For Sobon, the mis­take had been jug­ging too many things at once, this time. His squir­rel body, when it reached the end of sil­ver stars, or what­ev­er, had tried to evolve, some­how, and he want­ed to make it as hu­man-like as he could, but he couldn't keep all of the de­tails in his mind, and the fail­ure... was not pleas­ant, for him or for those he left be­hind. What­ev­er had saved him the last time he died--the last two times he died, he sup­posed, saved him again, but he could only watch from the out­side as the crew of the ship wan­dered around the wreck­age. From ...the be­yond, he sup­posed, he could sense the vague shape of the ship, since it was soaked with aether, and he could clear­ly sense Ki'el, but be­yond that... it was im­pos­si­ble to know who was who, or what was what.

He con­sid­ered, for a very long time, try­ing to force his spir­it into some­thing or some­one else, but as be­fore, he didn't find him­self able at all to con­trol his drift­ing through the be­yond. In fact, when he looked around, he found that he was nat­u­ral­ly drift­ing to­wards some­thing, and the more he fo­cused on it, the more he was sure that all of the aether in the area was also flow­ing that di­rec­tion.

It was like a hole, some­where off in the dis­tance, and he sup­posed it was one of the great wounds in the world he had seen from afar. Around the edges of the hole, the lights of oth­er aether--or more like­ly, qi--users had gath­ered, form­ing a mass sol­id enough to be seen even from a dis­tance. Of course... he con­sid­ered, as he looked back at the ship he had no way to re­turn to, at the stu­dent he had just trau­ma­tized and left be­hind. When aether gath­ered, dis­tance was a fuzzy thing.

It was a sim­ple truth, at the core of it. The great galac­tic aether veins were a re­source for a vast num­ber of rea­sons, and only one of them was that they ac­cel­er­at­ed trav­el across unimag­in­able dis­tances. The be­ings that lived with­in those veins could trav­el from one end of a galaxy to the oth­er as though go­ing to the cor­ner store for bread, and tra­verse the whole uni­verse in a day. In real space, the ef­fect was lit­tle enough, but with­in the aether it­self, space bent to such a de­gree that no nor­mal life could sur­vive, un­shield­ed. Even in­ter­stel­lar tele­por­ta­tion re­lied on far, far less dense en­er­gies, and as a con­se­quence, the space fold­ing and time sav­ing was so much less.

So per­haps he was sim­ply see­ing far, when he ob­served the lights danc­ing around the hole in the world. Per­haps he was trav­el­ling far­ther and faster than it felt like he was. What mat­tered most was flow, con­nec­tion, and in­tent. As he con­sid­ered in­tent... he found a spot in his heart and en­graved Ki'el into it. The girl didn't de­serve what he had un­wit­ting­ly done. If he sur­vived... or lived again, he would find a way to let her know, to give her clo­sure. It was the least he could do.

When Ki'el was too far for him to mon­i­tor any more, but he was not yet with­in range of his des­ti­na­tion, Sobon al­lowed his mind to slow, let­ting the time flow by to save his san­i­ty. It wasn't for all that long, at least sub­jec­tive­ly; he awoke to find him­self ap­proach­ing what seemed, from this side, like­ly to be some kind of mil­i­tary block­ade sur­round­ing what must have been the wound in the plan­et's spir­it that he was be­ing drawn to­wards.

The pow­ers that stalked both sides of the block­ade were in­ter­est­ing, to say the least.

It was tempt­ing to say that he could sense, from this side of the be­yond, a... taste to the de­fend­ers, that is, the out­side of the bar­ri­cade, and that taste re­mind­ed him of the Djang. It was... dim and dif­fuse, and he could have been imag­in­ing it; by no means were any of the peo­ple there in­di­vid­u­als he rec­og­nized. But aether cir­cu­lat­ed dif­fer­ent­ly in dif­fer­ent cul­tures, and the cul­ture here was too dis­tinct­ly like... like Xoi Xam, at least. Some­thing to them was ut­ter­ly ruth­less, blood­thirsty, while also pack­aged nice­ly with a po­lite fa­cade. It fo­cused on nic­i­ties like clean­li­ness, pro­ject­ed im­age, but hid depths.

