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

---

The only sounds Tred could hear were Soothing Acoustics Volume 27 and his own breathing.

The acoustics were soft, pleasing sounds that were actually shown by studies to decrease heart rate.  They were more than just pleasing, they interacted with the brain in such a way as to calm it even in moderately-stressful situations.

Of course, by moderately-stressful, they probably meant a hard day at work, Tred thought.  Not a spacewalk on your city-ship that was floating in the void between stars.

His heart rate was alarming him, and each time he noticed it, it kicked up a little higher.  His HUD had started automatically hiding it to help, and then when he overrode that, his system suggested he turn it off.

But he wanted to know how fast his heart was beating!

“O-okay,” he said, swallowing and then repeating the word with a little more energy.  “Okay, this section is good.  Let’s . . . let’s head onto the next section.”

The drones beeped affirmatively.  They had thrusters but mostly just clung to the ship with tiny magnetic claws and hooks.
Meanwhile, he floated free.

Well, not entirely free.  He was in a spacesuit inside a bottleship – a small metal can with multiple manipulator arms and thrusters.  It was better protection from stray cosmic rays, and thankfully he had gotten permission to use it.  It still counted as a space walk.

Every engineer and officer had to do at least one spacewalk every four months.  It was just a core skill that could come into play in any emergency scenario.

Tred was not a fan.

They were cleaning the hull; which really meant filling in tiny scratches with titanium paste and scrubbing off the bits of micrometeors that regularly bumped into the ship.  If they were travelling fast enough it wouldn’t even take much to leave a mark.

They had the whipple shield, a kind of stand-off, multi-layered, honeycomb armor, to break up and absorb a lot of those.  But that outer layer got damaged as it worked, and those plates would have to be removed and recycled.

A small warning chirp told him that a screw had split and the two pieces were floating away from the ship.

“Catch them!” he called.  Some of the drones thrust after them, but soon hit their tether distance and came back.

He couldn’t let those two pieces just float off.  You did not leave scrap in space!  Even if you were in the middle of nowhere, for all you knew twelve billion years from now it would hit some space family on their way to vacation, and you’ve just become a murderer!

It had nothing at all to do with being obsessive-compulsive, he told himself.

Grabbing the controls, he maneuvered his bottleship after them.  It only took a few puffs to move close, and two claw-like arms automatically collected the screw pieces.

He looked back through the bubble canopy and realized that he was drifting further and further from the Craton.

Not a dangerous amount of distance, but it gave him a thrill of fear all the same.  He jetted back.

The bottleship itself was tethered, and he hadn’t reached the end, but he felt a great deal of relief when he was back closer to the ship.

He glanced up at his heart rate, seeing that it was elevated.

“On to the next area.  And be careful of brittle screws!”

The drones beeped back an affirmative.  He thought it sounded sarcastic.

The bottleship started to move automatically to the next section of the ship for them to check, and Tred found that he was literally twiddling his thumbs.  On the controls.

Well, that was not a good idea.

He glanced into his HUD, checking messages.  It was more a nervous reflex than anything that mattered right now.

He had unread messages; he usually had updates from the ship’s blog and other people’s blogs that he followed.  He did not read them, but he did subscribe, and then he felt guilt over not reading them . . .

But one was marked as urgent.  Why hadn’t it . . . oh, right.  Nothing except an emergency message from command itself would come through while you were on a space walk.

He glanced at it.  “To Diplomatic Staff”.

What?  He was an engineer, not a diplomat!  Diplomats were good with people, not-

Then he saw it was from Ambassador Jophiel.

His heart pounded.  They had . . . spoken a handful of times in the last few months.  But things were not the same since he had taken her to see that play, Ussa and Usser: A Tragedy of Ancient Earth.

It had never occurred to him that the bloody story would leave a negative impression on her.  She was composed of plasma, a Star Angel whose natural environment was in the corona of an unusual star, an environment they simulated inside Reactor Seven.

Star Angels could not, as far as he could tell, even hurt each other.  So seeing the horribly violent depiction that the Qlerning playwright had created had disturbed her.

