Anja pushed bits of endive around her plate with a frown. The newly unlocked hydroponics bays were operating at full capacity and the sudden influx of fresh human vegetables was taking the station by storm. The problem was that every food stall seemed to think that greens should be fried, steamed, boiled or baked crisp rather than simply served raw. After a beaming, obese Kitan vendor had presented her with a limp bowl of boiled lettuce she had eventually given up and grabbed a few handfuls of produce straight from the hydroponics trays. Despite all her effort and anticipation, however, the crisp leaves seemed strangely unfulfilling.
“You know what they say,” Jesri said, her mouth half-full, “if you’re not overjoyed to see real food, you’re overdue for deployment.” She reached over and stabbed a fork through some of the leftovers on Anja’s plate, darting backwards before her sister could do much more than scowl.
Anja’s annoyed expression faded as quickly as it had arrived, however, and she sank back in her chair with a sigh. “You might be right,” she admitted. “Not like we have a shortage of things to do around here, but lately my day seems to be very… administrative,” she said, spitting out the word with a disgusted expression. “I wish the resistance members would consent to appear publicly. That would let them talk with the guilds directly so that we could go do something useful.”
Seeing her lack of objection, Jesri happily reached over to steal Anja’s plate. “We aw-”, she said, hastily swallowing a mouthful. “Sorry. We are being useful. The guilds are enthusiastic but they’re still like kids in a quartermaster’s sometimes. They need us to help them. Besides, I thought you were still training with your guys?”
“Oh, sure,” Anja said, making a dismissive gesture. “We help out. My men train. What does it gain us, though? The Gestalt is not going to be brought down by a robust station economy and two dozen trigger-happy lizards.” She shook her head in frustration. “It has been a week and a half since we took the gate. Xim Len is nearly done with the first Ysleli ship refits. I would at least have expected a tentative plan from David on what we do next.”
Jesri nodded, tapping her bottom lip with her fork thoughtfully. “I get the impression that they were a bit thrown off by not being able to use Ellie’s research. They could be reassessing parts of their short-term plan, or at least revising details. Also, I was checking in with Chris about the fabrication bays and he mentioned something about wanting to let the situation with the gate mellow out a bit before we made any more big moves.”
Anja shook her head. “Mellow out?”, she snorted. “Sister, the gate is only going to draw more attention with every jump. I know that if Manifold gets its way, it will be the premier transport route for exports in this sector. Exports which, by the way, include a selection of new human-make goods straight from the fabricators. I worry that the resistance is underestimating the station’s inevitable growth spike from giving the guilds access to both the station facilities and the gate.”
“It’s possible,” Jesri allowed. “For all the talk of keeping a lower profile by not bringing the Grand Design within range of the station we’re being fairly unsubtle. Speaking of which, have you talked with our David lately?”
“Two days ago,” Anja confirmed. “Happy as could be, still parked off some rogue planetoid playing xenogeologist with the sensors. We should count ourselves lucky that we allowed him on the ship and not the David from Elpis - otherwise, I would worry about ever seeing the Grand Design again.” She sighed and leaned back in her chair, lacing her hands behind her head. “Unfortunately,” she said, “I think it will still be too long before we are able to safely bring her to Elpis. Once we do, we confirm to the Gestalt that the ship was not destroyed at Ysl. At that point Elpis is lost to us no matter what we do.”
“Perhaps that accounts for the sudden hesitancy from our resistance cell?”, Jesri mused. “After all, they’re the only ones here who can’t evacuate if an Emissary comes knocking.”
“Only one way to find out,” Anja said. “Sister, I believe we are overdue for a strategy meeting with our incorporeal friends.”
“Well, hold on,” said Jesri, grabbing her fork again. “You’ve still got sprouts.”
----------------------------------------
Rhuar and Qktk joined them in the briefing room, settling down around the table just minutes after the two sisters arrived. Rhuar’s fur was filthy, matted with grease and marred by a few crisped patches that still smelled faintly of burnt hair. He had been spending ever more time in the fabrication workshops with Xim Len as they put the finishing touches on Tarl’s ships.
