Outsider, Part 4

Sometimes the abyss stares all on its own.

The first thing I do when I get home is fix myself up, or at least attempt to. The piece of software responsible for planning out my reset ritual immediately warns me that full recovery will be impossible without an outside energy source. Magic happily violates the laws of thermodynamics, but it has limits. It's not unexpected; I can feel how much of me is missing. In my case, nearly half of my entire flesh, spread across higher dimensions as it may be, has been fried or blasted into uselessness.

That leaves me with two options. Option one is acquire an energy source. That either means an aetheric resonator— building-sized devices that convert electricity to magical potential —or a sufficiently energetic sacrifice. The former will be next to impossible for me to use out here: resonators are as expensive as they are delicate, and explaining how my ritual diagrams are produced or what I plan to do with a million-hept piece of equipment would be difficult if I'm going to keep my cover intact. The latter is easy if I'm willing to ritually sacrifice another sophont. I'm not.

The second option is easier. The reset ritual might not get me a full new body out of each damaged one, but fractions still add. I'll have to drop down to six forms in total, which hurts, but it's tolerable, and fixable later if I can get my claws on a resonator for an hour or so.

A part of me yearns to know what it was like before magic was done with computers and math, in ancient history when it driven purely by symbols and will. The rest of me remembers what happened to the civilizations that actually used old magic, and I turn over control of my body to a computer program while it draws the ritual diagram with mechanical precision.

Fortunately, I can multitask. I dial up Ka'aska, who answers my call on the second ring. "Artemis? Are things okay?"

"Things are very okay, Ka'aska. Nobody's in any danger anymore."

The stress leaves his voice like a deflating balloon. "Thank the stars. What happened?"

"Well, you inadvertently got into a labor conflict with the Thorns, and—"

"That doesn't sound very okay!"

"It's fine. That whole thing with the shooter was... well, a shitshow for everyone involved, really. Short story is the Thorns hired a guy to negotiate with you, and he had a pretty bad misread on what they meant by 'negotiate.' He's currently pushing up daisies, so—"

"—pushing up what? I don't understand."

Uploads might be supernaturally good at learning new languages, but idioms remain a constant struggle. "Uh, sorry, idiom in my native language. What I mean is, he's dead." Or at least mostly dead, in a way that means he won't be back here anytime soon.

P'tassks are hard to get a read on, but I'm pretty sure if he was a human, he'd have blanched at that. "Was that... you?"

"I mean, he did try to kill a bunch of people. Anyway, talked it out with the Thorns, no hard feelings there. I mean, I did have to—" I cut myself off before telling Ka'aska that I did have to personally eviscerate a few of a mob boss's personal enemies. Poor fella doesn't need that stress on his shoulders. "—you know what, don't worry about it, it's not a problem anymore." I've been doing surprisingly little emotional wrestling with the fact that I killed two people. I guess murder is easy when your victims are slavers.

"I... won't ask, then."

"Eh, it's in the news, but you don't need the gory details. Anyway, the Thorns are apparently happy to just give you what you're asking for."

"Do I want to know what you did on our behalf?"

"Not as much as you'd expect, actually. Most of what I did was getting myself out of the trouble I got myself into. You and your folks are safe, and you should expect a call from management soonish, I think. They really want that port open soon."

"That's..." Ka'aska pauses, as if to sigh or let out a held breath, but I hear nothing over the connection. "...thank you, Artemis. I'm not sure if I can thank you enough."

Ah shit, here we go. I don't need the glazing. "Just doing what anyone else would have. Stay safe, Ka'aska."

"I will. Thank you."

I hang up, and move on to the next item on my list of social errands, the favor I owe a guy on the forums for pointing me towards the right building last night. Fortunately, all he wanted was an explanation, and local news has made that trivial.

sharptraveller: [LINK: Visiting Martial Artist Stops Shooter, Breaks Up Trafficking Ring] So, hopefully this explains everything that was going on.

tok_kro_4: What the fuck.

sharptraveller: Yeah, I wandered into some trouble. That whole thing with the Na'ak building was because there were two shooters. The second got away, but the first one gave me a tip, which, thanks to you, helped me find the second guy again. And then that led to the whole flesh trade thing, and I figured I should deal with that, so... yeah.

It's... sort of a lie, but not much of one. As far as anyone besides me and Kolot knows, I was just a bounty hunter in the right place at the right time.

tok_kro_4: I didn't realize you were a martial artist, I guess.

sharptraveller: I think "bounty hunter" would have been a better headline, but my entire species is not this good at fighting. I've got a few decades of practice.

tok_kro_4: And you just work as a bouncer here?

sharptraveller: I mean, I'd give classes if it made any sense, but I don't think my style is exactly convertible between species.

tok_kro_4: Perhaps not, no. Well, thanks for coming through on that.

sharptraveller: Of course.

After that, it's just a matter of waiting until the ritual diagram is done, and then my weekend is over.

Work is unexpectedly boring, despite my celebrity status. Osuong isn't exactly thrilled to hear I'll be leaving soon, but also understands the why. The implication that someone out there might be gunning for me, and might take that shot while I'm at work, is enough to satisfy him. While I don't think that I'm in any particular danger from the enemies I've made here on Opus, it's better not to linger. This was never my final destination, I just didn't think I'd be able to move on so quickly.

I stop by the transit terminal before heading home, and acquire a ticket offworld. It runs me a cool 10,000 hepts, and that's with me spending most of the journey hibernating. But I bite my lip— metaphorically, anyway, I don't really have lips —and purchase the ticket anyway. The earliest departure date I can get is in six days, which gives me another "week" before I leave.

My destination is the system of Sandelekon, the closest Confed system to 7720 Rankin, and the end of the line for anyone traveling out here from the Confed core. It'd be neat to see their core worlds myself, but the Confederacy is massive. It'd take me the better part of a decade to get from the fringe to the middle, and while I might personally have forever, I only planned on five to ten years of adventure, not thirty.

The next morning, I'm graced with messages from both Cirol and Tosk, practically at the same time. Cirol's asking if I'll be at the gym today, and Tosk... oh, this is fun.

tosk: Hey, I know you have work today, but you came up as a topic of conversation during my workout, and some idiot's here talking real big about how he can take you in a fair fight. Wanna show him up?

artemis: I would love nothing more in the world. On my way.

I shoot Cirol a reply too. I've got two hours to burn before I need to head to the club, and she seemed fun enough. One breakfast smoothie and a ten-minute walk later, and I enter the gym to be greeted with the sight of Tosk arguing loudly with a Luouong in a bipedal suit, the same sort of thing that Kolot's goons were wearing the last time I met with him.

