{Really?} Talon asked, staring in surprise across the prowler's control console at Spiral. {They eat that?}
Her diral-sister nodded.
Talon made a face. {That was not what I thought you two would have been discussing while we were down on the moon.} She let some of her mostly-joking suspicions about the Maia-born loroi leak into her side-channels.
Spiral laughed out loud, before quickly clamping one hand over her mouth and glancing back towards the rear of the cockpit, and the crew quarters down the corridor beyond.
{Don't worry, I doubt even you were loud enough to wake him up from all the way up here.} Talon reassured. {Although with how tired he seemed when we returned to the ship, I did wonder just what you two had been doing...} Her friendly smile curled into a smirk. It was not often that she got to be the one teasing Spiral.
That earned her a muffled snort as Spiral shook her head. She indicated the sensor readout projected in front of her. {Not while there was still fighting in the system.} With a glance at Talon out of the twinkling corner of her eye, she added {Although that would have made for an exciting backdrop...}
Talon grinned back at her. {Seed-head.}
With a wink, Spiral continued {No, we simply spoke of our childhoods and training. Of the battles we had seen,} her sub-channels darkened {and the friends we had lost in battle.}
{A warriors' discussion.} Talon sent, and Spiral nodded.
{Yes. It is amazing to me that he — and the rest of these human warriors — did not go crazy, fighting a war down to the very last of their species.} Her sub-channels emphasized how impressed she was with the accomplishment. {That is a feat of determination that any warrior would be proud of. I can only imagine how strong his mind must be.}
{Can only imagine?} asked Talon. {He did not show his thoughts to you directly?} The ODSTs had explained that they kept their lotai-machines active most of the time, to keep to their culture's higher emphasis on privacy. But with only he and Spiral on board…
{No.} Her diral-sister pouted briefly. {He said that the human mind is much less 'ordered' than a loroi one, and that he didn't want private thoughts leaking out.} Spiral's own side-channels revealed just what sort of 'thoughts' she hoped he had been having.
For her part, a chill ran down Talon's spine, thinking of what Tempo had told her aboard the crashed human warship. Was Alex afraid of revealing information which he had been ordered not to share with the loroi? With Spiral?
With Talon?
She squashed the brief spike of hurt that that had raised. Of course a good warrior would follow their orders, even if that clashed with their friendship with another warrior! It spoke well of Alex's character that he could resist Spiral.
{But he will not resist us forever!} The Maiad just couldn't help declaring, grinning broadly at Talon.
{No he will not.} agreed Talon, before she turned her attention back to the piloting display in front of where she sat. It did warm her heart that Alex had trusted them to fly the Did Ever Plummet Sound while he slept. Then again, it wasn't like there was much to do during one of these slipspace flights, no matter how fascinating the actual mechanics may be.
And on that note… {Just under one-thousand solon until our next filament hop.} Talon sent, eyeing the piloting display in front of her.
Spiral checked her own screen. {And that should be our last one before arriving at the next system, a day later.} She paused for a beat or two. {What do you think this 'Ran' system will be like?}
Talon thought back to what Alex had said about their destination, as the prowler had left the Tinza fleet behind in the Ring system. {A former industrial center and military bastion? I imagine that the Soia were especially thorough in destroying it. And it's not like anything visible would remain after nearly three-hundred-thousand years, anyways.}
Spiral sent back a non-verbal pulse of agreement, her sub-channels sorrowful. {From a planet that Alex said once held billions of people.}
A brief and surreptitious pulse of sanzai towards the rear of the ship confirmed that the lead teidar was safely asleep in her bunk. Talon sent {Worse than many Serens.}
{It seems strange that they then chose it as an arranged place for leaving long-term messages for other ships.} mused Spiral.
{Tempo explained that it may be instead that their Colonel wants to show us how bad the War was.} Not that Talon could really blame him, after his people had suffered through a war like that. Sorrow shared was sorrow lessened, after all. {But even she wasn't sure just what would still be there to see. So it is possible that if any other human ships had left their refugee fleet, they would also have left a message in the decided place in that system.}
{That would be—} Spiral cut herself off, both tenoin turning to the door behind them just as Alex appeared.
Blinking sleep out of his eyes, the human nodded to each of them. "Mornin'."
Talon frowned and glanced back at the display, checking the chronometer. "It seems that it is late evening." At least, that was her reading of the strange, nineteen-cycle 'day' that the humans used. Was she wrong?
Alex stared at her for several solons, before breaking out into a chuckle. "I, uh, guess I walked right into that one." He nodded to the screen. "How're we doing?"
"One-thousand solon until we hop to the last filament, which should take us in to the Ran system within a day." Talon said.
"Good. Oh and, uh," he hiked one thumb over his shoulder. "I'm going to grab breakfast. You two want anything?"
Spiral sent mirthfully {A male, bringing us food? Not how it usually goes, but I like where he is leading!}
{I… don't think it necessarily has the same meaning for humans as it does for us.} Talon replied.
Her diral-sister sent back in exasperation {First he holds your hand, then he puts a blanket over you when you sleep, and now he brings you food? Are you waiting for a specific invitation, or just for him to pull you into bed with him?}
{Perhaps when we get some down-time later.} leaked out of Talon's mind, before she could clamp down on her sanzai.
After a beat, Spiral's happiness flowed over her. {Yes! That is the idea! You first, then me, and I am sure that that listel tozet wants to be afterwards.}
{She seems more 'protective' than anything. Not everyone thinks all the time of mating.} Talon sent, smiling despite herself. {You're the only Maiad here, after all.}
{Then it is my duty to train you all!} Spiral shot back, along with an image of herself as a creche instructor, in the front of a classroom filled with the six other loroi of their small expedition.
