N.B. This story has nothing to do with anything. I just felt I had to post something.
“Sir – sir! Come with me, sir, please.”
“What is it?” Commander Echaron barked, slamming his food-maniple down on the table. The electric field in which the food was transported stuttered; the young Zedzen quailed back from his elder's rage.
“We're receiving a communication from a Khanati ship, sir.”
“Can't the uptight bastards wait?” Echaron roared, picking up the maniple again and scooping up a lump of egju, dripping in kirro gravy. The egju screamed.
“They say it's urgent, sir. V-very urgent. Black ships that don't show up on sensors” The young Zedzen's crest flushed blue, indicating alarm. Echaron considered his egju, licked some kirro gravy from his maniple field, and thoughtfully bit the writhing creature's head off.
“Keep that warm for me.” he ordered a passing Incongruent.
“Sir.”
Echaron tramped tripedally through his satellite's corridors following the young Zedzen, though he knew the halls of Zaragorazas Exploratory Reconnaisance Staging Point better than any Zedzen alive. For five hundred and twenty-eight Zedzen years – approximately two thousand one hundred and eighteen normal years, as Zedes I was slightly further out in its solar orbit, and orbited slower – Zaragorazas had played host to no less then thirty-one exploratory missions all aimed towards the Gelian Cluster – a vast conglomerate of hot young blue stars far out on the Zedzens' home galactic arm of Galeda, in the galaxy the Zedzen called Bolase. It had been one of these missions that had contacted the Khanati – a slightly older, roughly equivalent-technology space-faring race who were not nearly as pure of morals as they liked to believe.
Some of those expeditions had found other things as well, older things, more powerful things, more evil things, but those expeditions didn't come back. Echaron knew this.
The bridge opened up in front of him, shiny and sleek and efficient. The traditional, obsolete space-view was underscored by bank after bank of silvery monitors, panels, levers, buttons, keyboards, lights, dials, displays, LEDs and one stray egju, which survived long enough to leap happily with its two webbed feet for no apparent reason before one of the Zedzen technicians caring to the monitors absent-mindedly bit its head off.
The young Zedzen dragged a tripodal, saucer-like stand over to Echaron, its tines screeching across the polished floor.
“Mind the floor.” Echaron cautioned absently, squatting down on his three legs – not an easy feat – and using one of his three arms to depress a red button on the holographic projector.
“We recorded this message approximately four minutes ago, sir.” the young Zedzen bleated. Echaron ignored it, and pressed instead the play button.
A life-size replica of a Khanati fizzed into view, blue and marred by distortion.
“Communication to Zedzen outpost Zaragorazas.” one of the two side-by-side beaks squawked in a reasonable approximation of Lingua Franca – Zedzen Standard. “From Khanati Missionary-class exploring vessel The Light of Truth, Brought to the Disbelieving, Ma'arkha Etcaryom Monrov tel'Oristisarisi Bahanka, rank Jahark, Zedzen equivalent captain.” Echaron's crest flushed green in amusement at the Khanati's condescension. “Requesting all available forces be mobilised to come to aid of The Light of Truth, Brought to the Disbelieving. I repe - ”
“Incoming transmission!” one of the technicians brayed in a deplorable Goltafi accent. Echaron winced inside. “It's from The Light of Truth, Bro - ”
“Yes, yes, let it through.” Echaron waved one hand imperiously. The technician with the accent fiddled with a bank of controls for a moment, until the space-view began to buzz with static.
“Communica - ”
“Echaron, archon of Zaragorazas Outpost, receiving. Speak.”
“Did you not hear my request?” the Khanati squawked. The tines on the side of its bullet-like head stiffened momentarily. “I requested - ”
“I know what you requested. Why should I? Ships cost money.”
“That's all the Zedzen care about, is money!” the Khanati shrieked. “You should send ships here because if you don't... you might not be able to stop them again!”
“Them?”
“Archon! The Khanati are your allies! Aid us!”
“Who'll say if we don't?”
“You have to help us stop them! If not for our sake, then for yours!”
“I will consider it.” Echaron ended the transmission. Not one of the technicians looked up; not one questioned his calculating attitude. Ships did, after all, cost money, and the Zedzen were nothing without money.