Sobon spent enough time mea­sur­ing and con­sid­er­ing their peo­ple's spir­its that he was al­most to the bar­ri­cade it­self be­fore he fo­cused on those try­ing to es­cape.

If he told peo­ple from this world that the species he saw was alien, they would not un­der­stand. Sobon was from an in­ter­stel­lar em­pire, and it was be­yond clear that the mon­sters try­ing to es­cape were not of this world. The tone of their souls, the music behind them, was of a different tone and timbre than the life from this world, just as his own was, though they were also nothing like the sound of his soul, either. From what he saw, the in­vad­ing species could be eas­i­ly split up into dumb an­i­mals, smarter an­i­mals, and ac­tu­al in­tel­li­gences; from the Be­yond, he could see glim­mer­ing threads be­tween the true in­tel­li­gences and some of the smarter an­i­mals. From the po­si­tion­ing alone, the dumb an­i­mals were be­ing ma­nip­u­lat­ed to be can­non fod­der by the smarter an­i­mals, and they were some­how be­ing led by the ac­tu­al pow­ers.

None of them re­act­ed to Sobon drift­ing clos­er. He would not have ex­pect­ed any of them to; he knew lit­tle enough about how the Aether tied into af­ter-lives and spir­i­tu­al planes, ex­cept that it was a niche dis­ci­pline in aether stud­ies, and re­searchers in aether stud­ies loved look­ing into any­thing of use. That strong­ly im­plied that re­search into the af­ter­life was ei­ther not worth the re­search, or wait­ing on some re­al­iza­tion to make it more prac­ti­cal. That was, of course, on Crest; it was al­ways pos­si­ble that oth­er cul­tures had dif­fer­ent pri­or­i­ties. As his strange aether bub­ble drift­ed through the Be­yond, with some bat­tle go­ing on on the oth­er side, he re­flect­ed that he had no idea how he would have gone look­ing for a per­son such as him­self if he'd been told to. Most like­ly, it would in­volve some par­tic­u­lar aether spin that he wasn't well versed on the ap­pli­ca­tion of, but which?

It wasn't un­til Sobon got close enough to the rift in the world that he could be­gin to see in­side it, that he caught some­thing's at­ten­tion.

What he saw on the oth­er side he had al­most come to ex­pect--a shat­tered aether pro­jec­tion that was, or had once been, ad­vanced tech­nol­o­gy. The aether struc­ture traced an out­line like a large styl­ized build­ing, or more like­ly, a frag­ment of a crashed star­ship. Deep in­side, he saw what he knew to be a mas­sive aether dy­namo, though the odd per­spec­tive played with his abil­i­ty to clas­si­fy it. Most of its light was chan­neled through mas­sive cir­cuits around the struc­ture, though near­ly every, junc­tion, and ter­mi­nal de­vice leaked aether into the vicin­i­ty, in lev­els Sobon im­me­di­ate­ly clas­si­fied as tox­ic. Aether of suf­fi­cient den­si­ty, es­pe­cial­ly from dam­aged sys­tems, would cause cel­lu­lar mu­ta­tions with­in min­utes, and in the worst cas­es, could turn a nor­mal, aether-adapt­ed spac­er's body into a grotesque, tu­mor-cov­ered mess in per­haps an hour, or more like­ly less.

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

Lurk­ing over it all was the un­mis­tak­able, rapid­ly evolv­ing pat­tern of the ship's AI, and it was this that some­how was able to de­tect Sobon. From the be­yond, there was some­thing al­most bi­o­log­i­cal about the pat­tern, even as it played through, resided with­in, and pro­ject­ed out­wards the ship's sys­tems. The nexus of its at­ten­tion was a bul­bous pro­jec­tion like an eye on mul­ti­ple stalks, which swept across the ship and the sur­round­ings in turn un­til it caught 'sight' of Sobon drift­ing. At Sobon's cur­rent dis­tance, it could not do more than look, split­ting off a small­er eye to track him while the core of the AI con­tin­ued its du­ties mon­i­tor­ing the ship and the sur­round­ings.