"...because you get to abuse hydraulics doesn't mean that you can— oh, speaking of, there she is." I give Tosk a wave as he notices me, and I also notice Cirol, who is currently sparring with another Mahknan. I might have face blindness for a lot of species (god knows I can't tell any Vikoan or Luouong apart), but Mahknans all have some stripe markings on their forearms that makes it easier to identify individuals.

"Tosk. Who's the friend?"

"Artemis, this idiot is Goluo, I've known him for far, far too long for him to doubt me like this. Goluo, this is Artemis, who I've known for about six days."

I give Goluo a nod. "So, what did you tell him?"

"Everything you told me. He still thinks he's got a shot."

He moves over to get a better look, and I'm actually shocked to see how smooth his locomotion is. Most of the time it seems like his species moves mechanically in their various conveyances, but this looks perfectly natural. "This suit's rigged up with hydraulic muscles. Not great at speed, but lots of strength. And it's mechanical, so strikes don't bother me."

"Grappling, then? And I'm sure a punch doesn't matter, but..." I bring my tail-blade forwards so that he can get a better look at it. "You want a demonstration?" I haven't done any proper wrestling here yet, though my idea of "wrestling" probably involves a lot more stabbing than Goluo is used to.

"I still think I've got a shot."

"Man, no you fuckin' don't," Tosk says.

"It's okay, I don't mind demonstrating," I respond, stepping into the ring and being careful not to gloat. Habit says that I should taunt an opponent who thinks they can beat me, play it all up for the crowd. I was Regicide, killer of victors and breaker of crowns, six-time Basao System Champion. I still am, honestly, but there's no crowd here, and I would feel bad about what would basically be bullying. "Should be a decent warmup. Anything I need to be careful with? I assume you'd rather I not slice all your cabling."

"Ideally go easy on the blades, yeah. This suit can take impacts and strain, but the rest... fixable, but pricey."

"Sure. For your part, the only thing I need you to not do to me is decapitate me more than once." I crouch down on all fours as Tosk's eyes widen at my remark. I don't think he realized exactly how durable I am. "Give us a countdown, Tosk."

"Three, two, one—" I move the instant he says "go," digging my claws into the floor to dash forwards. Goluo lunges for me, trying to get me in what I assume is going to be an absolutely brutal hydraulic press of a grapple, but he's all strength, no speed. In the blink of an eye I'm juking to the side for a tackle, and he's turning to respond, the sheer mass of the suit preventing me from bowling him over, but...

Tap. My tail-blade makes a soft thunk against the polymer of his tank, right behind where his actual head is.

"Stop." He struggles for a moment, and I tap again. "You just died. Also, if I didn't do that, I could have severed the hydraulic lines in your shoulders." I tap my claws against his exposed shoulder joints where I've grabbed him.

Tosk laughs, a deep chuffing noise. "I fuckin' told you, dude. Less than ten seconds."

"...shit." He curls back into his tank a bit, like an eel retreating back into a coral reef, except the reef is the suit's torso, and I release him.

"Really impressive control, though, I've never seen a Luouong move like that on land. Or a full hydraulic suit like that."

"It's custom," Tosk volunteers. "He likes wrestling."

"Yeah," Goluo replies, seemingly already over his loss, "and he likes losing. So it works out. You want a rematch? I like learning, too."

Tempting, but I catch Cirol eyeing me from across the gym, apparently finished up with her own match. "Maybe later, I owe someone else a match too." We bid each other farewell, and I slink over towards her.

"Looking for a fight?"

"Something like that," she answers. "How does a workout and lunch sound?"

After a few rounds of trading punches and a brief questionnaire on what I can safely eat (everything) and what I like to eat (soft foods), Cirol takes me to a soup place a short walk away from the gym. I get the "sweet and spicy stew," and am mildly disappointed to find out that whatever chemical the chef's species thinks is spicy is not capsaicin. Fortunately, I am enthused to discover that the herbs go wonderfully with the meat, even if I can't identify either. I slurp my soup while Cirol tears into something that looks suspiciously similar to a bisque in a bread bowl, and eventually I decide to break our consumptive silence with a question.

"So, what did you do before all this? I can't imagine you've been a merc your whole life, right?"

"Nope," she answers between spoonfulls. "I used to teach unsut tarel, but there's not much money in that—"

"—hold on, I don't know know that word."

"Oh, right, you probably wouldn't. It's a martial art, old Mahknan tradition. Anyway, my studio shut down a few years ago, I've been in my current line of work to pay the bills. Turns out most Mahknans out here on the fringe aren't particularly interested in the old traditions."

Hmm. "And you are?"

She chuffs. "If you're asking if I like the Confederacy, no. That whole parasite isn't traditional. I'm interested in the really old stuff, pre-contact and early space era."

That's a relief. "Well, now you've got me curious. I thought your species' fighting style was all about about punching."

Cirol takes another bite before speaking. "Yes and no. When we're doing our little keeping-sane fights, we just punch, since that's what we're set up for, physiologically. There's a lot of evolutionary biology there, but the result is that our own punches aren't likely to cause any serious problems to each other if we're hitting the torso or head. Unsut tarel is a combat discipline, so there's a lot of focus on hitting joints and causing actual damage. Kicks and grapples, too."

"Oh, so if you did that to someone else..."

"Well, it'd be rude, at a minimum. It's not instant death or anything silly like that. But a shattered knee is more expensive to fix than a bruise."

"You know, I have some training too." That might be understating it a little bit.

She looks at me with all six of her eyes, something that I understand is equivalent to a human smile. "I suspected, but I figured you get enough questions, I didn't want to pry."

I laugh with my own deep chuff. "If I hated questions, I'd have stayed home. I was actually a professional fighter for about thirty years." Translating Earth years into Council standard cycles is something that happens automatically for me, but they're actually within a few percent of each other.

Cirol's eyes blink out of sync for a brief moment. "Wait, so— oh, stars, I assumed your whole species could fight like that!"

Well... technically, yes, but that's just because I am my whole species. "Not at all, no. We're as clumsy and uncoordinated as much as anyone else is, I just have a lot of practice."

"So... wait, how old are you? I have no idea what your species' lifespan is like."

"I'm fifty-ish, in terms of subjective time. Add another decade if you mean total, I've done a lot of traveling." I was born in 2216, seventy-two years ago, but keeping time down to the exact day is impossible in FTL, and doubly so when I spend most of my travel time with my mind paused. Hyperspace time isn't one-to-one with realspace time, and it'll be another few decades before the Union and Council timekeeping signals travel far enough to meet and let us sync up our clocks.

