These were the tip of the iceberg, however, and countless ships were en-route to other destinations. These ships were headed for remote locations to forward deploy quarantine and isolation sites, their modules were fully automated and run by near-sapient AI shards that could be set to accommodate any known culture. The modules were specified to meet species-based general needs, with the majority being catered toward pan-humanity, but with others based around other species common to the region.
Viltacáno Tyelciel nos Galdor sat at the head of one of the dual command centres of one of these vessels, attached to TYCS support. The Fair Lady was a ship that was longer than typical of the class, the central spar more than five kilometres long, and she raised an eyebrow, “Well that’s something certainly,” she said. Like most craft of any size originating in Menelmacar, the command centre of the vessel was built with holographic projectors in the walls, allowing the ‘flying carpet’ experience of the void. The ship’s threat detectors were calling her attention to thousands of obvious defensive systems ranging from the swarms that surrounded the Thanatos star to flotillas of drones that were already inspecting her ship.
She stood with her arms behind her back, looking at the planet itself, the world barely seemed habitable from orbit, an ash grey orb without any sign of life and precious little water remaining on its surface. Around it though, there were rings, by the number of transuranic elements in their construction she imagined they probably massed more than the planet itself, though the ship could not scan Thanatos’ mass. Glittering cities and domed parks could be seen on the rings, with constellations of other orbital plates, space stations, and most of all, ships.
Her communications and astrogation section, four people of the twenty-person crew, were certainly getting a work-out today; there were few systems as complex to navigate. Even though the ship was smart enough to navigate itself through the shoals of other vessels, a degree of supervision and discretion was essential.
“The enemy will come here captain,” her attention was taken by the leonine basso-profundo of Narth-Droneherder. She turned to look him in the eye, few unfamiliar with his species would dare, he was eight feet of striped menace, whose face was home to fangs the size of jacketed bullets.
“You think they’ll have that much nerve?” Tyelciel said.
“I do with this much force revealed the vile things cannot demur without making the attempt,” he said, “I feel it in my bones,” Narth said, “I hope we can be here when it happens.”
The mustering continued across the system, the product of a decision that had happened with remarkable speed; a new legation from the Galactic Republic of Arkasia had been invited to the Martian Forum only yesterday. That same day the Forum had passed a motion. On Titan, the home of the Triumvirate of Yut,"he same motion, with just the names swapped in the appropriate places, was passed simultaneously. A joint response of the two bodies to the cavalcade of tragedies in the region over recent years.
The stereotype that many on this side of the galaxy had of Solarians was that they were distant, uninterested, and slow to act or make decisions. Dusty old senators; impotent, lame-duck, not sedate so much as sedated. Consumed with petty bickering over irrelevant property lines. In support of this, detractors could say that the Scutum-Centaurus arm crisis had been considered a problem for the locals to resolve unaided. Many Solarian powers had barely seemed to notice.
The truth was simple: many of the states of the far side of the galaxy had a reputation of being deeply antipathetic to accepting assistance from the Solar Reaches. The moment the request had been made, plans long drawn into existence were implemented.
None of the ‘Solar’ powers was truly confined to the region of Sol, and many were found far across the galaxy, or even in other galaxies, with several engaged in a high-level conflict in the Triangulum Galaxy even as the Scutum-Centaurus relief operation had been implemented. The Great Civilization had yet to become involved in that other conflict and more than that it had well-developed hubs across the Milky Way, which they called the Great Wheel galaxy.
The muster at Thanatos had been chosen because even by the standards of such worlds, this one was well defended, and positioned on the rimward reach of the Perseus arm, within ten thousand light-years (accounting for their Z-axis positions) of Arkasia’s home system, a jumping-off point for fleets to head rimward and a bastion to retreat to if the need arose.
Of course, while civilian aid was being mustered, the Triumvirate-Forum forces were hardly restricted to this. Other involved parties were headed directly to Arkasian systems to address immediate needs, while the first wave of the TYCS response began.