Although the diagram on the board there would not have been considered appropriate, even on Maia. Probably.
While Talon was still recovering from that mental image, Spiral spoke aloud "It is most friendly to offer! I think it will be more fast for Talon to show you with herself!" To Talon, she sent {It is still many hundreds of solon until our next maneuver. You have enough time to go look through the food stores with him.} The narrat stretched as well as she could in her well-padded seat. {Also enough time to work your legs awake again.}
"Sure." Alex said, raising one eyebrow at Talon.
After only a half-beat of thinking, she did rise from her pilot's seat even as Spiral sent {I nearly forgot — grab a stuffed pozet for me, any filling!}
Talon gave her affirmation as the two of them filed out of the cockpit. Past the folded-up medical cots, and the still-closed door to the captain's cabin. Then the open door to the armory, where one of the male ODSTs silently looked up at the two of them passing before returning to his work.
"[Evenin', Doc.]" Alex said, as they entered the cramped crew quarters. "[Trying to figure out how to work that, uh… is that a comb or a can-opener?]"
At the table set in the middle of the bunk-lined compartment, the human doranzer sat with a half-deflated ration pack in front of him next to one of the human datapads. In one hand was a white Union fleet-pattern comb, which the human was spinning back and forth between one finger and thumb.
"[Both, I think. One of the elves gave it to me, the little one who got the shit shot out of her back on that Ring. Now that's gratitude.]" He grinned up at Alex and pointed to the closed-off bunk capsules behind him. "[None of these jarheads get me fashion accessories when I seal their insides back in. I've already got enough extra stims and energy drinks to last me a lifetime.]"
Alex laughed, stepping into the room. As he passed the doranzer, he ran one hand along the nearly-shorn hair on the top of the human's head. Strange for a warrior who was clearly very capable to keep their hair so short, but these were aliens. "[Can't say I know what you'd do with a comb anyways, buzz-cut.]"
"[That's 'high-reg,' thank you very much. Faster to clean the blood out of it after every mission.]" The doranzer looked up as Talon passed behind him. "[Hey, maybe your girlfriend would like to borrow the comb. Don't think she's ever seen one, by the looks of it.]"
Now both humans glanced back at Talon. What was she missing?
Alex shrugged. "[Hey, some things are universal. What's the point of being a Navy pilot if you can't lord your hair over the grunts in the mud down below?]"
With a bark of laughter, the doranzer turned to Alex. "[And her long hair gives you a nice handle to hold onto, right kid?]"
Alex's face flushed bright red, and the ODST broke out laughing.
The language meant nothing to Talon, but she could recognize banter between friends when she heard it. And assuming that humans blushed for the same reasons as loroi did, maybe Alex had his own Spiral to deal with.
Leaning one shoulder against the wall at her side, Talon smiled a lopsided grin at Alex.
His blush only deepened.
Definitely a Spiral-worthy conversation he was having.
"[See, kid? She knows what's up.]" The doranzer winked at Talon. "[You sure they don't speak English?]"
A brief double-knock on one of the sleeping capsules came a solon before it opened. Another Helljumper, blinking sleep out of her eyes. "[Doc, is there a reason you are still up at this hour? At least flyboy here has to mind the ship.]"
"[Nah, I'm just reading through the files the elf doc gave me.]" The doranzer tapped at the datapad. "[It's been a quarter-fucking-million years, I don't want to find out the hard way that they've developed some new reaction to anything in my medkit.]"
"[Is there anything else in your kit besides biofoam and booze?]" The human female asked, smirking.
"[Hey, if neither one will make you better, you may as well pass on.]"
If only Beryl were awake. The listel would definitely enjoy listening in to the aliens speak, more practice for her growing understanding of their language. For her part, Talon just basked in the banter of warriors clearly friendly and familiar with each other. As stunted as it was by the limits of spoken speech, the pace and tone brought back fond memories of her own diral-sisters.
Still laughing, Alex said "[Any intel on which of the rations taste least-bad, by the way? I tried brown, and turns out that it's genuine-imitation stroganoff.]"
The doranzer made a face. "[I knew they'd changed it! But no, orange is still 'Thai surprise' and I'm pretty sure green is supposed to be something Hispanic. Damn if I can tell just what, though.]"
"[Hey, my grandmother would kill whoever labeled those orange ones anything to do with Thai.]" The resting ODST called from her bunk.
"[Thanks, you two. Guess I may as well stick with brown.]" Alex waved for Talon to follow him as he knelt by one of the cabinet doors recessed into the bulkhead. "Well, Talon, I wish you better luck than me in finding something you like in here."
She pulled two sealed pozet packets out of the half of the cabinet filled with loroi rations, and yanked on the wrapped cord to get the self-heating started. They'd be nice and warm by the time they got back to the cockpit. Talon turned to go, only to see Alex still fiddling with a machine he'd pulled out on an arm from the wall.
He glanced over at her, as a dark steaming liquid rushed into the cup he'd put into the machine. "Oh, uh, want a cup?"
"What is it?" She leaned closer. Her nose stung, either from the steam rising off of the liquid or from its sharp scent.
"Coffee. Uh, human stimulant drink."
Perhaps something similar to noillir? "If it is safe, then certain." These humans would know if it were unsafe for loroi to drink it. And in any case, there was a doranzer right there.
He held out the cup. "Careful, it's hot. And for a night-shift watch, it's black enough to put hair on your—" Alex cut himself off, frowning.
The doranzer snorted.
Talon tilted her head slightly to one side, thinking. There was a similar phrase… "Perhaps say 'It is strong enough to grow your hair out'?"
"Yeah, let's uh, go with that."
Taking a careful sip, Talon was pleased to find it rather smooth. Like diluted noillir, if anything. "It is not bad."
