Transiting the void between the galactic arms

3,718 light-years from Earth

June 9th, 2176 A.D.

Na’las stared at the depressing gray shimmering of the strange space on the viewer, feeling it mirroring her own soul and reinforcing the despondency that had her ensnared within its claws.

They had finally left the galactic arm of their origin five solar days ago, leaving the silent burial grounds of untold billions behind them as they followed the ancient scent trails of their evil kin and entered the unknown expanse.

She flicked her tongue out and tested the air, the forked tip vibrating rapidly before retreating into her jaws. The air felt thick with the depression pheromones being released by her fellow Bal’Ri’Sar in the chamber, and she tasted the bitterness of their shared melancholy as the oily residue coated her taste buds.

Hunters had been sent ahead of them in small, single-occupancy scout ships to lead the crusade safely through the void between the galactic arms and ensure they did not stray from the path or blindly blunder into danger.

It was not a true void, as there were still thousands of sparsely littered stars in the vast emptiness. The lonely suns were like exiles, condemned to never feel the gentle pull and warmth of a companion as they drifted alone, their feeble lights fading into the terrible nothingness surrounding them.

Just like these isolated suns, she felt her soul crying out in desperation as it begged for the warmth of life, for even just a moment’s reprieve from the endless death they had been traveling through for so long.

Even here in the great nothing, death held sway as her hunters returned and told them of fallow worlds with long crumbled cities and the ancient remnants of great fleets drifting on their never-ending orbits through the now lifeless systems.

How much more death must they endure? How many more songs of grief and remembrance must they sing before they are finally able to fight for the life they desperately wanted to save from their evil cousin-kin?

On the viewer, she barely reacted as she saw the small flash of another hunter scout returning to update the fleet on what lay before them. She expected a warning of another dead world along their course, and she dreaded having to sing the mourning dirge in remembrance for another unknown species long gone and unremembered.

The comm system crackled, and she craned her neck to present her right ear hole towards the nearest speaker in a desultory manner, not wanting to truly hear of another atrocity committed by the hateful Bal’Ri’Kan.

A glimmer of shame came upon her for the disrespectful manner she was displaying, and she forced herself to sit up straighter as the shame was replaced with dread for what she was about to surely hear as the hunter’s voice blared from the speakers.

“Hunter Scout Shar’nak reporting in. I located a large stellar cluster and entered it. In one of the solar systems, I found a large fleet of 1,598 unknown ships in orbit of a Class-3 world at the following coordinates…27.3 by 183.4 by 289.

I did not even know they were there at first. A ship emerged from nowhere, followed by the rest as they simply appeared as if from nothing. The unknown ships are intact and went from barely detectable energy emissions to power levels beyond what I have ever thought was possible for vessels of their size after they tasted my ship with their scanners.

There were no life signs on the ships, but my probes detected strange readings from a massive structure located just below the surface that could be possible life signs. The readings were tasted by the hunter probes and transmitted before they were destroyed by some type of energy weapon the probes could not detect until it was too late.

I could not verify the readings as the ships in orbit began to arm weapons after destroying the probes. As I retreated, I received messages from them in several unknown languages the computer was incapable of translating before entering strange space and returning to the fleet.

Radioactive decay particles on the hulls of the ships indicate they have been there for at least 120,000 cycles. I am transferring the contents of my databanks over now.”

The voice paused, and Na’las found herself trembling with anticipation as the full import of what the hunter scout was saying made itself known to her broken soul. They had found signs of possible sapient life within the never-ending death they had been journeying through at long last!

It took all her willpower to refrain from leaping out of her seat and screeching with a long-lost joy she thought had fled from her soul forever. Struggling not to give in to her desire, she heard the voice of her departed matriarch within her mind counseling restraint, as she had many, many times during her apprenticeship.

‘Validate, corroborate, and authenticate before you trust, Na’las. Like a good scientist, a good leader must verify the truth of a thing before they can trust in a thing. This goes for all things: the things seen by the eyes, the things heard by the ears, and, most importantly, the things felt by the hearts.’

