Tales from the Inbox: The Fall of Cerberos

2947-04-23: Tales from the Inbox: The Fall of Cerberos

The survivors of the failed colonial effort on Cerberos here on the Frontier are lucky to be alive. Of one hundred thirty colonists recorded in the settlement's records book, only ten remained to be evacuated when a supply ship finally touched down and took them aboard. The culprit - a xenopredator they justly dubbed the Cerberos Ravager - is the closest thing to a true dragon that human explorers have ever encountered on any habitable world.

Obviously, the lizardlike avian-analogues of Herakles IV have the basic body plan of a dragon, but these small, agile predators are hardly the stuff of legends. Cerberos's apex predator, by contrast, has the size, scaly hide, and appetite of the horrors of antiquity, though its anatomy is more wolf-like than lizard-like in many other respects.

Gilbert S. is one of the ten survivors, and he is lucky to be alive. As the unofficial head of the colony's militia, he led a final effort to divert the Ravager away from the survivors of its first attack - an effort that likely saved what few lives were extracted from Cerberos's ruins. He briefly stood up to the predator alone, armed no better than Nojus Brand - he had only a survival multitool. He doesn't know how he survived - one of the other colonists pulled him to safety after the beast dashed off in pursuit of his three brave associates, none of whom were ever seen again. It seems the beast tried to bite him in two and missed, but knocked him into the cover provided by a nearby boulder, which sheltered him from a second attempt. Gilbert remembers little, however; he suffered a severe head wound and only recovered after the survivors were rescued.

Speaking of our friend Mr. Brand - I have received word that he has recovered from his injuries and, despite the advice of his doctors, is planning a new adventure. My sources say he will be announcing his next destination soon, and that he has been consuming a large amount of Cosmic Background media offerings while recovering from his injuries. Perhaps his media diet even includes this text feed, and some of the strange worlds which our submissions have describe will someday appear on his vidcast program.

The last of the colony outpost’s buildings was a flaming ruin by the time the array had been made ready to send the distress signal. Cerberos had defeated its would-be tamers; now it was only a question whether the huddled dozens cowering in the irrigation ditches of what had once been a kilometer-wide farm plot would survive to be rescued.

Gilbert and three other men watched from the cover of a rocky hillock as a lone Ravager nosed through the burning rubble, looking for anything edible. Edible to a thirty-meter-long Ravager bull, of course, included human flesh – local meat was indigestible to humans, but nature had not been fair enough to ensure that the reverse was also true. Worse still, the Ravagers were clever, perhaps as smart as an Earthly bear – not sapient, but they learned quickly that only the largest human weapons could inflict any serious injury on their scaly hides, and that even the most powerful sonic fences had weak points.

The only thing saving the survivors from absolute annihilation was the fact that ravagers were solitary and territorial – they only had to fend off one at a time. The one which had ruined their settlement was the only beast for many kilometers. If it was sated, it would protect the surviving humans – a future food source, in its eyes – from its own kind.

Unfortunately, the Ravager had returned after leveling the town, looking for more to eat. Even as Gilbert watched, it dragged a few hopefully-lifeless bodies out from beneath the twisted beams and torn plating that some thirty homesteads had been reduced to, gupling down each one in a single mouthful. Soon, it would smell the survivors hiding not far away, and the only thing between it and them were Gilbert and his compatriots, who between them had only two Reed-Soares multitools, a single hunter’s rail-rifle, and a dodgy jolter pistol which wasn’t even lethal against human targets.

Gilbert loosened his white-knuckled grip on the high-tech machete in his hand, knowing that no amount of death-grip would let him cut through a Ravager’s thick scales. The four of them could only try to draw the beast off into the hills, hoping that it would not return for the remainder of the survivors. Their lives were already forfeit – but each of them had a sister, or a mother, or a wife, who would perhaps survive long enough for a rescue ship from the mining installation in the outer system to receive the distress signal broadcast from the colony’s faltering comms array and pick them up.

At last, with a decisive shake of its great head, the Ravager faced the landing field, put its nose to the ground, and began wandering toward the hopelessly outmatched foursome. Gilbert took a deep breath, squared his shoulders, and prepared for the end. “Gentlemen, it’s been a pleasure homesteading with you.” With that, he hopped up onto the rocks and waved his machete at the beast, catching the light with the reflective flat of the blade to ensure its attention.

The Ravager looked up and snorted almost derisively at the challenge. It had shrugged off the fiercest counter-attacks the colonists could muster, so it had every reason to be unafraid. Even as it stalked forward, Gilbert taunted it, his legs trembling so fiercely he worried he would fall off his perch and break his neck before he had a chance to be torn apart by the xenopredator’s three-foot-long teeth.

