The station was quiet. No, that wasn't quite right. The station had noise, but not the noise of a station. The slamming, metallic sounds as ships dock and undock, the hiss and bubble as fuel is pumped between tanks, or the grinding as dents were buffed out. No, this station had a different set of noises. A gurgling noise, as outside the walls, the hull was almost solid silver, the memetic polyalloy, liquid metal, was taking shape, growing out like living flesh. The inside was not bare of this silver sheen either, with many a surface shimmering in the low light as it morphed into the hall I walked down.
Behind me were the figures of Joe, Bandit, and four of my other captains. Outside, with weapons trained on the station, were the rest of my fleet, ready to atomize our killers should it come to that. I doubted it would, however. After all, if they'd wanted to kill us, there were easier ways. The hull showed that off clearly, and I had some suspicions on what exactly the battle in space had meant, as it had been just a little too perfect. Each side had had almost equal force in terms of power and mass. That sort of setup didn't happen by chance.
"Greetings to you, Warriors," said the voice from before, and confirmed it had been the speaker, not some translator, doing the talking. The words echoed around us, as if coming from the hull, and both the aliens, and the three women and man in power suits, instantly scanned the room, drawing weapons. I didn't bother, however, instead continuing to walk forward, out into what would have looked like a throne room, with a dias and everything. I knew it was a recent addition to the station though, the silver walls only just taking on other colors as I watched.
"And to you, Foremost of the Korath-Ah," I said in stride, coming up to the foot of the dias and standing there. Before me was...the oldest man I'd ever seen. He wasn't human, that was for sure, but he appeared to be close to it. However, even if he wasn't human, the shaky way his limbs moved, the fact that silver liquid was obviously assisting him meant this being before me was ancient.
"You must have questions, in regards to the great contest. Ask them, and I shall answer as best I can," he offered, and Bandit, her hands holding twin plasma blades, stepped forward, brandishing one of her weapons, and trying to stand up tall. I put a hand on her hip, and her gaze looks down at me. She appears about to object, but I shake my head, and the Quarg at last stands down.
"I have many questions, but first, I'm going to ask this one, as it seems the most relevant. How many Korath-Ah were on those ships. Real ones?" I asked, and I heard at least one of my captains gasp, though I didn't know which. The old man before me, just stared for a moment, then chuckled in an all too human way.
"And why do you suspect that there was anything other than Korath-Ah on those vessels?" he asked plainly, coughing once, and putting a four fingered, two thumbed hand to his chest, before sitting up straight to face me.
"Because that fight was too easy. We won without a single casualty, just some damage. More, I can see the hull of this station. You're making more ships, a lot of them. Enough that, if I were to hazard a guess, you could replace every ship in that force. Yet, despite this, I saw not a single living being on this station. Put two and two together there, and I surmise that those ships, even though we saw the people manning them, were manned by androids like the ones on our own ships, and you were here giving the orders. Am I wrong?" I ask, and the old man barks out a laugh again, before shaking his head.
"You are not, Young Warrior. The Raiders and World-Ships you faced were of the Korath-Ah, the Caste of War of the Korath People. Long ago, they would have been manned by living examples of us, but today, too few remain, and those that do, are like myself, husks of a bygone day," as he spoke, he waved his hand, and I was witness to his history, played out in moving silver scenes, as forms rose from the floor, and acted out battles, both flying in ships, and fighting armies on the ground. It was a grisly sight, to say the least, as the Korath-Ah seemed to revel in butchery and destruction.
"Before the Drak unmade us, we were the greatest conquers this galaxy had ever seen. The Ah, the First, leaving behind our worlds, and venturing forth to claim worlds in the name of the Korath. With Silver Blood, any technology we found was ours, and any advantage an enemy had was lost the moment after we captured it," as he spoke, the scenes were replaced with a galactic map, with worlds that were branded with what I now knew to be the symbol of the Korath.
"Then the Drak stopped you?" I guessed, and the Foremost shook his head.
"The Drak would not care about such. To them, one species is as good or as bad as another. No, they would not have cared one wit about the Korath-Ah's conquest, even should it come to dominate the galaxy," he explained.
