The ship in orbit was an older model, with modifications that TerraSol Orbital Control had never seen before. Still, it was registered, not only on the modern Confederacy records, but on the TerraSol records from before The Bagging.
It was actually registered out of the VodkaTrog Imperial Registry.
Despite the fact it had changed its name, it still possessed the earlier serial numbers and well as registry numbers in its transponder.
It was also piloted by the same being it was registered to.
The It Tastes Sweet, now registered as the It Tastes Bitter, a registered trader/colony ship, formerly of Tnvaru Prime, reflagged under TerraSol.
Its maiden voyage had taken place at the same time as the Lanaktallan Council's assault on Fortress Sol.
Forty-thousand years Galactic Local.
Fifty years TerraSol local.
The Virtual Intelligences had interrogated the transponders, had examined the ship, and permitted it into the Sol System. Further VI examination had allowed it to enter Solarian orbit.
Another round of automated VI processes had permitted the It Tastes Bitter to send a single dropship from the strange looking vessel to the surface of TerraSol.
To the Vodkatrog Empire, specifically.
The dropship disconnected from the massive ship and dropped into Terra's atmosphere.
Astro-Control took a minute to categorize the dropship.
An ancient Enkima Enjeru class dropship.
From before the Glassing.
VI's interrogated it again and again.
One noted something and pinged a living supervisor.
Logan Ivan Ivanka Ivanovicth rolled his eyes as VI 3716a128 pinged him that it had discovered something strange about the museum piece entering atmosphere and heading for the center of the Vodkatrog lands.
That particular VI had a tendency to ping supervisors over paint scrapes that looked strange to it as well as a five ounce difference in stated weight and actual weight.
To be honest, Senior Supervisor Ivanovicth had alerted Virtual Intelligence Counseling several times about that particular VI.
Still, it had been logged and now he had to see what was wrong.
He tabbed up the screen, putting away the fascinating book he had been reading, an authorized biography of a Hamburger Kingdom politician and the political scandals the Lanaktallan had become embroiled in.
He chuckled to himself.
Heh. Embroiled.
Broiled.
Hamburger Kingdom.
heh.
His smile froze when he saw what the VI was reporting.
There were overlays on the dropship's transponder.
One on hand, it was often a sign of something nefarious when a transponder had overlays. Most people who purchased used gear replaced the transponder completely.
On the other hand, it was used and old. A pre-Glassing design. Transponder replacement might not have taken place if the owner wanted to keep as close to original manufacturing specifications as they could.
But on the gripping hand, the last thing he needed was some bork brained pirate deciding they were going to try extorting the cybernetic psychopaths of the Vodkatrog Cybernetic Cossack Hordes.
He ordered his scans to peel back the layers to see what was going on.
No luck. The transponder was partially disabled.
He sighed.
Great. Now he had to do his job.
It was almost unfair.
He opened a comlink to the dropship, which was taking a slow, leisurely reentry arc rather than a least time drop.
"Sour Fruit, this is Vodkatrog airspace control, please respond," he said, keeping his 'pleasant working voice' instead of his normal growl that was the result of too much time spent as the lead singer of a death speed metal band in his youth.
"This is Sour Fruit, go ahead tower," the voice responded. It was female, maybe.
His systems reported it was a Tnvaru, at almost 65%. A female Tnvaru at roughly 73%.
That made him frown.
"We have signals of transponder overlays on your ship. Please fully activate your quarriable transponder," Ivanovitch said.
There was silence.
"Complying, tower," the Tnvaru voice said.
The VIs immediately jumped on the transponder and Ivanovitch watched as they peeled back the first overlay.
It made him frown.
Dropship and high threat mobility vehicle #8D7A357F37C, Atlantis Control
Nothing else. No nation, no star system.
He noted with some interest that one VI had gotten a look at those transponder codes and had immediately run off to hide in the cafeteria.
Behind the drink vending machine VIs.
The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.
There was another one. This one under encryption.
"Sour Fruit, disable encryption on your transponder," he ordered.