The man with the rifle fired a single well-aimed shot, which slipped between the predator’s slightly open jaws and burrowed into the soft tissue of its palate. Surprised but not badly hurt by the tiny projectile, the Ravager snarled and backed away several thundering steps. “Now!” Gilbert shouted, and the group took off from its cover, running toward the narrow gullies of the hills.

The beast’s surprise lasted only seconds, and soon it was charging forward in pursuit of the fleeing colonists. It was faster than they by far, but before it could catch up, the four men dived into the cover provided by a cluster of boulders, firing a few flashy but ineffective jolter blasts to persuade it to stop.

“What now, boss?” One of the others asked Gilbert, peering out at the Ravager as it began to sniff among the rocks, looking for its hidden prey. It was a fair question – the nearest fresh cover was too far away to reach before they were overrun.

Gilbert gestured for the others to get ready, then held up his machete. “Go. I’ll give you the time.”

They knew it was pointless to argue. Gilbert pressed himself against the boulder, and the others crept farther away. A machete to the nose would only annoy the Ravager if he hit it exactly right; with dozens of lives riding on the diversion’s success, Gilbert knew he had only one chance. 

Details

Tales from the Inbox: Indigenous Immolation

2947-04-30 - Tales from the Inbox: Indigenous Immolation

I know you all want me to have a story about the topical subjects of the day – the simultaneous reports of Angel activity on the Sagittarius Frontier and of Sagittarian ships sighted on the near side of the Gap – but neither of these reports come with proper eyewitness stories which Cosmic Background can currently publish. Some of them are stuck in the Naval Intelligence approval queue, and the others are difficult to source. Fundamentally identical sighting accounts from several places lead me to believe that there is a Datasphere copycat effect amplifying the underlying phenomena, if any – far outside their true size. 

If we get an account fit to publish by next week, expect to see it in this space, but I can offer no guarantees. 

Today’s entry by contrast comes from a very reputable source – the Confederated Navy. Specifically, our source is Mikael T., a helmsman aboard the frigate Phoebe Sherbourne. Sherbourne is one of the vessels in the Arrowhawk task group under our friend Samuel Bosch, which was dispatched on a solitary high-speed patrol run through a nameless system near Sagittarius Gate. Given the events which Sherbourne observed, Naval Intelligence has cleared us to ingest his account for the entertainment and education of our audience. The new Sagittarius Frontier is not as empty as our own Coreward Frontier – it seems to teem with native space-faring sapients like no region surveyed since the Brushfire Nebula, and just like the denizens of the Nebula, the Sagittarius natives are absolutely capable of making war.

While this does make the region more dangerous, it is generally regarded as a positive sign for the economic future. Just as trade with Cold Refuge and other Brushfire worlds boosted a flagging economic situation shortly after the brief but intense Brushfire War. I expect the Navy to boost its presence on the new frontier in case a similar colonial conflict is sparked in Sagittarius. Perhaps with a show of modern force, a direct conflict can be avoided.

The sudden chiming of the console startled Mikael enough to spill his cup of hot pseudo-tea on his clean white uniform. Fortunately, the smart-cloth prevented both liquid and heat from penetrating; it rolled off his chest in large droplets, splattering to the deck below his crash-padded helm chair. 

“Damn!” Kicking his feet off the console, Mikael pulled up the alert which had caused the noise. The ship’s course, set hours before on the beginning of the high-speed system patrol run, now seemed to be a collision course with a tight cluster of asteroids tumbling through the system. While not strictly urgent – the collision wouldn’t occur until the next shift – the alarm did signify a major change in the astrogation computer’s understanding of the system dynamics. The course Sherbourne traced had been calculated – by Mikael himself – to stay a healthy distance from the orbits of all the known system objects. 

“Helm, is there a problem?” Skipper Uggeri turned his stern gaze in Mikael’s direction.  

The skipper’s ring of displays and readouts replicated the alert on the helm station, so the question was obviously not one that could be answered by repeating what Mikael could see on his console. “Astrogation recompute, skipper. I’ll plot us a course update.” 

“What caused the recompute?” The question was directed at the officer maintaining the system tactical plot. The estimated orbits of five planets and two hundred lesser objects tangled the three-dimensional display just ahead of the skipper’s station. “I didn’t see any orbits move.” 

“We got new velocity data for these two groups of asteroids.” The woman manning the plotting station highlighted a set of ellipses in the tangle. “The group in green is moving far faster than original telescope readings suggested. The group in red, much slower.” 

Mikael glanced up at the display. The orbits of the two groups intersected – or nearly did – just before their mutual closest approach to the system’s nameless star. Something about the arrangement seemed too neat, but he put it out of his mind in order to compute a new plot that didn’t involve Sherbourne flying right into the heart of the red group and possibly battering itself to pieces on a succession of tumbling space-rocks. 