The Flag Command Ops room for the Dagor Aglareb was similar to that of the Fair Lady in its overall structure, and actually smaller than the civilian vessel’s, as the ship was not run directly from this chamber, instead, it sat three to six people in comfort and served as a room for the fleet commander to survey the overall progress of the battle. The Dagor Aglareb did not truly require a conventional command centre, as the ship was sapient in itself.
The holographic image flashed white as it reverted to display the chosen system on the coreward edge of the Scutum-Centaurus arm. The system that had been chosen was a spinstar, ancient even by the standards of stars, massive compared to Sol in its heyday billions of years before even as a metal rich remnant it was bigger than the home-star; such ancient stars left rapidly rotating white dwarves with greater mass than more slowly rotating dwarf stars from which heavy elements could be siphoned. Although the star was a remnant of something ancient, even with the star’s light reduced to a tolerable level in the holographic rendering that surrounded the room the blazing star they had jumped to cast sharp shadows.
Louvres opened across the ship, as the gravitic and magnetic fields that it extruded began to pull matter from the star, starting bright new fusion reactions as they rose, and the battleplate began to release hordes of smaller structures. Someone had once memorably described a battleplate’s overall strategy as ‘throwing a beehive at the enemy’s face’ and the Dagor Aglareb had a powerful need for bulk mass - already its sub-craft were swarming.
Warlord Ferinion watched them go. He was a man who had spent the last thousand years sitting in a great many chairs in rooms like this, albeit with incrementally improved lumbar support. He still had the figure of a young warrior in his prime despite this, and his face was lean, with dark brown eyes that held a patient invitation in them.
He watched the optical view, and then reduced it with a gesture, calling up spreadsheets and countdowns that displayed the mission’s progress. He was not going to subject his crews to grandstanding, every one of them was far too busy with more important matters. Instead, he was far more interested in the progress of the fleet’s elements.
Caida, one of the aides who had spent much the same length of time metaphorically standing behind said chairs, watched the progress of the fleet. She appeared much more human than he did, though her hair was not only pale, but the colour of polished ivory. “We should be able to begin screening here within six hours Herunya,” she said.
“Keep an eye on the data we get back, when we go to public disclosure we are likely to get little initial traffic, but the first incidents in screening will be decisive.”
The ship was going to be providing oversight to a refugee clearing area, and its outer constellations of ship-drones were going to be operating in a fully air-gapped high-independence mode, their task was essentially customs, mixed with triage, to intercept ships that were leaving contaminated zones. These new drones were being assembled with only a limited suite of possible communication options. One of the several enemies assailing the conflict zone had been reported as capable of infiltrating cybernetics and electronics, and the drones in question were built to be physically only able of reporting a few select laser codes, and these were not digital transmissions or even data bursts, but simply coded frequencies; the spacegoing version of ‘green for clear to progress to next level screening, yellow for hold for investigation, red for open fire on us.’
This system was not foolproof, but Caida and her people were no fools.
Screening hubs and refugee zones were one part of the response, but they were not all of it. Further core-ward there were ships moving with far more lethal intention. The crescent prow of the Athkira was deep sea green, almost colourless in the lightless void, the vessel had come forth from outside the galaxy. The ship was young by the standards of the Great Civilization, Athkira was not a veteran of the War in Heaven; instead, it was a new vessel not only physically but mentally, nurtured in the shipyards of the Ichnarus system.
Athkira was painfully lonely. The vessel had not endured the collapse of the transgalactic networks that supported the Great Civilization’s communications networks during the War in Heaven, and it had not had to stagger from the Great Sleep. It had endured similar isolations only in testing before now, but those had been scheduled. This was different and far more daunting; it had offloaded the broth of quantum encryption nodes that supported it and excised its hyperwave communications units, it had segmented its memory and removed the partitions that even included how to rebuild such systems, along with thousands of other related technologies.
Organics who had been through the small things that they called wars had often said their experience was crippling boredom followed by moments of terror. Athkira had always been able to sympathize with such experiences, but only now could it truly empathize.
The vessel had exloaded a complete mind-state before this mission, of course, the difference was that now it had also made certain that it had forgotten how to do so. It would be a lengthy clearance process before it could do so again, and it felt a fragile vulnerability that most organics would struggle to associate with five kilometres of heavily armed living metal. The longer the mission continued, the further it would diverge from any replacement that would be created should it be confirmed lost.
