Little Moment: Alien of Steel

By Eric 'Erico' Lawson


Galvan Homeworld

408 Years Before Little Moments (1590 A.D.)

The spiral galaxy that the Galvan species called home was a cold, unforgiving place. Too often, it was also cruel. Theirs was a species of diminutive stature, yet boggling longevity and intelligence. That rare combination, many historians and anthropologists had suggested over the course of their civilization, was the key to their survival through the hurdles of development and evolution.

The Galvan tendency towards rational thought and sustainable development had seen them escape the pitfalls that had ended so many other civilizations. Their probes and radio telescopes, the ever-vigilant eyes and ears that they had built to look outwards into the space of their home galaxy and beyond, had shown them the fate of countless civilizations before their own, all of them dead and extinct, and more civilizations that existed even now. They had learned of peoples and places that had been wiped out - through cosmic probability from supernova-induced gamma ray bursts or extinction level impact events, from the inevitable failures of a planet's protective atmosphere or its magnetic barriers against the heartless stellar winds. They had learned of civilizations that had died off because they had overreached, exhausted themselves through unsustainable practices or gone to war against other spacefaring societies and been wiped out for it. More miserable still were those civilizations that never left their homeworlds, dying in their evolutionary cradle for one reason or another.

Shortsightedness. Greed. Zealotry. Raw, heartless ambition. Indifference to common advancement and survival. There were hundreds of ways in which the peoples that inhabited the galaxy had died, or were in the process of dying off.

But not the Galvan. They had survived their cradle of infancy, risen up hidden away from the predator races of the galaxy until they had stepped forward into the stars and begun colonizing other worlds. They had created artificial life to aid them - and upon realizing that the Mechamorphs were sentient, had set them free and given their children the moon of their homeworld as their own home. The Galvanic Mechamorphs were their friends and allies now, Makers to their Thinkers.

Beyond their borders, beyond the reach and security of their patrol vessels that kept pirates and warlords and worse at bay, there was chaos. They studied it. They learned from it. They prepared to face it, should it come to them. But they did not seek it out and they did not try to control it. The wisdom of hundreds of Standard Galvan Revolutions of governing had kept them safe and protected, even in the face of those who coveted their technology and their prosperity.

That wisdom now found itself tested, because somehow a single object had managed to fly past their early detection nets through some strange form of spacedrive that carried a signature unlike anything ever recorded before. In the control room, all eyes turned towards the most brilliant thinker of the Galvan race in modern times, and Azmuth, the Prime Thinker, fought down the urge to glare at them.

"You don't need me to tell you all how to do your damn jobs." He snapped at them, and every head in the room quickly turned back towards their screens, chattering away and performing calculations and running projections. Azmuth let out a long and irritated sigh. He saw how they looked at him, like a time bomb waiting to go off. It had been six Galvan Revolutions since Zenith left him after their last fight about how much time he spent on his work. If he was going to crack from being divorced and alone, it would have been in those first rotations. No, he hadn't cracked. He'd just buried himself in his work, the very thing that had upset Zenith so greatly. But she was not around to yell at him for it anymore - wherever she'd gone, she'd done a very good job of disappearing. Azmuth had taken the hint that she had no desire to reconcile and gone back to his projects for planetary and colonial defense work.

On this particular day, it had left him in charge of the planetary defense network

Their work, efficient as always, gave them a predicted point of atmospheric entry and landing point. Crashing point, if they could not slow it down. If it was incapable of slowing down on its own. His heart jumped a little when they put it up on the main holoviewer - it was going to land by the Central Laboratory Complex. Not just his own laboratory space, but hundreds of other Galvans had their projects, their life's work, ongoing there. An impact would be catastrophic for their way of life, and worse - there were some projects that needed to be kept secured for safety's sake.

Azmuth tapped in the connection code for the CLC main board and added his authorization, the surest way to make sure they would answer and not let it go to message recording. "Inbound object, Code Nova. Engage defense shield and shunt to internal power, offline all projects capable of hibernation state!" He didn't bother waiting for an affirmative response, he just killed the call and turned his focus back on the room. Every Galvan sat up a little straighter at their stations.

"Tractor beams." He ordered, and their Golan defense satellites in orbit released the drone ships. Like a cloud of insects, the drones closed in and fired off gravitic stasis beams, an order of magnitude more powerful than the standard models that other species had available to them. He watched the drone feeds with a mixture of scientific curiosity and horror as the ship erected a particle barrier with a peculiar wave effect that shrugged off every attempt from the drones to grab hold of it.

"Direct kinetic force. Push it off course." He said next, and one drone flew in to try hull contact to shove it off course. The ship effortlessly saw the move coming and jinked on the z-axis, and several of the Galvan in the room gasped. Thankfully, none of them stated the obvious. It had taken him nearly half a revolution to get them to stop being so inefficient. Azmuth stifled his own growl and took stock of what he knew.

"Time to impact, 2.34 Solverts."

It was a small vessel. Shaped like an interstellar cruise missile, really. Powerful, clearly being run either by a high-level AI or by a living sentient. It had the capability of evading their outer sensors on its flight in, was immune to tractor beams, and was very maneuverable.

"Scans. Show me what we're looking at." Reacting to his wish, the Galvan brought up the high level scans that the Golan satellites had taken of the ship on its approach.

It carried no explosives, at least that their sensors were capable of detecting. Aside from its impressive drive system, there were no distinct features that lent itself towards weapon design. And there was a single lifeform on board.

"Sir, I have a target lock on the missile." The officer manning one of the drone control stations barked out. "Do I have authorization to fire?"

It looked like a missile, Azmuth knew and understood that. And certainly, with the amount of defensive precautions available to it, there was an argument to be made it was one. But it carried no explosives that they knew of. And it had a lifeform on board.

For the first time in a twelveset of revolutions, the Prime Thinker found himself hearing Zenith's voice in his thoughts again.

You're so wrapped up in your work, you miserable bastard, you could never see what was right in front of you!

"Sir!" The officer repeated anxiously. "Do we open fire?!"

Azmuth stared at the ship for long moments more, risking a glance at the countdown clock. "No." He finally said, his voice steady and resonant in the CIC. "Do not open fire."

"But sir, the missile!" Another Galvan protested.

"Why do you think it is a missile?" Azmuth asked, and without waiting for a response, stepped onto his waiting hoverdisc and gave it an order to guide him to the nearest transit terminal. He turned and looked over his shoulder. "There is a living being on that ship. Whoever they are, they came an awfully long way just to risk crashing against the barrier shield of the CLC. We designed it to absorb the force of a high-yield fission device - in the worst case scenario it will still hold. We'll be replacing capacitor conduits for a quarter of a revolution, but it will hold."

"You're risking the entire CLC on a gamble, sir." One of the younger and braver Galvan in the room remarked. Azmuth fixed his most potent glare on the fellow until he withered and looked away in shame.

"Galvan do not act out of fear." Azmuth declared flatly, and at last, only silence answered him. Nodding to himself, he let the hoverdisc resume its journey and in moments, he found himself outside and countless Galmarks away from the planetary CIC, close to the Central Laboratory Complex that was under threat. Looking up into the early evening sky, which had just started to tint from orange towards a darker blue, he could make out what looked like an early evening star approaching. There it was, the ship. In the background he could hear the warble of the alarms in this district begin to sound off, warning every citizen to make for the shelters, and there was the CLC with its barrier field glowing an angry red and gold.

"Estimated time to impact, 0.75 Solverts." The communicator around his forearm reported, and Azmuth stared up at the ship with a gimlet eye. The flare of heat from atmospheric re-entry around it gave it a terrifying glow now.

But then…that glow began to fade.

"Recalculating. Time to impact, 1.35 Solverts." That could mean only one thing, Azmuth well knew. The object was not a missile. It was a ship. A ship with a lifeform on board, now coming in and slowing for a landing.

That shocking news must have passed through the CIC as well, because the sirens steadily began to fade away, leaving empty silence. The scrambling Galvan stopped and looked up in wonder. Azmuth merely tucked his arms behind his back and flew in closer. Some were still wary, but…he had a feeling that this ship's presence was benign. Using the AR overlay on his visor, he marked its projected landing point and directed his hoverdisc to a spot 0.1 Galmarks away from it.

The ship itself was a tapered cylinder, one main engine and two smaller ones on one end and a blunted nose on the other. It flew down with retros firing strongly at the front, the two outer engines at the rear swiveled down to balance it until its forward momentum was halted. As perfect as any antigrav system could operate, the ship belching fusion torch fire descended to a flawless landing in the CLC courtyard, just outside of the barrier.

Azmuth was already moving towards it before the thrusters on the vessel were done firing, and he was the first on the scene. A quick message to the CLC had them drop the particle barrier and send out some microdrones to erect a glittering barricade of flashing lights to keep everyone else back, and he paused long enough to snap a biofilter field around himself and then a larger one around the vessel to protect the local area from any microorganisms.

His proximity must have acted as a cue, because there came a hissing of pressurized air and the top hatch, nearly a viewing window in its design, opened up on a hinge. Curiosity got the better of him, and Azmuth floated up the side of the small craft to peer inside. Who had piloted the ship so carefully?

His eyes went wide when he saw the ship's lone passenger, lying in a makeshift cradle and wrapped in a yellow and white blanket, cooing as if it had just woken up.

It was a child. A blue-skinned bipedal child, two arms, two legs, and two unfocused eyes. Its head turned towards Azmuth, it blinked, and then let out another coo as it tried to focus on him. A stubby, chubby hand reached up towards him.

With a delicacy and wonder that the moment deserved, Azmuth reached down and touched the palm of his hand to a single outstretched finger.

"Where did you come from, little one?" He asked the burbling infant.


One Galvan Rotation Later

Crisis Response Bureau

Crisis Response Board Meeting Room

The Galvan Medical Board's specialized team had run a battery of tests on the child which had arrived. The infant, for lack of a more precise word, was perfect. It carried no diseases, its immune system was already the equal of an adult Galvan's in its response. There was no damage to its genetic code via the usual culprits that came with deep space travel. It was a male of its species, and was the equivalent of a Galvan infant of one revolution in age. Their projections, based on the rate of telomere decay, were that it would have a lifespan equivalent to a Galvan, or perhaps slightly longer. 1200 revolutions on the far end.

