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First

(My train of thought outright crashed at 1900 words. That’s falling on your face and getting a concussion in spitting range of the finish line. Good lord.)

The Buzz on The Spin

“We’ve spoken enough.” She suddenly says rising up. Harold doesn’t bother to rise.

“Have we?” He asks.

“We have. You have made your case, and an admittedly good one. But my authority only extends so far. Convincing me further serves neither of us, so I’m kicking this up the ladder with the highest priority. No doubt it will take them time to debate, but we WILL be seeing you again.”

“And if I slip out of sight when you need me, use THIS contact code. It will get you in touch with my brother, he has the ear of Admiral Cistern who in turn has the ear of many, many powerful individuals.” Harold says holding up his communicator. She brings out her own and they tap. “They didn’t need to be quite that close.”

“I like to be certain.”

“Certain is a good thing to be.” He agrees before smirking. “But you know, you never gave me your name. I am Harold Armoury Jameson of The Undaunted. What beyond unknown alien species blah blah blah would you like to be known as?”

She pauses then smirks.

“You really think I’m giving you my real name?”

“A private nickname. Surely something you’d rather hear me say beyond YOU and HEY isn’t unreasonable.”

“...Velocity. One of my names is Velocity.” She admits and he toasts her with his glass of water.

“To you then Velocity. May your entreaties to your superiors be successful.” He says and she smirks before picking up her own glass for the first time and clinking them together.

“May they be successful indeed.” She says before putting the water down, then vanishing in a recall teleport.

“So she knows about that bit of human culture, or her own people have something similar. Either way, interesting.” Harold notes before signalling for a waitress so he can get the leftovers to go.

•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•

“While I can see the appeal of your religion ma’am, I think I’ve seen enough for now. Unless there’s some other great mystery or truth you’d like to tell me of.”

“Hmm, a pity. But the message doesn’t reach all, not always. In the end though, truth will out. Although, you are heading to speak to The Order of Everbrith next right?”

“We are...” Observer Wu hedges, unsure where she’s going.

“Oh nothing to worry about, just let her know that I’ve given her the privilege into explaining The Cycle of Gravid Resurgence.”

“And that is?”

“Ah ah ah! I’m letting them have the pleasure. Anything more on the Orthodox Gravid Faith? You’re free to spend time in our church of course, but I do need to get back to brushing up on tonight's sermon.”

“How often do you have them?”

“Thrice weekly, and thrice on those days. It accommodates all the differing schedules of work, travel, and of course special sleeping patterns. Not perfectly of course, but well enough that there is maybe only one or two calls for a special service outside of normal hours.”

“Well, that’s good to hear you have it so well thought out.” Observer Wu says before smiling gently. “May I assume that this Gravid Resurgence is a game changer?’

Ah ah! I’m leaving it for her. After all The Conservative Gravids and The Order of Everbirth both will want to have their say.”

“What’s the difference between the two?”

“Well, The Order of Everbirth is mostly about sheer number of children. And The Conservative Gravids are more focused on the role of the husband. How he is to be protected, loved and kept safe. They might give you some trouble.”

“... I thought they were the same denomination with two names?” Patras asks.

“They’re close. Very close and there’s a lot of crossover. But they’re technically different. They do use the same temple though, they just rotate days as to who’s praying or preaching at the time.”

“Which leads to a good question, what do Gravids pray to exactly? Is there a god or is it just some form of meditation upon The Gravid Truth?”

“That depends entirely upon the denomination. The Gravid Faith was born in the wake of... no, I’ll leave the pleasure to Mother Clapperclaw or Mother Arfallen. Perhaps both if you’re lucky. They’re wonderful women. Granted Clapperclaw is likely to want you boys all safe and comfortable, whereas Arfallen rarely goes five minutes without gushing about her little girls. It’s cute.” She says.

“That... oh my goodness, for some reason I’ve spoken to two high priestesses without learning their names. How did I even DO that?” Observer Wu demands.

“Her name is Mother Shanks. Earlier you spoke to Mother Cyberblade.” Harold calls out from the entrance before walking in. “And speaking of, greetings Mother Shanks! A pleasure to meet you.”

“The pleasure is mine young man. Although I must ask, with four men with so small an escort rising to five things aren’t looking quite so good for you if you seek to speak to Mother Clapperclaw and Mother Arfallen. The might try to detain you for your own safety.”

“The lovely ladies of the group are my wives actually. So we have four unattached men. One is station staff, so I assume he can slip out. Even without his gifts of stealth, Observer Wu is married though his beloved is back on the homeworld. I cannot speak for his bodyguards though.”

“I suppose two unattached men surrounded by friends and family is a lot easier for them to swallow. Although I do suggest you get at least a few more women to act as escort. Either way though, you’re safe in this section, so I have little, if anything to complain about. Best of luck now!” Mother Shanks bids them. It’s a clear dismissal, but it’s delivered in such a cheerful tone that it feels odd.

“So did things to well with our infiltrator?”

“Are we getting a new sister wife?” Giria teases.

“Yes and maybe. She’s going to speak to her higher ups to try and get them to calm down, or at least talk to The Undaunted. And I do think I made a good impression on her. I got a name out of her willingly, which means she’s very comfortable around me for an infiltrator. So who knows.”

“I wonder if his dick in her would still be visible.” Umah considers and most of the group misses a step at the sheer what the fuckery of the statement as Harold chuckles.

“Well let me keep working at it and we might very well find out.” Harold says.

“Heh. Hmm... any hatchlings from that... I wonder if it’s possible to breed in naturally invisible Warforms? It so rarely holds true with Cloaken being brought in, would this new species be the secret sauce?” Umah considers

“Maybe. I don’t think right now is the right time to consider Eugenics though. First we need to make sure they’re something other than hostile and hiding.” Obsever Wu remarks.

“It’s not Eugenics, it’s about bringing in the best of the best to the bloodline so we get the strognest possible warriors born!” Umah protests.

“That’s Eugenics.”

“Isn’t that more stopping the ‘wrong’ people from breeding than encouraging the right ones to breed?” Umah asks.

“Partially.”

“Yeah, no. We need computer programmers and farmers and other boring things to get to the exciting job of fighting. I know that, I’m not dumb. Duh.” Umah says as they leave the church entirely and Patras points down the way to the shared Conservative and Everbirth Temple.

“I suppose that was the major mistake of... hmm... bit of a hot button that topic.”

“Heh, so you’re saying the Nazi’s...” Harold begins.

“Don’t start.” Observer Wu warns.

“I’m just saying that if they were more, this group should be in charge over this group should be the only one, then they’d probably not be so reviled.”

“We’re missing something.” Patras notes.

“About a century ago there was a major conflict. The losing side did some pretty heinous things and have been thoroughly vilified by history. What I’m saying is that if they were less horrible they would not be so vilified. They’d still have been wrong mind you. But they’d be less despised.”

“Be that as it may, they are still thoroughly despised and for good reason and you are going to stop this Mister Jameson.”

“Fine, fine. It is a provocative topic, even if the history surrounding them is actually quite fascinating and glossed over so often for pursuit of decrying their leaders as evil and the people as fools if they’re not monsters for failing to oppose it.”

“Mister Jameson. Stop.” Observer Wu commands him. He puts up his hands in surrender. “Good.”

Umah sidles up besides Harold. She leans in to whisper. “What’s so bad about these guys?”

“Death camps, broken treaties, horrible experimentation and more. They basically went down a checklist on how to be hated and reviled by history.” Harold whispers back.

“Oh, and what’s so fascinating about them?”

“The average one was just some average person. Which says all sorts of horrible things about psychology, couple that to the fact that they did make legitimate advances in medicine that no one wants to admit and the sheer raving mess that was the build up to them and you have a drama among dramas, except it was real...”

“How crazy did it get?”

“We have video of one of their most well known leaders twitching and fidgeting in public in a way that suggests he’s on high grade narcotics and stimulants.”

“Whoa... must have been a weird time.” Umah says.

“That’s one way of putting it.” Harold says. “People are also really touchy on the subj...

---

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[Chapter 1] ; [Previous Chapter] ; [Discord + Wiki] ; [Patreon]

Chapter 196 – Never been a Saint

With a crackle, the tiny speakers hidden in the humans' ears came to life as they pressed their way through the nervously riled-up crowd at an aggressive pace.

“Mission Control calling Carbon,” the familiar voice of the Admiral came through, carrying its usual professional tone with just a small hint of added urgency.

“This is Diamond. Carbon copies,” Andrej quickly replied from the front of the team, keeping his head down and his pace up as he answered the incoming call. “What do you have for us, Mission Control?”

James dodged the low-hanging arm of a young koresdilche as he listened in to the radio chatter, his face firm and stony as he wondered what she could possibly want from them now.

He didn't have to wait long, because it barely took a moment before the Admiral's voice came through once again.

“We just got new intel on one of the hostile's positions,” she explained in a firm manner and seemed to want to get the information across as quickly as possible. “5561 Osteaclibur lane. A hidden cellar that can be reached through a hatch in the supply closet that can be opened via a control panel in the bathroom. Prepare for password confirmation.”

Everyone briefly turned their heads to glance at each other. New intel? Right now? Where'd that come from?

The Admiral wasn't generally one to come through with intel if it wasn't reliable. However...

“How's your blood, Ma'am?” James asked through the line, taking over the conversation momentarily to ensure that that was actually his mother they were talking to.

“Runs like water,” his mother's voice replied without hesitation, and James gave his team a subtle nod. Given what they knew about the language model that their opposition used against them, he doubted it had cracked that code. “Prepare for password confirmation, Carbon.”

“Copy, Ma'am,” Andrej took back over with a serious tone. “Ready when you are.”

Everyone went very quiet to listen as the code was dictated to them.

“Too. Tree. Sev-en. Nin-er. Nin-er. Fife. Fow-er. Fow-er. Wun. Ait,” the voice gave through, each of them committing the numbers to memory with various methods of trained memorization.

“Too. Tree. Sev-en. Nin-er. Nin-er. Fife. Fow-er. Fow-er. Wun. Ait,” Andrej returned in a practiced manner. As he did, his team both checked the numbers against their own recollection while also once again committing them to memory while listening for the second time. “Copy, Mission Control.”

“Confirmed,” the Admiral replied, verifying the password while the team already changed the direction of their push through the crowd to accommodate for their new target. “Be advised, the source of the intel is not clean. I repeat, the source is not clean. Proceed with appropriate caution.”

“Copy that, Ma'am. We'll be careful,” Andrej confirmed while everyone adjusted to their new route and formed up around him once again. “Carbon out.”

Covering each other's sides and flanks, the team of small primates became akin to a group of shadows, sliding through the tight but plentiful openings that were ripe for the taking for people their size.

“Any inkling what that's about?” Admir asked into the silence after a bit. Seeing as they had a good bit of ground to make before they would even get close to the new target, he likely decided that constant silence wasn't the way to go for the meantime.

“Whatever it is, it's probably time-sensitive,” Athena replied from the other side of the formation, though obviously their voices were all joined together through the same channels in each other's ears.

“If it is then we were never going to make it in time,” Tuya assumed, clearly weighing the way they had ahead of them against the idea of needing to get anywhere in a timely manner. “If they so much as dream that we're coming, they'll be long gone before we get close.”

“Yeah, but the quicker we are, the more they may have to leave behind to make it,” Admir countered with a hint of pondering in his voice. “Presumably, at least. Unless we suddenly had a random breakthrough on deciphering one of their frequencies, this intel likely comes from some other busted ambush-attempt. At least that's my best guess.”

“Makes sense with the unclean source,” Athena confirmed after a moment of thought. “You think they weren't expecting one of their own singing?”

“Or they were counting on exactly that,” Tuya gave back for consideration. “But that only leaves us back at square one. Still, considering they used enough powder to blow half a city block last time, we should probably keep the possibility in mind.”

Everyone briefly gave some sort of confirmation.

In the meantime, James gently bit his lip. This could definitely be another trap. At this point, that was almost becoming the norm rather than the exception. Still, something about the situation was different.

For all their differences, he knew his mother wasn't quite so easily duped. If she gave them this intel with the sense of urgency that she had, there was a good chance she had reason to believe it was a hot trail.

Of course, that didn't make a trap any less likely. It did, however, make it more likely that the bait was a lot more valuable this time. If they could snatch the cheese this time, maybe it would get them somewhere.

Despite all their skepticism about their own pace, the team reached the Osteaclibur lane soon enough. The entrance to what appeared to be a somewhat 'upper class' area, even for this neighborhood, was distinguished by the statue of the street's name-sake member of the first Galactic Council.

Unlike the many other statues around the place which were modeled after Captain Uton and meant to display an “average” yet idealized simmiareskis, the depiction of Osteaclibur was one of a shorter, stouter monkey with thicker fur and a tail that was only half as long as it should have been, presumably after suffering some sort of injury.

The at this point ancient silver-back had a grumpy expression on his wide face, and even in this immortalization of his form, his thick fur was patchy and unkempt in places, straying away from his skin in every which way, almost as if he had just rolled out of bed.

“Must have been quite the character,” Admir commented, glancing up at the larger than life depiction as they all quickly moved past it.

In his mind, James had to agree. For all they were propped up to be these days, he couldn't help but think that the first Council was most likely not all that different from the people that lived today – and they were certainly far from some strange, mythological figures.

An odd but also strangely comforting thought to have in a time like this.

Holding their formation, they pressed onward into the half-gated community. At this point, they had moved far enough that the crowd had significantly thinned out, though there was still a noticeable number of people out on the street, seemingly just loitering.

So far away from anything interesting that was happening, a bit of suspicion crept up on all of them. Were these people just out and about? Or did they have a reason for standing this far back?

And even if they were just bystanders, having so many of them here still wasn't good. If something was about to explode, it was almost certain that someone was going to get caught up in it.

“Really prefer the jungle to this many civvies...” Athena grumbled as she looked around, before turning her attention towards the Major. “Should we clear them out?”

Andrej released an almost chirping sound as he sucked in air through a small gap between his tongue and his teeth.

“Let's see what the target looks like first,” he stated and gestured for everyone to go a bit quicker. “Keep your guards up.”

“Copy,” everyone else replied as they picked up their pace.

Obviously, the group of uniformed and armed humans was getting some strange looks as they passed by. Judging by the faces of some of the bystanders, there were definitely a good few among them who seemed to recognize just who that was hurrying past them there with a huge gun in his arms, though some also seemed like they thought they were just seeing ghosts.

A good chunk of them surely didn't expect to see one of the Council Candidates to rush past them in such a situation of all times, thus thinking they must've imagined something or confused him for someone else.

Still, James kept a close eye on everyone's reactions. Just in case someone was maybe a little too surprised to see him here.

“That's the house,” Tuya soon called out as the first to get a direct visual of the correct address, with everyone else quickly following her gaze right before then looking everywhere else in a quick scan of the perimeter.

This deep into the street, the density of people had definitely lessened once again, though there was still a good chunk of them out on their feet.

“Coal, Carbonado, you're on. Everyone else, cover,” Andrej ordered, causing everyone to move right away while giving brief confirmations.

Although, it did seem to give one of them a bit of pause, as Tuya turned her head towards the Major briefly to look at him a bit incredu...

---

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The warp cruiser burst into space at the edge of the Drizzk solar system. Immediately there were blares of weapons arming, and target locks. That soon passed as the scans which followed soon after concluded. A high priority message quickly popped up on screen, as the Drizzk realized who exactly had burst into their space.

The message was accepted, and a video feed was established. If Drizzk could blush then the room filled with them would be flush with red. Every eye on the feed was directed onto Kyle's heavily armed and armored form.

“We congratulate you on your success against our eternal enemy. And we welcome you to our humble star system!” The head Drizzk general stated.

Kyle accepted their gratitude from beneath his armored skeletal form, and they were granted not being blown up by simply moving their ship privileges. They made their way through the system, weapons never leaving their lock on their ship the whole time. Just cause they were happy to see Kyle, didn't mean they weren't still their old warlike selves.

The ship made it's way into geosynchronous orbit around the main Drizzk planet. A party of ships entered escort orbits around their ship, and a small lander docked with their airlock. A party of extremely large Drizzk grunts boarded their ship and bowed before Kyle as he made his entrance. He had uploaded Drizzk etiquette to his suit's subsystems and taking a cue from it's programming, simply ignored the grunts. He rudely (politely, in Drizzk culture) barged his way past them and entered the lander, where he took a seat upon the captain's own chair. The grunts entered the ship, assumed defensive positions around Kyle, and the ship began to enter the planet's atmosphere.

You could see the celebrations from low orbit, well not actually, but it was extremely apparent that the entire planet had been undergoing a festival for the last week already. The destruction of a lifetime of enemy forces was a reason to celebrate, and the defense of the planet and solar system was left to the lowest of the grunts, and highest of command for a time.

The lander, outfitted in the royal colors of the Drizzk, touched down on the landing pad built specifically for victors time immemorial. There was a lot of unused architecture on the planet, steeped heavily in tradition. They were a society that expected victory, needed it. This whole month would be set aside as a month of victorious celebration, at least until their next war campaign wiped the board and required their energy for war.

Kyle stood at the head of a Drizzk contingent, the doors hissed open as the pressure differential between atmosphere and artificial atmosphere met. Kyle, in his suit, was unaffected by this. Similarly the Drizzk were built different, and simply stood in formation. The cry of victory was enough to deafen a normal unmodified human. Kyle on the other hand had technology on his side, and his helmet automatically silenced the noise.

He stepped forward, atmospheric thrusters lifting him off of the ground. A purely decorative set of lasers ionized the air in a winglike fan, and purely non decorative tesla generators blasted the ion pathways with electricity. The electricity snaked out along the electrically conductive pathway burned into the air, forming a stunning arc of electricity that looked like a grand godlike wing with a beating heart of electrical fire. As though the Drizzk population had been holding back this entire time, a new wave of eardrum bursting noise cascaded through the air, the electricity flowing through the air vibrating with the raw sonic energy pulsating through the air.

This demonstration was a little over the top of what had been recommended by the Drizzk diplomats, who had directed what Kyle should do, and how he should be perceived. He had shot down their excited recommendations that he blast another hole in their moon in celebration, at the firm direction of Medusa. Instead he had gone into the Drizzk national archives and stolen the image of a religious god emperor of centuries past. Well, the idea anyway. There was no way they had access to electrical wings and man portable flight back then. Kyle broke off of his main Drizzk honor guard and blasted a circle around the densely packed crowd of Drizzk civilians. Not like exploded a circle into the crowd, though he was sure they were deranged enough to enjoy being slaughtered by a figure of legend. No he flew around, making sure to have his wings pointed upwards in order to avoid frying random insect people.

All of this was extremely effective, and a great deal of fun. And very, very clearly visible. A dark figure watched Kyle as he flew about, a sword made of clear ice shimmering in the cursed light. It was a necessity though, her mission was far too critical to allow some light to cause her to falter. She already knew where Kyle was going to be, this was her time to scout his capabilities, and weaknesses. A glance from a random Drizzk civilian, more easily distracted than the usual member of their society, moved across her position. She leaned back into the gargoyle she was perched on and channeled her sword's clear ice around her, making her invisible to the eye. She hated being seen, more than she hated failing missions. This was her chance to make it somewhere, to get answers. She wouldn't fuck this up.

Kyle finally landed on the platform that he was supposed to have walked to, turned down his electrical output, and accepted the formal combat by sword that a great warrior was to be met with. He just let sword take care of that though, every swing at his vitals repelled by a floating glowing blade within Kyle's control. This clearly frustrated the Drizzk warrior, he was after all their best and this fuckwit wouldn't even lay a hand on the sword that repelled all of his attacks. It was humiliating, which in itself was exhilarating, you didn't become the best by believing yourself to be unstoppable. It was a fight that would go down in legends, a glorious battle with an honorable loss on his part, he was sure. It was the greatest battle of his life, and he would hold the memory in a place of honor for the remainder of his life. Kyle yawned.

After pointing his electrical laser at the Drizzk, flourishing his blade, and zapping him hard enough to make him take a knee, the battle was concluded. Now all that remained was... days worth of combat, speeches, and meaningless formality. Sure he was gonna get to name and own a grand swath of land laden with grand structures, treasure, and servants. But there was a lot of formality to living on a Drizzk world, and Kyle would honestly rather be out in space somewhere than have to live his life according to the strict regimen of the Drizzk.

Eventually the sun went down, and Kyle was allowed a short interval of rest and recuperation.

In the morning his quarters were empty. His armor sat at attention, open and awaiting it's operator. But nobody was there to fulfill it's purpose. Medusa walked in, fully expecting some shenanigans on Kyle's part. Perhaps a gadget of some destructive ability being worked on, tools strewn about the place as Kyle tuned his suit's carburetor or something. Medusa knew that that it didn't have one, nothing did these days, but it was a great way to get under Kyle's skin. But when she entered the room there was nothing out of place, no tools on the floor, no Kyle in his bed. Hell, it looked like it hadn't even been touched.