"[High praise for Navy coffee.]" Said the ODST from her bunk.
Alex pulled another cup from the cabinet next to the machine. "Keep the cup if you want. We've certainly got enough supplies for just the seven coffee-drinkers aboard." As the machine hummed into life, Alex shot a grin at the doranzer.
Who responded "[Hey, we ran out of milk for that battery-acid you drink, even before our last mission. And I don't think there's so much as a single cow left in the universe, so that's not going to change anytime soon.]" The human warrior tucked the comb away in one pocket and picked up his own ration-bag.
The Helljumper said from her bunk "[You know perfectly well that Navy-supplied cream has never even seen a cow, inside or outside.]"
"[Still takes the edge off.]"
The way that the three humans carried on their conversation alternating between Trade and their own language prompted a question from Talon. "Do all the humans in your team speak Trade?"
Alex paused, cup in hand halfway to his mouth. He glanced down at the doranzer.
"[Pretty sure your old man said that wasn't exactly classified.]" The seated warrior then said in halting Trade "We speak not much well. Can understand if said to, but saying out loud is more difficult."
Heh. Even worse than Spiral. She looked back at Alex, a question forming on her lips.
Apparently, the doranzer could understand what she was thinking. "Child and uncle speak with Tempest most common, learn to say very well." Even with his clunky spoken Trade, the humor in his voice was evident "Child true grew up with second-mother saying in Trade."
Talon turned her smile on Alex. "'Child'?"
He shook his head softly, stepping around the table on the other side from Talon and the doranzer. "I'm the youngest member of the Furies. Of course, compared to certain old timers," he nodded with a smirk to the warrior who Talon was just now stepping past "anyone would look young."
The two of them left the room, walking back into the corridor. Talon looked aside at Alex, thinking. He had been called 'young,' and while he was somewhat older than her that was still as nothing compared to how much worse fighting he must have seen.
How many battles had Alex seen, how many worlds evacuated?
Worlds destroyed?
Talon had seen ships blasted out of formation while on close-defense duty, and many times had come back from longer-ranged fighter patrols to a smaller Strike Group than the one she'd left.
Had seen diral-sisters disappear forever, their fighter vanishing in an eye-searing blast of Shell point-defense plasma, or a missile strike, or a thousand other things.
It was one of the things that all loroi in the Union had come to learn, these past twenty-five year: that it was proper and honorable to be a warrior, yes, but that war itself… was nobody's gain. Not wars like this one, between the Union and the Hierarchy. A war where no prisoners were accepted, no ground was ceded except as cratered desolation, no warriors gained renown by their deeds on the battlefield.
Or at least, none seemed to achieve anything of note by those deeds. Emperor Eighth Dawn throws her own squadron into the line to attempt to stem the Shell offensives battering down the walls of the home sectors… and only finds her own death.
Years later, Sunfury gives the Tithric their just desserts and pushes the enemy lines back for the first time in the War. Her reward? Being cut off and surrounded, her entire fleet cut down to the last warrior. The war only ground on.
And even Stillstorm, the most famous remaining commander in the Union. What had she earned, for twenty-five years of grueling service directly on the front lines? More than a decade of stalemate, entire generations of loroi being fed into the meat-pulper of the Charred Steps.
Nothing gained.
What was the purpose of fame and martial glory, if the warrior who earned it gained nothing for her people, for her Union?
Only with this latest discovery of the humans was there even a chance of seeing this war end, it seemed to Talon.
"Talon?" Alex's voice was low.
She blinked, turning aside to meet his worried eyes.
And only then realized that she had all-but-crushed one of the stuffed pozet in her clenched hand. She'd give the undamaged one to Spiral, then.
She forced a smile. "It is fine."
"...If you say so." Alex held his words until they were several mannals away from the crew-quarters compartment before murmuring "Are you okay?"
She glanced across at him. Was he okay? She knew well enough how oppressive the stresses of war could be. Every loroi knew that. Well, every warrior loroi, the ones that mattered.
And she also knew just how much it helped to be able to share that burden with one's closest friends, fellow warriors. To reassure them that all here sailed the same boat, that they were not alone.
But Spiral had been right — all humans were alone.
And yet he clearly was doing his best to be a friend to Talon, and to Spiral, and to Beryl. Even though he could not know them, could not feel them, not in the way that really mattered.
How could Alex stand it?
Talon carefully transferred the mashed pozet to the other hand, the one that carefully balanced now two wrapped rations and one 'coffee.' The other hand reached up, hesitating briefly before grasping onto Alex's shoulder.
She'd seen the gesture between two of the other humans, earlier. It seemed to be a sign of warriorly affection.
Alex's eyebrows rose, and he opened his mouth to say something.
Stopped himself.
Then his own hand climbed to rest atop Talon's own.
Warm
The two of them smiled gently at each other.
Spiral was right: the next down-time could not come soon enough.
"Emerging to system will be in thirty solon!" announced Spiral.
"Noted." said Alex, from the pilot's seat.
For her part, Talon let her sanzai convey her distracted acknowledgment. She was instead still busy calculating the arrival vector. The human charts of the system had been accurate...
Nearly three-hundred-thousand years ago.
Alex had assured her that the jump into the system would still be well within the tolerances of the Did Ever Plummet Sound's slipspace core. But at the same time, with their ever-increasing proximity to the system had come the chance to see if it would be possible to calculate a better arrival vector just by using the observations from their slipspace sensors.
It had been a very enjoyable twelve cycles working on that, Alex supplying humanity's known tricks about navigating slipspace while Talon contrasted that with what the Union knew about hyper jumps.
But there would be only one way to know just how accurate those calculations would be, and that was comparing them to the actual in-system data after the jump.
"Five solon! Four, three, two, one..." Spiral counted down.
