How Many Planets are in the Solar System? - Universe Today

Source: http://exoplanet.eu/catalog/

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Undrat knew he wasn't the brightest neo-sapient in the galactic arm. None of his people would ever be known for hyper-intelligence or cleverness or ingenuity. They were not grand philosophers or intellectuals. They admired intelligence, admired cleverness, even though comprehending it beyond acknowledging it was largely beyond their capabilities.
That did not mean his people were worthless. His people were the kind of people that slogged through history, their eyes on the goal, ever walking forward. In the long drawn out march of time they had discovered each thing slowly and progressed to the next even if it took centuries or millennia. It did not concern them that they were considered one of the less intelligent neo-sapience species, they knew what was important.
Hard work. Perseverance. Endurance.
For over fifty million years they had been one of the Neo-Sapient Species watched over by the Unified Council. Their home-world had been forgotten as they spread out among the Lanaktallan worlds. They were largely uninterested in colonies or expanding their race.
They were content to enjoy the finer things in life.
A job well done. A difficult and lengthy problem that the solution was perseverance being accomplished. Enduring whatever had to be endured.
Over the aeons Undrat's people had always worked for the Lanaktallan. They were proudest of the fact that they were often moved by the tens of thousands to a new colony to provide the manual labor that a robot had not yet been programmed and fashioned to do.
They had been part of the Unified Council for so long that most of the other species viewed them more as furniture or a standard issue part of anything that required labor.
Undrat's people were robust. Their thick skin let them endure harsh solar emissions, their thick bones and heavy muscles let them handle work on planets up to 1.6G, more than twice the preferred gravity of the rest of the Unified Council species. Their internal organs allowed them to eat and flourish on bare nutripaste without even most of the additives that the majority of races required. They could eat rudimentary crops and usually even local food species with no difficulties. They healed quickly, even from injuries that would kill most of the Near-Civilized and Civilized Species.
But they weren't the brightest or sharpest.
Undrat had worked in a warehouse when the humans came. He and his men had watched the humans land. Had seen them and had admired their form, much like their own. Bipedal, two arms, moving with power even if they didn't always move with grace.
He had largely ignored them, preferring to keep with his own work, which was carrying boxes and crates, running grav-dollies, and doing other hard jobs.
His muscles were thick and solid, his endurance deep and rapidly recovering.
He could work a whole nine hours and after fifteen hours of rest be ready to work again. He could lift his own body weight above his head.
The Lanaktallan who was his Overseer had always praised Undrat and his fellow workers. After all, the Tukna'rn people were the backs the colony had been founded on. He was valuable property of the Fu'uku'ugu'utmien Industrial Conglomerate, with bar codes down his arms, across his back, chest and forehead, and across the back of his neck that he had been born with, the bar codes tattooed into his very gene code.
If he had ever been curious enough to look he would have found that he and every one of his fellow Tukna'rn were more valuable to the Conglomerate than a fork lift. He would have just nodded, not really understanding why it should be surprising. He could work on any surface he could stand on, could work in different gravities, in different weather, with different cargos, without the need for programming or expensive mechanical maintenance.
Of course he was more valuable. He could be put in cryosleep to go to the next world and virtually ignored for centuries if need be.
The Terrans, the humans, had arrived and then came the great roars of THERE IS ONLY ENOUGH FOR ONE which made no sense to Undrat. Did not the dining facility have enough for everyone to eat? Was there not enough work to go around? Did not the Fu'uku'ugu'utmien Conglomerate not own all the resources of the planet and the people upon it?
The reply of THEN DIE ALONE! made no sense to Undrat either. He could not imagine being alone for long. Tukna'rn and every other species capable of thinking were always in groups.
Before he could be disturbed by having to contemplate the roars the sirens had gone off.
Undrat had been sent into a shelter beneath one of the great warehouses. He and his fellow Tukna'rn sat patiently, eating and sleeping and everything else according to the computerized schedule. At time the floor shook and faint vibrations could be felt.
Eventually the roar of THERE IS ONLY ENOUGH FOR ONE! had ceased.
The shelter had sounded the 'all clear' and Undrat and his fellow Tukna'rn had been allowed back onto the surface of the planet. They had emerged, blinking at the harsh light that somehow penetrated the thick cloud cover. Their skin flushed a deep bluish-green in response, reacting to the increased radiation from the sun and the clouds.
The Overseers had gone. Fled. Left.
The Overseer in charge of Undrat and his fellow Tukna'rn workers was confused and angry. He approached the Terrans and whatever it was that the Terrans told the Overseer seemed to anger the Overseer more.
Undrat himself heard the Overseer tell the Terrans that the Tukna'rn people were valuable assets, extremely valuable property of the Fu'uku'ugu'utmien Conglomerate and that he could not believe that the Conglomerate had abandoned them.
Then the Conglomerate had returned with the forces that kept unruly colonists and workers in line. MilSec, CorpSec, and the fabled Executor Security Forces arrived in ships. Undrat had heard the Overseer tell the Terrans that of course the forces coming in weren't hostile, they were just there to protect valuable conglomerate property.
Then the alarms sounded and the shocked and distressed looking Overseer led Undrat and his fellow Tukna'rn workers into the shelter again.
Strangely enough, for reasons that Undrat did not know and did not think to ask, even more workers were led into the shelters by the Overseer. Many different species, some of whom even did the more intellectually demanding jobs of monitoring computers and other important systems.
The Undrat simply sat in the shelters and waited. They counselled the other species not to complain, after all, there was food, air, water, and enough room to sit and even exercise facilities to maintain one's strength and endurance.
Again, there was the rumblings and vibrations.
The Overseer seemed extremely concerned, often wringing all four hands as he sat in the Facility Overseer's office.
At one time Undrat himself saw something strange. The Overseer was talking to a hologram of another Overseer, who was obviously giving the Overseer orders. The Overseer suddenly picked up a chair that the Tukna'rn used when sitting in the Overseer's office and smashed the holotank with it.
Three sleep shifts later the elevator came down and a squad of armored Overseers with "EXEC-SEC" written on them exited. They asked for the way to the Overseer's office. Undrat was tasked to show them.
Undrat knew his people were not considered very intelligent and that he was an average Tukna'rn.
But 'within standard species median' did not mean 'stupid.'
He heard the Executor Overseer sneer about how Undrat and his people were 'lounging in such opulence and safety' and how 'they would be better used to clog the guns of the Terrans' rather than 'inhabiting a shelter better put to use by their betters'.
His people were incurious not unintelligent.
Undrat did not like what they were saying. His people were not animals. They were not wastes of resources. They were valuable and coveted property of the conglomerate and his Overseer was proud of them and admired by his peers for overseeing such industrious properties.
When he got to the Overseer's office he was ordered to stand there, as if he was a robot. That did not bother him, he was used to short commands.
The Executors ordered the Overseer to 'evict the neo-sapients so they could be armed to force the Terrans to fight them' and the Overseer protested.
Undrat did not care about the argument at first. It was between beings who far outranked him and usually gave orders.
But one statement got his attention.
The ExecSec commander said it, pointing at the Overseer.
"Kill this fool."
Undrat reached out as the ExecSec officer drew his pistol, put his hands to either side of the Lanaktallan's torso, and twisted as he squeezed. Ribs crunched and the spine crackled as Undrat twisted the Lanaktallan's torso and bent it to the side.
The other Tukna'rn did the same. Undrat's father, Ildrut, brought both fists down on the armored flank-spine of the one next to him, breaking the Lanaktallan in half.
The Overseer merely stood and watched.
Neural pistols went off and neural bolts thudded into the Tukna'rn, who felt them as a slight burning tingle where they hit and raised welts like they had been bitten by a particularly aggressive insect. A plasma pistol was fired twice, catching the paper clothing on fire but only causing the skin of the Tukna'rn to darken and painful burns on the first two layers of skin to happen.
Then it was over.
The Overseer stood there and nodded slowly.
"You are loyal and valuable property," he said softly. "You did not betray the Conglomerate, the Conglomerate has betrayed you and every being in this shelter."
The Overseer looked up from the bodies of the dead Lanaktallan, killed by heavy strikes of blunt fists and the pressure of the Tukna'rn grip.
"Gather their weapons. Any who come down the elevator are to be killed until further notice," the Overseer said.
But no more came down.
Finally Undrat, who went everywhere with the Overseer, even slept in the same room as him, always carrying a riot shield and a heavy plasma rifle, saw the Overseer talk to one of the Terran lemurs on his vid-display.
It was nearly a month later when the Overseer stated that he, and a handpicked group, would ride the elevator to the surface and speak to the Terrans.
Undrat rode the elevator silently, holding onto the rifle.
If the Terrans attempted to harm the Overseer, then he would kill them.
Unlike the Tukna'rn, they would be as fragile as everyone else in a universe built to challenge even the Tukna'rn people. IF a fist did not do it, then he had a plasma rifle.
He would not let the Overseer, who had shepherded and cared for the Tukna'rn since the time of Undrat's father's father's father's father's time, to come to harm.
The clouds were low and heavy. The air smelled of burnt plants and like a greenhouse that had caught on fire. The air was heavy with soot and ash and lightning ripped at the clouds and the ground in equal measure.
The Overseer had been wise to order everyone into hazardous environment suits. The world did not look as it had.
Undrat looked around him. It looked as if a forest had grown where the tarmac of the great warehouse complex had once been, and had then been burnt away to leave behind sticky black ash.
There was a heavy vehicle present. A large tracked vehicle, with a heavy cannon on it. The back was open, a ramp leading from the interior of the vehicle to the ground. Six bipeds with two arms walked down the ramp, all of them in some kind of black armor.
Undrat could tell they were Terrans. They moved like the Tukna'rn people. With strength and power, even though they were taller and thus more slender. He nodded to himself that they all had weapons, after all, the Overseer had stated that the Conglomerate was fighting the Terrans over the Tukna'rn and other neo-sapients on the planet.
Of course they were. The Tukna'rn were valuable property.
Two of the six Terrans were carrying something fascinating to Undrat. They worse what looked like a kind of loading frame that Undrat had been trained to use when the object to be loaded was too much for even his strength. The frame was also attached to a heavy looking gun with a barrel as thick as Undrat's arm, the bullets leading into the gun were bigger than Undrat's fingers. It even had a small screen angled for the Terran to be able to look at it. A datacable went from the gun to the armored arm of the Terran.
While the Terrans and the Overseer spoke, Undrat stared at the large gun. Curiosity, finally stirred to life by the entire situation, tickled at him. A strange feeling, but one that urged him to ask a single question instead of just mutely staring.
"Is it heavy?" Undrat asked, speaking without first being asked a question. He was not addressing anyone of rank, he knew that. The Overseer was talking with the two who obviously had ranking. There were merely the two with the big guns and two others with heavy looking rifles that looked almost unfinished.
The Terran looked at him, its face hidden by the black front of his helmet. It hefted the big gun. "It's pretty heavy."
"How much does it weigh?" Undrat asked, curious as to how much a Terran could carry.
"Ninety-two kilograms outside the man pack frame," the Terran said. "Total weight with the gunner's man-pack frame is one-hundred-twenty kilograms."
Undrat's datalink, which helped him with things he was slow to do, told him how much it weighed, which was as much as he weighed.
"Is it effective?" Undrat asked.
The Terran gave a nod. "Light and medium armored fighting vehicles don't stand a chance. If a tank gives me too long, I'll rip it apart. The clankers and the dwellerspawn don't stand a chance."
"Then it is good," Undrat said. falling silent. He admired the gun's lines, how lethal it looked.
If he had that, he could keep anyone from harming the Overseer, the Tukna'rn people, or the other neo-sapients in the shelter.
The Overseer had stopped talking, turning to look at him. Undrat pointed at the heavy gun and the Terran carrying it.
"May I look at it more closely, Overseer?" Undrat asked.
"If it does not bother the Terran, you have my permission loyal one," the Overseer said. He turned back to the Terran. "They are a good people and I do not allow them to come to harm. They are loyal, work hard, and ask for little in return but what they need to survive."
"Answer his questions, Corporal," the Terran said.
"Thank you for indulging him. Curiosity from his people is not common," the Overseer said. "They are slow to act unless ordered, but ultimately a gentle and trustworthy people."
Undrat put the rest of what the Overseer was saying out of his mind as he slowly moved over to the Terran.
One always moved slowly and obviously when approaching a stranger.
"Have you had it long?" Undrat asked.
"This particular one? About a month or so," the Terran said. "Command ordered at least one heavy gunner per squad once the Dwellerspawn started spawning heavy units in greater numbers."
Undrat looked around. The vegetation looked weird to him and he realized he never really paid too much attention to the plants unless he was tending to a greenhouse or field of crops.
"What are Dwellerspawn?" he asked.
"Bioweapons from outer space," the Terran said. "They landed a month ago, we had to use atomic and biowarfare to counter them."
"Oh," Undrat said.
"Have you been in the shelter the entire time?" the Terran asked.
"Yes," Undrat said, still staring at the weapon. He could see how it operated, although he was not sure about the function of the large orbs attached to the back of each of the ammunition boxes. Perhaps more ammunition? But why store it in a round object when a rectangular box would be more efficient?
"How long?" the Terran asked.
"Five hundred twenty-three sleep cycles," Undrat said. "We will have to go to half rations soon."
The Terran nodded.
After a while the Overseer turned around and made a motion at the Tukna'rn. "Follow. We must prepare for something."
Undrat was slightly disappointed to leave the interesting looking weapon behind, but he followed the Overseer. They moved to one of the cargo loading areas for the shelter and the Overseer brought up the elevator. He ordered the Tunka'rn to rest and they waited.
After some time the Overseer waved at Undrat and his cousin Akdru to follow. They moved over to the heavy door and opened it.
Heavy blocky looking vehicles towing a heavy trailer were backed up to the door. The Overseer and the two Tukna'rn used hand motions to guide the three trucks as they backed up. When they reached a point halfway to the cargo elevator they stopped.
Terrans got out and moved to the back, lowering the ramps in the back.
Inside were boxes marked as food, medicine, clothing, toys, blankets, entertainment, and survival parts.
The boxes were thick heavy metal, the kind Undrat had only previously seen on spaceships.
One of the Terrans told the Overseer that he could have the boxes sterilized by fire or UV light, it was safe for the contents.
The Tukna'rn worked without complaint alongside the Terrans to stack the contents of the trucks onto the elevator. Once it was fully loaded, the Overseer and Undrat's father rode it down.
