“I’m not superstitious,” Tanis countered. “And I think we’re at forty-seven ‘lost’ civs? Though, to be honest, most of them aren’t lost, they’re just deliberately segregated from the rest of us.”
“What are you thinking?” Tanis asked.
Angela pointed out.
“Have you noticed how so many of these civs are near star collider sites that the core AIs left behind?” Joe asked. “It’s starting to become quite the pattern.”
“The teams working on that are searching for rapidly shifting stars,” Tanis said. “Since they spend more time when they find collider sites, it makes sense that those are the places they’d find civs.”
The new voice belonged to Captain Rachel and carried no small amount of urgency.
Tanis swallowed apprehensively.
Katrina had been providing operational command and security for the team studying the scattered core AI remains in orbit of Sagittarius A*. They were also looking for any clue regarding what had happened to Tangel and Finaeus—though after ten years, no one was holding out much hope.
she finally asked.
Tanis glanced at Joe, passing him the information while replying to Rachel.
CHAPTER 4 - KRAI
GALACTIC DATE: 412.12.140
LOCATION: Far Patrol Shell, XI Phrysi
REGION: Void, Mass Conformity Qa-Loar
Two minor cycles passed before another flare of light came from the dead orb.
By that point, Phrysi was within a home-span of the mass conformity’s light orb, just passing the orbit of the innermost fluid orb. This time, with the two probes adding to the light absorption, the AMs aboard Krai’s travelshell were able to assemble a clearer view of the emission.
Spectral lines were consistent with a matter-combining energy jet, and yet they were not consistent with any designs of travelshell jets that je was familiar with.
Kes mind immediately went to stories je had heard about those who had been cast out of capsules, destined to swim in lonely oceans where they scraped out a life on bare rocks—granted, that normally meant within a comfortably cool methane ocean, not the literal bare rock of a dead world.
Of course, it wasn’t at all unheard of for X’Liy to operate near dead worlds. They were, after all, the most likely places to house a plethora of elements needed to build the best travelshells. However, those sorts of operations tended to be large-scale endeavors. Smaller, single-shell operations tended toward mining the loose rock that drifted throughout a mass conformity.
Even just the thought of setting limbcups on the surface of a dead orb was enough to send a shiver through Krai. So much gravity, so empty, so hot.
To kes knowledge, few X’Liy had ever landed on such an orb, though it was more common now that the people had learned how to create negative gravitons to offset the natural force of mass. Even so, any resources that needed to be gleaned from such inhospitable locations were extracted by artificial minds controlling unpeopled shells.
It was entirely possible that what Krai was seeing was just that. An AM-controlled mission that hadn’t been logged properly. It wouldn’t be the first time je had encountered such a thing.
Je would have been able to accept that explanation if it wasn’t for the fact that any machine sent for such a task would be well known to the Far Patrol, and their jet signatures would have been identified by the Phrysi’s AMs.
Unable to stop it, kes mind shifted to other stories, tales of creatures not from the home oceans all X’Liy sprang from. Dark beings from distant pools who were bent on destruction. Other stories that often came to mind at times like this were of artificial minds that had escaped the great purges. Not the sort that je employed to manage kes travelshell, but rogue AMs that had risen against the X’Liy, machine minds with their own goals, goals which all too often misaligned with those of organic people.
There were rumors that some had escaped the purges, flying off into the far reaches of the darkness, alone—much like Krai was—but unlike Krai, those nefarious AMs were plotting to come back, bringing retribution upon the home pools.
Though je had never said it aloud, Krai sometimes wondered if that was part of the Far Patrol’s original mission: to guard against any rogue AMs that might return. Not that anyone really feared that now. It had been hundreds of great cycles since the purges. If there were AMs that had any concern for the X’Liy, they surely would have done something about it by now.
Enough with your fears, Krai. It’s probably just an uncoupled one trying to extract precious resources without the proper approvals.
Determined to make a light-silent approach, je ran through the shell’s knowledge pools, ensuring that the Phrysi’s skin would appear entirely dark to all observers, just a mote of black in an endless sea of nothing.
Satisfied that the shell would be impossible to see, Krai pushed off kes command cradle, pulling past the shell’s control arms to travel down the shaft that led aft toward the feeding grotto. Phrysi wasn’t a large shell, so the journey didn’t take long. On the way, je passed a viewport that looked over the lower tanks within the shell.
There, the methane was processed, imbued with nitrogen and other elements, each of which were carefully managed to ensure that the X’Liy’s life remained well-supported and stable. All appeared to be in order—which Krai would have known from the monitoring systems, but je was always comforted by a visible inspection.
Just past the viewport was the entrance to the feeding grotto. Within lay several sealed vats of small creatures, each one of Krai’s favorites, all living in their enclosed environments until such a time as je desired that form of sustenance.
