New to Other-Terrestrial? Check here! Or if you need to, jump to the beginning of the episode here!

---

It seemed all too soon when Vakulinchuk sent out his alert for them all to return.

“Suit up!” he called.  “We’re going in hard vacuum!”

They’d already had lessons on the suits – were wearing most of the pieces, just lacking a proper helmet.

Every uniform, including hers, had a pop-up head cover that would activate in the event of pressure loss – giving even those caught unawares by a hull breach a chance to survive.  It was no substitute for a proper spacesuit helmet, though.

As they buddied up, she got Knowles, who seemed more nervous now, though she smiled.

“First time in a vacsuit?” Apollonia asked.

“Ah . . . no.  I’ve done hull welding in a shipyard.  Supervising drones, mostly, but when there’s nothing to do but watch, you go out and do it yourself a few times, right?  Helps pass the time and gets extra work done.”

“Oh, yeah.  Naturally.”  Apollonia had never done that.  Hell, she’d never been outside a station in a suit before.

Her throat felt dry.

She pulled on her helmet and clamped it, hearing the click of a good seal.  The faceplate was a screen, and she got to see a nice proper HUD for once.

Maybe this wouldn’t be so bad!  There were some errors due to her lacking the subdermals for the suit to interface with, but she closed those warnings.  They weren’t a huge deal, the suit was telling her.

“Check your partner’s seals.  You don’t want to be out there and then find out you’re leaking air,” Vakulinchuk said through their radios.

Knowles checked her, and then gave her a thumbs-up.  Apollonia went to check hers, and immediately forgot everything she’d been told.

No, she knew this, she thought.  She just had to focus.  But it felt so stuffy in this helmet.  Air was circulating, and it was cool, but she still was feeling hot.

Everyone else was done with their checks.  She fumbled through the rest of her check on Knowles as best she could, then patted her to tell her she was good.  She honestly wasn’t sure.

“All right, everyone,” Vakulinchuk said.  “Activate magnetic boots and stiffeners.”

She clicked that on.  Her feet stuck to the floor, but almost more importantly, the suit went partially rigid.  If not for that, then walking in zero-g even with magboots was a nightmare; you could put a leg forward, but your torso would want to stay behind, and you’d just end up bending backwards as your feet moved on without you.  Unless you were quite strong, it was extremely difficult.  With the suit stiffening at strategic times and places, it was manageable.

“Connect your umbilicals and activate your beacons.”

She turned on the latter first – never, never wanted to be without that!  If you drifted off without a beacon, no one would ever be able to find you.  The nightmare, just drifting off into the Dark, with the demons and ghosts and spirits . . .

She swallowed through a dry throat as she connected her umbilical to the ship.

They went into an airlock.  It was a small, claustrophobic room, and she could hear the sound of air hissing out – fading into silence as it thinned too much to even carry noise.

The doors opened, and she saw endless stars.

“March!” she heard.  Knowles started, and she began after her, but her throat felt like it was closing up.

“Nor, are you all right?” she heard.

She tried to speak, but she couldn’t.  Her stomach was rebelling, her throat was spasming – and then she threw up.

Some part of her suit broke, flopping down into her face, and she flailed, reaching for her helmet even as she began to choke.  Without gravity, it was impossible to even get the vomit out of her throat, and she began to gag, threatening to get even sicker.

“Help!” she cried – or at least tried to cry, but she couldn’t talk.

Excited voices were saying something, and Vakulinchuk was there, calling for the air to be brought back.

“And gravity, for star’s sake!” he cried.

It was back in a moment, and suddenly Apollonia was able to spit, though she was still choking.  The air was coming back, and it took an awful long time before Vakulinchuk was able to take off her helmet.

He put something on her face.  “Just let it work,” he said, though through instinct all she could do was fight and flail.

The device sucked the vomit out of her, and then gave her a gulp of air, and she gasped loudly.

She was on the floor now, stars swimming in front of her eyes, the whole rest of the team clustered around, looking at her.

“Spread out, spread out,” Vakulinchuk said.  “You’re all sitting ducks just standing here like this!”

She appreciated it, but it seemed like her humiliation was already complete.

“I think,” she said, then coughed.  “I don’t like vacsuits.”

“That seems obvious,” Vakulinchuk replied dryly.  “Let’s get you back up.  We have some meds that might help with that.  Just let me get a pharmacy drone over . . .”

He stepped away, but she didn’t want to wait.  She struggled to her feet, feeling bitterly annoyed that now when she actually needed help to stand, no one was offering a hand.

She wasn’t sure she could have made herself take one right now, anyway.

The airlock was opened back into the main room, and she went through.  Before Vakulinchuk returned, she moved towards the door.

She’d had enough training for today.

“Nor!” she heard Vakulinchuk call as he noticed her.  She waved him away and went out, tearing off the vacsuit as she went.

She wanted to curse, scream, or cry.  God this was pathetic.

She couldn’t do this.  Why did she ever think she could?

As she stalked down the hall, she expected to get a message from Vakulinchuk, throwing her out of the Volunteers, or threatening her with dire consequences if she didn’t come back.  But that message didn’t come; she only got one saying that she could take the rest of the day off, but to report again tomorrow morning.

Fuck!  Couldn’t they at least be properly mad?

She turned a corner, holding one of her gloves, wanting to hurl it down the hall, when she walked into Squats on Sand.

“Oh!” she cried, her leg hitting his shin and bouncing off.

