Nature of the Beast
One-Shot Series: First Star I See Tonight
Part 13: I Can Explain?
*Logs will be a running thing with this part of the series. Short.
Kind of a goofy in-betweener.
Personal Log: Hearsay
Time: 3210 Hours (home time)
Cycle 137 of 4 Lunar Cycle, Multi-Target Mission
Location: Faarol System (MG8002)
According to our resident stellar experts, the Faarol system's comprised of a youthful G1 V and five companion satellites. We did a preliminary sweep and found that while the rocky planets themselves are less than habitable, thanks in no small part to their proximity to Faarol, the moons of the gas giants were far more to organic life's tastes. A scan of the surface of one such moon, Eixvn, revealed bio-signatures – clusters of 'em. Biggest bunch was over twenty thousand strong. Could be evidence of population centers. We'll be getting a closer look. Captain's heading us planet-side – guess I should say "moon-side" – to confirm readings. No telling what we'll find down there, or if they'll be friendly. Cap'n's still debating on who to send down for this one. Can't risk botching this one.
Rather not have another incident like with the Thraxuvans, so we're keeping Hokey Pokey on a tighter leash this time around. Gotta send her down. No way around it.
*Note: Full details on the system are in the cap'n's logs.
We're (me and Riddler) also working on setting up some comm. buoys for future teams, according to survey and safety protocol. Got word in the Kluvork system that a ship went in Sector 817 and hasn't come back according to schedule. Vanished. No word yet from 'em, but we'll be checking in on Jixgon in Sector 820 for a jump to Fringe. They have enough supplies to last 'em for a couple lunar cycles if they're down, and way longer if they ration. Here's hoping no one's hurt.
Every organization had a slew of rules associated with it. For the Elite Guard, the big ones all revolved around an insistence of political neutrality, moral uprightness, and upholding their oaths of service. They existed at once as a police force and a service force. The Triage Clinics obeyed a code of preservation, though they could get politic-y compared to the Guard depending on who ran them. The rescue crews, like the Liberators and the Specters, obeyed rules that all revolved around safety and ethics and generally being helpful in delicate, dangerous situations, and like the Guard, they were sworn to protect the people. Interactions between organizations and beyond them were pretty straightforward in the grand scheme. The Guard was the most transient of all groups, interacting with multiple organizations, and generally more trusted than law enforcement depending on city.
The CERF was a little more complicated. And weirder. Sort of.
Survey ships — they had some of the more extensive protocols owing to their very nature. Ships like that were the vanguards into new, unexplored territory. It was their allotted task out of the bunch to sneak into the unknown, earning them the affectionate, teasing titles of "Trekkers" among their colleagues. Because of their nature they had to be delicate and cautious when exploring new worlds, particularly ones inhabited. Rules like "Avoid first contact with creatures below Level 3 to prevent deification," "New languages constitute universal modes of communication, such as gestures, but it is vital to study first to avoid misinterpretation" and "Xeno-biologists are mandatory for survey class vessels, but are to be monitored closely during exploratory expeditions," were just some such rules survey ships like the captain's had to obey. Severe infractions could lead to a loss of position — permanently.
'Rules, rules, rules,' he ruminated. 'What's a civil society without rules?'
"BJ, meet me in the 'bridge chamber."
He turned to face the Avioid on her perch, "Eh?"
"Moon has lower gravity and a thick atmosphere. Perfect for flight and sustained gliding. Besides," she continued as hopped off, "we won't get spotted as easy."
Not taking the resident XB with her – risky. And, strictly speaking, against protocol.
"It's a fly-over," she reminded him. "Hokey Pokey can't fly. But –"
He smiled.
"But," she repeated. "I'll have her send one or two bio-drones so she can get some readings of her own. I'm not gonna keep her from doing her job."
"Cheeky, cheeky," he grinned. "Better make sure they're on their best behavior then."
Leeway chittered and clicked from his post.
"Give her some credit, Lee," Zodiac urged. "Eagerness doesn't mean a bad scientist. Her research was fascinating."
Allele's eagerness, while not as negative a trait as Leeway believed, was akin to taoth in his opinion, he said — in moderation it was helpful, but too much could lead to adverse side effects. Did that mean she was incapable of learning to moderate it? Absolutely not.