“What’s the error on those velocities?” Uggeri could pull that information up on his myriad consoles, but he preferred to make his subordinates do it and tell him the results when there was no particular rush. 

“For the green group the first data was off by...” The young officer reading out the results hesitated, frowned, then continued disbelivingly. “Over forty percent, Skipper. More than ten thousand meters per second deviation.” 

Everyone on the little warship’s bridge looked up at the absurd figure. How could telescope readings hours before have been so wrong about two clusters of asteroids, and not about the planets or the other objects in the system of similar size? 

Uggeri scowled, then nodded. “Sensors, get the ‘scopes on that red group and verify those numbers. Damage control, diagnostics on the telescope systems.” 

Both officers bent over their consoles to execute the skipper’s order just as Mikael finished computing a new course that had no collision risks. “New course plotted, Skipper.” 

“Hold onto it, helm. We’ve got some time to figure this out.” Uggeri’s voice was calm, but Mikael had been with Sherbourne during the previous year’s counter-Ladeonist operations, and he recognized the edge that had appeared in the stern officer’s tone. The skipper smelled danger. 

“Aye.” Mikael prepared the course change to be executed with a single tap of the controls, then sat back. 

“New ‘scope readings indicate the new figures for the red group of asteroids... Off by another five percent.” 

“Five percent lower?” Uggeri leaned forward. 

“Five percent lower, aye.” 

"Powered acceleration!” Mikael blurted, immediately regretting his outburst. 

Uggeri speared Mikael with a hard look, then nodded his agreement. “Ship to general quarters." 

The ship’s computer obeyed the order before any of the officers could change the alert level. A murmur swept across the bridge as the lights dimmed and the general quarters alarm began to wail in the corridor. 

The young man at the sensors station spoke first, having to speak up to be heard over the alarm. “Skipper, there’s no gravitic drive signature, no rocket plume, no ionized tail. How?” 

“Hell if I know, but those things are accelerating.” Uggeri took control of the plot and factored in the estimated acceleration rates of both groups. To nobody’s surprise, the rapid velocity bleed of the red “asteroids” appeared to be a means of reversing course too late, and the more measured velocity change of the green group adjusted its course to maintain intercept despite the dramatic efforts of its prey. 

“There are ten objects in that green group as big as a cruiser.” Mikael didn’t see who had made the observation, but the horror in the voice was obvious. 

“But they’re asteroids.” The young sensor tech insisted numbly. 

“Asteroid starships.” Uggeri corrected. “Like the colony haulers of the twenty-third century.” 

“But they have no drive-” 

“That we know how to look for.” Mikael was surprised to find his own voice interrupting the young man. “Wouldn’t be the first time.” 

“Helm, cut the drive and give us a gentle tumble. Sensors, get every eye we have on these things.” 

Mikael flicked away the course change and began executing the skipper’s order. Stealth measures when the frigate had loudly blazed its way in from the jump limit for most of a shift were unlikely to have much of an effect, but it was worth a try. Even if the asteroid ships were crude things, the large group tagged in green probably shipped enough weapons to smash a lone frigate. 

Fortunately, as the minutes ticked by, it remained obvious that the green group had eyes only for its original prey, the red group of similarly constructed vessels. The shift came to an end, but Mikael stayed on the bridge long after he had surrendered his station to a replacement, intent on seeing what would happen when the two groups closed. 

“Increased infrared signature on forward elements of green formation.” The new sensors tech, more senior but no more comprehending the sensor data, put the figures up on a screen. “Dust jets.” 

“They’re taking hits.” Uggeri muttered. “Probably mivrowave lasers.” 

“Will those work on an asteroid?” 

“They’ll heat it up.” Someone had evidently remembered the difficulties even a modern starship had bleeding excess heat into the un-conductive void. “Stars around, they’re going to roast alive in there.” 

“Now seeing increased thermal on lead green elements.” 

Mikael tried to imagine the primitive battle taking place farther in-system. As microwave lasers heated up the metals and rocks of each asteroid-ship, the carved-out interiors would become hotter and hotter, until flesh began to cook and overheated equipment caught fire or simply melted. Even the winning crews would likely emerge from their cratered battlewagons badly burnt, if they emerged at all. He could think of few more horrifying modes of war, even in the annals of Terran warfare. 

The battle had only one possible conclusion, of course. The green group, both more numerous and more massive on average, heated the red group until the targets glowed cherry-red even in visible light imagery, and the heat on its own ships stopped increasing. Mikael wondered what the conflict was about – was it a civil war between members of the same species, or a battle between the forces of two similarly-equipped cultures? What were the stakes of the battle? Had the red fleet fought valiantly to the end, or had its leaders begged for mercy as they died? 

