We’d been in hyperspace for about 20 hours after the incident breaking orbit at Yantari III, and I was beginning to feel like I was being avoided.
Jo seemed to be in constant meetings with the station about one thing or another, which was understandable. It was only natural that as their most senior officer she wanted to be kept up to date on what was going on back at what amounted to their homeworld at the moment. All but two giobhioni left alive were living on that station, so she was right to be anxious.
Toftri was completely absorbed at the helm. That didn’t usually prevent him from chit-chatting, but with Jo there on the bridge in communication with the station, he was reluctant to converse in even a whisper.
The infirmary had suffered some superficial damage when our aft shields nearly got taken out. It was nothing serious, but it sent Tratsa into a bit of a flurry getting everything sorted to perfection again. It seemed that giobhioni trained the medical personnel they sent out on space postings to be able to do rudimentary repairs on equipment. At least enough to change out individual modules to get machines working again. I had offered to help, but she’d insisted she had it all in hand and two people working on it in her infirmary might just get frustrating.
Whether it was out of anxiety after confessing what she’d done, or just exhaustion, Jessica had retreated to the cramped quarters Jo had offered her, and hadn’t come back out. It was reasonable to assume she’d crashed hard after all that had happened. She was a computer geek, used to working in an office, in a megalopolis, not being on the run from the law.
I saw Tindron and Boudya in the mess when I had gone for a snack, but they seemed to be having a deep conversation with Stacy. Heavy topics regarding AI Psychology, and how Stacy was coping after all that time she had spent alone. There had been a couple of sideways glances in my direction, and I’d recognized the look in Boudya’s eyes that said she wasn’t quite ready to have that “I told you so” chat I was sure was on its way.
So, while I badly wanted to hug either Boudya or my sister, or partake in some casual intimacy with Tratsa (especially after all the danger of the last day or so). I was left to my own devices. And of course, as any engineer does when they find themselves without anything else to occupy them, I fell back on tinkering.
While everything else had been going down on Yantari III, Tratsa and Stacy had sent the revised plans for an EVA suit for me to the ship’s MiniFac. Stacy had notified me it was ready about the same time I’d gotten the cold shoulder from Boudya, so I figured it was as good a time as any to give it a look over and see if anything needed changing.
I had finished doing a systems diagnostics, and checking the additional equipment Stacy and Tratsa had added while I was off ship, and had stripped down to try the thing on, when of course the door to my quarters opened.
“Thomas, Stacy asked me to…” I heard Boudya say behind me, as I was bent over, bare assed, reaching down to pull the bottom half of the EVA suit up. “Well damn you’ve lost a lot of weight.”
It’s a funny damned thing isn’t it? Boudya and I have seen each other in the altogether quite a few times, and by the end of things had lost all body shyness with each other. But here I was, caught with my pants down, and startled into fumbling to pull them up like a teenager when his mom barges in while he’s showering.
“Damnit, I know I secured that door!” I grumbled, “Stacy, this was you, wasn’t it? It’s one thing when you pull pranks with Jo or Tratsa, but this just isn’t funny!”
No response.
“She does this kind of thing often then?” Boudya asked, still watching me yank on the EVA suit in a rush, “And don’t rush that too much, you don’t want to get something pinched that’ll hurt too much. I remember doing that a time or two back in the day and I still cringe just thinking about it.”
Sure enough, just as she said that, part of an inner hookup raked painfully against a bit of sensitive skin and made me hiss sharply. “Fuck!” I barked out, jumping slightly, then wincing as that compounded the problem. “Bloody hell that hurts! And yeah, I know rushing it can lead to this. I’m just not used to being startled by an unexpected observer mid gear-up. Especially not when the observer is someone I’ve got outstanding issues with.”
She walked gracefully over to me, soft soled deck-shoes making no sound, and placed her hands on my shoulders. “Do we have outstanding issues Thomas?” then gently turned me around and began to finish suiting me up. Her warm, soft hands slipped over my skin to first undo the mistake I’d made in my haste, and get the waste reclamation intakes hooked up properly.
My whole body tensed when her hands took charge of the process. Benastians had this weird way of turning even the most non-titillating, unerotic activity into a sensation that made something in your hindbrain light up like a christmas tree. They didn’t even need to try! Just like Boudya was doing right now. There was nothing sensual about her movements, no caresses, no accidental touches that lingered a moment too long on erogenous zones, just pure practicality and business. But my mind was flooded with memories of previous nights together, of the scents and tastes of her, and every nerve ending in my body seemed to ignite.
She, on the other hand, had to be out to torture me for payback. When my brain could reason it out later, I couldn’t see it possible that she was blind to the effects she was having on me. No benastian past adulthood would be that blind, I knew that for a fact. But she focused completely on the modifications on the EVA suit. “Looks like you integrated some form of durable armor into the material.” she commented as she lived the torso section up and helped guide my arms into the sleeves. “And what is this around the helmet seal? Some form of airbag deployment system? Thomas, it’s the helmet that’s supposed to protect your head!”
