CHAPTER 23 - REFINERY AND WARLORDS

Whereas previously, the four passengers were glad and excited to be leaving Decl-tjub, now these emotions were replaced by trepidation. Gratitude did not disappear, of course, but the atmosphere regained much of its tension as soon as they were informed of the station's structure.

Artur was there too. While the CMO was next to the human passenger, Artur sat down beside the blanket that concealed the Chimera. "Hey Quuluco, or what's your name… you know this thing?"

The Canid pulled out the box with the glowing orb from his pocket, then pinched it in his bulky clawed fingers. "So this thing's supposed to tell the pressure, the temperature, and fuck if I know what else, bake a pizza or whatever. When dad gave me it, the piece of shit didn't come with a manual or anything. You guys carry these around everywhere, but I could find fuck all on the internet. How's these work?"

A yawn could be heard from under the blanket. "Could you not use a translator, silly gray two-legs?"

"Your language is more convoluted than mom's meatcake recipe. I tried. Every translator I tried gives out gibberish," Artur said.

"Oh, I suppose your pathetic, un-Harmonious algorithms simply cannot handle the intricate, wonderful splendor of our language," Qoolucu responded, not seeing how Artur rolled his eyes. "Shall I explain?"

"Yeah, just keep it simple."

"When the lights in the top thirty percent of the orb blink from two point seventy six times a second to five point thirty one times a second, in a counterclockwise spiral pattern, and the orb is not currently in freefall, the amount of spiral loops is the current air temperature in Hyyz degrees, which translate to Celsius degrees by…"

Something about the way the Chimera talked mesmerized Artur. The wolf-man absent-mindedly stared at the sphere, twirling it in his hand. Qoolucu's explanation ran on and on and on, and the sentences seemed to only get more convoluted in the process. The speech lasted for more than twenty minutes without pause.

"...while if the eleventh hexagonal staircase, according to the fifth system of numbering, as to be applied in the square scenario, is red, while the quasar in the center of the orb is in the shape of a 600-sided solid…"

Still being under the blanket, the Chimera had not noticed that his canine interlocutor had fallen fast asleep.

Meanwhile, on the next bed over…

"...are you sure we will be able to even breathe there?" the Asian man said.

"Let me check, Mr. Ning…" Elektra had found out his name in an earlier conversation.

The robth-hu were methane-breathers, as the database informed.

"We really should have done the research on this, but we were desperate," Ning said.

"Well, look how many ships of different species they have around," Elektra waved to the viewscreen on the wall, "Surely they have provisions."

"Hopefully. We're catching the first ship that goes out towards the Alliance powers. The Bulwark is more open, right? Not part of a faction?"

"It's a total loose cannon," Elektra sat down on the cot, "Trades with everyone except the Sphere, but can also get shafted by anyone. It's not even in the Non-Aligned League."

"Right, should be easy to find someone," Ning nodded.

***

There was not actually much paperwork required for docking. In fact, it was all handled by a display-less bot within a few minutes, with the screen only showing static.

The ship pulled into an open spot on the stardock. There was an uncharacteristic grinding sound as the clamps connected. Gravity's last vestiges finally vanished, and everything and everyone rose into the air.

"I will have to verify the integrity of our connectors while we are in port," Patch intoned as it exited the CIC.

"Let's get our little fugitives out," Jamaad floated upwards and proceeded to the medbay. Kuw and Rachel followed.

As soon as the door opened, the passengers began packing their bags.

"Thaaaank you, sir," Mwiu said, "But won't you get in trouble? Isn't this against some kind of…?"

"That's what we were talking about with Ning, Mwiu," Elektra said as she stood up from the bedside. "Captain Warren, are we sure we won't get court–"

"Let's just say, that 'virus' could have 'caused' a bit more 'damage'," it certainly looked like the captain had adopted the air-quote habit from Artur. "Maybe even a whole day or two of camera logs could have been affected. Wouldn't that have been tragic, Sensors Officer Beka?"

Rachel smirked and nodded, understanding what exactly she should do, while Elektra frowned. "Crime is everywhere, crime, crime, petty and not, well-intentioned and not… Given the outcome I can't really judge, but how did you even last this long, sir?"