Nearest the door was the flouris vat, the wide container holding a dozen of the small, bulbous creatures. They came in a multitude of colors, but Krai preferred the blue ones.
Je unsealed the lid and slid several tentacles through the viscous field that kept the delectable snacks from swimming out into the grotto. Quickly snatching three of the flouris, kes securely latched the suction cups lining its sinuous limbs onto the creatures’ bodies and drew them toward kes.
They squirmed in kes grasp, which Krai tightened, slowly crushing the life from the snack before popping the first one into kes mouth.
The taste was delicious, and je savored it for a moment before consuming the other two and resealing the vat.
Satiated for the moment, je gave brief debate whether to return to the command grotto or tour the ship. Since je was already drifting in the currents, je decided to tour the rest of Phrysi, checking the fuel propulsion jets, inspecting the life-flux tanks up close, and reviewing the light spears, ensuring they’d be prepared for any conflict je might encounter.
That idea scared Krai a little, but not as much as je thought it might. Je had run into a number of uncoupled ones in the past. Many would leave a mass conformity when they spotted a member of the Far Patrol, but some had remained, a few ultimately confronting Krai.
In those cases, a short exchange with light spears was all
that had been necessary to convince the interloper to move on—never had Krai been in anything approaching a protracted conflict. And never had je killed another X’Liy.
Krai was drifting back past the feeding grotto when an alert rippled through the life-flux around it, methane hissing with the severity of the alarm.
Je twisted kes limbs, kes ten tentacles forming a propeller that screwed through the liquid surrounding kes and drove kes up the shaft to the control grotto. Once there, je slipped between the arches and settled into place, eyes glued to the image wavering on the display before kes.
There drifted a travelshell unlike anything je had ever seen. It was long, a thin scaffold connecting the jets to a boxy fore-section. Small, grey blocks were attached to the thin section, with several more drifting nearby the shell—if one could even call it that—apparently waiting to be attached to the skin.
What in all the glimmering orbs is that thing?
Krai checked Phrysi’s vector, confirming that the shell would pass within the dead orb in just over one more tenth-cycle. Je would pass more than five minor light spans from the strange shell, which should be enough distance to ensure safety, but je wondered if perhaps it might not be wise to put even more distance between it and the strange shell.
As je watched, another cube was lifted from the dead orb’s surface by a smaller shell, this one much more conventionally shaped: a single small body with large jets on the back. The smaller shell moved the box into a waiting pool before descending back to the surface.
Smaller jets flared around one of the cubes, and Krai watched as it was pushed toward the scaffolding on the large shell-that-wasn’t-a-shell.
In a way, it reminded kes more of a stalk of gheshin that grew in the thin nitrogen flux around the oceans of the home pools. Those plants were thin on one end and bushy at the top, similar to some of the things that grew in the oceans, but also hard and ridged.
A gheshin it is, then. Stars, how am I going to imbue this experience to the Far Patrol to review?
Over the next half tenth-cycle, Krai watched as more and more cubes were lifted from the surface—by two smaller shells, as it turned out—until the spindly section in the center of the gheshin was covered by the objects brought up from the dead orb.
After several more cycles, the small shells latched onto the gheshin’s skin, the larger vehicle’s jets igniting and moving away from the dead orb.
Krai watched with relief flooding kes limbs as the stranger’s craft moved away from the dead orb, using the velocity imparted upon it by the mass’s own motion to shift onto a vector away from the central light orb.
A moment’s consideration was all it took for the Far Patrol shell-steerer to deploy another probe, setting it to follow the gheshin and track its vector as it exited Qa-Loar’s conformity.
As Phrysi drew closer to the dead orb, the eyes on the shell’s skin were able to make out the site on the surface where the strangers had landed. There were more machines down there, great excavating devices that were boring their way into the orb. More structures were nearby, gouts of gas rising from them, likely purifying whatever the gheshin-people were extracting.
Krai wanted to take a closer look, but shifting vector to pass by the dead orb would break its darkness, and the strangers would see kes.
Though it was difficult to make the decision, je knew that the machines would still be there in a few tenth-cycles, so je set a course to mass-swing around Qa-Loar, using it to brake before approaching the dead orb.
Je knew that the strangers may have monitoring systems in orbit of the inhospitable ball of rock, but that was a risk that je would just have to take.
Though it was hard to admit, the more Krai thought about it, the more je became certain that the ones in control of the gheshin were not X’Liy, and were very likely not rogue AMs.
No, they were something else altogether.
We are not alone in the galaxy.
CHAPTER 5 - KRAI
GALACTIC DATE: 412.12.142
LOCATION: Far Patrol Shell, XI Phrysi
REGION: Void, Mass Conformity Qa-Loar
It was all so…alien.
