The Naval navigational officer was one of the few with no ties to the insurrection. She was surprised that the ship could and would arrest people. She was more surprised when it came time for the micro stop that Costan spoke briefly on. He had control given to the primary helm, an antiquated carry over wheel from the sea fairing era. What he did was strange, he made the ship lurch to a stop, turn hard left, then up and right, then full forward again.
Even the AI was confused. It knew what was done and how, but couldn't figure out how they were now going even faster than before. They were over their maximum speed, even in slip space the ship had limits. Costan had used the collapse of the hyper dense superluminal energy bubble to make them go faster, a lot faster. The bubble also did it's thing on the target colony. They performed the maneuver twice more before Costan had some systems power down, others power up, and a countdown to some other kind of transit began while they were still above light speed.
The Samaritans were an older species, and were far more advanced than they let others believe. They applied their trade throughout the galaxy, they helped keep the peace. They were ftl long before the Nekogians, but kept it quiet. Currently, one of their representatives was talking with Grequenok dignitaries about the ongoing war with the Nekogian Empire. He got an update from his people about something strange.
His people were spread about here and there, so when the "colony" went dark, he knew about it. When a warp drive spooled up, he was very intrigued as to whom came up with a version their technology and how. They were a psychically gifted race, so they had done the occasional abduction. They did so to get good translations and also get a feel for the species technology level, but only went after people whomst worlds were better off without, like murders.
They were not astranged to the skip or slip drives, and knew about the stop hop that left the colony without electronics. The move was never performed by the Samaritans because it was too risky, nobody made it to ten thousand years of age by being risky. Whoever it was probably called it something else and were probably Nekogian. Nobody else would be willing to attempt a possibly catastrophic move like that except the Grequenok, and they wouldn't do so near their own planets.
That and they were the only suspected races because they were the only two with slip drives. The Samaritans could use them, but didn't think that it would be viewed in a good light, and the warp drive was superior. The representative expected that, from the readings, it would take about two days for them to get wherever they were going. The team that found the warp spool calculated them heading in his general direction, but forty five degrees of angle speculation was a lot of other places.
The representative didn't really doubt that they would be targeting the world he was on, however; something had destroyed a whole systems electronics, then repeated it for the system that he was in. The evidence was pointing to the Nekogians. His ship was fine due to it being a military vessel of Samaritan build, but the Grequenok were effectively shipless and defenseless.
The Representative gave aid in mediation when the brand new Nekogian war vessel popped up out of the nowhere. They were a day and a half early, perhaps they managed to find an old Samaritan ship, reverse engineered it's warp drive, and miraculously improved it. He would have to be gentle with the mind probing, but he was calling in help in the case of being found out. The Nekogians would probably be wary of his presence on their enemies home world, supporting communications and brokering peace.
The Samaritan remembered to set his ship's electronic warfare systems to defense only, they were and would stay neutral in the conflicts until they were attacked. The Grequenok had been discussing what was going on in hope of getting the Samaritans to become allies or just support them. They were honest about losing every ship that they sent after the Nekogians after the first attack, but kept the details of the attack occluded. They didn't want to be caught in a lie by the peace keepers.
They even informed the representative when the colony went dark, claiming that the Nekogians must have glassed the whole planet or something. He already knew what happened, that all of their electronics were destroyed, and nothing more. Then it happened to a Grequenok Military space station and then the home system. The Representative's ship was not harmed, nor were the Samaritan watch ships at those locations.
The first hail would be interesting. He didn't know how he would persuade a few Nekogians to discuss peace in person, but he had to if he wanted to know how they got warp technology. They would probably be very cautious or, and more likely, paranoid. He knew what the Grequenok did on KR-9, and the Nekogians had rules to their warfare that the Grequenok broke. The Grequenok even broke their own rules of warfare there.
Somehow a simple insult from the intoxicated daughter of the Nekogian Emperor Karcos gave them reason to try and deny that the Nekogians, who they got the slip drive from, was less than sentient. This would make brokering peace even harder, but he was a psychic with eight thousand years of experience. He just had to take small steps over a long time, starting with the hail.