Jophiel did not open up to him about as many things, he felt.  He wanted things to go back to how they were, but he did not know how to do that without saying things that seemed like too much.

Cursing at the timing, he opened the message to read it.

To: All Diplomatic Staff for ‘Jophiel’ of the Star Angels.

As this diplomatic mission has reached its conclusion, all personnel assigned to the Ambassador are hereby released from their duties.  All information, data, correspondences and other forms of communication continue to be Guarded Secrets between Earth-Humanity, the Yia-Star Angels, and the greater Sapient Union.  Congratulations and our greatest appreciation are due to all who were involved . . .

Tred stared at the letter in shock, reading and re-reading it.

His console beeped at him.  The bottleship had reached its next spot.

“Abort!” he told the ship.  “Take me back inside!”

“Query: Is all well?”

“No!  I mean, I’m not in danger.  I-  I’m having a personal crisis!”

He pounded his fists onto the controls.  “Take me back inside right now!”

---

< Ep 13 part 4 | Ep 13 part 6 >

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

---

“Greetings, Captain Brooks, I hope all is well.  It took awhile for you to come.”

Admiral Heskall had been waiting an unusually long time to get Brooks on the line, and he displayed the patience that had made him famous.

That it was Heskall talking to him meant this had to be something important.  The man was famed as one of the leading thinkers of Union military command.  Not simply for the parts that involved humanity alone.  Heskall was on the Joint Command Council, which cooperated with the military leaderships of every species in the Sapient Union.

“Greetings, Admiral,” Brooks replied.  “All is fine, I was off-duty and attending personal business.  I apologize for the wait.”

The Admiral nodded, accepting that without further question.  “I can tell you we are glad you are back in command of the Craton.  System-Admiral Vandoss speaks well of your abilities.”

Brooks accepted the compliment with a simple nod.

“We have an interesting development out past the edges of Union space,” Heskall began.  “An independent archaeology team has discovered a structure in interstellar space that they believe is a relic temple.”

“This claim is being taken seriously?” Brooks asked, feeling a clenching in his stomach – of fear but also excitement.

“Yes.  The team has submitted a great deal of imagery in support of their claim, which our science teams have verified as undoctored.  Needless to say, we are hoping to get a closer look.”

Images appeared for Brooks to view.

They showed a structure, which appeared to be a massive ziggurat of a greyish-blue stone.  The scans showed that it was massive, planetary in size.  There were pyramidal structures on the outside, and a single entrance, massively scaled up with the rest of the gargantuan structure.

It was an amazing image, but they were less detailed than he liked.

They were not doctored, no, but they could not tell the composition of the materials.  They did not show anything inside the temple, or even nearer its massive entrance that was so big it must have been for the landing of starships.

And the images were only of the temple; no ships or shuttles or even drones were near it, and the infrared images seemed to suggest no occupants.  All of which lent to the idea that it was an ancient and abandoned structure.

But it still left a lot unanswered.

“These are from over 500,000 kilometers away,” he noted.  “The archaeologists didn’t get closer?”

“They moved as close as was possible for these images, but the relic temple is within an extremely powerful magnetic field,” Admiral Heskall said.  “Comparable to Jupiter’s in strength.”

“It has a magnetosphere?”

“It is not the source – we do not know what is, but there is a dangerous amount of radiation trapped around the station, as if it is in a larger system’s Van Allen Belt.  We believe the temple itself is unaffected; but all the charged particles made it impossible for their ship to get closer.  This is why the team contacted the Sapient Union – they need our help.  We have just concluded our negotiations.”

“What’s the source of these charged particles, though?  You said it’s in interstellar space, so there’s no nearby source of solar wind, right?”

“We don’t know,” the Admiral admitted.

Another mystery to unravel, then, Brooks thought.  “Who is this team that found it?”

“You’ve met the lead researcher already – Nadian Farland.”

Brooks’s frown came unbidden.  “Farland?  He is not a fan of mine.”

The man had punched him the last time they’d met – their first meeting.  Farland was a well-known adventurer and archaeologist.  Famed for taking risks, making big discoveries, and he’d leveraged his success into a media enterprise.  Films, games, merchandise, all sorts of things that kept a steady inflow of money – letting him pay for most of his own expeditions.