It was back in half an hour and Undrat was proud of his fellow Tukna'rn in the shelters for unloading the elevator so quickly.
It went on, until finally the Overseer told the Terrans that the shelter's stocks were full again.
Undrat was glad. He was tired now but did not want to show it in front of the Terrans.
When he rode the elevator down with the last load of supplies, the Overseer told them all how he was proud of them, how they had done their people, and all the people in the shelter, proud that day.
When asked how much longer that the people must stay in the shelter, the Overseer startled them all.
"Until the Terrans say it is safe. The mad lemurs of Terra fight against the planet itself as the planet was corrupted by something vile from outer space," the Overseer said. "They are winning, but it is slow. We will all be safer in the shelter."
"This is our home. Should we not fight beside the lemurs?" Undrat asked.
The Overseer looked at him. "I am proud of your willingness to fight next to the lemurs, but no, you are untrained in combat. I will not waste your life."
Undrat felt pleasure in the fact that the Overseer still considered him valuable.
So Undrat stayed in the shelter. Helping maintain it, waiting patiently for the Terrans to say it was all clear.
Less than a hundred sleep cycles passed before he was allowed to leave the shelter.
The habitation where he had lived was gone, a pile of scorched rubble now overgrown with grass and moss. The dining facility was little more than crumbled plascrete. The vast warehouses were flattened, the tarmac reduced to thick soil.
The Overseer led them to a place with thick walls. For almost a week he simply waited to be told what to do. He sat on his bunk for most days, watching the colorful programs on the vidslate he had been given, the cloth one piece clothing as comfortable as the boots.
After that the Overseer told them that they would help the Terrans.
He carried boxes, moved machinery, helped the Terrans as they kept "Refugee City Tau" working and providing comfort for everyone.
One day the Overseer came to Undrat's room that he shared with three others. The Overseer sent the other three out and sat down on a chair, folding his arms.
"Worker Undrat, while we were in the shelters you expressed a desire to fight next to the mad lemurs of Terra," the Overseer said.
"I did," Undrat said after a moment. It took him a moment to remember, but he remembered it with perfect clarity.
"Is that still true?" the Overseer asked.
Undrat sat and thought about it. The Overseer waiting patiently. Finally Undrat looked at the Overseer.
"It is."
The Overseer nodded. "The Terran Confederate Military Forces are recruiting neo-sapients like your people. You are a good solid dependable being and a hard worker. I will be pleased to refer your name to their recruiters."
"Thank you, Overseer," Undrat said, and meant it.
The Overseer left.
Two days later the Terrans came and got him. They had him take tests. Written, verbal, video. Tests of logic and math and spelling and problem solving. He answered the questions one by one if he could, if he could not, he simply moved to the next one once he realized he could not answer it. After that came the physical tests. Then tests regarding his emotional and psychological state.
Three days later the Overseer informed him that he was accepted into the Terran military and that he was to go and choose one of the many jobs he had tested for.
The Overseer urged him to be diligent in his studies when the Terrans trained him for his new job.
Undrat agreed.
A day later the Overseer came to see him off as the Terrans loaded him and others into a heavy vehicle to take them to Camp Alpha for training.
A year later, Undrat went to see the Overseer in his new uniform. The Overseer expressed pleasure in seeing him and expressed pride in Undrat at graduating from the difficult Terran military training.
He told the Overseer that he was a "Heavy Weapon Specialist" in the Terran Army now.
The Overseer urged him to be diligent and attentive to training and his duties, as the Overseer was in ensuring that the neo-sapients, the people, under his care received the highest level of comfort and necessities he could.
Another year passed. Undrat trained hard, mindful of the Overseer's words. He often wrote to his family, and the Overseer, about his training. He learned how to use many different weapons, from a simple magnetic acceleration pistol to the massive 155mm Hellbore crew served self-propelled gun. He learned to operate weapons from the doors of strikers, mounted on vehicles, or just plopped into the dirt. He learned how to call for close air support, for artillery, for orbital bombardment, for medical dustoffs.
The Overseer wrote back, praising Undrat for his diligence.
It had been two years to the day that Undrat had joined the Terran military when it happened.
The sirens went off again.
This time, the words from beyond were different.
YOU BELONG TO US
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General No'Drak stared at the holotank, leaning back from the table and pushing the plate to the side. He picked up his pack of cigarettes and opened it slowly, looking at the data that he had been looking over while he ate.
Almost every unit was no longer engaged in fighting. There was some mopup, mostly being handled by the light infantry, mechanized infantry, and the light attack craft units. Third Armor was undergoing refit and examination.
The tanks of Third Armor and First Armored Recon had long lists of malfunctions, errors, and breakdowns, most of them overlapping.
The meme of "Your old tank" and "Your new high tech supertank" had millions of likes, recasts, and other engagement metrics.
No'Drak knew anger when he saw it.
He compared the maitenance lists for the old tanks that Third Armor and First Recon had swapped out after the Telkan Campaign to the current list, then compared it to the new armor that First Telkan Marines and Fifth Powered Infantry Division was using.
Third Armor and First Recon had nearly six times the amount of part and software failures that were standard across virtually 80% of the tanks. The biggest piece was the battlescreen frequency algorithm software had been patched in the field by an enlistedman from 27th Maintenance Brigade.
No'Drak opened the reports on the software. Corps software analysis stated there was nothing wrong with the algorithm, everyone below Corps stated bluntly that the software was trash. The enlistedman from 27th's report was more in-depth. While most of it was formula and went over No'Drak's head, there was one part that he noted.
Every 82 seconds the software restarted at the same frequency before rotating through six different frequencies within a thirty second interval, afterwards randomization improved.
The second part was that the early frequencies all matched the mining lasers used by most mining systems, including Precursor systems.
While the system should have discarded that set of frequencies and not used them further, it did not lock those frequencies out.
Corps Maintenance claimed that the software did and showed simulations where it did so.
The enlistedman had countered that after approximately 185 to 383 seconds it reset completely, wiping out the frequency lockouts and returning to factory baseline.
The One Star General in charge of Corps Maintenance had recommended that enlistedman be punished for insubordination due to fact that when the General replied that Corps simulations did not show that, the enlistedman replied "Actual use is different and you'd know that if you'd been in a tank in the last three hundred years instead of hiding behind a desk."
No'Drak sighed. It was a clear case of insubordination in writing. He wrote a quick recommendation to the enlistedman's commander to fine the enlistedman one narcobeer, require ten pushups, and force the enlistedman to recite the Corps motto ten times at high volume as a punishment.
He then penned a letter to the General, telling him that he would be personally looking over the after action reports regarding the new armored vehicles and armored infantry suits.
Next up was the logistics report. General No'Drak sighed. The current General in charge of logistics was a perfectly servicable subordinate, but he lacked General Tik-Tak's flair for producing two bullets when he had only had an expended shell casing. The General was complaining about nanite depletion, work performance metrics dropoffs, morale issues, retention issues, and, of course, the fact that he had busted black market rings twice and a prostitution ring another time.
General No'Drak just signed the receipt and promised himself he'd look over it real soon.
Clone Warfare was reporting that they were no closer to solving the issues with rapid growth clones and the Born Whole system, and as of the writing of the report the two systems were to be considered unavailable. Simba, Goodboi, and Purrboi production was starting to have problems with neurological system collapse but Clone Warfare was checking the issue to see if it was a possible mutation in the Friendkiller Virus. Additionally, there were now issues with transferring SUDS templates across hardwired systems and it was possible the entire system would go down.
That one was an issue. No'Drak signed the sheets and ordered the entire Clone Warfare Division to be taken out of the order of battle, despite the problems it would cause with reinforcement and replacement.
General No'Drak punched up his Table of Organization & Equipment, looking for an older section. There, 21st Replacement Battalion. He reactivated it, pulled men from retention offices, medical oversight judgement boards, and other places, and ordered the old unit's colors uncased and the unit brought back online.
The FTL needlecast superluminal communications system was back online. He sent memos to the other units within a month's travel distance, advising the other Generals of the issues currently plaguing V Corps (Old Blood) and 7th Army (Old Blood) as well as his ideas on how to mitigate the problems.
He suggested that reactivating 21st Replacement and doing Old Blood/New Blood calls could relieve some tensions, as well as recruiting from the former neo-sapient populations for integrated forces.
He also made sure to annotate that while the various units of 7th Army had not taken many casualties (less then 1% of force levels) during the last few battles it could not be assumed that there would be no serious mass-cal events in the future.
Ge'ermo'o watched with interest. Dealing with force level issues was never a problem in the Great Herd. For every lost soldier there were millions, billions more to take their place. He was interested in seeing how General No'Drak would handle the issue.
The warning was something that made Ge'ermo'o nod.
While there has always been billions of replacements awaiting any Great Herd that took casualties, I can no longer rely on such a depth of replacements any longer. The new tanks being developed for Great Grand Most High A'armo'o will take weeks, possibly months of retraining to use, which means that any replacements brought in from other Great Herd units would require the same training, Ge'ermo'o thought to himself. He quickly opened his dataslate's message application and began drafting a report to Most High A'armo'o that the Great Armored Herd might be facing retention, replacement, and recruiting issues in the near future, highlighting the fact that the new weapons and vehicles required training that needed to take place outside of a combat zone.
Ge'ermo'o nodded to himself as he sent the message.
He was a most observant commander, which allowed him to see issues that others may not.
General No'Drak saw the message go out and opened it. He looked it over and nodded to himself, restraining from looking over at Ge'ermo'o, who was going over the estimated casualties from the long battle to save the planet.
He could tell from the phrasing that what Most High Ge'ermo'o had been suggesting was tantamount to heresy to Lanaktallan sensibilities.
But the Lanaktallan had learned.
More than that. Had applied what he learned to spot a potential problem in the making.
He forwarded it to MI and CID to add to the undoubtably growing files on Lanaktallan and Most High Ge'ermo'o both.
That done he turned his attention back to the map.
Below the mountain still burned 1st Platoon, HHC, 1st Telkan and two other icons.
What is happening down there? he wondered.
He reached out, tapping 108th Military Intelligence Battalion, requesting a situation report. It came back within minutes, complete with video.
No'Drak checked the templates first. Templates for Mantid cryosleep fluids, parts for cryosleep pods, templates for precooked turkey, chicken, goose, and ham. A question of whether or not a suckling pig could be produced by a template-cracked Class III Nano-forge. (No, it could not, not alive) A request for a template of a "Goddess Pele Succulent Fire Walking Roast Pig Feast" for a Class-III nanoforge. A request for templates for UV lights calibrated to solar output of the planet prior to the Precursor AWM attack, templates for a holoemitter that could provide eVR non-hookup works with a "Pre-Attack Surface Park".
It looked weird but No'Drak changed the order of the data requests several times, then went back over the requests one at a time, complete with any images sent back by Casey.
One was a helmet cam from 1LT Vuxten. It showed an armored Sergeant Addox with at least thirty little green mantids huddled around him. Most were asleep, but a good number of them were eating strips of grease dripping still steaming meat.
When No'Drak heard the audio he groaned and turned it off.
"So the kid, right? He totally rocks sixth grade. Letters in track and field and grav-skiing, is voted most popular, even has top mark grades, and his dad, right, his dad decides that the kid deserves the bangingest reward possible," Casey was saying.
No'Drak wasn't falling for that one again.
Instead No'Drak paid attention to the displayed troop stress levels as Vuxten's cam panned over them. They were all well within resting baseline, even if all of them but Vuxten and Addox were paying attention to Casey, who was talking while he was messing with something on his loading frame.
No'Drak opened up a file and started moving data. Pretty soon he had a good idea what was going on.
There was a facility beneath the mountain that dated back to the initial Precursor War. The Mantid upper class had rebelled against the Queens for unknown reasons. The remaining upper class had been relegated to a hell of cryostasis and revival since then. Vuxten and Addox, with the help of that lunatic Casey, were bribing the Mantid upper class remaining with turkey to surrender.
No'Drak shifted his attention, looking at possible exit points for a deep level mining vehicle leaving the facility. He ordered Clone Warfare Division to run off from pigs, turkeys, and other food animals preferred by mantids and have them on standby.
He then copied what he was doing to a memo and sent it to Casey's contact in 108th MI, to forward to Casey.
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"Your blinky is flashing," Private Nulfret said, pointing at the round device on Casey's loading frame.
"Oh, nice," Casey broke off the joke, reaching down and tapping the device while turning over his left hand so it was palm up. The holoemitter implanted in his hand twinkled and he stared at it for a long moment.
"Lieutenant Vuxten, sir," Casey said.
"Go ahead, Sergeant," Vuxten said.
"Commands creating a 'temporary EPOW site with live animals, Mantid rated shelter, and everything else, including psychic dampeners for our soon to be defectors," he said. "Coordinates incoming, but we have a place to take these guys in the sun."
Vuxten nodded. "Do your meme magic. Let's keep memeing these guys to life."
Casey nodded. "I'll get right on it, sir."
Vuxten looked over at Addox, who had every green mantid that had wandered into the room clustered tight around him. "How you doing, Sergeant?" he asked.
"All right. Most of them are asleep. Its hot and sweaty in my armor, but their color's getting better," Addox answered.
"All right. We're going to lay a heating pad on a grav-dolly once the work crew gets back and they can transfer there. We'll put some low power phasic inhibitors on it," Vuxten said. He turned to where 471 and some of the other greenies were gathered together around a data-cable.
"How's it going on your side?" Vuxten asked.
--own this thing-- 471 said. --hemming in vi right now--
--tough security-- 568 said. --five digit password/login single entry combo--
That made Vuxten snort. His pay-card had a six digit PIN and had thumbprint verification.
--oh no how we outclassed-- 834 said. --asking for three digit number only passcode--
"Gotcha. Just taking time to figure it all out. Keep it up," Vuxten said. He moved over and sat down on a large piece of computer equipment that the greenies had cut out of the system and had pulled away.
Is it weird that I miss being enlisted? he thought to himself.
His suit's VI tossed up an image meme. It was blank, just a line in the middle, with "TOP TEXT" at the very top and "BOTTOM TEXT" at the bottom.
Vuxten sighed. They were out of range of everything. That didn't bother him so much, back during the Second Telkan War he'd been deep enough in the jungle enough times that he didn't have communication with anyone else.
But back then it was mostly just keep him and his squaddies alive, follow orders, and fight the good fight.