"I know when I can get away with it. You ain't a frontiersperson. You're from Finland or whatever, all the way on Earth. You don't have that kind of intuition. To the Admiralty, I'm this upstanding model captain. Alone, with a crew I trust to not fuck me over? I do what's right. If we can clean up even one billionth of the filth of the central Oval, we'll do it. It's not like Yectkogg's 'justice' system deserves even a smidge of respect," Jamaad said.

"Not Finland. Finnmark, Norway. But yes, I suppose you really were a different person at base…" Elektra shrugged.

"It does conflict me, at times. Sometimes I think if I'm doing the right thing, have second guesses, but it's all– ah I digress," he then cleared his throat. "Get your asses in gear, you four! We're at the destination!"

They hastily finished packing their bags and floated towards the docking port.

"Elektra, did you let them anywhere else on the ship?" Jamaad said.

"No, they stayed in the medbay. They didn't even eat in the mess hall," Elektra shook her head.

"Given how the shipboard food iiiiis, yall are luuuucky!" Kuw chuckled.

Mwiu smiled and hugged her before she led the group towards the exit. "Thank ya all again! Thank ya so much! We owe ya our liiiives!"

The group of four hitchhikers beamed with glee as they prepared to leave towards the great unknown.

"Have a postcard from the Kaziil Technocracy! I accidentally had an extra printed back there," Ning said, and handed Jamaad a broad card of thick cardboard. It was a tad larger than old Earth postcards were, and had a certain heft to it. A golden gear was surrounded by four oddly-composed, desaturated photos depicting velociraptor-beaver-hybrid-esque aliens dressed in reflective labcoats working in what appeared to be laboratories. Some brief angular text captioned each picture, in two languages, one of which was English. The entire card had a true-holographic effect, making it seem like a window into another world.

"Thank you," Jamaad said, and stowed away the card in his pocket after inspecting it. "Have nice travels. I bet you really need a towel after all that happened."

"We got those," Ning said and pulled out a fluffy white towel out of his bag for a few seconds. "We never forget about them, very useful."

"I wanna get a look at the station," Rachel said. "Can I follow them for a bit?"

"Yes, we're staying here for… around eighteen hours," Jamaad said. "Be safe."

"Caaan I go too?" Kuw said.

"Any of you can go. Artur has to stay as he knows the guns the best, I will stay to watch over him and Patch, but the other three of you aren't currently needed. Be careful out there, I have a bad feeling about this… place." Jamaad said.

"I suppose I'll check out this station too," Elektra said. "We'll just follow wherever you go."

Ning nodded.

Three of the officers followed the four refugees into the airlock. It cycled as normal, and opened into an antechamber so brightly lit as to cause everyone except the blue android to squint and rub their eyes in unison.

This was the saddest, barest foyer Rachel had ever seen, and she saw plenty of utilitarian military bases. Aside from a gently humming vent pumping in a human-suitable, if oddly stale, atmosphere, the only kind of contraptions around being a single oxygen mask coupled with an oxygen tank, in a slot on the wall. No furniture either, besides of course the two doors.

"Right, that place is more full of methane than a ship's shitters when the CELSS pipes backup," Rachel said. "Why's there only one?"

She looked very discouraged as she pried out the breathing setup… and, with a clang, an identical one popped out of the slot to take its place.

"Ah, there's like a stack of them there."

The masks were stretchy. So stretchy, in fact, that they flopped like three-dimensional rubber bands. Nobody seemed sure how to wear these over their mouths, seeing as there definitely would be a leak.

Then, Qoolucu let out a squeak. "I have found a lever! This little lever makes the mask rigid like glass!"

There was indeed a tiny switch on the side of each respirator. Everyone stretched theirs to fit, then snapped them in place. After turning some valves on the oxygen tanks, they felt a fresh, cold, steady stream of oxygen flow into their mouths.

Beyond the notched doors, there was another, much smaller airlock. Its doors slid open in turn. The bright light of the foyer cast an ever-widening path of illumination into the darkness beyond. There was absolutely no illumination beyond, only a constant yet almost imperceptible, low, droning hum punctuated by audible eerie clangs, skittering, and squeaks. It was very broad, with lots of room– while the station certainly did not look that way on approach, its insides appeared almost cavelike. The walls had many, many little hatches, pins, sockets, and knobs of uncertain purpose, as well as subtle Braille-like writing.