The science and engineering teams that had swarmed to the site once the child and the medical teams had left had learned far more, and now presented their findings to the Crisis Response Bureau, of which Azmuth was chairperson.

"...very durable materials. Our metallurgists have already begun putting together research proposals to reverse engineer the cerametal alloys, based on what our passive scans took. If we can avoid cutting pieces of the ship off, that will be our first effort."

"Very well." Azmuth inclined his head and looked to the next slightly nervous youngster down the line. "Data Management. Were you able to interface with the ship's systems, pull down its navigational logs?"

"We…We were, yes. Although it made no sense to us at first."

"Elaborate."

"The navigational logs carried star charts of the galaxy that were incongruent with our own. They were inaccurate in ways that were not explainable through the usual reasons of lack of data or a faulty understanding of celestial mechanics. But then one of our analysts, in an attempt to run a diagnostic, ran a stellar drift algorithm on the navigational database and came up with a match. Based on our own predictions done two hundred and eighteen revolutions prior, the navigational logs match the state of the galaxy as it was…thirty-two thousand, four hundred revolutions ago. Give or take 100 revolutions for margin of error."

That caused a stir of noise among those gathered. Azmuth raised an eyebrow. The claim seemed preposterous - a ship from more than 30,000 revolutions in the past, arriving now, with a hale and hearty infant?

"We didn't believe it ourselves until we checked the ship's main databanks and discovered that there were several partitions. Most of them are keyed to an unknown genetic signature, but more than that, they are chrono-locked. Meant to be opened over the course of time, and only by the ship's authorized user. The sheer amount of defense mechanisms in the optronic processors were mind-boggling to our two Mechamorph agents. To put it plain, only the main authorized user will ever be able to access them. To try and brute force them open will lead to a cascade failure that will destroy the entirety of the databanks."

Azmuth considered that for a moment. "Given the genetic lock, how reasonable is it that the ship's makers intended those files to be accessible to our infant passenger?"

"...The probability is very high, Prime Thinker."

"Then as there's nothing to be done about it now, we'll table that problem for later. But you would not have segued into this topic if it did not relate to your strange navigational findings."

"Yes, sir. There was one partition we had full access to. A partition with a rudimentary translation matrix that we decoded very quickly. Along with a primitive visual file and audio carrier. This lone partition was meant to be found and accessed, because it contained a message."

Azmuth's mouth went dry in anticipation. "And what did the message say?"

The technician pushed some buttons on his holopad, and the main viewer in their conference room lit up, lowering the ambient lights at the same time.

The data was fragmented in places; either the result of the ship's journey, the method used to transfer the video file from formerly incompatible hardware to Galvan Spintro-Script, or less likely, the sheer time that had passed from when the ship had launched to yesterday. Azmuth discounted the third almost out of hand because of the state of the child - unless his civilization had somehow managed to achieve perfect cellular stasis in a form that hadn't been readily apparent at first glance. But fragmented and staticky as it was, Azmuth could still make out a blue-skinned sentient with calm white eyes and a calm smile, dressed in a slightly glowing white smock, standing in the foreground of a building that shook while warning lights flickered and muffled sirens droned. He seemed at peace, though sad, if his facial expressions were anything near to a Galvan's. And his voice was soothing, though the language was indecipherable. The language software and the patched in translation module provided a voice-modulated substitute in Galvan a fraction of a moment after the original, letting them hear the undertones of the original message simultaneously.

"I leave this message for the child I will never see grow. I leave it for those who we have sent him to. My name is unimportant. Only life is important - and the life of our civilization has come to an end. But not his. Not my son's, the treasure of my heart, the final gift of my beloved." The alien's face shuttered in pain and loss for a moment, but he shook it off and pressed on. "Hubris. If there is a lesson to be learned from our people, it is that hubris finds its home the easiest among the powerful, the self-assured, the complacent. Our civilization forever reached for mastery. The mastery of our domain, and especially the mastery of ourselves. We made ourselves stronger, faster, more invulnerable. Through generations of rigorous genetic study and manipulation, we unlocked gifts that made us as gods. But in our haste to reach for power, we lost the wisdom that was needed with it. We thought ourselves…endless. Inevitable. And fear crept in. We let in our doom when we sought to make our rule eternal, because we forgot what so many peoples across the stars we journeyed to knew and accepted as living truth; that nothing lasts forever."

The blue alien closed his eyes for a moment, breathed in and out slowly, and finally opened them. "We sought to predict, to foresee what would come. To do so we harnessed the power of a singularity, bound it in our machinery, and brought it to our native star. We retreated and abandoned the galaxy to its own devices, shored up our borders. Through the event horizon we reached, creating a wormhole that gave us a lens to the galaxy of thousands, tens of thousands of measures hence. Our scientists sought for the evidence of our civilization, our technology, our voices communicating over signals. They saw nothing, and fearful of what that emptiness of our presence meant…they pushed further. Our leaders demanded more, and too few voices stood up in protest to refuse them. I…did not refuse them. The safeties were disregarded, more power was applied. And the singularity ran away from us."

The room he was in shook again, and the alien winced as part of the ceiling came down in the background, looking back at it before spinning back to the camera with the wildness of someone who was on borrowed time.

"But I did see your civilization. The Galvan civilization, a society of minds forever looking for answers, a society with more wisdom than ours had. As I record this message, the singularity is destroying our entire civilization from the inside out. It is only because I am on a distant outpost of it that I am alive to do this now, but the reprieve is temporary. I have designed a ship with the technology we once used to help our probes survive the stresses and gravitic shear at the heart of the galaxy's devourer. Due to the enormous power constraints, it would never be large enough to support an adult. But a smaller vessel - one designed with the same rough dimensions as our chronal probes - will make it. So I give you the gift of my son, and beg for your help."

Azmuth stared in silence, horrified. This was the eulogy, not only for a man, but for an entire civilization. A civilization of which there was no record. No trace. And there never would be, if this was accurate. There would be nothing left to find.

"I will not tell you his name. Or mine. Or the name of my people. Perhaps they are better left forgotten. Perhaps we are better left forgotten. Let our sins die with us. My son…my son is blameless in our fate. No child bears the burden of their parent's mistakes. I cannot atone for what our people have done to ourselves, but I can try to spare him. I can try to give him a future. If he decides he wishes to know of me, or his people, or our achievements then the records are encoded in the ship, to be unlocked as he grows in maturity. And hopefully in wisdom. But if he decides to walk away from it all, and start anew…that, too, is his to decide. I give my son the gift of a choice."

The alarms in the message came louder now, more pressing. The alien scientist was crying now, and he wiped a finger under his eye to clear it.

"Strength is double-edged, and my son will have strength in abundance. If what I have seen of your people holds true, 32,000 cycles hence from now, then yours is a society with compassion. With heart. I am sending you my heart. He could do such wonderful things, or such horrible ones. His ship has already left, this message is being transmitted and recorded so it will be there with him in your time as he rides the wave of our destruction to his future. I beg you. Help him. Raise him. Teach him well, teach him to be better than his people were, than his foolish father was." The image began to glitch out even harder now, losing resolution, the colors going wild. But the voice…the voice held strong. "Know that you are loved 32,000 cyc – past, my son. I pray you are loved – time. Be brave. Be str — ough to be wise. Nev – rget your heart, and fly…"

The message collapsed in a flash of white that was swallowed in darkness, ending with the suddenness that death always brought.

"Fuck." Azmuth looked over sharply to the Galvan who'd said it; Eselape, in charge of First Response. His face was pale. Azmuth found himself agreeing with his fellow Galvan, though he settled for rubbing his fingertips over closed eyelids to fight the headache.

"Well. That answers that." The vice-chair of their committee declared tonelessly. "Now what do we do?"

"You heard that warning, right? This child is dangerous!" One panicky older Galvan blurted out. "We should euthanize it now, while we still can!"

"YOU DARE?!" Diola thundered, the female Galvan bolting upright and giving her elder a death glare. "It is a child! Innocent!"

"It's dangerous!"

"No, it could be dangerous!"

"We should study it!"

"IT is a him, you…"

Back and forth, the arguments in the room continued, growing more and more heated and leaving Azmuth just feeling tired.

That last message had been given by a man of science, full of regrets. A man who had done everything in his power for one last act - an act born not out of rage, or defiance at the futility of fighting death. An act of love, and hope. An act made from the heart.

Revolutions later, and the last words Zenith had tearfully screamed at him were as fresh as ever. "You are a heartless bastard! I was a fool to think you ever loved me - that you could ever love anyone!"

In his dying rotations, that scientist of a doomed people had put aside power and ambition and his own life to give his son a chance to survive. He felt ashamed, and humbled, that someone who had made a ship capable of flying through singularities would forego all science for one final, defiant act of compassion.

An act that Azmuth's people now threatened not out of logic, or the weight of evidence, but out of fear. And Azmuth's thinking crystallized into a plan.

Zenith had been wrong. He was many things. Hyper-focused on his work. Slow to show emotions. Someone who struggled with forging bonds and relationships. Short-tempered and dismissive. He was all of those, yes, but he was not heartless.

"I will take him." Azmuth declared, amplifying his voice so it echoed in their chamber. Every argument stopped, every head turned to him. "I will raise the child. I will honor his father's wishes."

"But - but sir, the risks…"

"We are Galvan." Azmuth thundered, staring the lone protesting fellow down until the opposition withered and died. "We act with the weight of evidence, not out of fear. Perhaps you require a remedial course in ethics if you have forgotten that." He looked around the gathered sentients of the Crisis Response Board, searching their faces. "Who else will oppose my claim?"

None did, and the meeting's final moments passed quickly now that the issue at hand was…not resolved, perhaps, but tabled. Kicked down the skyway.

When Azmuth left the meeting, he'd already purchased an old laboratory building out in the sticks, sold off his existing laboratory space in the CLC, and put in work orders to move his equipment and repair and refurbish the run-down but larger facility far away from the prying eyes and breakable equipment of so many other fragile Galvans.