“C-call it a failsafe.” I stammered, attempting to reach for the seals that would lock me up inside the suit. Boudya’s hands were already there, however, working the seals deftly, even though they’d been modified using giobhioni materials science, improving on the polymer adhesion properties in order to increase the durability and lifetime of the joins. “S-such systems could have prevented some time un-unconscious during the last couple months.”
“You’re going to need to give me the entire story when we have time…” she told me, checking over all the external connections to make sure everything was locked in place correctly. She fumbled with a couple and I had to do them myself, systems that Tratsa and Stacy had suggested that were pure giobhioni tech. When done, she stepped back. “We don’t have any outstanding issues Thomas, just a long talk, which we will have, later. Stacy is waiting for us in the mess hall to go over what she found in those files Jesse stole from Enigma Osiris.”
Clearing my throat, I did my usual set of stretching movements to ensure the suit was settled in place correctly and nothing was pinching or binding, then nodded to her. “If that’s your word on the past, we’ll leave it at that. Let's not keep them waiting.” I paused for a moment, “And don’t think I’ve forgotten about your stunt Stacy! You will be punished for this.”
You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.
The ship’s mess was a relatively intimate affair, since the crew complement for the Elegance of Light could be as low as three, it really didn’t need anything big. It consisted of a long table with bench style seating, an automat along one wall, where one could ask for a meal from any of the menu items the ship had means to make through protein resequencing, a beverage dispenser, and a waste disposal unit. On the opposite wall was a holoscreen for entertainment purposes, or for instances such as this, as the mess hall was also meant to serve as a conference room.
Boudya and I stepped in and took a seat, I caught Tratsa giving me a sly smirk, and Jophixa raised her eyebrow at me before Stacy began speaking. “Now that Boudya and Honeylips have finally arrived, we can get started.” the holoscreen lit up with the list of files Jesse had revealed to me the previous day. “These are the files Jesse claimed as her severance when she took her leave from Enigma Osiris. They were very heavily encrypted, more heavily encrypted, in fact, than the governmental or System Security networks for Yantari. Someone at EO really wanted to make sure these files were only opened by approved readers.”
The file Jesse and I had noted for its filename was highlighted, “Our human sibling crewmates noted on seeing the filenames, however, that this file’s name was the exact spatial coordinates of the ship that originally put Sugarcakes -ahem- I mean Thomas, at odds with one Captain Johnathan Barstol. It was that fact that initiated Jessica’s decision to claim the files as severance.”
“Do the other filenames correspond to valid spatial coordinates as well?” Boudya asked.
“Indeed they do,” Stacy replied, and the holoscreen shifted to a map of the Milky Way galaxy, with a myriad of glowing red markers lit up. “Each of the markers corresponds with one of the filenames. The Giobhioni members of the group might recognize this marker’s location right here.” the map image zoomed in, and even I realized what I was looking at.
I blinked, Toftri and Tratsa gasped, and Jophixa swore profusely. When the others looked at me, I said, “That’s where Barstol took us to recover the derelict ship. The one with the contagion on board. The place where the giobhioni station also happened to originally be.”
“Originally?”
“We’ve moved it.” Stacy explained. “The station has the ability to shift to hyperspace. There was no way we were staying in the same spot once the Elegance began its mission to warn the Commonwealth of the contagion. We didn’t want to risk someone like Barstol returning to see, for example, why a planetoid of that size had the strength of gravity well it does. It could very well have been in his plans once he delivered the derelict to his employer.”
Boudya let out a low whistle, clearly thinking of the amount of energy required to to move a space station the size of a planetoid. “Okay,” she then enquired, “two files, both with names that pointed to locations of derelict spacecraft of unknown alien origin, where Barstol was hired to retrieve them. Seems a stretch to call it coincidence. Is there any pattern to the remaining coordinate locations?”
“These six,” and six of the markers on the map turned blue, “correspond with the locations of former giobhioni installations. While these,” another eight turned green, “with the locations of other known species we were in contact with pre-stasis. The remaining sixteen filenames point to locations outside space either giobhioni or humans and their allies have mapped. Thirty two files, thirty two coordinates within the Milky Way galaxy. All of these locations are on the near side of the spiral, leading to the assumption that perhaps these were only the locations that have been unearthed by Enigma Osiris, given distance and travel time.”
All of us were nodding at that, but Stacy wasn’t finished. “As I said at the beginning, these files were locked down with the heaviest encryption I’ve seen the Terran Commonwealth use so far. Even after understanding the paradigms your people use for such things, I still had quite a bit of trouble with it. It was quite maddening.