The doors then closed back up as the seven oxygen-breathers floated into the corridor. They were plunged into pitch blackness.

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

Five datapad flashlights, a screen-lamp, and a hitherto-hidden headlamp between the head-growths flickered on in sequence.

"...do people even live here?" Mwiu said, her voice echoing through the cylindrical hall. Even muffled by the mask, it sounded thunderous.

The skittering got closer. Rachel instinctually backed away into the cold, hard steel doors behind her.

The robth-hu was similar to a bear, if bears were thrice the length and perhaps half the width… and had a dozen small limbs on both sides, small and stubby like legs of caterpillar, only a smidge longer and more elongated, with four very flexible fingers and three articulated claws per finger. Dense white fur, like that of an albino chinchilla, covered it completely. Its eyeless face, round and snout-less, was dominated by the widest mouth Rachel had ever seen, locked into a pseudo-grinning expression with exposed, jagged teeth. Its huge dog-like nose was black and had many whisker-like, fleshy tendrils extending from around its nostrils. Four huge ears, resembling satellite dishes more than anything organic, crowned the top and sides of the alien's head. The bare flesh of these ears was gouged with deep troughs of scars, seemingly of a decorative purpose. It wore a long vest of undyed fabric, with many belts and clips containing tools. Strapped to its chest was some kind of metal box, resembling an old-style radio. Wires from the box plunged into its head.

It 'spoke' without opening its grinning mouth, after emitting several brief squeaks. An androgynous, unsettlingly perfect human voice resounded from the box. "We greet you. Make yourself comfortable. We have food. We have shelter. My name is impossible to transliterate. Call me by my exocomm designation: Twelve Sixteen Forty Fifty-Eight."

Rachel felt a primal fear and just nodded… but the travelers seemed completely unfazed.

"Hello Twelve. I am Ning Qiangfeng. Do you know of any civilian ships that depart towards the Alliance core and have room for four hitchhikers? You know. Terran Federation. Relmai Commonwealth. Aadalu Eternal Sacred Republic. Kseldani Collective. QDNE-32's Domain," the man spoke slowly.

"There is a kseldani-owned fast-delivery freighter currently at dock, about to head for its home civilization's border with the relmai. The Mkis'bas'msul. It is beginning departure preparations in one hour forty-five minutes. There are no other ships heading anywhere that way."

Ning gestured to his group. "We should get going. Just in time, huh…"

The others nodded, and pushed forwards. Twelve chittered something, seemingly facing empty space, then followed them. The hallway was oddly empty.

"This station is so big, why is nobody here?" Rachel said.

"The draft lottery concluded three days ago. That is why," the robth's synthesized voice said.

"You guys have conscription?" She quirked an eyebrow.

"First of all, we are not 'guys'. We reproduce by parthenogenesis and do not need your sexes. Second of all, the Enemy is at the gates. The Enemy watches. Soon there will come the Last Trial. There will be fighting. There will be blood. There will be justice."

"Ah, I didn't know… Oh right, the Aby–"

Twelve shrieked. "DO NOT MENTION EVEN THE HALF-TRUE NAME OF THE ENEMY!" their voice was cranked up to maximum volume, and the oxygen-breathers covered their ears. "OR THEY WILL COME SOONER!"

"Sorry…"

"As you are an outsider, I forgive you, feline," the blind alien said as they turned a corner, entering an oddly narrow and claustrophobic passage, "but a citizen would lose a limb for this offense, as per the Code."

Elektra chuckled morbidly, eyeing the bear-centipede. "I suppose for you, that's not as crippling as it is for us two-legs-two-arms. Like losing a finger. Still harsh but I understand…"

"Do not forget four-legs-two-arms!" Qoolucu spoke up. "Whereas for the others, it would be six times as debilitating, for me it would be only four times. However, that would still be a terrible event."

The conversation was just going downhill now. Kuw's gleaming eyes darted around as she struggled to think of something to distract from the uncomfortable subject and prevent more musings on dismemberment. "Do yaaaaaall have anywhere to buy stuff at?"

Mwiu bumped her with an elbow. "We're on a timer!"

Ning shook his head. "A quick dash into a gift shop or whatever won't cause us to miss the ship."

"Follow," Twelve's voice echoed.