The prowler rumbled around them, and the cockpit windows ahead shifted back to the starry field of realspace.
"Smoother every time." Alex noted. He leaned over, clapping Talon on the back. "Good navigating."
"I think I now am understanding better how to—"
Talon's response was interrupted by Spiral shouting "Sensor contacts! Many ships!" Even as Alex brought up a small sensor repeat onto his screen, she added "It is the Shells!"
The narrat's sanzai alert brought Beryl to the bridge, leaning over Spiral's shoulder. "It is two divisions, spread around throughout the system. They seem to be… searching."
Colonel Jardin's low voice sounded from the open doorway "Then that answers our question. They pulled navigational data from somewhere, either the probe or the Mandelbrot."
"But they must have left a very much long time previous, being here already!" said Spiral. "This distance must be taking more than a tozon to reach, from as distant as their Shell homes."
Which said something rather unsettling about just how long the Enemy had known about the crashed human ship and the Soia Ring. Without having humans there to help them — Tempo's imagined scenario from before flashed through her mind — it must have taken a long time for the Shells to find navigational coordinates from the human records.
Had the Shells found the Ring system years earlier? How much more had they gleaned from studying the wreck and artifacts found there?
"And if the Fleet's still in slipspace," said the Colonel, "then the Bugs aren't going to find anything at the end of the rainbow, anyways. Doesn't mean I want them picking over our old colonies, though."
A cold line traced its way down Talon's back. How certain could one be, now, that the Shells didn't have any way of reaching into slipspace? The human Admiral's recorded message had mentioned them sailing with at least one other ship… of which there was no current trace. Had the Shells found this 'UNSC Mobius'? What could they have learned from a recovered slipspace drive, in over a year of study?
"Anyways," continued the senior Jardin as he leaned in over his nephew to tap a brief series of commands into the console "put us on a course for this moon, above the fourth planet. However the Bugs came to be here, they don't seem to know where the drop-off point is."
Alex asked "Old ONI base?"
"From the Insurrection era, yes."
"I see." Then Alex pointed with one hand towards the three asteroid belts clearly visible in the system and said with a smile in his voice "And, of course…?" he held out one hand.
With a sigh, Colonel Jardin reached into a pouch at his waist and drew out a small, palm-sized plastic-wrapped item. He handed it over to Alex, even as he shot a thin smile at Talon. "Trust my nephew to remember a bet a quarter-million years old."
Talon looked over quizzically. Alex winked at her with a chuckle, "There's three belts, which means I win the last chocolate bar in existence."
Talon was still forming her thoughts into a prepared vocal sentence — sanzai was so much easier — when Beryl beat her to speaking "It seems that there is some significance of the three asteroid belts in this system? Was that not the count when you last surveyed the area?"
Carefully tucking the 'chocolate bar' item into a shirt pocket, Alex pointed with his other hand to the innermost asteroid cluster. "Only the two outer belts are 'natural.' That innermost one? That is what's left of Surveyor."
Talon's eyes flicked back and forth across the sensor readings, the back of her mind tallying up the mass it represented. "A Soia dreadstar?"
"Mmm-hmm." Alex made a strange noise, but nodded.
Colonel Jardin intoned "Never send an Architect to do a Warrior's work."
Talon and Beryl exchanged a glance, eyebrows raised. Before either of the loroi could vocalize the thoughts on their minds, Alex explained "A few years after Tempest's Rebellion, the Empire had stabilized things enough to go back on the offensive. They put their Councilor for Grand Architecture in charge of the war effort… and she decided that what the Empire needed was a, uh, 'grand victory' to shore up morale, and that she'd prove her competency by overseeing it personally."
The Colonel picked up "So she took three moon-ships under her personal command and went straight for the biggest military target that they were aware of: Reach." He pointed to the innermost planet. "She found a fight, all right. Six months of grinding their way in through the outer system defenses saw the moon-ship Desolator crippled enough by Reach's orbital defenses to force it to withdraw and limp home. That was a big blow — those things took time to repair." He laughed darkly. "I'd wager it was still in yard hands when the War ended."
"Anyways," Alex smoothly continued "she apparently decided that this whole operation was becoming something of an, uh, embarrassment. The S-MAC platforms over Reach were chewing through the smallships deployed from her remaining two moonships and were even getting a lucky few hits in on the big ones when they strayed too far in-system."
His uncle said "So she did what any inexperienced military commander would do: she gambled everything on a pinpoint jump right into Reach's close orbit with her entire force." He sighed and shook his head. "Crippled the S-MACs, sure, but it brought two moon-ships into boarding range."
Talon blinked in shock. "Boarding range?" She thought of the stories she had heard as a child about the Soia, of the 'city-sized' or 'moon-sized' — depending on the record — dreadstars that had dominated known space. Even the fragment of one that she herself had seen, earlier, was colossal, many thousands of mannals across.
Just how did one go about 'boarding' a ship like that, prepared for combat?
Alex explained "It's not like we captured the ships or anything. A team of Spar— uh, special forces infiltrated aboard the second moonship, and brought a NOVA bomb along with them."
Talon wouldn't have caught the slight change in wording of his speech if Tempo's earlier warning hadn't had her alert for it. The humans definitely were concealing something. Even Alex.
"It seems that these 'special forces' of yours must have been very skilled warriors." Beryl observed, her side-channels making it clear that she had noticed the same slip as had Talon.
"They were." Alex said.
With a low chuckle, his uncle added "As good as Helljumpers, I'll give them that."
Alex snorted, and continued "Anyways, they set off the bomb inside the ship. The blast vaporized the vessel, and slammed Surveyor next to her into the moon Turul. Both of them broke apart on impact, but the debris cloud was still spreading when we were forced out of the system a year later." He craned his neck back, smirking up at his uncle. "There had been some, uh, debate at the time if they'd end up deorbiting, or forming a ring around Reach, or forming a ring around the system primary."