If there was one thing the man hated, though, it was tomb raiders – though many might unkindly call him that – and in his youth, scratching a living out on the fringes, Brooks had once led a search for lost relics from the dead civilization of Xiphos.  It had been a move born of desperation, and a lack of other opportunities that were less unsavory.  He was not proud of it.

“I am aware of what transpired when you met the man on Gohhi,” Admiral Heskall said.  “But I hope that will not be an issue.  Farland actually suggested that you be the one to come help.  It seems your work helping the !Xomyi has earned his respect.”

Brooks nodded, but still did not like it.  “I see.  He’s not generally a fan of the Sapient Union, either.  I’m surprised he asked us at all.”

“Most ships can’t easily muster enough protection from as much radiation as is present.  Even a brief exposure to it would be deadly.  Only a heavy ship – or a Cratonic ship.  Since the Glorians are not about to lend out a heavy warship for science, and the Gohhians would charge him more than his entire media empire is worth, we’re the only other option.”

The Union would jump at the chance to study a Relic Temple, Brooks knew.  Even he, despite his misgivings, wanted this opportunity.

Was it really the right call, though?

Curiosity could be a dangerous thing, especially with regards to relic technology.

He thought, for a moment, about Iago Caraval, and the strange, aberrant images he’d seen that had driven the man almost to madness.  It had led him to almost flee with his son for parts unknown, believing that the Craton‘s crew, including his closest friends, were secretly conspiring against him.

That the man had eventually managed to return from that brink spoke a great deal to the strength of his character.  But there were many lessons of caution to be taken from his story.

“Admiral, may I speak frankly?” he asked.

Heskall considered, his eyes flickering over the image of Brooks he would see projected on his end.  It was common in civilian circles to project your image however you liked; you could appear to be skiing along with a friend while you were in fact sitting down at home.

In the Voidfleet, though, images were always projected accurately unless it was deemed a security risk.

Heskall was sizing him up; he was likely wondering the same question Brooks had asked of himself after Ko; was he ready to return to duty?

Hell, it was a question he asked himself regularly, even if he felt confident.  To know yourself was a skill that anyone with this much power had to ask themselves.

“Yes, Captain,” Admiral Heskall said with a nod.  “I would like to hear your thoughts.”

“This last year has been an eventful one for the Craton,” Brooks began.  “We brought Ambassador Kell aboard, we encountered Leviathans, or at least things related to them frequently.  We also brought on board the Cerebral Reader, Apollonia Nor, who grew up as a street urchin.”

Heskall nodded.  “You must be wondering why we constantly send you on these missions.”

“Yes.  I know that we are fast, that our ship resonates in a way with zerospace that makes us able to make jumps easier and quicker.  And that, theoretically, a CR’s presence provides some protection against the reality disrupting effects of exotic matter.  But we aren’t the only ones with these qualities.  So . . .  yes, Admiral, why us?”

“Those qualities are often a consideration,” the Admiral admitted.  “But they are not the only ones that are relevant.  You are, to be frank, perhaps some of the most experienced personnel we have when it comes to these ‘exotic’ matters.  No other Captain has encountered a Leviathan as often as you have.  No other crew has faced them and lived as yours have.  It is . . . perhaps unfortunate that you are a city ship, with civilians aboard.  Believe me that many discussions have been held on this topic, and we have considered sending other cratonic vessels on these missions.  Honestly, Captain, and this admits more than I perhaps should admit, these strange occurrences you encounter are not isolated incidents, and you are not the only one involved in them.”

“I see,” Brooks said.  “I have one other question.”

“Go ahead,” Heskall told him.

“I know this is not something that has been overlooked, yet I feel I have to ask it.  Is this worth it?  Are these . . . for a lack of a better word, Admiral, eldritch things something we genuinely should be probing into like this?  Are we perhaps broaching things we should be leaving alone?”

The Admiral was quiet for a few moments.  “It’s a question I think all of us have asked ourselves many times, Captain.  I must admit that I do not know.  We do not even know enough to even know if we are going too far.  That is . . . unfortunately, why we must keep trying.  Perhaps some day we will know that we were all fools.  I hope not.”