The emergency diplomatic channel was always open, it was established as a means of developing truce and requesting emergency aid. It was also the first restricted bandwidth in the ftl communication relays, due to it's important nature, and was agreed to by all sentient races capable of making a relay. The relays were actually very easy to make once you started understanding slip space, which is the basis of creating the skip drive that bounces off slip space before enough research and ingenuity furthers the understanding enough to create an actual slip drive. The rep sent the hail.
When they had just came out of transit, the AI reported the unknown ship model, and Costan was getting an odd feeling. Costan had her display the ship. It was mostly a match from the description of a Samaritan ship, but it gave Costan a vibe like the giant brain eating brain did that one time. He suppressed a shudder from the memory, the psionic weird tentacle faced brain eaters...
He grabbed the color swatch book out of storage and flipped it to the page of different colors of white. Yes, he pocketed it from the forced labor prison, not like the Shill can't afford a new one off of his labor. He set the book down, and whispered to someone a set of instructions.
While the crewmen assembled to partake in the "team building exercise, Costan retrieved two helmets made of a swirly metal. He gave one to Grimcar and instructed him to put it on, Costan put on the other. Grimcar put on the weird helmet, wondering what was going on like everyone else.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
Costan then looked at the one appointed the team leader and told them to begin. The team leader walked around the divider and announced the importance of multiple view points as the focus of the exercise. The Marines were not amused, but not objecting. Everyone was to look at the ship and point to the color of the ship in the book, or the closest shade to it, regardless of what others point to or think.
Everyone was dumbfounded when they all pointed to a different version of white despite looking at the same image. The team leader then gave Costan a thumbs up and congratulated the participants for understanding the importance of different sets of eyes. Grimcar asked why that needed to be done here and now.
"I've got good news, bad news, and horrific news. Which one you want?"
"Let's start with the bad."
"That Samaritan ship isn't a Samaritan ship. It's an illusion over something else."
"Good news?"
"The good news is that the Greq are probably not warring with us of their own will."
"And the horrific?"
"Sentient, psionic, brain eating parasites from a different universe. Hence the special helmets."
The hail alarm went off. Costan ordered Sheila, the AI into full defense mode. He didn't want her to catch anything. He had her set up an isolated display in a separate room to repeat the swatch test on segments of video, but only from certain parts of the screen and without audio. He needed to know how bad the infestation was.
He knew something stuck wrong about the Grequenok historic records that they shared over the educational networks. The fact that a fully militaristic race would have so few wars or internal conflict, and the whole wiped out the poor sods on their moon nonsense. The Samaritans should have been all on them like stink on shit, but no. Either their whole history is false, they are an artificial species, the Samaritans are in on it, or a combination of the three.
He answered the call. The supposed Samaritan was standing with a few high ranking Greq, excluding their High Emperor. The strange opalescent and pearlescent shimmer all over the Samaritan gave away the fact that the entire image of the entity was an illusion. Costan would have to keep them talking long enough to assess if any of the Greq were illusory, but he would have plenty of time.
"I am Parthiticus, your third party mediator of the Samaritans. I hope that we may find a peaceful end to this conflict. While I am planet side with the Grequenok authorities, I am neutral in this. Please state your name and the purpose of your visit, for the record."
Grimcar just looked at Costan with a face of "you opened this can, you eat it." Costan proceeded to do so, beginning at the beginning. He stated his name and rank, then everything that led to him being just a conscripted Marine. It took almost four hours for Costan to divulge his full name, station, and how he came to be a conscript.
Then he began his retelling of the war, as he knew it, from his side. Costan made sure not to speak of the many years he spent in various hells or other lives, he especially evaded the war against the Vllthed. Those brain eating bastards were from outside of that universe, and could be the entity he was talking at. He continued on to the reason he was in the here and the now, purposely extending his individual words to as long of sentences to extend his talking as much as possible.