Qktk had been a bit harder to pin down as of late. Everyone Jesri talked to seemed to have recently conversed with him about trade or shipping, food or leisure - even Manifold had mentioned Qktk talking with it at length about potentially renting use of the Leviathan while its captain was indisposed. As far as Jesri could tell, the little Htt was networking his chitinous ass off while they were stuck on-station. Assuming there was a populated station left here when all was said and done, he was probably going to be a very wealthy individual.
They both looked bone-tired in the dim light from the room’s displays, making Jesri feel her recent restful idleness all the more keenly. The four of them sat in the dark without talking for a long minute or two before the screens activated to show David and Helene.
They too looked tired, although theirs was a harried stress that reminded Jesri of soldiers that had spent too long under siege. The quiet, inevitable threats marked you differently than the immediate and specific threat of a sniper or a knife in the dark, Jesri knew from experience, and it was that threadbare quality that hung from their features.
“Hi everyone,” Helene said with a wan smile. “It’s been too long since our last sit-down.”
“Yeah, that’s kind of why we asked to meet,” Jesri said. “Is there an issue with our timetable?”
David puffed his cheeks out, exhaling slowly. “Kind of, yeah, but not the way you think. We’re concerned that the project is getting too visible too fast.”
“Wait,” Rhuar snorted. “Help me out here. You’re saying that stealing the most famous human artifact in the galaxy and parking it on your doorstep attracted some attention?”
That earned him annoyed glances from David and Helene both. “Obviously we accounted for some notoriety once we started making moves,” Helene said crossly. “The gate was always an essential acquisition, without it we can’t penetrate far into Gestalt-monitored territory without being immediately intercepted. We anticipated that it would cause some disturbances when we acquired it.” She shook her head.
“That’s not the issue,” she sighed. “It’s all the rest of it. If you take Elpis and introduce the gate, it doesn’t impact much. There’s some increased attention by the Arrigh and Kita, sure, but eventually things trend back towards baseline.”
“Unfortunately,” David said, “that’s not how things played out. We should have reassessed when the Ysleli arrived, that was the first major divergence from our projections. We even discussed the matter, but came to the conclusion that the Ysleli were largely uninterested in the larger political scene and would be a minimal impact - an assessment that is still correct, I might add.”
Jesri gave them a flat look. “But their presence on the station still changes things,” she said slowly. “It spurs the guilds to action.”
“Exactly,” Helene confirmed, missing or ignoring Jesri’s odd tone. “The guilds used to be fragmented and risk-averse. When you changed the power dynamic by floating a bunch of money and human tech in front of them, they suddenly stopped their infighting and started taking a more active role in station management. It’s acting as a huge economic boost to the station. Between the fabricators and the gate the growth has been immense - would you believe me if I told you there were twice as many people living on Elpis as there were before you came?”
“Seriously?”, asked Rhuar. “I’ve seen an increase just walking around, but I can’t believe the population just doubled. Where are they all staying? You can’t just dump that many people into the station, you need rooms, food, water - we’re a closed system, even if the station is huge there’s only so much of it that’s usable.”
“The dockworkers and freight haulers have converted cargo spaces into dormitories,” David said with a grimace. “They’re hiring everyone they can get to help out at the docks, their biggest labor sink is cargo transport. Food and water thankfully aren’t an issue, the hydroponics bays are more than compensating for the increased demand. Jesri’s infusion of funds into the system means that the local economy is fluid and cash-rich, so everyone is content - for the moment.”
“It’s stable until one factor or another hits a ceiling,” Qktk mused. “Right now it’s all growth, but boomtowns always hit a contraction eventually. Eventually there will be a lack of food, water, jobs, essential services.”
“Eventually Xim Len will realize she can just make cargo robots to replace the dockworkers,” Rhuar pointed out. “I know the capabilities of the fabricator, there aren’t many jobs on the station that will be safe once the large-scale assemblers are finished working on parts for the Ysleli ships.” He scratched at his ear, then shook his head. “We should probably consider what happens if literally all the new arrivals to the station find themselves unemployed overnight.”
Helene winced. “Not to sound callous, but that isn’t our problem. The eventual economic difficulties that Elpis may face are no doubt severe, but it’s beyond the scale of our operation. It’s the immediate exponential growth that’s concerning to us.”
She steepled her fingers and leaned forward, her eyes intense. “We have been concerned about the worsening state of our operation for a while, but we had hoped that Eleanor’s research would yield results before the situation became untenable. Now that we know it isn’t safe to use her patch we can no longer be certain that we will be ready to confront the Gestalt before it discovers us. We may be facing an existential threat to the station within months, even weeks.”