The hunter scout began to speak again, his voice now tinged with worry, which made all her senses go to high alert. Her two hearts began to slam furiously in her chest as she signaled for the volume to be raised before listening with all her might.

All around the system, there are massive debris fields left over from obvious battles. Multiple scans have confirmed the same rate of decay for the wreckage as what was tasted on the unknown ships in orbit. The mass of the wreckage fields corresponds to hundreds, possibly thousands, of ships.

Most of the wreckage is... is Bal’Ri’Kan in origin. Repeated scans have confirmed the results; our hateful cousin-kin have been here and have been defeated, either by the ships in orbit themselves or perhaps by them and their allies, as there are other destroyed ships that are not Bal’Ri’Kan or of the same origin of manufacture as the ships in orbit.

Her hearts still pounding, she felt her initial elation slowly deflate as the mention of their hateful cousin-kin brought the entire thing into focus within her mind. What was she to do? As she looked around at her fellow crusaders, she saw the same hope and worry she felt in her battered soul being mirrored in their eyes.

There was also a change, and she could smell it through her flaring nostrils as they released new pheromones of contentment that displaced the stale bitterness she had tasted just before. She felt her own pheromones releasing instinctively in response and mingling with theirs as it drifted through the currents of the air recyclers.

Though she was the Matriarch, the crusade was not hers alone to command or risk; it belonged to all the faithful who volunteered and committed their lives and fortunes to the great work of building and outfitting the Fleet.

She must call a great council to discuss this with all the other chieftainesses to reach consensus, and then she must pray to the Creator for guidance before asking the wise teachers for their wisdom in this matter.

She hooted softly, letting the communications tech know she wished to speak with the hunter scout. She heard the tech chirp a moment later, indicating a two-way connection had been opened, and she spoke clearly to ensure her orders would be heard and followed precisely.

“Hunter scout Shar’nak, this is Matriarch Na’las speaking. I thank you for your report and your efforts, and I have a new task for you. Return to the system from whence you have just come, and collect as many samples from the wreckage as you can to bring back to us for analysis.

You are to avoid any contact and try your best to avoid detection by those unknown ships in orbit; I do not want to antagonize them any further. Your life is paramount; do you understand? The inta you feel like your life is in danger, you flee, and you rendezvous with us. Acknowledge and confirm my order, Hunter scout Shar’nak.”

“I confirm your orders, and I will comply, Matriarch. I shall depart immediately.”

The speakers crackled again as the connection was closed, and she stared at the viewer, seeing the telltale signs of an impending jump into strange space rippling around the null space engines of the hunter scout.

A few inta’s later, there was a bright flash, and the small vessel seemed to stretch as it entered the transition point before vanishing in another brilliant flare of light.

The communications tech hissed softly to let her know they had received the full databank download from the hunter scout, and she clicked in response as she walked over to the station to take the data disk the tech was holding up for her.

The information now within her claws, she hurried out of the chamber and sprinted towards the Sacred Sanctum, not caring how undignified it was for her to be seen doing so by her fellow crusaders. She felt the cool smoothness of the disk against her palm, feeling as if she was holding something precious and rare within her clawed fingers.

She would have the wise teachers examine the information within the disk to see if they knew the unknown speech. It was unlikely, but not impossible; they may have heard the unknown language before. If not, perhaps they could translate the speech and teach her how to speak it.

She wanted to know who they were and how they were able to stand against and defeat the hateful Bal’Ri’Kan when all the others had fallen before them. The fact they were still there and not yet destroyed meant they were capable of fighting and defeating the Bal’Ri’kan scourge.

Such powerful and advanced warriors would make good allies, and maybe the Bal’Ri’Sar could get them to join in the great crusade to end the terrible evil infesting their galaxy.

Thirty-seven hours prior

Messier 35, The Shoe Buckle Cluster

2,938 light-years from Earth

The automated detection network activated as an intruder passed by a long-dormant sentry drone, triggering its awakening as the small craft unknowingly tripped the passive sensor network with the minute gravitational waves generated by its passage.