She stumbled back, but one of the weird tentacles around the top of his head shot out and grabbed her shoulder.

“Oh, Apollonia!  It’s good to see you.  I was not lurking in the area – just . . . I was working,” he said.

That was a very odd thing for him to say.  And as he stumped around, she realized he could hardly lurk even if he tried.  She was shocked she hadn’t even registered that low-tide smell that seemed to follow him around – he practically reeked, though for her at least it still brought to mind positive memories of Earth.

“Okay,” she said.  “I . . .  I was just leaving training.  I failed.  Miserably.”

“Really?” Squats on Sand asked.  “That’s terribly distressing – what’s wrong?  Are they being . . . unjust?  I’ve heard sometimes humans are that way to other humans!  Abmon do not have that issue, there’s so few of us we all know each other.”

“I didn’t know that,” she replied dully.

“Well . . . it was a joke.  There are tens of billions of us, despite our populations being relatively small.”

“All right,” she replied.  “Look, I’m sorry, I’m just . . . I threw up in my vacsuit, and here I’m from a colony!  Everyone expects us to take to space like it’s second nature, but I never went outside to play with the micrometeors.  I just . . . stayed in my corner.”

Squats on Sand went silent, his body sections rotating so three of his eyes could view her at once.

“You’re quite upset,” he said, as if just realizing it.  “I am sorry.”

“You don’t have to apologize.  I’m just being a whiner,” she said.  An attempt at a smile tried to come to her face.  “Do Abmon ever do that?”

“Hah, never!  Well, sometimes.  If one of us eats all the grack!”

She had no idea what that was, but forced a smile.  It was easier with Squats on Sand than most people.

Dark, how strange was it she got along so much better with aliens than other humans?

“Is there anything Abmon don’t do better than us?” she asked, getting that this was some sort of joke of his.

“Ducking,” he said without hesitation.  “I’m afraid we’re in full squat all the time, and- Dr. Y, hello!  I was not lurking here, I am in this area in an official capacity!”

Hearing Y’s name got her attention.  She turned and saw the AI – or his tall, mechanical body, at least – standing behind them.

“By all means,” he said genially.  “Do not let me interrupt your important work of conversing.”

“Y!  What are you doing here?”

“Conveniently,” he said, “I was coming to see you, Nor.”

“Why me?” she asked.  Not that she minded, but it seemed . . . well, convenient, as he had said.

“Trainer Vakulinchuk informed me you were having an issue with nausea, and I thought it would be a nice break from my own work to come myself.  I could have sent a drone, but they are very impersonal.  Along that topic, Armorer He That Squats on Yellow Sand – haven’t you left a drone in charge of the armory for a period of time greater than is allowed in protocol?”

The Abmon did an odd sort of hop in place that achieved no air.  It seemed impossible to think they could jump at all.

“Ah, well,” he said.  “That is a valid point.  I should perhaps be on my way.  I am sure that all is well there, but I should check.”

“Farewell,” Y said happily, as Squats on Sand ambled away.

“I think he was actually lurking here,” she said to Y.

“Yes, that is an appropriate word,” Y replied, his voice brimming with amusement.  “Though he is actually quite dedicated to his work when he is actually doing it.”

He turned to her.  “Now, this is a good chance to give you a medical check-up.  If you will come with me, Nor, there is a medical suite not far from here!”  He began to walk away.

“Wait,” she said, not following him.  “Didn’t I just get a checkup recently?”

“Yes,” Y said, turning back to her.  “But it is always good to get another.  The march of entropy is inevitable, after all!”

Apollonia took a deep breath.  At least she could be around the one being who she didn’t actually fear would judge her as useless.

“Okay,” she said.  “Lead the way.”

---

< Ep 6 Part 23 | Ep 6 Part 25 >

New to Other-Terrestrial? Check here! Or if you need to, jump to the beginning of the episode here!

---

Apollonia breathed hard, straining to bring more air to her burning lungs.

“Heave!” Vakulinchuk ordered.

Apollonia had thought she was already heaving – she felt ready to heave in another way – but she tried to exert herself even more.

“Go on, you almost have it!”

With a cry, Apollonia and those at her sides succeeded in lifting the plate of metal.  It was, theoretically, a piece of hull that had had punched into the ship in a mock-attack simulation.  Now, as the ship was ostensibly still under attack, she and the others were attempting to clear it from a hall.

Normally, she knew, they’d have some kind of lifting equipment.

But when they’d come in for their volunteer training today, Vakulinchuk, their trainer, had told them that they would have none of it.

“Power is not always available,” he said.  “Robotic arms malfunction.  Sometimes we must make do with the muscles of our back and with sweat on our brow.”

She’d felt so stirred by the idea.  At first.

But now, she was just exhausted.

It didn’t help that they’d been at this for days.  Sure, at first the training hadn’t been this difficult.  A lot of trust tests, which admittedly she had sucked at.  She’d dropped one man, who at least had laughed it off.

Vakulinchuk had taken her aside and talked to her.  She’d expected to be chewed out, but his words were reinforcement instead.

“We are all in this together, Ms. Nor,” he had told her.  “We must work together – and that means to trust each other, even with our very lives.”

And everyone had done that, it seemed.  Only she’d had more trouble trusting than anyone else.

No one had let her fall.

And the more they went through it, the worse she felt.  Because she didn’t always catch them, and she knew she was supposed to.

“All right, we have to flip it just one more time to get it into the cart!” Vakulinchuk exhorted.