Admiral Heskall seemed like he maybe wanted to say more, but thought better of it.  He swallowed and adjusted himself, his uncertainty disappearing beneath confidence.

It was Brooks’s turn to be silent for a moment, as he considered the Admiral’s words.  Slowly, the same confidence that the Admiral held grew in him.

He did not know if this was wise.  Whether it led to disaster or victory, he at least knew he was approaching this for the right reasons, and that he was making the best decision he could with what he knew right now.

“Thank you, Admiral,” he said.  “I’ll begin preparing the Craton for departure.”

---

< Ep 13 part 3 | Ep 13 part 5 >

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

---

A long strip of the Equator ring was marked off with flashing drones, as the Aeronautics Club of the Craton prepared to launch.

Brooks was the only member, though Apollonia had appointed herself as an honorary member of the club for today.

She had gotten an aviator’s cap and goggles, with a matching bomber jacket.  Brooks had laughed upon seeing them, admitting that he’d never gone that far.

“That’s fine,” she told him.  “I got them in your size, too!”

Brooks had donned the outfit with good cheer, even though it did not suit his typical Antarctican demeanor.

But Apple beamed at him.  “We need more people in the club so I can get everyone to dress up like this.”

“Don’t you dare,” Brooks replied with amusement.  “I don’t want to have to seriously run a club.”

From a protective case he brought out his plane.  It had four wings, and was a mottled tan and green, with large red stars on it.

It was the model he’d been working on before the mission to Ko, months ago.  Even after his return, he’d taken months to return to his duties, refusing to leave the !Xomyi band he had saved.   Until they felt secure in their new situation aboard the vast carrier that was slowly preparing them for life away from their doomed homeworld.

After he’d returned, she had made the suggestion; “Why don’t we fly your plane?”

Now, they were minutes away from its first flight.

He’d said it was a Po-2.  The name had no meaning to her, but she had nodded along as he had told her of its history from nearly a thousand years ago.

“It was a great plane,” he finished.

“Great,” she said.  “Let’s see it fly!”

Brooks urged her to wait a few more minutes while he did last-minute checks.  Opening up a hatch, he tinkered with the engine.  Apollonia thought he was just stalling, but waited anyway.

“So I hear tomorrow is your test,” he said to her.

Oh.  So that’s why he was taking this time.

Nervousness wriggled into her stomach at the thought of her Officer Candidacy Test.  She had taken practice tests, but Jaya had helpfully told her they were not much like the actual thing.  “To let you practice it will be a hindrance,” she had said.  “It’s best if you go in fairly blind.”

“Yeah,” she replied to Brooks.

“Do you feel confident?”

“No,” she admitted, looking away.

“It’s probably good.  Thinking on your feet is better, and the more confident you feel the more shock you’ll have when you find you aren’t ready.”

“That’s a great pep talk,” she said.  “Really.  Truly.”

Her sarcasm got him to side-eye her.  “The plane is good to go,” he said.

Apollonia’s excitement returned.  “Yeeeeeee!”

He lifted it with both hands over his head, while she hopped aside.

“Ready?”

She nodded.  “Let ‘er rip!”

Brooks started the engine.  It chugged to life with an adorably tiny putt, and its propeller began to spin.  She’d seen him test it, but now it really started up.

He threw it forward, trying not to nosedive it, and the plane cruised ahead – at first jerkily, wanting to fall, but the pilot inside – a tiny robot controlled a simple flight AI – corrected and gunned the engine, and it began to gain altitude.

Around the blocked-off area, a crowd of dozens of curious onlookers had gathered.  Their eyes followed the plane on its maiden voyage, a soft chorus of ‘ooohs’ accompanying its success.

It was to be short-lived, as a regular drone blundered into the airspace.  The pilot AI swerved, tipping the wings, but he lost precious lift and began to spin out of control.

Until Urle reached up and caught the plane easily in one hand.

“It was a nice flight,” he called.

The crowd applauded.  Apollonia thought it was more for Urle’s catch than the plane itself.