Anja gave the display an uninterpretable look. “What are our options?” she asked.
David shrugged. “There are really only two. We must either delay the rapid expansion of the station or accelerate our progress on the data layer of our offensive.”
Jesri drummed her fingers on the table irritatedly and frowned. “The station’s economic growth is past the point of easy recovery. We could find ways to put a damper on it, but there isn’t much we could do that would be meaningful within the next couple of months.”
“We could disrupt guild operations,” David suggested mildly. Anja and Jesri exchanged a glance, then turned back to the display.
Helene looked askance at him, and he spread his hands in a placating gesture. “I’m not suggesting anything large-scale,” he said soothingly. “We need Xim Len where she is to complete Tarl’s refit, and most of the others aren’t worth the trouble. Just removing the Caran in charge of the shipper’s association would shake things up enough.”
“Manifold?”, asked Rhuar with surprise. “David, don’t get me wrong, but Manifold is convinced it’s about to make a fuckton of money. You can’t pay it to abandon the guild.”
“Manifold is singularly focused on optimizing its logistical network,” Qktk added, nodding in agreement. “It only cares about money because it’s the designated metric for success.”
David shrugged. “There are less voluntary ways we could go about it,” he said casually. The room stared at him for a moment, and Qktk’s mandibles twitched spasmodically.
“For fuck’s sake, David!”, Helene shouted. “We are not contemplating violence against Manifold. Some lines we don’t cross.”
David shook his head. “Helene, if we don’t do something then Manifold dies anyway. So does everyone else on the station, followed by everyone in the universe.”
She pursed her lips angrily. “I know the stakes. It doesn’t excuse calculated thuggery, calculated murder. We can’t let ourselves stoop that low, we’re better than this.”
“No we aren’t,” David laughed incredulously. “Seriously, Helene, are you going to say that in front of these two?” He gestured to Anja and Jesri, who had been sitting in stony silence throughout their exchange. “Are you going to sit there and tell them with a straight face that humanity is too noble to stoop to treachery and assassination? That we only kill combatants, never civilians? That we were always the good guys?”
Helene’s face grew uncertain as she looked through the display at the two Valkyries, then it hardened once more. “An argument like that has no constraints,” she scoffed. “You can justify any manner of atrocity with that logic. If you take that route, you abandon any pretense that we are still humans and not simply rogue software rampaging through the station systems.”
David’s smile grew wider, taking on a feral quality. “Oh, don’t take such a limited view of our humanity. Real, authentic humans created our friends over there, after all.” His eyes bored into Helene’s unblinkingly. “Tell me, what do you think they were?”, he demanded. “Were they diplomats, in three meters of power armor? Spies, with rifles larger than you? Do you think they made Valkyries by teaching them about due process and rules of engagement? Ask them!”, he shouted, pointing through the screen at Anja. “Ask how many times they looked back at the human giving them their target list and said ‘we’re better than this.’”
This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.
“Enough,” Anja said coolly, her eyes fixed on David’s. “This is a useless discussion. We will not be killing Manifold.”
“Thank you!”, said Helene indignantly. “See, David-”
“Quiet,” Jesri interrupted, her voice tight. “Both of you. Is this all you have after two weeks? Brute force and moral hand-wringing?”, she admonished them. “Why didn’t you reach out to us before wasting all this time?”
Helene’s mouth hung open in shock, and even David looked mildly surprised. Jesri’s hands curled into fists below the table, her lips pressed into a thin line. “There is no scenario where assassinating a guild leader will provide a sufficiently beneficial outcome. At best we would cause a mild delay while one of their lieutenants takes charge, at worst we are discovered and the entire operation is blown.” She stared at David and Helene with cold eyes. “Attempting to influence socioeconomic trends with political violence is the first resort of desperate amateurs. Refusing to fully explore your options for personal moral reasons is naive. Both of your analyses were simplistic and disappointing.”
Anja leaned back in her chair, taking in the stunned faces of the resistance members. “Worrying about the growth of the station is useless. The economic situation on Elpis was always going to be largely uncontrollable as a result of our actions. Even if you had been transparent about your concerns - and let me be clear, you should have been - there is little that we could have done to arrive at a different scenario.”