She really wondered what kind of situation would have them lacking power arms and exo-suits but still have gravity – but she wasn’t going to question the man who’d been in Response probably longer than she’d been alive.  He had that ageless look about him.

She had fallen on her rear, and struggled to her feet.

God this sheet was heavy.  Bracing herself behind it with the others, they lifted and flipped it onto the wheeled cart.

The others cheered at their success, but she was too tired to do that.

“Fifteen minutes,” Vakulinchuk said.  “Then we’re going to practice operating in vacuum.”

Oh, that just sounded awful.

The others in her group didn’t seem nearly as exhausted as she felt.

She’d never had a full-time job before.  She’d done odd jobs, stolen, or begged all her life.  The former had never lasted long, the second was always risky, and the latter was, well . . .

People who didn’t have a lot still often gave.  But not when things got too tough.  And it was demeaning.

It was the only good thing she could say about prison; that they gave you food.

On the Craton it was different, of course, and no one had ever even bothered her about paying for stuff.  On some level she knew it wasn’t exactly free, but she also kind of thought she was just in a new, slightly more dignified level of begging.

As the others spread out, talking and looking generally so pleased, she found herself loathing her own self-pity.

Vakulinchuk was off to the side, gazing off, clearly busy at work in his own personal system.

She moved towards him, into his line of sight, but waiting.

He didn’t keep her looking wrong.  The man had a large mustache and a broad face, but his eyes were kindly.

“What do you need?” he asked.

“Ah, sorry to bother you . . .”

“It’s not a bother,” he said.

“I’m . . . well, are there any kind of . . . strength-enhancing things I can use?  I mean, even just a lever, like a crowbar.”  She smiled nervously.  “We’ll still have those if the power goes out, right?”

“Yes,” he said, looking amused.  “But it was more about getting everyone to lift together, than just solving it the best way.  We’ll get to that sort of thing.  Right now, we need you all to work together under stress.”

“That makes sense.  But I feel like I’m a lot weaker than everyone else.  And a chain is only as strong as its weakest link, right?”

“We’re not going to be in combat, Ms. Nor, so you don’t need to worry so much.  Focus largely on working with the others.  They’re counting on you, as you are counting on them.”

More like getting carried by them, she thought.

A frown crossed his face.  “Though now that I’m checking your records, have you ever had muscle treatments?  I’m not seeing them listed.”

“No,” she replied.  “I can’t get anything like that.  My body rejects them – when I got one for my bones as a kid it made me sick for months.  Still never fully took.”

“Oh!” the man said, shocked.  “Well that explains a lot.  The artificial fibers meld with your muscles and make them quite a bit stronger, you know.”

“Yeah,” she replied.  “But I’m just working with what nature gave me.  And I guess generations of genetic tinkering and rad damage.”

Vakulinchuk looked thoughtful.  “This would explain your difficulties, Ms. Nor.”

“So . . . does this mean I can use an exosuit?” she asked hopefully.

He chuckled.  “It takes years of training to use them.  And sub-dermal implants, to be honest . . .”

“I don’t have those, either,” she said, deflating.

“Don’t worry.  You volunteered, and we appreciate the help.  Each according to their ability, right?”

“Right,” she echoed, not buying it.

The man clapped her on the shoulder and went away, and she checked her tablet.  Still five more minutes of their break.

As she moved back towards the others, she heard them talking.

“. . . ship was fired upon – by the Tul Hev.”

“But we’re here to help them,” a woman said.  Apollonia thought her name might have been Knowles.

“They did it anyway.  It seems they got out, but only just.  I don’t know what we’re even doing here if the people we’re trying to help are shooting at us.”

“It seems like a big warning sign,” Knowles agreed.  “And this Maig clan – have you heard much about them?”

“I’ve heard enough to know I don’t want to have to fight them.  They say they torture prisoners . . .”

“Hell, I’ve heard they eat them.  I never really believed that one sapient being would eat another, but . . . there are a lot of stories.”

Apollonia was not enjoying eavesdropping on that conversation, and she moved away.

---

< Ep 6 Part 22 | Ep 6 Part 24 >

New to Other-Terrestrial? Check here! Or if you need to, jump to the beginning of the episode here!

---

Urle’s internal clock noted that it was only twenty-two minutes later when they received a signal back.

“We have received a one-word reply,” the comm officer said.  “‘Yes’.”

Urle sat up.  “Ambassador, are you ready to speak to your people?”

The Hev nodded, holding himself a little taller.

“Receiving live signal.”

This time, the signal was video as well as audio.

The Hev that appeared before them was tall, with broad shoulders and a face that seemed like it had been mangled at some time in the not-too-distant past and healed only crudely.  Yet it fit with the flinty eyes.

“Ambassador.  Who are our new allies?” the Hev demanded curtly.

N’Keeea said nothing, but gestured to Urle, who stood.

“Greetings, in the name of Union Humanity.  I am Commander Zachariah Urle-“

“Human ship with Sepht crew?” the Hev demanded.

“Right now I speak to you from a Sepht ship that accompanied us, but these are the only Sepht in the system.  But I am afraid we have not been introduced-“

“How many ships have you brought?” the Hev demanded.

“We are two, counting this one,” Urle said.  “May I know your name?”

“Two ships?!  Are you an advance force?  How did you get past the P’G’Maig?  Are there more than this engaged with them already?”  The Hev sounded alarmed, angry, and confused all at once.

