Liminality
Inner Gamma
Faelanii Deep Space Listening Station
1312.2 PLF
In the depths of an eternal twilight lit only by the dull glowing of a sphere of screens, a man in a bone shell stirred.
His body, a nest of glowing implanted wires and tubes, fanned out as he uncurled spiderlike from his temporary hibernation, drifting gently around him as they unravelled in the zero-g of the small sphere he called home. Dark eyes opened, revealing amber irises that seemed almost to shine in the pale lights of his listening station. Cold and articulate, they scanned the incessant babble of information that bloomed and receded across the flowing liquid metal interfaces he was linked to, searching for the thing which had disrupted his sleep.
“Raids across rimward trade lanes increased last month…”
“New construction takes place in the Liu Xiu economic zone as…”
“Fresh riots have broken out in Citic when…”
‘There’
His eye was caught by a dull orange light at the bottom of his sphere and spun his body to face downwards, kicking off gently to propel him towards the screen. With outstretched hands he slowed himself upon reaching the bottom, his body held suspended above the screen as his eyes twitched back and forth whilst reading the series of glowing logosyllabic pictograms. Long delicate fingers contained in pale resinous ceramo-bone brushed the nano-material, causing a cascade of information to bloom outwards across many screens, revealing the compressed data that had travelled so far from the Liu Xiu cabal to his station in deep space.
Above his head the mercurial interface warped and reformed itself, projecting a flowing image of energy and nanites in the form of an alien figure. The sculpted face of the man in the bone shell observed the static image quietly, the light dancing across the innumerable contours his ivory faceplating, revealing a face as angelic as it was alien. Scrimshawed and engraved into strange and fantastical designs of mythical beasts and figures, pale blue painted phoenix-like birds danced on either cheek as strange many horned animals ran beneath, their forms elongated and abstract, mixed in between with strange overlapping curved shapes. A pair of carved antlers erupted from the forehead, curving back behind the ears before flaring upwards a series of jutting points like a pagan monarchs crown, and matched by further carved plating that extended to the back of the head in a tide of horns and engravings. At the neck, the half unsealed synthetic material of his jumpsuit revealed a vast and complex network of blue, black and red tattoos, the symbols of his clan, his Tuatha.
Another long finger came out and touched the screen again, causing the image to jump into motion. Across the surface light rippled, giving the clay like metal colour and detail it had lacked upon its initial formation. Behind him, the sound system projected a foreign tongue, the worlds incomprehensible for a moment, before coalescing in his mind into something coherent as his training in GalaStan kicked in.
“We are now just days away from the highly anticipated arrival of the Golden Goose, yes that same vessel which has been dominating the airwaves in recent weeks, is due to arrive before the end of the week. The vessel itself will be in port at Cirrus Station, while the crew takes their month leave down here in Freeport among us. At the end of the month they will depart to begin the true portion of their expedition heading further out towards the rim…”
The report showed a ship, and his hands flared outwards to expand its size, a ball of nano-liquid separating and floating before him, solidifying itself into the shape of the ship. Data blazed beneath it, everything the operatives had been able to gather from open and closed sources about the vessel, although much of it unfortunately remained speculative. The basic design of it was understandable however, and the man had no issue conceiving of what type of ship it would be.
‘Lightly armed. lightly equipped. Fast.’
‘A diplomatic vessel.’
The newscaster continued to babble on in the background as he examined the details, only again catching his attention as the name of the captain was revealed. His arm twisted unnaturally in it’s socket, it’s double joints allowing an easy reach behind him as it pulled towards him another screen, his consciousness already directing the interface to bring all the information on ‘Captain Beyton’ it could, from both public and private records so the operative report could be correlated.
Access to the information network soon turned up the details he was looking for. The aged face of a man drawing past his prime, a history of logistical and corporate successes in commercial hauling. In great stylised letters the words ‘Kirgstine Starline Enterprises’ flashed into view as he tracked down the companies site. Closing the news network link the man clicked onward, the calming voice of a woman detailing an abbreviated and naturally biased history of the company as an automatic infomercial began automatically, followed by the announcement of the proud work they had achieved in the “Twin Eagles” trade line. A stylised picture taken of the man had him seated at his desk, eyes seemingly peering back at him even as he read over the small bibliographical blurb the company had given their now retired CEO of sixty years. Fresh details emerged in regards to information services from within the FRS, a incessant series of attempts to lobby by Mr Beyton - each seemingly more frustrated than the last- to increase trade networks and expand trade corridors into the rimward sectors of what the outsiders called the “Gamma Quadrant”.
The man in the bone shell cocked his head, returning to the picture as he studied the xenos curiously.
‘Who are you?’ he mused, a finger tracing the edge of the picture as he studied the man.
‘You’ve achieved so much in your short life, and yet you continue to work long past the age of retirement and comfort… what do you want?’
He peered into those stern eyes, gazing back implacably with his own black and gold ones, ‘Could it be that you want to be remembered Mr Beyton?’
‘Well…’ the man in the bone shell mused, pushing himself up and back to his prior position, hands grasping handrails to stabilize himself in the process.
‘We’ll have to see about that.’
With a gesture to it, the interface rose before the man in the bone shell, liquid metal pulsing and flowing before his eyes as it formed and reformed into an articulate command programme. With a touch to one of the ideographs a rapid pulse shot through the connective wires and tubes along his back, causing his arched back to freeze in a state of tense paralysis. His eyes fluttered as the machine interface responded, his senses becoming hyper aware and the reality around him tangential. He was the machine, and the machine was him. Signals and instructions of flesh and metal rejoining in a perfect state of divine ecstasy.
His “body” - or rather a perfect holographic copy of it - now floated incorporeally amidst a flowing tapestry of light and sound, infinite amounts of information flowing through and across him as his mind expanded within the new connection. Surrounding cameras gave an image of himself, or rather his “machine self” as he correlated data, forming a package to send back to his masters in the Rim.