Of course, though it was alone, it was still able to communicate, though only with structured data bursts pared of all interactive content, communications systems were never closely associated with consciousness systems (except when one did exload a consciousness) but now this was a trickle of information using secure basic formats. It felt almost as though it was using punch cards, using something so gauche as words to structure the trickle of communication it allowed itself through the isolated networks with its siblings.
A prick of awareness brought Athkira from its reverie; as a sub-self of its mind tugged at its mental sleeve to observe. A flotilla of vessels, a mix of war-craft and civilian vessels, several cultures, lay in orbit over the world it had been dispatched to. Contact had been lost with this place and those who had fled from it.
Athkira would normally have hesitated to open fire preemptively, but this was one of a number of worlds confirmed as fallen to the sundry foes by refugees that had already reached Arkasia. It fired as it reverted to real space, without hesitation. On its dorsal side, tubes released ten score high-distort missiles, weapons that were perfect for informational hazards, as their drive systems utilized a ‘corner-case' of conventional physics to exist outside the material universe until they impacted, their ability to engage moving targets was minimal, but Athkira did not care.
Its vessel class had been built to take advantage of these weapons, a proprietary weapon of the Triumvirate, and it had a very large number to spare. The missiles winked out as they approached the speed of light, and it lost the ability to track them. The enemy ships were moving, but for now, the element of surprise was on the attackers’ side.
Several of the enemy vessels were ripped apart from within as the HDMs struck. Athkira and its siblings were striking more than a hundred targets simultaneously, their attacks timed by atomic clocks in inertialess chambers - held on a single frame of reference - rather than any communication between them. Analysts said that future attacks like this would be less successful, but the Athkira was not a ship that any opponent would expect to fight, for none of their class had ever fought before outside of simulations with their siblings.
Watching the fragments of the ships it had targeted, Athkira felt a vindication.
Right, you odious bastards, let’s get the rest of you.
Elaterhatisse ita Mephrit had finished inspecting her temporary home. She had explored the apartment and taken in the view from the sloping windows of its main room. They showed the battered surface of Thanatos, seemingly a sky, though it was ‘down’ from the ring face, it was hardly a wonderful view she had to admit.
She was a Quendi woman, her hair spun gold, but it was not her most arresting feature. Her eyes shone with the light of stars, the fire of flares and coronae hanging in them, and she moved economically, her eyes taking in all around her. She wore green and gold, the dynastic colours of the Mephrit, whose dynasty had wholly restructured itself around providing weapons for the War in Heaven. Though she was no necrontyr, she followed that trade, and found her spiritual home there.
She set a golden coin with lacquer of green on the table at the centre of the apartment, soligram generators imported her preferences, generating replicas of her home’s more comfortable items across the suite, and she set her iron scroll on the wide, high table that had appeared nearby, its expanse of malachite a replica of the one she usually used.
She liked to think on the hoof, and her workspace was set up for that task. Several dozen of her colleagues occupied nearby suites already, and Elater had sprinted back from the Fornax Expedition to be here.
Here the information flows of the Great Civilization were far from isolated, though preparations were being made to do so, and if they had to be, the Working Group had wanted bodies near where the decisions could be made.
The merely military operations that had been undertaken thus far weren’t Elater’s concern, she was much more interested in gathering information. With the information security resources currently being deployed, they were at a stage of conjecture.
There were reports of survivors from a night shrouded world who had carried a story with them, an unlikely rescue from a shipwreck that had happened long ago, and these were being carefully considered. Elater watched the information spread across the table, mentally bringing some of the information from her halo - the extensions of her personality into the noosphere - and displaying it visually. She’d been following as she walked, and she did not speak aloud, instead, her thoughts became comments and expert systems transcribed them into desired formats.
And through that output, a single theme was growing. There’s either an error in our data or our picture of our enemies is woefully incomplete.
Appendix 1: Resolutions
Appendix 2: Map
Appendix 3: Participation