She began ticking off items on her fingers in a clipped tone. “The arrival of the Ysleli necessitated a pacifying concession to prevent Arrigh military intervention,” she explained, “and given our resources any gift of sufficient value would necessarily involve exposing station systems capable of economic disruption. Using the necessity of such a gift to secure the loyalty of Tarl and his men via the refit was tactically sound, even if it granted Xim Len an unfortunate amount of access,” she said, her voice still flat. “Acquiring the gate as well may have been a step too far, but I see no viable way to proceed without it.”
“It’s easy in hindsight,” David retorted, his defiant tone marred somewhat by the rattled expression on his face. “Where were your objections and analysis when we proposed the mission? What stopped you from giving your dire warnings about the consequences of the gate operation during the briefing?”
“It’s… shit, it’s our fault, really,” Jesri said frustratedly, her anger bleeding off. “We’re used to working with trusted handlers, and your help up to now had gained you that trust. Perhaps a bit too much, but don’t mistake that criticism for something it isn’t. Your information and assistance has been invaluable to us thus far. It’s no exaggeration to say that we owe the resistance our lives several times over. We just…”
She hesitated. “Back when we were running missions for the Navy there would often be missing context or unexplored implications in a mission briefing. The questions occurred to us, obviously, but we never said anything because it wasn’t necessary. Our handlers had inevitably considered it, evaluated it, arrived at the optimal conclusion far ahead of the briefing. It was easier to trust them, just like it was easier to trust you.” Helene stared back at her, eyes flicking between the two sisters uncertainly.
“They would scold me for saying this,” Jesri said ruefully, “but they were perfect. As perfect as they could be, anyway.” She looked at Helene and David, a touch of sympathy coloring her expression. “But you aren’t. Hell, we’re the ones who are supposed to be going around running insurgencies, not you. You’re a handful of people that stumbled into this essentially at random. That’s not to say you haven’t done exceedingly well - improbably well, even.”
“But the fact remains, you are not our handlers,” Anja said sharply. “You lack the support of the military intelligence apparatus. You lack specialist groups to compile information packets on subjects of interest. You lacked our advice, if only because you did not solicit it and we did not think to offer it.” Her face softened somewhat, and she leaned forward again. “You are not infallible. We should not have treated you as such. It was… sentimental of us to do so, and incorrect.”
Helene cleared her throat with some difficulty and stared at the two sisters. “What are you suggesting?”, she asked quietly.
“Only better coordination,” Jesri replied. “We’ve missed several key points so far where we could have worked together and leveraged our individual areas of expertise to better influence the developing situation on the station. Loop us in more often, keep the lines of communication open. Let us help you.” She shot David a chilly look. “We have a much broader skillset than simply checking people off a list.”
“Fine. Wonderful,” David said brusquely, his face red. “We’re all talking now. If we’ve given up holding back the station’s economic expansion, that leaves us with the distant second choice of accelerating our plans against the Gestalt.”
Anja nodded, choosing to ignore his vaguely petulant tone. “Do we have any promising options?”, she asked.
“Not even poor ones, I’m afraid,” Helene said quickly, speaking before David could respond. “Our current obstacle is that our information on the Gestalt’s network architecture is limited to what the Beta instances were able to exfiltrate when they escaped. Ideally we’d have a physical sample of Gestalt hardware…” She trailed off, shrugging helplessly. “We had discarded that idea as unrealistic, for obvious reasons.”
Jesri frowned. “That’s a tough ask, yeah,” she agreed. “Is there something else we could use in lieu of a hardware sample? Scans, transmission logs?”
“Detailed schematics, perhaps,” Helene said thoughtfully. “There’s really not a substitute, though. We can only get so far on theoreticals. We need to study methods of attacking the Gestalt’s network, and we can only test our theories if we have something to attack.”
“So that leaves us with what?”, Qktk asked. “Stealing a Gestalt ship? That sounds unwise.”
“Try impossible,” grunted David, still wearing a sullen expression. “The Gestalt doesn’t have ships. The Emissaries are like big drones, you can’t board them and steal them. We would have to disable one, which we can’t do. Even the Grand Design could barely scratch them.”