"Oh, you're about my age, then. At least in years. I'm forty-eight, so, I don't know, middle age for my species? Or, at least middle age before any extension." Like most species, Mahknans have figured out various life extension treatments, though unlike Sol and its neighbors, how long they live tends to be a function of their wealth. Most will easily live a century and a half, but the wealthiest can comfortably hit double or triple that.

"Ah. We... don't actually know how long we live."

"You're immortal?"

"Not exactly. First-generation Askaians, the ones that were tube-grown, had fixed lifespans of about thirty years. We figured out how to snip out the early termination genes about two hundred years ago, and nobody's died of natural causes since. We really just don't know what our full lifespans are." Funny enough, thirty years is about the upper end of how long this body could be expected to last, though with the way I use it, ten is being generous. Fortunately I don't have to worry about any biological lifespan, given how easy it is to reset it back to a fresh state.

"That's... fucked, honestly? Being made like that."

I wish I could explain to her that it's the opposite, that I couldn't be more proud to be what I am. I want to tell her that my body isn't something I lucked into, it's an organic monument to hundreds of years of bioengineering history, a living sculpture woven by artists far more deserving of praise than I've ever been. But I can't, and I give a noncommittal shrug instead.

"It comes with some advantages." I show off the claws on my hand that isn't currently cradling my stew. "But for me, it's just sort of strange to me how everyone else knows what to expect. I don't." This is true, just in a way that I can't exactly talk about. Nobody actually knows if uploads are immortal. We're pretty sure we are, but immortal means forever, and uploads have only existed for a little under five hundred years, far less than the longest-lived species of the galaxy.

We eat our lunches in silence for a while before Cirol has another question. "You said you were trained, right? Does your style have a name?"

"Not quite, it's more of a... personally developed thing, I suppose. I probably could teach, but there's not exactly a surplus of students out here, at least ones that I could give any useful instruction to."

"I'd love to learn! Even if I can't really do any of it, I love seeing what other species have for martial arts."

My fighting style would probably be fascinating to her, a mix of old Korean human martial art (itself imported from Japan) and more modern dragon-focused arts adapted to suit my unique biology. But explaining all that involves explaining that my "species" isn't real, and also probably that I have a computer for a brain.

So, lying it is, I guess. "I can at least show you, yeah. Though I'm headed out-system in a few days, so I won't have much time."

"Sandelekon, right? First time in the Confederacy?"

"Yup. Got any tips?"

"What, just because I'm Mahknan?"

"Sorry, I—"

She chuffs, "Ah, got you. Lucky guess. I'm from Sandelekon, I've still got family out there, even if we don't talk. Anyway, living in the IC's easy. Pay your taxes, don't flagrantly break the law, and... listen to your betters, I guess." She's distinctly angry when she says that last bit, but I don't interrupt her. "How's your Interlang?"

I swap to the language easily, "Decent enough, I hope." It damn well better be, given the six-month immersion I did with my neuroplasticity maxed out on my way up here. "Sounds like there's a story there, though."

"How the fuck do you sound like— oh, it's your little speaker box, isn't it?"

"What?" It sounds like it's working correctly, at least to my ears.

"You have a Mahknan accent. Threw me for a loop, since you're visibly not." She huffs before continuing, "but, story... not really. Plenty of folks see what's going on, how the whole machine works. Most of them just don't care, or think it's right. Especially Mahknans, because we get to benefit from it. Bleak way to live if you care about it, and it's not looking like it'll be changing any time soon."

"There's an old quote. 'We live under injustice, its power seems inescapable. But then, so did the divine right of kings. Any power can be changed, and no empire lives forever.'"

She fixes me with all six eyes again. "Now that's an interesting quote to hear from you."

"How so?" It's a quote from some Earth activist in the 1700's, but there's no way she could possibly—

"The original quote is, 'we live in capitalism,' not 'under injustice.' And it's particularly notable because the person who said it lived to see the end of capitalism in their civilization."

I'm torn between panic and affection. On one hand, she gets it. On the other... she knows enough Union history identify a quote from the 1700's. I need to be careful, and I hope my pause doesn't give away the game. "Must be nice. Where's it from, originally? I think I've only heard it in passing."

"A star system called Sol, though I couldn't give you directions, exactly. It's in the Interstellar Union, a few thousand lightyears spinward of here. Caught a human history book from a trader a year or two ago, the quote stood out. And I have some friends who are very interested in Union history these days. Though..." she leans in, conspiratorially. "For you to have heard that in passing... a little bit of a radical under all that armor, are we?"

My heart feels like it's thundering in my chest. "Perhaps I am," I answer, doing my best to sound sly, "or perhaps I'm just a tourist."

"A tourist from a species that so rarely leaves their homeworld that nobody has ever heard of them?"

I see a light at the end of the tunnel, but I feel as if the overbearing weight of untruth might collapse down on me at any moment. "Perhaps you're not the only one who wants a better future for everyone. Askaians do too."

Cirol blinks with all six of her eyes, all at once. "I see," she says. "I think we might be a little more aligned than simply being in the same business, then. Though I can't say I've done much about it."

"Neither can I," I say, honestly. "Yet."

She squints. "Weren't you literally in the news for shredding a gang less than two days ago?" Oh. Right.

"...honestly, I kind of just blundered into that one."

"Mhm. Why are you actually going to Sandelekon?"

"The real truth? Getting firsthand accounts of the culture and society. The Council's asked us to fight, but the Confeds haven't made themselves Aska's enemy. Yet." I shrug. "Obviously I already have an opinion on the matter, but we have to actually see what they're like before we start volunteering for a war a long way away."

"Stars. I don't even want to think about what a squad of Askaians with Ranger suits can do."

Probably less than an Aggressor squad, the Union's equivalent of Confed Marines or Council Rangers. Warforms, even unarmed ones, outclass me in combat by the same margin that I outclass ordinary organics. Synthmuscle that never tires, armor that I can't penetrate, and electroplasma rocket assist for every movement they want to make. A warform can literally beat me to death with its bare hands in a few seconds, and I know this because I've tried fighting a trained warform driver a few times. They just ignore my blades and punch me in the head until my spinglass breaks. My biology might be terrifying, but it still loses to battlesteel.

"Well, most of the fighting's in space, isn't it? Not sure how much we'd contribute, though I guess that they wouldn't want to waste us as ship crew."

Cirol stays quiet for a few moments before speaking. "How would you feel about a traveling companion?"