He made sure to add in his request the need for a very large reinforced bedroom for his newest ward, easily four times the size of what would be his main workspace.

…which would require childproofing.

Azmuth felt a headache coming on fast.


Divola Province, Continent of Moyus

Southern Hemisphere, Galvan Homeworld

5 Standard Galvan Revolutions Later

"Papa! Papa, wook! Fwowers!" The child gushed. He'd gotten bigger, but there was still the chubbiness of baby fat in his face and in his grabby hands. His very grabby hands. It had been a bit of planning that some had criticized him for, but Azmuth's instinct to childproof everything had paid off more than once. It wasn't so much that he expected the child to be hurt, even at three revolutions in age there were signs of what would be an impressive foundation of invulnerability. Today that meant that on this particular spring afternoon, as Azmuth took the child for a stroll through the wilderness behind his home and laboratory, that when the blue-skinned alien reached down to grab at the flowers with clumsy fingers, he tore up not only the specimen of Yellow Cramar that he'd been staring at but also the roots and the clump of dirt around them.

Through the vocoder of the maintenance mech suit that he'd repurposed and modified for child-rearing, Azmuth shook his head. "Gently, Bright Eyes. Gently." The boy lowered his arm and pouted a little, staring at the now crumpled flower.

"Sowwy, papa."

Azmuth guided his mechanical suit over to stand next to the boy and forced it to drop onto one knee, putting himself closer to Bright Eyes' level. It was a silly name, a nickname really, but given the strange circumstances of his arrival on Galvan Prime and how so much of his heritage remained chrono-locked behind a machine, it sufficed. When the time came, the child could decide for himself what his name would be. For now, Azmuth didn't even bother trying to correct the child into calling him by his real name, much less try to give him a proper Galvan one since the child wasn't Galvan. 'Papa' was a stabilizing influence in the child's life, the adolescent psychiatrists had told him, a name linked with authority, oversight, comfort, and security.

"You need to be careful." Azmuth reminded the child for the one hundred and ninety-sixth time that rotation-unit block. "This flower is precious." And not just in the 'traditional' sense that other nascent civilizations among the stars might attribute to nature and wildlife, either. Galvan Prime had been a hostile world to the Galvan people, who had been smaller than most of the things that threatened them. Untold generations of climate control, terraforming, and selective bio-modifications had turned Galvan Prime into a more artificial, controlled world, with only spots of untouched wilderness allowed to flourish in sanctioned parks and wilderness regions. Yellow Cramar was a variety of plant that they'd never been able to domesticate - it only flourished in the wild, where the climate control was not so intense.

"You have strength," Azmuth went on, gently unfolding the boy's hands and removing the ruined flower, "more than most. You are different than others on this world. Larger, stronger. I honestly have no idea what you will be capable of. And you must decide for yourself, Bright Eyes, what you will do with that power."

The child's lip wibbled a bit at the admonishment. "Like what?"

Azmuth considered that very innocent sounding question, feeling a weight in it, and even more weight in his answer. All of the child's attention was on him, and something in the back of his head pricked. Be careful, that unsettling feeling warned. Be careful, for this is important.

"There are those who believe that the strongest should rule above everyone." He began carefully. "That strength, alone, is the singular metric to which all should be measured. That being strong is all that matters, and there is no place for anything else. For kindness. For caring. For friendship. Or love." Azmuth set the flower down on the ground and set his hand on the boy's shoulder, using touch to make him pay attention. "What do you think, Bright Eyes?"

"I don't know." The boy said unsteadily. "But you take care of me." Azmuth nodded the head of his power suit. "An' you love me. So…it's im-por-tant." Bright Eyes blinked a few times, and nodded back, sounding more sure of himself. "Yeah. Strong is wrong. Cawing's good too."

"Then you have a solid grasp of what matters." Azmuth declared, letting go of the boy and standing back up. "Come on. Let's get you back home, and see to dinner." But the boy didn't move from where he stood, and instead looked down at the flower on the ground. "What is it, Bright Eyes?"

"I hurt the fwower." The boy said sadly. "Papa, can I save it?"

Azmuth blinked at the question before shrugging. "Perhaps. We can try, at least. Pick it up, Bright Eyes, and we'll see if we can't replant it." Beaming, the child reached down and delicately picked up the flower, toddling towards the patch of ground he'd gotten it from. Azmuth stood and watched him waddle on.

He was still so young, Azmuth's Bright Eyed child. But he would not be young forever.

In five revolutions from now…the first piece of his adulthood would manifest.


Five Galvan Revolutions Later

The child had known he was not from this world. Azmuth had never seen the point in lying to him about that when every Galvan who visited their home or lived in the sparsely populated region they called home looked different. And Bright Eyes had asked at first why he was different, where he came from. Those were answers Azmuth couldn't give him, so all he said when it came up was always, 'You will find out when you're older.'

That time was today. The ship that he had arrived in had woken up from its hibernation, and begun glowing. The child stood in front of it, fidgeting and nervously looking back over his shoulder to Azmuth. He was taller now, some more of his baby fat had vanished, and his speech was clearer now.

"It's all right." Azmuth reassured him. "This is the ship you came to us in. It is your inheritance. The answers you have been wanting are here."

"Papa, what if I learn is bad?"

Azmuth almost smiled inside of his power suit. "Do you remember the message I showed you?" He had shown Bright Eyes an edited version of the clip that had set the Council into such hysterics - just enough to make it clear he had been sent away to protect his life, and because he was cared for. "Do you think that there is anything you will learn that will be bad? When your father did everything he could to save you?"

The child, now ten Galvan revolutions old, mutely shook his head though he did not seem entirely reassured either. "Will you stay here with me?"

Azmuth, finding no words suitable, merely nodded his head. Bright Eyes took one breath, then another, and walked up next to the ship that had brought him to this world. One trembling hand on a gangly arm reached up and touched the surface of the ship, and Azmuth was startled to see glowing lines of circuitry manifest on the hull around where his hand was.

A moment or two passed, and then the cockpit that had remained stubbornly closed ever since he pulled the infant out of it opened up again, and an antigrav sphere ejected from inside, hovering up above the ship and spinning around to take the lay of the land before centering its attention on the child. A beam of light shone down and stopped on the child's forehead, and Bright Eyes - froze.

Azmuth's heart skipped a beat, but his suit was still tracking Bright Eyes' vitals and they were stable. "Bright Eyes? Child?" He said aloud. No answer came. The orb sent out a second beam of light, and a hologram of a male adult of the child's species appeared.

"He cannot hear you right now. He is speaking to another runtime of my program." Azmuth stared at the figure who smiled at him. He knew this figure.

"You're his father. Or…rather…"

The smile the hologram wore waned a little. "A limited-scope artificial intelligence program purpose-built to act as a guide. And one that can, if necessary, interact with others as well. Like yourself, Azmuth." Azmuth's suit stood up a little straighter when his hand twitched at the controls, and the hologram chuckled. "Yes, I know who you are. My son has been telling me about you, and about growing up in the rural part of your world. Thank you for raising him."

"...It was logical." Azmuth tried to deflect the fellow's gratitude. "What do I call you?"

"So keen on learning more of what came before, are you?" The hologram mused. "Ever curious, that is a trademark of the Galvan, I suspect. But you are wary as well."

"Wary does not mean fearful." Azmuth corrected him. "I am not afraid of your son." Others had been, and still were, he did not say. In many ways, his time away from the capital spent raising this alien child had been seen by his peers as the ultimate experiment of his career, and several were rooting for his failure in it.

The hologram gravely nodded. "I know. You have tried to raise him to respect life, to respect his power. You have done far better as a father than I have, and that is another reason I do not give you my name. It does not bear remembering."

Azmuth sighed, but let the matter drop. He looked back over to Bright Eyes. "So what are you talking about?"

"We were talking of his life before. Now, I am offering…" The hologram paused, blinked a few times, and raised his eyebrows. "Unexpected."

"What? What is?"

The hologram smiled again and laughed. Actually laughed, and sounded relieved when he did so. "That brave boy."

"What did he do?"

"He decided that he did not want to learn of our people. Our civilization. Our knowledge."

"What?!" Azmuth nearly reached out to jerk his son clear of the beam connecting him to the device. "How could he make that decision? It's illogical!"

"It is an emotional decision, to be sure, but one with a core of logic at its heart." The hologram said, calming back down again. "We failed. We killed ourselves in our hubris, and I see no flaw in him not wanting to repeat that choice."

"What you learned, your science, your discoveries!"

"Our discoveries are what killed us in the end. We lacked the maturity to accept our fate, and in the process, created the conditions for it. No. I know you would love to learn our ways, but you will not. You must progress in your own way, Azmuth of the Galvan people. And so must my child. No, even as we speak I am deleting the comprehensive files on our technology and history from the ship's database, save what is needed to maintain and repair this holographic emitter and construct. I will leave you with one datafile, however."

"What would that be?" Azmuth asked glumly.

"A comprehensive datafile on our species' biology, including sexual maturation, reproduction, diseases, and aging." The hologram grinned at him. "I will spare you from having to give him the sex talk."

"Wonderful." Azmuth exhaled. "And you'll be sticking around, then?"

"Even though he has refused the gift of our legacy, the day may come when he needs someone to speak to. That is what I made this program for, after all. To be a voice, a guide, as he goes through his life."

"To be a father when he needs one." Azmuth said. The hologram blinked and then shook his head.

"No, Azmuth. He already has a father." And the blue alien man winked at him. "Good luck."

The hologram winked out of existence, and the beam of light coming out of the hovering sphere did as well. A moment later, the first beam connected to the child's head faded out also, and the sphere descended back into the ship, which closed up and went back into hibernation. The child sucked in a lungful of air and stumbled a bit before righting himself.

Azmuth stepped closer to him, one hand of his power suit outstretched but not touching. "Bright Eyes? Are you…?"

"I'm okay." The child said in a hushed whisper. "I'm okay."