The shell was a vast spiny contraption, a artifice of Kruthuntir - known as “bone coral” - which extended out in uneven spikes which pulsed and throbbed with light in the darkness of deep space. The listening post gave the impression of a cross between a lionfish and a sea urchin, it’s body boiling out in uneven segments as more and more had been added to it’s structure in uneven extensions. Within he could sense the few other operatives that lived within him within it, and of which he shared a quiet but distinct link during their designated hours of recreation. The constant thrum of energy came like a heartbeat to him, a constant companion which kept him focused on his duties to empire and clan, and kept him sane amidst this outpost within the great nothingness.
His hands, now covered in tendrils of light encircled the data, forming a sphere of information that burbled and sang beneath his expert fingers, a detailed package which under direction took on the sigil of an beautiful alien insect, ready to be sent through his spines and across the galaxy to where his people awaited, proud and imperial.
Then the man in the shell did something he was not supposed to, his hands moved and separated a copy of the file into a new sphere. A detailed pictogram of three brass eyed clouds crossed it’s surface as it was directed towards a hidden subspine of the listening post, it’s form flowing into existence in a stream of nanites as coded passwords were activated.
The man in the shell paused, the first emotion he’d shown since his awakening passing across his face.
'Decisions to be made...'
He remained like that for a long time, both spheres glowing healthily within his hands as he floated in the holographic lights of the interface, considering his options. Within this realm his mind fought a battle within itself, seconds of real time becoming hours of thought within this ethereal realm. He cocked his head to look at the spheres once again, contemplating the information within them.
Against his better judgement, he entered the codes.
The information disappeared, flashing along the spines and into the far reaches of space, their coded and encrypted details a mystery to all but those that awaited their arrival.
The man in the bone shell considered for a moment the meaning behind these events, the possibilities that would come from this.
‘The pieces are in motion, the game is changing...’
‘A new era awaits us.’
His body, a nest of glowing implanted wires and tubes, fanned out as he uncurled spiderlike from his temporary hibernation, drifting gently around him as they unravelled in the zero-g of the small sphere he called home. Dark eyes opened, revealing amber irises that seemed almost to shine in the pale lights of his listening station. Cold and articulate, they scanned the incessant babble of information that bloomed and receded across the flowing liquid metal interfaces he was linked to, searching for the thing which had disrupted his sleep.
“Raids across rimward trade lanes increased last month…”
“New construction takes place in the Liu Xiu economic zone as…”
“Fresh riots have broken out in Citic when…”
‘There’
His eye was caught by a dull orange light at the bottom of his sphere and spun his body to face downwards, kicking off gently to propel him towards the screen. With outstretched hands he slowed himself upon reaching the bottom, his body held suspended above the screen as his eyes twitched back and forth whilst reading the series of glowing logosyllabic pictograms. Long delicate fingers contained in pale resinous ceramo-bone brushed the nano-material, causing a cascade of information to bloom outwards across many screens, revealing the compressed data that had travelled so far from the Liu Xiu cabal to his station in deep space.
Above his head the mercurial interface warped and reformed itself, projecting a flowing image of energy and nanites in the form of an alien figure. The sculpted face of the man in the bone shell observed the static image quietly, the light dancing across the innumerable contours his ivory faceplating, revealing a face as angelic as it was alien. Scrimshawed and engraved into strange and fantastical designs of mythical beasts and figures, pale blue painted phoenix-like birds danced on either cheek as strange many horned animals ran beneath, their forms elongated and abstract, mixed in between with strange overlapping curved shapes. A pair of carved antlers erupted from the forehead, curving back behind the ears before flaring upwards a series of jutting points like a pagan monarchs crown, and matched by further carved plating that extended to the back of the head in a tide of horns and engravings. At the neck, the half unsealed synthetic material of his jumpsuit revealed a vast and complex network of blue, black and red tattoos, the symbols of his clan, his Tuatha.
Another long finger came out and touched the screen again, causing the image to jump into motion. Across the surface light rippled, giving the clay like metal colour and detail it had lacked upon its initial formation. Behind him, the sound system projected a foreign tongue, the worlds incomprehensible for a moment, before coalescing in his mind into something coherent as his training in GalaStan kicked in.
“We are now just days away from the highly anticipated arrival of the Golden Goose, yes that same vessel which has been dominating the airwaves in recent weeks, is due to arrive before the end of the week. The vessel itself will be in port at Cirrus Station, while the crew takes their month leave down here in Freeport among us. At the end of the month they will depart to begin the true portion of their expedition heading further out towards the rim…”
The report showed a ship, and his hands flared outwards to expand its size, a ball of nano-liquid separating and floating before him, solidifying itself into the shape of the ship. Data blazed beneath it, everything the operatives had been able to gather from open and closed sources about the vessel, although much of it unfortunately remained speculative. The basic design of it was understandable however, and the man had no issue conceiving of what type of ship it would be.
‘Lightly armed. lightly equipped. Fast.’
‘A diplomatic vessel.’
The newscaster continued to babble on in the background as he examined the details, only again catching his attention as the name of the captain was revealed. His arm twisted unnaturally in it’s socket, it’s double joints allowing an easy reach behind him as it pulled towards him another screen, his consciousness already directing the interface to bring all the information on ‘Captain Beyton’ it could, from both public and private records so the operative report could be correlated.
Access to the information network soon turned up the details he was looking for. The aged face of a man drawing past his prime, a history of logistical and corporate successes in commercial hauling. In great stylised letters the words ‘Kirgstine Starline Enterprises’ flashed into view as he tracked down the companies site. Closing the news network link the man clicked onward, the calming voice of a woman detailing an abbreviated and naturally biased history of the company as an automatic infomercial began automatically, followed by the announcement of the proud work they had achieved in the “Twin Eagles” trade line. A stylised picture taken of the man had him seated at his desk, eyes seemingly peering back at him even as he read over the small bibliographical blurb the company had given their now retired CEO of sixty years. Fresh details emerged in regards to information services from within the FRS, a incessant series of attempts to lobby by Mr Beyton - each seemingly more frustrated than the last- to increase trade networks and expand trade corridors into the rimward sectors of what the outsiders called the “Gamma Quadrant”.
The man in the bone shell cocked his head, returning to the picture as he studied the xenos curiously.