I blink. "Wh... what? You barely know me, you have a life here, you—"

Cirol shakes her head in a sort of left-right tilting. "I'm not particularly tied down, I've been meaning to go visit my family for a while, and I like you. And you could use a guide."

"Isn't the ticket price—"

"One of the little benefits of the Confederacy is that my return fare is free. They're happy to bring their wayward citizens home, especially ones of species who have earned the privilege," she says, practically spitting out the word earned like she's taken a bite out of an apple with a worm in it. "You're leaving on the next ship out, I assume?"

How... goddamnit. If conversation was a competition, she's won it, and I concede. "In five days. Didn't you say you don't talk to your family?"

"Yeah. Should be fun when I show up at their door." She takes a massive bite out of her bread bowl and stares at me, waiting to see how I react. I return her wide-eyed smile with one of my own, as sharp and toothy as ever.

Cirol and I meet at the planetside terminal. I've spent the last of my days here seeing what sights there were to see, which is frankly not much. Opus is really just a ball of rock that just so happens to have an oxygen biosphere, crudely hacked into the cross-species atmospheric standard of the Orion Council by transplanting an alien ecosystem. It doesn't have much in the way of elevation, there's only the one city... well, I'm glad my time here has been cut to a total of two weeks rather than a few months. They even made drone racing boring! How the hell are you supposed to have fun racing a drone when you can't even feel the airstream?

Complaints aside, it's going to be interesting having a travelling partner. Unlike me, Cirol has baggage, a backpack and a pair of enormous duffel bags that even she seems to be struggling with.

"Can I take your bags, ex?" I ask when I catch her eye.

"I like the fabric intact, please. Not a chance." She hefts her bags onto the counter, where a clerk tags them and hauls them over to a conveyor that whisks them away. "Artemis, I never asked, does your species take cryo?"

"No, we hibernate instead. It's not quite as efficient, but it's better than being active the whole trip. I'll have to get up once or twice for food and a stretch." One of the consequences of my dragon side's thermal insulation is that I can neither burn nor freeze, which means no cryo for me. Hibernation genes are pretty straightforwards, so I got those added in before leaving. Not that the boredom of interstellar travel matters much to me— I can just pause my entire brain at will. "Are you planning on being out the whole time?"

"Unfortunately not," Cirol answers as we head towards the boarding area. "If the trip was only a month, cryo would be fine, but it doesn't actually pause us, just slow us way down. I need to work out at the halfway point so that I don't wake up insane when we get there."

"My comm implants will still work while I'm out, I'll just set an alarm to wake up when you do. It's probably a lot easier for me to get out of hibernation than it is for you to go in or out of cryo."

Cirol gets a look about her, one that I've learned means that she's worried. "Exactly how deep does your comm implant hook in? There are... rules, where we're going."

"That anyone would be able to figure out without dissecting me? Not illegally deep, it looks like it hooks into my ventral spinal cord." I'm not worried about being frank about how I'm affected by Confed laws on implants, aside from the obvious issue. Cirol and I have spent enough time chatting the last week for me to learn that she finds the whole restriction ridiculous, particularly with how the Council backed off on their own restrictions to no ill effect.

"It looks like? Also, wait, ventral spinal cord? You have more than one?"

"Organometallic nerve filaments. My nerves look like wires, and my wires are grown in the same way that my nerves are. And, uh, yeah, I have two spinal cords. Just in case."

"Oh, that's fucked. Both of those things. But my question was more about how the implant's actually set up."

"I have a... I think you would call it a neural mesh? We're designed to grow it organically, it's not possible to put it in surgically." This is, in fact, how the earliest true mind-machine interfaces on Earth worked, bioengineered bodies with interface meshes grown into their grey matter. We've come a long way since then. "But also, I have two centimeters of x-ray opaque armor between my skull and my brain. It's kinda hard for anyone to check what's inside. And if it's a problem, I need it to talk, and I think they do disability exceptions, right?" Of course, the Confeds would put a bullet in my brain if they ever learned what I am, but that's not likely.

"That's true, but you should take care not to mention it if you don't have to. People here might not care anymore, not since the Council repealed the neural augments law a few decades ago, but Sandelekon isn't here."

"It's really that different?"

"This close to the border, the real conservatives aren't omnipresent, but they definitely exist. Those folks will think you straight up stop being a person if you've got too much metal in your head. Something like fifteen percent of Confeds think that Luouongs aren't sophonts because of the implants they use to walk around on dry land. Including some of my family, unfortunately."

"Not you, obviously."

"You think I'd be hanging out with you like this if I was?" She chuffs as we catch a first glimpse of the lifter platform out of the concourse windows, "Wow, that's a big fucker. Guess we're going up with cargo."

The lifter itself is a massive, slab-like thing, visible through the concourse windows. I've never actually ridden a lifter out of atmosphere before, a consequence of being able to beam my mind wherever I need it and print off a new body at my destination. This one appears more or less the same as Union designs, and the convergence is not without reason: Distortion drives don't work in atmosphere, agrav doesn't work in vacuum, and on most habitable worlds there's a twenty-kilometer zone at high altitude where neither works. Lifter platforms solve this problem by putting their distortion drives on cables, launching them up to their minimum altitude with electroplasma rockets, and then towing the rest of the lifter into space.

"No aero shuttle for us, sadly."

"Oh, I don't mind, I've got someone to talk to."

"Oh?"

"Mhm. I hear she's mildly famous on some backwater border planet."

Oh.

The trip from the spaceport on Opus to the transit terminal in the outer system takes two hops and just over three days, which we both pass by reading, though I distinctly get the sense that she's going stir-crazy when we finally dock at the station. We're given practically no time before we need to board the passenger ship, the SV Frontier Star. Much like the lifter platform and the system shuttle that brought us out here, it's boring and utilitarian, a grey rectangle with engines.

Of course, we won't be looking at it very much, which is why it gets away with looking like that. Cirol and I separate, bidding each other farewell for a few weeks of sleep, her heading off to cryo, and me heading off to a more normal bed. It's a little strange for me— the only part of my travels out here from Basao that involved my physical body was the last leg from Agkett to 7720 Rankin, since it's generally easier to print a new body at the destination than it is to haul one around. But I have the capability regardless, and so I flip the various internal switches to trigger the correct sorts of hormone cascades, wait until my heart rate slows to a crawl, and hit the pause button.