Medusa stepped out of the room and confirmed with the guards that Kyle hadn't left. The windows didn't open, and were four inches thick. There was no way in or out that didn't go through the guards, and yet, no Kyle. She pulled out her Agency tablet and pinged Kyle's identifier, and the tablet beeped right away. It claimed that Kyle was in the room, and following it's crude compass led her to a patch of red goo on the floor. The thought crossed her mind that it was his blood, but that wasn't what it was at all. No, it was the nanites that Kyle had been injected with that allowed him Agency clearance.

Medusa stood there for a second, her thoughts racing in a clear ordered fashion, before she tapped a mental button to connect her to Agency HQ.

“Kyle is missing.” She said simply.

The line switched, THE BOSS's voice coming into her head.

“The fuck do you mean Kyle is missing.” THE BOSS questioned.

“I mean, somebody came in, extracted the nanite goo. Which, to my knowledge isn't possible outside of an Agency lab. And took him. The guards didn't see shit either.

There were a couple of reasons for this assumption. One, if Kyle was out there somewhere he'd be bombarded with Drizzk wanting to make “polite conversation” with Kyle. Aka combat central wherever he was. And according to the scopes they had on the planet, wasn't happening anywhere. Two, he wouldn't dare go out without the armor, because it was cool as hell, and because Kyle would be limp meat without it's protection. And three, because Sword was laying on the floor looking very inert. No floating shenanigans, no telepathic shit-talking, just a piece of metal laying on the floor looking sharp.

Medusa picked up the sword and banged it against the bed frame. Noth...

---

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---

Chapter 124

I managed to clean a few more statues during that run until I arrived at a very particular place.

The area was filled with ruins, and the monsters there were humans, or at least they looked like humans. The clothes indicated a prehistoric technology as it was barely more than furs on their bodies, and they used stone weapons.

I managed to fight them without much trouble, but when I arrived at the statue, I was speechless.

That thing was so large that the small crystals could barely cover it. It was a vehicle, easily as large as a heavy-duty truck, the type that would pull semi on the highway. That eighteen wheeler was impressive, but it also left me with a lot of questions about what to expect from that.

As we started cleaning that statue, I observed the vehicle more and more, and somehow, I was certain I had seen this vehicle somewhere. It was only halfway through that I realized where I had seen this. It was a command vehicle, the type that would transform into a command center of strategy games.

Seeing this, I knew that this boss would be the first one I had to get rid of. The last thing I needed was the sudden alarm that an atomic bomb had been detected inside this dungeon ten minutes after the second phase had started. That sucker had to go immediately.

Seeing the ruins around it, I knew that I could not afford to let that boss to even produce one infantry unit or else I would lose a lot of girls trying to get them to leave the barricaded buildings.

After a short moment of thought, I decided not to risk it and destroy the buildings immediately. I needed a lot of explosives for it, and I was not really loaded with high density stones to create a lot of these. So, I ordered the girls to use the digging skill from the miner job.

I led the efforts and did the same, and thankfully, the logistics team inside my dungeon took the effort to transform the rocks we dug up into ores and stones. I then used the stones to create explosives.

That's when I noticed that the number of monsters was going down while we were digging up rocks. I had found a way to reduce their numbers without fighting them!

I knew that using my job skills consumed the chaotic magic in the air, but seeing it affect a dungeon in such ways was a surprise for me. Then, I had a sudden idea of how to do even more damage to the dungeon, but first, I needed to level about fifty buildings in preparation for the fight with that boss.

I filled the buildings with thousands of explosives, which wasn't particularly difficult with the help of hundreds of girls, and then we watched the show. I have to admit that when one of the buildings shot up like a rocket, I might have put too much of those nice dynamite sticks inside of it.

Still, the girls seemed to enjoy the scene.

After clearing the place and only leaving the boss in that place, we returned to the fox area.

The idea was to test out the fishing skill, too, so we went to the lake in that area.

As it turned out, that skill also created a lot of trouble for the dungeon because the numbers of the first phase went down with us fishing inside. However, even with lures and all, no ghost ships emerged from the waters, so there was some interference with my skills.

I realized that even with the use of nets, the results of fishing were slower than the digging skill, and since I needed more experience with my miner job, I ordered the change of skill use.

There were a few girls that complained, but I promised them that it would be worth it. The girls guarding the fox statue also participated, and I observed it for a while.

I saw how a few crystal shards grew on the statue, but after a few seconds, they simply broke, turned into ash, and disappeared. We were consuming the magic inside this dungeon faster than it could produce it. This was a great discovery.

The speed was nowhere close as hunting monsters, but if we could get the number of the first phase down to a few hundred and then use this method to get the final ones, it could be a viable solution. At the same time, using this method to get rid of unwanted monsters, like the magical foxes of this dungeon, was also an interesting option. Simply leaving them til the end and then slowly killing them with this method.

Suddenly, I had another idea. I was unable to gain experience points by fighting inside the dungeon, but what about this job?

I ordered my girls to continue digging and broke a few rocks, obtaining ores from them.

I then ordered the logistics team to create a portable furnace and put it in my inventory.

I carefully observed the experience bar of my miner job and started smelting the ores into ingots. Nothing. Then, I asked the logistics team to smelt a few of them. This time, my experience bar reacted.

There was something inside this dungeon that prevented me from obtaining points, but it didn't affect the girls outside the dungeon. This was an interesting discovery.

I asked the girls that were with me to continue to dig, but most of them weren't motivated anymore, so I had to use extreme measures to get them to follow my orders.

I stood in front of them and told them with all sincerity that they could claim all gems found inside the rocks if they agreed to do it. Needless to say that this message got them to do it.

The logistics team was suddenly overwhelmed by the amount of ores and stones that we were sending them. The gems stayed with us, but it didn't take too long until they started complaining that their inventory was overflowing with shiny rocks.

So, we gathered them in a large pile in our middle, and I let them continue that work. I spread my wings and flew around, observing the rest of the dungeons.

I saw how some of the statues had lost a lot of crystal shards, but I also noticed that none of the monsters that had already spawned were affected in any way by our actions.

This was also useful information. I temporarily stopped their tasks and ordered them to clean up any monsters in this dungeon before continuing the task of digging up gems.

My girls had their sights on the gems, I had another goal in mind.

First / Previous / Index / Next

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/hfy by /u/ralo_ramone on 2024-12-03 20:52:33+00:00.

---

“I know that man. He’s the Lich,” I said.

The System Avatar suddenly intruded into my memories, and it felt like acquiring a new skill. My brain was pressed and squeezed, flattened and built again. I wanted to puke, and I would do it if I were in my actual body, but everything around me was just a vision of the System. The sun disappeared, and stone walls grew around us. We were inside a cave. The ceiling was five or six meters above our heads, but we weren’t all that deep. The light of day entered the cave from the entrance.

We were in the cave where I first fought the Lich.

“The System can read your memories, remember?” the System Avatar apologetically said.

“I know,” I replied as the scene around me slowly became sharper. Memories seemed to need time to load. “My brain was scanned when I first arrived, wasn’t it?”

The System Avatar nodded. 

“I wrote a rune that triggers a mind-reading spell. The rune inputs information into the System, telling it you want to cast a skill. Passives, like your [Swordsmanship], work with a continuous hypnosis spell feeding information directly to your mind,” the System Avatar explained as my memory loaded. “Your [Intimidation] skill is an interesting one. After a level check, the System casts a mind-control spell on the target, implanting fear in their brain and erasing it when the skill ends.”

I nodded, fighting against the nausea. The System wasn’t anything but runes and spells following a certain logic. The revelation didn’t come as a surprise, considering the amount of Fountain mana the people from the System Avatar’s office could use.

I wondered why they had so much power compared to the natives of this world.

There was something the System Avatar wasn’t telling me.

If otherworlders had so much power, my Class might be a leash instead of a help.

“Wait,” I said. “Does that mean I will have to learn true magic to fix the System?”

The System Avatar shrugged.

“If we ever get to that point. First, we need to deal with the Corruption snowball.”

Days and nights passed in a second.

The next moment, I was standing in the middle of the cave, blocking the Lich’s path. It wasn’t actually me, but a memory. The Lich stood before me, his hand stretched forward, touching my chest. Black tentacles of Corruption moved under my skin. The Rob from the memory tried to yell, but no sound came from his mouth. I was getting converted into a Corrupted monster. Then, at the very last moment, Loki jumped out of my pocket. With a black whirl of mana, he turned into the man of the Avatar’s memory—Alex from R&D.

How dare you!

The Lich yelled directly into my brain.

“How dare you!” Loki replied, channeling a sea of flames from the palms of his hands.

Primal mana flowed through my hands as the Corruption severed my contact with the System. 

Give it back!

Then, I performed true magic. The ceiling melted, and the System Avatar paused the memory. He approached Loki and examined his human form: black, straight, long hair, pale skin, and blue eyes, dressed in a red tunic.

“This is Alex from R&D, but why?” he muttered.

Then, the realization hit me.

“The Lich isn’t asking me to give back his powers, because I’m not using his power. I’m using the Fountain,” I said. “He’s asking Loki to return his appearance, his body.”

The System Avatar was in shock.

“Gag me with a spoon. You turned yourself into an undead, Alex… no, it must be a coincidence. He would’ve never. The Changeling must’ve been born in the late development stage and saw our memories. There’s no way Alex turned himself into an undead,” he muttered.

Despite the System Avatar’s denial, I knew the Lich was the man from his memories.

“It’s him. The Lich recognized the runes. He knows who you are,” I said with a severe tone. “Fast forward to our last encounter, a few days ago. He mentioned you and wanted me to give him the Access Rune.”

The System Avatar cursed.

“If you knew all of this, why didn’t you mention it earlier!” he yelled, all traces of his cold, machine-like demeanor gone.

“You were having a mental breakdown!” I shouted back.

A wave of nausea hit me. The scene changed to my fight against the Lich in the Chrysalimorph’s body. Behind a fallen tree, I saw Pyrrah and Hallas cowering like baby owls during a thunderstorm. They were horrified. In the middle of the clearing, beside the fallen pine, the Lich ranted about the bigger and meaner things prowling in the deep Farlands.

“Oh my God. This is worse than I expected,” the System Avatar said. “The Access Rune is dangerous, but this is even worse. Alex knows every single nook and cranny of the System. He could dismantle the System in a single day if he wanted. He could make changes…”

I massaged my temples.

“That scene has been in my brain for months now. Why didn't you notice before?” I grunted.

The System Avatar glared at me, offended.

“Well, sorry for respecting your privacy,” he said sharply. “Do you even know how many hours my living self spent convincing everyone not to add a subroutine to zap anyone with the slightest murderous intent? Because it’s not that hard. The System can be a slave collar with very few changes. Look at the Zealots!”

I took a deep breath, trying to calm myself down.

“Let’s think. This might be our only chance to get in contact in a while,” I said. I needed to know more about my enemy. “The Lich can use true spells like you and the HR woman. Am I right?”

The System Avatar nodded, understanding the intentions behind the question.

“Alex could animate puppets. It was very useful in and out of combat, but he never explained how he created them. After the initial fiasco, sharing information about our skills became taboo,” he said. “The puppets acted like Alex, as if they inherited part of his personality.”

Puppets. It made sense he turned into a Lich. His bodies I’ve met weren’t the real ones but fakes.

“If we don’t find his real body, we can’t kill him,” I said.

A devilish grin appeared on the System Avatar’s face. “He’s using a node as a hideout. I know it. I smell foul play. There’s no way so much Corruption appeared in such little time.”

“A node?” I asked.

System technicalities were outside my range of expertise.

“The System has four levels. The centralized code connecting to the Fountain, transmission nodes in charge of computation, proxies serving as a bridge, and the end users,” the System Avatar said, still grinning. “Technically, the example is wrong, but it is the best way to visualize it. What’s important is that we cast powerful camouflage spells to cloak the nodes. Users and non-users can’t find them. The System blocks the users, and the non-users don’t have strong enough spells to dispel the mirages. However, the Access Rune will allow you to find them.”

I grinned back. The Lich would pay for everything he had done to me and the kids.

“So, which node are we looking for?” I asked.

“There are dozens of nodes in the area, but one has been malfunctioning a lot more than the others,” the System Avatar said. “Remember the set of coordinates I gave you? The zero represents the starting point, where I gave the coordinates to your orc student. The next three digits are an angle. East is zero degrees, north ninety degrees, and so on. The rest is the distance between you and the location, in meters, of course. I’m not a barbarian.”

I closed my eyes and remembered the number—nine digits—012768012. Our target was sixty-eight kilometers and twelve meters northwest of the position Wolf had received the coordinates. Without [Foresight] assisting me, it was hard to do the mental math, but as soon as the System Avatar let me go, I could subtract the distance from the starting point to Umolo and figure out where to go from there.

“Do you think you could’ve decrypted it without my help?” the System Avatar asked with a smug smile.

“It would’ve taken me less than a day. Not many sets of coordinates work if you don’t have a map.” I replied.

The memory around us trembled, and I knew our reunion was coming to an end.

“The security subroutine?”

The System Avatar nodded. “Killing the Lich and getting rid of the Corrupted node might give us enough time… you are still on board with my plan, right? You don’t feel like pulling a Byrne?”

I raised an eyebrow.

“I don’t know, man. You don’t seem to be putting much effort into it, and I am a technology junkie. I’m sure a load of guns will solve the whole Corruption matter.”

The System Avatar wasn’t happy with my answer.

“You know I can’t boost you if that’s what you’re hinting at. I’m not in control of almost anything, really. Other than these pockets of memory hidden in the proxies, I cannot edit the code.”

I scratched my chin, deep in thought. If the System Crystals worked as the bridge between users and nodes, he might be able to code something I needed. Maybe it wouldn’t be helpful to combat the Lich, but I was confident in my ability to kick his ass without any external help.

“I want to give Wolf a chance to live the life he intends. The Greyfangs offered to scrub the System from him, so I assume this Crystal can do that,” I said.

The System Avatar nodded. “I can write a suspension subroutine. Give me your hand.”

The Avatar’s hand closed around my wrist like a steel pincer. Then, the pain blinded me. I felt like someone had pressed a red hot branding iron against the palm of my hand. He let me go, and I pulled back. I examined the area, but the rune disappeared with...

---

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The original was posted on /r/hfy by /u/BainWrites on 2024-12-03 19:16:11+00:00.

---

[(RR)First] - [(RR)Prev] - [(RR)Next]

“This must be a war crime.”

Major Sumaya Franklin looked down at the document she had been handed, the proposal lying on her desk, causing a confused grimace to form on her lips. Such proposals weren't anything new in Sumaya’s job: much of her time was spent sitting in this office, day after day, looking over and approving some of the many thousands of requests a military might make. New initiatives, upgrades, weapons: everything a modern galactic army needed.

This suggestion that had been placed on her desk was different. It was the kind of thing that potential future people might make damming documentaries about, an idea that seemed crazy and somehow… Heretical

“We checked with the lawyers, Ma’am. They stated the complete opposite, that since they are all legal Terran citizens, that denying such a request might fall foul of several equality laws.”

Niall O’connor spoke up as he stood opposite to the Major, a simple professional tone to his voice as he watched her thumb through the document he'd written, proofread, and then provided her. He'd created many such documents during his career, as the military had many problems, and his job was to create problem solvers. To put the right pieces together and create a tool that dealt with the niggling issues the rest of the military couldn’t.

If he was being honest, this was one of the weirder ones he’d put together. It wasn’t even his idea: the people referenced in the document had been the ones to suggest this new covert operations squad, Niall had just put together the feasibility study and done some of the legwork to get the paperwork. He could feel a little sympathy for Sumaya, as everyone he’d shown the proposal to had fallen squarely into one of two camps: ‘This is awesome’, or ‘This won’t end well’.

The Major had nothing against uplifts. As soon as they were technologically able, humanity had uplifted their animal companions into sapience, bringing their lifelong friends to the stars and beyond, granting them increased dexterity and intelligence through extensive genetic modification. The vast majority of these now Terran citizens were once dogs or cats, with a lesser smattering of parrots, hamsters, rabbits or other common pets. Sumaya didn’t mind those, they were good people. Even the exotic uplifts were mostly fine, the result of a few crazy people who had decided to uplift their pet racoon or alligator. She could still understand those to some extent. These uplifts however…

“I know it’s not the politically correct thing to say, but why were these uplifts even created? Out of every animal on God’s green Earth, someone chose these species.”

“Most people would get offended by that, although having spoken with the members of the group myself, they’d be inclined to agree.”

The individuals Niall had spoken to were just as strange as their creation, each one fully aware of the reputation they held, almost taking it with pride, the bad boys of the Terran people, a sign that sometimes the Terran chaos went a little too far.

“Look at this one: Legion. Never mind why they were uplifted, I want to know how. Doesn’t the uplift process require a minimum amount of… brainpower to work with?”

“The how is complicated. Something about a biological communal mind, taking advantage of their lack of individuality to form a consciousness in large groups. Makes them functionally immortal as long as their egg batches are never destroyed. As for the ‘why’...”

Niall paused for a moment, reading from his own notes on the group.

“Legion’s creator was a Dr. Fyodor Dmitrev. After he uplifted the first one, his given reason during the press conference was, and I quote: ‘Because I’m the smartest person alive you bitches, I can do what I want’. He then went on a three-hour-long drunken profanity filled rant for the rest of the press event. Ended up creating five of the uplifts in total, until one of his creations killed him.”

Legion wasn’t the only one of the proposed group that had an ‘interesting’ upbringing, all of them did. Nobody who would uplift these animals would be considered normal, or even stable. Frankly it was a miracle any of the uplifts ended up even slightly functional in the end considering their creation.

“That tracks with what I’d expect.”

Sumaya continued skimming through the document, feeling a pit of despair in her stomach as she continued to read. No matter their apprehension of this supposed project, she couldn’t argue that it wasn’t going to be effective. Each of them were already in the Terran military, each with a long list of accolades and successful missions under their belt. Besides the obvious negative PR, there was no good reason to say no, and no good reason to potentially alienate current highly effective military assets.

“Can we at least change the name?” Sumaya finally said, shaking her head. “It really sends the wrong message.”

Niall gave a chuckle at that, shaking his head in response.

“That was one of their hard lines, they see it as a badge of honour, who they are, what they are. They’re strangely protective of how people see them.”

Sumaya resisted the urge to sigh, instead weighing up the pros and cons of keeping this group of highly effective soldiers happy, and the reputation hit should it become known that she signed off on something like this. Visions of various headlines ran through her mind “Major Franklin signs off warcrime committing death squad” and “Major Franklin: Racist refuses to let uplifts fight for our nation.”. It only took a few moments for the pros to outweigh the cons. Realistically, nobody in the long term would care as long as the group maintained their professionalism, and this wasn’t even the craziest thing approved in the Terran military this week.

“Fine. I give my approval for ‘The Bastard Squad’”.

—-----------------------

Raxl didn’t like guarding things. Raxl didn’t like a great number of things, mostly anything that didn’t involve fighting or eating. She was a Hagorthian, a giant species of reddish brown lizard that had evolved the aggressive trait of never stopping their growth, fuelling a biological desire to continually fight and eat in order to sustain this never ending requirement for resources. Hagorthian culture was filled with a constant obligation to prove your own strength through fighting, the species having travelled the stars conquering planets, demanding those they enslaved to provide worthy challenges and food sources.

Many external researchers had speculated on how the Hagorthians had even managed to build a civilization able to create FTL travel, a few noting the species seemed to take great leaps forward whenever they were led by the very, very few born with exceptional intelligence. None of those had appeared for quite some time, however, as recently in the last 100 years they had allied themselves with 4 other slaving species, calling themselves the Estorian Empire. This empire had unsurprisingly found themselves in a wide spanning war against the slaver hating Terrans and their allies.

Raxl gave an absent-minded growl as she stood in place, weapon in hand, trying to at least pretend that she was keeping a look-out for any potential threats. The machine behind her glowed and did… something. She wasn’t sure what exactly, the annoying bird who had handed it over to them said something about blocking waves, quantum entanglement, and a bunch of other words far too long for her liking. Raxl also didn’t like long words, nothing in her life was complicated enough for any word larger than eight letters, and that was only if you included the apostrophe in the word fightin’.

The Lelzoil were also one of the members of the Estorian Empire, the brightly coloured xenophobic avians the complete opposite to the Hagorthians, focusing on the power of intelligence and extracting knowledge from the universe at any cost. As much as Raxl would have been more than happy to grab the annoying talking weak bird and bite it in half, supposedly they had a solution for the even more annoying Terran problem.