“Sir,” Urle said.  “I can explain – we have achieved permission to pass through the lines.  We are not here to fight for you – we are here to negotiate with the P’G’Maig for your survival.”  He gestured to N’Keeea.  “Our Ambassador, Decinus, will tell you more.”

The Hev would have none of it.  He let out a strangled sound of rage, reaching forward for the camera, so quickly and furiously that Urle wanted to recoil.

The signal cut off.

N’Keeea was cringing.

“Th-that was Grand General G’Kaackt . . .” he said softly.  “But he . . . I am afraid he does not place much belief in negotiations . . .”

Decinus looked quite worried.  “Let us try again in a moment.  Perhaps after the General takes a little time he will be willing to speak to us again.”

“Captain!” a sensor officer cried.  “We are being painted with targeting lasers!”

Urle bit back a curse.  “Maneuvering thrusters, pull us back-“

“Missiles have been launched,” the sensor officer continued.

Urle’s threat board was already lighting up.  Stars, that was a lot of missiles.

“Why are they firing on us?!” Daa said, glaring at N’Keeea – who, for his part, had nothing to say, simply folding his head over and putting both hands over his snout.

“Ambassador – is this a warning, or a real attack?” Urle asked N’Keeea sharply, watching the distance tick down.  The nearest missile would reach them in thirty seconds.

N’Keeea said nothing.

“They would not dare to attack us!” Decinus said.  “We’re here on their behalf!”

Urle watched the missiles come closer.  “It seems they do not agree, Ambassador,” he said.  He waited a few more seconds, until he felt sure that this was not merely a warning.  “Arm all PDCs, engage countermeasures – break their damn locks!  And pull us back, we can drag those missiles through some dense debris fields if we move . . .” he sent the signal to the engines, getting them to move already.  “This way.”

Daa was up in N’Keeea’s face.  “Ambassador, we have to know if this is a false attack or not!” she was saying sharply.

“Leave him be, Captain,” Urle ordered.  “I need you to take command – helm, give me control access.  Defense grid, let me interface with the PDCs.”

The ship was smart, like all ships, but he could add his own intellect and reaction speeds to both endeavors.  Sitting back in his chair, he lost visual with the rest of the command center, leaving only audio on, and began to see through the eyes of the sensors.

A handful of missiles had struck debris as the ship had put it between them.  Not too smart, then.

The Bright Flower had very little in the way of armaments, not when so much of her space was taken up by her specialist equipment.  But at least that equipment told him a lot about the missiles.  He scanned them all, noting any that seemed jittery, like they had a bad thruster.  A lot of them did, and he devised a counter-fire pattern that could exploit that, predicting their likely maneuvers, and aiming to put flak into those paths.

They had only two missile tubes and a dozen missiles of their own, but several were designed for destroying enemy missiles, so he loaded them and with the ship’s help gave them headings.

“Two away,” he declared.

The missiles were twelve seconds out.  The Maig had, at least, detonated theirs by now.  And these were far more threatening – not just because the Bright Flower had far fewer defenses, but the missiles themselves were larger, with heavier payloads.

Several were intercepted and destroyed by the counter-missiles, others by their PDC fire in short, controlled bursts.  But they didn’t get them all.

“Rotating the ship – all crew, brace!”

Most were already in their seats, but Daa and N’Keeea weren’t, the ship told him.  Through the eyes of the ship’s internal cameras, he saw as the Sepht Captain grabbed N’Keeea, throwing him into his seat and herself over him, gripping on with every limb.

Urle tried to slow the turn as much as he could so as not to hurt her; but it would be close.

He couldn’t dodge the last two missiles.  But if he angled the ship just right . . .

He felt the g-forces pulling at his body, saw Captain Daa holding on for dear life.  Just a few more seconds of these Gs . . .

The ship rotated on another axis, and he hoped his calculations were right . . .

“Brace for impact!” he cried.  A klaxon was going off, a deep, throbbing sound for Sepht ears.

The ship shuddered as it was hit.

But the alarm sirens were not declaring catastrophe; he fired the counter-thrusters, finding they all worked, while damage reports poured in.

“Impacts,” an officer called.  “On radiators 7 and 31.”

Urle turned his vision back on, decoupling from the system.  He saw the eyes of the crew looking at him, almost in awe.

“You moved the ship so they’d hit the radiators instead of the main body?” one asked.

He saw that two crew members were helping Captain Daa, who looked nearly unconscious.  He moved over and helped bring the Captain to her seat.  She had risked her life to save N’Keeea, who was still just sitting there, saying nothing.

“Yeah,” he finally answered the crewmate.  “Too much risk of loss of life if they hit the hull.  Or a reactor breach.  Are there any other launches?”

“Negative, Acting-Captain.  We’re pulling back, and they’ve stopped target-painting us.”

“Continue to pull back,” Urle ordered, feeling suddenly exhausted himself.  Daa was rapdily coming to, and he was grateful for that.

“Damage report,” Daa said, shaking her head, rubbing a tentacle across her brow.

“The two radiators are at 32 and 17 percent efficiency – all others fully intact.  Debris from the hits caused minor damage to seven sensor nodes, and pierced three spots on the hull – decks 7, 8, and 12 have depressurized hallways, but not in occupied areas.  A minor leak from water tank 3.”

“Casualties?” Urle asked.

“None that we know of, Acting-Captain,” the officer said, his relief palpable.

Oh thank the Stars . . .

Urle’s legs trembled, and if they’d been in gravity he might have had to lock his knees to keep upright.