A deep-toned trill escaped the helmsmech as his smooth, low pauldrons rolled in a shrug. The Avioid shrugged back and left the bridge. He stepped up and took her post in the center of the bridge. His optics remained fixed on the visual feed. Pale, thick, silver clouds swirled around the ship into a dense blanket that put Kaon's foundry district on a bad day to shame. Simba's readings said it thinned out nearer to the ground, but was thickest right smack in the middle — so thick the ship's deep pulse scanners were having a hard time seeing through at points. He found himself rubbing his chin without really thinking about it. Finding them under that mess would be like finding a spring in a scrapyard. Problem, that.
"Though broad and deep the cloud-sea churns," he muttered, "we plunge below to further learn."
Leeway buzzed.
He winked at him, "Shakespeare ain't the only one on this tub who's got a way with words!"
The otter-mech's twinkling optics betrayed the smile behind his oral cover.
Releasing a gust of hot air, he leaned onto one trod and peered once more into the roiling sea of silver. He brought up the live feed from the scanners in a flick of his wrist. In the margins of the feed, a text communication appeared from Manifest. He opened it in a tap. The Requisitions Officer had, per his careful, always-prepared nature (he refused to call him paranoid), attached tracker beacons to each of the two ladies and the two bio-drones Allele had decided to send, Tinker Bell and Buzz. He sent back a confirmation. Half a breem later and all four tracker beacons blinked to life within the swirling cloud banks, all four signals' telemetry maintaining a steady pace in their descent. He smiled. Snickety could be trying some cycles, and Combustor may grunt and swear at him over his quirks, but the fauxline officer had a valuable knack for solving a problem while keeping all parties satisfied. As Manifest always chanted, "it pays to prepared for anything." Sometimes, of course, you could prepare and prepare all you liked, and something would go wrong — that was how life was. An unexpected variable could fly in without warning, throwing you off. Manifest would never admit that though; he believed that mantra of his.
He hit another holo-key, "How's it going, girls?"
"Pit, it'sreallyhardtoseeinthismess — youwouldn'tbelieveitunlessyouwerehere, Dodger! ButIgottaadmitshewasright — perfectglidingconditions! AndcanIjustsayAllele'sdronesaresooooocute?!"
Zodiac groaned from her end, "Dodger, don't bait her, please."
Suppressing a chortle, he promised that hadn't been his intent. Was it his fault Freefall loved to talk?
"We're gonna go radio silent once we get past the thickest part of the clouds," Zodiac warned. "Can't be sure yet if the life here is Level 5 and has radio capabilities to hijack our transmissions."
"Gotcha," he said. "No rush. Just be sure to beep us when you're on your way back up."
"M'kay."
Patience, he mused as second joor ticked past, was a requirement for a CERF member; just as the universe was not hurried in its evolution, they were not rushed in their assignments. Survey ships, however much they were tasked with, had far greater quantities of time to finish their missions. They were, after all, trekking into entirely new regions without the convenience of spacebridges waiting for them or communication buoys. Like art, it was not quantity they were really after but quality in that quantity. They had to have solid data — other crews coming in for in-depth analysis could get neck-deep in scrap if they didn't have all the information they needed.
Scouting missions onto specific lunar or planetary regions for her usually lasted around a joor at most. But she had three helpers this time to make the scouting much more efficient — and she wasn't back yet.
From his post off to the right, the helmsmech cheeped, buzzed, and trilled. He did not need to understand his unique auditory binary to know his concern was shared.
"I'm sure they're fine, Lee," the Corvid said. "You know her. If she finds something interesting she sometimes takes longer."
He was not the type to give in to concern, but Zodiac was a creature of pattern — and she wasn't following her pattern.
One hand went towards the holographic input that semi-circled before him. As he hovered the digit over it, debating, a beep met his audials. He brought up the telemetry data of the tracker beacons. One had appeared, and as he watched, a second appeared. Then a third and fourth came in a pair.
"See?" he grinned at the helmsmech. "What'd I tell ya?"
Leeway whistled like a happy piccolo.
He opened up the silent comm. channel in a flash, "Cap'n! You good?"
"We're fine, Dodger!" she assured. "Just give us a g-bridge! The drones need a bit of a wash!"
"Yes, ma'am!"