He knew this was part of the good fight, sitting and watching Casey twiddle with his hologram, Addox pet a little greenie that had stopped in place, turned to look at him, then asked for food, and watching the rest of the platoon sitting around playing cards. Three of them were using their palm mounted holo-emitters to toss a glittering ball back and forth.
Vuxten had seen the training films, knew that despite the urgent feeling to do something that what he was supposed to do, as a leader, was simply project an aura of calm and control. He was tempted to do a maintenance check on his stubber, but knew that would increase his platoon's anxiety and he didn't want anyone else following his example and taking apart their weapon only to have something, anything, attack and catch them unarmed.
Training films are different, he lamented. I'm starting to understand Casey's pink golfball joke and why he keeps starting it over and over. It's not supposed to end. It's supposed to be a kind of touch stone to keep everyone grounded, help pass time, and relax everyone because things have to be going good if a Senior NCO can start the joke over to make sure everyone's in on it, Vuxten suddenly realized. He almost groaned out loud at how obvious the whole thing was.
"Sir," Casey's voice broke into Vuxten's thoughts.
"Go ahead, Sergeant," Vuxten said.
"I need you to come with me. I need to move as far away from those little guys as possible," he said.
"What's going on?" Vuxten asked.
"Finished my meme. Gotta go with the rest," Casey said. "Well, it's less a meme and more a pictograph series to convince those big guys something."
The big human got over and started moving to the far end of the room, on the other side of huge banks of computers. Vuxten followed, curiosity starting to well up. When he got over there Vuxten saw Casey holding a piece of warsteel in his bare hand, his gauntlet sitting on the barrels of the minigun.
"Crank up your phasic inhibitors the greenies installed on your armor to max and max out your psychic shielding as high as you can without passing out," Casey said. He opened his faceplate and took a deep breath, closing his eyes.
"Uh, all right," Vuxten said. "Should I bring over 471?"
"No. Just us, sir," Casey said. He clenched his fist around the piece of warsteel as Vuxten cranked his internal psychic shielding up to almost 140%, the max he could handle before he started getting tunnel vision.
Casey squeezed the warsteel and Vuxten watched as muscle spasms made the muscles along the side of Casey's jaw ripple. Vuxten suddenly smelled dry dusty air, a hint of stale sour human body odor, scorched molycircs and warsteel. His reactor level twitched and he saw his psychic shielding suddenly go amber. Casey was whispering something to himself in a language that Vuxten didn't understand and that his suit's VI didn't translate. It felt like heat was emenating off of Casey, an almost physical pressure against Vuxten that seemed to push through his armor to press against his skin.
WARNING! PSYCHIC DANGER! WARNING!
flashed on his visor, in his cybereye, was announced in his ear.
Casey opened his eye and Vuxten tried to resist stepping back but was unable.
Casey's eye was glowing a bright steady crimson, bright enough to illuminate the eye socket. More, there was a dull red shining from behind the patch. Casey transferred the piece of warsteel to the frame for his minigun and picked up another, squeezing it and then repeating the whole thing twice more.
Vuxten watched as Casey closed his eye, took several deep breaths, and relaxed.
The bar for his psychic shielding's load dropped from reddish amber to yellow to green to blue.
"Everyone OK?" Casey asked, slowly standing up.
"What was that?" Vuxten asked.
"Just bad old memories," Casey said dismissively. "Nothing major, nothing important."
"Oh," Vuxten felt completely out of his element.
"Just don't tell the Colonel you saw me do that, it freaks her out," Casey grinned.
It freaked me out too, Vuxten thought to himself but kept the thought to himself. "So what is that for?"
Casey flipped his face shield back down. "Imprinting a piece of warsteel," he said. He opened his hand and Vuxten saw that it was squeezed like a piece of taffy. "This is going to convince the Mantid big boys not to fight us."
"How?" Vuxten asked.
"So, warsteel can be imprinted by intense exposure to anger, love, fear, other intense basic emotions," Casey said. "So, I just imprinted it with battle fury."
"You're going to have your meme warn them if they fight you'll rip them in half, provide the piece of warsteel as psychic proof, to convince them to go into cold sleep till we can get them somewhere they can be unthawed," Vuxten said. putting it all together.
"You're quick, sir," Casey said. "I don't want to fight these guys, I don't think they want to fight, but getting them to the surface has problems."
Vuxten nodded. "Close quarters in one of the mining machines to travel to the surface. Who knows how they'll react to our battle buddies, you and Addox, not to mention all of us Telkan."
"Exactly, sir," Casey said. He moved over to the little robots he had built. He put a piece of warsteel in each of the robots, putting the warsteel in a grasper claw.
"All right. The pictogram basically says that me and Addox are dangers. We aren't mentioning you or the battle buddies. That we don't want him to get hurt," Casey started.
Vuxten listened to the rest of the plan.
"Sounds good, Sergeant," Vuxten said. "Let's hope it works."
-----------------
Cordexen stood under the air vent, eyes closed, fantasizing about standing in the long waving grain of where he had grown to maturity in the service of the queens. About the warmth of the sun on his carapace. How the wind smelled of ripening grain tended to by the russet and golden mantid of the servitor castes.
In the long forever he had been trapped in the facility he had admitted that given what he now knew, he would have preferred to have become a crop tender, overseeing the gold and russet mantids working the fields to provide grain for the herds.
The little robot rolled back in, beeping.
Cordexen looked up, happy to have his thought interrupted.
The hologram appeared and it took Cordexen a moment to take it all in.
It showed Cordexen next to a cryostasis tube. Then it split in two. One side showed Cordexen refusing. A bipedal primate came in, trying to be friendly. Radiation, marking psychic danger, radiated from the biped's head and Cordexen exploded. On the other side Cordexen got inside. It then showed the primate carrying the cryopod up to the surface where it opened and Cordexen got out to eat turkey in the sunshine.
Cordexen scoffed slightly. After all, he was the premier psychic predator in the galaxy?
The robot beeped and a robotic clamp raised up.
Cordexen recognized it as Substance W.
He reached out with one bladearm and tapped it.
YOU CAN NOT STOP ME! NOTHING CAN STOP ME! YOU CAN'T KILL THIS MOTHERFUCKER! NOBODY CAN SAVE YOU FROM ME! MY HATE KNOWS NO BOUNDARIES THAT YOUR ILK CAN FLEE BEYOND! YOU CAN NOT STOP ME! MY WRATH, MY RAGE, WILL NEVER EVER STOP!
Cordexen was almost overwhelmed by the images that slammed into his mind and threatened to tear him apart like cardboard trying to hold back an atomic explosion.
Ruined cities burning, blasted landscape, scorched skies. The sound of millions screaming in terror and agony. The terrible silence of being the only living thing.
He was wrapped in Substance W, in strength enhanced armor, wading into his foes. Screeching things, warped things, that his fists crushed, his hands tore asunder, that his guns shattered. Their jaws snapped at him, their caustic drool flooded from their jaws, poison billowed around him, fire surrounded him.
He was surrounded, overwhelmed, cut off, alone, by twisted mockeries of life that gibbered and howled and capered and danced even as they killed and destroyed.
But that wasn’t the worst to Cordexen’s senses.
The rage that filled him. The all consuming fury. A need to destroy, to smash, to hammer the enemy into nothing more than carbon paste that would drip from his fists. To howl and bellow his rage and fury at an uncaring universe even as he thirsted for carnage and mayhem.
His thoughts were charged with it, buoyed by it, flooded with it. Images of men and women and children being slaughtered did nothing more than fill him with even more rage, more anger, more fury, stoking into an all consuming fire that burned hotter than the atomic explosions that roared to life around him.
Nothing could quench that all consuming fury, that need to destroy.
It needed fed.
Cordexen slammed back, against the wall, panting. His abdomen heaved with each breath he took and he was aware that he was rubbing his vestigial wings together in anxiety as he stared in horror at the piece of Substance W as it slowly lowered down into the robot.
The front of the robot opened to show more turkey.
He moved forward, picking up the turkey, and went to sit on his command couch.
The robot turned and moved away, taking that piece of unbridled fury with it.
He suddenly found that he did care if he lived or died.
When asked, he would allow himself to be put in cryostasis.
Anything to avoid the creature that had touched that piece of Substance W, infusing it with more than wrath.
Cordexen knew he had tasted another being’s hate.
He did not wish to taste it again.
------------
Vuxten looked at Addox, who had just finished putting the last little green mantid on the grav-dolly, setting it gently on the warming pad. Two privates were covering the little greenies with another warming pad.
“They’re in cryostorage pods and being loaded onto Gobbler,” Vuxten said. “The rest of the pods are already loaded.”
“We’ll load these guys up then,” Addox said. “How long till we get to the surface?”
“Four hours,” Vuxten said. He looked around at the computer and control center. “The computer system will shut this facility down into standby mode in six hours, in case we have to come back.”
Addox nodded. “I’ll just be glad to get out of here.”
“Me too, Sergeant, me too,” Vuxten agreed.
------------------
General No’Drak had just returned from the latrine when the icon started flashing.
“Sir, Adder-One has made surface. They’re requesting mantid capable medical services and evac,” one of his aides said.
No’Drak felt a wave of relief fill him knowing the mountain was going to stay intact.
“May I ask a question?” Ge’ermo’o asked the Treana’ad general.
“Go ahead,” No’Drak said.
“Does it bother you that it seems anti-climatic?” Ge’ermo’o asked. “I have spent the past several days nervously awaiting an explosion that would turn the central mountain range hub into a fiery pit of doom but yet nothing happened.”
No’Drak gave the Treana’ad equivalent of a smile. “Yeah. It’s almost disappointing, isn’t it?”
Ge’ermo’o nodded. “Indeed.”
“Well, let’s find out what they found down there,” No’Drak said. He turned back to his aide. “Get medical teams in there. I want a full debrief as soon as possible,” he said. He turned back to Ge’ermo’o. “Why don’t you accompany me.”
“I would like that,” Ge’ermo’o said.
----------------
Casey stood next to Vuxten, watching the medical personnel unload the cryostasis pods from the massive mining machine. Glory was sitting behind them, mechanics going over her left leg and hip.
“You know, I thought we were going to end up shooting our way out, not bribing them,” Vuxten said.
“Shooting our way out would have been the easy way,” Casey shrugged. “We were ready for that. We got lucky.”
“How so?” Vuxten asked.
Casey looked down at the Telkan officer. “We had an arrangement of skillsets and knowledge that normally isn’t available without prior preparation. Between all of us we had the skills necessary to get out of a jam without having to resort to combat. That’s rare.”
Vuxten nodded and filed the information away.
Next time I might not be so lucky.
[first] [prev] [prev appearance][next]

The human gazed at the aliens around him and knew, just knew, he was in a LOT of trouble.
They were not much to look at. Small. Furry. Possessing faintly rodent like features. Their powerful hindlegs had them leaping quite large distances. When humans first encountered this species their initial impression was of some kind of hybrid of Kangaroos, harvest mice and Hobbits.
Their gentle and passive nature and their habit of communal sleeping had led humans to call them ‘Dormice’ out of affection.
The human wanted, very much wanted, to go back home and inform his fellow humans that this was a bad idea. A very bad idea.
The Yucani did not appreciate the term. The Yucani did not appreciate a lot of things. Mostly, right now, this group of about 400 of them did not appreciate him.
Their angry chirps and trills grow in intensity as they hopped angrily around him. Younger males would seemingly leap towards him at high speed, before landing close with a furious hissing noise. While the human could speak Yucani, he could barely understand them as they trilled so quickly. He held up his hands in what he hoped was a universal sign of surrender.
The human may not have been an expert on Yucani culture, but he was fairly sure he knew what a lynch mob looked like. The mass of small creatures had cornered him against a wall and continued to gaze at him balefully. Each passing moment they seemed to increase in anger, in their aggression, in their potential for violence.
A stone slammed into the wall besides him.
Three things happened immediately. The human saw the stones arrival seemed to give the Yucani the idea that this was a brilliant innovation.
Oh crap! They are going to stone me!
The largest Yucani in the mob, stood about seven feet away from him, suddenly removed a vicious looking knife, with a long serrated edge.
It’s gonna stab me!
And a roar of a Yucani constabulary patrol ship suddenly was heard, its distinctive sound causing many of the small creatures at the back to turn their heads.
The police! They’re gonna save me!
As the vechicle moved closer, more and more of the mob heard it and the human was very relieved to see that they didn’t start picking up rocks and the one with a knife, his large brown eyes filled with fury and rage, slowly returned the knife back to his clothing.
The craft landed, and six Yucani got out; their green uniforms were armoured, which made them look actually impressive (the human had long ago realised that only the larger members of the race were ever chosen for their constabulary).
They slowly hopped towards the mob, who had now turned and were trilling and squeaking in high pitched tones towards the newly arrived officers.
The human gulped down a breath of air. The sense of relief and gratitude he felt was immense. He was saved. As the officers made their way towards him, the crowd parting, he felt his legs go weak. He wanted to collapse. But he managed to hold it together long enough, to offer a grateful smile as one finally made his way towards him, dividing his fellow Yuanci like the Moses before the Red Sea.
“I am very happy to see you,” says the human, smiling down at the Yucani constabulary officer. It responds by removing a short grey metallic pole and jabbing it into the humans leg.
Pain. SO much pain. A searing, agonising, exploding pain that begins in his leg and races through every single nerve cluster in his body. The human convulses and screams, his bladder empties and he almost instantly drops into unconsciousness from the agony. He falls into a crumpled heap against the wall. The Yucani officer, ignoring the little cheer that had began from his fellow species, gazed down at the human with contempt and spat.
Two months later…
The young human, manacled and bound is thrown into the small conference room the aliens had built for this meeting. His eyes glance up and fall upon the first human face he had seen in many weeks.
“Oh God, thank you. Are you here to save me?”
The other human was in his fifties; his eyes bore the look of a man who had seen many things, perhaps too many. His suit was well made, sensible, if not slightly on the conservative side.
In response to the question he smiles gently and says, “Kid, I’m fairly sure only God can save you. But I am here to try and help with the mess you are in.”
Relief, mixed with wild joy fill the prisoners face. The younger man spots a chair to sit in (the room had the familiar setting of two human shaped chairs and a desk between them), and falls into it in a heap, his manacled hands landing heavily upon the table.
“Oh, thank you! You need to get me off this planet. The conditions I’ve been kept in have been awful. I am totally isolated. A hole in the ground with a large vent in the ceiling. They throw food down to me. The place stinks.”