‘Who are you?’ he mused, a finger tracing the edge of the picture as he studied the man.
‘You’ve achieved so much in your short life, and yet you continue to work long past the age of retirement and comfort… what do you want?’
He peered into those stern eyes, gazing back implacably with his own black and gold ones, ‘Could it be that you want to be remembered Mr Beyton?’
‘Well…’ the man in the bone shell mused, pushing himself up and back to his prior position, hands grasping handrails to stabilize himself in the process.
‘We’ll have to see about that.’
With a gesture to it, the interface rose before the man in the bone shell, liquid metal pulsing and flowing before his eyes as it formed and reformed into an articulate command programme. With a touch to one of the ideographs a rapid pulse shot through the connective wires and tubes along his back, causing his arched back to freeze in a state of tense paralysis. His eyes fluttered as the machine interface responded, his senses becoming hyper aware and the reality around him tangential. He was the machine, and the machine was him. Signals and instructions of flesh and metal rejoining in a perfect state of divine ecstasy.
His “body” - or rather a perfect holographic copy of it - now floated incorporeally amidst a flowing tapestry of light and sound, infinite amounts of information flowing through and across him as his mind expanded within the new connection. Surrounding cameras gave an image of himself, or rather his “machine self” as he correlated data, forming a package to send back to his masters in the Rim.
The shell was a vast spiny contraption, a artifice of Kruthuntir - known as “bone coral” - which extended out in uneven spikes which pulsed and throbbed with light in the darkness of deep space. The listening post gave the impression of a cross between a lionfish and a sea urchin, it’s body boiling out in uneven segments as more and more had been added to it’s structure in uneven extensions. Within he could sense the few other operatives that lived within him within it, and of which he shared a quiet but distinct link during their designated hours of recreation. The constant thrum of energy came like a heartbeat to him, a constant companion which kept him focused on his duties to empire and clan, and kept him sane amidst this outpost within the great nothingness.
His hands, now covered in tendrils of light encircled the data, forming a sphere of information that burbled and sang beneath his expert fingers, a detailed package which under direction took on the sigil of an beautiful alien insect, ready to be sent through his spines and across the galaxy to where his people awaited, proud and imperial.
Then the man in the shell did something he was not supposed to, his hands moved and separated a copy of the file into a new sphere. A detailed pictogram of three brass eyed clouds crossed it’s surface as it was directed towards a hidden subspine of the listening post, it’s form flowing into existence in a stream of nanites as coded passwords were activated.
The man in the shell paused, the first emotion he’d shown since his awakening passing across his face.
'Decisions to be made...'
He remained like that for a long time, both spheres glowing healthily within his hands as he floated in the holographic lights of the interface, considering his options. Within this realm his mind fought a battle within itself, seconds of real time becoming hours of thought within this ethereal realm. He cocked his head to look at the spheres once again, contemplating the information within them.
Against his better judgement, he entered the codes.
The information disappeared, flashing along the spines and into the far reaches of space, their coded and encrypted details a mystery to all but those that awaited their arrival.
The man in the bone shell considered for a moment the meaning behind these events, the possibilities that would come from this.
‘The pieces are in motion, the game is changing...’
‘A new era awaits us.’
‘The Watchful Nyther’ - Ice Serpent Class
Estimated Time of Arrival at Beacon: Thirteen Hours.
The sound of venting steam, gurgling fluids and whirring hyperceramics filled her ears as she woke from enhanced biostasis. Eyelids fluttered as a groggy mind grasped for purchase, thoughts and images flitting through her consciousness as she tried to make sense of it all.
‘Blood. Duty. Service.’
The words sprung to mind almost as soon her confusion began to clear, a repetitious mantra that blended into the stream of her thoughts as she struggled to anchor her mind. As her vision began to clear the harsh sound heavy breathing replaced the whir of motors and slosh of water, the tight oxygen mask of her face becoming increasingly uncomfortable as she felt dark fluids drained down her legs. A name and rank slowly entered her confused mind, replacing chaos with order and certainty, even as numb fingers grasped at the oxygen umbilical that coiled across her chest.
‘Tai Kushanna. Captain of the Watchful Nyther. Colonel of the 12th Golden Company, in temporary service as Adjutant to Lord Factor Ulliath Aerganteil, and Formaer Warrior of the Faelanic Celestial Empire.’
‘Me…’
The pods internal display lit up, meaningless technical scrawls in Norn pictograms crawling across the surface of opaque shell in front of her as she struggled to concentrate on them. Without a pause for her dulled mind, the machine began to run a vast tide of auto-doc data, detailing treatment for injuries, nutritional supplements, thirty hour observation records, and a host of other medical jargon that made little sense to her. A hand reached up to press against the pseudo-organic material, pushing through curling holographic static in a halo of white light around the point of contact. With a start she realised it was her hand, dull eyes blinking in surprise at the unexpected movement.
‘Well… who else’s hand was it going to be?’ She thought wryly.
With a a sharp crack like breaking ice the biostasis chamber responded, coolant hissing and water trickling across its surface as Tai began to rise. With two powerful grey arms she discarded the knuckled organic oxygen mask and pushed herself up onto one knee in the pod. Across her naked back she felt the electric pop of cords as biomechanical sensory plugs disconnecting from her skin, little shocks coursing through her muscles as it pumped sensation back into her. Staring down at the writhing cords in fascination, she watched as their their lamprey like maws opened and closed padded bedding beneath her, struggled to connect with something that was no longer there.
Heaving herself over the side of the pod, her two feet hit the coarse, bony ceramic of the ships floor and she shakily stood.
‘Not much muscle weakness.’ she mused in approval, ‘Mustn’t have been in stasis for long then.’ With a glance she scanned her surroundings, recognising her quarters as murky shapes became defined as the room lit up to her presence.
‘They didn’t need to put me in medical wing either… Good.’
The crew and she had been onboard a derelict in the frost belts when they’d run into trouble. Initially it had just been another ‘scan-and-bag’ job, the usual Reach-based grunt work of figuring out the technological worth of a dead ship - or its scrap worth if it wasn’t advanced enough - and bagging up any choice “corpsicles” for the scientists back home to poke and prod at to their leisure. Her First Officer Prevan-La had complained like no tomorrow about it, but orders were orders when it came from C-Con, and so they’d gone onboard to salvage what they could.