Anja’s face lit up. “We may not need to fight an Emissary.” She looked at Jesri, her eyes glittering. “We already defeated one, remember.”
Jesri blinked. “Trelir?”, she asked, twirling her hair around a finger contemplatively. “Do you think any of his body survived? There was the bomb in his office, not to mention the other Emissary blowing up half the continent.”
“He was quite resilient, sister,” Anja pointed out. “We only ever managed to damage him cosmetically. He did seem confident that the bomb would kill him, but he was outside of his office when it went off. His facility was also underground, which may have afforded his body some protection from the other Emissary’s attack.”
“Or it could mean he’s buried under dozens of meters of rubble,” Jesri pointed out. “Not that it changes much, he’s still our best bet.”
“By far,” Rhuar snorted. “It would be easier to dig him out of the molten fucking planetary core than to square off with an Emissary and win. The planet doesn’t shoot back.”
“Helene, would that work?”, Jesri asked, looking back toward the display. “Could you use Trelir’s body as your hardware sample?”
David and Helene shared a glance. “I’ll have to run it by Yetide,” she said, “but I don’t see why not. David?”
He gave a grudging nod. “From your reports, Trelir seemed to have enough autonomy that he could be useful. It depends on the state of his body.”
“Then it’s settled,” Jesri said happily. “We’re going back to Ysl.”
“What’s left of it, anyway,” Qktk said glumly. “I’m not sure why you’re so pleased to be going back there.”
Anja flicked his carapace lightly with her finger, grinning. “My sister just likes having a mission target,” she said airily. “No need to worry, Demon Captain - I doubt we will have need of your famous services this time around.”
“Oh, leave him alone,” chuckled Rhuar as Qktk grumbled and slouched in his chair, looking everywhere in the room but at Anja. “Besides,” he added, “I wouldn’t bet against a little combat. The Ysleli were ready to fight us before we got them blown up. Now we’re going to come back and rummage around in the ruins of their homeworld after they’ve had a few months to get good and angry? To salvage a piece of advanced technology? With fucking Tarl in our party?” Rhuar shook his head. “Some folks are going to get shot,” he said sagely.
“Wait,” Helene objected, “why would you even take Tarl back to Ysl? Wasn’t he exiled and stripped of his rank?” She looked to David for confirmation, received a nod in response and shook her head disbelievingly. “That would make things unnecessarily complicated. Let’s not even mention that he’s completely insane. Any member of Anja’s squad would be less trouble if you needed a local guide.”
“I didn’t say we wanted to take Tarl,” Rhuar snorted. “I’m just being realistic. If he hears that we’re going back to Ysl, which he absolutely fucking will - what do you think his reaction will be?”
There was a moment of silence while everyone thought.
“Ah,” muttered Jesri. “Shit.”
----------------------------------------
Xim Len’s wings fluttered in a nervous spasm before she caught herself and stilled them, mentally cursing her lack of composure. She never had issues showing her work to clients, but then again these weren’t her normal clients. Tarl, normally a font of endless questions, stalked silently behind her like a moody yellow thundercloud with his eye darting to and fro. He set her teeth on edge, but she had largely grown accustomed to him over the past several weeks.
Rhuar was likewise a familiar sight, having taken it upon himself to join her engineering team for the later stages of the refit. Odd, certainly, but he was prone to surprising insights and unconventional solutions that had endeared him to her engineers. Rhuar was, unlike Tarl, quite welcome in her workshop. His friends, however…
She felt her wings begin to twitch once more and willed them to be calm, glancing nervously behind her. The two humanforms walked quietly behind Rhuar as they approached her workshop, their feet making no noise whatsoever as they moved. The two sisters were creepy like few others she had met, and that was before you knew what they were. Every time Xim Len snuck a glance at them, their bright blue-on-white eyes were already staring straight back at her like they knew she was thinking about them. Creepy. And now they wanted to check her work.
Not like she wasn’t confident in her results. The requirements and specifications Jesri had provided for her were admittedly excellent, and working in the fabrication workshops was a dream fulfilled. But Jesri hadn’t handed her the key to Xlixë-Who-Chases-The-Dawn’s divine cloud-forge and told her to make a cargo crate. No, heavenly tools were to be used for heavenly pursuits. The reactors alone were so terrifyingly energetic that she had test-fired the first one by remote in a vacant dock half a kilometer away from populated sections of the station. That it worked perfectly with only a slight audible hum was somehow the most terrifying part of it. Everything in human engineering was orders of magnitude stronger, brighter, faster, deadlier than the peak of her previously-limited imagination - yet somehow still quiet, efficient, understated and elegant. She was grateful, terrified and humbled every day she came back to the workshop.
