by Aer-ki Jyr
Then a first happened. The turtle asked her a question. It wasn’t in words, but rather a concept. Isolation and acceptance. It wanted to know if they were going to leave the turtles alone.
It took some work, but eventually she was able to get the idea across that Star Force didn’t want this planet, they only wanted to remove the lizards from it. Then she went on to infer that they wanted communication with the turtles, but nothing more. Doing so without words was difficult, so she worked to try to get it to understand that they wanted a sample of their language to learn.
The other turtles were on the edge of blowing up inside, but this one was acting as an intermediary and Jaina stuck with him. After some not so successful attempts at him speaking to her, he pictured an image of one of their display screens and directed her to it. She accepted, then let him go and gently followed. The others freaked out again as soon as she moved, but her guide kept his nerve and Jaina kept reinforcing the calming emotions flowing to him, sensing that if she didn’t filter out all the noise from the others he’d freak out again too. The communal mind here was strong, almost to lemming levels, so Jaina decided to keep this guy in her camp constantly, not wanting to let their progress slip by releasing her telepathic domination of him.
It was odd. Usually such interference was used to cause problems with others, but she was actually helping him, giving him far more emotional structure and clarity of perception than his race had. In essence she was making him emotionally smarter by plugging her mind into his. That was a crude way to describe it, but given that all they had right now was crude communication it seemed fitting. The others obviously didn’t like what was happening to him, for they could feel it a bit and he was still communicating with them, but she knew from Madi that they thought he was in some sort of trance or possession.
More like helping someone with a limp stand up straight, but whatever. So long as this guy was playing along the others could freak out all they wanted.
The turtles’ display screens were small for the most part. There were a few large ones for general viewing, but the work stations were no bigger than their faces. That was due to the fact that their arms didn’t reach more than a few inches, meaning they were literally planting their faces in the tiny screens to work.
Her new friend did just that, working one of the consoles and bringing up an image of text on one of the bigger screens in what looked like some sort of monitoring room.
“Surface surveillance,” Madi filled in. “They keep track of the lizards a lot.”
“Big surprise,” Jaina said, having to adjust her HUD to see the ultraviolet displays that otherwise looked like ghostly images just spilling over into the visual spectrum, much like their hallway lights. She didn’t recognize the script, but thanked the turtle for showing it to her as she recorded her helmet telemetry so the analysts could study them later.
It wanted to know if she understood them, and she inferred ‘no, but that they would learn.’
The turtled popped its head back into its working face plant and tweaked a control with one of its face arms.
The text changed, not just saying something else, but into another form entirely.
“Different languages,” Jaina guessed. “They’ve got to have relations with other races out there if they’ve got smuggling going on. Hopefully we can recognize one of these.”
She recorded this one and gave the turtle a negative thought. It switched to another and another, running her through a list until it was her turn to freak out.
“Madi!” she said, a bit of trepidation spiking in her. The turtle apparently sensed a bit of it and recoiled as if he had done something wrong. Before he started wondering if he was going to get killed Jaina dismissed her own emotions to a corner of her mind that wouldn’t transmit to him, then calmed him down while quickly explaining that she did recognize it, but that it was the language of an enemy.
“Never thought I’d need this,” she told Madi, activating a tiny laser on her helmet that was configured to be a projector. Why it had been included in their armor she’d never really known, but now it was going to be incredibly helpful until they figured out how to interface with the turtles’ own comm systems. Different technology didn’t allow for plug and play options, and mating up computer systems was a pain in the ass that required some pretty good software techs. Fortunately they had some of them onboard the ships in orbit.
Jaina configured it for their light spectrum, sampling what was coming off the monitors and reciprocating, then she spoke the words she wanted and had them displayed in script on a nearby wall that she directed the turtle to.
“Asc ratch cu. Asc sen burtu,” she said in V’kit’no’sat.
10
March, 3202
Solar System
Earth
Davis walked into his office in the early morning, having just finished a pre-dawn workout in time to see the sun just climbing over Atlantis’s buildings on the east side. He sat down at his desk feeling the post-workout relaxation as he brought up his logged messages, finding 122 new ones since leaving his office yesterday.
That was typical, and he breezed through most of the notifications until he came to a rather long one. It was a data update from Sara concerning the Tamni, whose language translation was still ongoing. The turtle-like race spoke V’kit’no’sat only so far as it was in their databanks and therefore offered a means of limited communication, but overall they were not familiar with it aside from being an obscure language from their distant past.
But the fact that they knew it had been a big concern, especially since they were considerably far beyond the furthest reaches of the V’kit’no’sat empire. In this update Sara shed some clarity on that, detailing that the Tamni were not local to this region. About 330,000 years ago they were involved in a civil war that saw this faction leave their homeworld in the Sagittarius Arm. They ran far, horrified at what had happened to their kin and what they’d been forced to do defending themselves. They left their traitorous kin behind and hid themselves away further rimward.