"And someone guessed right." Colonel Jardin said.
"A 'guess' had nothing to do with it. I calculated." Alex corrected his uncle, smirking.
Meanwhile, Talon's mind was still struggling to picture two Soia dreadstars being destroyed in a single stroke. "How wide were these Soia craft?" She asked, feeling Beryl's attention focus its laser-like intensity.
"Bit under four hundred klicks across, so that would be, uh… five-hundred-thousand mannal?" Alex said. "They varied a good bit; it's not like the Soia were turning these things out on assembly lines. Each one was custom-built by whichever Architect was overseeing its construction. Surveyor was one of the biggest — Tempest says that Architecture always loved to over-build her pet projects — but the more common small ones went down to fifty klicks across, so sixty-five-thousand mannal."
The three loroi in the cockpit exchanged mutual feelings of horrified awe at the idea of warships at such a scale. Talon tried to mentally picture just how unreasonably large even a sixty-five-thousand mannal ship would be. If she wasn't mistaken—
Unsurprisingly, Beryl beat her to the calculations. {Even one of those 'small' dreadstars could have had more internal volume than the combined Union fleet.} Her sub-channels showed more curiosity than anything else.
Did Ever Plummet Sound drew closer to the moon that Colonel Jardin had indicated.
As if he could receive her sanzai, Alex spoke aloud "They were more city than warship, keep in mind. Pretty light armament. Uh, for their size, anyways. The Soia had learned — well, Tempest had learned — decades earlier not to bring them any farther in a system than was necessary to drop off their smallships."
"[I'll leave the conversation to you.]" The elder Jardin spoke aside to his nephew, "Land us on the surface at the coordinates I gave you. I'll step outside — it should only take a few minutes to check the message box, but it does require proximity." He stepped out of the cockpit.
While the prowler dove into the airless moon's gravity well, Spiral noted from her sensor station "One of those Shell frigates may soon be coming much close to us."
Alex reached one finger up to tap against a set of indicator lights above his station. "We're in full stealth. They'd have to be very close by to notice anything, especially once we shut down the engines and deploy the adaptive netting." He glanced back at Spiral. "How nearby will that craft get?"
"It seems to be making maps above the moons of this planet." the narrat responded. "It is flying maybe two-hundred-thousand mannal above the surfaces. Perhaps it will be that close within three thousand solon."
"Hundred-fifty klicks, then, at closest." Alex said lowly, to himself. How strange it must be for aliens, to form their own thoughts by speaking aloud to themselves! He returned to a normal voice "That should be far enough to be safe. Besides, Uncle should be done with his contact by then."
The prowler gently landed, the muted rumble of its ventral thrusters fading away. With her now-greater familiarity with the alien ship, Talon recognized the series of thuds and clunks echoing distantly through the hull to be the boarding ramp lowering.
Talon made a show of stretching casually in her seat — all the better to reassure Alex that she trusted his judgment — although she kept one eye on the display repeater that showed the slowly-approaching Shell ship. The mechanisms that kept the human craft hidden from the Enemy's detection systems were not yet familiar to her, so she certainly did not entirely trust them.
For a few solon, only silence filled the cockpit.
Then a thought struck her. "Alex, is it normal for a UNSC messaging location to have to be physically accessed? I think maybe it would be safer to communicate to it from orbit."
The pilot shook his head. "We got no response on the tight-beam on the way in; the transceivers must have been buried long ago." He returned to checking the indicators at his station, muttering to himself. "[Baffles are cold, nets are out, thermal pipes… may as well dig them down while we wait.]"
"That seems to make sense." Talon nodded.
More silence, this time eventually broken by Alex. "Talon, you said a while ago that you and Spiral were in a, uh, 'gang.' What's the story with that?"
Talon thought she saw what he was asking, with his strange twisting of spoken Trade. "It is the childhood training of all loroi warriors. Older children are grouped in diral, and sent into the wilds to perform tasks and challenges to prove their worth as warriors. We on Taben were in a diral fifty strong; I say the best diral on the planet, then!"
Spiral proudly added "The 'High Tide Low-lives' were we!"
"Uh-huh." Alex said, smiling. "Any fun stories from your Lord of the Flies experience?" Talon tilted her head at him quizzically, and he waved one hand. "An ancient story of human children growing up alone on an island at sea. They mostly fight each other."
Talon nodded, slowly. "Then that is perhaps much like two tenoin diral meeting."
"We beated both fights!" Spiral boasted, grinning widely at the memories leaking through her parallel sanzai. "Other dirals had to go fishing again; we ate their caught leviathan!"
And if anything could make the tough muscle or fatty blubber of a Tabenid Leviathan taste delicious, it was winning that meat in a fight. Talon could still remember that meal. It had tasted like… victory.
"Right, so… pirates." Alex's smile had grown into a warm smirk. He nodded his head at Spiral. "We definitely need to get you an eyepatch, now. Don't know where we're going to find a parrot these days, though."
"Eyepatch and 'parrot'?" asked Spiral.
"The traditional, uh, 'uniform' of pirates in human literature. Mostly cinema, now that I think about it."
Talon's eyebrows rose. The humans must have an admirable warrior history indeed, if even pirates had uniforms! "I think maybe 'pirate' is perhaps not the most correct word. Diral are supposed to fight each other, but also not to kill each other. I know that at least one of the other diral we beat still passed their graduation, afterwards."