Azmuth waited a few heartbeats before speaking again. "What happened? While you were speaking to the ghost in that machine, a hologram of it was out here with me. It said that you…"

"I didn't want to know." Bright Eyes spun around and stared at him. The child was only two heads shorter than his power suit, such had been his growth rate. Azmuth found himself silently thanking the AI construct for leaving him even the little pieces of data that would allow him to track the child's growth.

"Why not?" Azmuth asked him. "You had the sum knowledge of your people, your home, at your fingertips, child. Their collected history, their scientific developments, everything…!"

"They aren't my people, papa." The child cut him off again, and he had that stubborn look on his face like he'd had the one time he refused to go to bed when Azmuth told him to. "You are. And that wasn't my home." He stomped a foot on the ground underneath them. "This is my home, papa."

Azmuth wanted to shout at him more, but…it was done. And for all that the thought of losing all that knowledge made him want to shout at the sky, a small part of him felt something akin to the warm sensation after completing a project successfully.

It was pride. Azmuth blinked inside of his power suit. He was proud of the decision Bright Eyes had made. Settled in his heart, even if his mind railed.

"Yes." Azmuth whispered back to him. "Yes, it is." The child's lower lip quivered and he raced in, wrapping his arms around the power suit.

Three breaths later, Azmuth made the suit hug him back.


Five Galvan Revolutions Later

Just because Azmuth had moved his home and his laboratory out to the middle of nowhere did not mean that he suddenly became an outcast in Galvan society. He was still sought after for opinion and review on papers before publication, he was still on the CRB, and the CLC had him listed as "on sabbatical." Which meant that he didn't have to attend the bulk of the meetings…

…but, as today was reminding him all over again, he was still counted as a first responder resource when something went utterly, terribly wrong. He'd been with his young ward, who had grown even taller in the five revolutions since he passed on the offer of a lifetime and decided to make his own way in the universe. Bright Eyes had put on an impressive amount of muscle that made his once wiry frame look very well defined. One moment they'd been enjoying a picnic on the edge of the Divola Wildlife Preservation and the next his power suit's uplink to the CRB alert system flared with warnings. One of the space elevators close by had begun reporting critical component failures - and there was a load of highly explosive minerals from one of the mining outposts five systems away already on descent.

Sitting in the pilot's seat of their polycraft and flying as fast as he dared push the highly-efficient but low-force helix props, Azmuth kept the CRB communications shunted through the ship's radio relay so Bright Eyes could listen in as well. None of the news was particularly good.

"The Moyus orbital elevator is not rated for hazardous materials - only inert ores, sundries, and food items." Azmuth growled out, knowing that the speaker on his power suit would make his irritation sound that more ominous. "Would someone care to explain how, exactly a shipment of Dichromium ore ended up on an elevator it was never meant for?"

"Orbital Control checked the logs already, Prime Thinker." An apologetic Galvan explained. "It seems that the Spaceyard was running behind schedule, and one of their junior yardmasters…authorized the transfer to the Moyus lift, overriding the lockouts."

"Then I want his head on a platter, because it's clear that they weren't using it to begin with. I'm on my way, send me text updates as they come in." Azmuth slammed the communicator off and swore out loud, prompting Bright Eyes to lean away in surprise. "The most intelligent species in the galaxy and we still have people with their heads up their asses. One yardmaster trying to save time, and now not only is the elevator, but the entire province is at risk."

"Dichromium? I thought it had to be processed for use in fuel batteries." Azmuth's blue-skinned ward mused. "How dangerous is it in its raw form?"

"Processed, it's more explosive but creates ionizing particles with very short half-lives. In its raw form, it's enough of a health hazard that we ship it in heavily lined and shielded containers to prevent even the chance of environmental exposure." Azmuth brought up a picture of the Moyus orbital elevator and its rated cargo capacity. It was smaller than the major terminals along the equatorial plane which prevented the larger containers from being used. "While it's not highly unstable on its own, enough of an impact - say, were the elevator to be damaged enough that the lift derailed and dropped away for a freefall descent - would cause the ore to detonate regardless. The damage to the elevator would be bad enough. The ionizing radiation the ore would create will damage the ecosystem for several provinces."

His ward straightened up in his seat. "Father. How can I help?"

"Once we get to the elevator, you're going to take control of this polycraft. I'll be disembarking and taking scans of the interior. We'll coordinate with inbound assets, but right now I'm the closest to the scene."

"But father, I could…"

"But nothing, Bright Eyes." Azmuth quickly shut down the argument, turning the head of his power suit towards his ward. Already he could see how the adolescent was chafing. "I know you are stronger now, and faster. But you aren't ready. You don't know the specifics of this model of orbital elevator. If you blunder in, you could make things worse, or injure yourself. Or likely both. Please. Do as I say."

"...Very well." The youth grumbled, crossing his arms and looking rather put out.

Azmuth sighed and focused ahead. After a while longer, they were up high enough to see past the mountains. "There." He said, and pointed. Only just visible through the gentle rains and cloudy skies stood a pillar of gleaming metal, no larger across than the span of his Bright Eyes' forearm at their distance. "There it is."

"It doesn't look like much."

"We're still 120 Galmarks away." Azmuth said, and reached for the throttle. "Hang on."


His Command Level access codes allowed Azmuth to tap into the orbital elevator's diagnostics and control systems as soon as his ward got the polycraft close enough for him to jump to it. The damage was worse than he feared.

"Damn and blast it!" Azmuth opened up a line to the CRB situation room. "I'm patched in and sending you the local data. How in blazes are there this many system faults happening at once? Do the technicians assigned to Moyus just go around ignoring warnings?"

"Acknowledged, Prime Thinker." The weary voice of the operator at the SitRoom answered back. "How bad is it?"

"Pretty damn bad." Azmuth snapped back. He squeezed his mech suit past the outer, helical tracks that spiraled up the tower and towards the central and supporting spires that made its heart and the main structural supports. In theory and in practice, an orbital elevator worked much like a ball on a tether, being spun around at the same speed of a planet's orbit. So long as the 'ball', the orbital platform that connected to the elevator and allowed ships to dock to load and unload their material to the surface, remained intact, an orbital elevator posed no risk at all. But the tether and the immense forces involved required advanced metallurgy, expert architectural designs, and constant maintenance.

Azmuth brought up the maintenance logs and turned around when the whine of the polycraft now being driven by his ward grew louder. He could see the adolescent looking at him in concern, and connected to the ship. "Bright Eyes, fly the poly up the side of the elevator and give me eyes on the transport coming down. I want to know exactly what we're dealing with, and I don't trust their manifest logs any further than I trust these maintenance reports."

"As you wish, father!"

The Galvans were not a warlike people, but they understood the concept of battlefield triage just as well as the less advanced species in the galaxy. You prioritized the critical problems first, saving the non-critical ones for later. With full access to the elevator's internal diagnostics, Azmuth flagged the most egregious system faults and set the ones that would keep for tomorrow under a lower-priority repair order. Right now, only the one outer track of the four currently in use mattered. The nearest of the eight critical faults wasn't very far away, and he clambered up the central spire to get to it, hissing as soon as it came into view. One of the support struts was cracked almost all the way through, and two of the others in the same section showed severe metal fatigue.

It should have all been replaced rotations ago, and he didn't have the time for a thorough repair that it required. "Damn and blast it." He scowled, and sent an order for the elevator's drones to grab a pack of a dozen track sheaths and bring it to him. It would do for the stressed joins in the interim, but the one that was cracked needed a more brute force approach, so he made his suit's pointer finger uncap the torch welder it contained and got to work, throwing off sparks in every direction as he forcibly welded the crack back together. The work wasn't all that hard compared to nanocircuitry work, but it was time consuming.

He was nearly done when Bright Eyes finally radioed back to him.

"Father? I've located the lift. It's…"

"Show me." Azmuth demanded, sensing the hesitation on the part of his son. The image from the polycraft's forward cameras linked into his power suit, and Azmuth blinked at what he was seeing. He didn't believe what he was seeing. No, that wasn't it. He didn't want to believe what he was seeing.

The lift, rated for only light industrial loads, wasn't just carrying a shipment of hazardous Dichromium.

It was carrying a double-capacity load of it.

"By all of Tezerene's Treatises!" Azmuth snarled. There was no way for that to be an accident. Someone hadn't just overriden the lockouts to allow the Dichromium to be sent down on this elevator, they'd also overridden the weight capacity restrictor. And he could do the math quickly enough in his head to track what that meant, faster than the folks back in the CIC watching this mess unfold could.

"Azmuth, a double standard load is going to strain the -"

"I know." He interrupted them, finishing his spot weld just as a drone arrived with the pack of reinforcing sheaths he'd ordered. He quickly slammed one into place over a damaged section of the track and sealed it, and the auto-meld function caused it to heat up and bond with the surface of the rail, like shrinking plastic wrap over an object. The second received the same treatment and then he snapped the case of sheaths to the waist of his suit before climbing back up again.

"It's picking up speed, father!"

"The added weight is overriding the braking system-"

"I KNOW!" Azmuth screamed at them. "And if I can't fix these welds then none of that's going to matter, or it'll be what makes it worse!" He could see all too clearly in his mind how that much added weight, going that much faster past all existing safety limits could put additional strain on the entire track. Enough to make the entire track collapse. Maybe the entire tower. As things stood, the track breaking apart and the Dichromium derailing and becoming a free-falling bomb that poisoned the region with fallout was the best case scenario. "Where are those damned reinforcements, Command?"

"Still 6 Solverts out - sorry, 4 Solverts. They were authorized for in-atmosphere hypersonic travel."

Azmuth checked the elevator's gauge on the Dichromium's progress. It was already halfway down from orbit, and speeding up. It made his blood run cold. "They aren't going to make it in time." He activated the emergency thrusters in the armor's boots and jetted up the outside of the tower towards the next critical fault.

"I'm going to try and slow the lift down. Buy you some time." His ward sounded so sure of himself as he declared that.

"With what, exactly?"

"This poly has a cargo gripper on its belly, I'm going to try to grab on!"