The sentry drone quickly accessed its databanks and scanned its files, comparing the current timestamp to the most recent pulses from the three nearest pulsars. 47,326 cycles and 217.3 solar days have passed since it had last been activated by the presence of an intruder.

The intruder continued its course, unaware it was now being tracked by multiple sentry drones as the small craft headed towards a wreckage field 12,348 likals distant from its current location.

Analyzing the actions of the intruder, it ran billions of calculations and concluded the new arrival would not turn around and leave the system like the last twelve intrusion attempts detected in the last 122,984 cycles.

All the other intruders immediately left the system once they detected the massive debris fields orbiting the primary, but not this one. The sentry drone had tagged the intruder, and it was now being closely followed by a stealth probe that was collecting information and sending it back to the sentry drone.

There was only one life sign detected, but the probe was unable to determine the species within it due to interference from the strange alloy it was constructed out of. Scanning its database, there were no records of this type of ship ever having been catalogued by its creators.

The vessel was actively scanning the wreckage, and the sentry noticed the full-spectrum scans being directed towards the 2nd planet where the vault was located. This warranted action, and the sentry drone sent an emergency signal to the long-idle Protector to warn it.

* * *

Billions of lines of code appeared in the vast blackness where the kernel of awareness had been slumbering undisturbed for many millennia. The kernel grew brighter as it absorbed the code enveloping it, growing larger and beginning to pulse rapidly.

There was a bright flash, and the awareness became conscious as subsidiary neural connections were formed and joined to it by sub-mind programs. More lines of code and logograms appeared, and the artificial intelligence absorbed millions of zettabytes of information as it scanned the contents of all the databases of the Vault network.

122,984 cycles have passed since it was last active, and it went about the task of cleaning up the billions of random errors that cropped up in its neural nets during its long sleep. Finishing its self-diagnostics and repairs in 2.3 solar seconds, it could now focus on the reason for its awakening.

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

There was an intruder in the system, and the small craft was now heading directly for the Vault world.

I am the Protector. I must perform my function and safeguard the creators.

Connecting to the Guardian ships, it woke up their AI controllers and ordered them to prepare to defend the Vault as it updated them on the situation and checked their systems to ensure full functionality.

One of the ships had a small antimatter leak in the annihilation chamber, and it ordered the AI controller to repair it before the gamma radiation increased to detectable levels and disrupted its cloaking field. After the AI controller verified the command, it turned its attention back to the small vessel.

The intruder was 607,320 likals from the Vault world and currently braking. Once it came to a full stop, it released several small objects that headed directly for the planet as the vessel turned off its engines and used maneuvering thrusters to flip its bow back over.

The Protector spent the next 4.7 solar hours updating the entire Vault network throughout the solar system, ordering the Guardian ships, sentry drones, and other systems to initiate self-diagnostic and repair efforts as it waited for the intruder’s probes to reach the planet.

It scanned the probes and determined they were no threat to the Vault; the simple constructs were basic data collection devices and not worth the risk of exposure by attempting to destroy them unless necessary.

If the intruder ship did not approach any closer to the Vault world, it would allow the six probes to take their scans and order the Guardian ships to remain hidden from detection. Perhaps the intruder would leave once they determined there was nothing of interest on the surface, as the Vault was underground and masked by a multi-layered stealth field.

The Protector diligently watched the probes as they entered the atmosphere, dispersing over the two large continents and running their scans in an obvious search pattern. After 43 solar minutes, one of the probes started a search pattern that would take it over the subterranean complex according to its calculations.

It was only when a second probe joined the first one and they initiated a joint search pattern directly over the vault that the Protector began to prepare to destroy them. Right before it was about to activate the hidden particle weapon emplacements, an alarm was triggered across the Master AI network, drawing its attention away from the probes.