"Complying, tower," the female Tnvaru said.
The registry hidden under the encryption suddenly cleared.
For only a split second the registry showed.
He could taste fresh blood, hot and coppery in his mouth. He could hear the shriek of a thousand thousand Mantid. He could see the bloom of atomic detonations against a blue sky.
UGANDAN CIVIL DEFENSE appeared on his monitor.
He didn't see it.
He suddenly remembered that the person next to him, Cherise Hartford, kept stealing his lunches.
His console imploded as he stood up. The VIs, those that had survived, ran screaming. Some jumped the firewall and escaped into the internet. Others ran and hid in deep storage.
Over a dozen screamed and launched themselves at one another, ripping and tearing at each other in an electronic orgy of slaughter that sent consoles into overload.
Ivanovitch turned and punched Senior Traffic Control Specialist Hartford in the head, knocking her out of her chair. His temples were pounded, his mouth was full of the taste of blood, his ears full of enraged roaring.
Safeties kicked in.
The Sour Fruit was notified to turn off its transponder immediately.
It took four coworkers to restrain Ivanovitch long enough for the medical nannies in The Soup to sedate him.
The Sour Fruit kept moving along its flight path.
0-0-0-0-0
There was an armed welcoming party at the spaceport as the Sour Fruit settled down.
The ship was heavy looking. Armored, the weapon pods retracted, the point defense systems offline. The dropship folded its wings into the fuselage as it landed. Steam billowed out from under it as it settled onto the tarmac.
The warborgs brought their systems online and waited.
A single envoy from airspace control moved forward, waiting.
The gangplank dropped down from the front belly of the dropship.
Three figures slowly moved down the gangplank.
In the lead was a Tnvaru, a female, leaning on a walking stick. She wore homespun clothing, or at least clothing manufactured to look as if it had been made by hand. Behind her were two Terrans, large even among Terrans. The female was dressed in a short pleated leather skirt with copper reinforcement on the outside the pleats and a corset-like leather top chased with bronze. The male wore simple denim jeans and a leather vest, with a sword across his back.
The Tnvaru stepped to the side as the two Terrans reached the bottom of the gangplank.
The female stopped, kneeling down, touching her fingers to the tarmac. She closed her eyes, her lips moving as she whispered to herself.
The male stopped, going down on one knee, bowing his head. He pressed three fingers to the tarmac then lifted them up and kissed them, before placing both hands on the ground. Like the female, he closed his eyes and whispered to himself.
The security VI used lip reading software to monitor what was being said.
A standard travelers prayer for thanks at the end of a journey.
The Tnvaru started moving forward once the two Terrans got up.
The lead of the meeting party noted something.
The Tnvaru's eyes glowed a faint amber as she moved forward.
The Tnvaru stopped.
"I am Nakteti the Traveler."
0-0-0-0-0
The day was dark and overcast, with snow blowing on the wind. The terrain was covered in snow, trees and bushes laden with it. It was cold, dark, and windy.
A single figure stood in the snow. Short, with two sets of arms. Her lower hands were crossed on top of a walking stick, the top arms were folded across her chest. She wore a heavy cloak over heavy protective clothing, with goggles over her eyes and her hood pulled out.
She could feel the one coming.
Not just through the strange senses she had gained over the years of dwelling beneath the snowy surface.
But in her heart of hearts.
It was the glow of amber that appeared first through the snow.
The shape loomed out of the snow. Tall for a Tnvaru female, but still unmistakably female.
She felt her heart leap with joy.
The shape resolved itself into a lone Tnvaru female with amber eyes, wrapped in a thick wool cloak, wearing a protective mask over her face.
The newcomer bowed to the one waiting, who turned and motioned at a hole in the rock wall.
Together, they entered the hole.
The shuffled through the twisting passage beyond. The twists and turns quickly shutting out the wind. Not to say it was warm, warm was relative in the brutal lands of the Warsteel Cossacks, but no longer immediately deadly.
Both remained silent as they moved through the tunnels, which went from tunnels hacked by hand tools through raw rock to carved and decorative markings on the walls.