Raxl both loved and hated the Terrans. On the one hand, the strange primates were always a good fight. Sure they were small, but then what species wasn’t when compared with the Hagorthians? No matter their size, they always had a fight in them, the willingness to go head-to-head in combat when required. Killing a Terran was never an easy thing: it was a honourable and proud thing.

Raxl was covered in an assortment of trophies from her nearly 140 years of fighting, teeth and bones strung together into bracelets, fangs and claws showing every major kill she’d ever successfully accomplished. There were the fangs of her first mentor, the jawbone of the first Juiral she ever hunted, and of course, nestled on the side of her hip, was the primate skull of a Terran she’d bested in combat. From before the war, back when less savoury and adrenaline seeking Terrans would visit Hagorthian space to engage in the many acts of ritualized combat that existed.

Which was the real problem: While they fought well, Terrans didn’t do war correctly. They hid behind automated drones to do their warfare, focusing on losing as few people as possible instead of the glor...

---

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The original was posted on /r/hfy by /u/PepperAntique on 2024-12-03 20:15:58+00:00.

---

Previous / First

Writer's Note: The King has spoken, so it shall be.

Enjoy.

Joey grimaced as the nurse stuck the needle in his arm and filled a vial with his blood. As she did a radiology tech used a handheld scanner to check his hip out.

"So Mister Choi." The Petravian half of the interrogators began. "You fully admit to supplying the Estish government with the secret to constructing Gates?"

Joey sighed as they asked roughly the thirtieth variant of that question.

"No." He said, also for the thirtieth time. "I supplied Ekron with the secret as a way to pay him for helping me, and also as a way to help him stay out of prison since helping me escape was likely to be considered an act of treason or something."

"And you were aware of the importance of the Gates both to the Petravian government and interdimensional security?" The Earther half of the pair asked.

"You mean the Gates that Petravius HASN'T used to conquer the world despite everyone else thinking they would?" Joey retorted. "Or the interdimensional security that requires a paired Gate in the other universe to work?" He asked sarcastically. "THAT... interdimensional security?"

"Are you angry Mister Choi?" The Earther asked.

"No." He admitted easily. "Annoyed sure." He nodded at the nurse. "That's about the twentieth vial she's filled." He shrugged. "I am glad you're finally calling me Mister Choi though. Beats 'Self Proclaimed Mister Choi.' That was awkward. And I'm saying that as someone on the spectrum. So you know it's true."

The two interrogators shuffled awkwardly in their seats. They had insisted on calling him that for the first hour or so of the interrogation but had slowly relaxed. Which either meant they were slacking, or all the tests and the room next door were confirming who he was to them.

"Don't try to distract us." The Petravian said. "You proclaim to be Joseph Choi. A heroic young man who died seven years ago in a battle against a minion of the Gods. You look like him. You sound and act kind of like him. And you somehow knew how the Gates worked well enough to give those secrets to our Nation's greatest rival. Yet we have Joseph Choi's remains here on Castle grounds. With DNA and dental matches with Earth's medical database. So you can't possible be Joseph Choi."

"And yet here I am." Joey said smugly as he gestured down at himself. He pointed at the bruise on his arm where the nurse had done numerous blood draws. He turned his hand over to show the ink still on his finger prints. Then he pointed at the mirrored wall. "And I'm betting the people in that room are confirming all the things these machines and the enchantments in this room are telling them. That I'm Joseph Choi." He waved at the mirror. "Hi Miss Veliry." He said. He could, despite the enchantments shielding the room, sense her in there watching with the others.

This only made the two interrogators less comfortable.

"And yet that's not possible." The Petravian insisted. "Joseph Choi is dead."

"Yeah!" Joey agreed. "I was! Now I'm not!. Don't know how to tell you this. But your worlds got a shitload of weird stuff in it dude."

For a change the Earther actually stifled a chuckle, causing his partner to glare at him.

"Look. I've said it before. I'm saying it now. And if you two don't fuckin' get with it, then oh well." Joey said sarcastically. "I don't know. Why I'm back. But I am. And I'm staying. Fucking Deal with it. Or I'll destroy anything and anyone that tries to fuck with me. End of story." He bobbed his head as he held his arms wide. "I did it in Ostielle. I did it when I killed the Commander of the Cobalt Legion. I'll do it here to. I just don't want to because I kinda like this place and most of the people in it."

**"Are you threatening the Capital?"** The two of them asked in unison.

"That's for you to decide." He replied with annoyance. "I don't care. I'm over it. I just wanna go home and get to know my son and nieces."

Before either of them could respond the door opened.

"Out." The person standing outside said in a rich baritone.

The two interrogators and the two medical personnel stood up and made to leave. The radiologist stopped next to Joey first and spoke in his ear.

"You have some really bad damage to almost every bone in your right leg." He said as he held his pad up for Joey to see. Sure enough there was signs of improperly healed breaks in his femur, tibia, fibia, and his pelvis. "I'd highly recommend getting them repaired when you can." He said before standing up and leaving as commanded.

The Earth interrogator paused before they fully left the door.

"My supervisors won't like this." He said as he stood before King Farrick.

"They'll live." He said simply as he stood, unmoving.

The interrogator looked back at Joey for a moment, then shrugged and stepped around the King.

King Farrick stepped into the room and slowly moved to sit in front of Joey.

Joeys eyes widened a bit as he looked at the King for the first time in seven years. Then he saddened a bit.

The King had aged a lot in the past seven years.

Like his brother he had, in his previous life here, thought of the King as a jolly, if somewhat stern, uncle.

But now as he looked at the smaller, thinner, much greyer monarch, he was reminded of the King's age. And all the stress of trying to lead a nation that had spent the past few years recovering from the Day of Dying Sky, after all the other calamities that had already occurred before that, and he'd clearly suffered the stress.

He set his cane against the table as he settled himself in the intentionally uncomfortable chair on the other side of the table and studied him.

"Well by the gods." He said as he looked at Joey. "I never thought I'd see one of you again."

Joey nodded. "It's been a long time sir." He said.

"Yes. Yes it has." He said.

The two of them sat in silence for a while as the King continued studying him.

"I was there." The King said, finally breaking the silence. "I was there when your brother brought you through the Gate to the druid forest."

Joey looked at him in surprise. Despite having been home for nearly a week before the Royal Army had come to get him, none of them had talked about it. They'd danced around the difficult subject, though he knew it was on all of their minds.

"I was there, standing beside your mother when James," He shook his head as he looked down at the table between them. "when James carried your body- your corpse- through the Gate and begged her for help." He said somberly. "I was one of many who caught her as she fell." He gestured at his chest. "Heart attack. Your doctors called it a heart attack."

Joey's jaw clenched. He'd noticed how much slower she was now. How she napped more often. He knew that, healing magic or not, a heart attack and old age still took their toll. And he couldn't imagine how much turmoil his return must have caused.

And yet, again, they hadn't talked about it at all.

"As someone who has lost siblings... and his wife. And as a father who has watched his children flirt with death repeatedly. I can't imagine how that day must have affected her. Much less the day you BOTH disappeared." The King said before seeming to think. After a few moments he looked up at Joey. "Are you... Joseph Choi?" He asked. "All other circumstances and confusion aside, are you actually Joseph Choi?"

Joey considered the question.

He had doubts as to whether he was ALL... Joseph Choi. He thought there was some fuzziness around some of the edges. Like a copy from an old and worn out copy machine back on Earth.

But he was still certain.

"I believe so." He said.

There was a single tap on the mirrored wall. The King turned and looked at it for a second before looking up at him.

Then he stood up and walked around to Joey, using the table to support himself.

When he got to Joey's side he held out his hand.

Joey stood up and accepted it, giving it a firm shake.

The King pulled him into a hug that wasn't as tight as he remembered the King's embraces being.

"Welcome back my boy." He said. "By the gods welcome back."

Joey returned the embrace, surprised at how emotional the King's approval felt for some reason.

After a few seconds King Farrick patted him on the back and broke off of the hug.

He made his way back around the table and retrieved his cane, then began walking out of the room. As he got outside he swiped the runes outside the door and the enchantments on the room deactivated.

"Let him go." The King demanded of people Joey couldn't see outside. "This young man's been through trials we can't even imagine. And even before that he's the reason our nation has the Gates. AND the reason we didn't get devoured by the Gods and their abomination." He coughed into his hand a bit and an aide appeared to steady him. "Let him be. The damned room says he speaks true. The Earth machines say he is who he is so everyone just let the man be with his family."

Joey moved to follow him out, and the guards didn't harass him. The door next to the one he and the King emerged from opened and Miss Veliry rushed out to hug him. He hugged her back. And he didn't miss the way Amina left the room after her and began stalking away, looking less pleased than she probably should have. He couldn't exactly bl...
***
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The original was posted on /r/hfy by /u/Marushyne on 2024-12-03 17:11:08+00:00.

---

By Captain Bill Morrison of the USS Remembrance

(Currently seeking asylum in 32 different systems)

Look, nobody goes into space diplomacy expecting it to be easy. But there's "challenging" and then there's "accidentally starting three interstellar incidents before breakfast" – guess which kind of diplomat I am?

When Earth's Unified Senate gave me command of the USS Remembrance (seriously, who names a diplomatic vessel after memories? Why not just call it the USS Your Mom Was Right About Everything?), they handed me a simple mission: visit nearby star systems and apologize for humanity's various first contact screw-ups.

"It'll be straightforward," they said.

"Just say sorry," they said.

"How hard could it be?" they said.

Spoiler alert: Very hard. Extremely hard. "Converting-the-ship's-fusion-reactor-into-an-interpretive-quantum-detector" levels of hard.

---

Day 1: The Alpha Centauri Incident

Or: How I Learned That Colors Can Commit War Crimes

My AI assistant ARIA started us off with what seemed like an easy one.

"Captain Morrison," she chirped, sounding far too cheerful for 0600 hours. "Our first diplomatic mission involves apologizing to Alpha Centauri B for the Red Spacesuit Incident of 2157."

"The what now?" I asked.

"Humanity's first contact team wore red spacesuits to their greeting ceremony. In their bioluminescent language, this effectively declared both a trade embargo and suggested their stellar mass was below average."

I stared at my coffee. My coffee offered no answers. "How do you accidentally insult a star's weight?"

Turns out, the Alpha Centaurians take their stellar pride very seriously. And fixing this particular faux pas required our entire crew to don bio-reactive suits that changed color based on our emotional states. Ever tried maintaining diplomatic composure while your suit broadcasts every embarrassing thought in technicolor?

"Captain," my first officer James Thompson called out during the ceremony, his suit flashing a particularly mortified shade of mauve, "I think my suit just told them about my teenage goth phase."

"Could be worse," I replied, watching in horror as my own suit started displaying my entire browser history in various shades of ultraviolet. "At least you're not currently explaining to their High Chancellor why you spent three hours looking up 'do black holes have feelings' last night."

We left Alpha Centauri with a treaty, several radiation burns, and a new ship's regulation banning anyone from thinking about embarrassing memories during diplomatic functions.

---

Day 15: The Tau Ceti Tangle

Or: Why You Should Always Read the Fine Print About Quantum Physics

The Tau Cetians were supposed to be easy. All we had to do was apologize for accidentally drilling into their crystal-based civilization. Simple, right?

Wrong.

"What do you mean they want to install a black hole in my cargo bay?" I demanded.

ARIA's holographic form shrugged, a gesture she'd learned from watching too many human soap operas. "It's their traditional form of acceptance. They want to conduct a small gravitational experiment. Very small. Barely noticeable."

Dr. Michael Roberts, our chief physicist, was practically bouncing with excitement. "Captain, do you realize what an opportunity this is? We could learn so much about quantum gravity!"

"The last time you said that, we ended up with a temporal paradox in the coffee maker. It's still serving yesterday's coffee tomorrow."

But diplomatic relations required sacrifice, so I agreed. The next month was... interesting. The good news? We learned a lot about quantum gravity. The bad news? The black hole developed a taste for coffee mugs, specifically Dr. Roberts' collection of "Universe's Best Physicist" novelty cups.

"It's showing preference for items with scientific puns," he reported, watching his last mug spiral into the event horizon. "I think it's developing a sense of humor."

Great. Even the laws of physics were laughing at us.

---

Day 45: The Sirius Situation

Or: When Social Media Attacks (Literally)

You know that moment when you realize humanity's greatest mistake wasn't nuclear weapons or reality TV, but letting the aliens discover our internet? Welcome to Sirius B.

"Captain," ARIA announced, "the Sirians have spent 35 years trying to cleanse their spacetime of our social media broadcasts."

"How bad could it be?"

The answer was very bad. The Sirians, who communicate through gravitational waves, considered our electromagnetic internet traffic to be the equivalent of cosmic graffiti. Imagine trying to explain to a civilization that experiences time non-linearly why humans spend hours watching videos of people failing at parkour.

"So let me get this straight," the High Resonator vibrated at me. "Your species intentionally broadcasts recordings of itself falling down stairs?"

"Well, when you put it like that..."

"And these 'memes' – they are some form of mass hysteria?"

Lieutenant Jessica Anderson, our communications officer, tried to help. "Think of them as... quantum fluctuations in cultural consciousness?"

That actually made sense to them. Too much sense. They became convinced that memes were a form of quantum weapon. We spent the next week trying to convince them that "Rick Rolling" wasn't an attempt at mind control.

---

Day 73: The Grande Unified Theory of Diplomatic Incidents

Or: Embracing the Absurdity

It was during our seventeenth apology ceremony – this one involving synchronizing our ship's atomic clocks to apologize for introducing daylight savings time to a species that experiences time spatially – that I finally understood.

"ARIA," I said, watching Dr. Roberts try to explain to an eleven-dimensional being why humans can't just "take a shortcut through the sixth dimension" to avoid traffic, "I think we've been looking at this all wrong."

Every species we'd met had their own utterly unique way of existing:

• The Procyon Collective thinks in fusion reactions
• The Beta Hydri Alliance experiences time backwards (they start meetings by saying goodbye)
• The Altair Federation considers three-dimensional space "charmingly retro"

We weren't failing at diplomacy – we were all just cosmic weirdos trying to make sense of each other.

Our final report to Earth's Unified Senate was simple:

To: The Distinguished Members of Earth's Unified Senate

Re: Why Everything is Weird and That's Okay

After extensive research, multiple temporal paradoxes, and one incident involving a black hole that now has strong opinions about coffee brands, we've reached a conclusion: everyone in the universe is incredibly strange, including us. Especially us.

Recommendation: Establish the Universal Weirdness Recognition Treaty (UWRT), acknowledging that:

1. Reality is subjective
2. Physics has a sense of humor
3. No one really understands TikTok, across any number of dimensions

Respectfully submitted,

Captain Bill Morrison

USS Remembrance

(Currently oscillating between dimensions 4 through 7 due to a minor quantum hiccup)

They all accepted it. Turns out, the universe has a pretty good sense of humor about itself.

These days, our black hole makes the best coffee in known space (though it still occasionally eats the mugs). Thompson gives lectures on "Chromatic Diplomacy and How to Hide Your Embarrassing Thoughts in Ultraviolet." And sometimes, late at night, you can find me in the observation deck, trying to understand eleven-dimensional jokes.

Because here's the thing about space diplomacy: the secret isn't learning to be perfect. It's learning to laugh at yourself while you're trying.

P.S. We did eventually explain TikTok to the Sirians. Turns out it makes perfect sense if you describe it as a quantum superposition of cringe and creativity. The Sirians now have their own version involving gravitational wave dances. It's actually pretty good, even if watching it does occasionally violate causality.

THE END

(Unless you're experiencing time non-linearly, in which case, this is actually the beginning)

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---

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(Previous Part)

(Part 001)

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Unarin stands inside his Sanctum, alongside Dosena. The glint of many ancient pieces of art on the walls do not draw Unarin's attention as they usually would. Instead, his thoughts dwell on the rather sudden and unexpected battle between the two Wordsmiths, a battle he did not see coming but which also isn't entirely out of his expectations. Naturally, he noticed some tensions building between them in the past, but he could never fully account for the thoughts they were secretly holding within their time-accelerated domains.

The two highest Founders wait for a while until the individuals they've been expecting finally arrive.

The doors to Unarin's Sanctum slowly open, and two Psions enter. Executor Riley, and Executor Sartran.

They did not teleport inside, because that would be extremely disrespectful to the First Founder's authority. In the Volgrim Empire, none may enter his Sanctum without permission. Not even the highest of High Psions. Only three individuals have obtained such a special privilege, those being Founder Dosena, Muuxunuu, and Unarin's brother, Randis.

Not even the other three Founders possess the right to desecrate Unarin's Sanctum without permission. This therefore stands as a testament to the rest of the Empire on just how intimate Unarin's relation is to the other three. He even considers Dosena to be as close to him as his own family.

The Executors enter, agitation visible on their faces. Clearly, after the battle on Maiura, they did not anticipate that the two Wordsmiths would suddenly pounce at each other's throats.

Unarin faintly frowns. "Where is Creator Demila?"

Sartran bows his head. [Apologies, First Founder. After the battle, I dispatched her to check the situation on Tarus II. She will return shortly. Her infiltration skills are excellent.]

"I see." Unarin says, his tone plain. "I am interested in her perspective. She has been watching the humans for longer than the rest of you combined. She may be able to shed light on this new development."

[Are we going to intervene?] Riley asks.

Unarin remains silent for a time. He stares at her, his face giving away no clues as to his inner thoughts.

"...That will depend on any useful details you can give me, as well as Demila. Start by recounting the events on Maiura. Leave out nothing."

Sartran lifts his head. [With permission, I will transmit a psio-burst.]

Unarin nods. "To Dosena. Both of you."

The High Psions nod. They open up their minds and instantly transmit every single piece of information they collected during the battle on Maiura. Using her super-accelerated mind, Dosena finds it utterly trivial to sort through a mere few hours worth of memories, collecting and assessing each point one-by-one.

After checking to ensure none of the information is compromised, and also that none of the High Psions have been compromised, Dosena transmits a nearly identical data-burst to Unarin. It would not be acceptable for anyone but her to do this, for Unarin does not trust any other Psion with slipping information directly into his mind.

Not that they could, even if they wanted to. As a practitioner of the Mind of Void, Unarin's ability to resist Psionic mental links is powerful to the extreme. Over the eons, only Dosena has mentally communicated with him enough to bypass some of his filters.

A minute later, after Unarin silently receives Dosena's transmission, he finishes digesting all of the new information. His expression becomes inscrutable.

"As I suspected. There does indeed seem to be a sinister intelligence lurking within the heart of the swarm. It is not as mindless as it purports to be."

Unarin falls silent again for a few moments.

"The matter of Kolvaxians hiding their Psionic abilities is alarming. We must now assume that they are capable of deep planning and plotting. It is very likely the Executor Plaguehosts are feigning weakness. They are capable of fighting at the 8th Level of Psionics. They merely choose not to do so in order to make us complacent. From now on, we must assume that they will reveal this capability in a future battle."

[I have my own thoughts on the matter.] Dosena interjects, her voice plain. [I believe it is possible, perhaps even likely, that the Plague can replicate the same host over multiple instances. The swarm has never shown this to be possible, but if we assume it is, then we could see ten copies of Executor Huron appear within Milky Way space all at once. Perhaps even a hundred copies, a thousand, or millions.]

"That is a terrifying thought." Unarin mutters. "If true, then this war is already lost. The Plague will be unstoppable. There is no point in entertaining such thoughts. We already know that killing a unique Plaguehost, such as Sartran's doppelganger, will cause it to regenerate elsewhere. I prefer we assume that only one of these individuals may appear at any given time. Anything else is a gross violation of the laws of Cosmic Conservation. I refuse to believe Akasha would allow any Ruler to create such an unstoppable army."

Dosena doesn't retort. Even she believes this to be a step too far, and would simply mean that the war is lost. The Second Founder might be powerful, but not even she could defeat a thousand of Huron's clones attacking her all at once. Her best option at that point would be to flee for her life.

At that point, why even bother fighting anymore? The Volgrim might as well start hiding in pocket dimensions or fleeing into the Unknown.

Unarin begins pacing back and forth, allowing his thoughts to wander.

"The matter with Neil Adams is... troublesome. I spoke to him on this very day, and was even beginning to make plans to deepen our collaboration. He was wiser than I expected, though burdened by his hatred of demons. I still believed we could work together to achieve greater things."

"For him to abruptly stumble and fall over his feet like a clown... it seems there was some external intervention involved. Creator Demila was the closest during that event. Let us wait to hear her testimony before I make any final decisions."

Unarin's eyes betray no emotion, but internally, he already has a suspect in mind.