The older man raises an eyebrow, “That’s good. You getting off lightly.”
“Lightly? The entire thing stinks like a sewer.”
“That’s because it probably IS a sewer,” shrugs the older man, reaching for a briefcase by his side.
“What?”
“Yucani prisons. They don’t incarcerate anyone but worst offenders on their world. The closest they have to prisons are specially made sewers.”
“That’s…”
“Tell me, have random Yucani been coming along and urinating and crapping into your cell as they pass?”
“What? No. That’s horrible.”
As the older man places his briefcase upon the table between them, he smiles a cold, tight smile, “The Yucani word for ‘prisoner’ literally translates into English as ‘Eaters of Our Shit’. I think the fact that they are throwing you human food and not pissing on you qualifies as light treatment.”
The younger man’s jaw just drops. A stunned look of absolute horror crosses his face. The older human uses this as an excuse to open his briefcase, remove a heafty file in a manilla cover out (it lands on the table with a satisfying heavy sound), closes the briefcase and places it on the floor besides him.
“Are you from the Embassy?”
“No. I just arrived in-world an hour ago. Four days at warp. My guts feel mushy.”
“Oh. Are you a lawyer?”
“I afraid not. Formally the excuse the Embassy will give you is there are no humans conversant in the intricacies of Yucani jurisprudence to be able to offer effective advice. Off the record? No lawyer in the entire solar system would touch your case. So, they sent me. I’m a specialist.”
“What in?”
“Apparently being human,” says the older man, who opens the folder and begins scanning the pages underneath. The younger man is too confused to say anything which suits the older one just fine. He glances up into the scared eyes of the prisoner.
“Andrew Montgomery Eversham, born 2118, Britain. British? Should have figured. Father was an engineer on Ares station, mother was… French. Well that explains much.”
“What does my mother have to do with anything?”
The older man gazes him up and down and asks, “Only child huh?”
“Yes. Why?”
“Thought so. Right, Mr Eversham. Do you know what they are charging you with?”
“No one has told me anything at all. I was performing, and the next thing I know I was being chased by a mob of angry Dormice, and then one of their police…”
“Yucani. Not Dormice.”
“What?” Eversham’s eyes widen, and he nods, “Yes, right. I know. I figured that out. But you know its just us here.”
“Saying Dormouse to describe a Yucani is like being home and using the word ‘Kike’. It’s a derogative term. An insult. Maybe not enough to get you punched, but we don’t do that.”
“Alright. Yes. I understand. I will try. Good job you ain’t Jewish eh?”
“Bad news I’m afraid. I am.”
“Oh.”
The older man scans through the documents and frowns.
“You are charged with a multitude of offenses. The first of which is Causing Great Disgust of Public Morals; Crude and Offensive Language; Heresy towards the Gods of the Yucani; Causing a Disturbance of the Peace… what were you doing?”
“I was doing my routine.”
“Routine?”
“I’m a comedian. Stand up.”
There was a raised eyebrow.
“You are comedian?”
“Yes.”
“And you caused this reaction?”
“Apparently.”
“Gonna say Kid, I’d work on your act.”
Eversham blinks and his face contorts with frustration, “Are you here to help me or not?”
The older man however just gazes at the file before him, “As well as the above you are charged with Inciting a Yucani to Wish to Commit Violence- this is a serious offense by itself, but they have charged you with inciting every individual in the crowd who heard you. So that’s 496 separate charges. And given each one carries a possible death sentence…”
“Death sentence? I could die?”
The older man smiles coldly across the table, “And we haven’t even gotten onto the serious allegations yet. So far, its just been the warm up. Now it says here that you perform under a different name.”
“Yeah. Abe Froman.”
“What?”
“Abe Froman. You know from that old movie.”
“What old movie?”
“A 20th century classic. Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. The character of Abe Froman- the Sausage King of Chicargo? You must have heard of it?”
The older human raises his eyebrows high.
“No ‘Abe’ I haven’t. Neither have the Yucani. Which means they arrested someone called Abe Froman, only then to discover his real name is Andrew Eversham.”
“It’s my stage name.”
“The Yuctani don’t have concepts for ‘stage names’. All they know is a human arrived on planet with one name and then started using another name once here. And THIS is why they have charged you with espionage.”
“ESPIONAGE!!?”
“Yes. Specifically, because of the two names thing. And THEN because they think you are some kind of human agent, but don’t know what exactly you could have been up to, they assume the worst and charged you with everything they think you COULD have been here to do. That’s what the rest of the folder is.”
Andrew gazes at the thick pages with a look of absolute terror. The older humans eyes begin scanning; “So, from the top, ‘Suspected of Wishing to Assassinate the Emperor of the Yucani; Suspected of wishing to Assassinate the Chancellor of the Emperor of the Yucani…”
He moves forward a few pages.
“Suspected of wishing to put poison in the water supply of the cities of Heshis and Jebin…”
“But I…”
The older man lifts up more pages and smiles, “Suspected of seeking to violate the sacred virginity of the High Priestess of Rho- that’s impressive.”
“Are you serious? This is a joke.”
“Deadly serious,” hisses the old man, who closes the file with a loud thump. He fixes Eversham with a fierce stare.
“I gotta tell you ‘Abe’- you are in so much trouble right now that EarthGov is an inch away from washing their hands of you, throwing you to the Yucani and letting them take dumps on your for the rest of your short life. I am, literally, the only hope in hell you have of surviving and if I’m being honest- it aint much of a hope.”
“But it was just a few jokes,” mews Eversham, his eyes welling up with tears.
“Who thought it would be a good idea to travel to another planet and do stand up comedy?”
“My agent.”
“Your agent? What did you do? Sleep with his wife?”
“No,” comes the panicked reply.
“Didn’t you even do some basic research on what the Yucani considered humour?”
“No. I thought it would be more interesting to just turn up and see how they reacted to human jokes… you know… see the raw reaction.”
The older man is briefly speechless. He takes a breath and says quietly, “Gotta admire your chutzpah Kid. Not smart but that’s a LOT of chutzpah…”
“Why would EarthGov throw me under the bus? I don’t understand. I screwed up sure, but…”
He stops as the older man just holds up a hand. He gazes into his eyes as the first human he has seen in months speaks very quietly.
“Here’s the deal. As far as we can tell, a couple of months ago, this young human leaves Earth and flies to Yucani homeworld. He passes customs, checks into a Yucani version of a hotel and asks if they have versions of ‘clubs’. He discovers that, being social creatures, Yucani do indeed have these places where they gather to be entertained. Brilliant says he. The human goes to one of these. This human, he is not entirely ignorant- he’s learned basic Yucani. Not much, but enough to converse conversationally.”
The older mans stare nails the young man to his chair.
“So he goes there and meets the Yucani in charge. Explains that he is a ‘human entertainer’. Asks if he can perform. The Yucani, like the rest of his species? They get on well with us. We share similar traits. We have had good relations since the Treaty of Commerce and Travel was signed fifteen years ago. Sure, he says. He announces this human. Who gets on stage. But does not sing. Doesn’t dance. He talks. He talks to them. He says some pretty damn insulting things about them. He ignores their obvious growls of displeasure.”
“I thought they were laughing!”
“You thought wrong kid. The crowd sat for about twenty minutes getting madder and then decides enough is enough. They chase him out of the club, across two streets and corner him outside of his hotel. Where he is arrested and not lynched because the club owner rang the constabulary. Have I missed anything out?”
“No,” says Eversham quietly.
“So the EarthGov embassy gets informed of all this and do what they do and move to smooth ruffled fur. It’s just a misunderstanding they say. It’s an easy mistake they say. Their records show he is JUST a comedian. But here’s the thing kid. Yucani don’t have comedians. They don’t get it. So the Ambassador tries to explain it to them. Which in turn leads to a discussion about a very unique trait we humans have that Yucani do NOT have. Know what that is?”
“A sense of humour?” Eversham says, literally unable to help himself. He is surprised at the response.
“Well spotted. They have one but it is nothing like our own. They became fascinated at our sense of humour and then in quick measure, horrified at it. They find the very essence of human humour to be offensive, aggressive, cruel and vicious. Their government is considering tearing up the Treaty between our two races. Literally, your little stunt has caused the MOTHER of all diplomatic incidents.”
“I… I had… no idea,” stammers the Englishman.
“That comes as no surprise to me whatsoever,” comes the hissed reply. The older man sighs and rubs his eyes and continues. “Now the GOOD news is, given the severity of the charges you face, the nature of the issue, and the sheer monumental insanity of this whole thing, the Yucani have decided to not bother with all the minor courts, judges, appleant proceadures. You are going to be tried by the top court on the planet. The Ultimate Court. One trial, one hearing, one.”
Eversham just nods.
“The bad news is, it won’t be you alone on trial. It will be the entire human species. And our sense of humour. Somehow, just somehow, we have to convince these creatures that actually our sense of humour isn’t just an awful trait that they find offensive. And that means somehow, just somehow, I’ve got to defend human comedy in front of a species who has no concept of comedy at all.”
The older man sighs.
“And I thought raising my eldest daughter was tough!”
There is a silence. The full weight of the moment clearly hits the young man. He lowers his head and fights back tears. Eventually, without looking up, he says quietly.
“I’m sorry.”
“I’m sure you are kid.”
“I’ve been a fool.”
“This much EVERYONE can agree upon.”
“I never meant to cause this…”
The older man sighs again, “I know you didn’t kid. Everyone knows you didn’t MEAN it. Doesn’t make it any easier for folks back home.”
Andrew Eversham nods. Displaying the stoicism his nation was famed for, he remains very quiet. Tears drip off his nose but he makes no sound. The older man just looks at him, an iota of sympathy creeping into his sad eyes. Moments pass. Eversham finally speaks.
“It… maybe it would be better if everyone just wrote me off. Said I was insane. Aberrational. Throw me under the bus. Let everyone get on with it?”
A small sad smile crosses the older mans face.
“To be blunt, that is what a LOT wanted to do back in EarthGov. A lot still do. But it’s too late for that. The whole race is in the mix now. Like it or not, we gotta jump on this ride and see it through to the end. And this is why they sent me. Because some fool thinks that if anyone can win this, can somehow get you off, its me.”
“Are you a diplomat?”
“No, no, nothing like that.”
“So why did they send you?”
“Beats me kid. I mean I have a rough idea, but really? I think they sent me because they are desperate.”
“What do you do for a living?”
A smile.
“For my sins? I’m a Rabbi.”
Four Days Later; The Grand Chamber of the Yucani Ultimate Court
Rabbi Johnathan Cohen had to admit- it was impressive. For such a small race, the Yucani could do ‘grand’. As he looked around the chamber of the highest judiciary on their planet, he could imagine it being used for an equally impressive purpose back on Earth. Of course on Earth the décor and colour scheme would be a tad different. More imposing.
Regal even. This?
It reminded him of the garish interior of some Western Bordelo from the 1890’s if he was honest. Still, the gold and purples and reds didn’t distract from the gravitas of the assembly or the importance of the room.
Or the size of the crowd.
EarthGov told him it was going to be a big show. They were not kidding. The five judges (known as a ‘claw’ the standard designation in all Yucani trials apparently) were looking impressive in their yellow robes of office, but they were upstaged by everyone else. The importance of the nature of this trial had demanded that anyone who was anyone would be here.
Rabbi Cohen could see the heir to the Yucani Empire had arrived (representing his father and 83 siblings); the Minister for Relations With The Hairless Ones (the formal designation for the poor Yucani official who dealt with humans) was also there, talking to him in hurried trills.
There were delegations of all the great and the good of this species, including The High Matron of the Sacred Priestesses of Rho, whose arrival caused him to smile inwardly. And it wasn’t just the Yucani who were here.
The unique nature of the diplomatic spat had caused interest from a half dozen other species. He saw the Ambassador of the Tu-Kek sitting within a glass encased sphere; the Emissary of the Golden Hive, which sat unmoving upon a perch, witnessing all that it relayed to the collective hive mind of the crew of the colony/ship that had arrived in orbit a few days before.
There was even a Frosh there, hovering enigmatically in its encounter suit, and the Frosh didn’t seem interested in anything except fractal mathematical equations most of the time. None of the species knew a damn thing about them- highly advanced but utterly abstract.
And there were the other humans. The Ambassador was there looking nervous (he was partly to blame for messing up the aftermath of the event- his job was on the line); the Commodore of Human Forces in the nearest sector was to his right, looking bored (only here because EarthGov was slightly worried this could end in a war). The attractive secretary (who everyone whispered the Ambassdor was sleeping with), sat on the other side of the Commodore, his handsom eyes glancing at the proceedings nervously.
And this ignored the several hundred normal Yucani who had managed to gain attendance to the trial. Rabbi Cohen took a sip of water and muttered to himself, “No pressure then Johnathan…”
“What?”
He turned to the rather pathetic figure of Andrew Eversham besides him. He wasn’t chained, and he had been issued new clothing, but his eyes were sunken and he looked the very image of a broken man.
“Nothing kid,” he says kindly, “you ready for this?”
“No,” comes the dispondant reply. For some reason Johnathan smiles at this.
“That’s the way. Honesty is always the best policy.”
The beating of a gavel is enough to start the proceedings. Ear pieces to allow fluent translations of all sides words are donned, and Rabbi Cohen takes a deep breath. Yucani trials followed a slightly differing format than humans- but the jist was roughly the same. The ‘prosecution’ he noticed was a grey furred alien, whose somewhat rotund body revealed him to be a corpulent and well fed member of his species. No doubt some great legal mind.
The trial passed quickly enough- the facts were not in dispute and indeed the defence case being as it was (the human in question was ignorant of any harm he could cause and meant no malice) was not even seriously contested by the state. No, in truth the real reckoning lay in the deeper issue of human sense of humour, and how in would colour future Human-Yucani relations.
Eventually, after about an hour, the rotund alien hopped back towards his table and began trilling in low, dark tones. In Cohen’s ear the translation came across clearly.
Which leads us, most supreme claw, to the crux of the issue. The human’s case rests upon a simple defense; he was innocent of any illwill towards our peoples, but sought to ‘entertain’ us with an example of human ‘humour’. This has led to our people investigating this aspect of the aliens personalities, and what we have found is disturbing indeed.
Johnathan watched closely as little creature trilled and squeaked in strong tones, his brown eyes forever gazing around him; while he was no expert on Yucani bodylanguage, Cohen knew showboating when he saw it. The little fat furball was playing to the crowd, playing upon the sensibilities of his race.