The locator beacon on the polycraft tracked concurrently with the rapidly falling lift. A small part of Azmuth wanted to protest, but the larger part of him knew that they were simply out of good options. There was no one else around in a position to do anything. He had enough to worry about already, whatever Bright Eyes would do, it was out of his hands.

The second critical repair took less time. His hands danced at the controls of his power suit, and the clunky mechanism's own hands flew as the next pair of sheaths slammed into place. Another boost of his thrusters came with a warning that he was eating through his dwindling reserves faster than they were replenishing, and then he was on the third damaged section of rail.

At the fourth junction, Azmuth took note of the speed of the descending Dichromium shipment and realized it was slowing down a little. "I think…I think I've got it! The polycraft is holding up so far, and-" The hopeful voice of his ward was shattered by the squeal of shattering metal, and then the shipment sped up again. "It- it broke off!" Bright Eyes shouted, horrified.

And that was when the runaway freight drop hit the system failure the furthest up. As soon as it ran past there came a shriek from the elevator's sensors, and red sections of the track went full black after the lift passed by. Complete system failure. A telltale vibration passed through the whole of the space elevator, and Azmuth knew they'd run out of time. Sealing the fourth, he made his way up. "Get out of there!" He ordered his ward.

"But, I -"

"You tried. It didn't work. Now get out of there son, get away from here as fast as you can!"

He heard no further remarks from his ward, and the CIC was thankfully, blessedly silent aside from an updated ETA every solmark. When the cargo hit the next damaged section down, Azmuth was close enough to pick it out through the zoom on his suit's optics, too far away to do anything about it when the next segment gave out. He could only watch as pieces of the support struts flew off of the links between the track and the central spire, and the damaged railing gave out so severely that the track pulled away from the rest of the elevator. It resembled a string unwinding from a spool - or maybe a little like that gelatinous rope candy that Bright Eyes special-ordered from the Peptosians. And as the load kept descending, Azmuth witnessed more of the track even below the undamaged section begin to buckle and pull away as well - a seam giving way completely from a single fissure.

"No, damnit, no!" He growled out, and finished rocketing up to the next damaged section. Clambering into the inner workings of the elevator, Azmuth clamped the maglocks of his boots into place and grabbed the track's support struts right as they snapped free and started to let the track detach.

His power suit started throwing out warnings one after another. It wasn't designed for the high stresses he'd been subjecting it to. His power reserves were quickly diminishing, and the micro-actuators in the synthetic tension fibers were already screaming about fatigue. But he didn't have a choice to let go. He had to hold on.

He just -

Had

TO

HOLD

ON

It was the endoskeleton of his suit's left leg that gave out first, a hairline crack that disrupted the power and caused the main knee extension servos to stutter long enough that it buckled, forcing his other leg to pick up the slack. Roaring in the cockpit of his suit, Azmuth felt his armor jostle as he struggled to keep the track even. It rattled heavily as the cargo lift came nearer, shaking the arms and throwing out even more warnings.

As the load neared, the weight and momentum of the lift crunched the rails hard against him. Azmuth put everything his suit had left into the arms and his one good leg, but it wasn't enough. He was crushed in and the arms and legs buckled, then shattered.

A Galvan mind was an instrument of such precision that the speed of thought was far too often quicker than their bodies could react. When Azmuth felt his power suit giving out on him, he knew that he was going to perish, crushed like a bug in a can, entombed in death in his metal shell. He saw it and raged and mourned and accepted that fate in the time it would have taken another creature to blink. It was his regrets that his racing mind lingered on the longest.

Regrets for all of his unfinished projects, and how unlikely it was that anyone else in Galvan society would be able to pick up the ball and run with it. Regrets about how things ended with Zenith. Regrets about leaving Bright Eyes - no, his son - alone in the world at the cusp of adulthood. The protective shell of his torso started to give way and crush in, threatening the emergency blowout locks that would allow him to break free. He shut his eyes, not wanting to see his death coming for him.

His ears still worked, though. To his surprise, they heard something he hadn't expected. The cessation of the crunching squeal of metal. A moment later, the feeling of brief weightlessness stopped with a jarring thud, as if his suit had suddenly been frozen in midair.

Azmuth opened his eyes. One optic from his power suit's head was still on, doggedly stubborn in the midst of the total power failure.

He stared in awe as he watched Bright Eyes support and keep the space elevator's untethered cargo tracks level with his legs and torso fully extended, teeth gritted from the strain. The boy's clothes were a mess, the seams torn where muscles that bulged out from the effort had ripped clean through. One arm pressed against the central spire of the elevator, and his other was holding the ruins of his suit.

Behind his son, the overloaded cargo lift screamed past, somehow staying on the tracks as Bright Eyes held it into place. Three heartbeats, and it was past them, on its way down. The strain eased, and Bright Eyes sucked in a lungful of air as the beaded sweat on his brow started to drip.

"Can you eject, father?" Bright Eyes asked hurriedly.

"...What?"

"Your suit! Can you eject out of it?" Azmuth stared at his son a moment longer, and reached a shaky hand for the manual emergency release. The seams of the suit hissed as it depressurized, started to separate, and froze. With a snarl, he punched the toggle switch next to it, and the explosive bolts forcibly separated the anterior chest piece, sending it flying out and away.

For the first time since Bright Eyes had been an unthinking infant and Azmuth had learned the hard way that Galvans resembled toys to babies, adopted father and adopted child looked at one another. Bright Eyes blinked twice and then smiled.

"...You knew?" Azmuth asked him. "How?"

Bright Eyes let out a small laugh and winked an eye. "Aside from hearing your breathing and heartbeat from inside of your suit? Or being able to look through the metal to see you?"

Hyper-senses confirmed, Azmuth tallied in his head.

"Come on. Climb out of there already, old man. We have a lift to catch." Bright Eyes encouraged him. Azmuth did so with shaky arms and legs, and Bright Eyes cupped Azmuth in the palm of his hand and cradled him against his chest. As soon as Azmuth was safe, Bright Eyes let go of the suit and it fell away towards the ground. And then he did something that Azmuth hadn't expected all over again.

He backed away, flew away from the interior of the space elevator, and then soared down after the runaway cargo lift.

"You can fly." Azmuth said woodenly, thinking back to the medical files he'd perused through almost daily from his son's space capsule. "You weren't supposed to gain flight until you were around 18 revolutions old."

"Must be something in the water here on Galvan Prime." Bright Eyes replied cheerfully, drawing closer to the lift. "Now hang on, this might get a bit bumpy. Oh, and father?"

"...What is it, son?" Azmuth said, noting how startled his ward looked at finally being called by that descriptor. Startled, and then undeniably happy.

"You know how you said you would let me pick my own name? Well. I finally thought of one."

"What is it?"

"You'll find out in a bit." Bright Eyes winked at him.

The solmarks passed by faster than Azmuth could process, although maybe it was just because he was busy watching his son as the blue-skinned youth strained and grit his teeth, somehow slowing the entire cargo by flying underneath it and pushing up until it was descending at a far more reasonable speed.

When they reached the ground station, all of the reinforcements that the CIC had promised were inbound had finally arrived, and so had the camera drones and stunned reporters sent out to document the crisis. Azmuth knew why they looked so croggle-eyed, he still felt like that himself.

"You - you stopped this lift from crashing and saved the space elevator. Who are you?" One reporter, less stunned than her peers, finally asked.

Letting Azmuth down onto a nearby hoverplatform and standing clear, Bright Eyes stood in his torn clothing and squared his stance, cocking his arms and pressing his fists down against the sides of his waist.

"My name is Ultimos," he said, "and I am here to help."


Galvan Center

Crisis Response Bureau, Crisis Information Center

Galvan Prime

392 Years Prior to Little Moments (1606 A.D.)

Of course, there was hell to pay once all was said and done. Starting with the sacking of every orbital elevator operator who'd been directly or indirectly responsible for the crisis that had nearly caused the collapse of the Moyus space elevator and unfathomable ecological damage. Azmuth had made sure of that, even though it had meant stepping on influential toes.

If you hadn't gotten the job on merit, Azmuth had long ago decided, you didn't deserve to keep it.

"...with repairs, the Major Projects joint repair team estimates that the Moyus Lift will need to be offline for approximately half, or perhaps even three quarters of a standard revolution." The technician read off the report as clinically as he could under the circumstances. Although his eyes didn't stay on the smaller holoscreen in front of him; like most of the room, the bulk of his attention was on the larger holo-monitor showing a playback of Ultimos's debut on the world stage, gently bringing the runaway cargo lift down safely, and all the while protecting a small Galvan figure in the palm of his other hand.

"Yes, thank you Algon." Azmuth said, waving a hand at the other Galvan. "Apologies. It seems most of the room is distracted." He touched a button and the image froze at the most impressive moment, when Ultimos posed and announced his name and purpose.

"My name is Ultimos, and I am here to help." One of the other leading Galvan officers of the CRB, Jiddus, repeated in a deep accent that didn't quite match. Azmuth raised an eyebrow at Jiddus and the fellow merely shrugged. "A rather impressive display. And timely. Your decision to take the child in and raise him seems rather prescient under the current circumstances, Prime Thinker."

It was a well-meaning remark but it chafed Azmuth's sensibilities regardless. "I did not make that decision because I thought there was something to be gained from it." He said stiffly. "As I recall, Jiddus, you were one of the reactionary fools who wanted to euthanize Ultimos when he was still an infant."

Several heads in the room turned and stared hard at Jiddus, who withered a bit before he rallied and shook his head. "We could not have anticipated -"

"No. You could not have." Azmuth cut him off. "You cannot look at a child and predict what they will become when they grow. Ultimos will make his own way in this universe."

"Where is he now, then?" Another board member asked. A technician at the side of the room shut off the recording and brought up a live feed, placed next to a planetary locator marker in western Wayfrad. It showed him flying low above the ground in the face of an incoming mudslide with a small settlement behind him - slamming into the ground and burrowing one massive trench after another that sapped the mudslide's strength until it was exhausted.