I am instantaneously greeted by a comms ping. My internal clock tells me that six weeks have passed, and that we have traveled just under two hundred and sixty lightyears. The flash of disorientation flows through me, dissipating as quickly as it arrived. I'm on a ship. I'm traveling. I don't want to be bored for three months. Right. And an automated message has notified me that Cirol is scheduled to be coming out of cryo for some stretches and exercise.

Waking up my body is a much more visceral experience than putting it to sleep, and I wake up with everything being a problem. I'm sore, my calves are cramping, I'm thirsty, I have to piss, I'm hungry... though I imagine whatever Cirol is going through is far worse. After taking care of my immediate needs, I amble down to the cafeteria to acquire some food before I meet up with my traveling partner. Blessedly, it's mostly empty, though they don't have much in the way of selection. I grab a few purple fruits that look like oversized grapes and discover that they taste something like a pear, if a pear was sour and had the texture of a grape.

Midway through my third sour-grape-pear-thing, an Illia ambles over to me, some sort of nutrition bar in hand.

"Mind if I join you?"

Kind of, yeah. But I don't say that, because he has more implants than flesh, and my curiosity wins out over my soreness. I motion towards the other seats at the table.

"Artemis. Nice to meet you...?" He has at least synthetic arms and legs, and I don't think his purple eyes are a natural color for Illia. I haven't seen anyone with that much tech on them, and especially not tech that is so obviously shown off. The surfacing on his artificial limbs is shiny chrome, so whatever his motivations are, he's definitely proud of what he's done to himself.

"Ompell, but Omp's fine. You're big news back on Opus, you know."

Omp. Honestly, what a wonderful name. Omp. Ten out of ten. Maybe I like him after all, despite the freak shit of trying to make conversation with someone who literally just woke up.

"I've heard," I grumble out. The strange part of hibernation is that your body feels like you've overslept, but your mind doesn't. I really shouldn't need to grumble at all, I talk using a speaker linked to my mind, but everything is sore, and my voice settles into a vaguely uncomfortable groan regardless. "Honestly, it's half of why I'm headed out. Might have made a few enemies."

"That'll happen with bounty hunting. Good news is Sandelekon's a lot friendlier for mercs, people tend to understand it's just business."

"Really? Are you a mercenary?"

He smiles— well, not quite, he shows his teeth, I don't exactly know what that means —and I discover that Illia have hundreds of vicious-looking needles in their mouths. "This corporate war isn't going to fight itself. And this much alloy doesn't pay for itself, either."

He really does have a remarkable amount of metal instead of flesh. While I can't see under his tunic, he must have a lot more than just his arms and legs to keep his limbs from tearing the rest of his body apart. Illia are tall, slender, and immaculately graceful, a consequence of evolving on a homeworld with just over half of Earth's gravity. For the same reason, they're practically made of glass compared to even a baseline human. I'm tempted to ask how his setup all works... but I don't know how much of a sore spot their fragility is for their species. Would it be rude to ask? I don't know, and I'm not going to risk it.

"Corporate war? I thought Sandelekon was pretty peaceful?"

"...are you not going there to do merc work?"

"I wasn't planning on it? I don't exactly like the idea of killing some corporation's enemies."

He takes a bite from his bar, chewing for a bit before responding, "Well, the corporation's enemies are some other corporation. Hard to feel bad for the bastards. And there's not a lot of killing, per se. Just a lot of 'go steal the thing,' 'go break the thing,' and 'go protect the thing,' really."

Yeah, and I'm real sure that random folks aren't getting their lives destroyed in the process. "If you've got a contract to knock off the c-suite, I'm down. But otherwise, not my deal, not a fan of having a master like that."

Omp turns a slightly darker shade of blue, which I'm starting to think is his species' equivalent to a human blanching. "Be careful who you say things like that around. I can tell you're joking, but..."

I decide not to tell him I wasn't joking. There's just about three kinds of people I think I could kill and not feel a little bad about: slavers, rapists, and corporate executives. But I repeat myself.

"Noted. You were talking about a war?"

"Second corporate war. There was one when the system first got taken by the Confeds a hundred years ago or so, and now that the trade lanes aren't as safe as they used to be, there's another one going. Scarcity gets the investors a little testy, I guess. Good for me, though."

Trade lanes? I hadn't heard any of that. Not like I've been reading news beyond the local stuff, but... "What's going on with the traders? I'm a little out of the loop here."

"Uh. The war? The big one? Council's been pushing back, and the privateers have gotten bolder in the last ten years or so. Sandelekon's right out on the border, the last lighthouse of civilization if you believe the Confed media."

"Oh, right. Yeah." Maybe I am bleary. The body and the mind aren't as separate as some spinglass architects would like you to believe, after all. "Sorry, I did just sleep for three weeks."

"Oh, it's alright, I wouldn't be here to chat with folks if I couldn't handle the wake-up brain. Cryo's rough for everyone." Someone new shuffles into the cafeteria, another Illia, and Omp is immediately distracted before I feel the need to share that I don't use cryo. I go back to munching on the big grape things, and check out the ship's intranet to see what the interstellar news has to say about the matter.

Convoy Agreement Breaks Down After High-Profile Heist

Border Trade Volumes Down 6% This Year

SV Iongaze Interdicted In High-Profile Orion Raid

That last one sounds interesting. It's from a few months ago, presumably shortly before the Frontier Star left Sandelekon for 7720 Rankin.

The SV Iongaze returned to port yesterday after being interdicted by Orion forces following its first jump out of Sandelekon. In a pattern that has become worryingly common, the Iongaze was approached by stealth Orion vessels during its drive cycling period in interstellar space, where it was forced to jettison its cargo and ordered to return to Sandelekon with its passengers.

Notably, the Iongaze was boarded by Orion marines using stealth ship hulls and what appeared to be a new model of power armor. Experts say this suggests that the forces were part of the Council's rarely-seen Covert Operations Group, thought to be responsible for the majority of Sandelekon's trading woes.

Governor Drabask and Province Commodore Vrail have promised to increase the system garrison's size by ten percent and beef up patrols in response to the attacks. Attempts to arrange convoys with Navy escort failed to materialize after inter-corporate agreements broke down following the Yelen Tower incident last week.

Senior Captain Fasok of Sandelekon Garrison Command said in a press release that the Navy's ongoing investigation into how Council forces predict the jump routes of their targets is classified, and asked citizens to remain on alert for suspicious behavior.

The images tell the story much more clearly than text could: warforms and angular black-hulled shuttles. Clearly the freighter raids are some sort of IUSC fleet operation, but to what end, I couldn't say. Nor could I guess at how they're actually doing that. Finding a ship after it jumps usually involves being close enough to get a good read on its jump flash as it leaves, which means everyone would see a ship jump after the one that had just left.