{I guess the Fleet does need garrison troops.} Spiral admitted, condescendingly. {They were not exactly the finest of warriors. Those other tenoin barely knew how to set their sails! What happens if they meet the Shells?}
Talon confidently answered {Shells don't sail.}
Alex laughed "Right, 'friendly' pirates, then. Any other fun stories?" He glanced at the display, showing the Enemy warship still some time away from their moon.
This time, Spiral answered "Yes! There is the graduation with the missing anchor!"
{Not that story!} Talon sent with a mental groan. All had turned out well — except for Talon — but it wasn't her proudest moment.
{Yes that story!} replied her diral-sister. "On the night before our graduating time, we sailed into the bay where we would be graduated… but without an anchor!" She held up one finger for dramatic emphasis.
Talon interjected "I think maybe I should be explaining this. Spiral has not very good spoken Trade, and might mistake the story."
The narrat in question stuck her tongue out at Talon. {Or I might tell him the full story!}
{Most of which only occurred in your seed-filled head.} Talon sent. "The entire diral would be judged by the condition of our ship. It seemed to me that we were at risk of failing exactly as we were about to graduate."
"So Plunger stole an anchor!" said Spiral.
"Was that allowed?" asked Alex, one eyebrow raised.
"Diral girls are supposed to 'find' what materials they need, either taken from nature or from civilians." Talon shrugged. At the human's surprised face, she quickly added "The civilians are compensated by the tenoin caste authorities for any objects taken. And we do not put them in danger, only take… 'necessities.'"
"But an anchor? Isn't that, uh, important for boats?"
"All ships were in a protected cove, not in storm season, and the tide would not be pulling the other ship out to sea until many cycles after our graduation ceremony was to be done." Talon side-eyed Spiral. "And I was planning to put it back afterwards, all along."
"But the most great part is whose ship Plunger took the anchor from!"
"Oh?" Alex's eyes glinted playfully in the reflected light from his display. "Don't tell me you robbed the instructor's boat, or something."
"More better still!" Spiral said. "It was a ship of—"
Talon interjected first, to set the facts straight. "It did not have any flag or label that we had been taught, and did not wear the banner of a warrior's ship. So it was a fair target by our instructions." Despite herself, Talon's lips broke into a thin smile. With now several years comfortably in between herself and the incident, she could admit that it was funny.
She continued "And so at night, while the rest of the diral rowed the ship to keep it in place and not pushed ashore, I went along the seafloor to this other ship and took their anchor. Attached it to our anchor-chain, and swam up back to our ship."
"But a whole anchor?" Alex asked. "That seems, uh, heavy."
"It was. But I was strong enough." Talon nodded, pulling her shoulders back and flexing slightly. "And as the one with the best head for navigation while blind, it was my duty to do that work."
"And so in the morning we stood in lines for our graduating event, in front of ship 'mysteriously' washed ashore!" Spiral said.
"Bet they didn't like that." Alex snorted.
"It seemed that they did not trust the currents for their safety, and deliberately moved their ship onto the shore." Talon said with a shrug. "They would have been safe where they floated, but that was their choice."
"So," Alex apparently could tell the question that she had been not quite answering, "whose boat was it?"
"It seemed that it belonged to the three nilodi caste members that were to be recording our graduation." Talon explained, a brief laugh escaping her lips. When Alex looked nonplussed, she continued "The Nilodi are Taben's own non-combat caste closest to the listels. They observe and record sanzai conversations that do not involve being near any risk of battle."
Taben might be the junior partner of the three Sister Worlds, but at least most of their own traditions had been preserved. The Tenoin remained their own caste apart from the Soroin, and the Nilodi remained separate from the Nedatan. And a good thing, too — the nilodi lived their lives as a good Tabenid should: out at sea, not crammed into some shore-bound monastery. Taben was proud of her sons, the finest males in the Union!
"Huh. What determines who gets sent to the, uh, 'nilodi' versus the 'listel'?" Alex asked, his attention focused on Talon so that he missed the way that Spiral's grin exploded. He muttered to himself in his own language "['Preserver' caste.]"
The narrat said with a grin "Because the nilodi are males!" Her sanzai appended the memory of an admittedly very cute nilodi male flanked by his two scowling caretaker warriors… and all three of them with their caste's clothing soaked up to their waist. Halfway up the male's chest, for that matter. "This one and caretakers had to wade ashore!"
"They could have just waited for the morning tide to recede." Talon repeated the gripe that she'd explained to her own caste reviewer. That Tenoin Seinen had seemed so intimidating at the time with her sanzai so brusque and clipped, but looking back on it now Talon was pretty sure that she had actually been holding back her own laughter at the event. "They did not have to swim."
"It did not make the senior caretaker very happy for her ship to stop doing ship-things. And then she saw 'our' anchor when our ship was pulled up onto the shore!" Spiral said.
"Most fortunate for us, it seemed that the nilodi male himself was more only amused by things." Talon said. "He was kind and talked his caretaker into not being quite so tough against us." She quirked her lip. "Well, not against the rest of the diral. I had to spend my first night after graduating re-attaching the anchor to his ship." And it had been hard enough getting it off of the chain in the first place; replacing all of the attachment parts in the dark had been an even greater challenge.
{And were denied your encounter opportunity.} Spiral grumbled, {Your official opportunity. But I still say that Evening Fog was hoping you'd swim up and 'encounter' him on his ship. He did specifically say that both of his caretakers were heavy sleepers...}
In her well-worn side of the old argument, Talon pointed out {On a ship that small? They'd have to have been in a coma to not overhear anything fun. It wasn't worth the risk, not without an official agreement from his caretaker.}
And even with her diral officially graduated, Talon hadn't wanted to inflame the caretaker's anger even more by asking for an encounter with the male under her protection. Even if he could have used some help getting warm after his dip in the cold waters...
Alex grinned broadly. "Now that's a story worthy of a pilot!"