If she had been honest with herself, Tai had shared Prevan-la reservations, although she didn’t tell that to the dour second in command. C-Con usually didn’t give a shit unless it was Old Empire in origin or something equally unusual and this derelict was neither, just some ugly, half frost-warped freighter, made by a race barely past banging rocks together to create fire.
All had admittedly gone well enough to begin with, perhaps a little too well she now supposed. They had cut into the hull with a sea-locust-like salvager drone, raked through the damaged ships computer for transferable information and started collecting frozen bodies with little issue. Nothing hostile had been encountered and everything seemed to be going to plan. One minute she had been bagging up a twelve legged arachnid race in mechanistic boredom, and then all Thirteen Hells had seemingly bust quarters.
A Laishka scavenging party, which had been ducked into one of the ships hull breaches beyond their sensors had been surprised to find a Faelanii patrol vessel above their heads. The pirates currently raking through the interior of the derelict had been even more surprised, and had let out a panicked salvo of gunfire before the Formaer had ever caught onto their presence. Tai had been hit twice in the stomach, but had managed to rally her forces to drive the intruders off, cutting down the last of the predatory aliens as they’d disengaged from the derelicts surface and sped off into the Reach.
Tai had caught the video feed from the shipboard cameras just as the ‘Nyther’ broadsided the small ship as it slipped into FTL, damaging it even as it escaped into the dimensional breach. She wasn’t sure if I’d been enough to pancake the vessel, but there had been little opportunity to follow up, and with the trail pointing the ship directly into the clutches of a Reef Barrier, little desire to give chase. Even the Nyther’s HK-F10’s weren’t duty-mad enough to follow through on that kind of suicide mission.
Around her the chrysalis lights of her quarters began hum gently as they heated up, filling the ribcage interior of her quarters in a pleasant yellow glow. Grasping a thick bundle of folded linens from a nearby wall counter and began to dry off her keratin plated skin as she walked out of the biostasis room, advancing towards a concave portal in the wall of her office.
Working her way through her drenched black hair with the towel, she leaned forward and waved a hand in front of the portal. She watched in interest as the pulsing metallic veins that coursed through the ships hull responded, nanites flowing across the concave surface in an oily black sheen. In seconds the dip in the hull had turned from a web of pulsing black veins, into a flawless grey mirror, her own gold eyes and an angular handsome face staring back at her from its almost polished surface.
As she stood naked before the mirror, she tentatively began exploring the wound sight across the left of her abdominals. Her calloused fingers ran across the dermal ports in her skin and amber linear veins of her grey semi-synthetic body, as she probed the fresh skin over the repair work, looking for flaws. To her satisfaction she saw no scarring and felt no pain from the point of injury, only a lingering stiffness that tightened a ball of discomfort within her.
‘Standard work’ she thought, ‘Those auto-doc biocomputers are getting better at their job.’
After another couple seconds she grunted in approval and ran her fingers through her hair, clearing the wet locks of her unshaven right-hand side out of her vision. Her eyes caught on the arm of intricate pictographic tattoos that ran across her skin, old scars of duty failing to mar the needle work that had imprinted itself from shoulder to hand. A flash of nostalgia crossed her mind as Tai remembered those distant days, the camaraderie she’d felt with her fellow riot police in Neo-Angkarath, and the night after a couple dozen cups of harthal where they’d decided to get tattoos done by an Ambrennei flesh sculptor who’d looked as icy as a reachberg and twice as salty.
‘Good days.’ she mused, a touch of wistfulness striking her. She wondered where Maran, Kuza and Dennikov were now, trying to recall the details of their redeployment.
‘They were probably shipped of to some cushy job as the planetary defence forces inner colonies… or maybe as back-line administrative guards for the Core Systems.’
She shook herself, unwilling to let nostalgia turn to longing. She had duties to perform, orders to make, reports to write, the Nyther needed her attention.
‘Blood. Duty. Service.’
The chime of her data-symbiont pulled her attention back to the present, an incoming call listed in her right eye from Yranii, Navigator of the Star of Morning. With a blink and a twitch of her head she put the Navigator on speaker, already pulling clothes out of a series of hexagonal insect-like pigeon-holes in the wall next to the mirror, tying a ornate wrap around her waist in a complex breachcloth.
“Captain Tai Kushanna.” the feminine voice was an overlapping chorus, a multitude of many sub-components in her ears as the station navigator spoke to her through her mind-wiped biocomputers.
“Grand Navigator Yranii.” Tai replied evenly, pulling a sleeveless fur lined shirt over her head even as she acknowledged the navigator. “To what do I owe the honour?”
“There has been a disturbance in Sector 447-7 and Lord Ulliath wishes your vessel to intercede on his behalf and begin negotiations with the ship present there. Yours is the only craft properly equipped for the task within current comms range, so your orders are to travel there immediately and resolve this situation.”
Tai frowned, “Understood navigator, but what exactly is this vessel? Is it hostile?”
“It is alien. A non-Reach based species, and currently presumed non-hostile.” the navigator replied in a clipped tone. “Your orders have been transferred to your personal data-symbiont. We currently deem the mission confidential, and so public dispersal beyond necessary authorities is naturally forbidden”
“Ooooh…” Tai said, a smile twitching at the side of her mouth, “A mysterious visitor from the Outer Dark, how exciting!”
“Indeed.” Yranii replied dryly.
Tai was never quite sure why the Faelanii higher ups liked to maintain a terribly officious nature like Yranii’s, but she supposed it was a matter of not being linked into the collective subconsciousness. A lot of emotional data must have been lost in translation when talking to someone not of their species she imagined, along it could be a result of focus as well. It took a lot to keep a cool head she figured, at least when your ancestors had a collective fit in your grey matter for not murdering everything in sight.
