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The return trip was forecasted to take a bit less than 300 MicroCycles, much less than the 300 Milli Cycles it had taken us to get out this far. To be fair, we had made frequent stops to establish beachheads and conduct recon on our way, so it was a bit slower going than it would’ve been had our only goal been to make a straight shot as far out as possible, but not that much slower.

Even The Collective’s most capable JumpDrives would’ve taken at least 100 MilliCycles to get back home from our current position, and that would be if pushed to the limit of their operational speed, to say nothing of range. The fact that The Hegemony was employing tech that was at least 2 orders of magnitude faster was impressive enough, but judging from the brief snippet I caught from the debrief before being ushered out, they had also drastically increased their JumpDrive’s maximum range, and that was something else entirely. I pondered the implications as I stood in the forward observation deck and stared out the windows.

“R&D is gonna have a field day when they see this thing!” The booming voice said suddenly from behind, i flinched, losing grip on my drinking vessel, which tumbled to the ground.

“Gah!” I gasped as my eyes focused from the neon vortex of HyperSpace beyond the window, to the reflection of Kel.

“Ope! Sorry Chakky, didn’t mean to startle you!”

“Oh it’s no problem at all, Lieutenant Col—“ I stopped, noting the camber of the head, the raised tuffs of fur atop the eyes, the mouth drawn tight in what I believe was called a ‘pucker’. I resumed.

“I mean, Kel.”

“Aha he learns!” He bellowed, then gentler he continued. “It’s good to see you, Chakky. I apologize I haven’t had a chance to catch up with you yet, it’s been rather hectic lately.”

“I understand completely, Kel. There will be time for colloquy and conference later, after we’ve all returned safely home, away from the danger out here.”

“Yes right, true indeed, Chakky. True indeed.” He said.

Though I hadn’t known him long in the grand scheme of things, I had come to recognize when the distance arose in his voice.

“Did I say something wrong, Kel?” I asked.

“No, no.” He replied as he gazed out the window. “It just your mannerisms, the way you speak, they are very similar to Krady’s when I first met him.

“Well, Ambassador Chyrkrady did hail from the same providence as me, it’s a rather small one. And given my species propensity for extreme geographically dependent dialectical variation, it’s no surprise that you find me more similar to him than you do most others of my ra—“

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“So goddamn analytical.” He said, and I could see his broad smile in the reflection as he gently shook his head. “Just like him…” He trailed off.

I didn’t know what else to say regarding Chyrkrady, having myself not even fully processed the events that transpired on The Hands 500 MilliCycles ago, and I certainly didn’t want him to bring up Caleb, so I decided a hasty change of subject was in order.

“What did you say about the R&D department? Something about a ‘field day’?”

“Oh right.” He said. “I was saying that all the top brains are gonna have their hands full with this Cruiser. Trying to reverse-engineer the JumpDrive, figure out how it can sustain such prolonged—and fast—HyperTransit. They are gonna have a lot of work to do.”

“Indeed they will. I had been pondering that very subject before you arrived.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yes. If we can manage to implement this advancement ourselves, it would bestow a significant advantage. All the more because it will come as a surprise to The Hegemony.”

“Yeah, here’s hoping. As of right now Folly and Blunder are our only ships that can match The Heg’s JumpDrive performance, and well, that’s because they are Heg Drives. But if we can manage to copy this tech… let’s just say that would be most convenient. We’re making this return trip in 2 and a half hours instead of 3 months, to say nothing of being able to get back to Rod and Saxxon and the rest. They’ll’ve been sitting smack dab in the middle of Heg space for at least 6 months by the time we can get to them.”

After a slightly prolonged silence on my part, he must have seen the gears turning in my head, because he continued.

“Everything all right?”

“Yes, yes, sorry. It’s just that I always mess up your Human measures.”

“Oh right, sorry Chakky. I’ve been using The Collective’s Standard Increments long enough now I ought just forget the Human measures, but I’ve been lazy with it lately. Old habits die hard. Reminds me where I’m from I guess.”

“Do the Standard Increments tend to be difficult for your race?”

“Not really no. Even before our alliance with The Collective, we had multiple measurement systems on Earth, and while the adherents of any particular one might have stubbornly resisted learning others—even if objectively simpler—everyone was used to encountering multiple scales.

And anyone born after The Incorporation grew up using both units, Human ones for most things at home, and The Collective’s for most everything else, though more and more the Standard Units have replaced our archaic Human measures.

So even for the old guard like me the conversion is pretty trivial, it’s just math.”

“But to a non-trivial degree, the Human units are still easier for you.” I said.

“Well sure. Look, if you say MilliCycle, yes, I know that’s about 8.7 hours. A MicroCycle, yeah I know that’s roughly 31 seconds. Ten MicroCycles, about 5 and a half minutes. A hundred Milli Cycles, a month and 6-ish days, et cetera.

And it’s even easier on the bigger timescales, your standard Cycle is almost exactly an Earth ‘Year’. So KiloCycle, MegaCycle, and the rest are real simple.

I can do the conversions lightning quick, but the point is that I still have to do them. They’re not quite intuitive in the same way as ‘day’, ‘week’, ‘month’, or ‘year’ are for me.”

“I see.” I said.

“I’ll make a point to use that which you are familiar with, Chakky. You’ve got enough on your plate as is without having to translate my ramblings of things from long past…” He trailed off, staring at the fluorescent iridescence beyond the transparent armor that served as our viewport to the universe beyond.

I followed his gaze and noticed both our reflections quite pronounced in that moment. The scars along Kel’s neck and arms like cracks in the unfocused blur of his mirrored doppelgänger. For just a second I caught his eye staring at those same distinct fissures, then his stare met my own, and he turned abruptly away and bounded down the hall.

In that moment—standing there, watching that hulking mass moving away so unnaturally swift and nimble—I wondered what it must be like to be a Human at this current juncture in time. Homeworld all but destroyed. Unfathomable multitudes of your own kind simply erased from existence. Innumerable LightCycles and a vast technological disparity standing between you and your revenge, with no guarantee that you’ll live long enough to exact it.

I let out a heavy sigh and turned back to my quarters to rest a while before our arrival…