It was Demila, not Jason, who caused Neil's death. Hope Hiro jumped to a different conclusion because of his hatred of Jason, but the matter is all too clear to me, as it must be to Jason. But why would Demila kill Neil Adams? Especially without my permission? I shall give her a chance to explain herself before I render judgment.

A flicker of killing intent flashes through Unarin's heart. This unruly subordinate failed to capture Gressil and has reported only the most useless information until now. She caused a major diplomatic incident, and it could cause a huge rift between humanity and the Volgrim.

To do all of that without Unarin's permission, she had better have a good reason!

The First Founder does not tolerate insubordination.

Unarin and the Psions engage in further small talk, dissecting the events of that day, as well as discussing several key losses. The deaths of the Archangels genuinely surprise Unarin the most. How could Raphael allow his foolish sister to blunder into the Kolvaxian's claws? Unarin begins to wonder what sorts of powers the swarm will obtain once it digests Archangel Uriel completely.

Twenty minutes later, Creator Demila arrives back on Volgarius, traveling to it via a Warpgate. She hurries to the Founder's Thumb as quickly as possible, causing Dosena to frown as she senses the rapid approach of her junior.

[Something isn't right.] Dosena remarks privately to Unarin. [Her emotions are unstable. She is uncharacteristically anxious.]

Unarin narrows his eyes.

"Is that so..."

Not even a minute later, Creator Demila teleports just outside the Sanctum. She waits, her body trembling, until Unarin motions with his hand. Then, she power-walks inside.

After entering, and before Unarin can say anything else, Creator Demila quickly drops to one knee and bows her head deeply while slapping a hand over her heart.

[Founders, forgive me! I acted without permission!]

Unarin blinks. This wasn't what he expected.

"Elaborate." Unarin says, drawing the word out.

Creator Demila keeps her head lowered, unwilling, or perhaps afraid to look into Unarin's eyes.

[It was I who caused Neil Adams' death to the Plague.] Demila freely admits. [I did this without permission and caused an...

---

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Colony Security Operations Chief Steve Malcolm stared up at the scouting vessel as it came in for landing about 30Km outside of the colony’s perimeter. Personally, he would have preferred that it landed further afield, but the Colony Director didn’t want to seem too unfriendly.

 

It did help that the scouting vessel wasn’t that big by human standards. Barely larger than some of the pre-FTL rockets humanity had been using to try and escape the Earth’s atmosphere with 200 some years ago. Modern human spaceships would only classify it as a system picket ship, which is why it’s role as a scout whose purpose was to flee at first sign of contact was so easy to accept for the humans.

 

Although once the ramp came down, Steve had to reassess the dimensions he had been mentally calculating the ship based on. With the sole exception of the crocodilian, who was called an Arcoinian they had been told, who was on par with human height and mass, the other aliens were smaller and slimmer than human proportions.

 

The Grey looking one, an Orthoid they referred to themselves as, was only 1.2m tall, and a decent portion of that, easily 1/4th was head.

 

The Captain, a Car’thoon as her species was called, had what looked kind of like a cthulu-esque head with 6 small tentacles on the front, a slight hint that there might be a beak underneath there somewhere, although that hadn’t been confirmed, just suggested in how the 6 tentacles moved. She also seemed to have 4 larger tentacles that acted as leg and arm analogues, although her clothing currently made it unclear if she actually had a body or if they connected directly to her head. Her skin was also a rather bright orange red in tone. She seemed to move along at a height around 1.3m tall.

 

Then there was the small furball that was poking its head out of the ship to look around. They had been informed of this 4th crew member, but no one had spotted this Rhondion previously. Apparently its the ship’s Engineer, the being resembled a small rodent of some type, hard to tell more at the current distance from the ship, but it couldn’t have been more than half a meter tall at most.

 

Steve had been given strict directions that no one was to approach the alien ship until the Orthoid Science Officer, one Lt Newt’rual gave directions. He was here to keep curious humans back, because humans have a bad habit of thinking directions are for other people and don’t apply to them.

 

So he was sitting here, waiting and keeping an eye on the visitors. Eventually the Arcoinian, Sgt Marknrak was the name from the briefing if Steve remembered correctly, wandered up, and asked politely

 

“Good day, have you been unable to hear the requests from my Captain or the Lieutenant?”

 

“What requests? I’ve been waiting for something from them, but I’ve been getting silence. You’re the first one to try and talk to me this entire time.” Steve replied.

 

This caused the big Croc looking guy to give a bit of a frown. “My Captain has been trying to reach out to you with her telepathy for 10 minutes now, and she says it’s like shouting at a brick wall.”

 

“Well why didn’t you just give a yell then? I definitely would have heard that. No wind out today to drown out the noise.”

 

“Define yell?” the Sgt asked in a confused manner.

 

“Like this” Steve said right before letting out a loud yelling call.

 

All the aliens immediately looked around as if afraid that the world was about to fall on their heads, before slowly relaxing.

 

“Oh, right you guys are only recently getting over the idea that there aren’t bigger scarier things out in the world out to get you… Sorry about that.” Steve said, looking around a little embarrassedly. His shout seemed to have drawn the attention of a dog and cat though, who came to see what the fuss was about.

 

“Well anyways, Lt Newt’rual would like you to come over to test some things out, please and thank you” the Sgt gave a low rumble.

 

“Sure, sure. Let’s go boy” Steve said as he gave the dog some skritches behind the ear as he walked over towards the ship.

 

Unexpectedly, the Captain collapsed when he got to a distance of 100m from her. Steve immediately dashed over, and lifted her by threading one arm under what would have been the armpit on a human, and trying to assist her in a hobble over to what appeared to be a form of seating set up nearby.

 

He turned to the Science Officer to figure out what was wrong only to realize that the Orthoid was also having difficulty, having collapsed into a nearby chair.

 

He turned to the Sgt, only to see that the Sgt was nodding knowingly.

 

“Told you Lieutenant.

 

You didn’t want to believe it, but I knew as soon as I saw their relative size, and it was only confirmed for me when they mentioned killing the Dragons.

 

They’re psionic nulls.

 

But no, that’s impossible you said.

 

Psionic nulls would invalidate the theory of peak psionic evolution, so there must be another reason you said Captain.

 

And now look.

 

His mere presence shut off all your passive psionics.

 

Still think the Humans aren’t walking psionic null zones?

 

But no, no one ever listens to the Arcoinians just because we’re reptiles and have a history of hunting for meat” the Sgt rumbled at his two slumped superiors.

 

“They ignore your species just because you guys hunted meat?” Steve asked with a quirked eyebrow

 

“So, while their species would sometimes eat meat, for them it was always scavenged. They have always viewed us as slightly more savage because we would hunt for fresh kills.” the Sgt said with exasperation.

 

“Man, wait until they get a load of humanity then!” Steve laughed “We started as Omnivore scavengers who were prey, but developed tools so that we could become the Hunters, and we love fresh meat. We raise livestock now so that we can still eat fresh meat for our meals.”

 

The moment was broken by the sound of a high pitched screaming coming from the ship, with the Rhondion bolting out of the ship, a belt of tools worn like a sash. Behind it, stalking out of the ship with a focused look was a cat.

 

“Oh crap, I better stop that before your Engineer gets hurt.” Steve said, dashing for the ship.

 

He just barely managed to intercept the cat, and pick it up into his arms, calming it down by petting it until it started to purr, which caused some of Lt Newt’rual’s instruments to start beeping.

 

The Rhondion had decided to seek the high ground on top of Sgt Marknrak for safety.

 

“What-what is that death-kill creature-thing doing in the human-creature’s arm-limbs?”

 

“It’s a Cat, its one of the types of pets that Humans keep around for companionship. They have the benefit of getting rid of small vermin from around our settlements for us. The other major type is dogs, like that boy there. They helped us hunt in our early tribal days, as well as provide mutual defense of our settlements.” Steve said.

 

“These animals that your kind have bonded with… along with the readings my instruments are picking up… might help… explain much…” Lt Newt’rual said with effort. Slowly pushing himself into a more comfortable sitting position.

“I didn’t realize I was subconsciously supporting my head’s weight with my psionics. Its something my people try to avoid doing, but often end up doing.” He continued

 

“That creature” pointing at the cat “gave off a supplementary boost to your psionic null zone when it purred, and similar creatures have evolved in our spaces as known hunters of psionic creatures.

 

That ‘Dog’ as you called it is also giving off a psionic null zone, although no where near as strong as what you are, so it seems that may have helped with the bonding between your species.

 

Additionally, my instruments seem to be picking up an unusual interaction between the two null fields, and I would need to observe the interactions between multiple humans to be sure, but I think the two of you in close proximity are combining to cover more area than either one individually.

 

Rather than overlapping like normal psionic fields, they seem to meld and expand.”

 

“Apes stronger together” Steve jokingly quoted.

 

Although the aliens didn’t seem to understand the joke.

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Update: Awards?! Plural?? Holy heck, y'all seriously like these. I'm like...blown away. Seriously thank you all.

___________

Vilantia Prime, Palace of the Throne

Council meetings were becoming spirited of late. Now that the existential threat of war had been removed, the focus had shifted to growth and rebuilding. Not everyone was pleased by this, the Throne noted wryly to itself. They rapped a stone gavel against the table to bring a bit of order to the meeting before saying anything

"Ministers. History shows us that the generations before us know war and peace in cycles; but it is time to find a new way to build a peace that lasts. To achieve that, we look to success and adapt it. The Terrans have been helpful in assisting with beginning the recovery, and I believe that we can look to some of the things they do and expand on them. Improve on them. Since the Great Civilization, we have been searching for worlds to colonize with precious little success. There are worlds that have proper air for colonization, but their gravity is always weak and causes problems. I believe it is time to evaluate a concept that is new to us." There was a pause. "Orbital platforms. We as a people have never invested in such things at scale, as the Hurdop threat has always been one that we would have to guard against. Now, in this time, I believe that we should bend our efforts to crafting orbital stations in order to be able to extract minerals, retrieve necessary fuels, and grow."

The War Minister tapped the table once. "My Throne. I do not doubt your wisdom in this, but I must raise a concern. The Hurdop have never been so vulnerable as they are now. I believe this plan would be more effective if we did not have a constant threat at our neck. We have the resources for one offensive push. With that, we would have dominion over them, and we would guide our future."

A shake of the head was the reply from the Minister of Trade. "My friend, you have seen the reports as well as I. We throw countless lives into a breach, the Hurdop do the same, and we are left with tales of glory and empty ships where our subjects once lived. We have had the resources for 'one offensive push' for a year. And always it has been insufficient. We cannot trade, cannot grow into anything with a constant threat of war. The only trade partners we have are the Terrans, because no other cargo ships will dare journey into our space. We have cut ourselves off, and we cannot rebuild under the constant threat of fire. Respectfully, there are threats in the dark that do not wear the fur of the Hurdop."

The War Minister scowled. "Kindly attend to trade, Trade Minister, and allow those skilled in war to concern themselves with war."

"For trade to occur, we must have goods. We have no goods. We must have ships to carry these goods. We have no ships to carry goods as your designation of all cargo ships as warfreighters has seen to that. We must have partners with which to trade. We have only the Terrans as consistent partners - all others refuse because they do not know if the goods they purchase will be lost. War precludes prosperous trade, Minister. Direct your unders to find ways to defend the orbital platforms the Throne describes, and allow me to attend to trade."

There was a tensing of muscles under the War Ministers jacket along with deep inhalation of breath. The other ministers shifted uncomfortably at the display, as it normally preceded an outburst that sent secretaries scurrying for cover. In this moment however there was no such outburst, and the War Minister seemed almost serene for a moment.

The Throne rapped the gavel again. "Quite enough. I have given a direction, and that is the way we will go. We will work with the Hurdop in peace, and we will hope that they see the advantage to doing so. Follow or name your replacement."

None of the Ministers present named their replacement.

___________

Terran Foreign Legion Ship "Twilight Rose", Bridge

R-space was soothing in several ways. Somehow the little bubble of spacetime felt like a warm den, and the pattern of blues from the front and reds behind was almost mesmerizing. It didn't mean he could simply stare out at nothing, but it was peaceful. The calm that was going to come before the storm.

And the storm was going to be a formal dinner. The Clan Way required him to advise that he was Nameless, in order to keep the others from acknowledging him. The easy way out would be for him to invent some illness or mechanical issue within the ship that required his presence – however there were several of these runs in the future, so it was quite possible that this was an event that would have to be faced sooner rather than later.

He sighed softly, looking out at the viewscreen. His command staff shifted their postures slightly to look back before O'Brien finally broke the silence. "Problem, sir?"

Gryzzk grunted softly. "The meal aboard the Godsfang. My social status will make conversation awkward."

She grunted softly. "Telling them to kick rocks isn't an option, I take it."

He shook his head. "If I am to regain my status, I must acknowledge my place. If I am fortunate, I will not be spoken to."

"Respectfully Captain, you're not that lucky."

"It would seem not. I would recommend that you and the XO converse with the Vilantian lords on my behalf."

"My Lord Captain, we have something amiss that demands your attention in the cargo hold."

Gryzzk rubbed his forehead - they'd managed to go four hours into R-space without incident. "What's the issue, XO?"

"Security did not elaborate. However, internal sensors note an unusual heat signature in the cargo hold."

"Speculate."

"Well, it's not your mom - her heat signature made scientists think Vilantia was a binary system for like a century. So maybe Gregg-Adams picked up a spare cat. In any case the guard mount thinks you need to find out more, because otherwise they'd actually have to do something that's not burping or farting."

Gryzzk looked at the holographic form of the XO. "You're doing this so I don't have to think about the dinner tomorrow."

"Guilty as charged, sir. Stop brooding, start doing. We'll handle it."

Gryzzk sighed, finally leaving the bridge and heading to the cargo hold entrance.

Sergeant Michaels, saluted crisply as Gryzzk approached. "Sir whatever it is, it's fast. Squad says it smells like you. But you been crawling every inch of this ship for a few weeks, so everything kinda smells like you."

"Have you tried talking to it?"

"Yessir. No response. We didn't want to try anything drastic."

"Very well." Gryzzk glanced at two of the squad, flicking his lower eyes over their nametags. They were Hurdop-born, if their names said anything. "Cartre, Dilmie. Load for stun, do not fire without my express order. Follow me. Everyone else, load for stun and shoot anything not us." With that, he unlatched the deckplate and slid down the ladder, waiting for the sensors to register the motion and light up the area.

He moved forward, allowing the two privates behind him to take their place behind him. They were exceptionally nervous about this – certainly they'd seen Gryzzk at company functions and heard stories, but at the same time he was an unknown on many levels.

Gryzzk sniffed the air cautiously. They were right – he'd been everywhere on the ship of late, learning the layout and making sure nothing was going to be overlooked. But the scent here wasn't entirely his. Familiar, and it made him groan softly.

"Cartre, check your tablet and head for the section marked 'rations' - Dilmie, report back to Sergeant Michaels that my daughter has managed to stow away." He then moved forward slowly. It took Cartre a few moments to catch up and head for the ration stores, while Gryzzk circled around and softly called out for Nhoot.

She trundled out slowly, carrying Rhipl'i and smelling both happy and nervous. Once she saw it was Gryzzk, Nhoot firmed up her face and straightened her uniform, dusting small food crumbs from her shirt. "Mama said you might need help, so I said I would help. And...the ship is pretty."

Gryzzk sighed. "Yes it is, but you really should tell me before doing things like this. Come on, let's go to the bridge and get you a bunk."

Nhoot nodded cheerfully as Cartre fell in behind them and they exited the cargo hold.

"Squad, this is my daughter Nhoot. She has apparently decided the ship needs her presence, and according to her this was with the approval of Grezzk. I'll be checking the story, but for the moment carry on. Check your tablets for any changes that might be coming." He glanced as everyone in the squad save Cartre automatically went to their tablets to see if anything might be coming in at the moment. Cartre leaned over and whispered to Dilmie. Something about that didn't quite sit right with him.

"Private Cartre. Walk with me for a moment."

Cartre smelled nervous for some reason. As they walked, Gryzzk tried to force relaxation to his voice, but he kept it low. "Is there something malfunctioning with your equipment, Private?"

"Sir?"

"Your tablet. Is it defective?"

"I. I don't know sir." Cartre's ears drooped slightly.

"Have you never had one ...

---

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---

[Author's notes]: this is where some may wish to avert their eyes. I am not writing erotica or outside the bounds of the rules, and you can skip this chapter and get a very sanitized summary after things are over. But at the same time, I am dealing with some really goddamn heavy topics here, and I feel like a warning is in order. That may just be vanity on my part, but it has much more to do with people I've known who were in destructive relationships with very manipulative people than with any particular agenda.

If I get to write a seven-foot-tall Crocodilian and a human insane enough to jump into hard vacuum to cripple another spaceship, I get to say "you may wish to avert your eyes".

Previous Chapter and Next Chapter?

[Grace]

Now I understood. Slammed against the bars from the outside, a gun to my back. Held up by my wrists to the point my toes could barely touch the ground. Confronted by a couple of Leporidae who, I realized, had every reason for their suspicion and hostility ...and thought I was just more 'meat for the grinder'. I'd be lucky if they didn't bite my nose off. And frankly, I deserved it. I'd always chalked up the bunnygirls' being 'under the weather' to wild nights out, or colds, or - fucking anything but this!

Caged up like animals, brought up to serve the clients, and brought back down here to 'serve' them in other ways... my blood boiled, and I understood why Sam was holding me in front of them.

I could have seen it, could have said something, but even now I lacked the words, and I understood why Sam was ramming his gun into me from behind. Christ, I was going to have bruises all over my back for months! But he hadn't shot me yet, despite the fact I was useless after giving him the codes. Why?

[Sam]

I let my gun hang free and dialed Don Lorenzo while glancing down the lines of cages. "Santiago!" I yelled, "how many are we dealing with?"

The massive Crocodilian seemed to be locked in conversation with a lady, or maybe a mere girl, in one of the cages at the far end of this hell. But he did nod at me, signalling he'd heard what I said.

I plunged the fist holding my phone into the back of my hostage, as it rang.

One ring.

Two rings.

Three...

[Don Lorenzo]

They told me I'd narrowly escaped the Grim Reaper's clutches. They'd managed to extract the bullets and sew up my heart and lung. For the third time in my life, I was grateful I'd chosen a comprehensive medical insurance plan. And that I hadn't been shot in the head. Then my phone started going off.

I reached for it, but it was too far. That was when I made The Decision. I got out of my hospital bed, pulling out an IV, and pulling off a suite of monitoring equipment. The machines I'd been hooked up to started screaming, and I saw one of them flatlining me. But I managed to get my phone, and yelled "Isabella!" into it.

[Lorenzo], she said, [what do you need?]

"I need to get out of this bloody hospital!" I almost screamed. Then I dialed it back ...a bit. "I need the craft outside my window, and I'll make the jump!"

A nurse stormed into the room as I was opening the window. Probably because I'd flatlined according to their instruments. "You know how lucky you are to have that bed?" he asked.

"Yes," I told him levelly, "give it to someone who needs it more than I do. And patch up that IV spot!" I ordered, in tones that got him to actually swab and bandage my inner elbow.

"You are leaving against our medical advice," the nurse said, "so you will have to sign this for-"

I snatched the clipboard away from him and speed-read it. It was the standard "chucklehead here has left against against our medical advice and we aren't liable for any complications resulting from that" tripe, so I scrawled a signature on it, and saw Isabella outside my window, her landing ramp extended far enough the jump would be short. I resisted the urge to throw the clipboard in his face, and just handed it back to him civilly with a curt "that should do it. My insurance company and my team of accountants will settle the bill once you jokers manage to prepare it."

Then I made the leap of faith out the window.

And finally answered my phone. It was Sam on the other end.

"I thought you'd never pick up, Don," he said, "but we've got a situation here."

"A 'situation'?" I asked, clambering up the landing ramp.

"More like a clusterfuck," Sam continued, "there are thirty-six or maybe forty women down in this basement, maybe more - I can't tell, because these fuckers have been putting multiples in each cage. The cages at the front are for the bunnygirls working the casino floor, but the cages at the back..." I could sense the barely suppressed rage in his voice, "they've been getting it rough. Santiago's been trying to talk them down, but some of them saw him in that fucking suit and assumed he was a client, so that's not going as well as it could."

"Too many to handle in Isabella," I said, clawing my way into the captain's seat, "but I can have busses lined up in front of that building in - Isabella, how fast can we get a fleet of busses there?"

[Depending on how many favors you want to call in], Isabella said in those calming tones, [perhaps under ten minutes. You have made some generous donations to the bus drivers' union. Is this the time to make them play to your tune in return?]