Skipper Uggeri, of course, wanted none of the risks inherent in getting answers. “Helm, get us the hell out of this system.” His voice had become grim as he too probably imagined the horrific deaths of the losers. 

Mikael’s replacement gratefully entered a new course and Sherbourne executed a graceful turn back the way it had come. 

Details

Tales from the Inbox: Angels in Sagittarius

2947-05-07 - Tales from the Inbox: Angels in Sagittarius 

Since Tales from the Inbox last appeared in your ingestion feeds, Naval Intelligence has experienced a policy change. It seems they aren’t terribly interested at the moment in restricting what we publish about Angel activity (real or otherwise) on the Frontiers.

Angel activity in the Core Worlds and especially Sol is still restricted information we need to pass through the local Naval Intelligence branch office, of course. Evidently, whatever data-collaring arrangements exist between the Confederated Navy and the Angels do not extend to the borders of explored space, and  As this subject is popular with our audience, I am combing my inbox for any other stories freed for publication by this change in policy.

Today’s entry is combed from the records of Priya Ansa, a vessel owned by Gino S. Gino is familiar to this text feed: his brush with death on the far shore of the Gap a few years ago graced this space as Tales from the Inbox: The Sagittarius Sniper. Because it is derived from the datasystem of an undamaged starship, the events described in this Tales from the Inbox are quite well documented.

Not dissuaded from the Sagittarius Frontier by his experiences, Gino developed a new business model, collected investors, and returned to Sagittarius Gate. Rather than moving into that system, however, he and his new venture set up shop in the recently surveyed system Tel Ramaz.  

Gino watched the graphs and charts hungrily from his cabin aboard Priya Ansa, paying special attention to the oddly high titanium and tantalum numbers. The business model he’d presented to his investors back at Maribel was going to work – perhaps better than he had projected.

Next to the graphs, a three-dimensional map of the Tel Ramaz glowed in a display tank, and Gino wondered about the orbital mechanics that had formed the system. Dominated by twin belts of asteroids set askew from the orbital plane, Tel Ramaz had only one planet: a moonless gas giant, orbiting inside the rubble rings. The planet was in fact close enough to its sun-like stellar parent for its superheated atmosphere to glow orange-red, as if the tortured world harbored dreams of becoming a star all its own.

Tel Ramaz would be, Gino knew, the place to make his fortune. He had been wealthy all his life, growing the modest fortune left to him by his mother until the destruction of a shipyard-scale foundry apparatus at Sagittarius Gate was only a modest setback, but none of that investment wealth had been properly earned. Gino wanted to do what his mother and grandfather had – to build something of his own worthy of the wealth which would flow from it. Tel Ramaz, with its bounty of asteroid resources, seemed like the perfect place to break ground.

“Boss, we’re coming up on the test object now.”

“I’ll be up in a minute, Connelly.” Gino ran a hand through his thinning hair and stood up from the desk in his tiny cabin. Priya Ansa was almost twenty percent smaller by mass than his wrecked foundry ship Ida’s Venture, but its much larger pressure hull gave it enough space for a proper crew. For his second journey across the Gap, Gino had been able to sit back and let hired professionals fix all the things which went wrong – this cut into his margins, but the convenience had been worth it. Ansa had reached the Sagittarius shore in good order, without its owner having to perform a single EVA.

In the short walk to the command deck, Gino had plenty of time to imagine his new operation as it would be in little more than a year, sitting astride the commercial artery to the new frontier. Even with regular traffic across the Gap, explorers and colonists in Sagittarius would need some place to obtain nanoelectronic components and large structural elements their shipboard parts fabricators couldn’t produce. Ansa didn’t contain a foundry as his previous vessel had, but it contained all the equipment to manufacture a spacious habitat from native resources. Once the station was built, it would be quite empty; supplies and tooling shipped from Maribel would begin to populate it.

The command deck doors lurched open, and Gino saw the two-person duty crew lounging amid the compartment’s half-dozen consoles. The pockmarked potato shape of Asteroid TR-2B-86 tumbled lazily on several displays.

Ellen Connelly looked up at the sound of the doors. “Ready, boss?”

Though his participation was not strictly necessary, Gino grabbed a console and pulled up the core-sample probe readouts. “Mr. Jagoda, proceed with sampling.”

Madhu Jagoda sat up in his chair and gingerly put his hands to the controls. “Mining probe launch sequence. Ellen, line up the launch rails.”