Once they exited the narrow tunnel, there was a fork. Soon, they were in a rather spacious room. The beams of the flashlights scoured across the octagonal-prism walls. Various wares lined the walls on shelves with clamps, though no items were labeled and most were of completely non-obvious purpose. In a small alcove, behind a grille with a slot in it, was a robth who wore a hat with little spikes all over it. Several hatless others were bouncing around, inspecting the products. Only the robth behind the grille had a translator box on their chest. Nobody paid any attention to the flashlights, of course, but their ears were turned towards the newcomers. They opened their mouths slightly, but no sound came out… at least to Terrans.

"Ultrasound," Qoolucu said.

With Twelve serving as an interpreter and appraiser, the hitchhikers hastily bought various baubles for themselves, from 'paintings' with incredibly fine grooves, meant to be comprehended by touch, to very high-quality audio equipment. It was all very cheap here, compared to equivalent prices in Terra. Nevertheless, the three officers bought one thing each for themselves. New headphones for Rachel, for use both in the console and for recreation; some kind of sophisticated, purely mechanical ball-shaped game for Kuw that she had no idea how to operate; while Elektra bought… a robth-hu holy symbol: a palm-sized caltrop-like silver tetrahedron of narrowing cones, patterned with spiral bumps.

"...I thooooought you were a Christian?" Kuw said.

"I enjoy studying other Terran faiths, why can't I branch out to studying alien faiths? There is a bit of truth in everything, even if they are not fully on the right path," the blue genemod shrugged.

"Fair enooough. Maybe I can teach you about our deities?"

"Not here. I don't feel there's much to do here and I don't feel particularly safe. Let's go!" Elektra said. "Farewell, Ning, Mwiu, Qoolucu, and Petabyte!"

"My greatest wish is to meet you all again one day. I don't think I will, but I can hope," Ning smiled.

"We have your handles. After our mission is over we'll send you mail," Rachel said.

Twelve, meanwhile, vanished somewhere over the course of this conversation. The officers shrugged, exchanged hugs and goodbyes with their beneficiaries, and left towards the ship.

On the way back, with Rachel retracing every turn thanks to her navigational abilities, they met Patch in the tunnels. Its limbs held many blocky but extremely powerful-looking tools. "I verified the integrity of our connectors: nominal. But I also verified the well-stock-age of their tool-stores: exquisite," it beeped.

***

The weapons were okay.

"I think we're not gonna be picking up more people now," Jamaad said as the ship undocked and departed.

"Had a change of heart, sir, or what?" Rachel said.

"No, it's just that what's next is: a martial regime, a hive mind that is the opposite of the bquaa, and a contested territory. We're probably not docking any more at all. Prepare for a gauntlet in the next few days."

"And then?"

"And then we make it!" The captain gestured, widening his arms.

"...so soon?" Rachel tilted her head.

"Yes. I know it's hard to believe."

"Alright then. Onwards, to Vlloakk! It's nice to see a pronounceable name for once."

***

29 Apr 2231

Eight hours in, eight hours out. Jamaad made sure to inform everyone of the dangers ahead. The situation was tense. This last stretch of the journey was the most perilous one.

Everyone could contemplate their imminent danger for a whole eleven hours. Nothing else happened that day, only a creeping feeling of boredom intertwined with subtle dread. Dread that intensified as the end of the warp approached.

Patch was in the engineering room. It, alongside Grant and Sabauri, began preheating the engines. While it was a move so deleterious to the drive's lifespan and damaging to the Ugolnikov-Thompson crystal due to the impact on the bubble that it was not done until now, here it was very necessary: unlike the kjee incident, here they were expecting an immediately hostile response… especially since it was, according to the database, a populated system.

30 Apr 2231

Whirr. Slam. Roar. Vlloakk was about as generic as orange-dwarf systems could get. Five planets, one of which was an inhabited continental-desert world much smaller than Earth.

But what was in the system was irrelevant.

"Incoming transmission! From a nearby yollkul ship called… Fire From Embers. In English!" A sleepy Kuw announced, looking up from her console.

"The ship appears to be a Human Civil War-era cruiser of uncertain class, heavily modified with guns of yollkul make!" Rachel said. "It's more than fifty-years vintage, but be careful! Also, there are seven yollkul ships nearby. They don't seem to be attacking, low priority."