He came over slowly, the AI pilot in the plane frantically working the flaps and gunning the engine to escape his grip.  The crowd began to disperse.

“That was my drone, sorry,” Urle said as he came closer.

“It’s all right,” Brooks said.  “The plane flew straight long enough to show that she could.  I’m pleased with the result.”

Urle handed the plane over to Brooks.  “There’s a high priority message coming in for you.  You had your system notifications off so I sent the drone to your room.  By the time it found you here, well . . . I was already here.”

There was a little rebuke in his words; the Captain should not be out of communication.

Brooks reluctantly turned his system back on.  “It was only for the flight,” he said.

“Bad timing,” Urle replied, sounding like he felt bad.  “And I wouldn’t have bothered you if the message wasn’t important.”

Brooks looked to Apollonia.  “Thank you, honorary club member, for your assistance.”

She saluted properly.  “Anytime, cap’n.”

He returned the salute gravely before turning back to Urle.  “I’ll take the call in my office.”

---

As Brooks took his leave, Apollonia looked across the crowd of dispersing onlookers.  Most of the people were unknown to her, though Ann gave her a wave before going back into Watchito’s.  Several other people filtered in after her.

No one could resist good pizza, Apollonia thought.

One person was not moving away, though, just watching her with a serene smile.

“Hey, Cathal!” she called, waving her arm over her head.

His smile grew a little bigger, and she jogged over.  “Or should I say Father Sair?” she said as she got close.

“You may call me however you like,” he told her.

“Just not late for dinner?”

He snorted out a small laugh.  “That was an impressive flight.”

“Next time we’ll be launching a whole air fleet,” she promised him.

“Typical Union extravagance,” he said.  “Why launch one when you could launch a million?”

His tone was light, but his words seemed sharp, and she was caught off-guard.  “Well, why not?” she asked, her tone openly challenging.

She knew that religion was no longer really a thing in the Sapient Union, and in many ways Father Sair was an outsider on the ship.  But no one ever gave him a hard time or even seemed to think less of him for his beliefs or role as a clergy; they just did not share in his beliefs.

But he did seem to have a chip on his shoulder about that, at times.

He seemed fine, though, to just accept her words.  “Perhaps you are right,” he said.

His smile turned thoughtful.  “I was wondering if you might be interested in spending some time in prayer with me tonight?  I know you do not share my faith, but the practice is still good for the mind.”

That was true, but Apollonia didn’t know if she wanted to.  She had been planning to study more.  But maybe praying would help settle her mind for the test?

Her hesitation prompted Cathal to continue.  “Or, perhaps tomorrow night?  We are holding a ceremony – I think you will find it more interesting, we will be telling myths and legends.  They are quite interesting, even to the layman.”

That was more doable, she thought.  It would be after her test, and she’d . . . well, maybe she’d want the zen, or the consolation.  “Yeah, tonight I’m kinda busy, but tomorrow night?  That’d be great!”  She felt a little excitement about the idea, washing away Cathal’s remark about the Union.

His smile was pleasant and genuine, revealing under his normally serious demeanor the handsomeness of youth.  “I am very glad you will be able to come.”

---

< Ep 13 part 2 | Ep 13 part 4 >

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

---

Ham Sulp’s eyes opened, and for a moment he was not sure where he was.

The reality sunk in as the old dream faded; he was on the Craton.  This was his bunk.

Really just a cabin in the wall where he suspended his sleeping bag.  In microgravity, as all Spacers were used to.

He opened his bag and slid out into the room.  The floors and walls were all storage for him, and despite the cabin being small, it held a lot.  Defying his great organizational skills, there was so much that boxes stuck out of shelves into the space of the room, held with bungee cords.  Closed bags floated, only their handles attached to a surface to keep them from drifting away entirely.

He weaved between them into a sealing capsule.  Shedding his sleeping spacesuit, he squirted out spheres of water into his hand and splashed them on his face.

The drops that went astray were sucked back up into the recycler, to be filtered and cleaned for re-use later.

“Did you sleep poorly, sir?”