Gino sat back as the two veteran spacers lined up Ansa’s bow probe launcher with the asteroid, fired the remotely operated craft off its accelerator rail, and guided it onto the target. The operation went smoothly, the core drill bit deeply into TR-2B-86, and the probe pushed off for its short return flight. Everything worked perfectly, and soon the spectrometers in the probe bay began superheating the sample to analyze its composition.

“Contact.” Connelly frowned at her display. “Jump resolution.”

“Visitors?” Gino switched his console, visions of being run down by half-legendary Sagittarian warships already replacing those of a bustling trading post astride the new frontier’s supply artery. To his relief, the three new signatures were small, the size of large yachts. “Looks like Naval Survey.”

“Negative, boss.” The pilot switched several displays to show the system map from various angles. “Look where their jumps resolved.”

Before Gino could make sense of the data on the screen, Jagoda did it for him. “That’s almost a thousand lisec inside the grav shadow. Who the hell can do that?”

Gino gaped at the display. He knew the logistics of star drives better than the physics, but any spacer knew no human star drive could plot a precise jump that deep into a grav shadow. There were of course other cultures, other sciences, and Gino salivated at the possibility of learning the strangers’ secrets, and bringing them to the spacers of the Confederated Worlds. “Are they heading for us?”

“Don’t think so.” Connelly manipulated her console until a best-guess trajectory appeared on the displays. The ships seemed intent on the superheated gas planet deep in the system. Perhaps, perched as it was at the edge of one of the asteroid belts, with its main drive powered down for the sampling exercise, Ansa had been easy to overlook.

“Database is chewing on their signatures.” Jagoda shook his head. “Hell of a lot of drive power coming off ships that small. If they see us, they can catch us, and if they’re hostile, we’re dead.”

“Let’s hope they’re not hostile, then.” Connelly focused her display on the incandescent planet. “What do they want?”

“Fuel for fusion power?” Gino knew it was a long shot; nobody with the technological prowess to push jumps so deeply into a stellar grav shadow would power their ships with mere hydrogen fusion.

“Database found a probable match.” Jagoda took over the final screen displaying the potato-shaped asteroid to display an elongated teardrop cast in gleaming metal. All three were silent for several seconds; they all recognized the craft which had, appearing for the second time in human history, turned the tide of the Terran-Rattanai War. “It can’t be Angels this far from Sol, can it?”

“I’m not going to say anything can’t be, when it comes to Angels.” Connelly swiped the communication array controls over to Gino’s console. “Up to you if you want to say hello, Boss.”

Gino blinked at the controls. Say hello to Angels? Of all the things he’d dreamed of doing in his career as an interstellar entrepreneur, talking to the most mysterious variety of sapient life had never crossed his mind. “What do you say to them?”

“Thanks for squishing the Prides, what brings you out this far?”

Gino glared at Jagoda, then jabbed the control. “Unknown Angel vessels, this is the Confederated Private Starship Priya Ansa.” After swallowing against a suddenly dry mouth, he continued. “Welcome to the Sagittarius Frontier. Is there any assistance we can render?” With that, he released the control, and his words flitted away across the void on a tight beam.

“Transmission delay, four hours.”

“Then I think I’m going back to my cabin.”

As Gino stood up to make good on his declaration, an alarm shrieked. “Contact!” Connelly shouted, calling up the helm controls to start the main drive.

Jagoda took over the sensor readouts from the pilot. “Another Angel, boss. Right on top of us!”

“Where did he come from?” The ship bucked as Connelly burned the attitude thrusters. “He’s on intercept.”

“He jumped right on top of us. That’s not-”

“Stars around, Connelly, running won’t help!” Gino grabbed his seat, directed the comms array at the newcomer, and stabbed the “transmit” button once more. “Unknown Angel vessel, this is Confederated Private Starship Priya Ansa, powering down and preparing to receive boarders.”

“Hell, boss.” Jagoda shook his head. “There’s no telling-”

“Priya Ansa, entering your ship will not be necessary.” The harsh voice from the Angel ship sounded more like the product of a grinding machine than an organic throat. This was, Gino realized, the translator device their kind famously employed to parley with humans. “We intend only to scan your vessel.”

Gino shot a triumphant look at his employee. “Proceed, and apologies if we are intruding on anything.”

The Angel ship swept so close that collision alarms again wailed, then perched just outside Ansa’s much larger hull silently for several minutes. With panic receeding, Gino’s skin crawled as he imagined the secretive alien perched in his tiny ship only meters away – the Angels, their patriarchal attitude towards humans aside, were no less of an enigma than they were when their kind first appeared.

“Scan complete.” The grinding voice’s announcement produced a sigh of relief from all three humans on the Ansa command deck. “Continue your activities.”