“Your ship is being re-equipped and resupplied as we speak.” Yranii continued. “You should be ready to depart within the hour. In the meantime I suggest you familiarise yourself with the mission briefing and resolve any outstanding issues you might have on your ship before launch.”
“You’re certainly eager to get going,” Tai replied, an amused smile brushing her lips at the speed Yranii was pushing her at. “Fine, fine... I’ll have a read over the data as soon as I can. Having just come out of biostasis I’m a little out of the loop, as you might image.” She paused a little, wanting to rib the Faelanii, “Thanks for inquiring about that by the way.”
“Your ships computers informed me the injury was not serious.” Yranii replied curtly, “Laishka weapons are not sophisticated enough to ensure extensive bodily damage to Formaeri bio-synthetics of your generation… yet at least.”
“Well gee, when you put it like that I feel so much better Navigator.” Tai replied sarcastically.
After letting the pause in their conversation linger a little overlong, the Navigator continued, her tone somewhat more sympathetic than before. “I was… glad that you were not severely injured... Lord Ulliath thinks highly of your skills.”
‘Was that abashment in the voice of her superior?’ With the Faelanii it could be hard to tell, but Tai thought so. Her crooked smile revealed her enlarged lower canines as she grinned in amusement.
“I appreciate your concern Yranii” she said, letting none of her glee cross over the voice only channel. “I’ll update myself promptly. Blood, duty, service. Captain Kushanna out.”
Closing the comm link, her attention switched to the blinking glow of a ovoid dataslate buried beneath a tide of paperwork at her desk. Crossing the room she collapsed into a arched red coral chair, brushing aside old status reports and ship updates as she pulled the slate up from beneath piles of paper. Her eyes flickered up only once to appreciate the sight of the large translucent Kruthuntir portal that displayed the full wintery glory of the Pale Reaches, the white light of its majesty dappling the floors and her desk in eerie light as she worked her way through her administrative mess.
Still digging through the paperwork, her hands paused at a half finished codex in the Faelanii mythic style. Her codex.
Gently, she lovingly traced across half painted glyphs and scenes, her collected recollections of twenty years of service imprinted upon the thick, durable mycetic paper that had been the style of Faelanii illustrators since the Aeshanii period. It was a slow, laborious process, filling much of the space in her recreational periods - which were admittedly few and far between - but it was one that filled her with infinite satisfaction. The Formaeri body required little sleep due to the fusion of flesh and machine, so she was able to dedicatedly work like Aesithrian monk at her magnum opus, working and reworking entire portions of her work as she laboured over it. One day she hoped she would complete the work, but she doubted it would be any day soon. Still she was if not proud, then satisfied with the effort that had gone into it thus far, as well as its symbolism of her HK-F13 bloodline’s abilities for creativity that had leaped exponentially, even beyond the wildest dreams of the F12’s.
Lifting it reverently aside, she placed it in a rehal as she reached for the data slate beneath. If she had the time to spare in her transfer to 447-7, she would begin to touch up the one-hundred-and-twenty-second page. Her paints and brushes were dried, but it would take little work to make ship internal biosphere provide new colours and water to clean her brushes.
Picking up the data slate, she felt a slight pulse of electric shock as the machine connected with her data symbiont, the wireless link beginning to pump data through her visual cortex and into her brain. As more and more was revealed about her mission, her eyes scanning page after page of details in excitement, her wide smile broke into an even wider grin.
“Well, well.” she said, her voice thrilling with excitement as her eyes flicked gleefully through pages upon pages of classified data, “Here’s something for the history books…”
‘Blood. Duty. Service.’
The words sprung to mind almost as soon her confusion began to clear, a repetitious mantra that blended into the stream of her thoughts as she struggled to anchor her mind. As her vision began to clear the harsh sound heavy breathing replaced the whir of motors and slosh of water, the tight oxygen mask of her face becoming increasingly uncomfortable as she felt dark fluids drained down her legs. A name and rank slowly entered her confused mind, replacing chaos with order and certainty, even as numb fingers grasped at the oxygen umbilical that coiled across her chest.
‘Tai Kushanna. Captain of the Watchful Nyther. Colonel of the 12th Golden Company, in temporary service as Adjutant to Lord Factor Ulliath Aerganteil, and Formaer Warrior of the Faelanic Celestial Empire.’
‘Me…’
The pods internal display lit up, meaningless technical scrawls in Norn pictograms crawling across the surface of opaque shell in front of her as she struggled to concentrate on them. Without a pause for her dulled mind, the machine began to run a vast tide of auto-doc data, detailing treatment for injuries, nutritional supplements, thirty hour observation records, and a host of other medical jargon that made little sense to her. A hand reached up to press against the pseudo-organic material, pushing through curling holographic static in a halo of white light around the point of contact. With a start she realised it was her hand, dull eyes blinking in surprise at the unexpected movement.
‘Well… who else’s hand was it going to be?’ She thought wryly.
With a a sharp crack like breaking ice the biostasis chamber responded, coolant hissing and water trickling across its surface as Tai began to rise. With two powerful grey arms she discarded the knuckled organic oxygen mask and pushed herself up onto one knee in the pod. Across her naked back she felt the electric pop of cords as biomechanical sensory plugs disconnecting from her skin, little shocks coursing through her muscles as it pumped sensation back into her. Staring down at the writhing cords in fascination, she watched as their their lamprey like maws opened and closed padded bedding beneath her, struggled to connect with something that was no longer there.
Heaving herself over the side of the pod, her two feet hit the coarse, bony ceramic of the ships floor and she shakily stood.
‘Not much muscle weakness.’ she mused in approval, ‘Mustn’t have been in stasis for long then.’ With a glance she scanned her surroundings, recognising her quarters as murky shapes became defined as the room lit up to her presence.
‘They didn’t need to put me in medical wing either… Good.’
The crew and she had been onboard a derelict in the frost belts when they’d run into trouble. Initially it had just been another ‘scan-and-bag’ job, the usual Reach-based grunt work of figuring out the technological worth of a dead ship - or its scrap worth if it wasn’t advanced enough - and bagging up any choice “corpsicles” for the scientists back home to poke and prod at to their leisure. Her First Officer Prevan-La had complained like no tomorrow about it, but orders were orders when it came from C-Con, and so they’d gone onboard to salvage what they could.