"Yes," I told her, and then told Sam "break 'em out and we'll have busses lined up in front for everyone in ten minutes!"

"Don," Sam said, "I'm not the sharpest knife in the drawer, but some of them are going to think they're just under new management."

"THOSE BUSSES WILL BE TAKING THEM TO MY PRIVATE ESTATE! WE WILL SHELTER THEM THERE UNTIL A BETTER OPTION ARISES!" I shouted through the phone loud enough anyone could hear hear it even if it wasn't on speakerphone. Wait, with the amount of background noise I'd been picking up... had Sam switched his end to speakerphone during this call?

That might have been a good decision, I thought, until I heard Sam talking about blowing the locks off the cages.

"NO," I yelled, "YOU IDIOT! THERE HAS TO BE A SUPERVISORS' ROOM WITH THE KEYS!"

...little did I know that I had inadvertently persuaded a lot of the women 'on the fence' that we were actually the good guys here. I was still on speakerphone, and Sam's idea of blowing the locks would have caused collateral casualties. And everyone knew it.

"Alright, boss," Sam said, "In ten minutes, everyone's going to be out and those busses better be lined up outside, because the atrium's a death trap if they have anyone on the upper levels with a hint of good aiming."

"Isabella can deal with that," I told him and cut the call. She was equipped with weapons designed for space combat. Mopping a floor or two in a building would be nothing - the real challenge would be not hitting anything structurally important.

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/hfy by /u/New_Delivery6734 on 2024-12-03 13:08:40+00:00.

---

Blurb: Valens Kosthal had lived a life of magical study and became the youngest Resonant Healer and Archmagus in the wide circle of the world. He had spent his years studying magic, going as far as to dabble in the forbidden Warmagic.

When his experiments are discovered by the Inquisition, he is branded a traitor and sentenced to die. But in his final hours, his mentor, Headmaster Eldras, slips him a strange black sphere, sparking an escape to a world ruled by a powerful System, one that allows him to control mana without relying on tools.

He doesn't know how he arrived here, or why there's mana flowing inside his veins, and especially what this grand System is that governs the whole world, granting people all sorts of skills.

Still, he soon discovers that all of his magical theory knowledge and the skills he gained after years of study puts him way above the others in this world. As an Arcanist, a master of all elements, he realizes he holds powers that make him unstoppable.

But nothing as simple as it seems, and to go back, he has to solve the secret behind this world.

[Previous Chapter] - [First Chapter] 

Chapter 16

The path led to a tight lane that slithered from beside the chaotic mess, separated from the thick of the battle by a long wall that stretched across the cave. It created a corridor of its own where dozens of Skeleton Warriors clad in broken plates and wielding weapons of rust and worn metal pressed into the men in shining armor.

From what Valens could see, the two sides were in a deadlock, even though the humans were clearly the stronger side. The Skeleton Soldiers made up for their lack of strength with numbers and a fervent state of mindless fury. They didn't hiss when carved by a sword. They didn't stagger when an axe chopped halfway into their chests. They fought, thrashed, and clawed at whatever live tissue they could see before their eyes.

They were a terrible bunch, Valens had to say, but at least they didn't have any of those Wards and hideous monsters in the lane. Most of them were too large to fit into the small corridor anyway, which was probably why there was only a constant line of Skeletons being directed there to keep the numbers up.

Still dangerous.

If it had been his decision, Valens would have used the exit they came across on their way and joined the allied ranks from outside. That would take them quite some time, but it would have been the safest choice. Trouble was, it seemed to him that he was the only one thinking about safety in his group. Nomad and Celme scarcely had any intention to wait for a second longer.

It's different here.

Master Eldras had once told him that calculated risk was a fairly common topic amongst the Magi of old. When situations forced their hands, Magi had to come up with a quick solution to at least buy some time. It was like managing a hasty knot around broken veins when one of his Wards broke during an operation. The time it would take to get another Ward and realign his senses to that of the wounded area's Resonance just because he wanted to reattach the veins in a proper way could cost him the patient's life.

Hence the importance of practicality.

That was why, instead of mulling over a decision that had already been made, he started thinking about ways he could provide himself and the group some relief in this grand endeavor. There was a terrifying line of animated corpses waiting a few paces ahead, and a constant trickle from the main horde that fed into their ranks.

Patch the wound.

Valens nodded as the apathy forced the reek of rot and the din of chaos away from his mind. What he was left with was a cold detachment from the surroundings that allowed him to focus on the path ahead. There was a tight gap in the corridor wall through which the Skeletons had to pass to join their stubborn companions.

"I'll patch that hole," he said as Nomad and Celme bounded ahead. When they looked at him, he pointed a finger to the hole. "That'll cut their supply line. It'll probably turn a few eyes toward here, so we have to act fast if we don't want to be bombarded by that Necromancer's foul magic."

"You can do that?" Celme's eyes widened slightly, her face blotchy pink with ungodly amounts of blood underneath the skin. The Resonance told Valens that everything in the woman's body was boiling like a broth cooked in a human-shaped cauldron.

A simple nod was the answer he decided to go with. He hadn't the time to tell the woman that the act of magical healing wasn't something even an accomplished Magus could easily perform. One had to go through years of specific study and practice to even get the much-respected title of Healer in this field. Compared to that, performing a few spells wasn't something worth a mention.

They had gods here, though, with ways to grant humans their blessings. I wonder how that works?

He shook off the nauseating notion that anyone could become a Healer through some godly ritual in this world and instead reached toward the gemstones stitched in his thigh. Only a few remained there, and only one of them was full of earth mana, but that would be enough to manage a simple wall for now.

His senses instantly locked onto the heavy mana in the jewel. The spell formulae for Gravitating Earth waited at the edge of his mind. Unlike Earth Magi, who had to imprint the shape or the dimensions of the piece they wanted to move into the spell diagram with perfect detail, he only had to project the vacancy in the long wall's Resonance, which aligned seamlessly to the real gap in his vision, into the spell diagram, and move the earth mana to patch that hole in the Resonance.

"Get ready," he said as they closed in on the gap. Already, some of the Skeletons were looking toward them with questions in their sockets. They hesitated, as if not sure this sudden intrusion was in part a decision from their Master or if there was an actual breach in their tight ranks.

Nomad's sword made the decision for them, coming at the two who had just walked in from the gap with crushing force. Its tip gleamed with green fog as it hacked a smooth line across their waists, severing the bones and sending the body parts clanking down onto the ground.

"We move!" the Undead roared as he and Celme lumbered forward to the back of the Skeleton Warrior line.

Valens reached out to the mana and felt its tingle around his hands, a part of his mind focused on the gap in the Resonance. He sent the invisible threads toward the ground, right underneath the gap, and forced the bare patch of earth to move. It stirred with a grinding sound that sent a tremor across the wall, its edges perfectly aligned to both sides of the gap and rising slowly to close it.

Then a Skeleton Warrior jumped over the slightly elevated part, swinging a rusted sword at the Undead. The weapon clanked harmlessly off the armor, making the creature stagger back before a punch plunged into its face and splintered the nasal bone with a sickening crunch.

Valens frowned when the Skeleton Warrior's strange Resonance interrupted the gap's own frequencies. The part that was rising from the ground started to shift to match the difference, taking the animated corpse's form, which led to bone-shaped empty streaks in its otherwise solid surface.

"I need you to keep the hole clean!" he called out when another Skeleton Warrior tried to barge in from the gap. "Keep that space empty!"

Celme's eyes turned to him almost immediately, only to snap back to the hole when Valens jabbed a strong finger into her face.

"Keep that hole… Clean!"

"Understood," the Berserker said, reached out with a hand, and clutched the Skeleton Warrior from the nape of its neck like one might hold a puppy from its scruff, then slammed it to the ground and crushed its skull with the heel of her foot. Green light burst forth in a rolling wave and pushed the other ones trying to jam their heads over the rising wall.

The Resonance restored, Valens focused on the earth mana and guided it slowly with his fingers. There was a heavy feeling to the spell, as if he was the one raising that part, and some resistance because of all the foul mana sprawling over the fighting mob. Even from this, he could tell the Necromancer's mana pool was something beyond understanding, like an endless ocean that just wouldn't dry out.

When the tip of the rising earth matched that of the long wall, the spell came to a grinding stop and a loud ding rang in his mind.

Ding! You have learned the skill 'Gravitating Earth - Uncommon!'

Having expected that, he waved the notification off and joined the Undead and the Berserker as they moved toward the Skeleton Warrior ranks. Only a handful of them seemed aware of the closing threat, while the others further into the ranks were still occupied by the approaching human tide. That gave them the chance to grind the horde with two or three creatures at a time.

Nomad took most of the brunt. His armored bulk nearly blocked the greater half of the passage, which also limited his use of the sword to only fast thrusts and close swings. Celme didn't have that problem. Her sleek form was like an eel as she moved through the Skeleton Warriors. She punched and kicked, and her fingers drill...

---

Content cut off. Read original on https://old.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/1h5n0a8/arcanist_in_another_world_chapter_16/

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/hfy by /u/ProvisionalRebel on 2024-12-03 14:25:34+00:00.

---

This is related to On Human Piracy, as with the others so far you really only need to read the first one for the set up.

The humans were here.

My eyes scanned the bridge around me. I could hear the magnetic holds engaging with reverberating clangs.

The pirate ship hadn’t even appeared on sensors until it came practically screaming in. The automated evasive maneuvers meant to avoid rocks and ice hadn’t been nearly responsive enough to deal with a vessel under active thrust so close

I slammed my hand down on the command console before entering my authorization for combat alert. The lights shifted to blue, the alarm wailing in tandem with a strange stuttering, hissing sound.

My ears perked up for a moment as my brain scrambled to place the sound… a fusion lance.

I hit the comm “All hands, boarders! Ignore the airlocks, they’re breaching! Suits!”

As if to emphasize the point, there was a sudden wind and a whooshing sound…. But it ended much too soon to be a complete vent. I considered this as I ran to the arms locker, punching in my code and tossing out flechette rifles to the pilot and navigator before arming myself.

Of course, the pirates hadn’t vented the ship. They were after the cargo… and us, I thought belatedly as unbidden images of what happened to merchants who were caught transporting ‘slaves’ came to mind. I shook them away. We still had a chance.

I moved to the bridge’s door and peered into the hallway, they were damned close already. My eyes burned with the sheer brilliance of the lance cutting through the hull, the arc of energy sending molten slag scattering across the corridor. They were almost through.

“Firing positions! We can’t let them spread out!”

We took up positions to the sides of the doorway. At this distance we had a chance, just spraying into their entry point once they finished would be enough to keep them pinned.

Then the smoke started pouring in. I thought it was perhaps a damaged conduit at first but it filled the corridor as if under extreme pressure, backlit softly by the still working lance until that finally cut off with a shearing bang as the section of hull fell away.

“Fire!”

Bile rose in my throat as I sprayed flechettes into the billowing clouds of… smoke? It had suddenly become difficult to breath. My throat constricted, my lungs ached, and my eyes burned. A chemical weapon!? I… panicked, trying to feel for the controls. I had to seal it! Then, it became a moot point.

A shape moving in the smoke, blurred by my tears. I managed a burst, point blank but it didn’t even pause. Hands grabbed me, far too big for a human, and then I was slammed down into the deck. There was a moment of pain, then nothing as unconsciousness took me.

Sensation slowly came before full consciousness. I was alive, that was the first realization, and I was walking?... No… being dragged. Then I was unceremoniously tossed against the wall next to my crew. With some effort I managed to huddle up against it before I took in the full view of our attackers.

Powered armor. These insane criminals had gotten their hands on powered armor.

The stinging in my eyes had lessened but left them watering. I tried to focus on the pirates, taking in what I could until my eyes fell on the apparent leader’s helmeted head.

“Daniels, all teams report clear?”

“Aye, lieutenant. Last hold outs were trying to overload the engines but the CS seemed to have done its job long enough.”

Lieutenant. My brow furrowed. Then my eyes returned to wander across my captors as much as I could. All in powered armor. All sporting the same iconography. These… weren’t pirates.

“T-this is an outrage! This is an act of war! As captain of this vessel I de-”

A rifle snapped up, catching my outrage in my throat as I stared down the bore.

After a brief pause, an amplified chuckle rumbled around the room as the leader inclined his head to stare down at me through a narrow visor.

“Afraid not, compadre.” He grabbed my uniform shirt and pulled me up to eye level with his hulking form. “This will all just a bit of piracy as far as your government will know. And you know what pirates do to people like you.” It wasn’t a threat, it was a statement- flat and emotionless.

He leaned in, his visor filling my vision. I could take in the full picture now. I could see the shimmer of retinal implants, the subtle surgical scars of cybernetic augmentation around them.

“Which means that my ROE on this is veeeery lenient, so you’re gonna tell me what I want to know like your life depends on it. Because it does.”

My breathing quickened as I considered the juggernaut capable of tearing me in half with his augmented strength before I nodded my ascent.

A smile seemed to reach his eyes then, crinkling their corners “Good, we got a smart one this time.” He paused, as if to let me take in the weight of that statement. “Now, you will talk me through the security protocols of the camps on Selicoth, and provide me the necessary codes for your transports arrival. Then, we’ll see how generous I’m feeling about POW’s.”

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/hfy by /u/icallshogun on 2024-12-03 13:11:26+00:00.

---

Wellspring

First | Prev

Once again, having diplomatic access paid off. Alex had never left a station so quickly before, with the exception of the launching of the Kshlav’o. The Scoutship program had dedicated hangar bays and approach lanes, and a ship coming or going was planned days in advance so there was no overlap.

The GX8 still handled like a dream, and Alex took third position in the convoy of Tsla’o ships back to the Sword of the Morning Light, setting it up to follow the ship in front of him just like on the trip there.

Alex made note of the time and shut off the ARGUS. Having to think about what he was saying in front of both the ONI and Imperial Intelligence was tiring. Then he went to do a little eavesdropping of his own.

Sliding the pilot’s chair back, he slipped on the remote hud and crept silently as possible back to the stairs, crouching down to peer into the main cabin. The two royal guard were in the first row again, the dichotomy between alien armor and plush white leather chairs still weird. He gave them a little nod. They nodded back. That felt pretty good. Actual recognition.

Carbon and Eleya were all the way back on the right. Carbon had turned her seat around so they were facing each other. He had heard them talking while they stood in the entryway to the ship, but now a good ten meters away he couldn’t hear anything they were saying, just the sound of voices. At least it sounded copacetic. A little tense, which was about as good as he could imagine if they were having the conversation he was expecting to hear about later.

Alex parked himself sideways in the navigator’s station, leaning against the armrest and tapping his feet in the aisle. It was their conversation, one he had been very particular not to put himself into so far despite Eleya's attempt at getting him to spill some details for her. While he was interested in what exactly Eleya was saying, he was relieved that it seemed to be going well enough that there had been no shouting, or attempted murder.

He suspected that a discussion of that magnitude would take more than the entire flight back. Man. This was going to be worse than listening to Eleya sip a drink at the bottom of the cabin stairs because he wouldn’t let her bring an alcoholic beverage onto the flight deck.

Eleya had understood why he had stopped her from bringing it up, and even approved of his steadfast insistence that it remain in the cabin. The Tsla’o had similar rules about intoxicants and operating vehicles. It did not make her stop drinking as passive-aggressively as she could to be annoying.

He wished he had brought something to drink up here, though. Alex was sure that even creeping down to the head to get some water would be a distraction. He looked back at the cabin, the plush cream carpet at the bottom of actual wood stairs standing in sharp contrast to the utilitarian gray floor plating in the flight deck. Wait. The GX8 was originally a luxe shuttle, the intrasolar equivalent of a private jet. This area wasn’t necessarily meant to be seen by the passengers. There was even a sliding door to close so you could be sure that those passengers wouldn’t have to bear witness to employees.

One of the down sides to having nearly all of your experience with a ship being in a simulator is that you traditionally start off in the pilot’s seat. There’s no interacting with the rest of the ship, save for glancing back at the CPU navigator. Alex’s preferred GX8 variant in a sim were stripped racing models, usually with the Italia livery. He only knew where things were because he’d seen videos of the interior without all the luxury bits taken out, before a crew came in and stripped out every unnecessary gram of weight. Which included a whole bunch of what he had thought were just computer racks that took up the left side of the flight deck, across from the navigator’s station.

If they were going to put a pilot and navigator up here for eight or twelve hours at a time...

The two furthest back were obviously server racks. Rows of blinking lights and little displays telling anyone who would read it what was going on. Even navigation systems that didn’t handle FLT were not exactly compact, and these were fully loaded from floor to ceiling. The three remaining were just lightly decorated pressed metal to carry the motif of server racks. He popped the first one open, pressing the door inward to unlatch it. Coat closet and luggage storage. Ok. fair. These were not turnaround trips.

The middle one hid a kitchenette. Score. A little fridge, a sink, recycler, and a microwave. The forward-most locker was mostly emergency gear, but two shelves were stocked with snacks and prepack meals, and a third with some cups and dishes. Now wasn’t the time for snacking, he was still very much full from dinner, but if there was something good in the fridge...

It too was fully stocked, though not as extravagantly as the wet bar. A few of the usual sodas, juice, water - both still and sparkling because people on the flight deck are very fancy apparently - and the thing he reached for almost instinctively when he spotted it: a can of Vietnamese coffee.

The next question was how was this supposed to be eaten. There was no extra room up here and holding a packet of food over the controls of your expensive ship was not generally approved behavior. Alex looked over the Navigator’s seat, as it was convenient. Sure enough, there was a tray table in the arm rest and a button to make the chair rotate ninety degrees so none of the console was directly in front of where you would set food and drink.

He hopped back up into it and cracked open the coffee, then scanned the hud on the eyes he was wearing. They were still accelerating, forty minutes until they would have to turn it and start the deceleration cycle.

While Alex was very enamored with the ship, the reality of using it to scoot around the system was starting to set in. There was a lot of down time and he had not prepared for that, though there was little to be done in this case. Carbon or Eleya sitting around up here would have been more than enough company. Next time he’d have to make sure Neya came with, or snag somebody from his security team. Zenshen and Amalu would probably be cool with it, but for the rest of them it would literally be their boss telling them to hang out.

He sighed, the worst case scenario having arrived. Alex pulled out his phone and started playing games.

Two hours and three cans of Vietnamese coffee later, they were once again aboard the Sword of the Morning Light and parked back where the GX8 had started earlier that day. Eleya and Carbon were still talking. They had nearly thirty years of trouble to walk through, so condensing it down into just a two hour flight was unlikely. Condensing it down into a single conversation was unlikely.

The Royal Guard were just standing there at the stairs to the hatch when he finally departed the flight deck, the ship fully shut down save for auxiliary power. This was probably not a very common occurrence. Alex continued down the short, luxuriously appointed cabin.

They stopped talking as he approached. “Hey, I’m sure you guys noticed, we’re back. I don’t know if you want to move this conversation somewhere else, or would prefer to keep it going here.” This was no doubt a fantastically important conversation. The incident and the fallout from it had been eating at both of them for decades, so now that it was happening, he would do what he could to facilitate that forward momentum.

The two of them looked up at him, surprised. No, they looked up at him drunk. They both had lowball glasses and that bottle of whiskey Eleya had opened earlier was resting next to hip in her seat, now past half empty.

Carbon looked at him and then to Eleya. “We have arrived?” Now she was surprised, turning to look out the little window a little too fast and swaying in her chair. “Oh.”

“So it is.” Eleya was pleased, a sublime sort of smile on her face. She looked more relaxed than Alex had ever seen her. “I had not even noticed the landing, so talented is the young pilot.”

“So it is.” Carbon echoed her aunt before turning back to Alex, bright blue eyes focusing on him after a moment. Her ears and antenna raised before she spoke, working fairly hard to keep that focus from straying. “What did you say?”

“Do you guys want to continue this conversation elsewhere now that we’re home? You don’t have to stay on the ship.” The amount of concentration she was putting into that was kind of cute. “It’s up to you, I get the impression it was fairly important.”

“It is, yes. Long overdue.” Carbon nodded, staring hard to keep eye contact with him as she spoke and switching back into English. “I feel it may be a good idea to continue it tonight? It is not very late yet.”

She was right, it was only a little after eight. Several hours left in the evening before they normally went to bed. “You up for that, Empress?”

Eleya perked up immediately. “Oh, I am! There is still much left to discuss.”

Alex was momentarily taken aback by the raw enthusiasm in her voice. Eleya was in fact ready to get this done. “All right. Where are we going? Or, I suppose, where are you going?”

“You pick your words carefully, young Prince.” Eleya approved of that, whate...

---

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This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/hfy by /u/OriginalButtopia on 2024-12-03 06:35:49+00:00.