On the display, the Angel ship turned on its axis and zipped away, only to vanish into the gravitic eddies of a jump transition only a few thousand klicks away. That close, the jump produced a fresh cacophony of alarms, which Connelly hurriedly shut off. “Damned show-offs.” Her voice carried an even mix of annoyance and grudging respect.

Gino sat back with a sigh. “That was interesting.”

Jagoda massaged his temples with his hands. “Is that what we’re calling it?”

“The other three vanished.” Connelly pointed to the system map. “Jumped out like this one, or shut down their drives and went ballistic. No way to tell with ships that small.”

“You heard the alien, people. Continue the operation.” Gino stood. “I’ll be in my cabin.”

The skeptics in the audience will observe that technically there is no proof the intruders described were Angels. A hoax or similarly-equipped culture is equally possible, but I suspect this encounter is genuine. There seems little profit in a hoax in this instance. As for what the Angels were doing at Tel Ramaz, I can only speculate that they might be doing as our own explorers do - surveying this new territory. Though they have never exhibited colonial tendencies, perhaps the Angels do indeed have need of something which the wild expanse of a Frontier might provide.

Details

Tales from the Inbox: Seeker in Scales

2947-05-14 - Tales from the Inbox: Seeker in Scales

You may refrain from sending me your own version of the rumor that the Arrowhawk squadron tangled with Sagittarians in open battle this week on the far side of the Gap; I have heard several versions of this story, and Naval Intelligence flatly denies every one of them.  

This would mean little if they also prevented me from publishing them, but their ambivalence to my sharing these rumors suggests the stories are (at least as far as their office at Håkøya is aware) false. I’ve sent messages personally to Captain Bosch, but he has not responded to them, owing to the long turnaround time on communication sent along the mostly-complete chain of HyperCast relays which spans the Sagittarius Gap. 

The increased Ladeonist criminal activity on the Coreward Frontier, while verified and noteworthy, is also not within the purview of this text feed, and I do not need to be informed of it. Acts of terror are that cult’s usual strategy, and while their movement into the Frontier is a new development, it likely has more to do with the crackdown on their activities in the Silver Strand and other backwaters than it does to an actual expansion of their numbers and resources. It is not surprising that the mass movement of people from the Core Worlds and the Colonial Reach has brought along such unsavory elements as the Ladeonists. Perhaps once the Sagittarians have been dealt with, the forces the Navy is concentrating in the region will be used to root out their redoubts. 

Stories on this text feed have always been chosen with an eye toward the mysterious, the unknown, the shadowy, and to those who seek out the same. Jaska N. graced this space in a four-part series about his escape from the Rattanai slavers who destroyed his home settlement in Hegemony space (Tales from the Inbox: Rattanai Rematch). In his escape, he rescued an odd sapient which called itself Ina - this odd creature, seemingly made up of a swarm of metallic (possibly mechanical) constituents, proved useful, if uncomfortably friendly. 

Jaska, after parting ways with fellow survivor Karley, let the xenosapient Ina lead him into the Brushfire nebula, to what is probably its world of origin. 

The little runabout’s landing skids clattered down on crumbling rock, and Jaska leaned away from the controls. Though hardly the galaxy’s best pilot, he was glad he could still land a small ship on a flat surface. A storm had complicated the landing, but despite lightning and driving rain, the final approach had been relatively smooth. “We’re here.” Unbuckling his crash harness as sheets of rain beat against the hull above his head, he spun the pilot’s couch around and stood, mindful of the heavy planetary gravity overriding the weaker A-grav of the diminutive ship. 

A lithe, scaly figure slipped quietly out of one of the two bed-racks in the back of the crew compartment, seeming more to pour itself off the bunk than to climb down. Ina’s blue-black face-plate betrayed no hint of emotion or thought, but the way her whiplike, barbed tail cut the air suggested agitation. Despite any nervousness, she jumped to wrap him in a simple embrace communicated her thanks more than any three symbols drawn on the face-plate ever could.  

Jaska returned the embrace, long since used to her swarmlike composition and the way her plate-like components shifted loosely under his arms. Despite asking many times, it was still unclear to him whether Ina’s “scales” were machines or organisms – if they were machines, they were so sophisticated that they mimicked flat, beetle-shelled organisms, and if they were organic, it was no surprise that their metallic shells and perfect intercommunication mimcked networked machines in a local datasphere. 

The embrace, as intimate as one between lovers, dragged on several seconds beyond where mere gratitude would have been satisfied. With Ina’s cool, glassy face-plate pressed into his shoulder, Jaska cleared his throat. “What are we looking for?” 

Ina lifted her head, and Jaska had to push whitish pseudo-hair out of the way to see what she had to say. In three-letter segments replaced about once a second, Ina spelled out her message. “IWI-LLS-HOW-YOU,” her face flashed out. “ITI-SCL-OSE.” 