If she had been honest with herself, Tai had shared Prevan-la reservations, although she didn’t tell that to the dour second in command. C-Con usually didn’t give a shit unless it was Old Empire in origin or something equally unusual and this derelict was neither, just some ugly, half frost-warped freighter, made by a race barely past banging rocks together to create fire.
All had admittedly gone well enough to begin with, perhaps a little too well she now supposed. They had cut into the hull with a sea-locust-like salvager drone, raked through the damaged ships computer for transferable information and started collecting frozen bodies with little issue. Nothing hostile had been encountered and everything seemed to be going to plan. One minute she had been bagging up a twelve legged arachnid race in mechanistic boredom, and then all Thirteen Hells had seemingly bust quarters.
A Laishka scavenging party, which had been ducked into one of the ships hull breaches beyond their sensors had been surprised to find a Faelanii patrol vessel above their heads. The pirates currently raking through the interior of the derelict had been even more surprised, and had let out a panicked salvo of gunfire before the Formaer had ever caught onto their presence. Tai had been hit twice in the stomach, but had managed to rally her forces to drive the intruders off, cutting down the last of the predatory aliens as they’d disengaged from the derelicts surface and sped off into the Reach.
Tai had caught the video feed from the shipboard cameras just as the ‘Nyther’ broadsided the small ship as it slipped into FTL, damaging it even as it escaped into the dimensional breach. She wasn’t sure if I’d been enough to pancake the vessel, but there had been little opportunity to follow up, and with the trail pointing the ship directly into the clutches of a Reef Barrier, little desire to give chase. Even the Nyther’s HK-F10’s weren’t duty-mad enough to follow through on that kind of suicide mission.
Around her the chrysalis lights of her quarters began hum gently as they heated up, filling the ribcage interior of her quarters in a pleasant yellow glow. Grasping a thick bundle of folded linens from a nearby wall counter and began to dry off her keratin plated skin as she walked out of the biostasis room, advancing towards a concave portal in the wall of her office.
Working her way through her drenched black hair with the towel, she leaned forward and waved a hand in front of the portal. She watched in interest as the pulsing metallic veins that coursed through the ships hull responded, nanites flowing across the concave surface in an oily black sheen. In seconds the dip in the hull had turned from a web of pulsing black veins, into a flawless grey mirror, her own gold eyes and an angular handsome face staring back at her from its almost polished surface.
As she stood naked before the mirror, she tentatively began exploring the wound sight across the left of her abdominals. Her calloused fingers ran across the dermal ports in her skin and amber linear veins of her grey semi-synthetic body, as she probed the fresh skin over the repair work, looking for flaws. To her satisfaction she saw no scarring and felt no pain from the point of injury, only a lingering stiffness that tightened a ball of discomfort within her.
‘Standard work’ she thought, ‘Those auto-doc biocomputers are getting better at their job.’
After another couple seconds she grunted in approval and ran her fingers through her hair, clearing the wet locks of her unshaven right-hand side out of her vision. Her eyes caught on the arm of intricate pictographic tattoos that ran across her skin, old scars of duty failing to mar the needle work that had imprinted itself from shoulder to hand. A flash of nostalgia crossed her mind as Tai remembered those distant days, the camaraderie she’d felt with her fellow riot police in Neo-Angkarath, and the night after a couple dozen cups of harthal where they’d decided to get tattoos done by an Ambrennei flesh sculptor who’d looked as icy as a reachberg and twice as salty.
‘Good days.’ she mused, a touch of wistfulness striking her. She wondered where Maran, Kuza and Dennikov were now, trying to recall the details of their redeployment.
‘They were probably shipped of to some cushy job as the planetary defence forces inner colonies… or maybe as back-line administrative guards for the Core Systems.’
She shook herself, unwilling to let nostalgia turn to longing. She had duties to perform, orders to make, reports to write, the Nyther needed her attention.
‘Blood. Duty. Service.’
The chime of her data-symbiont pulled her attention back to the present, an incoming call listed in her right eye from Yranii, Navigator of the Star of Morning. With a blink and a twitch of her head she put the Navigator on speaker, already pulling clothes out of a series of hexagonal insect-like pigeon-holes in the wall next to the mirror, tying a ornate wrap around her waist in a complex breachcloth.
“Captain Tai Kushanna.” the feminine voice was an overlapping chorus, a multitude of many sub-components in her ears as the station navigator spoke to her through her mind-wiped biocomputers.
“Grand Navigator Yranii.” Tai replied evenly, pulling a sleeveless fur lined shirt over her head even as she acknowledged the navigator. “To what do I owe the honour?”
“There has been a disturbance in Sector 447-7 and Lord Ulliath wishes your vessel to intercede on his behalf and begin negotiations with the ship present there. Yours is the only craft properly equipped for the task within current comms range, so your orders are to travel there immediately and resolve this situation.”
Tai frowned, “Understood navigator, but what exactly is this vessel? Is it hostile?”
“It is alien. A non-Reach based species, and currently presumed non-hostile.” the navigator replied in a clipped tone. “Your orders have been transferred to your personal data-symbiont. We currently deem the mission confidential, and so public dispersal beyond necessary authorities is naturally forbidden”
“Ooooh…” Tai said, a smile twitching at the side of her mouth, “A mysterious visitor from the Outer Dark, how exciting!”
“Indeed.” Yranii replied dryly.
Tai was never quite sure why the Faelanii higher ups liked to maintain a terribly officious nature like Yranii’s, but she supposed it was a matter of not being linked into the collective subconsciousness. A lot of emotional data must have been lost in translation when talking to someone not of their species she imagined, along it could be a result of focus as well. It took a lot to keep a cool head she figured, at least when your ancestors had a collective fit in your grey matter for not murdering everything in sight.
“Your ship is being re-equipped and resupplied as we speak.” Yranii continued. “You should be ready to depart within the hour. In the meantime I suggest you familiarise yourself with the mission briefing and resolve any outstanding issues you might have on your ship before launch.”
