***Saggitarius Arm – V.C.***

***Travil, the Ambassador***

I closed the music box once the song had run its course and looked around the room. “Does anyone understand what that meant?”

Shaking heads and confused expressions answered me. Nobody could make rhyme or reason out of the strange song.

I wasn’t sure whether the pain of her injury was messing with her concentration, but Eleu asked wonderingly. “Why do you think that it meant anything?”

“Because Iris said that this is supposed to help us with our decision,” I replied. “Granted, I haven’t known her for long, but that woman rarely ever says something that’s not important or without meaning. She tried to tell us something with this, possibly even without her superiors knowing.”

Eleu snorted. “Should we discuss it at all then? This is the Demons’ ship. I bet they have surveillance in every room.”

“I don’t think that it’s that kind of secret,” Jerera interrupted. The sociologist stood up and hobbled further into the room. She had apparently injured her knee.

Then she addressed all of us. “Either the people who would have issues with what she is trying to tell us aren’t listening to us. Or she can ensure that we have privacy, but is unable to do the same for herself.”

I thought about that, remembering the past weeks. “I never had the impression that she was trying to hide something from us.”

“But she was trying to get us to ask the right questions,” Jerera shot back. “That woman always praised us like little kids when we thought of a new way to approach our surroundings. Or when we thought of a new question.”

“Icarius is the star in the song.”

I turned my attention towards the man who had spoken up. “Miredin! You are awake!”

I was so glad to see him awake and well. When the Demon medic told me about Miredin's injury, I feared the worst.

“Yes, I am,” the old physicist grumbled from his position inside the medical machine. “How am I supposed to sleep when all of you people talk so loudly? By the way, this V.C. is the real deal. Did any of you know that they have a development mode for people like me? It allows to simulate entire realities just to test out some obscure theories.”

“You mentioned something about Icarius being a star?” I asked.

“You people already forgot that this whole Dyson Swarm was built around a red dwarf?” Miredin winced as the needles retracted from his spine. They had apparently finished whatever repairs were necessary to restore him. It was actually a pretty impressive demonstration of the Demons’ medical abilities. An injury to the spine would have taken weeks or months to heal with our own medicine.

I sighed and nodded, then realized that Miredin was still lying face down inside the medical machine and that I had to speak up. “Yes, I still remember that.”

I said no more because I knew that it would only delay getting out whatever information Miredin wanted to share. The man was brilliant in his field, but he had this annoying tendency to believe that everyone should be able to come up with certain solutions on his own. He was especially stubborn when he thought that it was an obvious solution, so he kept asking obscure questions that were intended to guide others along his own thought process.

It was infuriating at times, but I had found that simply staying silent was the best way to accelerate things along. Sometimes it felt like admitting defeat and ignorance, but I wasn't in the mood for playing his game.

“Well,” Miredin coughed and turned onto his back. “A red dwarf is a ‘little star’. And the song told us to wonder what it is. I believe that Icarius isn’t a red dwarf at all. Especially after those gravity fluctuations almost turned us into red stains on the wall.”

The machine finally retracted from his torso, but he kept talking.

“You must take the size of this superstructure around the star into account. Unlike you guys, I actually visited one of their major gravity projectors and those things are huge. But despite the size and power output, there must be hundreds, if not thousands of them on the entirety of Icarius. Do you have any idea what it means for the gravity controls to almost kill us as collateral damage just because a handful of them fail?”

Eleu put it together before me. “You are trying to tell us that Icarius has considerably more mass than what the Demons are trying to make us believe. Or what they want their enemies to believe.”

“Because.” Miredin carefully sat up, clearly unsure whether he should trust his regained health. “-Once there nothing shines upon-, once the superstructure around the star is gone. -The traveller in the dark, thanks you for your little spark.- What do you believe will happen to the assaulting G.S. fleet once the Demons’ gravity controls fail? The 'traveller in the dark', the fleet that’s following this one, will indeed thank them for their tiny spark.”

He huffed. “The Demons are playing for keeps. We should do our best to convince our leaders that we should join the Silent. I don’t want to mess with people who are as determined as them. At least I don’t believe that the four or five Lmir colony worlds that will be in reach of the supernova are going to thank politics once they learn that a supernova went off just a few lightyears away.”