We have found humans delight in mockery; in lampooning; in deriding. They claim they do the same to themselves, as if this excuses them, as if it gives them the writ to inflict such things upon the rest of the galaxy. For a human, mockery of their institutions and their leaders is to be expected. But as we all KNOW- such things are anathema to we Yucani; where the familial bonds of love and honour are as natural to us as breathing…
The Rabbi tried hard not to roll his eyes. The prosecution was laying it on thick. Really thick. He watched as the creature hopped and trilled, waving its little arms about, modulating its voice expertly. He could see every Yucani in the room moved by this; their noses twitched, eyes welled up, their tails would go back and forth violently.
Carefully the Rabbi listened as the little creature moved onto the mainstay of his argument.
Is it not said by the Goddess Rho, that ‘all things shall be in its natural place, from star to planet, from ruler to bondman’; does not Rho teach us that there is only joy to be found in ‘careful appreciation of the natural order of all things’? Is it not said within our most sacred texts that ‘The ONLY path towards elevation of a soul, is through acceptance of its time within the body’? These are the foundations of our very society, our very civilisations…
The prosecution begins waxing lyrical about the virtues of the civilisation of the Yucani, but Johnathan was only half listening. There was a religious aspect to this after all?
As he mused on the sacred words of the Rho, part of him wondered if the wiley President of Earth was smarter than he liked to appear. Did the old guy KNOW this was going to be their approach? Is this why he sent him?
His thoughts are broken as the prosecution brings his long and somewhat vaudevillian diatribe to its conclusion…
…which bases itself upon mockery, and lampoon and cruelty towards living things are ideas we Yucani cannot afford to allow infect our civilisation. They gnaw at its roots. They will in time infest our nests. Supreme Claw, I must ask, no implore, no BEG of you, to issue an edict which petitions our Emperor to reconsider allowing these humans access to our world. Lest one night, one terrible night, the scenes we saw, where a single voice defiles the virtues of our culture are repeated… but this time by one of our own children.
Cohen takes a breath and smiles to himself. He glances over at the ambassador who looks back nervously. Besides him the quiet voice of Andrew Eversham says, “I really screwed this all up didn’t I?”
“Yes kid. But look on the bright side?”
“There’s a bright side?”
“It’s not everyday you get to be accused of defiling an entire civilisation. Think about how it will look on your CV?”
Rabbi Cohen stands as his opposing side sits down heavily. He picks up a small card wherein the correct honourifics needed to address the court are clearly printed and runs through the formalities quickly enough. That done he gazes at the five judges for a moment, and shrugs.
“The human sense of humour. Where do I, one of our species, even BEGIN to start describing this complex thing that lies at the heart of who we are, to your most Supreme Claw? There are great minds on Earth who have wondered about this for many centuries and reached no conclusion. And yet it is clear, I must. So let me try and break this down into a way I feel the Yucani can understand and I hope, accept it, for all its imperfections.”
“It is a question often asked by us humans- what makes us laugh? What is the source of our humour? The prosecution would have you believe it is cruelty and mockery. And from the surface it would appear so. But allow me to illustrate that human humour is complicated and made up of many levels.”
He strides out from behind his table, keeping his voice low and his eyes focused on the judges.
“The starting point is incongruity. We humans like you Yucanti had an issue with incongruity. Evolutionary speaking our ancestors, like yours, lived lives fearing predators; both our species in our ancient past? We would gaze, eyes to the horizon, forever searching for danger. We learned well the safety in patterns, the formal, fixed nature of our surroundings. Anything out of place, incongruous, we would be drawn to. It spelt danger, it spelt threat.”
“For my species, long after we had evolved past the need to spot such things, we had this trait inherent still within us. Why do I stress this? When humans spot an incongruity in nature, when it does not threaten us? We laugh. An exclamation of relief. Identical to what Yucani call the ‘musk of fear ending’. For your species it is natural and normal. Same with ours. Yours is scent. Ours is sound. Identical reactions. A thing we have in common yes?”
A few aliens nod at this. A good start.
“However this is not the full basis of our humour. Incongruity cannot be the full extent of our humour. If I was to find a shoe in a dishwasher, or you were to find Gurnix inside a Flubuton, that in itself would not be the cause of humour to us. It would be odd, but not humorous. The key for us humans is that incogurity has to be of a correct kind. For humans it has to involve a shift of perspective. The great human psychologist, Koestler, pointed out that for humans this shift is all important. An example would be…”
He nods to one of the technicians and displayed in the air in both languages are words.
When is a door not a door?
When it is a jar!
“This is an example of that type of humour. Incongruity presenting a perspective shift.”
There is utter silence from the audience and he scans the translation and smiles.
“Of course the joke does not translate at all to your race. The play on contexts and language is entirely lost to you. But notice how my fellow humans did not laugh either. Such things are primitive; plays on words, sudden perspective shifts. Proto-Jokes almost. I raise it to establish the baseline of our humour.”
“We humans have many of these jokes. We call them things like ‘knock-knock jokes’ and ‘lightbulb jokes’. They are not truly appealing to our humour, the highest compliment they can get is to be called clever, for you see they are missing a particular element of humour which the prosecution has done well to highlight.”
“What they miss, is a degree of cruelty.”
The little rotund advocate for the state stands and begins trilling in high pitched tones. Cohen waits for the translation to come through.
So you admit that humans revel in cruelty?
He smiles, “No.”
But you just said that your humour needs cruelty!
“A certain type, yes. But not the type you described.”
Semantics! Your supreme clawness, I urge you end this nonsense…
We will hear the human defence, intones the oldest, long whiskered judge, As we are curious as not how they will justify this.
“I thank the indulgence of the court,” smiles Cohen, and he takes a breath.
“There remains, there always will, an aspect of human behaviour that is mistaken for our humour but is not. This is how we humans use laughter. Laughter is a physical response to things. Mostly to humour yes, but also, and this is where the prosecution made their mistake, it can be a sound of triumph. At such times the sound is indeed dark and unmistakably cruel. Many have observed that for all the love we have of the sound of laughter it is by volume and in ferocity, an aggressive sound. And there exists many examples of our species using laughter when committing acts of cruelty.”
He shrugs, “It was only a few centruies ago that it became unfashionable to visit the places we kept our psychically and mentally disable for the purpose of laughing at them. We thought it good sport to look upon their pain. All of human history contains accounts of how public executions were raucous affairs, we would attend and celebrate the killing of one of our own, often with laughter as the guillotine came down upon them…”
Rabbi Cohen sighs heavily, “When I was younger I once saw a picture. Germany. The 1930’s. A small child, a Jewish boy, was being forced to clean the street on his hands and knees. Around him stood adults and they were laughing. This isn’t human humour, it’s cruelty. There are countless episodes of torturers laughing as they inflict pain. Of laughter being heard from mass shooters, from soldiers in war, at our most darkest moments. These things I do not refute. But point out a similarity of experience between our species.”
“Every species in the galaxy knows Yucani are fastidious in cleaning, how they value healthy and clean fur. No Yucani would ever dose another in urine for example. What then of your treatment of prisoners? Are we to take that as indicative of Yucani finding such things acceptable? Of course not. It is a certain, dark aspect of your society, misunderstood except BY your species. This is the same as using laughter by humans in moments of cruelty. It is separate FROM the debate about humour.”
He takes a breath and a sip of water before continuing.
“No, to say human humour is incognuity mixed with cruelty is too simplistic. It has to be the right type of cruelty…”
What do you mean the right type of cruelty? asks the supreme judge.
Johnathan Cohen thinks for a moment and smiles, “On Earth, a wise man called Mel Brooks once asked the question- what is the difference between tragedy and comedy?”
What was his answer?
“Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you fall down a manhole cover and die.”
The Ambassadors secretary bursts out laughing, the sound carries across the room, ALL eyes fall upon him. Hurridly he covers his mouth, going red in the process.
“And you see the very nature of it right there. A sudden juxtaposition of incongruity and a certain element of cruelty, producing an involuntary response. Laughter.”
He pauses for a moment and says quietly, “In our distant past, in the year 1991 of our calander, a human writer called David Barry said the following, “The most important humor truth of all is that to really see the humour in a situation, you have to have perspective. ‘Perspective’ is derived from two ancient Greek words: ‘persp’ meaning ‘something bad happens to someone else’ and ‘ective’ meaning ‘ideally someone like Donald Trump’.”
At this all the humans bursts out laughing and Rabbi Cohen holds up his hands, “Again- the involuntary reaction. I won’t bother to explain it your honours, just to say that last statement was a joke designed to highlight something.”
“The core cruelty here is that someone must lose dignity. As we humans say be brought down a peg or two, or be knocked off a pedestal. It can be used by the mob as a weapon, and YES, it does have a subversive power. One of our ancients, a man called Plato, thought humour was destabalsing to the state and should be banned from it, which for us humans? Tell us much about the kind of guy Plato actually was.”
See? This is my allegation Supreme Claw. The human ADMITS what I am saying is true…
“What we do you got right, WHY we do it you got wrong. I heard you speaking about how Rho says we must appreciate the time our souls connect with our bodies correct?”
The prosecution’s whiskers twitch a little, and carefully it says Yes
“Well, the most basic, the most universal, the most raw and successful brand of comedy, the one my clients version was but a verbal variation of, the one that transcends the many human languages, is humour based upon just that. The realisation that there is a split between the soul, the essence of a human, and these dull, mundane frail bodies we exist in. What a psychologist once called the ‘dualism of subtle mind and inert matter’. “
“We call that humour, slapstick.”
He grins to himself.
“The core of all slapstick is the ‘the blow and the fall’. It can be as simple as a human slipping on the skin of recently eaten fruit. Or elaborate and detailed, but at its core is something very important. We understand, totally, the immortality of the soul, what the Goddess Rho holds to essence of being, but we also recognise the limitations of the body. Your species finds solance in holding to the immutable structure of the universe to reconcile this correct? We reconcile it by finding humor when we are reminded that these frail bodies cannot match the perfection of what lies within.”
“All of this is just by way of explaining this…”
An image appears on screen. It is a small human infant, wearing a sundress, maybe aged about 2 or 3 years old. Walking towards them is an image of Rabbi Cohen. He smiles at the child, and walks towards her and then, suddenly, slips and lands on his backside, a look of mock shock on his face. And at that, the court room is filled with the sound of the small child laughing, laughing hard; uncontrollable laughter, a sound that makes every human in the room smile. The image ends.
“Your honours, THAT is the most beloved sound on my home planet. The sound of an innocent child laughing. It transcends cultures and languages, transcends time. It delights us like NO other sound. We can spend hours just trying to get children to make it.”
“Consider then what you just saw? An innocent- capable of no higher functions of thought; an infant. It’s reactions are primal. But what DID you see? An infant is able to identify itself as a being, and me as a separate being. It saw the classic imposition upon my being by this mundane body. I tripped and slipped on my tuchus. A sudden juxtaposition of incongruity. One second I am stood, the next I am not. Mixed with the RIGHT kind of cruelty. Misfortune happening to another. But notice my reaction- my mock smile? My grand daughter realises that it is not hurting me and responds with a spontainious reaction of laughter.”
“THIS is at its base, the core of ALL human comedy and humour; it is based on empathy, and innocence. Not for her convoluted explanations involving cruelty and mockery. Just instinct. As we grow we develop more sophisticated methods to find humour but at its core? That is it. Is that not a demonstration of how our humour is as identical as your veneration of the soul within the body? The acceptance of the duality of body and spirit?”
Rabbi Cohen smiles, gently and turns to the Judges.
“Your honours, I urge you to dismiss this case. And I urge you to do so because let me tell you what will happen to the defendant. He will be released. He will return home. And when he does? He will become the subject of many, many jokes. He bore no ill will in his heart towards your race- but he was a schmuck.”
What is a schmuck?
“It’s a certain type of human. For the Yucani? A schmuck will forever be my client.”
In his chair the stand up comedian opens his mouth and then closes it. Defeated.
“He will return home and we will make stories about what he did. We will laugh at his foolishness, his ignorance, his pride….”
And we so gonna have fun with you little fat gerbil, he thinks but does not say as he eyes the prosecutor.
“And our ambassador will sit down with the Crown Prince and they will add a provision to the Treaty of Trade and friendship that says, based on the psychological underpinnings of our two species, and given we recognise that we share in common a belief of the duality of our existence and indeed of the existence of the soul, that human humour is a natural byproduct of our evolution like musk scenting is part of yours. Neither of our species share these traits, so lets not inflict it upon the other huh?”
“That would seem to me to be a most equitable and fair solution.”
The judges consulte one another, the Yucani remove their translation devices, but Johnathan can see their chirpings are appreciative. He may not have convinced them humans are FUNNY… but he may have convinced them to let this slide. He sits down at his table, gathers up his case note and begins to place them inside his briefcase.
Besides him, the comedian gazes over and sees there, amidst the papers in the briefcase, a hard backed book… ‘On the origins of humor: why Neaderthals can’t take a joke’ by Dr Johnathan Cohen, and a sudden realisation crosses his mind and he whispers, “You wrote that?”
“When not studying the Torah, I dabble in evolutionary psychology. It pays the bills.”
“Thank you.”
“Hey kid, what we gonna do? Let aliens say we bad for liking to laugh? What’s next? We are sinful because we breath?”
As the court recesses, and the judges leave to make their judgement, Rabbi Cohen stands and turns to make his way over to the Ambassadour when he is stopped suddenly. There, before him, stands the representative of the Frosh. It’s towering form, its huge encounter suit, obscuring the being from within. It’s cold black visage, plain glass of some kind, looms balefully over him.
In all the hustle of the Yucani leaving, no one notices this member of the most elusive and obscure of all the alien species, make his way to stand before the human. Johnathan clears his throat and goes, “Hello?”
The alien just stands.
“Can I help you?”
The black screen suddenly flashes brief, fractal images upon it, who flare in and out of existing as quick as a human blink. At the same time a warbling high pitch noise emits from deep in the chest area.
The Rabbi blinks and says, “What?”
The images and the noise is repeated again. Realisation dawning, Rabbi Cohen places down his briefcase and picks up the translator device he was using back on the table.
“Say that again please?”
The images flash and the noise is made and two seconds later words form in the humans ear… a simple message…
Pull my finger.