But now, mostly terrified.
The small group crossed into the maintenance bay, a barely-contained chaos of scaffolding, wires and hoses strewn around the Ysleli ship sitting as if newly hatched in the center of it all. “Here it is,” she said proudly, letting her wings puff out a bit. “The Subtle Blade is the first of the refits to finish certification. We have seven more that are done, pending their own certification, but we wanted to fully clear one ship as a preview.” She preened, looking back at the faces of her clients as they took in the ship. “What do you think?”
She had no fear of their reaction now that she was standing in front of it. The ship still held to the elongated and boxy 98-meter frame of a Ysleli destroyer, but the side pylons had been extended and raked back in a sleek wedge to accommodate the longer human weapon mounts. Bulky and inefficient engines flaring out in the back had been replaced by the slim taper of smaller, cleaner thrusters. The hull, previously a lumpy crosshatch of interlocking armor plating, had been redone in a lightweight battle alloy that would easily outperform the heavier metals the Ysleli had been using. It shone like smoothed charcoal in the bay lights, a pristine semi-gloss hiding immense strength and resiliency in its micro-latticed structure.
The others looked at Tarl, seeming to come to a silent consensus that the first opinion was his by right. The tall warfather stepped forward, his lone eye no longer roving but fixed on the ship. “It is…”, he said, his voice trailing off dazedly. “This is a Ysleli ship?” He finally broke his gaze away from the Subtle Blade to look at her. “Xim Len, you are an artist of metal. This is the finest ship I have ever had under my command.” He made an odd bow towards her, his torso bending slightly to his left. “Please accept my gratitude for your work, and for indulging me in my curiosity these past weeks.”
Xim Len felt her wings tuck flat against her body in a sudden searing blast of embarrassment. Who was this, and what had he done with Tarl? “I, ah-”, she stammered. “Thank you?”
Jesri smiled and stepped forward to get a better view. “It’s wonderful,” she said. “You’ve really outdone yourself, Xim Len.”
Her wings were vacuum-tight against her back. “Your schematics were wonderful,” she mumbled. “I just followed the plans.”
Tarl had walked to the near pylon and was standing with his hand pressed against the cool metal of the hull, a blissful expression on his face. “Wonderful,” he murmured happily. “Yes, simply wonderful. I cannot wait to see it blooded in combat, bearing my men to glory within.”
Anja cleared her throat. “May I make a suggestion?”, she said sweetly. “It should not be much of a combat mission, but there may be some glory - or at least satisfaction.”
Tarl tore his gaze away from the ship and looked back at her curiously.
“Ysl,” Anja said, visibly enjoying the surprise on Tarl’s face. “We need to return for Trelir’s body.”
Xim Len swore she could see an image in Tarl’s glossy black eye as a feral grin bared his needle-sharp teeth. Tarl, Warfather-in-Exile, captaining his sleek and deadly flagship over the battered skies of Ysl - the hero returned, ascendent. She turned to Jesri as Tarl began to laugh softly, his eye gazing blankly ahead.
“You realize this is going to make him even more… him, don’t you?”, she whispered to Jesri. The humanform woman grinned back at her with a flash of her alarmingly white teeth. Xim Len successfully avoided flinching at the sight, feeling a pang of guilt at the impulse to flee. Jesri had been nothing but kind to her, after all. It wasn’t her fault that she was so profoundly... disconcerting.
“I’m halfway looking forward to it,” Jesri confessed. “It was either this or he would have found out anyway and gone on his own.”
Xim Len looked back at the cackling Ysleli. “Fair,” she acknowledged. “I just hope they’re ready for him.”
Anja walked over with a faint smile. “They’ve already had their planet half-destroyed,” she murmured. “What more could-”
“No, no no no no-”, Jesri said quickly, her eyes opening wide.
“-he possibly do?”, Anja concluded, her smile growing larger.
Jesri sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose while Xim Len looked on in bewilderment. She supposed it was a humanform thing.