The Guardian ship with the antimatter leak was suffering from a containment failure of the annihilation chamber. The repair efforts failed before the emergency mitigation systems could prevent the gamma radiation from expanding past the reactor bay.

The radiation that managed to escape was enough to interfere with numerous systems, and Guardian ship Honor of Stra’kki shimmered into existence as the crystalline semiconductors of the cloaking generators were destroyed.

Another alert penetrated its awareness, and it directed a part of itself to see what it was. The two small probes had landed on the surface directly above the subterranean complex and it reacted with alarm as it detected the probes utilizing muon detectors and another type of scanning wave spectrum it had never seen before.

Running trillions of calculations, it was presented with four options and selected one based on the need to protect the Vault and the creators within. It ordered the entire fleet to drop their cloaks and go to full power in preparation for defending the creators.

It did the same, the Courage of Grilkka going to full power as it sent both active and passive sensor scans directly towards the intruder that was still maintaining its current position.

As soon as the scan from its ship hit the small vessel, the intruder reacted by going to full power and returning an active scan along with a signal that contained mathematical and basic chemistry formulas.

This was followed by another signal with a language that was not recognized by the linguistic database at its disposal. The two probes suddenly lifted off the surface and began to accelerate to exit the atmosphere as the intruder sent more signals towards the Guardian fleet.

Connecting to the hidden defense weapons emplacements, it targeted the two probes and destroyed them, unwilling to chance them returning to their ship with information regarding the Vault and the creators within.

Detecting rising power levels from the intruder, it calculated it was going to attempt to flee and began target acquisition protocols to prevent escape. It could not let the ship leave with knowledge of this system and the Vault.

Two nearby sentry probes began to move in to disable the vessel, undetected as they armed their weapons systems and prepared to fire them as soon as the Protector gave them the order.

The intruder activated its maneuvering thrusters and flipped the ship before its engines went to full thrust. Detecting the signs of a null space capacitor being activated, it scanned the emissions and compared them to the emissions of all known null drive configurations catalogued within its database.

There was a 98% match, and it ran trillions of calculations as it verified the results three more times. The null space capacitor was almost an exact copy of the ones utilized by the Magnati, the allies of the creators.

It sent a command for the sentry drones to stand by as it factored in the new, unexpected parameters it was now facing into another series of calculations to determine what to do next.

It was under strict orders to watch for any signs of the Magnati, Magna’lit, and Slikaath allies of the creators in the system; that was the last order it had received from the severely ill leader before he went into the stasis pod and the Vault was sealed.

After all these cycles, it had finally found a sign of one of the allies of the creators, and it was trying to flee the system. It must find out if the occupant was one of the allied species. If not, it must find out where they found the null space engine; perhaps they knew where the allies of the creators could be found.

It activated the communication system and broadcasted a message to the still-retreating ship as it gauged the estimated time to flash out based on the power fluctuations emanating from the intruder’s engines.

They were just seconds away from flashing out, and it ordered the fleet to power down all weapons systems, hoping the potentially friendly occupant would see it as the gesture of goodwill it was intended to be.

~ This is the Courage of Grilkka; please respond. I have powered down all weapons, and I regret the destruction of the two probes before detecting the Magnati origin of your null drive capacitors. Please cease your attempts to flee; I wish to establish a dialogue with you. Please respond; I mean you no harm. ~

It sent the same message again, this time in the Magnati, Magna’lit, and Slikaath languages, along with the standard first contact package used by the Galactic Federation. There was no response from the intruder, and six seconds later, the small vessel flashed out.

It took the protector 5.4 seconds to reexamine all the actions it had taken to account for its failure, an eternity to an AI that intimately experienced the passing of every picosecond of its existence.

It connected to the Vault systems and scanned the interior to ensure there were no effects from the violations of the two probes. Detecting no signs of damage or interference, it took control of a nearby caretaker droid and headed for the pod containing the leader, the one that had ordered it to watch over them and look for their allies so they could be saved.