“Captain Daa – how are you?”

“I’m fine,” she said shortly, glaring at N’Keeea.  “What are your orders?”

“Given that she’s your ship, I’d like to know your recommendation,” he said.

“We get the flaff out of here,” she grumbled.  “And put Ambassador N’Keeea in the brig.”

Urle looked at the Hev, who was now shivering as well as unresponsive.  “I agree with the former.  As to the latter . . .”

Decinus stepped over, putting his hands on N’Keeea’s shoulders.  “Please,” he said.  “Allow me to speak with him.  He was just fired upon by his own people.  I don’t think it takes an expert to understand that he is having some difficulties.”

Urle took a deep breath.  “I agree, Ambassador.  Take him somewhere, see if you can get him calm enough to talk to us again.  But as soon as the zerodrive is charged, we are heading back to the edge of the system.”

---

< Ep 6 Part 21 | Ep 6 Part 23 >

New to Other-Terrestrial? Check here! Or if you need to, jump to the beginning of the episode here!

---

The code flashed by on the screen in great chunks, as Urle uploaded the data from his internal server to the ship.

“I am surprised you still remember all the code,” Decinus said, looking rather awed.

“It’s easy when you have a disk drive in your head,” he told the man with a chuckle.  “I wouldn’t say I remember it the way we remember names or paths we commonly walk.  It’s just . . . stored up there.”

He saw the look Decinus gave him, studying his head, wondering just what it might look like inside Urle’s mind.  Not everyone was prepared to accept giving up parts of their own bodies for self-improvement.

Urle had never really felt that attached to his meat.

“You are certain that this will not interfere with our proper emergence from zerospace?” Guona Daa asked, hovering around like a concerned mother.

Which, she might be a mother, Urle thought, having to force himself to look past the fact that she was around the same height as Hannah, with a smooth enough face to look young.  All Sepht had a youthfulness about them, especially Vem Em, even when they were well over a hundred.  And they had children almost as soon as they reached adulthood, their eggs only needing fertilization every three or four generations.

“It has no appreciable effect on any craft,” Urle assured her.  “I was deeply involved in this project, and it was only scrapped because the use-case is so uncommon.”  Well, and people tended to get a little concerned about messing with their zerodrive, much like Daa was right now.

“Now,” he continued, “I’m going to need a few minutes to adapt this to your system, Captain.  Shouldn’t be too hard.”

He plunged into the ship’s library code that dealt with heavy power switching and zero-drive core control loops.  The Sapient Union’s Information Security and Standardization Committee required all naval system code to be written in the Iota language and be available to all engineers onboard with proper clearance.  Urle knew Iota, but digging into Sepht code wasn’t easy – while they technically obeyed the requirements, their code was a mess of higher-level Iota mixed with chunks of opcodes specific to their processor cores that were yet to get included in the official compiler specifications.  All in the name of efficiency.  It seemed like squeezing just a couple more cycles from their CPUs was a kind of sport for them.

“What the . . . ?” Urle barely bit that one back.

Of course they invented a fancy macro name to replace all literals of the number three in the code – it was considered a very unlucky number, and four was considered even worse, making its references even more difficult.

Vem em programmers always took their work too seriously in his opinion.  This was just some virtual text that would get gobbled up by the compiler after all, but they still put just a little bit of their tradition into it anyway.

Urle fired the compiler up, observed the lack of any warnings or errors from the integration system, ran it five more times just to be safe, then took a deep breath and exhaled.  It was ready.

“All right,” he said, turning to N’Keeea.  “Whenever you are ready, Ambassador.”

---

< Ep 6 Part 19 | Ep 6 Part 21 >

New to Other-Terrestrial? Check here! Or if you need to, jump to the beginning of the episode here!

---

Leaving the command center, Urle moved down a dark, cramped hall, using handholds to grip and pull himself along.  The Bright Flower had no artificial gravity, and not even a single spin-section to simulate it; being semi-aquatic, Sepht could live a lifetime in microgravity with no ill effects.

Pulling himself to a wall, he let a group of officers pass him, all of them pointing their head tentacles as they passed.  It was their form of salute, and he returned it in the human fashion – they would understand that.

Two of them were Vem em and one a Nolem.  So far he’d not seen any of the ghostly and blind Pelan, but they were rather uncommon in the Voidfleet.  And he’d seen almost no males, who made up only a fraction of the population of all three species –  only around five percent of Sepht were born male.

The ship would have been horribly cramped without being in microgravity, he thought.  It helped if someone could pass over your head, though the halls were so short that the Nolem often had to stoop through doorways.

This was a ship grounded in classical physics – every gram of weight mattered.  Every gram of mass they could exclude was one less bit they had to expend energy and reaction mass pushing.  Even the moisture in the air was not mostly water vapor, but a chemical compound that fit the biological needs of Sepht, yet shaved off around 2% of the potential mass.  When you were talking tons of water vapor, it added up.

He caught some curious stares, but they mostly looked under the hood he wore over his head, trying to catch a glimpse of his hair.

Sepht quite liked the look of human hair; many he saw had styled their tentacles in imitation of it, pulled back into ponytails or swept to one side – an odd habit, in his opinion, as their head tentacles were quite practical.  He’d have loved to have that, and had even considered getting some mechanical tendrils for his head in the past.

He considered pulling off the hood for the crew’s benefit, but right now it was serving to wick a lot of the humidity away from the port-interfaces in his skull.  It was easier than switching out every one with a water-proof model.  Even the basic kind were rated for underwater use, but it was something that made him paranoid; he knew a man who had a short next to his brain, and they were still trying to piece his personality back together.