“Knave.” he ordered. The young Zedzen, which had been crouching in a position of generic abject servility for the duration of the message, sprang onto its three feet.
“Yes, sir?”
“Mobilise the Zaragorazas defence navy.”
“Does this mean you will help the Khanati?” Echaron gave the creature a clout.
“Don't ask questions you shouldn't know the answers to. No word of this must escape.”
Minutes passed in silence. The technicians tapped away at their keyboards and LEDs and displays, and outside the window, the bulky, practical shapes of Zedzen warships began to gather together, awakening from their hibernation since the time of the Second-and-a-Halfth Zedzen-Kyrra War. But no transmission came in from the Khanati vessel.
“Sir!” A technician bustled over, as much as one can bustle on three legs. “We've found the Khanati vessel.”
“Yes?”
“It's sixteen light-minutes to the galactic north of us. But...”
“Go ahead.”
“We've scanned the area thoroughly, almost enough to tell you what each crewman on that Khanati ship had for breakfast, if they ate. We found ordnance: the signatures of plasma-fire, ion trails, micrometeorites, all on a trajectory away from the Khanati vessel, and craters, as from damage, on the Khanati ship.”
“And?”
“That's it. It's as if the Khanati ship is battling with empty space. And – with all due respect, sir – judging from the extent of damage on that ship, it's some battle.”
Some of the expeditions Zaragorazas had hosted had found other things as well, older things, more powerful things, more evil things, but those expeditions didn't come back. Echaron knew this.
“Incoming transmission!” the technician with the Goltafi accent bellowed.
“...chon! Archon! Archon Echaron!” the Khanati commander shrieked. “Help us please! Gods be good, Archon, they've boarded us! The things I saw on the cameras – beasts of indescribable nature – help us, please, Archon! For your own sake!”
“Dispatch the fleet.” Echaron ordered the young Zedzen quietly. It vanished – for once, blessedly, without a word. The Khanati was thanking him profusely.
“...nk you, Archon, thank you. The Khanati Theocracy will be eternally grateful to you - ”
“As you said, aah, captain, it is for our sake, not yours. Goodbye.” Echaron ended the transmission.
“Sir!”
“For profit's sake. What now?” The machinist in question held up a tablet computer for review. “The fleet is ready for neutrino-drive acceleration, except for...”
“Yes?”
“We've got to enter the target co-ordinates.”
“Head for the Khanati vessel. The enemy we seek is likely in the vicinity.”
Minutes passed again. The tablet computer Echaron was holding had changed from a checklist of the fleet's preparatory progress to a map of its spatial progress, showing the blue of the Zedzen ships approaching the egg-yolk yellow of the Khanati explorer. According to the sensor, the Khanati ship was still firing, but some of its guns had dropped silent. Indeterminate objects seemed to have attached themselves to the hull.
“Sir. The target co-ordinates?”
“We can't see the profit-forsaken enemy vessel. How am I supposed to approximate co-ordinates with no input? Tell the captains to look for it by sight.”
A pause of a few seconds. The order was relayed, the flickers of ordnance beginning to fly from the Zedzen vessels towards a seemingly blank spot and then -
“Sir!”
“Sir!”
“Sir!”
A dozen messages popped up.
“ - can see them, black as night - ”
“ - blot out the stars - ”
“ - what is that - ”
“ - profit's sake – fire, dammit, fire! Fire!”
The Zedzen captains' voices melded together into one homogeneous, frightening babble. Echaron leaned forward over his tablet computer.
“ - going to circle around behind, maybe its engines will be vulnerable, if it has engines - ”
“No!” Echaron barked. “No, leave it a route of escape!”
“Copy that, sir. Arraeos, have you - ”
“Sir!”
“Go away - ”
“Sir, no, sir, it's retreating! The anomaly is retreating!”
The Zedzen captains cheered almost as one as their eyes saw what the sensor told them wasn't there accelerate away, blooded. The holographic projector in front of Echaron flickered to life again.
“Archon Echaron!” the Khanati captain cried joyously. “We are saved, and thanks to your intervention! We now have plenty of specimens to study to aid in our search for this new, belligerent race - ”
Some of Zaragorazas' expeditions had found other things as well, older things, more powerful things, more evil things, but those expeditions didn't come back. Echaron knew this.
“Fire.” he said.