“But I managed to finally break through it a little over three kilokrats - about 100 minutes - ago.” The holoscreen began cycling through files, all of which included images of planets, strange ruins tucked within alien landscapes, alien ships, or massive space stations. “Each file appears to be, as we were beginning to suspect, data gathered by long range survey probes. Some of these probes appear to have been launched into hyperspace tunnels decades ago, and been in transit most of that time.
“Each location has one thing in common.” The holoscreen shifted again, bringing up an image of one of the planet side installations, zooming in close to show the horrific image of dozens of dark, bristling carapaces, turned over on their backs, legs arched in towards their center, and appearing desiccated. From objects surrounding them, the carapaces appeared to be at least the size of a rhinoceros, if not larger.
The scene shifted again and again, showing those same carapaces, some with their disturbing many eyed, cupie doll faces shrivelled and staring blindly, like any source of bacterial, insect or animal predators refused to even touch them. My sister, Boudya and Tindron all gasped at the sight of them. I’d been warned about their monstrous appearance, but still I flinched back from the sight.
“Ktonshi!” Jophixa growled.
“Yes Commander.” Stacy replied, “Every location has evidence of dead Ktonshi present. Some of them show signs of more recent habitation by non-Ktonshi, but all of them were visited by the Destroyers at some point in the past, somehow while you were asleep, fought them back. But in doing so they didn't seem to survive themselves.”
“So Enigma Osiris is attempting to snatch up lost tech from all these lost races?” Jesse asked.
“I’m afraid it’s worse than that.” was Stacy’s reply, and something in her voice was not like anything I’d heard from her before. She was both enraged and frightened. “There is a video log on file, entered by one Benson Fisch, CRO of Enigma Osiris.”
The holoscreen shifted to the image of a silver haired caucasian man. While there were no visible signs of progressed age on his face, no crows feet, smile lines of liver spots, there was something about his countenance that exuded the gravitas of age. Perhaps it was in the hardness of his eyes, which stared out from the holo like chips of hard granite, cold as the vacuum of space.
“The derelict that was discovered at Wolf 486 was an incredible find.” he began, his tone controlled and cultured, the kind associated with someone educated in the top institutions known in the quadrant. “We’ve dated the vessel to approximately three thousand years of age, yet some of its data banks were still intact.
“The technology and materials science we were able to glean from it will keep our R&D teams busy for decades. The real treasure was the biological information on the mummified remains of the crew.”
An inset holo showed images of Ktonshi corpses, “These strange creatures, according to logs in the ship’s computer systems, were once something else entirely, and were transformed into these things by an artificial contagion. An alien species from beyond the galactic rim developed it as a weapon to wipe out any intelligent life that was not themselves by the simple expedience of transforming it into them.”
He paused a moment and scratched his cheek, “If I can locate more samples of these transformed creatures, maybe we can reverse engineer it in order to develop some form of protection against it in case these Ktonshi show their monstrous faces in Commonwealth space.”
Everyone in the room raised their eyebrows, surprised that the cold looking man who had such a hard reputation was working towards such a goal. The thought that he was being selfless was short lived however. “It’s of the utmost importance to keep that research under as tight security as possible, however. If we can unlock the mechanisms of the contagion, we might be able to use it for our own goals.”
“These Ktonshi, if they are indeed from beyond the rim, have no right to this galaxy. It is not theirs, not by birthright, not by right of conquest. It is ours! If any sophant species in the Milky Way will become the sole survivor, it will be humanity.”
“Three hundred years of making nice to these freaks and demons from the stars is too long. The entirety of Creation was put here for US, not these freaks. But Commonwealth is weak, and would rather live in peace!” the man’s face turned into a mask for zealous rage, “They will not take action to eliminate such corrupting abominations as the Benastians, or the meatheaded violence of the Hongushi. They were mistakes of creation, and deserve to be wiped out!”
“Well, if I cannot convince those in power to wipe those lesser species from the face of the galaxy, maybe this contagion will allow a ‘gentler’ option they do not deserve.” At this point he grinned. “I shall bestow upon them the blessing of becoming human. Whether they wish to or not is immaterial, they will have no choice. And perhaps I can turn their creation upon the creators, perhaps if the Ktonshi do show up again, my modified contagion will bring them into our fold.”
He leaned back in his chair, “The derelict’s navigational computers held information regarding other locations which had reports of outbreaks within their population. I’ve ordered a series of survey probes, buried under various black project protocols, to be launched to those coordinates to verify presence of hostiles or if target objects are even still there. It’ll take a while for the probes to get to some of those locations, even with them being our bleeding edge best tech.”
“In the meantime, It’s best I begin laying the foundation and research centers so that everything is ready when we have the material to work with. Patience is, after all, a virtue.”
The recording ended, and we all just sat there gaping at the revelation we’d just watched.
----------------------------------------