Most like­ly, Sobon thought as he ap­proached, the in­tel­li­gences he'd seen near­by were what was left of the crew, strand­ed and strug­gling to sur­vive against the na­tives. He had no idea what lev­els of pow­er the lo­cals could reach at their peak; the great­est pow­er he'd seen had prob­a­bly been the reaper that had killed him. But how pow­er­ful had the man been? How did it com­pare to stan­dard Crestan mil­i­tary equip­ment? Or--

[ QUERY: You are of the Em­pire of Crest? ]

Sobon felt a men­tal shift like a blink roll over him, as he ab­sorbed the pack­e­tized thought from the AI. He quick­ly not­ed an an­ten­na-like aether struc­ture point­ed in his di­rec­tion, and though he could not pro­ject any­thing back, he formed an an­swer­ing data pack­et, of the type the mil­i­tary would ex­pect in the cir­cum­stances--noth­ing more than his name, branch, and se­r­i­al num­ber, along with a sig­na­ture to­ken that any Cy­borg in the Mixed Marines could gen­er­ate to prove he was, or had at one time been, giv­en le­git­i­mate codes.

The AI, nat­u­ral­ly, need­ed only a mo­ment to de­tect the pack­et, process it, and form a re­ply.

[ IN­CI­DENT ANALY­SIS: Your ar­rival is most like­ly the re­sult of a crew ac­tion. I am able to con­firm that your cur­rent aether state match­es Ri'lef res­ur­rec­tion pro­to­cols. Your as­sis­tance is re­quest­ed. Do you re­quire as­sis­tance in con­tact­ing the Ri'lef upon res­ur­rec­tion? ]

For the first time in a very long time, Sobon felt the be­gin­nings of re­lief in him, al­though that didn't stop his cy­borg mind from run­ning over a num­ber of wor­ry­ing prob­lems. He formed up a re­ply pack­et, but ran over his thoughts a time or two be­fore mark­ing it as ready to be read.

[ RE­QUIRE­MENT: At­tuned com­mu­ni­ca­tions pro­to­col, con­fir­ma­tion of ba­sic aether rou­tines. ] There was a lot he felt he didn't need to spell out; the cryp­to­graph­ic sig­na­ture to­ken he'd gen­er­at­ed would mark him as a Cy­borg, and re­quest­ing con­fir­ma­tion of rou­tines should in­di­cate that he didn't bring all of his dig­i­tal knowl­edge along for the ride. The re­quest for an at­tuned pro­to­col was lit­tle more than ask­ing for a one-time pass to com­mu­ni­cate di­rect­ly with the ship AI, which could di­rect his call to the se­nior sur­viv­ing ship's of­fi­cer.

Even though he ex­pect­ed the AI to un­der­stand, it still took him by sur­prise that the AI im­me­di­ate­ly dumped out a sealed aether pack­et of some kind and launched it at him, some­thing weight­i­er than the mere data ex­change of be­fore. When it struck his bub­ble, he felt linked into it like he had been with his own sys­tems, and the mo­ment he queried the data­base, he let out the men­tal equiv­a­lent of an im­pressed whis­tle.

He'd been giv­en far more than the ba­sics.

[ QUERY: Sit­u­a­tion­al overview? ] Sobon wasn't sure ex­act­ly how much to ex­pect from the AI, but giv­en the im­me­di­ate as­sis­tance, it cer­tain­ly seemed like the AI was ei­ther ex­treme­ly des­per­ate, or had been au­tho­rized to do far more than he would have sus­pect­ed.

The pack­e­tized data stream that was launched back at him took time to process, time in which he was, oth­er­wise, do­ing noth­ing but drift­ing clos­er, and he al­lowed him­self to fil­ter through it. Even the high­est lev­el read­ing of the in­ci­dent, how­ev­er, was ter­ri­fy­ing.