"He's helping people." The technician said, checking the newsfeed. "Looks like heavy rains in the Decruus Mountains caused an unexpected mudslide they detected too late to stop with usual mitigation efforts. It had been estimated to wipe out a town of 18,000 souls."

"A more promising specimen than most." Another elder board member spoke up, his voice like coarse gravel against duracrete, and the whole of the room set to whispering animatedly.

Azmuth heard the muttered words between the Galvans behind him as he watched them study the videos of his son and a part of him almost…

But, no. That was purely emotional, and beneath the Prime Thinker. So all he said was, "Specimen, Prime." And his heart swelled at the words.


For the Galvan, having a figure of unfathomable strength in their midst was a novel experience. Ultimos was famous in a way that only the most brilliant minds had been before, and his face was everywhere.

There had even been clothing branded with his face and likeness before Azmuth put the legal team he kept on retainer to send out cease and desist orders. It kept the most egregious profiteers from getting ahead, but even Azmuth threw his hands up in defeat when it came to the homemade items.

Ultimos was simply too big for Galvan society to cope with. In almost every fashion. In the three revolutions that followed, Ultimos grew more and fleshed out fully, becoming an imposing physical specimen. And in spite of his stature, he was also known for his kindness. Especially around children.

His powers and strength matured as he achieved adulthood. He could fly at near supersonic speeds, endure the vacuum of space if he had a breath held in his lungs, and lift entire ships without breaking a sweat. Azmuth watched his son travel the whole of the world, but he always returned home.

Until his wanderlust grew too large. Until the cost of a childhood of being cloistered finally came due. Until Ultimos, in his 19th revolution of life, finally came to a decision.

"I'm not going to question if you've considered the statistical likelihood of trouble finding you if you go gallivanting off on this foolish plan of yours; I know you passed my knowledge module about our known galactic neighbors." Azmuth tried to muster his best scowl, folding his arms behind his back and suddenly wishing he had a more voluminous garment on aside from his uni-flex suit so he could seem more imposing. "But I do find myself questioning if you've suffered an undiagnosed intra-cranial bleed since you last came home for dinner."

"You performed my physical 60 rotations ago, father. You know that my health is pristine. This is just something I have to do."

"If you wanted to explore the galaxy, Ultimos, you could do it with our drone exploration fleet and telepresence. What is your fascination with needing to physically go there?"

"I just do, father." Ultimos said with no small trace of exasperation. "I need to experience it for myself. Just looking at a place from behind a holo-screen isn't enough. I need to walk on their worlds. Talk to them. See how they live."

"That sounds like a rationale built on an emotional component." Azmuth accused him. "Galvan do not act out of fear, or any other emotion. It is illogical."

"You should tell that to the children who chant my name when I fly past them." Ultimos remarked. He looked down, a flush of embarrassment on his face as he recalled some past experience. "Regardless, I am not Galvan."

"And here I thought you were finally over the defiant stage that came with adolescence." Azmuth threw his hands in the air and stormed around in a circle. "If this is merely an exercise taken out of boredom, there are other things you could do here on the homeworld. You could apply to serve in the Crisis Response Bureau, legitimize your meandering and assume a leadership position."

"That's something any enterprising and qualified Galvan can already do." Ultimos countered. "But I can do more. I need to do more."

Azmuth desperately wanted to shout at him, forbid this rash plan. But he was the Prime Thinker, and rash, emotional outbursts were not his style. He took a small breath, calmed himself, and forced his voice to stay level. "Explain it to me, then. Show your process."

Ultimos floated in place, his mouth and eyebrows contorting as he thought up his answer. "...All my life, you told me that I would find my purpose on my own. You raised me and taught me right from wrong. You showed me how a good person was supposed to act. If you felt like it, you could walk away from everything and bury yourself in your work. But you haven't. You serve in the CRB as a guiding chair, you retain authority in the Central Laboratory Complex. You put your own work on hold to care for another being's child. You have shown me, by example, that being a good person means that you look out for others. That you help them. And that is what I've tried to do."

"You have." Azmuth blurted the words out without thinking about it, a surprising and unconscious admission.

"Not enough." Ultimos shook his head. "The Galvan don't need my help. You're the most brilliant species in the stars. Your people created another species entirely by accident and then gave them their freedom, allowing them to stand as friends and equals to you. Our space is protected, insulated. Sparing the occasional natural disaster, I spend my time flying around pulling down children's toys from trees and making pointless public appearances." His voice turned heated at that, and Azmuth recalled his most recent outing at a provincial magistrate's dinner party. Ultimos wasn't wrong when he compared himself to a showpiece.

His giant of a son shook his head again. "I was sent here for a reason. I had to be. It can't be a coincidence that my birth father put me here, in your hands. There is an entire galaxy out there in need of help. A galaxy full of people who hold their hands out, screaming to be saved. I was sent here to help. So that's what I have to do." He relaxed his shoulders and the corner of his mouth quirked up into a smile. "To do any less would be…illogical."

Azmuth had never been one to be stunned speechless. He could count on the fingers of one hand how often that had happened in his life, but today he ticked another finger on to that tally.

"And you say you aren't Galvan." He finally forced out, conceding defeat. And Ultimos smiled. "Will you wait twenty-five rotations?"

"...What for?"

"Because if you're really going to do this, Ultimos, then you're going with the best ship I can build."

Ultimos reared back a little, surprised. "You can build a ship that fast?"

"Hmph." Azmuth shook his head and looked away, folding his hands behind his back. "I can finish the one I've been building that fast."

He wasn't looking at his son's face, but he could almost imagine the larger alien blinking multiple times. And he heard the sudden sniff that meant Ultimos had started crying. "You knew I was going to leave?"

"Of course I did." Azmuth said, shutting his own eyes. And he snapped them back open when Ultimos flew in and pulled him into a tight, gentle cradling hug.

"I'm not going away forever." Ultimos promised him. "I'll come home."

"There will always be a place for you here." Azmuth promised in turn. "When you grow tired and need to rest."

In truth, the ship was already done. There was some fine tuning and a half-dozen modifications to install and run diagnostics on, but Azmuth had another reason to make Ultimos wait. He planned on racing into the dark not as a conqueror, but as a symbol of hope.

A symbol of hope needed a uniform to match.


Galvan Center, Galvan Prime

One Galvan Revolution Later

Azmuth spent more time back in Galvan Center now than he had in years. His laboratory on the edge of the Moyus wilderness remained, but the emptiness had been something he suddenly struggled with. When he at last accepted that he missed having Ultimos around, or close enough to manage a streaming voice call, he'd moved back to the capital of their civilization just to be around others. To not feel as alone.

He was regretting that now, because the company of Ultimos was far more preferable to what he now suffered with. A mixture of sycophants, coat-tail riders, and critics. Ambition was a universal trait, and while it took a more academic lean among the Galvan, his species was not immune to it.

Azmuth certainly hadn't been. Being 450 revolutions old brought a fair amount of perspective, though, and a willingness to push through the offal others kept spewing. And to ignore the people he knew had nothing worthwhile to contribute.

He felt old. And tired. While he was by no means yet old enough to count as venerated, dealing with society as large took more and more out of him. Irrationally, anyways - he knew full well that there was nothing physically wrong with him. No hormonal imbalances. The FMRI and PET scans he subjected himself to twice every revolution had come up whistle-clean. It was, humorously enough, all in his head. He'd become accustomed to the quieter pace that came with living out in the middle of nowhere, with only limited company. He'd managed his duties in the CRB well enough with telepresence.

"What do you call it when you want to be alone, but you feel lonely?" He muttered to himself. Across the conference table, Algon perked up and looked over to him.

"Apologies, Prime Thinker. Did you say something?"

"No." Azmuth said. "Just thinking out loud."

"Ah." Algon blinked, not quite understanding it, but he pressed on. "Well then, the next item on our agenda is…"

And Azmuth immediately blanked out the steady droning words of his fellow sentient. He had the agenda up in front of him, it didn't require wasting solverts of useless chatter. A series of Golan defense satellites needed to be taken down for repairs and they needed to determine the optimum schedule to prevent a lapse in coverage. Azmuth had solved that issue yesterday out of boredom, though he hadn't messaged the maintenance plan off for inspection and approval. He did so now.

He knew full well that messages from Ultimos were few and far between. Away from the borders of Galvan colonial space, in the wildness of the unsettled regions, there were fewer hyperspace-capable transmission beacons capable of faster communications. Unable to hold conversations with him, Ultimos had taken to sending video diaries where possible, and audio logs when he worked in a region with dismally poor reception from the outermost beacons. Right now Azmuth would have killed for another message from his wandering adopted child to break up the boredom -

Beep. Beep.

Azmuth blinked and stirred himself to full wakefulness as he noted the blinking yellow icon in the corner of his holoscreen, and broke into a grin before he schooled his features. "Apologies, Algon. We'll have to cut this meeting short." Azmuth interrupted the still droning peon. Algon broke off and looked confused. "A critical matter has arisen that I need to see to. No need to reschedule, I'll finish glancing over the rest of your notes and give you my recommendations to pass on to the other board members."

"...as you say, Prime Thinker." Algon said, shutting off his portable holo-projector and tucking it away before hopping onto a hoverplatform and gliding silently out of the conference room. Azmuth waited eight long heartbeats to make sure he was well and truly gone, then enabled the conference room lockdown, shutting the doors and causing the glass that overlooked the CIC to tint and become one-way viewing only. Only then did Azmuth open up the notification.

You have three new messages from SP -Ultimos01. Display Y/N?

"Sending them in bundles now, are you?" Azmuth mused, already reaching a fingertip to his haptic holographic keyboard. The room dimmed, and from the emitter on the ceiling, the familiar figure of his adopted son took center stage. He looked rather dashing in the uniform Azmuth had designed for him; gold-yellow and white, so much like the blanket he had found the child in as an infant.

"Hello, Azmuth." The image spoke, winking with a grin. He only ever referred to Azmuth by his name in public.

"Cheeky." Azmuth mumbled, not needing to pause the recording. Ultimos had built in the space for him.