"And what are your stories of training graduation?" asked Spiral.
"Well, you've already heard how I, uh, 'earned' my callsign."
"Yes, I remember the exploding-fuel shuttle." Talon smiled warmly.
"Heh. Well, I'm afraid that my actual formal 'graduation' wasn't as fun as yours." His face fell. "We just got an hour-long lecture from the training squadron leader, and then we boarded shuttles to our line units. Of course, that was on Holdout just as the Soia were fighting their way into the outer system, so we were kinda, uh, pressed for time."
Talon's own smile disappeared as well. Her diral graduation certainly would have gone differently if the Shells had been actively fighting in the same system as Taben at that time. Would there even have been a graduation ceremony?
Either way, she definitely would have taken up Evening Fog on his none-too-subtle offer.
Alex continued, in a very distant voice. Apparently speaking to himself again. "A quarter of the graduating class were dead within the week."
Talon made her choice. She couldn't stand by and do nothing in the face of the sheer hurt transmitted through his voice — no sanzai necessary — whether coming from a warrior or a male. Or in this case, a warrior-male.
She leaned over the controls, resting one hand on the back of Alex's warm neck, fingers tracing along his spine and the bottom fringe of his hair. Since he couldn't hear her sanzai even with that contact, she tried to put it into words "But they won, in the end. The Soia were defeated. A warrior cannot ask for more."
Spiral mirrored Talon's gesture from Alex's other side.
He smiled faintly, glancing between the tenoin. "Thanks, you two."
Spiral said, slowly "Your friends from the squadron, they also still live in memories that you have of them. Perhaps it is good to tell stories you know of them?"
"Hm. When you put it that way..." Alex's smile warmed, almost back to as bright as it had been earlier.
As bright as Talon liked to see it.
"So, uh, there was Michael. Mike was a transfer from..." Alex began.
Listening to the human recount his stories, Talon adjusted her seat slightly, to sit comfortably with her hand still resting on Alex's back.
As a gesture of support to a fellow warrior, of course.
{Teidar pallan, please meet me in the captain's cabin.} Tempo sent.
Fireblade opened her eyes and sat up from her bed in the crew quarters. It had taken some time to get used to sleeping in proximity to the aliens, but after these several past fights against the Shells she figured that the humans could be trusted. {I am on my way, mizol parat.}
She rolled out of the bed, feet thumping softly onto the floor plating. The sleeping alcove below hers was empty — Beryl was up, most likely already present at the same meeting that Tempo's side-channels had promised. {Has the Colonel returned from his mission?} she asked.
{He has. And the information he has found is… interesting. You will wish to see it personally.} The mizol's side-channels hinted at some of the findings, but not with enough detail for Fireblade to make sense of them.
With a nod at one of the human warriors seated at the table in the middle of the room, Fireblade left the sleeping compartment. She paused briefly outside of the door to the captain's cabin, listening to the faint vocal speech that could be heard through the open door to the cockpit.
Good. It sounded like the two tenoin were proceeding well with their mission of forming a closer bond with the human pilot.
With a lurch, the ship lifted off of the moon and shot skywards. Fireblade shot a hand out to grab the door frame for support, and then squeezed into the cabin.
"—kes sense. They'd hardly have sat on their thumbs all this time." The Colonel shrugged.
Tempo crossed her arms. "But three-hundred-thousand years? And they have not yet found success?"
"Hey, slipspace is hard. Especially now after whatever the Soia did to it. I'm not sure how many of our eggheads ever really understood it, but I do know that few among the rebel loroi ever did. They just ran the ships and machines, same as most of us did."
{What is the summary of the situation?} Fireblade asked, standing behind Beryl and watching the mizol and the Colonel talk.
Beryl sent {It seems that the humans possess a message system which is capable of receiving messages from slipspace while being present here in realspace. He says that it is derived from what he called a 'slipspace com,' but I am uncertain if this is another of the 'acronyms' that the human language is fond of.}
{Interesting.} Fireblade allowed her sub-channels to reveal how little the finding actually meant to her, for all that Beryl obviously found it fascinating. {And did he find any messages?}
{Yes!} Beryl answered, her side-channels flickering through the details. {It is most amazing! He has discovered that there have been over a hundred recorded visits of human vessels to this moon since the end of the Soia Wars, approximately every few thousand years.}
Fireblade's eyebrows raced upwards. {The humans have been active in the galaxy for all this time!?} Then what had they been doing?
{Not in the galaxy itself, not really.} Beryl sent, her sub-channels grim. {It seems that the Soia's Ring weapon destabilized the slipspace 'boundary' enough that no human vessel from the refugee fleet was able to successfully transit back to realspace.}
That fit what the human 'admiral' had said in the message recovered from aboard Mandelbrot. Yet— {But that ship of theirs crashed onto the moon. So they can manage it, if they avoid gravity wells.}
{I am not so certain that they know that. From our experience departing slipspace when reuniting with the Tinza fleet, it appears that human slipspace engines are much more vulnerable to being drawn towards large masses than are our own jump drives. It also seems that the probe which the human admiral was going to send upon entering realspace did not make it back to the refugee fleet; their messages found here afterwards list that ship as 'disappeared.'}
Tempo's eyes briefly flickered over to Fireblade. {Then that gives us some very valuable information to bring to them.}
{You think that we can find their fleet? Did the Colonel not say that they were attempting not to be found?} Fireblade's own memory of exactly what the human leader had said so many days ago was imprecise, but Beryl immediately supplied the exact quote.
The mizol did not answer, in favor of speaking aloud "And what was the most recent attempt?"
Colonel Jardin looked down at the datapad in his hand. "Bit over seven-hundred years ago, they dispatched a frigate and volunteer crew to attempt a re-entry through a slipspace 'tunnel' one of their earlier ships had detected. That's, ah, usually left by a major point-mass; a neutron star or a black hole, something like that."