“Air outside is breathable, but should we wait for the weather to clear?” Jaska gestured to the viewpanel at the front of the ship, over which the rainwater flowed in cataracts. 

It was little surprise that Ina’s face displayed only two letters in response: “NO.”  

“Let’s see what we’ve got for coats, then.” Jaska gently lifted Ina off himself, then rummaged through the ship’s various storage compartments until he found a pair of insulated ponchos in the survival kit. The rented ship was meant to allow the renter to camp out on remote planets for a few days, so it came reasonably stocked for inclement weather. 

Even as he shook out one of the ponchos, Jaska found Ina’s sinuous, prehensile tail winding itself around his waist. Allowing himself to be turned around by its gentle pressure, he saw the message in her posture long before “ICA-NKE-EPY-OUD-RY” finished flashing across her face. 

“No thanks.” Jaska shook his head. She could indeed keep him dry – the swarmlike sapient could envelop him like a suit of scaly, symbiotic armor. Indeed, this trait had proven invaluable to their escape from the Rattanai slavers who had destroyed Jaska’s home settlement, but Jaska preferred not to give her an opening to use it. 

It wasn’t that the process was unpleasant – indeed, it was quite the opposite concern. Ina had proved herself quite capable of making the experience thrilling and even pleasurable, and it was obvious she derived a similar enjoyment from attaching herself to a cooperative partner in such a way. Symbiotic bonding seemed to nourish Ina in a way Jaska couldn’t understand, and she grew weak and feeble without it. Jaska liked Ina, but her symbiosis represented a fate far worse than death – it represented a way in which Jaska could lose his individuality, and perhaps even his humanity. He had allowed her enough contact to regain her strength, but no more. 

Perhaps understanding his reluctance in part, Ina did not force her dubious protection on Jaska. She always offered, but never pressed. Though obviously not human and no more subject to humanlike sexuality than the ship itself, she was content to match her mannerisms to her lithe female shape, as if she could slowly tempt him into accepting her symbiotic attention by swaying facsimile hips. Indeed, even the designation “she” which Jaska gave Ina was probably no more meaningful than to assign a gender label to the gun strapped to his belt. 

“ASY-OUW-ISH.” Ina took the second poncho, examined it, and set it aside, seeing no need for it. Her tail uncoiled from Jaska’s waist, and she stepped aside to give him space to shrug on the plastic garment. As soon as he had, she darted to the airlock and opened the inner door. 

The lock was so small that Jaska and Ina were pressed tightly together in its one-square-meter footprint, but neither of them wanted to be outside in the rain alone while the lock cycled a second time. When Jaska’s boots crunched down on the broken stone outcrop on which he’d landed, there wasn’t much to see – the rain hid everything more than fifteen meters ahead. 

“I hope you know where you’re going.” Jaska called out, detaching a Reed-Soares multitool from the ship’s belly compartment and configuring it into a long hiking pole. Though local time was near mid-day, the rainstorm hid everything in near total darkness, except when a purplish bolt of lightning cut across the sky. Oddly, there was almost no wind. 

Ina turned to face her human companion, a simple “YES” already glowing from her face-plate. Unlike Jaska's voice, the glowing letters had no trouble cutting through the hissing downpour. Oddly, the hairlike strands spilling from Ina’s head seemed to repel the rain without becoming wet. 

“Lead on, then.” 

Ina stepped in close and took Jaska’s hand in her own. As always, the scale-like components of her fingers shifted against each other under his grip, as if her hand was about to come apart if he squeezed too hard, but none of the scales slipped free as she pulled him gently forward. In Jaska’s experience, the scales only lost their grip on each other when she wanted them to. 

Soon leaving the rocky but clear ground of the outcrop, Ina led Jaska down into a gravelly, muddy ravine. With each step, his boots sunk in and then sucked free of the muck, but Ina’s nimble feet barely left any tracks. Being far lighter than she appeared, and crowned with a halo of whitish, water-repelling hair, she seemed to dance elf-like beyond the grip of the rain and the boggy ground. 

The sodden hike ended less than an hour’s walk from the landing site, and though Jaska was fit and healthy, the mud and then a rough uphill climb left him panting when Ina stopped and let her hand slip out of his. There, at the crown of a barren hill, Ina stood staring off into the distance as Jaska recovered his breath. 

“Are we... there yet?” Jaska, leaning on his multitool hiking pole, stepped up to see what his companion was looking at. A curtain of rain prevented him from seeing the opposite slope of the hill, much less the horizon beyond. Even when a particularly bright flash of lightning shot across the sky with a crack like the splitting of the world, he could see only a number of distant silhouettes, equally likely to be lifeforms, ruins, or simple rock formations. 