Using the artificial paw of the caretaker droid, it carefully wiped away the film of frost that had built up on the transparent carbon fiber and looked at the creator within the pod. He was just as he was the day he went into stasis, looking as though he was merely sleeping instead of trying to stave off the deadly plague that was trying to kill him.

Looking at the face of its creator, the Protector scanned the minute details to ensure all was the same as before. The eyelids were closed, and it inspected the thin layer of gray fur covering the face and prominent snout.

It pressed the control pad next to the stasis pod, scanning the small holo screen that popped up and displayed the current vitals. The body temperature was 12 degrees, and the life support system was optimal, taking over all physiological functions to preserve the current state of the organs and brain until the day of revival came.

Pleased with the confirmation of the creator’s safety, it made the caretaker droid slowly turn as it looked around the massive chamber at the other 3,247 stasis pods within it.

There were nine such chambers in the Vault, as well as the entire genetic repository of their world and its biosphere. Six of the nine chambers did not have adult Wan’sho within them; instead, they had tens of thousands of Wan’sho and Magnati embryos and fetuses in several stages of gestational development.

The rest of the chambers were empty save for the biosphere samples; the Wan’sho adults meant for the additional pods had died from the plagues infecting them before the Vault had finished being constructed.

The Vault Initiative was a secret project undertaken by the Wan’sho government in direct violation of the Genetic Accords, which were rigorously enforced by the Galactic Federation. In the utmost secrecy, they slowly collect genetic samples over almost two hundred cycles, and this was the result of the clandestine operation.

Two hundred cycles before the arrival of the Balrikans, the Federation was embroiled in a deadly conflict with an aggressive, expansionist power that did not adhere to the longstanding strictures regarding the creation and deployment of weapons of mass destruction.

The restrictions governed warfare within the quadrant and were strictly enforced by all the major powers that were signatories to the Treaty of Hirkrul 5 after it was ratified in the year 1,636 A.F.

The Zulehki aggressors were losing the very war they had started against the Federation as it marshaled its forces and brought their entire military might to bear against the Zulehk Confederacy after their illegal and cowardly surprise attack on the Arbalii sector.

In desperation, the Zulehki turned to outlawed accelerated cloning to reinforce their depleted armies with barely sentient slave soldiers. They also secretly developed biological weapons to target the founding species and their allies as the Federation counteroffensive seized more than half their territory over a period of fourteen solar months.

The Zulehki spies were easily able to gather all the required genetic material for their abominable weapons since most Federation technology was based on genetic scanning for virtually every task, function, and purchase within all aspects of Federation society.

Billions of citizens died as a result of the biological weapons created and deployed by the Zulehki. The entire quadrant, even longstanding adversaries, banded together and extirpated the Zulehk species as punishment within two cycles as they hunted down and eliminated every single one of them without mercy.

The Genetic Accords were created as a result of the war. All genetic technology and research were severely restricted quadrant-wide to prevent another occurrence of the devastating biological attacks that killed over seven billion and crippled billions of others with lifelong suffering.

All genetic data collected by any devices, even medical treatments, were destroyed within 27 solar hours by automated programs installed in every device capable of scanning and collecting genetic data. All forms of cloning and clone research were now completely outlawed as well.

Any species found to be engaging in genetic research with any biological component involving cloning, plagues, viruses, or bacteria that was not expressly permitted by the Genetic Council would be sanctioned and/or embargoed depending on the severity of the offense.

This was the reason for the secrecy surrounding the Wan’sho Vault Initiative. The Wan’sho government was adamant that they would never allow themselves to be threatened with extermination ever again as they secretly collected genetic material for their project.

They felt vindicated when the first of the Balrikan plagues was unleashed on the border regions 195 cycles later after the creation of the program. Their surreptitious collection of Wan’sho and Magnati DNA for the Vault was justified in their minds when at first millions, and then hundreds of millions, started dying horrible deaths.

Federation genetic research, long suppressed by the Genetic Accords, was woefully unprepared to find a cure or develop effective vaccines for the plagues spreading like wildfire despite draconian containment measures, and the Vault Initiative went into overdrive and prepared the expedition for launch under the utmost secrecy.