“You’re certainly eager to get going,” Tai replied, an amused smile brushing her lips at the speed Yranii was pushing her at. “Fine, fine... I’ll have a read over the data as soon as I can. Having just come out of biostasis I’m a little out of the loop, as you might image.” She paused a little, wanting to rib the Faelanii, “Thanks for inquiring about that by the way.”
“Your ships computers informed me the injury was not serious.” Yranii replied curtly, “Laishka weapons are not sophisticated enough to ensure extensive bodily damage to Formaeri bio-synthetics of your generation… yet at least.”
“Well gee, when you put it like that I feel so much better Navigator.” Tai replied sarcastically.
After letting the pause in their conversation linger a little overlong, the Navigator continued, her tone somewhat more sympathetic than before. “I was… glad that you were not severely injured... Lord Ulliath thinks highly of your skills.”
‘Was that abashment in the voice of her superior?’ With the Faelanii it could be hard to tell, but Tai thought so. Her crooked smile revealed her enlarged lower canines as she grinned in amusement.
“I appreciate your concern Yranii” she said, letting none of her glee cross over the voice only channel. “I’ll update myself promptly. Blood, duty, service. Captain Kushanna out.”
Closing the comm link, her attention switched to the blinking glow of a ovoid dataslate buried beneath a tide of paperwork at her desk. Crossing the room she collapsed into a arched red coral chair, brushing aside old status reports and ship updates as she pulled the slate up from beneath piles of paper. Her eyes flickered up only once to appreciate the sight of the large translucent Kruthuntir portal that displayed the full wintery glory of the Pale Reaches, the white light of its majesty dappling the floors and her desk in eerie light as she worked her way through her administrative mess.
Still digging through the paperwork, her hands paused at a half finished codex in the Faelanii mythic style. Her codex.
Gently, she lovingly traced across half painted glyphs and scenes, her collected recollections of twenty years of service imprinted upon the thick, durable mycetic paper that had been the style of Faelanii illustrators since the Aeshanii period. It was a slow, laborious process, filling much of the space in her recreational periods - which were admittedly few and far between - but it was one that filled her with infinite satisfaction. The Formaeri body required little sleep due to the fusion of flesh and machine, so she was able to dedicatedly work like Aesithrian monk at her magnum opus, working and reworking entire portions of her work as she laboured over it. One day she hoped she would complete the work, but she doubted it would be any day soon. Still she was if not proud, then satisfied with the effort that had gone into it thus far, as well as its symbolism of her HK-F13 bloodline’s abilities for creativity that had leaped exponentially, even beyond the wildest dreams of the F12’s.
Lifting it reverently aside, she placed it in a rehal as she reached for the data slate beneath. If she had the time to spare in her transfer to 447-7, she would begin to touch up the one-hundred-and-twenty-second page. Her paints and brushes were dried, but it would take little work to make ship internal biosphere provide new colours and water to clean her brushes.
Picking up the data slate, she felt a slight pulse of electric shock as the machine connected with her data symbiont, the wireless link beginning to pump data through her visual cortex and into her brain. As more and more was revealed about her mission, her eyes scanning page after page of details in excitement, her wide smile broke into an even wider grin.
“Well, well.” she said, her voice thrilling with excitement as her eyes flicked gleefully through pages upon pages of classified data, “Here’s something for the history books…”
Cyneryn System
Planet LX741
The Rim of the Pale Reaches
1312.5 PLF
Around a distant star, in a distant system, on the edge of the universe, a planet was dying.
This was no natural death, no sudden consumption of it’s mass by an ever expanding star, nor the destruction of an existing ecosystem by catastrophe or climactic collapse. The world was a rock, barren and cold of life...
And yet it was dying.
A great hole blighted the surface, a cataclysmic emptiness burning hot and red in the long night as unsuppressed mantle spewed and vomited across the surface of it’s broken shell. Above, drawn higher and higher and lit by ghostlike beams of energy was the torn surface of the planet, pulled up beyond the confines of the worlds gravitational pull and suspended unnaturally in orbit, just below a bright white shape.
Great lumps of matter hung suspended beneath it, sudden flashes of light and reflection showing the surface to be animate with moving shapes that darted in and out of it, breaking apart it’s surface, reducing it, and then rising to speed back towards it’s celestial counterpart, the beautifully delicate and dimly glowing structure that hung above it.
A white star made of bone and light.
Compared to the spherical bulk of the planet, the distant shape of the star seemed fragile in the void, but it was anything but so upon closer inspection. Great spines of milky bone extended outwards from a central mass, evenly spaced and strong as the day they’d been grown. Their surface was smooth but for the regular and biomechanically inspired veiny cords and artistic flairs that criss crossed like giant tendons, along arcs of shaped pale resin, across their surface. Tiny ships moved in between, mites dancing between the limbs of a titan, entering and existing the frequent docking ports along it’s length. The tips of the great spines glowed brightly, the smooth forms of base and stem unravelling as they became splintered with thousands of landing sites, antennae, sensors and industrial collection areas, brimming with harvested ore which had been cut down and shipped in smaller chunks to these sites, ready to be fed to the not far distant foundries which turned it into usable base materials. Further down each spine a diverse array of industries were practised, from metalworks, to shipyards, to electronics and agriculture, each often linked into the other in terms of position along the great spine to make the process streamlined, efficient, functional. Far distant the core of the great wonder glowed a pale white-blue light, it’s surface covered in small indents where transparent segments of the same bone-like material provided windows for the white stars millions of occupants as they lived and breathed and slept within it’s body. It was a great city ship, one of the wonders of the known universe, and the only one of it’s size. It was an artificial star, it’s body solid in form but lit and heated by immensely powerful reactors deep in it’s core that could never be silenced, creating the necessity for immense energy dumping coolant systems that even now burned with the intensity that mirrored a sun, glowing in the same cold white-blue light of the other luminescent pockets across it’s surface.
It was beautiful, an ethereal and wraith-like structure shaped lovingly by strange alien minds across spans of centuries, an artistic and technological project of unmatched scale and engineering.