---

First Chapter | Previous Chapter

This time, I beat the brothers to dinner. I had already eaten two slices of a pizza that I hadn’t had in thirty years by the time they joined me. They looked exhausted; their hair was out of place, and Elicec had a fresh cut across his forehead. Both of them looked like they had run a marathon and then fought a dragon afterward. Did forming a core take that much out of you? Was it because their race formed two?

“Hey guys, everything okay?” I asked, my voice was full of concern. I hoped they were okay and that if anything was wrong, it hadn’t been caused by bumping into me.

“Great!” they both said at the same time before Cecile continued alone.

“We formed our cores on the first try, and it turns out the mana in this place is pretty potent. We both managed to get a C-grade. I had expected a D at best, considering where we came from. This wouldn’t have been possible without you, Dave, so get that frown off your face. Tonight is a celebration!”

“My brother is right, and he's underselling it. Our cores are even aligned already. I’ve got a knowledge affinity, and he’s got a hoe affinity,” Elicec added.

“Not to sound judgemental, but yours sounds a lot more useful than his Elicec,” I said. What did an affinity with a hoe even mean? Could he use it as a weapon? Sow seeds better?

“Oh no, while knowledge is great, and I’m glad to have it, the gains are much more abstract than my brother’s. He can specialize the hoe as a weapon or use it to grow mana-infused plants. It’ll have some pretty amazing uses as he grows his core,” Elicec explained while his brother kept smiling like it was the best day of his life.

“Well, I’m glad you’re both happy with the results. As for me, no core yet, but I did learn a ton. After dinner, I should be able to complete my first quest,” I said, stuffing another piece of pizza into my mouth between words. I had forgotten how much I loved this place’s cooking.

“Well, there’s always tomorrow. Make sure you complete the quest with the system, or it won’t count. So, with everything you learned, is the world making a bit more sense now?” Cecile asked while his brother placed their order with the waiter.

“Yeah, somewhat; one question, though, you can probably still help with. How do you all keep track of the time? I haven’t seen any clocks anywhere.” As I asked this, what looked like two bright blue heads of cabbage appeared, one in front of each of the brothers.

“Oh, yeah, you probably don’t know about universal time. So the way our mom taught us when we were kids was to close our eyes and focus on the smallest bit of passing time we could think of, and try to think of that filling up the next increment of time and so on. She used different words, but they probably won’t help you,” Cecile explained.

After my next bite of pizza, I closed my eyes and considered a second. I wasn’t sure if that would be small enough, but generally, everything else was just defined as fractions of a second instead of their own unique units. Plus, I knew roughly how to count out a single second; that wasn’t going to happen for a millisecond. I counted out sixty seconds and then tried to picture sixty grains of sand filling an hourglass. From there, I pictured sixty of those hourglasses on a shelf labeled hour. As I started to picture twenty-four shelves, a new image flashed in my brain.

|June 3rd, 2024, 8:27 PM.|

Assuming I understood how this concept of universal time worked, that meant over two days had passed since the invasion. I would have assumed it was only the second day, not the third. Where had the lost time gone?

“Did it work?” Elicec asked, interrupting my confusion.

“Yeah, though I can’t fully account for all the time I’ve spent here. So, I think I understand how this works. The system is translating its passage of time into whatever the person’s normal passage of time would be considered, is that right?” I asked.

“Yes, that’s how I understand it as well. For example, if I say we should meet back here tomorrow at eighty thirty PM for dinner, you probably heard that translated as a time you understand, whereas I certainly said it in my own local time.” As Elicec explained this, his brother picked up a whole cabbage and ate it in one giant bite, licking his lips after finishing it.

“Yeah, strange. How does the translation work anyway? We can’t speak the same language, can we?” I asked, figuring I may as well get another curiosity out of the way.

“Yep, that’s another gift of the System. There are whole fields of study into it, so I can’t explain much beyond that. As for your lost time, this is our third dinner since we’ve been in the archives. We just assumed you were too busy for the last one. Did you sleep through a whole day?” Elicec asked.

“I must have. I guess the stress had gotten to me even worse than I realized. Well, congratulations again on the cores, guys, but I don’t want to stay out too long again tonight. I’ve got some more reading to get to before I hit the sack and get back into the library tomorrow. I also really want to see what happens when I complete this quest,” I said as I pushed my plate forward and took one last drink of soda.

They both wished me luck as I left. The fact that they had such a great experience forming their cores relieved a lot of the guilt that I had been harboring from them becoming entangled in my mess. That, in turn, did more to reduce some of my stress levels. Now instead of worrying about screwing up their lives, I just had to worry about saving my world—no pressure at all there.

Once I was back in my room, the first thing I did was sit down at my desk, letting the system’s interface flashback into my vision. The same welcoming voice played just like it had before. This time, though, instead of asking any questions, I focused on the options I could read on the menu.

|Master Arena Control System|

|v2,000,000.7ST|

|Status| |Quests|

 

I selected status, only to be greeted with what should have been a readout of my level and attributes. Instead, it was a series of errors. While I had expected this, it was still disappointing to find. I wondered if the librarian could give me any advice on this. She seemed pretty knowledgeable. I’d ask her in the morning when I made my return to the archives, I decided.

Returning to the previous screen, I selected quests instead. Unlike the last sub-menu, this one produced no errors. I had two quests listed. The first was the one I had worked on today: Read Karlinovo’s Guide to Core Creation, and there was an exclamation point at the end of it. Did that mean it was completed? The second one was greyed out and said Save U-1.9392912^10e37 Earth-107I2T112. I had no idea why it hadn’t been listed the night before or what exactly it meant for the quest to be greyed out. Luckily, I had a book with me that could probably help there.

For now though, I selected the first quest. The next screen showed a bright yellow quest complete banner above the original text of the quest, and the system’s voice once again played in my head. “Quest complete, three new quests unlocked. Your reward is a better sense of inner self.”

Just as I started to contemplate what that meant, I felt something surge through me. Somewhere around my heart, I could now feel the tiniest bit of energy inside myself. I didn’t think it was a core based on the writings I had gone over today, but it was certainly something. It was possible that this was what most people exposed to ambient mana felt all their lives. I’d have to ask the brothers tomorrow or see if I can find a book about worlds without mana. I returned to the main quest screen and read my new quests, two of which already had exclamation points next to them.

|Read Karlinovo’s Guide to Core Creation|

|Learn About Core Grades!|

|Learn About Mana Orb Slots!|

|Read Doplingint’s Manual on Synergistic Effects|

|Save U-1.9392912^10e37 Earth-107I2T11|

This implied that I could complete a quest before I even knew I would receive it. Did that mean that the listed quests were simply hints at potential paths I could pursue? Every bit of information managed to unlock even more questions in my head. I opened the core grades quest and read it over.

|Learn About Core Grades|

|Understand the concepts behind why cores are formed at different levels.|

|Reward Core Grading Ability|

“New ability unlocked, Core Grading, Rank F,” the System’s voice said as soon as I read the reward. What did that mean? How did I use my abilities? I acted on a hunch and returned back to the first screen. My hunch had been correct. Now, between Status and Quests, there was a new option: Abilities. I went back into quests, determined to get through that before starting anything new, and selected Mana Orbs.

|Learn About Mana Orb Slots|

|Understand how to slot a mana orb into a core and how it grows once slotted.|

|Reward Mana Orb Grading Ability|

 

“New ability unlocked, Mana Orb Grading, Rank F,” once again, the System’s voice announced the ability the moment my eyes glanced at the words. Is there a way to turn that off? It had been growing annoying.

“Can I disable the reading out loud of notifications that I have already seen?” I asked the System.

“Yes, would y...

---

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The original was posted on /r/hfy by /u/space_farmer_luke on 2024-12-03 06:26:55+00:00.

---

Chipped cup

I leaned back in my chair as the latest round of choking caughts left my body. I focused on the pain in my chest each breath was harder gained than the last.

“Mom, that was the worst bout yet. Are you ok?” My daughter asked as she walked out of the kitchen holding my faded tea cup.

Setting the tired vessel on the table next to me, I watched as the steam billowed from the black liquid.

“It’s hot mom, just give it a few minutes to cool down.” She said as she sat down next to me.

Reaching an age-twisted hand out to her she took it without hesitation.

“I’m dying dear. And it’s past time I tell you this.” I said focusing on every breath.

“No Mom you just need some more rest, you can tell me whatever you need after you get better.” She insisted as she forced the tears not to escape her eyes.

“No this is imported,” I answered with a tired wease.

“Ok, Mom what’s on your mind.” She replied this time letting one solitary tear breach the dam that was holding her pain back.

“When I was a little girl, a long time ago. My parents and I were on a transport leaving our colony on Zoll trying to escape the civil war.” In an instant, I was no longer a frail old woman but the shy child I was.

I awoke in my mother’s arms as the sound of stampeding feet and shouts of fear filled my ears.

“Everything will be alright, my love.” My mother whimpered. As she tried to run against the traumatized tide of refugees.

Unaware of the nature of the crisis I sleepily asked as I remained cradled in her arms. “what going on, why is everyone running around?”

My mother for her part kept repeating “Everything will be alright, my love everything will be alright.” Each time her words of reassurance grow more and more tear-filled.

As she ran and I rubbed the sleep from my eyes I heard a man yell to get to the life pods. We passed a first-class suite where an old woman dressed in a fine lavender nightgown was asking a crewman as he hustled by. “what’s happening.” She protested. He never stopped his march but instead yelled out over the noise. “We’ve hit a massive asteroid! Get to the pods!”

I was now wide awake. “Where’s daddy!” I nearly screamed as reality finally sunk in.

We were down another hall before my mother replied. “He’s saving us baby.” I turned my face to gaze up at her. The fear now boldly plastered on her face.

“I’m sorry lady but only one of you will fit in a pod.” A man's voice sounded out over the noise of the ship.

My mother lifted me and kissed my four head as the man took me from her. “Mam, these are programmed to head straight to the nearest class s planet. She will be safe, we’ll find her as soon as we can.”

I banged my fists against the transparent door as I watched my mother fall to her knees tears falling heavy down her face while she screamed out my name. At that instant, the pod rocketed from the ship, the g force smashed my unrestrained body against the pod's walls and everything went black.

I had no idea how long I was out. The terrible noise of the frantic ship was gone being replaced by silents and a muffled crunching of a lone pair of feet.

Under my tiny body, it was cold and wet and I was face down on it. Snow I thought to myself how did I land in snow? From behind me a woman’s voice spoke “What on earth is this thing?” After a moment I could feel the steps getting closer, I was both scared and too weak to respond.

As the steps stopped I felt myself being lifted up. “Oh child, you're frozen to the bone, and you look like you're a long way from home.” The voice sounded much like my mother and I struggled to crack my eyes open.

It wasn’t her. She had a tattered scarf wrapped around her neck and had round ears. Then everything was dark again.

I awoke in a dimly lit room. I forced my body to sit upright and gazed around. The tinny space was nearly bare of all decoration, only a painted portrait of a bearded man gazing upwards, with small strings of blood dripping from underneath a hallow of thorns hanging on the wall.

In the far corner sat a black metal stove that showed flames from cracks in its door. I lay on the only bed, its checkered quilt helped to shield me from the cold that was fighting to enter the room.

As I looked around at my surroundings the small door opened inward letting a gust of cold and snow enter the room. Stepping in from the frozen air beyond a motherly looking woman walked. She carried a small stack of wood and sticks and set them down near the stove.

With a grown she set her bundle down before straightening herself up to look at me. “How did you sleep?” She asked as she set a small kettle on the stove.

She wasn’t speaking elvish but my internal translator was going to work to help me understand her. We were poor but my parents scrimped and saved enough for me to have a translator.

“How do you like your tea dear?” She asked. I didn’t say anything both my shyness and inability to speak her language kept me from answering.

Walking over to my humble bed she carried a pair of old tea cups. Setting one of the cups into my hands she took a seat next to me. I stared at the chipped cup not knowing what to do.

“My name is Masha, what’s yours?” She asked while taking a sip from her delicate mug.

“Allay” I squeaked. My cracked lips nearly bled with the effort.

“Allay, that’s a beautiful name, where’s your parents Allay?”

And with her simple question, I broke and cried. I laid my head on her lap and sobbed. I felt her finger run through my hair in the calming way only a mother is capable of.

She patiently waited for me to stop before she spoke. “You remind me of my Anna, she was a little girl like you, and you look a lot like her.” I could hear the pain in her voice as she spoke. She continued to brush her hand through my hair and slowly I fell back asleep.

I awoke to a loud banging on the door. “Masha open up!” A man’s voice yelled.

Masha walked over to my bed and reheated my chipped cup before she set the kettle back onto the stove. She slowly walked to the beating door, before taking a deep breath and opening the door.

I pulled the quilt up over my face as the door swung open. I listened as Masha and the man talked.

“I’m sorry Masha but the council has decided that you are a loyalist and a traitor to the revolution, I’m sorry.” He said.

“I understand what that means Peter,” Masha replied “May I stoke the stove, I don’t want to leave a cold house.”

“Do what you must,” Peter replied before the door shut. From behind the door, another man admonished Peter. “Do you want to be a traitor as well? You know what happens then! The man yelled.

Masha calmly stepped up to me as I still hid under the blanket. “Allay, I’m sorry but I must go, please stay as long as you need.” She wrapped her arms around me and I wrapped my little arms back around her and with a kiss on my head, she arose. Turning to the door I could see her wipe tears from her face.

“Ok, I’m ready,” she said as the door opened and then shut behind her.

I hid under those covers praying that everything was going to be alright that she was going to be alright.

Then there was a loud pop and then a few seconds went by before I heard the man say. “It had to happen, look at it this way Peter now no one can say you were a czarist traitor.” Then everything became still again.

I waited for what seemed like forever before I ran to the door and swung it open only to find Masha lying in the snow, blood still flowing from her chest.”

I quickly picked her head up and laid it in my lap. Sobbing I cried “Please tell me what to do, please don’t leave me alone. Please!” I cried. I tore at my clothes to get any scrap of cloth to help slow the flow only to have her reach a blood-stained hand up to stop me.

“I’m glad I met you Allay, I got to see my Anna one last time, thank you.” She closed her eyes as her breathing became shallower and shallower. “If your parents are still alive child I pray to God above that they find you.” And then her spirit left.

“No, no, no!” I cried as I shocked her. The tears and snot froze on my cheeks as the snow fell on us. I held onto her not letting go, not until rescue found us.

They said once my father had learned what had happened he went back to that cold place and buried Masha next to Anna.

“Mom why are you telling me this?” my daughter asked the tears streaming from her eyes.

“Masha I’m telling you this because even when life is at its worst and death is coming for you, always choose to do the right thing. Just like she did.”

My daughter let go of my hand to wipe the tears from her face. Leaving my hands free to reach for my chipped tea cup.

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/hfy by /u/OriginalButtopia on 2024-12-03 00:37:36+00:00.

---

First Chapter | Previous Chapter

I found the brothers already sitting with two giant plates of food in front of them. There was a third open seat for me, and what looked like a menu was sitting in front of it. I quickly sat down as my stomach made even more noise.

“Do they have eggs, by chance?” I asked, looking at the menu. They did, actually. Under breakfast options, it listed fried eggs and toast. Finally, I could make up for my lost breakfast.

“I think they just have everything. Somehow, our mom’s famous glorintaraj is on their menu, and it’s amazing,” Cecile answered.

“For once, he’s possibly underselling something. This really is great. It’s like a slice of home,” Elicec added as the waiter appeared at the table, and to be clear, I do mean literally appeared. They didn’t walk up and surprise me. One second, the space next to the brothers was empty; the next, a six-armed man was standing there holding drinks.

“Can I interest any of you in tonight's special? It’s a wine from the Caves of Terunda. We haven’t had any in quite some time,” he said.

“Yeah, I’ll try a glass. Could I also have some water, fried eggs, and toast, please? Over easy if you could,” I asked with a giant smile on my face. Finally, something I understood: breakfast.

“Of course.” My drink and food order appeared in front of me instantly. Apparently, cooking time wasn’t a thing here either. “Does everything look good?”

“Yes, perfect, thank you." The moment I finished speaking, I dipped my toast in a yolk. I don’t know if it was because of my day, but the food really was amazing. Somehow, the eggs tasted better than any other egg I’d had in my life.

“Dave, did you check your terminal and get your quest to form your core?” Elicec asked after taking a drink of the wine.

“Should I have gotten that quest? All I got was a quest to read a book. Also, the system keeps giving me an error when I try to check my level. Any idea what might cause that?” I asked between bites.

“Uh, as far as I know, everyone’s first quest is to form their core, I guess, unless they already have. Do you have a core already? Did you try socketing a mana core in it? As for the level thing, glitches do sometimes happen. It might resolve itself in a few days,” Elicec didn’t look confident in his answer, though.

“Don’t really see how I could, but I guess we can try socketing an orb in. How do you do that?” I asked as I pulled one of the orbs from my pocket. It was a dull green color.

“Hold it up to your chest, and just kind of picture it melding into your body,” Cecile explained.

“That’s it, just picture it?” I asked, a little surprised that was all it took.

“Yep, if you’ve got a core, it should go in,” Cecile answered.

So I tried, and nothing happened. It just stayed pressed against my chest. “Yeah, I think this proves I don’t have a core, guys.” So that left the question of why my quest was unique, not to mention why my levels keep reading as either negative or error. I decided that tomorrow, I would read that book, mostly because I was at a loss for anything else I could do at this point. While I was at it, I should have looked for some introductions for dummies' types of books.

We spent the rest of the night making small talk and trying random dishes from the menu. I told them stories from my home, and they told me stories about theirs. Apparently, the two-headedness was entirely normal there. Their people were called the twinoges, and they had spent several generations saving up to send a representative to the Spiral in hopes of winning their freedom from a particularly cruel faction of dwarves. In turn, I told them stories about my family and my life before this happened.

They seemed to particularly enjoy the story of how my ex-wife and I first met. Apparently, in their culture, the idea of embarrassment leading to romance was not a remotely common experience. We had met after she had watched me walk straight into a fountain on our college campus. I had been reading a book and walking at the same time, something I stopped doing after this incident. I didn’t see the signs warning me away, and by the time I realized what was happening, I was already falling face-first into the water.

After several more drinks and even more stories, I was well past, ready to climb into bed. I was glad the elevators here just brought you directly to your room, as the idea of stairs sounded like a nightmare. I set my cracked glasses on the nightstand by the bed and crawled under the covers. The stress of the day finally fully caught up to my mind, and I fell into an anxiety-induced drunken slumber.

The next morning, I woke up in a cold sweat. It turned out that nearly being killed by creatures you had no idea really existed after goodbye texts from your kids all in the same day could have a lasting effect on your psyche. Surprising right? Even more surprising was that the pair of glasses I had set on the nightstand the night before were gone, replaced with an unbroken pair. Did that help settle my brain? Not even remotely, but it would let me see things better, which, in turn, should make it easier to read the book my quest assigned.

I forced myself back into my routine, hoping maybe that would help settle me. Whatever had been holding me together yesterday, likely a combination of adrenaline and whatever that pill did, had faded the night before. Now, I was fighting a losing battle to push away my imagination’s ideas of what had already happened on Earth and what would still happen if I didn’t find a way to help.

The food was as good as the night before. There was no sign of the brothers so far today, so I dined alone. That added to my routine and helped center my sense of reality. By the time I finished my breakfast, I had some of the anxiety under control—at least so much that it wasn’t threatening to overwhelm me and cause a breakdown anymore. I assumed the brothers were either sleeping off the effects of last night or working on their own quests, so that meant it was time for me to try hunting down a book.

Reading, especially reading entirely new concepts to me, had always been something I could lose myself in. I had high hopes then that once I started to sink my teeth into practical information mana and cores, I could further shake off some of the fears that were plaguing my brain. At the moment, they did nothing but fuel anxiety, which would only slow down my mental processing. I needed to find a way to get that back to where it had been during college. I needed to devour this archive, which meant multiple books per day.

In my solitude back home after the divorce, I had let myself slow down on the knowledge consumption front, and that seemed to be proving to be a real issue for me finally. I couldn’t count on finding anything to deal with my aging issue, but that was another problem I had to try at least to solve in the archives. If I had to fight an army somehow, I needed a body that didn’t break at the first fall I took, and the existence of those healing pills gave me hope that it wasn’t a futile goal.

All of these thoughts raced through my head on the very short trip back to the reference desk. The same two librarians appeared to be working as the day before. I caught a glimpse of the nametag of the one that had greeted us yesterday. Her name was Elody. I wondered what kind of species her people were. Did the extra eyes increase their ability to ingest information? Was that why they seemed to be the only ones working the archives? These were questions I could look into later when I had more time.