Best to keep the hood on.

Entering the office where N’Keeea and Decinus had been working, he was glad to find that it was far less humid.  Despite that, Decinus wore a mask to reduce his breathed humidity.

The two were sitting at a large plastic desk, several tablets on it with information that his system was not allowed to view, their images blurred for all but approved personnel.

“Ah, Urle, I am pleased you could join us again,” Decinus said.  “Ambassador N’Keeea and I have developed a communications plan to get through the jamming around Poqut’k.  The Bright Flower detected heavy interference while they were on the borders of the system.”

“And I suspect the P’G’Maig will not stop such interference for our benefit,” N’Keeea said stiffly.

Urle’s systems were noting the Hev ambassador’s stress levels as through the roof, and he was clearly rattled by it.  Urle could sympathize, but hoped he could hold himself together through this.  They needed him to talk to his people.

“I’m more concerned about the Musk Field around the planet,” Urle told them.  “The amount of junk in orbit-“

“They were once habitat stations that held billions of my people,” N’Keeea said, his words now as sharp as his teeth.  “It is not junk.  It is a graveyard.”

“My deepest apologies,” Urle said earnestly.

“To use the word junk in this context is normal for our people, Ambassador,” Decinus said.  “Commander Urle meant no insult by it.”

N’Keeea seemed to dismiss it with a thrash of his tail.  “The debris may be a problem if it prevents our communications lasers from reaching a base.  We must be very cautious – I know of the locations of many hidden communications relays that will reach our high command, but I do not know which, if any, are still functional.”

“And if we get too close without them knowing we are friendlies, they may open fire,” Decinus continued.

“Surely they’ll recognize that we’re a Sepht ship and not a Hev,” Urle said.

N’Keeea snorted.  “They will think it a ruse.  It is not uncommon for the P’G’Maig to acquire ships from other species and press them into use.”

He got up and paced, agitated.  “But worse – by communicating with the secret relays, we may expose them to our enemies.  If only we could send a signal they could not miss, but that the P’G’Maig could not replicate or use against us.”

Urle sat down across from Decinus at the desk.  “I have a thought about that.  Do you know what Bower Radiation is?”

“I am afraid I do not,” Decinus replied.

“Light,” N’Keeea said.  “The scale of the P’G’Maig invasion made it an issue; so many of their ships would appear at once that it would light up the skies of our worlds.  We called it Deathglow.”

Urle was stunned into silence for a moment.  The strange nature of zerospace meant that emissions from it were often called pseudo-particles; every photon, every graviton that came from it rapidly decayed, sinking back into zerospace – in theory, at least.  In practice, all of it disappeared within about half an astronomical unit.

For a fleet to be so large it lit up the sky of a world implied so many ships appearing at once, and so close to the world, that it was terrifying.

“Ah, I . . . didn’t realize it was a sensitive issue,” Urle said.  “I hope I didn’t say anything offensive again.”

“You could not know,” N’Keeea said.  “What was your idea?”

“Well – the Bright Flower’s zerodrive is incredibly precise.  Moreso than almost any other ship in the dark, and so we could – I believe – make it so that when we surface we send a coded message in the flash.  Think of it like manually opening a panel on a light source to create a binary signal.  The only question is what the code will be.  If your people are watching – and I suspect they will be – then they’ll see it.  And since the pseudo-photons will decay before going that far, the P’G’Maig are unlikely to see it.”

Decinus looked skeptical; he was no neo-physicist and it likely sounded like technobabble to him.

But Urle knew the science was sound.  It was an idea he’d worked on in R&D at the Praxis Shipyards around Mars, years ago.  The application was limited, but they’d made it work.

N’Keeea seemed intrigued.  “Do you honestly believe you can do that?”

“Yes,” Urle said.  “I have experience with it.”

“I have a code you can use . . . how complex can the signal be?”

“We can encode in up to six or so kilobytes of information.  Will that be sufficient?”

N’Keeea’s eyes widened.  “Oh, yes,” he said, his tail lashing, but this time in excitement.  “That will be sufficient.”

---

< Ep 6 Part 18 | Ep 6 Part 20 >

New to Other-Terrestrial? Check here! Or if you need to, jump to the beginning of the episode here!

---

“Acting-Captain Urle, the zerodrive is fully charged.  We may make the jump whenever you order it.”

Urle had, naturally, already been informed by his system, but it was still a good habit for the first officer to relay such important status updates.

His scanners swept the command center of the Eyes Gazing Upon the Bright Flower.

The Sepht ship was a marvel of engineering, by any measure.

While the Craton could break physics rather easily with merely seven fusion reactors to power her jumps, for ships whose hull was not made of tenkionic matter, it was an incredible feat to pierce the veil and sink into zerospace.

This ship was only eight hundred meters, pencil thin in contrast to the Craton’s spherical shape,

 yet contained twenty-one massive fusion reactors that could generate staggering amounts of energy.  Nothing less could have powered their zerodrive.

Where the Craton was gifted, the Bright Flower had to do the same through just hard engineering.  And as much as he loved the Craton, he had to admire that.

While the fore section of the ship was covered in the sensors that allowed the Bright Flower to fulfill its job as a scout ship, the latter half was covered in carefully-arranged radiators.  They extended far out from the hull, taking away the deadly thermal waste generated by their reactors – heated up until they glowed white.