Krai had trouble believing what je was seeing, but there was no denying what Phrysi’s eyes revealed. A one—je had to assume it was a one—was carving into the dead orb, purifying and accumulating some sort of material.
A cube already rested on the inhospitable surface of the orb next to a smooth, white pad bearing strange markings. Given the speed with which it had appeared, it was clear that the gheshin could return in only seven tenth-cycles to collect its next load.
Je scanned the world’s surface, looking for any pools, ultimately concluding that if there were any, they were below the surface, though it was also possible that no living beings had descended to the world, and the operation was entirely controlled by AMs.
Another spike of fear ran through Krai as je wondered if maybe the lack of pools did indeed mean that rogue AMs were mining the world.
No, do not be illogical. That which the rogue artificial minds created always appeared to mesh with that which X’Liy minds created. This is simply too different.
On top of that, the presence of the large fore-section of the gheshin suggested that some sort of creatures were present on the craft. If it had been an AM-controlled ship, whether they be rogue or otherwise, there would be no need for what was clearly a habitable section of the gheshin.
With all those disparate elements in mind, what Krai now had to determine was whether it was safe to send down a probe, or to simply report back to the Far Patrol home pool with kes findings.
Despite the fact that je was less than eager to risk kes own life, je knew that the Far Patrol, Leader Dyir especially, would prefer more information. Which meant that a probe would have to travel to the orb’s surface.
The stranger’s gheshin was still accelerating out of the mass conformity, its jets flaring brightly as it picked up velocity, appearing to be on a direct route to its jump point.
It was unlikely that the vessel could return to its mining site, should it become aware of Phrysi’s presence, but Krai still worried that if automated systems on the orb detected any anomalies, they would alert the strangers. At the very least, the Far Patrol would be annoyed that je had given one self away.
After a few more minor cycles of deliberation, Krai finally dispatched a probe, sending it on a trajectory that would appear to be the entry path of a small rock dropping into the dead orb’s minor conformity.
The probe sent periodic data bursts to Phrysi’s eyes, passing updates on its descent until it appeared to strike the surface a thousand span-measures from the mining site. The force of the impact was meant to seem as though it was from fallen debris, but in actuality, the probe had split apart, dropping ballast before entering a gentle descent that brought it to the surface several thousand span-measures away.
Once the probe was deployed on the surface, it took half a minor cycle to approach the mining site, moving slowly over the surface. The mining devices were visible the entire time, thousand-span-measure spears towering over the landscape as they bored into the surface.
Krai had spent some time observing them from space, but hadn’t truly appreciated their size until seeing it from the probe’s perspective. Je surmised that they had to be mobile devices; it would be foolish to build such large machines and leave them behind when the desired resource was gone.
How many systems must these strangers be in for me to stumble across them here?
Logic dictated that a civilization’s economy would need to be both strong and hungry for resources in order to make up for the expense of resource extraction in mass conformities without permanent capsules present.
Also curious was the fact that the operation was left unguarded. The strangers must never have been in conflict with other species if they assumed the mining operation would remain safe with no oversight.
Krai gave a moment’s thought to how the X’Liy would view the
presence of another spacefaring species in nearby systems. Many of the people preferred isolation, even from their own kind; so long as they perceived no threat, they wouldn’t take action. Others, ones who were heavily invested in keeping things as they were, might not react so well.
It had been some time since the X’Liy had known war. Not for over several hundred major cycles, when the last of those who supported artificial minds were cast out.
The probe drew closer to the refinery, drawing Krai’s attention back to kes knowledge streams, watching as the machine approached a smooth, vertical surface that formed one side of the enclosure.
The surface was clearly composed of an artificial compound, likely silica-based, from what the probe could see. Several span-measures down the façade, a rectangular inset sat in half-shadow. Strange oval imprints led to it from multiple directions.
Phrysi’s AMs surmised that the oval shapes might be where the strangers’ limbs made contact with the ground. The AMs also calculated that the strangers might only use two limbs to move.
Krai pushed keself up on two of kes sinuous tentacles, testing out the idea.
So ungainly…how do such creatures balance on two limbs with so much mass force pulling at them?
Je surmised that if the strangers had moved to the inset, it must be a portal leading into the structure. The shape of the inset and the different-colored rectangle within suggested that the strangers were tall and narrow, though their height was not greater than the length of a one’s tentacle.
Almost like the gheshin they swim in the black with.
Krai directed the probe to make a full circuit of the building, noting with interest the sleds that drove from the mining site, hovering above the surface while loaded with many mass-units of ore. The sleds were emptied into intake systems that drew the ore up into the refinery, where je assumed it was smelted into pure stones—which would then be taken by the gheshin to be used in manufacturing elsewhere.
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