The NI voice came in his ears as if Mo.P was standing next to him.  The NI was really just a neural intelligence, a chat bot with a little extra raw thinking power for lifelike conversations.  He’d made it himself years ago to practice with after he’d joined the Voidfleet.

Spacers were people of few words, but people from planets and intersolar space stations tended to yap a lot.  It wasn’t necessary to make the change, people understood the cultural differences.  But it helped him to understand intersolars to learn about the small things they chattered about.

Even though he no longer needed the practice, he’d grown fond of Mo.P, and kept him around.

“Yeah,” he told the NI.  “I had a dream.”

“A happy one?” the NI asked.

“No,” he said, slamming closed the cover of the faucet.

Pulling on his uniform, he opened the tube and floated out.  He’d take a proper shower later.

a drone appeared, with a projected sad face.  “Was it the same bad dream?”

“Yes,” Sulp said.  The NI’s memory was one of the few things he trusted.

It wasn’t really more secure than a diary or log, and he had to maintain a Resource Log anyway, but the NI was a companion.  Everyone needed their well to whisper down.

“I’m sorry,” it told him.

“Just how it is,” he said.

Every night, the same dream.

No, not a dream.  A memory.  Sometimes details were a little different, a little . . . hazier.  Memory was that way.  On really fevered nights, he couldn’t ever escape Terris.  The Leviathan never came, but he just felt caught in the limbo of trying to leave forever.  Until he woke up, that is, but it felt like forever.

It was worse today; it was an anniversary.  Not of the event itself, but of the day that all the surviving ships had met back up in deep space to take stock of all they’d lost.  When they had counted, they had found it so much worse than expected.

His own home fleet had come then, seeking to help.  They’d been the first to board many of the ships of Battlefleets A, B, and C, and seen the horrors.

This was what came of settling worlds? one of his old friends had asked him later.

Despite it all being an act of brotherhood, of the fraternity of intelligent species, the attempt of help itself had left deep scars.

A sudden burst of energy came through him in a shiver, like he wanted to scream or bash his face over and over into a console.

Just the early morning jitters after the dream.

He still had things to do; his goals, that he kept himself to.  How it had to be, he didn’t know any other way.

Coming to the mirror, he opened it, got out the autoscrubber and put it on his face.  The machine attached to the skin with gentle suckers all over, its flexible body conforming to his features.  Stray skin flakes and shed hairs could float into machinery and cause trouble later.

He ran a hand over his bald head.  Not many hairs to be found there, but the centuries of rads hadn’t made Spacers bald everywhere.  Random hairs on the body still could get shed.  An eyelash, and the worst, a pube.  Who wanted those floating through the air?

As he closed the mirror, he saw his eyes, the same pale blue as Sarah Lachmann.

He froze for a moment, holding his breath.

“Are you all right?” Mo.P asked him.

He turned away from the mirror.  “What’s my itinerary for the day?” he demanded.

Ten minutes later he was safely away from Mo.P’s prying care and among the space hounds, back in a part of the ship with artificial gravity.  Beaux, Cross, Sasha, Zeus, and Apollo greeted him warmly, the uplifted dogs’ voices coming from speakers on their collars.  They were still dogs, though, and danced in anticipation of their morning meal.

This was drone work, in the eyes of most, but there were tasks that were still best done with human hands, he thought, as he served each of the spacehounds.

They thanked him, and he thanked them back with a good head rub.

Angel the little Ship Terrier, was the only one who could not talk; she was just a sweet little dog without any enhancements or implants to improve her intelligence and grant her the ability to communicate with words.

She was a wiggly blur around his legs, jumping up at him, then dancing on her back feet, then running away, then back . . .  It was exhausting just to watch.

“Here,” he said, putting down her small bowl.  She was a lap dog or ratter.  Probably more the former even if her breed was originally intended for the latter.

Once he fed them, he waited while they finished.

“Zeus, you’re with me today,” he said.

The dog offered a human-like nod, and trotted by his side.  The Boku-boku down here in Resources did not like dogs of any kind, and still tried to argue with Angel, even if she could only bark back.  But today the little spazoids would have to get over themselves, because he didn’t want to sit alone.

---

< Ep 13 part 1 | Ep 13 part 3 >