"Accept it!" Jamaad said, a tone of distress in his voice.

The screen blinked, showing an old-looking, yet non-decrepit human captain. At least, Kuw was pretty sure he was a human. His skin was unnaturally pale, like that of a vampire, and his many wrinkles were covered up by what appeared to be streaks of thick pink paint. The man's extremely long hair was braided into two sideways ponytails that hung from the sides of his head. In addition, many tiny red beads hung from strings that pierced his shaved eyebrows, not quite reaching the lenses of his square sunglasses. Though he was only seen from the upper chest upwards, it was clear that despite these alterations, he used to be a Terran, or perhaps just Human, StarNavy captain. He wore a tattered blue jumpsuit with faded golden accents, and a crumpled service cap of the kind that was non-mandatory in the 2230s. Medals and sigils not known to Jamaad decorated these clothes.

Jamaad immediately stood up from his seat and paced, hunched over, towards the screen. This all suddenly took a weird turn. In fact, he almost, almost recognized his face through the makeup. It was the kind of recognition one would have of someone if one saw them in a picture or on video years ago, but not in person.

"I am Captain Jamaad Warren of the Terran StarNavy. Who the hell are you?!" the Pheidippides' captain shouted.

"Humans…" the other captain grinned, exposing his filed-down, triangular teeth. "I haven't seen humans in quite a long time… years, really… and ARMED humans? StarNavy humans? Since the war!"

He spoke good English, but seemed to strain to remember the correct pronunciation of each word.

"Who the actual fuck are you?!"

"A funny question. I am Kxylltillke Maak-iv-we. But I was, WAS Elijs Valters–"

The name was clearly familiar to Jamaad, but he struggled to pinpoint it. Artur's shouting, however, interrupted both his train of thought and the gone-native captain's monologue.

"VALTERS!" The wolf-man yelled, standing up. "I WILL KILL YOU! AS MY FATHER AND MY AUNT–"

"Weapons Officer Artur, shut the fuck up," Jamaad cut him off. Artur sat back down.

Elijs grinned. "I see the Canids are as murderous as they always were. Betrayed our True-Human Organization, slaughtered us like a pack of wolves upon an innocent flock of sheep. Oh well, I never felt really attached to their cause, as you can see," he chuckled as he played with his dreadlocks.

Jamaad cleared his throat. "So this is really you, of the THO. That same THO that massacred genemod and 'deviant' civilians, that THO? And now you've... assimilated to the thing you're supposed to hate the most? Aliens?"

Elijs completely lost it. Upon regaining composure, he gestured in front of the camera. "As I said, I couldn't care less about the supremacists' rhetoric. I only wanted power. New Bahia, Zan's Landing, do you think I really cared if some mutants died in concentration camps I never saw? I wanted power. Since I was a child, I wanted all the power, and I got it by taking small animals and sticking needles in their limbs. Since I was a teen, I wanted all the power, and I got it by burning down the camper van of an old man who moved into town. And when I was an adult, the war started. Now I could get the feeling of power through what really tickled it: authority. True authority, sanctioned authority. Do you think I ordered the Whisker Town Massacre out of hate for mutants? No, I did it to feel power. And when my own organization threatened to demote me during the Exile to the Hegemony over petty disputes, do you think I ordered my task force to turn towards the Triarchy purely out of protest? I did it to feel power. I could have my own little sub-hierarchy, here, and I got it. The Yollkull accept all, as long as they have power," he then giggled. "Anyways, here's the reason I phoned you up: care for a duel?"

"Ya are a monster, Mr Valters," Kuw said, and shook her head. "No duel! Let us go! We're on an important mission. It won't affect the Triarchy. In fact, if we don't reach our target, the Triarchy might not have it good."

Rachel, meanwhile, scanned the Fire From Embers' loadout and secretly sent it to Jamaad while passing a printed note to Kuw.

The cruiser was armed to the teeth, with several missile tubes, particle beam cannons, and even a broadside macron gun array. The macron guns were essentially railguns that fired microscopic bullets in order to shred anything in front of them. These were not yet a thing in the early 2180s, at the time of the Civil War, thus the array had to be a retrofit.

A 'duel' would be a death sentence.

But knowing Valters' disposition, his question may well have been rhetorical.

Sweat dripped down her face.