As it turned out, Aoibhe had severely understated how long the capacitors would need to charge.

Miliam had taken a shower and popped onto the bridge, only to be told they had another eleven hours on the clock. Apparently she hadn’t meant that a shower or nap would consume all that time so much as that there was plenty of time for either. Since there was nothing better to do and Aoibhe was busy, Miliam had tried to get some sleep, and after a couple of hours lying in bed, exhaustion had finally hit and knocked her out like a light.

When she returned to the bridge, Aoibhe handed her something- a little medallion with a hole crudely drilled into it, and a wire for a necklace. There was a magic circle carved into it, the characters familiar but clearly not English.

“Took me a while to find, but there’s a translation charm for you. Run some mana through it so we can be sure I didn’t drill the hole too close to the spell,” she said, and Miliam vaguely recalled she’d said something about these over the comms when they first spoke. She placed it around her neck and put some mana into it as instructed, and it lit up for a moment before returning to normal. “Alright, I’m speaking my native language now. Can you understand me still?”

“Clear as day. Should I still be hearing the accent, though?" Miliam replied, wondering how the device could possibly know what accent Aoibhe should have.

“Aye, that’s a trick of the mind. It’s because you heard me speak English before you used the charm, so when it translates for you, your mind fills in with what it expects to hear.”

“Huh. Weird. So, does everyone have one of these?”

“Some people prefer to run the spell through their grimoire, but most carry one, aye,” Aoibhe said, gesturing to a device she had plugged into the pilot console. It certainly didn’t look like any grimoire she’d ever seen; it was more like a joycon, but with a dozen or so buttons on the end instead of a control stick. “Speaking of, we’ll have to pick one up for you when we arrive. I’m no magic teacher, but we can probably get some simple spells that don’t need any setup.”

“Oh, that’s cool. What kind of magic is there, anyway?”

“You’ll see. The teleporter is about charged, so go ahead and take a seat.”

With that, Aoibhe turned around and worked the controls. After a few moments, she felt a faint hum run through the ship, then a buildup of mana even she could detect. Absent anything else to do, she gazed out the window, and if she’d so much as blinked, she would have missed what happened.

As the energy fed into the teleporter array reached its peak, there was a brief, unmeasurable moment where the view outside blurred. The stars doubled, the Kinzela in the distance became vague, with stars seemingly shining through it, and a number of small objects appeared in the distance, barely visible, but shining with starlight all the same.

It happened so quickly Miliam couldn’t be certain she hadn’t hallucinated it. One second she could see a star scape and the Kinzela, and the next, they had been replaced by an entirely new sky and countless moving lights in the distance, along with a planet half-shrouded in night. Had she seen an afterimage, or was the really seeing both at the same time? She didn’t have time to ask, because almost immediately after their arrival, a voice came in over the comm.

“Seppa’s Prize, this is West Gate Traffic Control, please state the reason for your visit,” a male voice droned.

“Huh, so that’s the ship’s name,” Aoibhe muttered before hitting a switch to reply. “Making a salvage claim, hoping to get some repairs. Also gonna need to request a tow; this wreck’s maneuvering thrusters are out of juice, so we can’t approach closer than the wave drive’s safe distance.”

“Copy that Seppa’s Prize, sending your flight plan now. Once you’re in position you’ll get your tow, Traffic Control out.” With that, the comm went silent, and Miliam found time for a question.

“How’d you know they were talking to us if you didn’t know the ships name?”

“They wouldn’t broadcast on an open channel, it would clutter everyone’s comms. Had to be a tight beam straight to us,” Aoibhe explained as she set the ship into motion. Again, Miliam felt nothing, but the ship began to move- though she could only tell because the distant planet started to grow.

As they came closer, Miliam saw that the world was inhabited, as evidenced by the city lights visible on its dark side. The day side of the planet, by contrast, was a patchwork of blue seas and teal-hued vegetation, any inhabited regions completely hidden without lights to give away their positions.