There is a silence. Around them the Yucani chitter and trill but Johnathan Cohen begins to smile…

[first] [prev] [next]
General No'Drak stared at the holotank that showed the disposition of all of his forces on planet. Precursors were recalling their machines, performing a fighting retreat, trying to get off planet with as many resources as they could while exposing themselves to as little fire as possible. In three places as soon as Third Armor started moving in on them the Precursors abandoned their resources and ancillary machines and just lifted off, running hard for orbit.
General No'Drak changed the orders to let Space Force handle any vessel that lifted off, sparing the planet from debris falls that were registering in the megatons in some places.
A meme popped up on the holotank window showing Third Armor morale and he shook his head. It was an old one, but put together by one of the logistics personnel that were finally coming off shift after refitting and reloading Great Herd armored units.
It showed a burning Balor with another Precursor staring at it thinking "On one hand, it represented fifteen years of resource gathering, on the other hand, I'm pretty sure there was a human dancing on the hull."
A spin on the spider in the cockpit or house meme, the big Treana'ad thought to himself.
His conscious gaze went to the icon for the burrowing mining machine, now four miles down and making a beeline for the junction of the mountain ranges in the middle of the supercontinent.
If, somehow, you blow that mountain up, my determined little Telkan officer, you'll start a chain reaction that eventually separate the continental plates into different continents rather than the super continent that has been there for billions of years, he thought to himself. However, having witnessed what your people are capable of, how determined your people can be, I'm sure the planet will break before First Telkan.
He lit a cigarette, watching the busy command center, only Ge'ermo'o keeping him company as the Terran Confederate military fought through the night.
To what are you heading toward with my men, you metal monster? No'Drak wondered silently. What horrors are they being subjected to?
The icon didn't answer, just kept moving at a steady 100 miles per hour on its five thousand mile journey.
"...so the kid, right, he gets top grades all the way through 3rd grade. We're talking top marks across the board, blows away testing scores, everything," Casey said, sitting on the edge of a scaffolding and chewing a piece of stimgum. "The end of the school year comes and the Dad says: 'son of mine, first of my line, what shall I bequeath upon thee for such outstanding marks in regards to your schooling?'" Casey idly pulled a small device out of the creation engine attached to his heavy gun and attached it to his frame as he kept talking.
Sergeant Addox looked up and shook his head, then went back to watching the device Casey had pulled off his loading frame. Vuxten made sure his Marines were comfortable, making sure that the platoon was relaxing, not letting the stress of their trip dull their edge. Half of them were sleeping, some were playing cards, and about a dozen of the greenies were playing a complex turn based multiplayer 4X game that looked like it had been going on for at least years.
"The kid looks at his dad and says: 'I wish for thee to gift unto me a pink golfball, patron of my familial line. One, not more, not less, of the shade of pink. I wish for this simple thing, mine pater, for I do not desire to view the House Mouse Planet, nor do I wish to gaze upon vast worlds you offer me through virtual reality. Nay, father mine, gift unto me just a simple pink golfball," Casey said, waving his hands around, the loading frame whining as he did so. "The father, knowing his son has indomitable will, concedes to his beloved offspring's demands and gifts the lad with a single pink golfball."
"Did the kid's language change?" Second Lieutenant Plunex asked, frowning. "My Confederate Standard is not the best, but I feel his language changed."
"Shh, you'll mess up the joke," Casey said, grinning.
"Your communication thingy is blinking, Casey," Addox said.
"Boojums never fail ya," Casey said. He moved up and knelt down next to it. "It's slow, but reliable."
"Why don't we use it for our standard communication?" Plenux asked. "I've heard there's problems with some of the quantum devices out in the Hesstla Theater."
"Because it's spooky particles," Casey said. "Boojums can suddenly decide they don't want to work, or might decide they're going to pretend to be a different particle, or ignore the flux of the other boojums they're mated to. They're the strange matter of normal particles and like a purrboi or a Treana'ad clan matron do what they want."
"How do you know this, Sergeant?" Plunex asked. "I thought you were Ordnance."
Casey looked up, grinning behind his clear face mask. The eye patch made it look decidedly villainous, Vuxten thought. "Wasn't born old, kid."
"Seriously?" Addox said. "Tell the kid."
Casey laughed. "All right. Boojums are the only thing that can reliably send communications out of a Nivenring or Doom Tube," he said. "Damn, long message. Not a template, though. Looks like text."
"Doom tube?" Vuxten asked, sitting down on a blank console. He'd queried his datalink, but all he had gotten back was an human in gray metal armor with a green cape standing next to water park slide staring at a small child saying "You find yourself in the Doom Tube, child."
It didn't make sense to him.
Addox looked up. "Imagine a tube, walls a hundred miles thick, five thousand miles wide, two hundred thousand miles long. Imagine it's full of mountains, lakes, rivers, the like. The atmosphere is prevented from spilling out by walls a thousand miles high. A fusion reactor travels down the length over a period of twelve hours before it exits the tube, moves to the outside, and travels the length back charging the solar panels."
Plunex gave a slow whistle. "What's the point of it?"
"Well, it's a non-planetary habitat. Usually they move at about point two C between stars on a careful path to avoid being captured by stellar systems," he said.
"Humans make them?" Plunex asked. "Why, aren't there enough planets."
Addox shrugged. "Nobody knows who makes them, kid."
The lights stopped blinking, only three green ones burning.
"Welp, better check my text messages," Casey said, squatting down. The frame hissed and thumped and Addox had to turn his head when a piston released steam.
"Really, dude, you're gonna do me in the face?" Addox said, mock coughing.
"I'm demanding on a first date," Casey said, touching the box with a finger. Vuxten saw the lights come on on Casey's datalink. Casey stood there for a moment, closed his one eye for a moment, then opened it.
"All right, my buddy in 108th MI let me know that this thing is heading for the junction of the mountain ranges," Casey said. He turned his palm over, projecting a map up with the holo-emitter in his palm that was Confederate Military standard. "We've got another fifty hours at current speeds to reach the junction range. Precursors are withdrawing, looks like we broke their morale."
"They're machines," Private First Class Shutruk said. "How can you break a machine's will?"
Casey gave a snort. "Pretty easy, actually. Their coding is obvious once you think about it."
"Bullshit," Shutruk said. Casey looked at him and he flushed. "Bullshit, Sergeant," he said in a much more even tone.
Casey chuckled. "OK, the Precursors are all: there's only enough ice cream for one, right?" He asked. Shutruk nodded. "So, it's all about resources, all about resource consumption and resource allocation. They view the universe as a zero sum game, like most races who never get too deep into spooky particles. So, if Trucker's out there gutting Precursors like Christmas turkeys
--turkey is delicious-- 471i said.
"then the Precursors have to decide if the amount of resources it takes to take a planet away from us is more or less than what they will reap once they own the planet," Casey said. "Since we're shredding the Precursors out there, ripping them apart probably faster than they can produce them, it mechanically and logically breaks their will."
Shutruk nodded and stayed silent except for a small embarrassed sounding 'oh'.
"Never be afraid to ask me a question, kid. All privates are stupid, a private is made up of being young, dumb, and full of cum, it's up to men like me and Addox to educate you, train you up right, so you don't fuck up and blow the Lieutenant here's leg off," Casey said, grinning. "He might find that a bit disconcerting."
Shutruk nodded.
"Oh, and you're more than five steps from your weapon. You're dead," Casey said, and closed his eye again. "You were my troop, you'd be beating your face."
Vuxten checked Shutruk's anxiety metrics, noticing that he'd relaxed despite the Terran NCO pointing out he'd walked too far away from his weapon.
After a few more minutes Casey straightened up, picking up the device and slapping it into an empty spot on the loading frame.
Vuxten had noted that the closer he looked at that loading frame, the further out of spec it seemed to be. He'd compared it to the other loading frames he'd seen around and noted it was a different model and its serial number indicated it had been run off by one of the big creation engines. Created piece by piece and assembled by hand. He had watched Casey attach over a dozen pieces of equipment he'd fabbed up from the nanoforge attached to the gun, never mentioning what the pieces did or what they were for.
"What's the plan?" Addox asked Vuxten.
Vuxten had known that question was going to get asked so he was ready.
"It's confirmed at least fifty hours till we get there. There will probably be maneuvering and wait list checking, then it'll dock with a facility," Vuxten said. "We use the nanoforge to keep our atmosphere tanks topped off, run up something besides Space Force standard nutripaste, let everyone get some sleep. Weapons check, ordnance check, officers and NCO's do WAG planning."
Addox nodded, his face shield transparent. "Sounds good, sir. I'll draw up a guard shift, assign quick reaction force, make sure that it's all smooth till we get there in two and a half days."
Vuxten pinged Plunex, telling him to pay attention as he spoke. "Make it happen, Sergeant."
"Hooah," Addox said, then moved away.
-------------
Vuxten watched as Casey came in through the airlock, followed by three Telkan Marines. He was off shift finally, having eaten nutripaste, taken a drink, and sat down. Plunex was taking over on shift and Vuxten felt tired even though he hadn't done anything for almost twelve hours but sit in the command center for the vehicle.
The three Telkan Marines moved over and sat down, keeping close together, as Casey moved up and sat down next to Vuxten. The Terran troop looked as fresh as ever in his loading frame. The black armor plates he'd put on over his adaptive camouflage were unmarred, his armored boots were shined, and he took off his face mask, exposing that he wasn't even sweaty.
"How is she?" Vuxten asked.
"Ready to come to our rescue if things go south of a hooker's backside," Casey said.
"You know, you don't talk like a religious person," Vuxten said. He held up his hand, even though Casey just snorted in amusement. "I've met a few of the guys from the Crusade, seen the Sisters in action, they talk a lot different than you."
"Fifth Reformation," Casey shrugged. He grinned. "I've been in the military for over nine hundred years, sir, joined the Planetary Guard at sixteen as a big dumb farm boy from the Black Range Plains. Transferred to Space Force and saw combat by the time I was seventeen," his grin got wider, and again Vuxten found himself wondering just how many teeth a Terran had in their mouth. "The war didn't end until I was almost forty," the grin somehow got wider. "The Elders, they had... well... they had changed my life path for me, in accordance to what they saw my destiny to be. Informed me that I was to stay in Space Force."
Vuxten frowned. "Why?"
Casey closed his eye and was silent for a moment. He opened it, sat down slowly, and waved his hand to encompass the sleeping Telkan Marines.
"They decided that this was where I belonged. Right here. Leading others," he said.
"I don't know much about Terrans, much less your people," Vuxten said. He reached out and laid his hand on the heavy gun he'd set down beside him. "The first time I saw your people, I was woken up after a shift of hosing out the interrogation cells. I'd been informed I was now Corporate Security and was going to have to fight the Precursors."
"Yeah, I get that, sir," Casey said. "Kind of how I ended up in Space Force," he made a buzzing sound. "Citizen Casey, you are now Space Force and fined fifteen credits for unauthorized wear of Planetary Guard uniform."
There was silence for a long moment.
--be careful-- 471 transmitted, taking a quick break from arranging his manufacturing queue in one of his city states. --touchy touchy--
"I once got fined a half day's pay because an Overseer got blood on his uniform leaving a cell that he had shot a Telkan female in the head only moments before," Vuxten said quietly. "I hadn't cleaned the cell yet, I was waiting outside. He fined me as he walked out."
"Oof, that's rough," Casey said. "Now the Marine Corps gave you a gun and told you not to let that happen to any other being."
Vuxten nodded.
"Why do you stay in?" Vuxten asked. "Nine hundred years? Aren't you tired?"
"You feel tired sometimes, sir?" Casey asked. He was running one finger up and down one of the barrels of his rotary minigun.
"Sometimes. Like now. I feel tired and wonder if I've gotten in over my head," Vuxten admitted. "Can't let any doubt show," he gave a wry chuckle and nodded at where Shutruk was sprawled out, his foot twitching as he dreamed. "Could you imagine how Privates like him would react if I showed doubt in the middle of everything?"
Casey gave another chuckle, this one with an ugly edge. "Nothing lets you know everything's gone sideways when the Lieutenant starts screaming about how we're all going to die."
"That happen?" Vuxten asked.
Casey nodded. "Sixth drop. My seventeenth birthday. Left the cake in the mess hall. Dropship took heavy bioplasma hits, one of the engines exploded and we starting spinning in. The Looey blew chunks into his helmet and started screaming we were all going to die."
"At least he was wrong," Vuxten said.
"He was SUDS'd, like everyone but me," Casey said. His voice got hard. "I was fighting from the wreckage of the dropship, using it as a fighting position, while him and everyone else were gettting SUDS'd out and decanted."
Vuxten shifted slightly, not sure if he preferred that long ass pink golf ball joke to what they were talking about now. "How long were you there?"
"Two months," Casey said. "Stripping rations from dead men till I got the dropship's nanoforge working," Casey gave a chuckle, reached up and touched his datalink.
Vuxten saw the incoming data request from Casey and allowed it. It was creation engine templates, all cracked and jailborked.
"What's this?" Vuxten asked.
"Telkan and battle buddy rations. Loaded it while we were on top of Gobbler here," he said. "Main nutripaste, standard Space Force troop transport flavor array, basic medicine kits including multivitamin, water additives. Basically everything you need to keep your men in fighting condition if you're sitting in the wreckage of a dropship with only a Class I Nanoforge you hotwired," he patted the nanoforge mounted on his gun's smartframe. "Have your greenie doublecheck it."
471 sighed and passed on his turn, eyeing 442's icon and wishing he'd been able to launch the amphibious attack to take 442's turkey farms away from him. He ran a quick check on the templates and saw that they were standard space force, just the serial numbers filed off and able to be run off of any creation engine. 471's antenna twitched when he saw that there were jailbork codes to break open any nanoforge and print out whatever was needed rather than what the nanoforge was designated as.
471 checked the nanoforge attached to his Telkan Marine's armor and saw that they'd load in just fine.
--checks out-- he said, then went back to nervously nibbling on the tip of his bladearm as one of 442's ocean units passed close to his hidden fleet during the other's turn.
"Think we'll need it?" Vuxten asked. He watched as Casey checked the status of some complex device the nanoforge on his weapon was slow-printing.
"I did," Casey shrugged. "Who knows? Maybe, maybe not. Hopefully you'll never need it and it'll just sit there in your implant's long term archive storage, compressed and cold, for your whole career."
"Proper preperation prevents piss poor performance," Vuxten quoted.
"Exactly, sir," Casey said. "If you don't need it, you're that paranoid officer who stresses over everything and tries to micromanage everything. If you do need it, you're lucky and probably stole the idea from a superior officer."