He struck another holo-key. The tinkling roar of a groundbridge entered the chamber. Back-to-back both of Allele's bio-drones buzzed in on their insect-wings, their spherical bodies covered in what he assumed was paint. It wasn't the childish scribbles and splashes of a primitive civilization — it reminded him of the sacred paint and war paint used by Predacons. Tinkerbell was covered in green and gold vegetative designs, and Buzz was covered in lightning markings. He couldn't wait to hear the story behind the paint jobs, and apparently neither could their owner. The doors to the bridge opened and Allele scuttled in. Beeping, the drones turned to meet her, landing in each open hand so she could lift them up and nuzzle them against her faceplates, crooning that she was happy to see them safe. Each chirped back.
Smiling, his attention went back to the groundbridge.
He stared at what came through.
Zodiac. Her beast form was covered in paint designs, adorned with jewelry of semi-precious stone held together by thin, braided vines, her talons and beak polished to a shine, and an elaborate crown of feathers and flowers on her head. Freefall followed her through in a similar state.
He stared more.
"What in the...?"
*Um...yeah. I-I can explain?*
He recovered and grinned, "Go on, then. I'm putting this one down for the records."
Perching, she explained.
"— and even though we couldn't understand their language, once we got across to them we weren't there to cause trouble, they pretty much opened the gates to us and treated us like royalty. We tried to tell them that wasn't necessary but they wouldn't listen. Their cities are all up on rocky spires and in the mountains, and they're a reptilian, feathered species with membranal wings — they can fly. Sort of. It's like gliding, really."
She held her hand out to emit a holographic image of the new species. Reptilian indeed, with scales poking out and glittered from beneath its thick coat of feathers, but its skeleton design was slightly more avian in nature. The thick beak, too, was avian. Feathers swept up from each cheek. Its long tail had long-outward facing feathers that would catch air currents and create lift, and its arms had wings connected to them that extended out to an impressive eleven feet, clawed hands on the wing's underside permitting for grasping. The way the spine arched told of a species halfway between bipedal and quadrupedal. Hooked talons on the feet. Predatory species in that sense, but the beak struck him as belonging to a seed-eater. The one scanned had an impressive mohawk crest that ran down its head and petered out at the start of its dorsal region.
"They actually get around on local wildlife they've domesticated. Allele can get you all the biological details on the life we catalogued. Anyway, they were fascinated by us, and really respectful. So we stuck around, let them investigate us, poke and prod us — the offspring really, really liked Allele's bio-drones," she laughed, "but when we had to tell them we had to leave by pointing at the sky, they apparently took that as —"
"They thought you were deities?"
She shrugged, "I mean, I guess?"
Jackdaw groaned. She could guess why.
"It's not all bad!" she insisted. "We got to negotiating with the local leader — big female; seems they're a matriarchal society — and they seemed okay with the idea of putting a small outpost here on Eixvn — they call it Irotep I think — the planet I mean, not the city we were in — the city's called Arxon — so long as we don't cause any damage to their environment. It's really fragile because almost everything is symbiotic."
Her lieutenant sighed, "Anything else we need to put down in the report?"
"Yeah," she confirmed. "The temple they have — it looked like the bridge of an old star-ship that crashed into the mountain. Allele got panoramic views for analysis."
He leapt at that, "What?"
She nodded, "Yeah! That's how they caught us coming — they got the scanners working through trial and error some time ago I think, and they tracked our arrival with them. They have radio communication and rudimentary wireless communication as well through reverse engineering the stuff from the ship crash. So they're at least Level 6. Which makes me think they didn't really deify us on arrival — they incorporated the 'metal aliens from space' religion a long, long time ago, but nothing about our treatment struck me as religious. It was more like a celebration when they greeted us. All 'Hey the metal people are back! Woo!' sort of thing."
Jackdaw massaged his chin, "Hm. Interesting. So they've been visited before?"
"I'm not totally sure," she admitted. "We didn't find —"
The bridge doors opened again. It wasn't often Combustor emerged from the den of the power core, but whenever he did he made himself known.
"Glitch," he greeted.
"Botch-baby," she returned. "So. Any idea 'bout the ship-temple thing?"
"Isnae modern," he grunted as projected his own hologram of what remained of the vessel. "Thing's somewhere between Silver and Golden Age in design jest from lookin' at it. Fecking shame I cannae get into the databanks. Some rootin' in her brains and I might find what made her go down in the first feckin' place. Those old things were built to last. The damage is mostly from them gutting her, but least they treated her with respect when doin' it."
"Her?" Jackdaw wondered.
"Ship's are always female," Combustor growled, "unless I judge otherwise."
Author's Note: Yeah. Some weird stuff happens when Zodiac's working.