Ina turned to face him, the letters “WEA-REH-ERE” flashing on her face. “JAS-KAD-OYO-UTR-UST-ME?” The addition of punctuation – a question-mark – in her three-letter message segments struck Jaska as odd. 

Jaska frowned. Little good ever came of someone asking such a question. “You have not done me any wrong yet, Ina. Don’t start.” 

Ina put her scaled hands on Jaska’s shoulders, then leaned in as if to kiss him, though she lacked a mouth or lips with which to do so. He realized what she was going to do too late to stop her – all at once, her humanoid shape dissolved, and a fluid rush of scaly components flowed into the cowl of his poncho, wrapping themselves around his head, then proceeding down his body and limbs. The scale-like constituents crawled under his jumpsuit and undergarments to interlock over his skin. 

Knowing what to expect, Jaska held his breath as her face-plate contorted until it covered his own face. The feeling of Ina’s composite body wrapping itself around his own was, devoid of the terror of the first time, a very nearly comforting experience. 

“I know you didn’t want this.” Ina’s voice, produced by the vibration of the scale-components over his ears, whispered sweetly. “But it’s the only way.” 

Jaska threw back the poncho’s hood and brushed Ina’s hair back out of his face, ignoring the clink of his newly mailed fingers against his newly visored face. “The only way to do what?” 

“Pluck a shard.” Ina laughed brightly, and as usual, every one of her scales laughed in unison, vibrating with mirth. “That’s why we’re here. With the shard, I can be complete.” 

“No more symbiosis?” Jaska felt an itch developing on his side, and just as he despaired of scratching it, the scale covering that patch of skin did it for him. 

“A shard of this world will sustain my strength.” Ina whispered seductively. “But I will still be capable. We make a good team, Terran. We can do much together.” 

“Too good for my comfort.” Jaska grumbled, but the honeyed voice in his ears found more than a little sympathy in his thoughts. “Where is this shard?” 

A bolt of lightning, seeming to move in slow motion, split the sky above their heads, and Jaska saw tiny sparks of its light reflecting from something nestled within the boulders of the hilltop. Stepping up to the odd object, he saw what it was – a bulbous xenoflora of mirrored metallic flesh studded with crystalline thorns. 

“This is your shard?” Jaska reached out to tap the plantlike organism. It rung at the slightest touch, loudly enough to be heard over the rain. 

“One such, yes. The closest to where you landed.” 

“What do I do?” Jaska held up his hand, feeling a slight tingle in his fingertips. 

“Pull it free, but do not wound it yet.” 

Remembering that he was many times stronger with Ina’s scales coating his arms, Jaska reached out to grip the “shard” where it protruded from the ground and pulled, gently at first but with increasing force. Stubby, twitching roots surrendered their grip on the pebbly soil, and the plant lifted free. 

Jaska held the odd thing at arm’s length. “Is this all we came for?” His hands were tingling more strongly now, and he wondered what the feeling meant. Perhaps some irritant on the plant had seeped between Ina’s scales. 

“Do you trust me?” 

“Ina, what-” 

“Do you trust me?” Ina raised her voice slightly, though it lost none of its seductive tone. 

“I think I do.” The purpose of the question still wasn’t clear to him, but the answer was obvious; when Ina had suggested the trip without explaining what she was after, he’d agreed without too much argument. 

“Then be still.” 

“Why-” 

The twitching pseudo-plant leapt in Jaska’s hands, and in spite of himself he squeezed it. At this pressure, the growth split open to reveal a branching manifold of pale crystals surrounded by golden filaments, all glowing with sinister light. 

The tingling in his hands and arms became a burning sensation, but Ina’s scales locked against each other, and he could not move to drop the plant. With a sudden spike of panic, he knew the sensation to be radiation – he had ventured out of the ship without a geiger counter, and Ina had led him to an organism that was highly radioactive. Under the scales, he imagined his skin discoloring, bruising, and then finally sloughing off in sheets as it was consumed by the harsh energy put off by the organic crystals. 

“Ina, you-” 

“I said be still!” The voice lost some of its honeyed charm, and gained a measure of impatience. “This will only-” 

But Jaska didn’t hear the explanation delivered to his ears by the vibrating scales. His vision swam, and consciousness fled, with the glow of the shard-plant chasing him into oblivion. 

Jaska sent this account in, of course. He did not die, but he was forced to spend several days recovering from the ordeal before he was healthy enough to pilot his rented ship back to a civilized world. Whether he still travels with Ina or not, he did not say; he does say that the sapient got him back into the ship and nursed him back to health.  

What the creature did with the “shard” he does not know. 

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