Vuxten smiled at that.
"Get some rest, sir," Casey said. He tapped one armored fingertip against the barrel of his minigun. "It's another forty hours till we get there."
-------------------
"...so then the kid, the kid, right, the kid gets like mondo great grades and junk, and like totally rocks all of like fourth grade, becoming, like, the top grade person and junk," Casey said, his voice slightly high pitched and he waved his hands around. "So, like, his like dad says: 'male child, you are allocated one desire unit' and junk. The kid, he goes like totally: 'I respond with gratitude of your acknowledgement, parental unit. I would like to requisition one pink golf ball for my desire unit.' and the dad like totally gets it for him and junk, totally like wondering what his kid could want a pink golf ball for because it's like totally weird and junk that his kid like totally wants like a pink golf ball and..."
One of the attachments on Casey's loading frame started beeping and he cut off, touching his datalink. Vuxten noticed, again, that it looked like Casey had added more armor to the loading frame. Now a lot of the pistons, gears, and chains were covered by armor.
"We changed direction," the Terran said.
Addox nodded.
"Are you sure, Sergeant?" Plunex asked.
Casey shrugged. "Unless the magnetic field of the planet decided to shift by thirty degrees over a five minute period, then we changed direction, sir. Who knows, sir, might have happened."
"At ease that shit, Casey," Addox said.
The same device beeped again and Casey tapped his datalink. "Huh, we're shifting back onto course. Wonder what we moved around?"
"Something stupid, I'm sure," Addox said, then leaned back and closed his eyes. "And shut up about that damn pink golf ball. I'm pretty sure the kid's just shoving them up his ass."
Vuxten barked out a laugh.
-------------------
"Sergeant Addox?" Vuxten asked over the private command channel, making sure that Plunex wasn't paying attention and was asleep.
"Go ahead, sir," Addox said, not bothering to make his face shield transparent.
"I think I figured out why Casey keeps going back to check on Glory," Vuxten said.
"Let's hear it, sir," Addox said.
"He got left behind a lot during his career. Kept getting dropped and left behind," Vuxten said. "He doesn't want Glory to be left behind."
"Notice what else he's doing, sir?" Addox asked.
"Mapping and reconing the machine," Vuxten said. "That way he's covered and everyone doesn't notice him checking on Glory because he's reconing around us."
"Know why he's checking on Glory?" Addox asked. Vuxten noted the intensity of the human's voice.
"Because Glory isn't a machine, she's a person. A digital sentience, not a machine without feelings."
"Exactly, sir," Addox said.
"That's why I keep giving him permission," Vuxten said. "I don't want her left alone in the dark in that ore gathering bay."
"Good man, sir," Addox said.
Vuxten sat quietly in the darkness of the Precursor machine's automated command center.
---------------
"The last of the Precursor machines are down, General," the voice said from the operations bay below. "Space Force is reporting all enemy destroyed. Ground side is just mopup of machines that didn't get away."
"Thank you, Major," General No'Drak said. He shifted his attention. "Status of the Great Gobbler?"
"It's moved under the edge of the junction of the mountain ranges, sir," the Major said. He tossed it up on the holotank. "The fighting has eased up enough we can get seismic on it now. It's slowed down as it's come closer to the surface and no longer moving in a straight line."
"Does 108th MI still have a line to Sergeant Casey?" General No'Drak asked.
"Specialist Grade Five Peak has reported for duty. Her commander said she's examining the messages right now. Apparently it's some kind of back channel system Casey keeps in operation," the Major said.
"Why?" Ge'ermo'o interrupted.
"Do you want the real reason or the excuse she gave to her commander?" the Major said.
"Both?" Ge'ermo'o suggested, wondering why she would lie.
"Officially, it's because Casey works Ordnance and needs to feed 108th MI ammunition consumption levels in his sector," the Major said. "That's the official reason."
Ge'ermo'o shook his jowls in slight confusion. "That sounds like a likely reason. Althought I do not understand why he would need a discrete channel and hardware devoted solely between the two of them. What is the real reason?"
"Tit pics," No'Drak guessed.
Ge'ermo'o queried his implant on the nature of a 'tit' and was flooded with lewd pictures of Terran female mammary glands as well as a bunch of pictures of small birds as well as a handful of explicitly drawn Rigellian females sporting impossible bare mammalian mammary glands.
"Well, I wasn't going to put it so crudely. I was going to call it 'inter-personal video, text, and image correspondence'," the Major said. "She's known Casey about sixty years, they've got some history."
"Why send pictures of mammary glands?" Ge'ermo'o asked, frowning. "That seems like a lot of effort, to create and conceal a private message device in order to just send images of mammary glands."
"It's a Terran thing," No'Drak said.
Ge'emo'o suddenly put it together as all the pieces suddenly matched together. "Oh! I suddenly understand!"
No'Drak raised an antenna, his specie's version of cocking an eyebrow. "Go on, Most High."
"They are involved in a sexual relationship and they send pictures of body parts to one another as a method of sexual enticement and amusement!" Ge'ermo'o felt proud of himself for putting it together."They cobbled together their communications device in secret so their commanders did not know they intended to carry out a long distance quasi-sexual relationship based on text, pictures, and videos in order to ensure sexual delight despite distance."
The Major, to his credit, didn't snicker.
No'Drak carefully took out a cigarette to avoid busting up with laughter.
"Right you are, Most High," No'Drak said.
"I am a most observant commander. It is why my men trust me so highly," Ge'ermo'o stated, folding all four arms. "If I were their commander, I would look the other way, as improved morale results in improved performance."
It took everything General No'Drak had not to spit out his cigarette in surprise.
"It's slowed to the point we can't detect it," someone called out.
"They've arrived," No'Drak mused.
-----------------
"Ready?" Vuxten asked.
Everyone signalled with their icons they were ready, standing at the single double door that was an approximation of an air lock that would lead out of the vehicle.
Casey triggered the door and it slid open, the tracks already lubricated.
Beyond was an endosteel hallway, big enough for a suited warrior caste Mantid to move around comfortably in, with runners up by the ceiling for green mantids to move down the hallway without getting underfoot.
The passageway ran for about a hundred meters and ended in another door.
"If anyone sees a hobbit with a ring in here, don't steal the ring," Casey said.
"At ease that shit, Casey," Addox said almost absently.
"Platoon, move out," Vuxten ordered.
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Cordexen held down the trigger of his blaster rifle, the plasma packets hammering into the Lanaktallan Autonomous Combat Drone, sending it staggering.
Shift two degrees, more drones incoming, echoed in his mind, orders from the nearby Speaker.
We need extract, he sent back.
Extract is coming. The Planetary Sub-Queen is still at the mining center, the Speaker said. We have orders to withdraw to the automated mining facility and guard her personage.
As it should be, Cordexen thought back. He kept firing, backing up, even as a flash lit up the sky. Another orbital strike, and he could feel the screaming deaths of 12 million Mantid as a metropolis was blotted off the map.
Bedamned all programmers, scientists, and engineers, he thought to himself as his rifle shattered another combat drone. He kept backing up, the half dozen little black servitors with him firing rockets and adding their sting-rifles to the firepower. He'd lost three quarters of them so far, but he'd managed to force the combat drones out of the bunker.
He took a hit, a particle beam smashing into his leg, the transfer of energy causing his armor to crack and spall outwards, but the inner lining held.
Another flash, this one accompanied by a huge cloud of steam.
Extract is almost here. Retreat to the evacuation bay. The Sub-Queen commands it, the Speaker said.
What about the Hive Queen? Cordexen asked.
One of his little black gunnery assistants exploded and Cordexen took revenge by hammering open the combat drone's armor and blasting apart the internals with his blaster rifle.
She, in her majesty, has already been evacuated. She calls all of her people to her, the Speaker transmitted.
Cordexen stabbed outward with a bladearm, transfixing an aerial drone and spiked psychic energy down his bladearm, shattering the drone.
In the mining facility? Cordexen asked.
It is deep enough that not even the orbital strikes can reach it. The Hive Queen believes that the site is unknown to the Lanaktallan machines and believes we will be safe, the Speaker said.
I hope she's right, Cordexen answered. He felt the Speaker's disapproval, but Cordexen was a warrior caste and was allowed to question orders. He was Mantid, part of the hive mind, not a herd creature like the Lanaktallan or a shared consciousness like the Atrekna.
Perform your duty, retreat, the Speaker ordered.
Cordexen felt anxiety build up as he suddenly scuttled forward, grabbing an explosive charge off his abdomen harness and throwing it into the room. He immediately scuttled back, ordering his combat drones to follow.
One fired a missile through the door, into the ceiling, collapsing it.
We retreat. Time and time again, we retreat in the face of those huge machines, Cordexen thought. Bedamned whoever created them, no matter what their purpose, for all they do now is destroy.
---------------
Cordexen followed the other warriors into the antechamber, staring at the vast bulk of the Hive Queen and the five Sub-Queens. The hive-mind was thick in the antechamber, almost visible. He still had a small russet mantid on his abdomen, working on the carapace over his back where he'd taken two Lanatkallan Autonomous Combat Drone hits to the back, but he no longer leaked ichor and vital fluids.
The Hive Queen reached out and touched every mind present. They felt her confidence and surety fill them. The knowledge that despite the fact that the Lanaktallan Autonomous War Machines were destroying everything on the surface, the Empire would live on in them, safe beneath the largest concentration of mountains where the continental mountain ranges all met.
The engineer servitor caste were currently engaged in ensuring that there would be enough room for all, enough food for all.
Once the Lanaktallan War Machines left, the soldiers of the Empire would take back the surface.
Cordexen held a small part of him back.
It wasn't the first planet he had been on that had been hit.
He knew, then, at that moment, that the Hive Queen had no idea just what the LAWMs would do. That they'd boil away the oceans if given the chance. Nothing but blasted rock and ash would be left.
But he could not protest, could not tell her.
Her mind overwhelmed the majority of his. He could not share with her the images of the worlds he had seen blotted out by orbital fire, reduced to nothing more than bare rock with thin wisps of atmosphere wafting over the radioactive stone. He could not tell her or show her what he had witnessed as world after world fell to the Lanktallan and Atrekna automated space ships. As populations were slaughtered by machines on world after world.
The four black gunnery servitors shifted slightly, uncomfortable, feeling anxiety as the part of Cordexen's mind that gave the orders to them was slightly out of synch with the touch of the Hive Queen, but her presence soothed them and they settled down.
The Hive Queen, powerful and confident, let all present, all in the facility, know that the situation was within her control. That the Lanaktallan Autonomous War Machines would soon leave and her faithful servants would retake the planet for the glory of the Empire.
Cordexen knew it was not true.
But he could not say anything.
The Hive Queen was the master of all.
--------------------
Cordexen felt the Hive Queen's touch, waking him up from a rest period. The touch linked him into the minds of one of the Speakers and the dozen warriors and nearly a hundred servitors with him. Cordexen could feel the movement of the mining machine as it breached the surface.
The Hive Queen and the Sub Queens oozed satisfaction, knowing that there had been no seismic impacts on the surface for over a month. That their warriors had been rearmed and healed from the harsh combat that had preceded the Sub Queens and the Hive Queen escaping to the mining facility.
The Sub Queens felt the most anticipation, the most satisfaction. Their will, to return to the surface, gather any remaining food and put them in forced breeding to quickly get their numbers up, was about to be made manifest. Their will would once again be what defined reality.
They knew that food species had to have survived, and as long as there were a handful then the food stocks could be rebuilt.
The Sub Queens hungered for more than nutripaste and synthetic meat, the longed, craved the devouring of the pain and agony and defeat of the food species.
The Speaker delayed exiting the vehicle after it surfaced, ordering the engineer caste to take readings of the surface before exiting the mining vehicle.
The Sub Queens joined their will with the Hive Queen and forced anxiety into the mind of the Speaker, driving him out of the mining machine and cancelling his orders to the engineer drones.
The Speaker ordered his followers out of the mining machine with him.
Cordexen, like the rest of the facility, saw what the Speaker saw.
The harsh glimmer of the stars. The interaction of the solar winds and tides on the magnetic field of the planet causing ribbons of light to appear in the sky. The vacuum was not total, there was nearly a tenth of normal atmosphere, but it was full of fine dust and isotopes.
Cordexen was a warrior caste, and he was not removed from the shared Hive Mind as two of the Sub Queens reacted with rage as they realized that there would be no return to the surface.
The Speaker screeched in agony as the Sub Queen's rage at being denied what they so desperately wanted crashed down on him. Most of the Mantid within the facility were servitors, and were ejected from the Hive Mind by the rage.
Cordexen was a warrior caste.
The Sub Queens and the Hive Queen kept him locked into the Hive Mind as they overwhelmed the Speaker.
The Speaker and his warrior attendants screamed in agony as the anxiety peaked in their minds, as their limbic system overloaded and they began to die. The Sub Queens lashed at the Speaker and the Warriors, taking their fury out by killing them as if they had denied a command of the Queen's will.
Cordexen was frozen in place, his mind locked, as he witnessed the deaths of one of the last Speakers, the Speaker that had overseen his actions as he had fought to keep the Sub Queen alive until extract alive.
Cordexen knew that only the fact the he had been on his authorized rest period had saved his life.
He kept that knowledge hidden in the small part of his mind that allowed him to make independent decisions during combat.
------------------
Cordexen had grown to hate the feeling that had come over him when he had boarded the mining machine on the trip to the surface.
A small contingent of engineer servitors had managed to survive the attack, quickly converting a repair facility to a hardened bunker. They also had with them a dozen slave species from a star ship that had landed nearby, crippled by the Lanaktallan Autonomous War Machines.
The Sub Queens and the Hive Queen, who had named herself Overqueen, wanted the servitor drones and the food species to be brought back to the mining facility.
Cordexen agreed with the plan. A starship crew would be highly useful, especially if they had starship engineers with them.
The mining facility processed rare earths and could be repurposed to process much more.
Cordexen had analyzed the chances that the facility could be refit to create a space ship to get everyone off of the ball of radioactive rock and found it to be quite good.
He had shared his thoughts with the Sub Queens when they had reached out to his mind and they had soothed him that he had not stepped out of line.
Whatever happened would be for the good of the Empire and the remaining Hive.
Cordexen knew this.
The mining vessel came to a stop.
Cordexen waited.
He was to merely wait until the servitor caste and the space ship crew boarded. He was only armed and present in case a wandering LAWM combat machine found them.
The small part of his mind was worried.