And they were glowing now.  The ship was nearly at its maximum heat capacity, running perilously close to the red line, but that couldn’t be helped if they wanted to make a jump.

Her crew of eight thousand were, by bulk, mostly sensor operators and fusion generator technicians – masters of their craft, all.  For a ship like this, that pushed the boundaries of what was possible, they had to be.

“Order all crew to strap in,” Urle told his acting-Executive Officer, the original Captain of the ship.  Her name was Guono Daa, and she had offered Urle command as soon as he’d come aboard.

It was slightly odd, but she’d told him that he was well-known and respected for being the first officer of the Craton – a ship famous throughout the Sapient Union – and it only made sense for him to take at least an honorary command.

He did know that was an element of Sepht space tradition, and he had accepted the offer, however much it made him uncomfortable.  Sepht technology was not fundamentally different from humanity’s, through technological convergence and sharing between their species, but in some ways it was still alien to him.

“All crew ordered, Acting-Captain,” Guono told him.  “Entering zerospace in fifteen seconds.”

The command center crew had all strapped themselves in, bracing for the jump with the majority of their tentacles; the three they used as legs, while also those on their head that gripped onto grooves on the backrest of their seats.  Some of the chairs were much bigger than others, their occupants of the larger sub-species of Sepht, the Nolem.  They were tall enough to tower over him, and tended to be paler shades of blue or green.  The Vem em, including the captain, averaged only four or five feet tall, with much brighter colors.

Guono had sat down herself, leaning back in her seat.  She was a vivid shade of yellow and only a little over five feet tall – which was rather on the tall side for a Vem em.

Urle’s seat leaned back slightly too far for his comfort, but it was secure; they had constructed a handful of human-style chairs on board for him and Ambassador Decinus, while approximating a Hev seat as best they could.

N’Keeea had not complained, being oddly silent during the boarding, the reason for which Urle could only guess at.  Nervousness, perhaps?

“Energy levels crossing threshold for succesful irising,” the jump officer called out.

The Bright Flower ran a tight line every time she made a jump; there was always variation in how much energy you needed to open a portal to zerospace, and so any jump was a nervous moment for anyone on board.

The pseudo-gravity of zerospace would pull them forward, imparting great momentum, but if the aperture was not properly and fully opened and the ship passed through it . . . the results would be disastrous.

“Portal open!” Guona Daa called.

They made the jump.  The ship rattled a lot more than the Craton, with shimmies and jerks that would have been alarming if he hadn’t known what they were; for a small ship like this, her mass was low enough for the Pavlona Shivers, a strange sensation of movement that was entirely a hallucination.

He studied the crew as they went, seeing eyes jump and tentacles twitch as they felt their own shivers, but none seemed bothered.  He continued to be impressed.

“We have successfully submerged in zerospace,” Guono said, and rose from her seat.  “All may swim freely.”

The rest of the crew began to get up from their seats, not displaying the excitement he’d often seen in crews during a jump.  Perhaps it was nerves, or perhaps another effect on the mind, but  after a zerospace entry some felt elated – submersion euphoria, he’d heard it called.

He just thought it was excitement.  They had, after all, just broken the laws of the universe.

“Anything to report?” he asked.

“Negative, Captain,” Guono said.  “Estimated time of arrival at the third planet; two hours.”

After nearly three hours of charging the zerodrive.  If the ship hadn’t already been charging for such a jump, they’d have had to wait twice as long.

He undid the straps on his seat and sat up.  “The bridge is yours, Captain Guono,” he said, giving her a salute.

She began to give orders in the guttural command language of Sepht, one which did not rely on color signals.

---

< Ep 6 Part 17 | Ep 6 Part 19 >

New to Other-Terrestrial? Check here! Or if you need to, jump to the beginning of the episode here!

---

The cafeteria felt different to him.

Iago sat alone, in a corner booth, watching the other volunteers mingle and talk to each other.  They were laughing, telling stories, one was clearly mimicking the act of carrying someone, and Iago knew exactly what training exercise it was related to.

And he knew most of these people; not the freshest volunteers, but anyone who’d had much time in Response had spent time under him.

Yet now they all were strangers.

They left him alone, which was good.  Probably the newer initiates were hesitant to talk to him, and the officers . . . well, they probably pitied him or felt too awkward to talk to him since he had fallen so low.

And he had.  He could recognize it; he should have realized it sooner, but he was not going to regain his old position.  At least, he’d come to feel that he was never going to be fit for it.  What had happened to him had changed him, permanently.

Pirra was doing well in the role, he thought.  From his vantage, at least, it seemed that way.  He’d seen far worse transitions under far better circumstances.

Meanwhile, he had broken.  Cracked apart, and even though he’d pulled his disparate pieces back together again – it wasn’t the same.  He wasn’t the same.

He’d made the mistake of seeing something that he wasn’t meant to see.

Just a moment of weakness, looking too deeply.  Just as he wasn’t supposed to look too deeply now.  Because whatever had made him look too long at that data, at those unnatural shapes and geometries out in the Terris system, was making him do it again.

He couldn’t unsee any of it.  Not those hideous, unnatural thoughts, nor his insights into the world he’d known his whole life.

He sipped his drink.  It took all his composure to look normal, to eat his food without gagging.

His system informed him of a new message.  It was Alexander again, asking to talk to him.  For the last while he’d been messaging asking how training had been going, how he felt, all kinds of questions.

Alexander . . .