"Are such gravity wells not usually avoided by craft attempting faster-than-light travel?" Tempo asked.
The Colonel opened his mouth to answer, but Beryl spoke quickly, her sub-channels radiating shock and surprise. "Did those records say where in the galaxy this slipspace tunnel was located?"
Tempo and Fireblade both sent a sub-verbal question to the listel.
Beryl explained, her side-channels a hurried rush of thoughts and calculations {We know from the Soia's Ring weapon that changes can be made to the 'nature' of slipspace-realspace interaction across a very large area, and that this interferes with the ability to travel faster-than-light. Human years are longer than Union standard ones, so seven-hundred human years would be approximately one-thousand years ago for us. Near the end of the First Mannadi War.}
Fireblade made the realization a split-solon before Tempo. {Which ended because of the mass disruption of jump drive travel.}
Tempo added {And was believed to be emanating from the Well of Souls. The black hole.}
"Ah, here." Colonel Jardin flipped the datapad around and held it out to the listel. "Doubt the thread patterns have changed that much in seven-hundred years, so it should still be accurate enough."
Beryl took the pad, staring down at its screen. Fireblade leaned over her shoulder to watch, letting the superimposed images from the tozet's side-channels fill in the details.
{It is the Well of Souls!} Beryl exclaimed, after several solons. {There are no other known stellar-scale masses in that region which could possibly be it!}
Tempo flashed a brief burst of amusement. {Perhaps the Mannadi owe the humans a small debt, for stalling our pacification of their people.}
Fireblade snorted. That was one way to phrase it. {Not that it helped them in the long run.}
{It was their choice to continue the aggression that would lead to the Second and Third wars against them.} Tempo shrugged.
Beryl spoke aloud "This is amazing! It is almost certain that your frigate attempted to re-enter realspace near the black hole known as the 'Well of Souls.' We have many records of gravitational disturbances throughout known space around the time when you say that the frigate made its journey."
"Well. Guess they must have slammed hard into it or something, because the Grafton was never seen again according to the log from the next ship after her."
Beryl handed the pad back to the human. "It does seem that perhaps human craft are more affected by gravity wells than are loroi jump drives."
"Either way, I'm glad that you and your pilots worked out a solution with Alex." the Colonel said. "And if we can find the refugee fleet where they're hiding..."
{Then this expedition becomes very interesting.} sent Tempo. Aloud, she asked "You believe that this is possible?"
Colonel Jardin nodded to Beryl. "That's up to your science officer here, and the three pilots. The exact access corridor to the slipspace pocket where the fleet's no doubt sitting has been excised from each of the visitation records. Guess they're still paranoid about the Soia being out there, somewhere. I don't know enough myself about slipspace to say exactly how hard it'll be to find them starting from a rough area, but I think it's possible."
{That… may be true.} the listel sent. {It seems that there is some correlation between the pattern of slipspace threads versus stellar mass distributions. If one compared the slipspace sensor readings from a ship such as this prowler to established star-charts...} her sub-channels fell. {But we are already so deep into the Great Wasteland, I doubt that our existing charts will be accurate enough.}
{A pity.} sent Tempo. {Then it is unlikely that we can forge contact with them before the end of the War. Sending a surveying expedition this far from Union space is not going to happen during wartime.} Implicit in her side-channels was the assumption that there would still be a Union, after the war.
Well, if there wasn't, then at least Fireblade wouldn't be around to care. And on that thought… {Should we encourage them to continue their search for their missing fleet, or should we push them towards returning to Union space?} she asked.
The human prowler and its eleven-alien crew would certainly go quite some ways towards ensuring a Loroi victory in the War; they could search afterwards. On the other hand, if the human & rebel-loroi fleet could be found…
It was an equally military and diplomatic decision, assuming even that they could influence the humans one way or the other.
Tempo nodded to Fireblade, acknowledging that point conveyed by the teidar's side-channels. {It is my recommendation as the expedition's diplomatic officer that we attempt to locate their refugee fleet. If we spend more than two entire transits searching without result, then we should re-evaluate. Your thoughts?}
Fireblade pinged Beryl before responding herself. Of the three of them, the listel was the one with at least some understanding of how the humans' slipspace navigation worked.
Beryl sent {I believe that that would be enough time to determine our odds of success accurately.}
Fireblade turned back to Tempo. {Then we are in agreement. Two transits.}
They turned as one to Colonel Jardin, whose eyes flicked between the three of them. "Well, what do you ladies think?"
"We believe that it is worth attempting." said Tempo. "It can be assumed that your nephew is already navigating us towards the approximate location of this refugee fleet?"
"Dusted off as soon as I got back aboard." he responded. "He says we should be there within a week."
Fireblade mentally translated the human term, and then nodded. Less than a single transit.
"Then it seems that we are faced only with the issue of the Hierarchy's presence in this system." Tempo said.
He snorted. "Doubt we could do much about them, and they're welcome to pick over anything they can find. I've left a little, ah, surprise for them at the drop point, even assuming they ever find it."
"Would that not harm the group efforts of your fleet's scouts during their next search?"
"Hardly. Just lets them know there was somebody in the neighborhood, snooping around. And if the Bugs don't find it, then the next UNSC ship to drop by will pick up the message I left for them." He shrugged. "Doubt it'll matter if their next ship only comes by in a few thousand years, but the idea's there."
It was disconcerting, to think in terms of millennia. To know that even while the Soia wreckage on each of the three Sister Worlds was still warm, human ships had been searching the galaxy for a way out of their slipspace prison.
Like sailors hammering on the inside hull of their capsized ship, hoping to break free.