Something didn't feel right.
---------------------
Cordexen escorted the Mulgraken down the hallway. A trained spaceship engine engineer, it was an expert in the ancient jump drives that were now the only way to perform faster than light travel.
The Mulgraken had been led by its Captain to the hardened shelters of the repair facility. There, it had helped the servitor engineers build hardened shelters, the whole while figuring out exactly what they would need to acquire to get the repair facility to repair and rebuild the space ship.
Cordexen knew that everything they needed was in the mining facility.
Free. Almost free. A month or a little more to repair the ship and we can send for relief. Escape. There's only enough room on the ship for a Speaker or two in addition to the crew, but they can lead back more of our people to rescue us, Cordexen thought, analyzing the situation quickly.
They entered the massive chamber, formerly used to repair the largest of the deep crust mining machines, and Cordexen felt his mind soothed by the touch of the Sub Queens and the Hive Queen.
They were massive. The Sub Queens were ten times the size of Cordexen, what was larger even than a Speaker. The Hive... the Overqueen was twice as large as the Sub Queens. They had allowed themselves to grow massive, attached to the walls and gantries that had been built around them.
The Hive Que... the Overqueen's egg laying organs were nearly complete, being shaped and guided by the russet healing servitors. All of the Queens present were swollen with eggs, their bodies distended and distorted. Once the Overqueen began laying, the Sub Queens would be hooked into the birthing system, their own eggs added to the Overqueen's eggs and bathed in her chemicals and ichor.
It is a Mulgraken, one of the Sub Queens, Cordexen wasn't sure which one, broadcast into Cordexen's mind.
Yes. A ship's engineer, keeping a courier ship of the Empire in working condition. An expert in the ancient technology of jump drives, Cordexen answered.
Come here, one of the Sub Queens ordered.
The Mulgraken staggered forward.
We are fortunate indeed that he survived, Cordexen told the Queens. With his knowledge, we can build and replace the jump drive engines on the ship he crewed and...
The Sub-Queen reached down, grabbing the Mulgraken in her long arms.
The Mulgraken screamed as he was lifted into the air.
Cordexen's thoughts were shattered by the sudden hunger from the Queens around him. He felt them overwhelm the Mulgraken's mind, pushing the terror and fear as high as possible, feasting on the Mulgraken's terror.
The Sub-Queen's massive jaws closed with a crunch on the Mulgraken's head, crushing the skull, ripping the head from the thick neck. Blood sprayed out in a glittering arc that splashed Cordexen's black chitined combat servitors, all of whom were trembling in the pleasure radiating off the Queens as they fed as one on the terror and fear.
The Sub-Queen dropped the body to the ground, where it landed on the endosteel floor with a wet thud.
Cordexen felt his mind released as the Sub Queens and the Overqueen all trembled with satisfaction.
I needed him! We needed him! Cordexen thought, outraged. We needed him to create the engines so we can escape!
The Queens all turned their heads to look at him.
You needs are trifling compared to our wants*,* the Queens stated. How many are left?
The answer was forced out of him. Eleven more.
Bring them. One at a time, the Queens ordered.
We need them! We need them to rebuild the ship so we can escape! Cordexen said.
You and the others will devise another way to escape, the Queens said, brushing off his protest. Your needs are trivial to our wants. Go. Bring them.
Cordexen had no choice.
He brought them.
One by one.
Our wants supersede your needs.
---------------------
Vuxten was looking through the feed from Casey's visor when the human looked up, following a large dark object up the side of the wall. There were twisted and damaged gantries, dust creating cobwebs along them. Thick extrusions of biomatter were in cables and sheathes, cradling and supporting the massive things on the walls.
Casey suddenly tightened his grip on the firing grip on his minigun, the barrels rapidly spinning up to speed. Vuxten wasn't quite sure what he was seeing as Casey lifted the gun, his visor and combat implants showing data that Vuxten filed away almost automatically.
Vuxten realized what Casey was seeing at the exact moment that the big human began firing.
A massive Mantid hung from the wall, head down, the carapace long empty of any organs or fluids, just a massive statue of chitin and exoskeleton.
Casey's minigun was packing HEAP rounds, one tracer to every five HEAP rounds, with ball and API mixed in.
It shredded the massive chest of the hanging Mantid as Vuxten's mouth started working.
Druten and Vintra rolled the side, taking cover behind large lumpy object. Druten fired his rifle, the rounds sparking off the thick chitin of the massive Mantid all the way on the right. Vintra emptied his grenade launcher in a ripping burst even as he broke cover, sprinting across the room, sliding to a stop behind a fallen gantry. He fired his rifle as he ran, the rounds sparking off the chest of one of the hanging Mantids.
"BY CHROMIUM SAINT PETER!" Vuxten yelled, something primal, ancient, kicking on in his brain. He lifted his rifle to his shoulder and started to enter the room, intending on backing the three troops up before the Queen could rip them apart.
Instead, Casey suddenly let off the trigger.
"NO THREAT!" Casey yelled. "CEASE FIRE!"
The bellow cut through Vuxten's spinal reflex terror as well as stopping Druten and Vintra in mid-stride as they switched cover.
"Holy Digital Omnimessiah," Casey said softly. His hand left the firing grip and touched his forehead, chest, left shoulder, right shoulder, as he spoke.
"Move in, safeties on," Vuxten ordered.
"I about shit myself," Addox said over the command channel.
Vuxten turned on his external lights, including his helmet lights, panning around the huge room.
There was ancient Mantid exoskeletons and chitin everywhere. Ancient to the point that no fluids remained, only stains on the endosteel floor. Vuxten saw ancient weapons in the hands of many of them.
Around each of the massive ones was a semi-circle pile of tangled chitin exoskeletons.
"This is new," Addox said. He looked over to where Casey was kneeling down next to one of the piles. He'd lifted a Mantid skull that was so large it could have only come from a warrior. "What are you doing, Sergeant?"
"Look at this," Casey said, turning on a headlamp and shining it on the skull as he turned it. "Chitin plates are ruptured outward."
Vuxten looked up, increasing the magnification on his visor. He looked at the chests of the huge Mantids hanging from the walls.
There was long rents in the thick chitin, some of them all the way through to the emptiness that had once contained vital organs.
"They killed each other," Vuxten said softly. He looked around. "What the hell happened here?"
----------------
Cordexen reached out to the Overqueen, the part of his mind that handled battle tactics fully shielded.
Oh Queen, we have detected a ship landing on the surface. A food species ship. Their engine is disabled but there are many of them, Cordexen said.
He felt the hunger and desire of the Queens, who had been eating nutripaste for months.
The only available mining machine to transfer enough warriors, speakers, and servitors is docking on a passage connected to your chamber, he sent.
How many? one of the Sub-Queens asked.
We will need most of the warriors and speakers. There are many and they are armed, Cordexen sent.
No, you fool, how many of the food species? all of the Queens asked at once. He felt pain lance though him at their anger.
It is a warship, a troop transport. Nearly ten thousand, he sent back.
He could taste, could feel, the Queen's hunger.
Send them. Send them now! Take as many as possible alive! the Queens said.
The small part of him that handled battlefield tactics kept silent and still.
May I open the door? Cordexen asked. Allow the troops through the chamber.
Hurry up, you fool! one of the Queens ordered.
Cordexen felt pain down his nervous system, down his main spinal cord.
You must activate the facility computer's psychic arrays to keep the servitors calm, oh Queens, he said.
He felt a tingling as the Overqueen activated the psychic systems.
He reached out to the Overspeaker.
They are allowing me to open the door. You will be able to carry out your mission, he sent.
Understood. For the good of the Hive, for the Empire, the Overspeaker answered with a small part of his brain that only communicated with warrior caste.
Cordexen opened the door to the Overqueen's Birthing Chamber.
The whole plan came apart.
------------------
Vuxten looked around, panning his suit lights over the massive chamber full of long dead Mantid that he had only seen in documentaries and memories pushed into his mind by the crazed psyches of the Imperium Marines.
"Whatever happened here, we missed it," Vuxten answered his own question.
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Let’s look at what the Vex are first of all and where they came from and what that means.
I’ll be using the Darkness/Winnower and the TraveleGardeneThe Light interchangeably.
As we see in Unveiling,the Vex are the final shape of the previous universe-simulations that Darkness and the Light.The defining feature of these previous universes is that they lacked the involvement of the Darkness and the Traveler or in other words,they lacked paracausality shenanigans.

"It always ends the same," the gardener complained. "This one stupid pattern!"
They're majestic, I said. They have no purpose except to subsume all other purposes. There is nothing at the center of them except the will to go on existing, to alter the game to suit their existence. They spare not one sliver of their totality for any other work. They are the end.
"Every game we play, this one pattern consumes all the others. Wipes out every interesting development. A stupid, boring exploit that cuts off entire possibility spaces from ever arising. There's so much that we'll never get to see because of this… pest."

I really want you guys to appreciate what this means. Imagine how many universes these two simulated in the Garden,an infinite amount? An amount we can’t even comprehend? Remember that this was before time too.They dominated every single reality for such an undeterminable amount of time that the Gardener ran out of patience and decided to make themselves into a law in the gamejust to impede the Vex.
The Cabal fancy themselves conquerors and they are,they once occupied the entire galaxy but what are they compared to the Vex,true conquest and domination in every sense of the word.
As Elsie put it:

The Vex will not rest until every star has been crushed into a black hole and every newborn cosmos filled with more Vex. And in the unending array of their enslaved cosmos, they will simulate all possible pasts, and fill those with Vex, so that all things that have ever lived or might ever live will experience infestation and consumption and torment by the silica nightmare. And in those devoured simulations, the simulated Vex will use our flesh as hosts for yet more nested universes full of yet more nested copies of us eternally tormented by yet more Vex. An infinite regression of pain and madness inflicted upon every possible version of us in every possible world. Not because they hate us, or fear us, or want to punish us. But because they are indifferent and curious, and they will do every possible thing to us in every possible way.

The Hive also fancy themselves as the agents of the darkness and utterly devoted to it’s principle and the creation of the perfect universe with the final shape.The Vex are not devoted the principle of the Darkness as they are the Final Shape,they are what Heat Death and Entropy are to our universe,except for every previous universe.Delaying the Vex required and continues to require the Darkness and the Light to subside entire species with the power to break the laws of physics.
There’s a common misconception that there Vex are just another species akin to the Hive or Fallen and that there just a bit weird since they are a hive-mind made up of radiolaria.The Vex are not a species in the same way that the others are,they are not the white fluid or the microorganisms suspended in it.
From Patternfall:

The patterns were abstract waves tumbling through the fire of the early universe, trapped in chaos, cycling through desperate self-preservation tautologies, while vast beings from beyond the narrow dominion of cause and effect thrashed and battled around them. For an eon, they were nothing but screaming equation-vermin scurrying through the quantum foam, fleeing ultimate erasure.
They propagated in the saline meltwater of comets orbiting the first stars. That broth of chemicals became their substrate, and they learned to catalyze impossible chemistry with quantum tricks. Then, they rained from the sky into the steaming seas of fallow worlds, and there they built their first housings from geometry and silica.

The white fluid and the radiolaria is their substrate,something they made for themselves in order to better interact with the universe.
In Ghost Fragment: Vex 4:

The cellular Vex elements are infectious, hallucinogenic, entheogenic. The informational Vex elements are more dangerous yet— and there could be semiotic hazards beyond them, aggressive ideas, Vex who exist without a substrate.

The Vex are not a “species” that’s come about through hundreds of millions of years of evolution,they are an idea,a concept,a mathematical constant and a formula.In this sense,they are far more like the Winnower and the Gardener than they are like humans or the Cabal.
The Darkness describes himself and the Gardener as being “principles of ontological dynamics that emerged from mathematical structures, as bodiless and inevitable as the primes.”
This is what the Vex are,like a super-algorithm and don’t even get me started on Vex tech.
The Vex can fold dimensions on planets like paper like they did on Nessus and create “infinite dimensional functional spaces” like they did in the Pyramidion which is it’s own can of worms.The Pyramidion is referred to as a Hilbert Space where there are additional dimensions up to infinity,Ikora said that entering the pyramidion is like transcending physical reality in the strike.
It’s generally accepted that the Vex have structures on every known celestial body linked by the massive transtemporal,trans dimensional gate network and the gates themselves are “non-gravitating, purely geometric traversable wormhole of the Ellis configuration. There is no singularity and no firewall (interesting ramifications for ER = EPR). The wormhole manifold provides a pathway to another four-point in our spacetime, or in a nearby parallel universe in the quantum many-worlds ensemble.”
This is effectively FTL travel,this means that it’s possible and even likely that they also have structures in every celestial body period in the observable universe and the normally inaccessible parts beyond that cosmological event horizon.It’s likely that there are structures on everything because even with us and with known tech and physics we could benefit from exponential growth and colonise the entire galaxy in a couple million years even if the ships are generation ships that take thousands of years to arrive at a destination.The Vex travel between star systems in seconds and have existed since before the existence of this universe and have been colonising things since at least around the time when the first stars emerged as evidenced by 2082 Volantis.
Invariably,there are more Vex units than there are stars in the sky,spread out across dimensions and space-time.Killing every single one is not possible simply because of the fact that the Guardians aren’t able to leave the Solar System to go on a trans dimensional trans temporal and trans universal crusade against the Vex,it’s just not a thing that’s possible for many obvious reasons.The Vex network is also decentralised,so killing a specific unit to mess everything up won’t work either in the same way that it did with Oryx and the Hive/Taken.
How do we deal with something like this?
With the Cabal it’s pretty simple,kill Caiatl if it comes to that,she’s in the system and she’s within reach. Same with the Hive,disrupt lines of tribute to weaken Xivu and Savathun to the point where they can be slain,that would end the Hive permanently.
Paracausality or not,there is no way to permanently defeat the Vex as I see,it would take the Traveler deciding that it wants to wipe out every Vex unit everywhere and everywhen all at once and I’m not even sure if it can even do that in it’s current state or indeed at all.Not that it’s not powerful enough but whether the traveler even has something like that in them.
If Destiny ends with paracausal powers being removed then that means that the universe is returning to the state of previous universe where the final victory of the Vex is not a risk but certain and guaranteed,everyone is completely screwed.
In conclusion,The Vex are OP and the Devs had to make a new game with new rules and also play the game themselves with cheat codes and then distribute the cheat codes to others so that they could survive the OPness of the Vex.
Thoughts?