“I’ve never seen a planet from here, not even Earth,” Miliam whispered, awed by the beautiful, half-cloaked marble growing closer every second.

“Aye, it’s a stunning sight, isn’t it? Never really gets old,” Aoibhe said fondly. Over the course of minutes, the planet grew from the size of a pea when they first arrived to a grand backdrop that overtook the entire window, crowding out the stars completely. Miliam couldn’t even fathom how fast they must have been moving to achieve that.

Eventually, a space station became visible, dwarfed by the planet behind it, but nonetheless gargantuan in its own right. It was a giant wheel, with spokes connecting to a tube through the center that, unbeknownst to Miliam, contained the station’s core operations and infrastructure. The outer rim, meanwhile, was host to numerous docks that branched out in every direction, a bramble of berths for star ships that looked chaotic at first glance but had an orderliness to it that was revealed the more one looked.

Countless ships swarmed the station, coming and going from the docks with flashes of chemical propellant. From this distance it was hard to make out any fine details, but the designs ranged from long tubes, to elegant forms reminiscent of sea life, to big, blocky things that looked more like buildings than ships.

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“They all look so different,” she remarked, fascinated by the bevy of starship designs on display. Aoibhe chuckled and decided to point a few out, with brief explanations.

“Aye, every species has different preferences and design philosophies. Those smooth ones? Sahagin ships. They live underwater, and like to model their ships after the great beasts they live beside. Their ships are full of water, so they don’t need to wear their weird reverse-diving suits all the time. The tall, long ones are probably dragonewt or harpy ships. They’re shaped like that so they can get everywhere through a long, open flight corridor in the center.”

“That seems like a structural flaw,” Miliam interjected, wondering what happened if that corridor was breached.

“Didn’t say it was smart design. The long ones are a gnome model, they like vertical layouts instead of horizontal. Those big flying bricks are dwarf designed; they use a whole lot less magic in their ships, so they’re weighted down with armor to compensate for the lack of barriers. The ones that are all black are tariaksuq ships; they’re nocturnal and hate being seen, so they tend to make ships that are hard to spot in the void.”

“You know a lot about ship designs,” Miliam observed, a bit impressed. Aoibhe seemed to know what species designed every ship in sight based just on the design philosophy, although she maybe looked a bit smug about it.

“I’m a pilot, I’ve flown most of ‘em in simulators. And it’s just pretty neat how everyone makes their ships a little different,” she responded, shrugging her shoulders. Their own ship slowed to a stop, evident only in their frame of view freezing, and moments later the ship lurched, suddenly under the effects of inertia as it began to approach the station.

“Uh…is this safe?”

“They’re just relocating us to a berth. Final coordinates are predetermined, so we’re not going to run into the station or something,” Aoibhe explained calmly, standing up. “Alright, may as well head down to the airlock. The station’s umbilical will connect on its own.”

With that, they descended to the bottom deck, stopping at a door Miliam hadn’t ever attempted to open. The inner door allowed them through, and just a couple minutes later, the ship abruptly stopped, sending Miliam into a wall, much to Aoibhe’s amusement. Moments later there was a series of clunking noises, followed by the inner door sealing itself, and then the outer door opened to reveal a long, flexible tube, with handrails along the sides.

Aoibhe went first, stepping out into zero-g. The corridor was spacious, but Aoibhe went right down the center, apparently not worried about becoming stuck out of reach of the sides. Miliam was a bit more cautious, grabbing a handrail and keeping one hand on it as she traversed hall. Ahead of her, Aoibhe calmly stepped into the gravity of the station, showing Miliam by example where she would need to do the same.

After a short wait in a second airlock, the women were released onto West Gate Station, in a section that looked remarkably similar to an airport terminal. Miliam gawked a bit at the diversity of people here, spotting bipedal lizards that came up to her hip, fantasy races like elves, angels, and naga, and even some she couldn’t guess at the identity of, like the antlered bipeds with every inch of their body covered, or the feathered quadrupeds that walked like apes on their clawed fists.