The pair reached an elevator. There was the shimmering of an enviro-field by the elevator. Within the field was a table with a small wooden cask, two glasses, and a plate of fruit.
The shorter of the two motioned the newcomer to follow and moved to the enviro-field.
Once inside she sat down and motioned the newcomer to sit down.
They both sat and slowly removed their protective goggles and masks.
The newcomer was younger, her face bearing fur scarring where something had changed the color of the fur in strips and swirls. Her eyes glowed amber and her face was serious, stern, almost bleak.
The other was older, with white circles around eyes of black metal.
Warsteel eyes.
The older one reached across the table.
"I am overjoyed that you still live," she said.
The younger one just held onto the older one's hand, reaching out with her other three hands. When the older one took the younger one's hands in hers, the younger one teared up, holding back a sob.
"You have traveled far, my little heart," the older one said. "My beautiful daughter has gone to strange places but, at last, has returned so her mother could grasp her hands again."
The younger one just nodded, choked up by holding her mother's hands for the first time in what felt like an eternity.
The older one looked to the side, where a large cyborg stood silently by the wall and nodded, then pointed with her chin at the table.
The cyborg moved forward a single step, held out its arms, which suddenly lengthened, grabbed the table and pulled it out of the enviro-field.
The older one pulled her daughter into her arms, hugging her tightly.
"At long last, you have come back to me, daughter-mine," Sangbre said softly.
Nakteti just held tight and sobbed, shaking slightly as her mother squeezed her tightly.
0-0-0-0-0
The figure was out of most people's worst nightmares. Tall, thin, a face like someone who made their living stealing children's dreams while they slept. Beady mis-matched cybernetic eyes, all six of them, looked over the object in front of them. The cybernetic surgical harness on their back was mismatched, looked as if it was built out of four or five surgical harnesses that had been relegated to a dumpster by a disreputable back alley surgical clinic that even the desperate avoided. The figure was wrapped in a tattered cloak that resembled a discarded shroud.
It reached out and ran its hands, not one of the fives of them flesh and blood, all mismatched, over the object in front of it.
"Yes, yes," the figure whispered.
It was a voice that small children heard coming from their closet in their nightmares.
"Still slumbers. Still yet lives. His will is strong. The will of his guardian stronger," the figure whispered. It moved around the object.
An ancient style cryo-tube.
"Strange energies, strange spirits, surround him, but yes," the figure said. It opened its too-big mouth and a long metal tongue, dripping thick viscous green fluid, flopped from the mouth to run over the cryo-tube. It smeared thick green fluid across the transparent upper fifth before pulling back into the mouth with an obscene sucking sound.
"Yes. Yes," the figure whispered.
It looked at the two Tnvaru standing on the other side of the cryo-tube.
"You do well to bring him to me," the figure said. It tittered for a moment. "I can revive him."
The younger of the two, with amber eyes, slowly nodded.
"Provided, of course," the figure said. It paused for a moment and shadows warped around it. "You can pay."
The younger one held up a small vial full of glittering white sand.
"From the afterlife," the amber eyed one said.
From within the robe a clacking pincher on an articulated metal arm emerged. The pincher clacked as it reached toward the vial.
"Him first," the female said, the amber glow in her eyes strengthening.
The tentacle retracted and the figure looked at the older one.
At her warsteel eyes.
"Yes, yes. Of course," the figure said.
It threw aside the shroud, revealing nearly a dozen surgical harness arms, six arms on the torso, and four tentacles attached to the chest. The flesh beneath was pallid, bloodless looking, pierced all over with metal rods, tubes, and knobs.
Shadows lengthened and changed form, becoming twisted and malevolent, often moving against the play of the dim lights.
"LET US BEGIN!" the creature shouted.
0-0-0-0-0
The Terran was clad in bunny pajamas.
For a long moment, nothing happened.
He slowly inhaled, then exhaled.
Then did it again.
His eyes began moving rapidly under his eyelids.
The fingers twitched.
And the Terran opened his eyes.