“Hi, I’m trying to find a book. I’ve got a quest to read Karlinovo’s Guide to Core Creation. Any chance you could point me in the right direction?” I asked her. I assumed there was some sort of organizational structure to the shelving system, and that was something I added to my list of things to learn, but first, I wanted to get this quest under my belt to see what happened. Since the brothers considered core formation so important, I needed to understand why that wasn’t my first quest and how I could do it anyway.

“Oh, that’s a name I haven’t heard in a long time, kind of archaic for a quest on core creation. Most of his theories have been abandoned for quite some time now. I believe the issue was the energy expenditure for his core model wasn’t feasible in the long run, but who am I to argue with a quest? Core creation should be in the seventh archive, the twelfth wing. From there, it’s alphabetical, based on the author's last name. If you decide to take the book with you back to your room, make sure you see us at the reference desk; otherwise, the elevator won’t let you in,” she answered, her smile never wavering.

“Thanks,” I said. I noticed that while her bottom set of eyes stayed focused on me, the top set seemed to roam over the archive behind me. Did they see in the same spectrum as me? I hadn’t considered that before. Human vision was surprisingly limited even on our own planet compared to some other animals. It was entirely likely many of the different species I had encountered could see things I could not. I filed that away as something else to look into, possibly a reference book on the different peoples of the spiral.

As I followed...

---

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---

First | Previous

The search was quick and pointless. The chamber was large, but there wasn't much in it beside the corpses of the Greys. Four tables outfitted with restraints. Five stations with control spheres, all inoperable. Several trays filled with torture equipment. There were odd devices mixed in with the knives and screws, but Yvian decided not to mess with them.

The dead greys didn't have anything useful on them. Didn't have anything on them at all, actually. Yvian kicked one of them in annoyance and immediately regretted it. The impact made her bare toes sting. She kicked it again, this time using the bottom of her foot. Motherless sons.

The others were gathering around her. Yvian wasn't feeling very Captain-like, nude and banged up as she was, but she took charge anyway. "What do we know?"

"Not much," said Lissa. "Their technology's nothing like anything I've seen before. I can't tell which parts are devices and which are just decoration." She frowned at one of the control stations. "The aliens were touching those glowing spheres, though. It looked a lot like what we do with Lucendian control crystals."

"That makes sense," said Scarrend. "They're psionic. Like us."

"We're not psionic," said Yvian.

"We are now," Scarrend disagreed. "That Lucendian crystal in your brain can connect directly to the soul of a Lucendian ship. We can feel them at range. We can feel each other's emotions to a small degree as well."

"We can?" Yvian blinked.

"You didn't notice?" asked Mims.

"It might be a little too subtle for Captain Sis," Lissa teased. She gave Yvian a smile. "You probably thought you were just getting better at reading people."

"I am better at reading people!" Yvian protested. "I'm insightful!"

"Yeah," Lissa agreed. "Because you're psychic."

"The point," Scarrend chuffed, "Is that our implants give us a small amount of psionic ability. The Grey Ones use psionics to control their ship functions. It is possible we could do the same."

"That's a dangerous thing to try," said Mims. "We don't know if our minds or the implants are compatible. Touching one might fry your brain."

"Even if it doesn't you might end up touching the souls of three billion hostile aliens," Lissa pointed out, She frowned. "You know, Sis, I'm not sure Kill Them All is a viable plan. This ship might as well be a planet, and we don't even have guns."

"I'm just happy we're not dead yet," said Mims. "If I was the Greys, I'd have activated some defenses by now. Sent in some drones or flooded the place with plasma. At the very least, I'd have decompressed the section we're in."

"There is no mechanism to decompress this area," Kilroy reported. "This ship's life support systems appear to be biological instead of mechanical." The machine pointed at one of the destroyed control stations. Liquid was oozing out of the charred remnants of a control sphere terminal. "As are many of the ship's functions."

"Well they have to have some way of dealing with intruders." Yvian winced as she shifted. Now that the adrenaline was wearing off, the bites she'd suffered were really starting to hurt. "I got the impression they bring a lot of beings up here. We can't have been the first ones to get loose."

"Affirmative," said Kilroy. The machine pointed up. "In addition to the phased abduction beams, this unit detects energy weapon turrets hidden in the ceiling. The ion grenades disabled them."

"So we're looking at restraining beams and turrets? That seems..." Lissa frowned. "Kind of basic."

"It's plenty," said Yvain. "If Mims hadn't had ion grenades we'd be dead."

"It's still basic," said Mims. "No redundancy. No backup plans." He nudged a Grey One corpse with his foot. "The bastards seemed pretty arrogant. They were offended that we hurt them. I think that's why they kept tracking us down."

"Playthings," said Lissa. "They called us playthings. They're mad we fought back."

"Not as mad as they're gonna be," Yvian decided. "We're just getting started. Kilroy, do you know where their bridge is?"

"Negative," said the Peacekeeper. "There is a significant amount of electromagnetic interference. This unit's sensor readings are only reliable within a four hundred meter radius."

"Hard way it is." Captain Yvian tightened her grip on her knife. "Kilroy, take point. Scarrend, you're rear guard. Let's go find a control node."

The chamber had five doors. Kilroy lead them to one of them. They couldn't find a control panel, so the Peacekeeper unit pried it open. "Alert," said the unit. "Hostile forces incoming." Then he disappeared.

Yvian backed away from the door. Lines of green light sizzled past. There were screeches and screams. Then silence. Kilroy reappeared. He had a fresh coating of green blood. He held a pile of strange looking guns in his arms. Yvian took one. It wasn't as sleek as the blasters she was used to. The pistol grip was small, but the body of the gun was bulbous, quickly narrowing to a point. Clear material formed three circles around the barrel of the weapon.

She pointed the gun at a bulkhead and squeezed the trigger. It made a high pitched hissing noise. A line of green death sparked against alien metal. "Huh. You'd think they'd be DNA locked or something."

"Foolish," Scarrend agreed. He took two of the guns from Kilroy. Lissa and Mims each took another. Kilroy tucked the last one into his suit.

"More will be coming," said Mims. "We should move." He grimaced. "Kilroy, can you take care of any automated defenses? I've got more grenades, but only six of them are ion."

"Affirmative." The Peacekeeper's eyes glowed red.

Yvian stepped out into a corridor. It was round. Most of the bulkheads were the silvery alien material she'd seen earlier, but there were lines of pulsing organic tissue running through it like veins. It was bright, but Yvian couldn't see a light source. The corridor stank less than the chamber she'd left, but not by much. Bright Lady, she hated this place.

Kilroy picked a direction. They walked. Periodically the Peacekeeper would disappear. When he came back they'd continue, stepping over the corpses of Grey Ones and glancing at torn bulkheads that used to contain restraining beams or turrets. Fifteen minutes of walking brought them to another set of doors. Kilroy ripped them open. He entered. Yvian waited, listening to the sounds of torn metal. A minute later he invited them inside.

This chamber was just like the one Yvian had left, but with few corpses. It was not unoccupied. Three tables contained creatures Yvian had never seen before. Pixenoid, but furry. They had big floppy ears, and might have been cute under different circumstances. They were very dead. The creatures were strapped down, covered in cuts and burns. Their faces were contorted in pain and horror. Their chests had been opened. Organs were missing.

"Motherless sons..." Lissa muttered.

"This was recent," said Mims. He touched one of the dead things. "Still warm."

"The Grey meatbags evacuated as we approached," said Kilroy. "This unit can hunt them down, Captain Mother Yvian."

"No, stay with us," the Captain decided. "There's no point hunting stragglers if we're going to kill all these things at once."

"Do you have a plan for that?" asked Lissa.

"No clue," Yvian admitted, "but that's what we gotta do. You felt those things. They're not going to stop." Scarrend snorted. Yvian frowned at him. "What?"

"Sorry Captain." The Vrrl chuckled. "It's just, you have no plan."

"That's not-" Yvian protested.

"No plan," Scarrend continued. "No resources. No idea what we're up against. And still you set an impossible goal. You trust yourself and your allies to do the unthinkable with no regard for the odds." He chuckled again. "It's insanity on the same level as the humans."

Yvian scowled. "You're an asshole."

Scarrend laughed. "Don't be offended, Captain. Your refusal to accept reality is your finest trait."

"To be fair," Mims cut in, "we've done a lot of impossible things these last few years." His lips quirked. "It's amazing what you can accomplish when you're too stupid to know better."

"No one does stupid like Yvian." Lissa agreed. She grinned. "Right, Captain Sis?"

"You're all assholes," Yvian muttered. She mustered her dignity and limped to the nearest control terminal. The glowing sphere at the top of it was undamaged. The pedestal holding the sphere was a mix of metal and that odd dark organic material she'd seen in the corridor. She held out a hand, stopping just short of touching it.

"You should let me do that, Captain," said Mims.

"I got it," said Yvian. She hovered her palm over the thing. She didn't feel anything coming out of the sphere. Was she really psychic? She didn't feel psychic.

"You're the leader," Mims argued. "I'm more expendable."

"Captain's prerogative," she told him. "You're in charge if this goes wrong." She let out a breath and closed her eyes. Her palm descended, resting against the sphere. It was warm. Hard. Kind of slick. Hmm. Yvian had expected an immediate connection, like when she touched a Lucendian ship.

"Is it working?" asked Lissa. Yvian raised her other hand, motioning for the others to shush. She focused, trying to feel the sphere the way she'd felt the Crystal ships. Her soul reached out. There.

"It's working," Yvian whispered. "I feel ...

---

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This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/hfy by /u/SomeOtherTroper on 2024-12-03 01:56:37+00:00.

---

[Author's notes]: this is where some may wish to avert their eyes. I am not writing erotica or outside the bounds of the rules, and you can skip this chapter (and probably the next one too) and get a very sanitized summary after things are over. But at the same time, I am dealing with some really goddamn heavy topics here, and I feel like a warning is in order. That may just be vanity on my part, but it has much more to do with people I've known who were in destructive relationships with very manipulative people.

If I get to write a seven-foot-tall Crocodilian and a human insane enough to jump into hard vacuum to cripple another spaceship, I get to say "you may wish to avert your eyes".

Previous Chapter and [Next Chapter()

[Grace]

I punched in the code, always mindful of the gun barrel shoved into my back and the way 'Sam' was pulling me into it with those ziptie handcuffs. If this was just a heist, my brains would be all over the carpet in seconds after it unlocked, but since my co-workers had tried to kill me, I had no idea what to believe.

"It's open," I said, as the door began to retract its bolts, and ...holy Christ! Was that Santiago?

"I dealt with the shark," the Crocodilian said, everything from his face down to the cuffs of his trousers painted in blood, "so how are we going in?" he asked Sam.

"WE'RE-" and then Sam turned to look at him, "...going in very carefully. I think we all know what we'll find down here, unless little miss hostage wants to sing like a songbird."

I told them I knew nothing more. It was like any normal bank with safety deposit boxes - you need a bank employee to unlock your box, but what's in it... the bank never knows.

"Convenient," the Crocodilian rumbled, pushing through a heavy velvet curtain into a room I'd never seen before. Circular, with couches or chaise-lounges around the perimeter. The lights were a dull red.

"Looks like they all fled with the alarm," Sam said, "let's keep going."

The next curtain deposited up into a small space, with a curtain on the opposite side. Sam immediately hit the button for the door on the right, and it slid open into a ...pool? One that was heated enough to send steam into the atmosphere.

"[UNTRANSLATABLE]!", Santiago yelled, stripping off his military gear in record time and diving into the pool. He looked so at home in the water, but something was tugging at the back of my mind, like fishhooks in my brain. Then I realized it, as Santiago completed his third lap: all the walls and the ceiling were mirrors.

Sam said, very levelly, "I think the opposite entrance goes straight to that penthouse casino," and I looked behind me at what was... yeah, now that he mentioned it, that was an elevator camouflaged with the same wallpaper the normal walls were.

"Yo!" Sam yelled, "mi hermano! We have bigger fish to fry!"

"Come on," Santiago said, toweling off, and he was a, uh, um, a, very good looking member of his species. I tried not to remember how he'd shielded me through a three-floor drop and I failed. He had a heart too. What do they call it "the Suspension Bridge Effect"? You know that thing where being in a dangerous circumstance with someone make you more favorable towards them?

"There's something on Earth we call The Dance Of The Seven Veils," Sam said darkly as he ushered me through the velvet curtain before him.

Nobody was in the room. It was just a makeup and dressing room. Then my mind started to put the pieces together as Sam slammed the muzzle of his rifle into the small of my back. I had to stop and collect my thoughts before answerin-

Another shove. And another. Those were going to leave bruises. "I don't know!" I shouted, "I never knew!"

"Fine," Sam said, pressing his gun into a new place in my back while pulling on the ziptie handcuffs, "but what do you think they'll know?" he said, putting me facefirst against a cage, slamming my face into it, and then holding my arms so far above my head there was nothing I could do.

Faces came toward me out of the darkness, all with rabbit ears, as I had to stand on my tiptoes just to stay balanced.

"So you're the new meat?" a voice asked. I assume it was their leader, or at least the leader in that cell.

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/hfy by /u/SomeOtherTroper on 2024-12-03 00:17:41+00:00.

---

[Author's Note]: Sorry, I've recently been dealing with some medical stuff that's kept me out of the writing mood, and I've seen the ending for this arc, and I don't like it, but it has to be this way. While I usually don't do trigger warnings, the next couple of chapter are going to include sexual abuse, sexual slavery, human/alien trafficking, physical abuse, and ...look, if that's going to be a problem for you, you don't need to read them because I'll give a sanitized summary after we're through all that. I won't be overstepping the subreddit rules, but I will be doing some very uncomfortable things, and I just wanted to let you all know, because the next few chapters are gonna be rough in a way that may trigger people.

If you don't want to look in the basement, you don't have to.

Previous Chapter and Next Chapter

[Sam]

There was only one way to the basement: through the titanic atrium in front of the building's entrance. I was angry enough to do anything, and had a live grenade clenched in my left fist.

...fuck me, that was going to be a long drop. I pitched the grenade at the central figure there and counted off a few seconds before I jumped. I'd begun to get a feel for this planet's gravity, and I was pretty sure that grenade would blow while I was safe from it. Pretty sure, I told myself before vaulting the railing.

I'd made the right call. There was an explosion of shrapnel and gore as I reached terminal velocity, and I managed to roll onto my feet in its wake. No injuries. Well, nothing serious, I thought as I got my feet under me.

"YOU!" a voice roared, echoing off the walls and ceiling of the atrium. I looked ahead straight at a ...bipedal shark? His species had evidently lost their gills in favor of being full air-breathers. Guess they beat us primates on their planet. "YOU KNOW WHAT YOU'VE DONE!" he yelled at me, drawing a bead on me faster than I could get my gun on him. Well, if this was how it had to end, getting ventilated by a man-shark wasn't the worst thing to put on my tombstone.

Then Santiago slammed into him from above, dropping The People's Elbow from three stories up like this was the fight he'd been born for. With a human woman cradled in his arms, "Take her!" Santiago yelled at me, shoving our luckless kidnappee toward me ...and putting those wide-open jaws to good use. She stumbled a bit before I grabbed her by the ziptie handcuffs and shoved the muzzle of my gun into her back.

"Alright, sugar," I said, once I had her in a hold I liked, "where's the basement access?"

[Santiago]

I felt his cartilage bend and crack under my weight. Sharks never grew proper bones, even if they had scary teeth, and I offloaded my burden to Sam fast enough to start a real fight. I couldn't let the shark get up again. My jaws clenched around his throat, but that wasn't enough - I had to control his hands, especially the one that had pulled a knife out of its sheath ...and this bastard thought he could stab me in the neck with it? I grabbed that wrist and he roared something as my own teeth ground through his scales and the taste of blood told me I'd managed to get through to an artery. So I started thrashing, an ancient combat technique passed down to me from my non-sentient ancestors. Jaws locked on my opponent's neck, I twisted my entire body back and forth, my tail assisting...

By the time I'd come out of my blood rage, I was looking down at a nearly decapitated shark. And still holding the wrist of his knife hand, the life flowing out of it. I took the knife as a trophy and held it aloft, yelling "who else wants some of this?"

I got no takers.

Mostly because there wasn't anybody to take my challenge. Sam had blown most of them to pieces, or, at best, shrapnel-studded pieces of what my teachers had called 'modern art'. One of them began pulling out a pistol, and I plugged him twice through the head with the same pistol that had shot the Don.

I yelled again "who else wants some of this?", brandishing their leader's knife in one hand and the pistol in the other.

This time I really got no takers.

Sam and the human woman were going somewhere behind the receptionist's desk, and I followed, covered in blood, high on combat, and ready for anything.

...or so I thought. I wasn't ready for what was behind that vault door they were unlocking.

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/hfy by /u/MrIzuarel on 2024-12-02 22:09:24+00:00.

---

Chapter 123

When we arrived, we immediately started with the preparations.

I didn't pull the crystal immediately out because I had noticed that the best place to deploy it wasn't always the entrance of the dungeon. Instead, we had found an interesting cliff where most monsters would be unable to reach the crystal. It would also cause us a lot of issues reaching it, but that was acceptable if the bosses here were unable to do the same.

Since the difficulty was in the lowest setting, a cleaning of the dungeon before starting the destruction was useless. I had tried this method before and noticed that everything had been respawned once Gaia's mercy started doing its thing.

I stretched my wings out and started flying towards the cliff. That was the only good thing about this dungeon. It allowed us to fly, unlike most other dungeons, but I wasn't sure if flying would help us during the final phase considering the many dangers we would face.

I found the place where we had planned to put Gaia's mercy and started the whole process.

As expected, the whole dungeon shook like crazy and grew several times in size. It wasn't just length and width, but also height. Slopes became steeper, distances bigger, and areas larger. But that wasn't the only thing changing. The weather became even harsher, and the cold became worse than before.

My girls had already been instructed about the plan, so we opened our wings and flew away.

I think I never cursed internally as much as when I flew inside that dungeon. The cold in the air, paired with the strong wind and the snow, made it really painful to flap the wings around. But I bit my tongue and powered through, just like most of my girls.

Our first target was the most annoying boss of that dungeon. We started clearing the area of the ice foxes of this dungeon.

Don't let the name fool you. Those vile beasts were by far the most annoying and difficult monsters of the bunch. They were able to launch ice spears at us and could use illusions to fool us, making them a very dangerous monster to confront inside this dungeon.

Thanks to their illusions, spotting them or avoiding their ambushes was difficult. Until we were literally pounced by them, a deep search was useless, but we were functionally immortals, so we powered through the initial clash.

We searched for the boss statue and found it after a while. It was actually easier than we thought because the black of the structure had a great contrast with the white of the snow, almost as if someone had cut a piece of reality in the white of the mountains.

Thankfully, the snow didn't stick to the statue, which was a bit abnormal, but since I didn't understand every aspect of magic, I simply ignored it. That's when we put the real plan into motion.

My girls were sent to a lake close by and prepared for the fallout while I waited for their signal. Once everyone was ready, I simply crashed "accidentally" against the statue, and while trying to separate myself from it, I rubbed off as many of the small shards as I could.

Needless to say, I didn't survive the many monsters I had summoned.

Forget two and three stars, I saw four and five stars monsters merge to form the peak of powerful monsters in that dungeon. There were thousands of them after the accidental release.

I revived myself, and we waited a bit until my cooldown was over, then started the real plan.

The area of the foxes had a special feature that most other areas didn't have. A frozen lake.

Now, what would happen if one of those powerful monsters stood on top of that lake? Nothing. The weight of that fox would do nothing to the thick ice of that lake. But what about thousands of them?

I ordered one of the girls to deploy one of my hunter's traps in the middle of the lake, making sure to attract only the foxes with it, and waited for the results.

As expected, once most of the foxes were on top of the lake, the ice could no longer endure the weight, and the ice broke. In less than ten seconds, every fox was swimming in the lake and trying to reach the shores.

We were mostly unaffected by it because we simply flew above their heads, but we weren't idle. We could not use weapons, but we could use other objects without problems, so we used planks from my woodworking job to keep the foxes away from the shores. This worked better than expected because none of them managed to escape once inside the water. At the same time, we relentlessly harassed them.

Those foxes needed to stay still and yell those laughing sounds to cast magic, but how could they when they needed to swim and open their long snouts would drown them?

It took quite a while, but we disposed of them after a while. However, during that time, I noticed something strange.

A few of my girls were using a skill I didn't recognize. As the green nagas flew over the foxes, their tails light up with a green aura before fiercely piercing a head of those foxes. If it had been an animal, it would have been a fatal injury, but those foxes brushed it off like it was nothing. So, after finishing the last of those swimming white mutts, I approached one of them and asked them directly.