She came back to reality when a short man, twice the width of any man she’d ever seen, addressed them. He couldn’t have been more than four feet tall, but his limbs were thick with muscle. Between that and the thick beard, Miliam concluded he was a dwarf, but his facial features seemed rather familiar, almost like a Neanderthal, with a heavy set brow and a thick, wide nose.

He had a clipboard.

“Trygve Enrikson, West Gate security,” he began without preamble. “Salvage claim?”

“Aye. Ship was adrift for at least five decades according to the logs. I put the bodies of the crew in the starboard bunk. Might’ve been pirates. I’d also like to report a pirate attack on the merchant ship Kinzela, of which I’m the sole survivor of the crew,” Aoibhe explained, saying the last sentence with a notably more somber tone. She handed the man something. A card, ID maybe.

“And her?”

“Picked her up on an independent colony, she was the only passenger and similarly survived the attack. She’d like to claim asylum.”

“I would?”

“You would,” Aoibhe said with a tone that brooked no argument. Miliam, wisely, zipped her mouth shut.

“Mm, you’ll have to speak to station admin about that. They’ll explain the process for intake of members of Collective species from independent worlds to her.” The dwarf wrote some things on his clipboard and nodded to himself, then looked up at Aoibhe. “Your ship will be impounded until your claims are verified, but if it was adrift for that long, you’ll probably be approved, even if the claim about pirates cannot be confirmed. As for your report, do you have the coordinates of the attack and the remains of the Kinzela?”

“All in the ship’s databanks. Our only teleport was from the system the attack was in to here, so it should be easy to find.”

“Alright, thank you for your time. I’ll get your claim submitted. Please do not leave the station until you receive clearance, as security may contact you for additional details of the attack. Do you have any questions?”

“Nay, I’m good.”

“Have a nice day, ma’am.” With that, the dwarf trudged off, his part concluded.

“Shouldn’t customs be a bit more…thorough?” Miliam asked, recalling what she knew about travel between countries on Earth. This seemed almost cursory, like they weren’t concerned in the slightest.

“They don’t need us present to do a top-to-bottom inspection of the ship, and they will. And since we’re already on board the station, we’re not leaving until they’ve checked my identity and you’ve gone through intake. We’ve also been scanned for weapons and grimoires, and he would have received a notification if mine was detected but didn’t trigger its safeties when the station contacted it. Most of their checks are just behind the scenes, so it looks simple on our end.”

Miliam nodded in understanding. Seemed like they had all their bases covered, but were streamlining the process to keep things moving.

“Anyway, now that’s done, let’s find some real food to eat and purchase you a grimoire. Admin can wait a bit.”

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Codex Entry: The Gaian Collective Fleet

The Gaian Collective has a particularly large number of species associated with it, but no unified shipbuilding standards. These two things are directly related. Crew members perform better on ships designed for their physiology, so instead of handling all shipbuilding centrally, the Collective issues a quota to each member and allows them to choose the designs used to fill it. These ships are then allocated to mixed-species fleets to promote unity.

Since physiology greatly affects fighting style, this leads to some very different ships. Centaurs, for instance, are naturally built for cavalry tactics and never developed infantry tactics; as a result, their ships are designed for speed and maneuverability, excellent for charging enemy lines or committing hit and run attacks, while dwarves and elves design their ships with extra armor and barriers respectively, making them effective at forming a line of battle.

This makes the GC Fleet both the most difficult enemy to face and also the most difficult fleet to command. GC ships come in a wide range of designs and capabilities, which makes their fleets highly versatile and unpredictable. Fleet composition is not standardized because some member species have lower populations than others, so one fleet may be modeled after an entirely different doctrine than another based on what ships it has access to. An enemy simply does not learn how the GC fleet fights- it learns how a GC fleet fights, and must then start over the moment it encounters another .

GC Fleet Command is aware of this and leans into it by allocating officers to each fleet based on their demonstrated talents in officer academy. Specialization is a virtue when every assignment requires a different set of skills.