"Petropia is a fascinating planet. Its people are living stone, and for being such a hard-headed people, they aren't afraid to have a little fun from time to time. They call it 'rocking out', which seems appropriate. They haven't done much traveling, when I asked their leaders they said that there was no reason for their people to do so on a large scale, since everything they need is on their homeworld and they live within their means. Oh, there are the young and ambitious, of course. Like myself, they feel the need to explore. Occasionally, one ships out on a passing merchant ship. An Elder named Silicus asked me, in fact, if I could locate a missing grandchild of his; a young Petrosapien by the name of Oam. I've promised to look into it, since there's little else they need my assistance with around here. Oh! I picked up a little present for you - a crystal wind chime. It's boxed up to preserve it from damage, but when I get home we'll have to set it up at our house out in Moyus. That's all for now, father. Take care."

"The Petrosapiens." Azmuth almost smiled. A very durable people. He'd commissioned work from them before when one of his projects required a more durable optical glass alloy of particularly large size and exacting diameter. If anyone understood glass and crystalline composites, they were it. He drummed his fingers on the table and started the next message.

"I ended up setting out in a more or less random direction after Petropia. The merchant vessel's logged flight plan turned out to be false. They did not lay over at the planet they indicated they were headed for. To my pleased surprise - and the relief of my ship's onboard stores - I stumbled across another world a significant pace away from Incursean Space inhabited by a population of long-lived bipedal cephalids. They call their world Chimeral. Their people are named the Chimera Sui Generis."

The image of Ultimos flickered for a moment as a series of holo-stills popped up onto the viewer. "I've attached some of the images I took for posterity during my visit there. They seem a very pleasant people, and apparently their lifespan is almost as long as you and the AI construct of my biological father estimated mine should be. I struck up a friendship with a young officer in their newly formed planetary defense force named Kah'Nor. He's excited about the future of his people, and I have to admit that it's somewhat catching. Chimeral is a long, long way from Galvan Prime and they have a lot of growing to do as a species, but I can see their potential. They could soon be walking between the stars, just as we do. They were happy to replenish my ship stores and even refuel my ship in exchange for some scutwork - placing defense satellites in orbit. Their military command has good reason to want them. Apparently, piracy is on the rise, and their world's been raided a few times. I've offered to stick around for a while, as their planners believe there may be another raid on their world soon. I came out here into wild space to help, after all." And Ultimos smiled and gave a tiny salute before the message ended.

Azmuth huffed once and smiled a little before clicking the final tab. It dropped from his face when he saw how drawn Ultimos looked.

"I'm - I'm sorry. I haven't recorded a new message in a while. It's been a stellar mess and I'm still trying to…" Ultimos stopped talking and dragged a hand down his face. The weariness, the utter sadness on his adopted son's face was wholly out of place and it worried Azmuth. His uniform bore stains and even scrapes and tears. Something had happened. Something terrible. "The raiders came. The new satellites did their part in detecting their ships, even fought three of them off, though three more got through. We had to fight them on the ground. I had thought they were coming for Chimeral's food, or supplies. I was wrong. They'd come to steal people. These were slavers."

Azmuth knew that such things happened, in the darker corners of the universe. It was one of the reasons why the Galvan were so insular, exploring by remote or not at all. They had evolved on a world as small creatures forever threatened by larger ones. He had done everything in his power to protect Ultimos from the grim realities beyond their borders. Perhaps he'd done too good of a job.

"Long story short." Ultimos finally continued, his voice dull as he forced himself to relive his dark experience. "We figured out their port of call, a rogue planetoid they'd converted into a stronghold. If you hadn't kitted out my ship with everything you thought I might need, we wouldn't have cleared their defensive zone. Kah'Nor and six others came with me. Only Kah'Nor and two lived by the time we got done. But when we were finished…when we were finished, there wasn't a one of those slavers who wasn't either dead or restrained and waiting to be taken back to Chimeral to stand trial for crimes against their people. And you remember that Petrosapien who asked me to look for his grandson, Oam? We found him. It…it was horrible. They were…"

Whatever it was, Ultimos couldn't finish the thought. He shook his head and Azmuth's mouth ran dry as he watched. "We stopped the slavers, we rescued the people they'd captured. I have a transport ship with three dozen souls on board that I need to take back home, or at least somewhere safe. And all it cost us was the lives of brave Chimeran warriors, and untold amounts of suffering. I'm sickened by the whole thing. I know that what we did here was a good thing. I know that I righted a terrible wrong. But for the first time, I see the scope of just how much there is to do to try and help this galaxy of ours, father. And I realized something." Ultimos looked directly at the camera, and from underneath his weary sadness, resolve began to shine through. "I'm not enough. On my own…I'll never be enough. I can't be everywhere. Even I get tired and need to rest. We stopped one operation, but how many others are out there? How many crews of space pirates are out there doing things while I was busy here? How many worlds are screaming for help as I take the time to write this message? No. I need help. I need…friends."

The third and final message ended, and Azmuth slumped in his chair as his mind swam with wild thoughts. He needed to compose a message to send back to Ultimos. Something reassuring. Something to help brace him up, because Ultimos was clearly distressed. But what could he say?

Azmuth started his recording. "Ultimos, I received your last three messages. You've definitely had a rough go of it. There is merit in the idea of cooperation, but be careful who you rely on. I've been part of far too many group projects in my time which turned sour. You have a certain amount of freedom, in being able to move around on your own as you have been. The more people you try to add to your cause, the more you can do yes…but the more complicated it will all become." Not even the Galvan were immune to that particular detail. It forever amazed him how little the CRB could get done when the members of the board got to arguing. "A hundred hands can achieve wonders, Ultimos. A hundred voices rarely speak anything but pure noise. I know it's a lot to consider. I know how tired you are, I could hear it in your voice and see it in your face. It doesn't have to happen immediately. You're considering a major decision, and you need a clear head for it. You're allowed to take some time to rest. Come home, son. Come home and rest."

He ended the connection, and after a moment's hesitation, sent the message off, not knowing when Ultimos would be in range of a beacon to receive it, or if he would come home to rest.

A quarter of a revolution passed with no word, and then suddenly, his adopted son's ship touched down outside of their old home. A battered, weary Ultimos limped to his bedroom and slept for two rotations straight.

When he woke up, Azmuth was waiting in the kitchen for him with his favorite breakfast.


4 Revolutions Later

In time, Ultimos did find friends. Azmuth found himself surprised at his choices.

He would have thought those who would agree to follow Ultimos would be boisterous, lanky meat-heads, fast to action and slow towards critical thinking. Instead, his first helper turned out to be a Cephalusian, an insular species from a water world, named Synaptak. At least, that's what he called himself after joining up. Like Ultimos before, he'd reformed himself from events early in his life. Cephalusians tended towards intelligence tempered by empathetic compassion. Synaptek came off colder and more calculating. Caring in his own fashion, but in a way that was hidden behind Galmarks of planning and deliberation. Ultimos was intelligent, Azmuth had taught him well, but Synaptak had a knack for plots and setups that left Ultimos in the dust.

Ultimos had called in Azmuth for an upgrade to Cephalusian's pressure suit, which his race used outside of aquatic settings. It was a slight inconvenience, but the flight out to Cephallia had been peaceful - and the fish, raw with just a bit of vinegar and spice and the accompanying seaweed salad had been delicious. His old 'parenting power suit' had been remade, and the Mark 2 version made for an acceptable public face. Synaptak had been duly impressed by his new modifications, especially the antigrav suite. Although he did remark that the upgraded 'emotive system' that Azmuth had installed in the translucent helmet's overlay would take some getting used to.

Unsurprisingly, having a second full-time member on Ultimos's "Hero Team" raised the success rate by an impressive percentage. Emboldened, Ultimos ventured out further beyond, made contact with more species. He made friends in some places, enemies in others.

On rare occasions, as with Synaptak, Ultimos made allies.

Most important of all, however, Azmuth watched as all of his child's trailblazing paid off in less obvious ways. The spacefaring species grew braver where Ultimos went. More willing to fight back against piracy and raiders. Better able to fly beyond the borders of their home systems, to reach out. They gained the courage to reach out to others nearby that Ultimos had spoken of fondly - and on rarer occasions, further still. A network of dialogue, trade, and loose diplomatic ties formed along the pathways of his ion trails.

The powers of the galaxy began to take notice; the insular, the expansionist, the opportunistic. Even species who ran the gamut of individualistic determinism, such as the Tetramands, found that their governments were reacting in the face of Ultimos's unifying personality and strength. It started with trade routes at first, and then, diplomatic liaisons, hyperspace networking and FTL communications.

And then one of the peoples whom Ultimos had aided, befriended, and made an ally put forth an idea, one that spread like wildfire. We could do more, be more, if we worked together. A proposal was put forward for a defensive alliance of star systems.

It wasn't some Federation of diverse species who sought friendship and knowledge, to help each other prosper through cooperation that some lesser minds than his had imagined in their first few cycles when they had more imagination than sense. Especially not when most of the meetings devolved into shouting matches of barely comprehensible worldviews….

But it was more than anyone dared hope as it finally settled into a Galactic Code of Conduct that seemed almost as determined to bind his son and his friends as it was the worst that dwelt between the stars….

And it was the worst that came right as the diplomats from a dozen races were meeting to discuss possible terms of membership, and to narrow down the rules and regulations as much as possible. Azmuth, standing as the Speaker of that debate in his power suit, was a firsthand witness to the desperate actions of the Pirate Lord Rau-Burtz and a hastily thrown together pirate fleet that came for the Uxorite homeworld where the dozen were gathered.

Ultimos and his allies fought them in orbit, on the ground, and even in the Meeting Hall. When the dust settled, Azmuth's suit was a little worse for wear, and there were injured, but the space pirate fleet was annihilated, Pirate Lord Rau-Burtz was dead, and the dozen stood united.


Uxorite Homeworld

Denevalli Tower, 1 Galmark from Uxorite Center's Planetary Meeting Hall

2 Rotations After the Galactic Enforcers Compact Ratification

The celebrations were ongoing in earnest, and more than one diplomat, celebrity, and aide had remarked that the star of the event was missing. Azmuth knew where to look, though. His son was full grown now, but some habits were hard to break. And when Ultimos felt overwhelmed, or needed a moment to himself to collect his thoughts, he would always look for the highest, darkest spot possible with the best view of the stars.