"I, myself, am within the here and the now to proliferate the cessation of the hostilities, by any means necessary up to and including death of any and all armed and or armored being and or beings in the here and the now, as disclosed by cavite thirteen, or cavite ten plus three, under the warfare doctrine of sentient races, article seven, subsection twelve, or ten plus two, of war and mercy where in , where out, and within or without, the conflicting states under the mutual agreement of war, where as war were declared by a race, species, religion, or group upon another and it be reciprocated in kind, to be the only option, where as I may have a conflict of views on the matter, it has been decided by those above my station, war was declared by the Grequenok years before the attack on KR-9, and then my species, the Nekogians, responded with the acceptance of such status, hence forth my presence with the conscripted war vessel Void Hammer, despite it having been planned the name Gentle Breeze, it was conscripted like me, myself, so don't expect pleasantries from her, she is very angry about how she was commandeered as soon as she left the dock, and no, they didn't even have the decency"...
Costan prattled on and on and on, uttering the longest single sentence in recorded Nekogian history, only to spite the parasites that everyone else, aside from the actual Samaritan Representative, thought were made up; but the Representative didn't know that Costan thought he was an Vllthed, he thought Costan to be an exceptionally long winded paranoid. Amongst the talking, Costan got the results back. Most of the Grequenoks passed, but almost everything else failed the swatch test.
Costan still prattled on; until, eighteen thousand words later, he accused the Grequenok of being a Vllthed slave race, and cattle for herding cattle. It all started to sink in, the Nekogians thought that Vllthed were involved. Costan helped the Samaritans brain along by accusing him of being a "brain eating bastard" and a "psychic parasitic piece of shit."
The Samaritan Representative realized that the dye's were outlawed because the Vllthed illusions, but was too late to do anything and had to flee. Those fines would compound with the failure to properly broker peace, but he would rather the compounded fines as opposed to being sewed together after an immortal shaman sliced, diced, and maybe pulverized him under the paranoia that he was a Vllthed.
The elder brain had been hoping that the Samaritan Psion would choose to fuck off for a long while, but didn't expect it to do so. He had to hide himself and his presence or the entirety of the Samaritan war host would be on him. It allowed itself a few moments of rejoice before returning to dealing with those pesky Hekates, despite them claiming to be Nekogians. He thought it would be easy to end them, but then it died.
Nobody noticed anything after the Samaritan Representative left, they were too focused on that he left to notice the War Shaman light his pipe and slaughter those that shouldn't have been. There was a new Mountain of Skulls on the Grequenok Home world, though it was made of Vllthed skulls. The Grequenok were somehow changed and were going sue for peace, their minds free for the first time in their lives. Well, sue after they pieced together their lives and came to terms with what the hell happened.
While the Samaritan Representative was trying to process everything before turning himself into Samaritan customs for processing, the Ass sent him a clip. It showed a burning mountain of Vllthed corpses and a deceased elder brain. The breath hitched in his throat. Of all the years, he could have been puppeted by those things or slain by that crazy Nekogian Shaman Prince Eunuch Marine... He didn't know anymore, a feat for a Samaritan.
The Samaritan who went by the monicker of Ass, was a rightly one by name. He was barely an adult at the age of one thousand cycles, but still as mature as an adolescent. Ass was laughing at it all, he knew that fancy paint would get him in some deep trouble, but never thought another species would accuse him of being Vllthed. Then, like some strange adventure comic, the world and moon just so happened to be completely infested with Vllthed.
Ass sent his full report, including the reappearance of the Greq moon, the utter massacre of the Vllthed by the Nekogian War Shaman, the fact that the Greq were planning to sue for peace and how Parthiticus, due to his unlawful use of forbidden paints, dies, and skincare products, succeeded through failure, tipping off the Nekogians paranoia, causing the destruction of the Vllthed and the resulting end of the Nekogian versus Grequenok and Vllthed War. It read like a poorly written action comedy script, but it was true.
Even the after action account of the War Shaman showing up on the Samaritan stealth observation platform and sharing alcoholic beverages with Ass was true. He remembered to attach the associated videos as evidence before he sent it. He never expected this kind of excitement from this otherwise boring post.