The other question this raises is, why don't they know those are Union ships? People on Opus knew what the Union was and what their ships and power armor looked like, there's no way that Confed newspapers don't. And there's especially no way that the Confederate Navy doesn't know that, we've been at war with them for two and a half decades! I should remember to ask Cirol about it next time she's awake.

Speaking of which. My comms suite pings with a text message from Cirol.

cirol: awake

Barely, by the sound of it.

artemis: On my way.

The walk over to her pod is enough to get most of the soreness out of my joints. Cirol is sitting hunched over on the cryobed, and she gives me a mournful look as I approach. She looks... awful. She's shriveled up like a raisin, almost, with deep wrinkles in her skin where they had been smooth before. Her eyes are sunken, the skin over her skull taut in strange places that it wasn't before.

"Sight for sore eyes, huh?" she mumbles.

"You look awful."

"I feel awful." She takes a deep sip of what I assume is water from one of the tubes coming out of the bed, then makes a moaning noise.

"Nothing abnormal, though?"

"Waited too long," she gets out, gesturing weakly, "brain... bad. Panic attack."

I remember Tosk telling me the symptoms Mahknans experience after long enough without exercise: anxiety, depression, or aggression. Cirol's must be the former, though I have no idea what a panic attack looks like in Mahknans.

"Past tense? Or ongoing."

"Ongoing."

"Can I help?"

She takes a deep breath and another slug of water before responding, her voice a little less gravelly with the additional fluid. "If you could scare the shit out of me, that would help."

That... that makes sense, actually. She doesn't actually have an anxiety disorder, her brain has just idled too long. Enough of a jolt could get her back to normal. "Yeah, I can do that."

She looks at me, expectant, and I wait just long enough for her to start to ask me something before I move. In a flash, I pin her arms down on the bed and press my tail-blade against her neck. Cirol reacts instinctively, trying to resist, but she's not stronger than me normally, and especially not now. I whisper to her with a fanged maw looming above her face. "I never told you what my species ate before we made ourselves omnivores, did I?"

Cirol freezes for a second, then two, and I briefly worry that I've overdone it before she chuffs and lets out a held breath. "That's not true at all, is it?"

"Nope."

She laughs again. "Yeah, that'll do it alright. Wow."

I let her up. "It works that fast?"

"You get fight or flight response, don't you? As fast as that."

I don't have the heart to tell her that no, I don't, not anymore. Needing adrenaline for peak performance is suboptimal. But I do remember what an adrenaline rush felt like, at least. "Well, glad I could help, then. Want me to grab you some food?"

"Give me a moment, I'm the least-hydrated sophont in the galaxy right now." She takes another deep drink of water. I think I can notice how she's starting to fill in a bit, as if she was a big water balloon that got deflated.

"Hopefully not regretting your decision to tag along."

"Not yet. Maybe after my next stint in cryo I will. Let me get some more water in me and we can go figure out where we can spar."

"Don't you need food too?"

"Nah, the blood additives they give us have nutrients in there, and going under with a full stomach is a good way to wake up with rotten food in your guts."

"Eugh."

"Yup." She takes another gigantic swig. "Okay, I'm full. Mind giving me a hand? Walking's kind of tricky for a little bit."

"How about a tail? My hands are kind of sharp." I bring my tail to my side, like a big fleshy handrail.

Cirol puts some of her weight on it, and I adjust my stance so that she doesn't tip me over, letting her grip my tail like a kid with a pool noodle. I can't fully support her weight like this, not with her to my side, but I can at least make sure she doesn't fall hard. Her first steps are shaky, but after a few minutes of walking she's able to move without help, and it's not long after that before she's bouncing around on the balls of her feet. It's honestly extremely strange that she has balls of her feet, just like how a human does. Her entire physique, minus her head and hands, is practically identical, but there's no common ancestor, just convergent evolution.

Blessedly, the ship's tiny gym is empty when we arrive, save the two of us. Cirol is looking better by the minute, and is decidedly less wrinkly than she was when I first saw her today. I'm honestly not sure how she survived being that dehydrated, but she didn't seem too worried about it, so I won't be either.

"If you're feeling up to it, could you hit me with some of that martial art you used to teach? Unsut tarel, right?"

"That's the one. I can give it a shot, as long as you don't claw me back." There's none of the spare padding that I had been using on Opus to let me strike without shredding people here, so we'll have to make do. "Do I need to pull punches on you? I assume not, but..."

"I would be offended if you weren't trying to hurt me," I answer. "Honestly, I'm curious if you can."

"Oh, don't taunt me like that." She takes up a fighting stance, though one that's different from the Mahknan norm, with her facing her left shoulder towards me instead of her whole chest. I return the favor, crouching down onto all fours, though I resist the urge to arc my tail around to the side where I can point the blade at her. No stabbing for me today.

I make the first move, moving forwards and to her right. She pivots to face me, and I curl my claws into my palm and strike upwards with a right uppercut. Not a particularly dangerous blow by either of our standards— I'm not built to punch, and Cirol can take a lot of blunt impact safely —but rather than block or take the blow, she kicks out her forward leg at my elbow, deflecting it at an awkward angle. That doesn't particularly hurt, but what does hurt is when she then nails the joint with a lightning-fast punch, and I feel a tendon go pop as the joint flexes in a way it is very much not supposed to.

Her eyes go wide at the sound of it snapping, even as I take the opportunity to close in on her. Losing a single tendon doesn't hurt my mobility much; I have secondaries without needing to shift in replacements, but it is noticeable. She delivers a knee strike to my own knee as I move, but it has little effect, and then I'm holding a closed fist next to her neck, the implication of my curled claws clear.

"Got you."

"I got you back! I heard that pop!" I realize from the tone of her voice that her wide eyes are a smile, not shock, and I return it with a chuff as I give her some space again. "What'd I get, anyway?"

"Tendon on the outside of my elbow. I'm surprised that you managed to hit the joint square on with your first shot."

She smiles with her eyes again. "Part of the practice is spending a lot of time hitting small erratic targets. And we're pretty good at motion tracking with these eyes," she motions towards her face. "Wanna go again?"

I give her a fanged grin. "Absolutely."

We do another five rounds, and Cirol manages to break something different on me each time. Not as easily or as quickly, as her lucky first hit is not repeated, but the fact that she can hurt me at all is damn impressive, even if I'm not striking back with any real force. The sum total of my injuries comes to three different tendons snapped, one torn elbow ligament, and a hairline fracture in my wrist. If anything, I feel... strangely proud that she could hurt me? It's not like I trained her or anything, she's not better because of me. But there's a feeling of pride that, I don't know, I've chosen a good friend?