But, it was also terrible, and monstrous…
For all it’s glory, all it’s wonder and fantastic majesty it’s very actions betrayed both it’s nature and perhaps the true nature of it’s creators. It was a parasite, a vampiric star that consumed the flesh and blood of worlds to perpetuate and grow in age and wonder. As it hung above this world, it ripped it apart with rippling beams of cutting energy, cannibalising the planet for the purposes of it’s masters. It ripped apart it’s body, pulling it upwards and then draining it of all the components it needed before discarding it again, leaving behind burning chaos and instability.
It was a metaphor in many ways, a artistic display self reflection unconscious or not upon the minds of it’s makers, and through it’s actions it mirrored their warped and indifferent minds.
But this was not all the purpose it served, for despite it’s activity it’s guiding hands dreamed and slumbered still. This world and it’s consumption was not the purpose of it’s arrival, only a byproduct of it’s intentions and the means to a greater end.
It was waiting on something.
Far distant, spread across many systems it had pollinated smaller parts of itself, beacons carrying a signal that would draw it’s quarry towards it, and further the aims it’s masters intended. The signal was basic, a series of coordinates and a repeating message which would take them to the system which the pale star waited, illuminated not only by the dim glow of a dwarf star, but the light that brimmed behind it in cascading glory.
The burning white glory of the Pale Reaches.
Here it would wait patiently for it’s arrival, a ghostly form amidst ghostly stars. It would glut upon the world beneath it as it’s forges and factories burned deep into the eternal twilight of the stars, building, creating, growing, making the armada which would traverse the stars and bring wealth, power and influence to the great empire that would send them forth. With gifts and honeyed words it would seduce them and bring them into the fold, and then the masters would rise again to take back what was theirs and what had been theirs countless aeons ago.
But for now, it waited… and watched.
This was no natural death, no sudden consumption of it’s mass by an ever expanding star, nor the destruction of an existing ecosystem by catastrophe or climactic collapse. The world was a rock, barren and cold of life...
And yet it was dying.
A great hole blighted the surface, a cataclysmic emptiness burning hot and red in the long night as unsuppressed mantle spewed and vomited across the surface of it’s broken shell. Above, drawn higher and higher and lit by ghostlike beams of energy was the torn surface of the planet, pulled up beyond the confines of the worlds gravitational pull and suspended unnaturally in orbit, just below a bright white shape.
Great lumps of matter hung suspended beneath it, sudden flashes of light and reflection showing the surface to be animate with moving shapes that darted in and out of it, breaking apart it’s surface, reducing it, and then rising to speed back towards it’s celestial counterpart, the beautifully delicate and dimly glowing structure that hung above it.
A white star made of bone and light.
Compared to the spherical bulk of the planet, the distant shape of the star seemed fragile in the void, but it was anything but so upon closer inspection. Great spines of milky bone extended outwards from a central mass, evenly spaced and strong as the day they’d been grown. Their surface was smooth but for the regular and biomechanically inspired veiny cords and artistic flairs that criss crossed like giant tendons, along arcs of shaped pale resin, across their surface. Tiny ships moved in between, mites dancing between the limbs of a titan, entering and existing the frequent docking ports along it’s length. The tips of the great spines glowed brightly, the smooth forms of base and stem unravelling as they became splintered with thousands of landing sites, antennae, sensors and industrial collection areas, brimming with harvested ore which had been cut down and shipped in smaller chunks to these sites, ready to be fed to the not far distant foundries which turned it into usable base materials. Further down each spine a diverse array of industries were practised, from metalworks, to shipyards, to electronics and agriculture, each often linked into the other in terms of position along the great spine to make the process streamlined, efficient, functional. Far distant the core of the great wonder glowed a pale white-blue light, it’s surface covered in small indents where transparent segments of the same bone-like material provided windows for the white stars millions of occupants as they lived and breathed and slept within it’s body. It was a great city ship, one of the wonders of the known universe, and the only one of it’s size. It was an artificial star, it’s body solid in form but lit and heated by immensely powerful reactors deep in it’s core that could never be silenced, creating the necessity for immense energy dumping coolant systems that even now burned with the intensity that mirrored a sun, glowing in the same cold white-blue light of the other luminescent pockets across it’s surface.
It was beautiful, an ethereal and wraith-like structure shaped lovingly by strange alien minds across spans of centuries, an artistic and technological project of unmatched scale and engineering.
But, it was also terrible, and monstrous…
For all it’s glory, all it’s wonder and fantastic majesty it’s very actions betrayed both it’s nature and perhaps the true nature of it’s creators. It was a parasite, a vampiric star that consumed the flesh and blood of worlds to perpetuate and grow in age and wonder. As it hung above this world, it ripped it apart with rippling beams of cutting energy, cannibalising the planet for the purposes of it’s masters. It ripped apart it’s body, pulling it upwards and then draining it of all the components it needed before discarding it again, leaving behind burning chaos and instability.
It was a metaphor in many ways, a artistic display self reflection unconscious or not upon the minds of it’s makers, and through it’s actions it mirrored their warped and indifferent minds.
But this was not all the purpose it served, for despite it’s activity it’s guiding hands dreamed and slumbered still. This world and it’s consumption was not the purpose of it’s arrival, only a byproduct of it’s intentions and the means to a greater end.
It was waiting on something.
Far distant, spread across many systems it had pollinated smaller parts of itself, beacons carrying a signal that would draw it’s quarry towards it, and further the aims it’s masters intended. The signal was basic, a series of coordinates and a repeating message which would take them to the system which the pale star waited, illuminated not only by the dim glow of a dwarf star, but the light that brimmed behind it in cascading glory.
The burning white glory of the Pale Reaches.
Here it would wait patiently for it’s arrival, a ghostly form amidst ghostly stars. It would glut upon the world beneath it as it’s forges and factories burned deep into the eternal twilight of the stars, building, creating, growing, making the armada which would traverse the stars and bring wealth, power and influence to the great empire that would send them forth. With gifts and honeyed words it would seduce them and bring them into the fold, and then the masters would rise again to take back what was theirs and what had been theirs countless aeons ago.
But for now, it waited… and watched.