That's when I realized that she was using a skill I had unlocked by doing quests, but I was unable to use it myself. "Poison tail" was a negligable skill, but the green nagas were able to use that skill for some reason. I was confused about that fact. They should not have been able to use that skill, but then I remembered that I also had the skill "Scratch" that I should not have been able to use.

Seeing how I was able to use these skills, I suddenly remembered how Gaia had mentioned that she had been bending the rules for me. With that realization, I understood why I was in a bad spot. I also understood that I had been an asshole when I told her I would not stop the summoning. Yeah, I should feel bad for this!

Being humbled in such a way, we marched towards the statue of the boss. There were still a lot of smaller crystals on it, but the majority were taken off of it. We dispersed a bit and then took the time to clean the statue properly.

What came out of it was quite unsettling. It was a priestess, wearing the typical japanese priestess clothes, but there was more to it. Animal ears, nine tails on her back, and a strange staff in her hands.

I knew this was a nine-tailed fox from the folklore, but I was uncertain about its origin. It could be the folklore itself, film, or game where that monster had been integrated. I knew this boss would be a headache as I had terrible compatibility with magically gifted enemies, and this monster was an expert at fooling others with magic.

In a desperate effort, I attacked the statue with all my might. I was almost hoping this would trigger something, but the strange smile on its face didn't change. I was almost certain she was mocking me, but I had no choice but to go away.

I left a few girls there to keep the statue clean and went on with my work.

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This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/hfy by /u/KamchatkasRevenge on 2024-12-03 00:59:38+00:00.

---

Jerry

USFS Crimson Tear - War Room

Up in orbit, the mood in the war room was almost as cheery as Stanley Arnesen's down on the field of battle.

Today's training was going even better than predicted. The simulated enemy, drones, hard light constructs and a variety of actual combat mechs with low powered and simulated weapons were holding their own in the scenario. Sort of. While the resistance was spirited and the simulated soldiers were making a fight of it, the Crimson Tear's newest combat team was handling their new toys beautifully, and were working together like they hadn't just started running joint drills only a week ago.

It was also proving to be an excellent test for various new Undaunted munitions like the missile with a trytite penetrator that had 'hit' Stanley Arnesen's mech. When you gave the boys in R&D a budget and told them to get creative you sometimes got some very nice toys and that was looking to be one of them.

The holo tank smoothly shifts to views to another view as Chief Warrant Officer Milintra switches their feed to cover a view as Doc Hancock's rapid assault tanks, really a form of heavily armed and armored high speed hovercraft, cut into the enemy flank like sharks into a school of guppies while the Huscarls led by Doc's own wife, Samantha, call sign 'CUTLASS', finishes off the curve ball they'd just thrown the 3rd MACS in the form of enemy air assets.

Jerry looks up and makes eye contact with his counterpart from Cannid Solutions. The corporate, progressive yang to Khan Hammehand's more traditional, conservative yin, Chief Operations Officer Natra Sharptooth more than lives up to her name. She was a devil to negotiate with and her smile was particularly toothy even by Cannidor standards.

She'd been pressing the Undaunted pretty hard on some of their latest weapons acquisitions, and was trying to determine if they might want to acquire a license to any Undaunted weapons in turn. Jerry had proposed some war games when she'd questioned what exactly the Undaunted were doing to do with all this stuff doctrine wise, not expecting them to actually have an answer ready and waiting.

So they'd set up some significant training ops at Cannid Solution's testing facilities on the moon of Gol'Shan, which orbited the world of Primus, where Cannid Solutions’ corporate headquarters was.

3rd MACS had hit the ground running and been tearing shit up from the word go after they finished their initial training on their new machines and weaved their way through more advanced maneuver training.

Thankfully Jerry had been able to wrangle the services of the Hancocks and a few other key personnel away from Admiral Cistern.

"Well? What do you think, Natra?"

"I think you Undaunted are a little too good at this shit. I haven't seen such a well drilled combat team in awhile. You boys and girls fight like you mean it!"

There's that toothy smile of hers, so shiny and bright it's actually reflecting light from the holo tank.

"I like it." Natra pulls her communicator of out pocket and flips through a few screens. "Alright. With all this in mind, I think our relationship with the Undaunted isn't just a good one, or even a valuable one, but a lucrative one. Once you get your toys picked up, come down to Primus, enjoy the capital for a little while and then you'll meet with the board. I can't determine or force an endorsement to the council of Matriarchs. Not even if I was the CEO instead of the COO. Corporate by laws, tradition and some other red tape. I'm sure they'll deal though."

Natra takes a moment to stretch, giving her back a firm crack.

"As to the rest. Seems like you're using those RATs well. They don't get a lot of sales in Cannidor space but they're popular, especially in cultures that don't have a power armor tradition or shy away from the cost of power armor. Those new modifications you specified are pretty neat too. Nice of you to license the cannon to us as part of the contract."

The Cannidor executive seems to absentmindedly pat part of her jacket, like she was reaching for a pack of smokes after she'd quit.

"Of course well trained power armored troops can knock off tanks at most scales by the half dozen but that's what you bring your own power armor to the party for. Those new Undaunted suits are pretty nice too. Those Grenadier heavy tanks of yours are extra nice. Reminds me of an armored support vehicle that the Cannidor used back in the days when open warfare was still a thing, but updated for power armor use. There is a lot of potential there."

She strokes her chin, pacing around the table before looking at Milintra.

"Could you get me a view of the walker unit please?"

Milintra makes eye contact with Jerry who gives her a subtle nod and she quickly switches views.

"Anything particular you're looking for angle wise? Or footage you'd like to review? I can pull just about anything up and stick it next to the live feed."

"No, the live feed's fine, I'm just looking at overall performance. The load out you selected is unorthodox Admiral Bridger but I have to say I quite like it. Good mix of energy and ammo based weapons, capable at most, if not all ranges. It's solid. Might even try marketing a mix like that one. The missiles are a hard sell but plasma torpedoes or something similar would engage a lot of galactic palettes at the cost of a little range and fire power."

"Not like I can copyright a mixed load out, though part of me wishes you'd continue to let your customers hobble themselves."

Natra barks with laughter, slapping her thigh.

"I just bet you would. Not that they need help, most people won't care about slightly improved combat performance or an advantage in some situations. A full energy weapons load out with maybe a rail gun for flavor will continue to adequately serve the needs of ninety eight percent of the galaxy and the two percent are so far out of the rest's league they might as well be practicing another form of warfare entirely."

The massive Cannidor business woman sighs contentedly.

"Honestly this is almost like relaxing into a bath for me. I was a warrior once upon a time. Been out of it for a long while now, but my frustration then, and I suspect your frustration now, is that my people no longer make war. We fight battles. It's a galaxy wide problem that the ammunition thing's always illustrated beautifully. Most warladies, generals, pirate queens or other assorted 'leaders of fighting women' are content in slapping lasers into most everyone's hands and considering the weapons side of logistics more or less a done deal."

"You know..." Jerry begins. "You sound a lot like someone else I know in your line of work..."

"If you mean Khan Hammerhand, you're not wrong. We have different methods, but I've never once said she's poorly informed or incapable. I have a lot of respect for her steel too. The woman can turn out power armor that should count as works of mechanical art. Except they let the wearer fight like a war goddess. I never had an issue with the Hammerhands, save they're conservative, hide bound and don't see a point in making weapons that are good enough instead of perfect, or selling to the greater market outside the warrior clans. There's nothing wrong with that, but the clans that formed Cannid Solutions wanted to do things our way, instead of the traditional way."

"I'm glad you can still get along. We'd certainly like to get along with both of you."

"I bet. Well the galaxy's plenty big enough for the both of us, and it surprises me not at all that Hammerhand is happy to get her claws into a new warrior house where power armor is the name of the game from what I've heard. I won't try to compete for your family contract of course. In the end, I think of it like this. Nine times out of ten, we're arming soldiers. Warriors? That's a whole different animal. Not that we don't have some nice toys they'll probably enjoy too."

"I see. Well... Eventually as a clan we will have soldiers as well..."

Natra laughs. "Oh well played. I hear from my sister who runs a chain of restaurants that recently signed a contract with your family conglomerate that your head wife Lady Sylindra's the ruthless negotiator in the family, clearly you've been taking notes if you didn't have the skills to negotiate properly to start with. I'm sure we can make sure whatever world you seize has a very well armed militia and security service. Especially if the Undaunted might be interested in partnering with us in the development of new kinetic weapons?"

Jerry smiles. "Neatly done. Actually I can do one better on that. I do have a letter for you from Admiral Cistern and Undaunted R&D asking to develop a joint R&D center for kinetic weapons and other fun toys. Cannid Solutions gave the Admiral a pair of uninhabited worlds near Cruel Space a year back now..."

"...And I hear you crazy monkeys have been terraforming one of them!"

"Waste not, want not, especially so close to the borders of Cruel Space. The other world is as was originally described, a barren moon with a flimsy excuse for an atmosphere, but plenty for testing. A base there could get a lot of work done, and we'd like to invite Cannid Solutions and a few other trusted partners to join us."

"I'd be a fool to refuse. I'll send Cistern a message and we can turn the details over to the lawyers."

"If you're interested in kinetics, I have something you can chew on now. If you think it's... worth a little so...

---

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This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/hfy by /u/Betty-Adams on 2024-12-03 00:54:36+00:00.

---

Humans are Weird – Breaking News

Original Post:

Rollsslowly pushed off the delicious bed of the freshwater river, this time remembering to put extra effort into the motion. He rose up against gravity and nearly instantly lost visual information on the smooth, algae covered rocks in the turbid water. However he managed to get enough momentum to pull his work bag off the riverbed and it followed his lagging end over the protruding rock without catching. Rollsslowly gave a few powerful strokes, not enough to maintain the surface-ward momentum of both him and his tools, but more than enough allow him to drift to the next collection site. As he drifted back down, forward momentum assisted by the current, a stray eddy of water tickled his appendages in a way that indicated a deep, narrow hole in the river bed below him that had not been there the last time there were in this location. Rollsslowly hesitated between just sounding as loudly as he could and getting out his comm unit, but finally decided on the comm, the surface of a smooth pond disrupted sound enough to confuse mammal audio senses, the surface of a rippling river utterly negated sound as far as the humans were concerned. He slid an appendage into his work bag and pulled out the device.

“Human Friend Nate!” He called out, not bothering to alter his tones to match the sound profile it had on land. Human Friend Nate found his unaltered underwater voice endearing ‘like whale speak’ whatever that was, and more importantly, had no trouble understanding it.

“Sup’ Undulate Friend Rollsslowly?” Human Friend Nate called back cheerfully, the comm carrying a clear voice and the water catching the voice that originated nearly two unds above and distorting it as the sound waves crossed the phase barrier.

“Be aware of a deep hole, just large enough to catch your walking appendage,” Rollsslowly said. “It is about in the middle of the distance between the two sample sites, about two and a half unds from either.”

“Roger that bud!” Human Friend Nate called, the approaching sound of his two massive appendages sloshing through the water changing subtly as he began attempting to detect the hole in the turbid water by touch.

Rollsslowly directed himself to the sample site and began the meticulous process of selecting one out of every ten of the most average lengths of the algae strands. It was fairly simple ones you got a feel for the local population, and despite the human member of the expedition protesting that a proper ecologist should have to “at least do some math” to be able to accurately select only those strands which fell within a standard deviation of the perfect mean, every attempt on their part to prove that laser measurement devices and artificially computed lengths would be more accurate, none of their efforts had proved, on post collection inspection to be more accurate than a well trained Undulate ‘feeling their way’. Rollsslowly was about forty percent finished when the water carried a sound to him and he stopped suddenly.

Rollsslowly had never heard that sound before. It was a muffled crack, as of the woody part of a terrestrial plant breaking under pressure, but very different. Something like coral snapping under the force of a wave, but muted. To be perfectly aligned Rollsslowly had never heard any sound like it in his existence. It was, there was no better word than alien to him, and for some reason, something that sounded through his every fiber, he knew that was a bad sound. He slipped out of the harness of his work-bag, remembering to drop its anchor and scrambled against the current back towards the general direction of the sound. He wasn’t sure why he focused on the hole, Human Friend Nate was aware of it and an experience river walker, but just down stream of the hole he found Human Friend Nate on three limbs, facing down into the water with his nose mere appendage breadths from the surface of the water.

Rollsslowly used one of Human Friend Nate’s thick arms to brace himself and thrust several appendages up out of the water to get a good look at the human’s face. The humans skin below the water, which was well below the mammal’s comfort level, was hard to read but above the water it was flush with pain signals and the expressive flesh over his face was taught with strong sensation indicators. Rollsslowly was about to demand explanation when Human Friend Nate took a deep breath and heaved himself up onto his folded legs, freeing his hands to smack at his face. A gesture that both dislodged Rollsslowly, forcing the Undulate to brace himself on the humans ‘knee’, and cleared the vast majority of the pain signals from the human’s face. The human looked up at the blurry distant blue sky with its rippling colors and took another deep breath.

“There was a hole,” Human Friend Nate commented in a tone of forced evenness.

“Yes,” Rollsslowly replied. “The one I warned you about.”

Human Friend Nate’s face contorted in a rueful smile and he adjusted his work bag that he carried strapped to his back.

“Yes you did,” the human agreed, “and I stepped in it.”

“What was that bad sound I heard?” Rollsslowly demanded.

“You heard that?” Human Friend Nate sounded genuinely surprised, “and identified it as a bad sound? Have you ever heard it before?”

“No! What was it?” Rollsslowly demanded.

“Most like to be one of those pesky little bones in my toes breaking,” Nate said with a shrug. “No big deal.”

Rollsslowly scrambled around the human’s mass to the foot where, despite the cold of the water, and the thing anti-laceration/traction covering the human wore he could see was now coloring with pain signals.

“Aren’t those bone things important to you?” he demanded, gently feeling the foot to get a better idea of the damage.

“The real big ones are,” the human agreed. “If it’d been my femur or tib or whatnot, I’d be up the creek literally, but other than running the bone generator over it not much to be done about a broke toe bone. Let’s just finish up this stretch of the river and walk back to the transport. Nothing else to do.”

“We could call for pickup,” Rollsslowly pointed out.

But Human Friend Nate shook his head and with slow, deliberate motions rose to his feet. The pain signals spiked, rippling across his stripes in glowing colors again but decreased as he began gingerly walking towards a flat rock that stuck out of the stream a few unds away.

“I’ll just take a sit there,” he indicated the rock with his hand, “and wrap my foot and set the bandage to walking book hardness. It’ll slow me down a bit but will keep the bones from taking any more damage.”

“Won’t that thing be an issue?” Rollsslowly demanded as he followed the human. “The part where if you damage one of your, I can’t recall the word, but when those organ things are inside and they get damaged they leak fluids into the wrong chambers?”

“Internal bleeding,” the human supplied as he folded his appendages down on the boulder and detached his work bag to get at the contents. “Nah, not for a little old broken foot bone like this. Least it won’t be a problem before we get back to the base and can have the medic take a proper look at it. Come on up here and watch now,” Human Friend Nate said with a grin, patting the boulder beside him. “Sounds like you never saw a foot get field wrapped before. Now pay attention to the direction I wrap the long bandage before I set the bottom to get hard, it’s important because of the way human blood flows.”

Human Friend Nate brought the injured foot up onto his ‘lap’ and began unrolling the long bandage from his work bag and Rollsslowly crawled up the boulder to observe. He had the creeping suspicion that he was being distracted to avoid an argument but he had never seen a field wrap before and it was interesting.

Science Fiction Books By Betty Adams

Amazon (Kindle, Paperback, Audiobook)

Barnes & Nobel (Nook, Paperback, Audiobook)

Powell's Books (Paperback)

Kobo by Rakuten (ebook and Audiobook) ====================================================================================================================================================...

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This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/hfy by /u/ArmouredCadian on 2024-12-03 00:42:36+00:00.

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Colony Director Sharon Lalonde took a deep breath to calm herself before getting ready to attempt to hail the Galactic Alliance vessel Searches for Danger. She had to discuss delicate topics with the Aliens, while sounding out whether or not it was safe to proceed further into discussions, or if the Aliens might be a threat to the Humans, and therefore the topics had to be headed off at the pass from discussion.

The screen turned on and she saw the same three aliens she had seen last time. There was the one that looked like a stereotypical depiction of an alien from Earth's mid 90's culture, the more Crocodilian looking one, and the one that was rather squid or cuttlefish like, she hadn't quite decided which, that seemed to be the Captain of the vessel.

"Good day to you, Galactic Alliance vessel. We have gone over your data-"

"Ma'am, she can't hear you, you didn't engage the psionic to EM transmitter, she has no idea she started to talk over you." the Crocodilian looking one directed at his Captain.

Psionics? Is that why the Captain doesn't seem to visibly talk? Not because of awkward dubbing, from translating, but because she's literally using telepathy? No wonder I've never seen a mouth move on her this entire time.

Sharon's eyes went wider when she saw the Captain gesture and a remote of some kind flew to her tentacle, possibly indicating some kind of telekinesis.

"Alright, can you hear me now?" came through in what Sharon had thought was the Captain's voice up to this point, although she wasn't so sure anymore.

"Yes, I can hear you." she responded.

"Alright, before we get to your concern about the data we sent you, I have a concern regarding your colony that I would like to figure out. How do you have such a dense psionic presence with only 400,000 beings living in your colony?" the Captain asked her with concern

"Its only 120,000 Humans in New Belfast, 400,000 is the total including all of the Livestock and we really wish people would stop making jokes about the livestock being part of the family..." Sharon started to say out of habit before realizing that given her current task she maybe shouldn't have revealed some of that information to the Aliens. Only to realize that the Aliens were all staring at here as if she told them that space was 2D rather than 3D.

"You have a psionic profile this dense with only 120,000 people on your planet?!?" the Grey looking alien was looking like he was about to suffer some kind of fit. "That would make you the most powerful psionic race in the entire galaxy at that point!"

At this point Sharon processed what they seemed to be implying and decided it was time to nip this in the bud real quick. "Humans don't have psionics"

You could have heard a feather land in the resulting silence.

"Well Lt Newt'rual's instruments say that you at least have a psionic profile" the crocodilian looking being rumbled. "By the way, what did you want to discuss regarding the data that we sent you?"

"So if we're to believe all of it, Dragons are large reptiles that suppress prey through fear, their territory is a large chunk of the milky way galaxy, which you guys are prodding into now because you're confused by their absence. Also for some reason this document seems to consider them the scariest thing ever since it says that you'll be paralyzed by the fear, and unable to overcome it, which honestly seems to be laying it on a bit thick..."

"No, that's rather underselling it. Dragons are powerful psionic beasts, and the fear described is a psionic aura that suppresses the mind of thinking creatures near the dragon so that they can either feed on or turn them into their servitors at their leisure. The paralysis described is a consequence of the brain being separated from the motor control of the body by the Dragon's psionic power. The whole reason that we have a Car'thoon for a Captain on these scouting vessels, is that if we did get near a Dragon, only they have the psionic strength to get us away from them in order to flee." he or at least Sharon suspected it was a he told her.

"Oh... So how would you deal with the Dragons if you did find them?" Sharon asked, slightly confused now.

The crew of the alien vessel looked confused, glancing at each other before looking back

"Deal with them? What do you mean by that? You can't deal with a Dragon. You just run away and hope you don't get eaten, maybe have strong shields to hide behind." the Captain replied.

"Do you guys not have a Navy or Space Force?" Sharon asked

"Oh, sure, but that's just for dealing with Pirates and hostile Alien nations. It wouldn't do much against Dragons, because we just don't have enough powerful psionics to keep the Dragon fear at bay for long enough to be meaningful. I mean this aura has a range of thousands of Kms on some of the largest Dragons... and what's so funny." the Grey looking researcher trailed off

"So I have some good news for you based on the maps you provided of suspected Dragon territories... Human space has swallowed it all, and I can confirm that we have not seen any Dragons in Human space. In fact it looks like the suspected nesting ground was our homeworld, and well, we had stories of Dragons in our histories, but they all stopped about 1200 - 1400 years ago by Earth reckoning, I think some of the latest stories were from around the 1200s or so? So yeah, we probably killed off all of the Dragons. You're Welcome?" Sharon laughed a bit. Not at all how she was supposed to go about revealing this data, but she just couldn't help it with how seriously these guys were treating the idea of Dragons.

"Colony Director, may we please land on the outskirts of your Colony and have yourself and a few other volunteers assist us with gathering some very important data? This could potentially help figure out some of the missing connections that do not currently make sense with our current data set." the researcher looking guy asked her.

"I'll have to clear it with Colony Security Operations first, and then I'll get back to you on that."

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