They were pursued for a long time, then local threats forced them underground and they kept periodically moving so they could avoid their enemies, which were rapidly growing in number thanks to their benign persona and their advanced technology that many wished to exploit, for they were trading bits of it away in exchange for resources and continued to do so to this day, which was why some races were willing to try and slip past the lizard empire in order to get to them.
They had had no contact with the V’kit’no’sat, fortunately, but they knew their language as well as the commonplace knowledge to stay the hell away from their scattering of outposts and not to attract their attention. They hadn’t had many footholds, but from those they did the V’kit’no’sat dominated the region with everyone else keeping their heads down whenever they came around. Fortunately that was almost never, and the Tamni and other races went on about their business aware of the threat of the V’kit’no’sat but never having to deal with them outside of rare circumstances…but the example of those few who did was enough to let everyone else know that they could not be challenged, and to do so even once was suicide.
But this data update was more about the Tamni and their split, along with more details on their race and current activities. Their technology was impressive in some regards and primitive in others. What they were trading to others often involved small scale things. Medicines, genetic alterations, nanotechnology, stealth equipment…but no weapons. No ships either. Their gravity drives were decent, but overall their starship capability was dismal. They were not engineered to fight, or even defend. This was a race that did not like being in space, so their ships were designed to get them from planet to planet and that was about it.
Which also explained why people came to them rather than them going out to customers. They traded their technological services for raw materials they couldn’t get on their current planet and hoarded them. Sara indicated that she had offered t
o trade them a great deal more, and as a result the Tamni were offering up more information than she’d even requested. It seemed that they were always lacking for something and having to ration various things. Food wasn’t one of them, but their civilization was perpetually on life support. Stable, but unable to grow in any meaningful way.
And since coming out to this galactic arm they’d been unable to acquire any Solari, meaning there was a whole host of machines they couldn’t build. When Sara had told them they’d be able to trade for that as well, in small amounts, they’d immediately reversed their isolationist footing and wanted to open a permanent link to Star Force.
Sara had indicated that she was going to set up a small colony on the planet to act as an intermediary and trading partner, but wanted Davis to choose which faction it should come from.
He thought about that for a moment. The Bsidd had the largest population and this world wasn’t far from their region, but there were other races within Star Force that were looking to expand and he figured this would be a good opportunity to throw one of them a bone. This colony wasn’t going to grow to cover the entire planet, rather be restricted to a piece of it that it would develop to fill then remain contained. The Tamni owned the planet, which Sara was willing to concede to them even though it was Star Force that had removed the lizards from it, and the colony was just going to be a link into the Star Force markets in an otherwise empty region.
So that limited growth potential meant the best choice would be a ward. The colony would be open to the public, so not quite an Axius deal but it wouldn’t be closed off to one faction only like many worlds were. Davis needed a ward to run it, but one that could facilitate both Star Force traffic and other visitors while allowing the Tamni to maintain their privacy.
There were several wards that could do that, but one that had been chomping at the bit was the Aronsic. Ever since the end of the Skarron war they’d been eager beavers with little to do. Their population hadn’t grown rapidly due to a lack of females recovered from Skarron planets, but over time that had rectified itself and they numbered about 3 billion spread across two systems and 4 planets. Neither of those systems were controlled by them, with Mainline colonies and other wards present, so giving them a chance to expand beyond that would be most welcome.
Davis knew he needed to assign a veteran Administrator to the task though to handle the interface with the Tamni and to set up the links to the transit network. He pulled up one of his quick lists of personnel and input a search parameter that gave him 294 candidates. He scanned the list briefly, with only a few names sticking out at him, then he picked a Kiritas named Briddi and brought up her file.
She was 493 years old, had worked a stint with the Kiritak that lasted 43 years before returning to the Kiritas faction and helping to run one of their major trade hubs. After that she’d moved to an Axius posting, then over to work with the Calavari before finally landing in a Mainline colony with a high Administrator ranking, but not quite good enough to warrant a Monarch posting. Her skills weren’t widespread enough for that, but her proven abilities would cover this assignment easily.
He logged the transfer request and sent it off immediately. There was a chance she wouldn’t want to go, but typically most Star Force transfers weren’t declined. On occasion someone would want to stay with a particular faction, but given how much Briddi had been moving around he didn’t see a problem with it…especially since he was assigning her to the top position in a new colony. That’d be a new mark for her and he had no doubts that she’d jump at it, as most Administrators were accustomed to doing. There was so much work to do in the empire, but so few top positions available that any time you could run an operation, let alone a planet, an Administrator couldn’t afford to pass up the opportunity if they had aims to increase their skillset and work their way up the leadership ranks.