Even as billions of Federation citizens fell ill and started dying, the Federation government still would have dealt harshly with the violations if they found out what the Wan’sho had done despite their preeminent position as one of the four founding species of the Galactic Federation.

Even their greatest friends and allies, the Magnati, would have turned against them. They would have considered the impermissible harvesting of their DNA as an unforgivable betrayal that needed to be punished, despite the true loyalty and love behind the Wan’sho intentions to save not only themselves but their hairless littermates as well.

Once confirmed cases of the plagues were verified to have reached the borders of the Slikaath sector, just 1,200 light cycles from the Womb World, the Wan’sho council ordered the expedition to flash into null space and leave Federation territory with an escort of 1,300 of their most advanced warships and 300 automated factory/supply ships.

Four days after launch, the first cases of a new virus were confirmed on the outer colony worlds of the Wan’sho sector. The convoy reached their destination outside Federation space, ashamed to have been proven right for doing what they did and escaping unscathed as their species faced possible extinction.

Using spy drones to gather information as they remained hidden, they realized just how terrible this new plague was while listening to the panicked news reports. Dubbed The Rage, it spread quickly throughout the outer colony worlds as they descended into madness and bloodlust, tearing each other apart in an orgy of mindless aggression.

Within eight solar days of the rage first being detected, it finally reached the Womb World as dozens of cases appeared among the populace. The convoy received their final orders from the government a day later and reentered null space to begin their grief-ridden journey to the Vault world in the void between the arms.

Unbeknownst to the Vault Initiative and the Wan’sho government, two undetected plagues had already reached the Wan’sho core region, and they were unwitting carriers that had already been infected. These two engineered viruses had a four-week latency period before they became detectable to scanners and blood tests, with the first symptoms only appearing by the fifth week of infection.

The first of them began to fall ill right after they reached their destination, and more than two-thirds of the breeding couples had died, most of them committing ritual suicide to spare themselves from the terrible suffering caused by the hemorrhagic fevers that slowly liquified their organs before they died an agonizing death.

By the time the construction droids had finished building and installing the first batch of stasis pods, only 3,247 were still alive out of the 12,000 Wan'sho adults. They were supposed to form the new breeding pool to restart the species when the plagues finally died out or the Federation discovered a way to save themselves and the quadrant.

After the last of the creators had been sealed in the Vault, there were three times the Protector was required to defend the creators and the Vault. The first was by a Balrikan fleet six solar months after the Vault had been sealed, and then another Balrikan attack eight solar months after the first. The last fleet was small and already heavily damaged, and they easily destroyed them. That was the last time the Balrikans came back to the system.

The final attack was by a fleet of 631 unknown ships 14 cycles later, which was soundly defeated like the first two attacks. This was also the last time the Protector was active before entering its long idle state until woken up by sentry drone 17-3.

The Protector did not know what happened to the Federation, nor did it know if the creators in the pods were the last of the Wan’sho. No Federation or allied ships had ever come or been detected within 100 light cycles, and they were expressly ordered not to leave the system and to remain hidden until found by the allies of the creators.

It checked on all the pods to ensure all the creators within them were safe, which took 1.4 solar hours before finally leaving the caretaker droid body and returning to its ship to continue watching over them.

After what had happened, it would not go back into the idle state it was in when the intruder entered the system. Its calculations indicated a 96.4% probability that other ships like the intruder would come based on its size and behavior.

It was a scout, which meant it was part of a larger force and organization, perhaps an expanding power or a colonial expedition searching for a new world to settle. The Protector began preparations for such an eventuality and ordered the Guardian ships to assemble into fleet formations for war simulations.

It had a duty to protect the creators, and it would do so to the best of its ability, like it had done three times before. If a larger force came and was peaceful, they would order them to leave the system after interrogating them on how they gained access to Magnati null drive technology.

If they were not peaceful, then the Guardian Fleet would do its duty and destroy them.