"Alright, alright, that's enough," an-out-of-breath Cirol says, holding up a hand before we go for a sixth round. "I need to not get too worked up, just gotta clear out the brain fog. You doing okay?"

I take a little self-inventory and decide that I'm fine. In an actual fight I tend to lose flesh and armor a lot more rapidly than joints and bones, so being down a few odds and ends doesn't bother me. "I'm fine, nothing I can't fix."

Cirol gives me a look. "Is there anything you can't fix?"

"...six sequential decapitations?"

"What the fuck." She doesn't phrase it as a question.

"Well, five would be survivable."

"How... okay, no, how the fuck does your regen work?"

I tell as much of the truth as I can. "My full body exists in a higher dimensionality, with some very complicated thaumaturgy linking it all together. If I'm hurt, I can just move in parts that aren't. It might look like I'm regenerating through everything, but it's functionally different, I can't create new flesh for free." It's not perfectly true, but it's pretty close. My shapeshifting allows some minor flexibility, not enough to make all my extra bodies act as a raw biomass reserve, but enough that I can cheat a little bit if I have to replace the exact same damage. It's particularly potent for my armor— I only have to fix the crack itself, not the entire plate.

"Huh. So you have a finite reserve, then."

"Exactly. I can't actually heal better than most species. I need magic for fixing serious trauma, the same as anyone else, but regular regen doesn't work on my extradimensional bits, so I have to do an Askaian-specific version."

"Oh, stars, do you have to pay for regen after—"

"No, no. This is basically a scratch, I can fix it myself."

She fixes me with her eye-smile again. "Suddenly you seem less intimidating."

I grin. "I'm just a big softie. Wanna go look at the stars? We're between jumps right now, and I think I saw a sign for an observatory room."

It's hard to describe, and xenoanthropology is always fraught, but I swear her smile softens into something earnest. "I think I'd love that."

It isn't long until Cirol needs to go back under, but we sit and look at the stars in the total darkness of the observatory for an hour, nothing between us and lightyears of void except a plate of clear polymer. It's beautiful. There's no light pollution at all, and the galactic disk is gorgeous in every wavelength.

...and I realize I might be catching feelings when I get the urge to cuddle her while we look at the stars. That might be a problem. I shove down those feelings for another time, and go help Cirol back into cryo. We both say our farewells. Even though it won't feel like long for either of us— a medically-induced coma for her, and six more weeks of brain freeze for me —it feels like the right thing to do.

I jolt awake once more. Something is wrong. There's text in my vision that shouldn't be there, laid across my simulated optic nerve by emergency systems.

HIBERNATION UNFREEZE
REASON: EMERGENCY // EXTERNAL
ELAPSED TIME: 40d19h03m54s
EARLY BY: 5m10s

SUMMARY:
Starship distress signal detected.
Signal source within 1km.

Rather than deal with hibernation soreness during an emergency, I shift, swapping out my dozing body with a fresh one. I'll pay for it later, as long as I live to see it.

I get my eyes open and scramble out of my sleeping pod, only for another round of confusion to hit. There's no flashing lights, no emergency siren. The ship seems to be humming along perfectly normally. I check my internal clock again— wait. We're one jump outside of Sandelekon. I was due to wake up in five minutes anyway. What the fuck is going on? A radio distress call would take years to reach anyone from here. But if it's radio, I should at least be able to listen to it...

"Mayday, mayday, mayday, this is the SV Frontier Star. We are being boarded by hostiles, we require immediate—"

The radio is immediately blown out by another transmission on wideband. "Frontier Star, I repeat, reduce reactor output to minimum levels and drop your shields. And please, don't waste a courier drone, we'll shoot it down if you launch one."

There's a long pause, and I get the sinking feeling that the captain is about to do something really, really stupid. The other voice comes on the line again, "Comply immediately or be fired upon." It's flawless, unaccented Council Standard, which makes sense, but means I can't tell where the speaker is actually from.

Another extremely pregnant pause occurs before there's a response. This time, the voice is different from the one on the distress call. "Complying. Shields offline and reactor reduced to minimum levels. May I ask who I have the pleasure of talking to?"

"This is USCS Hadal Virtue. I am operating under accordance with Orion Council Directive 1575, Special Intelligence and Wartime Procedures. Your crew and passengers will remain unharmed, and you will be permitted to continue to your destination as long as you do not take aggressive actions. Stand by to receive boarders."

Oh, shit. USCS means Union Space Corps Ship. My people. What the hell they're doing intercepting a passenger ship, I don't know.

Minutes pass. Nothing happens. My stomach growls, and I decide that if anything interesting's going to happen, it'll happen in the cafeteria rather than alongside a row of sleeping pods.

The cafeteria itself is a little crowded— not surprising, we're only one jump away, so people are starting to wake up —but as far as I can tell, nobody seems to be aware of the emergency going on. I'm treated to the sight of a few species I've never seen in person before, the two most notable of which are two Majats, shapeshifters who instinctively replicate whoever they're closest to, and a Nolansh, who looks like a person-sized millipede.

My curiosity is interrupted by the intercom blaring. "Attention. We will be undergoing a routine inspection from navy personnel shortly. Please remain calm, and follow their directions. Thank you."

Routine inspection, my ass. The announcement causes a bit of a stir. The chatter goes from quiet and calm to loud and worried in a flash. I acquire a new fruit— orangeish and vaguely gourd-shaped, but squishy like a sponge —and sit down to wait. It doesn't take long to be able to feel the thump of warforms on metal decks approaching, and I don't bother calling out over the link. Where's the fun in that?

The two dozen other sophonts in the cafeteria and I are treated to the sight of four warforms moving in lockstep as they enter the room. The worried murmuring turns into a mild panic that quickly subsides when nobody does anything stupid. I can't blame them, warforms are scary, two point five meters of synthmuscle and battlesteel with no eyes or face, just a blank glassy faceplate to hide a suite of sensory systems. There's a tiny moment of silence before—

<Holy shit, are you fucking Regicide?!> One of them transmits with identity information and a mesh invite, and I accept as easily as I breathe.

I keep my facial expression neutral— not exactly a challenge for me —but inside I'm gleeful. <Hey boys.>

<Ho-lee shit,> he repeats, <Play along for me, will ya?>

<Sure.> The link says that his name is Alvarez, Hadal 3-1.