And most of them knew that Davis was watching them. Monarchs were handpicked by him, and it was assumed that the more challenging of tasks that an Administrator could do the more they’d show up on his radar for future assignments. Running a world of your own was usually a Monarch’s job, so even though this was only going to be a small colony, it was the type of situation where an Administrator could show off, especially when it was being built from scratch. Briddi would be able to design it as she saw fit, and it would also be a chance to see how she could work with the Aronsic and utilize their skills.
“Knock, knock,” Paul said, coming up the stairway into his office.
“Morning,” Davis greeted, pausing his work as he looked at the now black haired trailblazer. “What happened to the blue?”
“Felt like a change,” he said, spinning a chair around and straddling it. “What’s up?”
“Just wanted to say hello to the new Vilord,” Davis said with a smile.
“You’re close to acolyte yourself.”
“Plodding along as usual, yes. Adept 98 and near to 99.”
“So long as you’re improving, the rate doesn’t matter.”
“Says the guy who’s constantly racing Morgan for new ranks.”
“Friendly competition,” Paul corrected with a smirk.
“I take it she’s not too happy you beat her to it.”
“Knowing Morgan, she’s ticked off. I haven’t talked to her since, but to be fair I’ve been camping out in the advanced training program and been making up ground. She hasn’t been back here since she moved her Clan to the border.”
“Think this will bring her back for a bit?”
“I doubt it. She’ll just try to train harder where she is…or build a bigger sanctum. How many worlds are you going to let her take?”
“As many as she can.”
“This is Morgan we’re talking about. She’ll be at the galactic core eventually.”
“Not if she keeps expanding laterally. Am I sensing some professional jealousy?”
“Yes,” Paul admitted. “She’s got the most territory of any Clan now, by far.”
“It was hard earned.”
“I didn’t say it wasn’t.”
“As was your ViLord rank.”
“Point taken.”
“So…what is Clan Saber up to now?”
“Like you don’t already know.”
“I don’t know everything, just a lot. What are you focusing towards?”
“Primarily…naval tweaks. Can’t beat the V’kit’no’sat if we can at least hold the line in engagements where we have a 10 to 1 advantage. We’re not there yet, but we need to be.”
“How do you think they’ll respond to the drones?”
“I’ve been discussing that with Jason quite a bit. If they can’t jam them, they’ll either go straight for the control ships or ignore them completely. Either way we can use that to our advantage if we can shave down their tech advantage. If we can’t, then it’s going to get ugly in the best case scenarios.”
Davis sat up in his chair and leaned forward, bringing up a map of the scattering of Clan Saber holdings, along with numerous holographic windows of Clan stats.
“You’ve done well, Paul. Damn well. As have the rest of you. But with you…I know you’ve got something else in the works. You’ve covered your tracks well, but you’re operating a lot of your colonies with a cushion. Not much, but I know you’re more efficient than that. And not resources. I mean personnel. You’ve got too much staff logged in across the board. Where are they really at?”
Paul stared at him for a moment, then hung his head. “Damn you.”
“I guessed right then,” Davis said, not having been sure until now.
“I thought I hadn’t left any traces.”
“You didn’t.”
“We wouldn’t be having this conversation if I hadn’t.”
“I don’t think anyone else would notice, especially since it’s Clan-wide. You each do things differently, but I’ve been with you from the beginning so I know how you think. There is no giveaway in your Clan stats that I could find, it just does
n’t fit your mojo. No outsider would spot that. So…what are you working on?”
“Not working on. Already done,” Paul said with a sigh. “Notice anything about Clan Sangheili?”
Davis’s head ticked to the side. “No.”
“Add insult to injury,” Paul scoffed.
“A joint venture?”
“Yeah. Something off the books in case our computer systems were compromised. Jason should be running excess personnel too?”
“Not that I’ve noticed, but then again he’s always been a little heavy handed in that department.”
“I’ve never paid that close of attention to how the others operated. Do we all have a fingerprint like that?”
“Oh yes. Even when you’re doing the same things there are telltale signs, though things sometimes alter when you get a new Marquis. Some of them add more flair while others go by the book and don’t alter what you’ve already established, merely adding to and repeating it.”
“Renning?” Paul guessed, referencing Jason’s current Marquis.
“There was a shift when he came on. Perhaps that’s why I didn’t notice the personnel shift, if Jason is doing the same thing you are?”
“He is. We decided to spawn a new Clan in secret. One off the books and without territory.”
“Kara?” Davis guessed.
Paul shook his head. “You really know us too well.”
“I’m on your side, so don’t worry about it.”
“Thankfully.”
“So where is this new Clan…”
“Ghostblade. It’s outside Star Force territory, raiding lizard shipping and worlds for resources to fuel a mobile fleet. Right now they’re working on a tiny moveable star forge. All the personnel are Clan Saber and Sangheili members, but all resources and ships are built beyond Star Force bookkeeping.”