The Ri'lef civil­ian re­sesarch ves­sel Tidal Coro­na had been in the vicin­i­ty of the plan­et on Founders' busi­ness--a thought Sobon forced him­self not to dwell on. That busi­ness was to re­main Se­cret for now, but the crew had de­tect­ed an anom­aly that they tracked to this plan­et. The in­hab­i­tants had, some­how, de­tect­ed and tam­pered with Founders' tech­nol­o­gy, with a plau­si­bly ter­mi­nal con­se­quence. The crew at­tempt­ed to in­ter­cede, and the ship was at­tacked and downed. The cur­rent sit­u­a­tion was an un­sta­ble and evolv­ing, and the re­main­ing crew were out of their depth. The AI lacked both fa­cil­i­ties and au­tho­riza­tion for ad­vanced com­bat and man­u­fac­tur­ing--mean­ing no re­pairs and no heavy weapons.

Sobon felt like there were a lot of ques­tions that need­ed an­swer­ing, but he was now drift­ing close enough to the ship that he wor­ried he might be out of time. He wasn't sure how these res­ur­rec­tion pro­to­cols were go­ing to go--he as­sumed they would ei­ther in­volve an­oth­er in­car­na­tion like the last two, or if he were spec­tac­u­lar­ly lucky, a cy­borg body of his own to in­hab­it. For now, though, he fil­tered out most of the ques­tions and fo­cused on the one thing most glar­ing­ly lack­ing from the brief.

[ QUERY: Es­ti­mat­ed Time to Sun­set ] The ac­tu­al thought pack­et he sent had the in­tu­itive-ra­tio­nal con­cept of the Crestan mil­i­tary term; Time to Sun­set was a sim­ple slang code, ask­ing when the sit­u­a­tion was go­ing to be un­re­cov­er­able. Ac­cord­ing to clas­sic Crestan po­et­ry, when the sun set, al­though it would some­day rise again, it would be over a dif­fer­ent world. The poet had meant to say the past is gone for­ev­er, but the mil­i­tary had tak­en an equal­ly po­et­ic in­ter­pre­ta­tion of the phrase: every­one alive to­day will be dead to­mor­row.

In much the same vein as Sobon's own first re­ply, the AI's an­swer was un­der­stat­ed, but it took him only a mo­ment to read be­tween the lines, and it was a fig­u­ra­tive gut punch. [ IN­DE­TER­MI­NATE: 30 Mins - Un­lim­it­ed ] The low­er bound on that an­swer--ab­surd­ly short--should have been the low­est in­ter­val that the AI it­self could con­firm was a wrong an­swer. In oth­er words, it was pos­i­tive that if every­thing it could imag­ine went wrong, there would still be at least half an hour of lee­way be­fore things were un­re­cov­er­able.

If an AI, a mas­sive com­put­ing en­gine with vast­ly more in­for­ma­tion about the cir­cum­stances than Sobon had, wasn't will­ing to put that num­ber any high­er, then its ear­li­er clas­si­fi­ca­tion of the sit­u­a­tion as un­sta­ble and evolv­ing was ex­treme­ly tongue in cheek.

He men­tal­ly looked up from the data pack­et to find that the AI had guid­ed the bub­ble pro­tect­ing his soul into a strange aether pro­jec­tion at­tached to the ship, one that looked some­what like a can­non. Giv­en how he had sim­ply col­lid­ed with a squir­rel and tak­en over its body, Sobon wor­ried the form of the pro­jec­tion was en­tire­ly too lit­er­al. For­tu­nate­ly, for some­one like him--and for some­thing like the AI--com­mu­ni­cat­ing at this range was a triv­ial, even in­stan­ta­neous af­fair, and he pro­ject­ed a thought at it even as it be­gan to load his bub­ble into a mech­a­nism.

[ DE­TAILS RE­QUEST­ED: Ri'lef res­ur­rec­tion pro­to­col? ]

The AI's re­sponse came with tone in­di­ca­tors sug­gest­ing sym­pa­thy, pity, and ir­ri­ta­tion with au­thor­i­ty.

[ RE­QUEST DE­NIED: Unau­tho­rized User. ]

The aether can­non flared to life, and sud­den­ly Sobon was else­where.