"No, what they feared was the Za. The Korath-Za, the Last. We were the Caste of War, always the ones who expanded our reach through martial effort and conquest. The Za were the opposite. The expanded inward, always looking to design the best weapons, they were the Caste of Science," and the scenes replayed, this time with Korath-Za, not conquering, but building. First forging swords, then guns, and finally weapons of all manners of descriptions, including some I simply had no name for.
"The Korath-Za were the ones who brought the Drak down upon us. They were the ones who believed that the sharpest blade could be made by continual use. So they devised the Twin Blades of Korath. The Kor Mereti and the Kor Sestor," and now the scenes were replaced with obvious robots. Boxy looking things, that actually resembled the NDRs back on my own ships, but ones obviously designed for more warlike purposes. The Korath-Za who built them set them against each other the moment they were ready, and in the crossfire of the two, both their makers died.
"I see. They made robots to fight each other, and with the Silver Blood you use, they'd be able continuously improve, until they were literally unstoppable," this got a very nice swear from Bandit as I spoke, and I actually had to wonder about things.
"What happened to them?" I asked, watching the scene continue, the robots always getting better as the hit each other harder and faster.
"The Drak noticed this battle, this war amongst the Endless Sky, space as you would call it. They collapsed the hyperspace lanes leading to our space, and then sealed us in. We fought, as we were want to do, but our greatest weapons were naught but toys to the Drak, and they swept us aside, and broke our people," this time no scene played, nothing, just emptiness as the silver liquid melted into the floor.
"So we were cast out of the stars, and made low. To the galactic north, I believe you will still find the Twin Blades, always slashing at each other, never strong enough to conquer one another," he said, and then displayed a small area of space. I quickly took a shot of it with a small recorder I had, to give the information to STAR later.
"What changed then? Obviously, you are no longer cast low, considering this station," I asked, gesturing all around us, and the Foremost seemed to consider the question for a moment, before finally responding.
"The Korath-Ah are dying. Only a handful of us, a few hundred, remain. The Drak did not consider that to cage us, was to kill us. They recognize that they erred, and though they could not repair us as they hoped, they could offer us solace in our final days. All the Korath-Ah live now as I do, within the great metal wombs. We send out memories of our fallen comrades into the stars, to conquer and do battle. Should our visions of the past fall, they give gifts to those who defeat them. Should they succeed, the Foremost who made them gains new resources," he explained simply.
I wanted to hate him for that, as such thinking killed humans, a lot of them, and yet...what was left to hate? Though he spoke, this old, decrepit man, kept alive by machines I had no doubt he couldn't understand, probably made by the Korath-Za or maybe even the Drak themselves. This was a man in his twilight years, so far lost in his memories of past glory that he couldn't see what was in front of him. The technology he commanded, if he put his mind to it, could make the world, the blasted scarred world below this station, bloom with life again. What did he use it for? To destroy and conquer, because it was all he knew how to do.
"So, you took from human ships, digesting their resources here into more ships. Is that why you can speak Gal-Standard?" I asked, and he nodded, a few images popping out of the walls of books and players and various other media. Things the ships he'd captured and ransacked had likely had on them. These were the things he'd learned my people's tongue from, even as he'd murdered them.
"How much longer can you survive like this?" I asked at last, and he just shrugged.
"My end comes, it could be within the year, or a hundred years from now, but when I die, it will be the death knell of my people," he said, with a defeated tone in his voice.
"Then you will be forgotten. Such is the way of all conquerors. To live in glory, and die in ignominy," I said at last, and then turned on my heel. We were done here. The old man didn't stop us as we left, nothing came to attack us. I knew I should blow this place away, destroy this fool of a man who was so lost in the past. But I couldn't. The Drak, as much as I felt they sounded terrible, had done this to him. I hated them, not him. I didn't pity him either. I simply felt nothing for him, and soon I launched away, setting course, and jumping away into Polaris, planning to return for more of the larger cores once I'd gotten the ones I'd already taken installed.