Sure enough, when Azmuth piloted the small, cloaked atmospheric antigrav pod up to the top of Denevalli Tower, the highest point in the skyline, he found Ultimos sitting with his knees drawn up to his chest and very nearly hidden in the shadow of its lightning rod-equipped flight warning beacon that flashed a gentle violet in a rhythmic cadence.

Ultimos looked up as he approached and disengaged the cloak, smiling a little. "You didn't come in your suit?"

"I left it back on autopilot at the gala." Azmuth said, parking the small hemisphere on the building roof next to Ultimos and leaning back in his seat. "As far as anyone else knows, 'Azmuth The Wise' is still there. The onboard VI has enough pre-programmed responses to manage the…ugh, hobnobbing these events require. People were asking about you, though. Some disappointed fans after this latest dust-up."

And more that wondered in whispers exactly who and what was in the battle suit that was always at his son's side for the last few days. Whispers he didn't answer. Not that he enjoyed the respect that the suit gave him as everyone looked up at him. Not when it was different from what Ultimos had given him when he was just found. More fearful, more deferential in a way his people never were, but it was useful.

Useful during the negotiations and now, when he left it behind and it gave him the anonymity of being just one more Galvan in the crowd….

He may keep at it, even if it didn't impress his son at all.

"Mm." Ultimos hummed as he turned away and looked over the skyline again. All the fires had been put out, and what destruction had occurred was rapidly being seen to, thanks to the combined efforts of the 12 species. Azmuth had seen the supplies and Mechamorph construction crews on the manifests from their inbound ships. In twenty rotations, the Uxorites would hardly know there had been an attack. "I'm certain they'll find time to meet with me later. I just needed some time to clear my head, is all."

"I know." Azmuth agreed. There were a few beats of silence, companionable and pleasant, and Azmuth allowed himself the time to enjoy the view. In sheer size, it did beat out the trees Ultimos used to climb up in as a boy.

"The Dread Pirate Rau-Bertz." Azmuth shook his head. "I always knew that he had a bigger pair than most, but just how crazy did he have to be to pull together so many ships for this attack?"

"I believe he was desperate more than he was crazy." Azmuth mused. "The threat of a unified body of planets, capable of pooling their resources for an organized defense? And to be fair, son, you and your little friends have been doing quite a number on his bottom line over the past decade." Ultimos shrugged in reply, and Azmuth pressed on. "Still, I do have to ask; Why did you decide on Galactic Enforcers as a name?"

"I didn't pick it out, but it seemed appropriate." Ultimos said. "I didn't want to be just a soldier. And we're more than patrol officers. Our job shouldn't just be to guard the spacelanes, or to sit around planets. If we're going to do this right, we need the freedom to go where people need help, where problems need to be solved. And not like we were. Not just as individuals. We're enforcing the Code that everyone has agreed upon. So - Galactic Enforcers. There you have it."

"There you have it." Azmuth hummed. He tilted his head back, staring at the arrangement of the stars in the belt of gas that formed the galactic disk. How different it looked here on the homeworld of the Uxorites, compared to Galvan Prime. "And don't think I didn't notice that everyone on your immediate team was wearing your colors. I hope you aren't expecting me to fly out and make a custom suit for every person you work with. Synaptak was a one-off."

"Don't worry, I think we can handle uniforms." Ultimos smiled. "And admit it. They look good in yellow, gold and white."

"Hm." Azmuth conceded the point. "There is one problem that they haven't considered yet, though."

"What is that, father?"

"This Galactic Enforcers of yours, they will need a home. Where you put it will have an impact on relations between the 12 gathered species. Whatever homeworld you decide on will carry an overweighted presence in your affairs, and the lure to centralize will forever threaten to grow, at the cost of the others."

"Ah." Ultimos caught on rapidly, nodding to himself. "Are you suggesting that I should propose Galvan Prime serve as the headquarters for the Galactic Enforcers?"

The thought was so ludicrous that Azmuth couldn't stifle the snort it evoked. "Stars, no. Keep your grubby clubhouse off of my planet. I can barely stand the people who live there right now anyways." That got a sharp laugh and a head tilt from Ultimos, and Azmuth cracked an honest, toothy smile in return.

"Don't worry." Ultimos said after he recovered, his face glowing slightly. "I think I have a spot picked out. Small little system. Single star. A lone uninhabited habitable world, plenty of planetoids…excellent place to build an orbiting space station, use the planet as a retreat and for training. It's even centrally located among the dozen signees, more or less. If I tell them we're going to build GE HQ there, it'll cut off their arguments at the knees. They may not always agree on everything, after all, but the one thing I can count on is that none of them want any of the others to become more important than they are."

"You've thought this through already." Azmuth realized, nodding his head gently. "A very well-thought solution there, Ultimos. It's almost Galvan in its approach."

"Well. I was raised by the smartest Galvan, after all." Ultimos winked at him, and the two shared a conspiratorial smile. Then the moment passed, and they both turned to look at the stars again.

Azmuth sighed. "It is so strange."

"What is?"

"What you've achieved here today." Azmuth turned to look at his son, grown and strong, yet as humble as he'd been as a child. "It is outside the expected data patterns. All of our intergalactic studies, our data probes - Civilizations either perish before they reach beyond their world, or they become isolationist, or they grow like a weed, expanding outwards as the Incurseans do, eating to prevent their demise."

"And in your example, the Galvan are isolationist, yes?" Ultimos mused. Azmuth thought it over and gave a short nod. "Perhaps that was true before, father. But not anymore. I have traveled over more worlds than just the 12 who have joined together here, you know. What I have seen…" He paused, and his gaze became distant. Azmuth sat up a little straighter.

"What have you seen?" He questioned, gently nudging Ultimos out of his memories. Ultimos blinked and came back to himself.

"There are worlds that struggled under the yoke of tyrants. There are worlds where their peoples are trapped by flawed perspectives, unable to see the way forward. There are worlds where people can see the problems their civilization faces, where some struggle to find solutions and yet others bury their heads in the sand, pretend that nothing is wrong or that there is nothing they can do about it. Some of them I could not help. Some of them did not want to be helped. But there were others that I could, some that did. And on those worlds, I saw them change. I saw the hollowness disappear. I saw them grow and become more. I saw them find their courage, their inspiration, their bravery."

"They…they can be more, Bright Eyes. They wish to be," Azmuth declared, astonished, and then something inside him shrank as he watched Ultimos raise an amused eyebrow at him because he'd never noticed that. Not in any of the studies he'd done of the other species before he moved onto what seemed like more promising lines of thought. Lines he actually lost for a moment. "You - they - Hopelessness..." He actually stammered as he listened for the warning alarms built into his suit. Alarms that didn't come, but the moment they gave him was enough. "Hopelessness is an emotion, and thus it goes ignored by most Galvan because you cannot quantify emotions, or derive set norms and values. It's just a side effect of a chemical reaction in the brain. Still, it is a powerful force. The presence of hope…Even more so. I've grown old and wise enough to learn that some things can't be measured, but they are no less valid of an influence on the fabric of reality, and between sentients." Azmuth stood up from his antigrav pod and Ultimos was quick to catch on, extending his hand out palm flat and facing upwards towards him. When Azmuth stepped on, Ultimos brought him towards his chest, creating a cavity with both hands for the Prime Thinker to sit in and feel the warmth of his body, the pulse of his heartbeat.

It was affectionate in a way that was very rare between them, for all that Azmuth acknowledged they were father and son. Azmuth was not one for displays of emotion. Perhaps that was one of the major reasons why Zenith had separated from him.

She was looking for something from him that he didn't understand how to give to her.

"You gave them hope. You made them into something more," Azmuth repeated. "And when you did, you changed everything. I honestly have no prediction for what will come next. But for once, I find myself thinking…perhaps it won't be as terrible as I always assume it will be." Azmuth leaned back against his son's chest. "Because you made me something more, too."

How strange. To think that those scant revolutions ago, barely a glimmer in his expected lifespan, that the decision to take this child in and raise him would have such a monumental impact on the state of galactic affairs. He thought of the changes that had occurred so far, and found himself wondering what changes would come next. Azmuth realized he was excited to see them coming.

"It is likely I don't say this enough," Azmuth licked his suddenly dry lips, "and that is a failing I may never correct, but I am proud of you, Ultimos. My Bright Eyes."

Ultimos let out another small little laugh and held Azmuth closer to his chest. "Maybe some day, you'll loosen up enough to say what I've always had to read between the lines to hear, father. And yes. I love you too."

Azmuth's throat tightened up and his eyes burned a little. Irrational, useless emotions. Unable to say anything else, he settled for gently patting his hand on Ultimos's thumb. It would do. It was enough. Ultimos didn't need him to say it to understand what Azmuth meant, and the Prime Thinker was glad for it. Below them, the celebrations went on. High above, Azmuth and Ultimos reveled in their unspoken bond and the gentle comfort of a makeshift embrace.

Azmuth was regarded as the most brilliant Galvan to ever grace the halls of the Central Laboratory Complex. He was an accredited leader in a dozen scientific fields of study, a figurehead of the Crisis Response Bureau. All of those things, Azmuth mused to himself, did not mean nearly as much as the title Ultimos had given him all those revolutions ago. All of those things, he thought as he looked up at the stars through blurry eyes, were not the equal of being known as Father.

Azmuth couldn't help but think of one of the lines that Ultimos's birth father had said, a line Ultimos had shared with Azmuth once, shortly before he left Galvan Prime. Some random impulse made him paraphrase it in his own thoughts now.

You will travel far, Bright Eyes. But I will never leave you, even in the face of my death. You will make my strength your own. You will see my life through your eyes…as your life will be seen through mine. The son becomes the father, and the father - The son.

He was a creature of reason, logic, rationality. He was lauded for his dedication to those values, as rigid as they sometimes made him. Ultimos had shown him something beyond numbers, figures, projections.

Ultimos had made him Believe.