He felt a pang of regret.  They’d been friends since they were young men and Alexander had first left his home station, and Iago had always looked out for him.  But he couldn’t talk to him now.

Even if Alexander had seen that truth, that glimpse of actual reality, he’d not understand it.  He was too naive, too pure . . . a good person.

He found that his hand was shaking.

It was getting hard again to keep up the facade, to act normal.  He’d been doing it all day, and by god it had been tiring.  Over these last few days he’d been trying to let it all go.  Just go back to how he’d been before.

He could work back up to his old position.  He just had to get used to it again.  He could gain back the respect he could see that he’d lost in everyone’s eyes.  At first he’d thought it was for the weakness of his breakdown, but no.

That was normal.  The mistake, the weakness that no one could forgive, had been that he’d looked in the first place.

Perhaps on some level, everyone knew the truth, but they did not want to think about it, to actually understand and accept it.  His mere presence was a constant reminder.

God it was hard.  It was only him and Elliot, and he couldn’t let his son know just how bad things were.  They were stuck here until after this current madness was over.

Someone walked by his table, smiling, and he forced his own smile with herculean effort.

If only there was someone to talk to about this.  To probe for a like mindedness.  Someone equally out of place-

Kessissiin walked in, carrying a tray and looking around.  He seemed to be searching for someone, but evidently didn’t see them.  His crest fell in a way that was too subtle for most humans to catch, but Iago had been around Pirra enough to recognize the disappointment.

Dessei were a very gregarious people, and being away from their circle and thrown into another was very hard for them.

Which . . . was something he could empathize with right now.

The Dessei’s eyes wandered his way, and Iago found himself waving to the being.

Surprise went over his face – or rather his crest lifted in a way that indicated it – but he did head over.

“May I sit?” he asked, his tone formal.

“Please,” Iago said.

Kessissiin sat down.  “It seems I still need to make more friends outside of training,” he said.

“It can be tough,” Iago said genuinely.

Unlike the others, he had this feeling he could trust Kessissiin.  The being was an outsider, unknown to him, but that’s what made him perfect.

He didn’t seem to look judgmental when he looked at him, there was no prior history that had been upset.

“You do well out there in training, though,” Iago said.  “I’m frankly surprised you aren’t assigned to a combat unit.”

“I wished for that,” Kessissiin said, the passion in his voice that Iago recognized, could empathize with.  “But Commander Pirra determined that since I had only just come here for detachment training it was best if I was in a non-combat unit.”

Which was a completely normal procedure, Iago knew.  He might have made the same call.  But it still seemed an injustice from this side.

“Well, we probably won’t face any combat, anyway,” Iago muttered.

“I’m not sure I believe that,” Kessissiin said.  “It is foolish to trust any being not to act in their own self-interest, and . . .”

He cut himself off.  “I am out of line,” he said quickly.  “I shouldn’t have spoken.”

“No, it’s okay,” Iago said, curious.

Kessissiin frowned.  “You are Iago Caraval, yes?  Former head of Response Team One?”

“Yes,” Iago replied.  So Kessissiin knew – but he still didn’t seem to judge.  Iago found himself fearing that, suddenly, but nothing in the Dessei’s face or body language changed.

“I’m speaking poorly about your friend and former subordinate, and-“

“Really,” Iago said.  “Words among friends.  We get to grouse.”

“Don’t get me wrong,” Kessissiin added quickly.  “I have a very high regard for Commander Pirra!  She is something of a hero among our people, the first Dessei of rank to serve on a cratonic ship.  She is well known!”

“I’ve heard,” Iago said.  “But anyone can make mistakes.  What were you going to say?”

Kessissiin still hesitated, but then leaned closer.  “The Craton is a mighty prize.  It is the most advanced technology humanity – even much of the Union – has.  And here it is, alone, in a fleet of aggressive Hev.  They would have so much to gain from taking this ship.”

“You really think they’d try?  They’d have a war on their hands if they did.” Iago asked.  The thought was one he’d had – probably many had had.  It was audacious of Kessissiin to say it to him, but he respected that.

“It is short-sighted, yes, but many beings are.  They simply see a gem dangled in front of them-“

“It’s also a warning,” Iago said.  “And frankly, I think they’d find the Craton a lot harder to take than they’d think.”

“I don’t doubt that,” Kessissiin said quickly, as if to cover saying something insulting.  “But they could take the ship eventually.”

“If we didn’t just jump away.  We probably could, before they could overwhelm us,” Iago said.

“Yes,” Kessissiin agreed.  “If.”  He shook his head.  “But tactically-“

Iago held up a hand, and Kessissiin dropped silent.  “Your instincts are good.  I understand your concerns, of course.  They’re not unfounded.  But we are Response – not Operations.  We don’t train to make those decisions.”

Kessissiin nodded, reluctantly.  “Surely your words must carry some weight with the Captain, however.  I am not afraid to fight, of course – I have taken part in rescue operations during and after combat in the outer sectors.  But I feel part of our job is to anticipate, not simply react.”

“Your willingness to do the right thing is a credit to you,” Iago told him.  “I don’t know if anyone will listen to me right now.  But why don’t we make a report on this and see if we can get Pirra to listen?”

Kessissiin’s crest rose in surprise, but then he nodded.  “Thank you for taking my concerns seriously, Commander.”

“Of course.  You’re talking sense.”

It felt good to be called Commander again, Iago thought.

---

< Ep 6 Part 16 | Ep 6 Part 18 >