"Alright, listen up folks. We're looking for one guy. Once we get him, we're out of your hair." He projects an image onto the wall, an Illia. Male, I think, or maybe neuter. "You know where this guy is, you tell one of us or call the bridge, you don't try and grab him yourself. This guy's dangerous and probably armed, we don't want you getting hurt. Got it?"

There's a mumble of assent from the crowd. I expected someone to get upset, but I suppose anyone making this trip isn't massively attached to either side of the war.

"Name's Vilne y'Oylen. Going once, going twice, going three times..."

I take another look at the picture. It's a little grainy and off-center, but it does look familiar, but I haven't met very many Illia, it could just be— hold on. It's the guy who walked in and distracted Omp. I raise my hand, like a schoolchild with a question.

"Sold! Big and pointy, you seen him?"

"Yup."

"Come chat with me outside, then. Everyone else, carry on."

I follow Alvarez out of the cafeteria while his other squaddies linger. He gets a question off first, <What the hell are you doing out here?>

He laughs, soundless over the link. <That's dedication. Not doing the razorclub scene anymore?>

<Nah, I retired. I figured it was time to let someone else take up the crown in Basao. Or, the crownbreaking, anyway. You from there?>

<Neat. Now what the hell's going on?>

<Sure. We're doing a favor for the Orions, their boy turned traitor. We got the tip a few weeks ago, apparently CounSec was running him down.>

<...you don't get paid.> Nobody gets paid, that's kind of the whole idea of post-scarcity.

<Sorry. Just saw him once, or at least an Illia who looks a lot like him.>

<Damn. Well, good to hear the passenger manifest was right. We've got a drone swarm sweeping the ship. Hiding won't do him much good.>

<Oh, shit, speaking of hiding. I had a, uh, encounter with another upload in Rankin that I need to report to some sort of authority, I think. And, if I can use your casting chamber, I could use a reset.>

It only takes a few moments before I get another comms ping. <Ops here.>

<Hi. I'm Artem—>

<Artemis Ingram, I know, I have your pre-departure file here. Send your bodyplan over and we'll get the resonator spinning, we can debrief on the flight over.> They are brusque and to the point, which I've been told is considered a compliment to a warship's bridge crew. <Will you be alright with an atmo bag, or should I dispatch a pressurized shuttle?>

<I can handle vaccuum for half an hour or so.> A common abuse of innate draconic magic is extending the temperature insulation to cover a lack of pressure, and one that I made sure to include in myself. Such tricks aren't even particularly uncommon in other species; thaumaturgical pressurization is widely used by both Orion and Confed vacuum workers, though usually as a backup instead of the primary protection.

I chuff as I enter the airlock. Now this is the home I miss. Go ahead and space myself indeed, with total confidence in the fact that I won't die in a few seconds when exposed to hard vacuum, and total confidence in the ability of someone else to pluck me out of the void. I seal the lock behind me, remove the panel covering the overrides, and depressurize the lock. With no pressure, the exterior door opens obligingly with a pull of the override lever, and I hop out into space.

In a lot of movies, especially old Earth ones, space is cold. You freeze, your blood boils, you die. But vacuum doesn't have a temperature, and if you can take the lack of atmosphere without losing all your fluids, it's a perfect insulator. So when I'm exposed to the "coldness" of space for the first time in a few years, I feel nothing but warmth as I stop losing my body heat to the air.

I flinch involuntarily as I see motion in the stars, a void-black dart flitting over to me on jets of foamed spacetime like a strange oversized songbird. It's almost alien to look at— even to my augmented senses, infrared and visual and ultraviolet, it's barely visible against the blackness of space. The shape is something that any Unioner should recognize almost instantly: a Blacklight, one of the Space Corps' omnipresent long-range fighters.

<{greetings|warmth|travel} Hello!> The burst of communication comes fast and full of data. The fighter's name is Igni, its pronouns are it/its, it's assigned to USCS Hadal Virtue, it's full on ammo— I stop trying to process it all and let it flow over me. Unprompted emotional sharing like that is odd, even rude for most uploads, but Blacklights aren't most uploads. Anyone who lives as a machine tends to be a bit... different.

<Um. Hi. Where do I hold on?>

<{humor} You don't.> It simply opens up a bay and grabs me, maneuvering around me and closing the doors. <{offer|senses|see}?>

<Uh. Sure, I think?> The bay is... not large, maybe enough to fit a few warforms packed in like sardines. Igni extends a sensory mesh for me, and I accept, and—

Ow. I turn down the sensitivity and narrow my field of vision just in time to watch the Frontier Star vanish behind us. <I would love to chat, but I have to give a debrief.>

<{understanding} We'll be there in ten minutes.> That's... actually pretty far? Perhaps it's so that the carrier remains invisible to its prey.

The debrief with Ops (whose name is literally just Ops, as far as I'm told) isn't terribly exciting. They listen patiently as I go over the last few weeks, murmuring appreciatively when I mention I was sure to destroy any intact spinglass Shane had with him, and asking a few questions about what others knew about me and the Union. The entire affair is calm, cool, and professional, and also entirely boring. Ops doesn't display much emotion, but, hey, neither do I, so I suppose I can't complain. I take the opportunity to pass off a mindstate during our chat. It'll take years to work its way back to the core network from out here, but it's better than nothing.

My arrival and subsequent repair is short and trivial. Igni drops me in the hangar, I walk to the casting chamber (which has atmosphere, blessedly), the ritual takes about ten seconds with the proper equipment, a fabber spits out a few new voice boxes for me, and I walk back for another ten mintues of flight back. The entire experience is rather strange. Everyone is perfectly friendly, but I get the feeling that I've intruded on something here, like seeing an upload with a biological body has thrown them all for a loop. Hadal Virtue herself doesn't talk to me, or at least she doesn't introduce herself, and I decide not to bother her.

<{farewell|caution|adventure} The others have found their quarry and already departed. Good hunting, Artemis,> Igni sends, dropping me off at the same airlock I spaced myself out of twenty minutes ago.

<Stay safe, Igni. Thanks for the ride.> I clamber back inside, seal the lock, and repressurize it. I should probably go find Cirol, she was due to start waking up sometime soon— except, as my comms sync back with the ship's internal network, I realize that I have several messages from her already. She's been awake for fifteen minutes.

That concern is immediately obliterated from my mind as the internal airlock door unseals.

"Hi, Artemis," Cirol says from her position sitting up against the wall. "I think we need to chat, don't you?"

Outsider, Part 4

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Outsider, Part 3

Knives in the Void: Technology of Interstellar Warfare

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Outsider, Part 2