I groaned in despair as I thought of walking up to my superiors and telling them that we had to join the V.C., because their damned star-turned-fusion-bomb was already within reach of several of our worlds. Would we even be able to pull off an evacuation if we had been forewarned a few decades ago instead of years as of now?

“Okay, listen everyone!” I looked around, making eye contact with my people one by one. “None of our political elites are to hear one word about this, am I clear? If we want them to save those colony worlds, then they can’t know about the threat under any circumstances.”

“But-”

“No!” One of my people spoke up, but I shut him down. “You don’t know those people as I do. I’ve practically grown up amongst them while I was trained for my role of First Ambassador. If anyone tells them that they have to do something because some colony worlds are threatened, they will lock down and do nothing simply out of spite, no matter how many of their subjects will suffer for it.”

I was painting a grim picture here, but I was absolutely certain of my assessment. The military types might try to pull off an evacuation, but our politicians would try to call the Demons' bluff. If we were to convince our leaders that the only way to save our people from assured destruction was the upload, then they would try to test the V.C.’s resolve by waiting them out.

I once more assured myself that my people understood the severity of the situation. One by one, I allowed all of them to speak up and to voice their concerns.

It felt like we convened for hours until I was certain that everyone had acknowledged the situation and that we were of one mind on how to proceed.

Iris’s ship, the Reach, departed Icarius without much fanfare or goodbyes from Iris. We were told by the automated drones that our government had been informed of a new meeting place and that the ship would arrive in two weeks, returning us to our people.

For the first few days, I felt ambiguous about what would happen upon our return.

I honestly felt like I had failed my mission and that I was now trying to minimize the damage to my people as much as possible.

Eleu tried to get me out of my funk by inviting me multiple times into the mess hall, but it wasn’t really working. By the end, she even tried it with insults, but I was having none of it while I thought about what had to be done once I met whatever representative our government would send.

I wasn’t sure why she expected me to react any differently when so much was at stake. This delegation had been under my command and we had been sidelined from the beginning towards the end.

The only thing I could say in my defence was that there probably hadn’t ever been a chance to turn this into a situation that the Lmir would be happy to accept.

Like the Demons turning around and flying back to wherever they had come from. Or for them to simply ignore our worlds while they and the G.S. dealt with their issues.

The days passed until I realized that Miredin was spending all of his time within the V.C.

It surprised me that we still had unrestricted access, and so I decided to request one of the meshes that allowed third parties to access the V.C.

I thought of visiting a nice virtual reality and actually found myself in the beach world that Iris had first introduced me to. Thinking about it, later on, some psychologists might have interpreted something into the fact. But at the moment, I was just glad to get away from everything.

So I lay down on the beach, not caring about getting sand into my clothes, and enjoyed the sun.

It took a while, but eventually, a shadow stole the sun from me.

Blinking, I looked up and saw Iris grinning down at me. She was no longer her Lmir-self, but a Demon through and through.

“Took you long enough!” she complained and sat down next to me. “I thought you would never pay me a visit. I told you guys that I would be available for questions.”

“I was depressed,” I explained with a grunt. “You have no idea what it feels like to live your entire life for one purpose. And then you find out that there was never a real chance of success.”

“So, maybe it requires a re-definition of your purpose?” Iris suggested. “You are right, I really never had only one purpose in life. And to be honest, it sounds like a really sad existence to me. What would you have done after you achieved your purpose? Have you never thought about what would come after? It is much better to just do what you believe in.”

I frowned as I thought about it. “Not really. I guess that nobody ever really thought that there would be an 'after'. You have to understand how your people are perceived by the rest of the galaxy. You are the great big monster that the G.S. warned us about all along. And you are coming for all of us, slowly and inevitably.”

“Yeah, I guess it’s unavoidable.” Iris gestured at the ocean. “I think the Blue like it better that way. For whatever reason. By cultivating this image of us, they make sure that only those decide to join us who are capable of dealing with the realities of the V.C. They might save some reluctant civilisation out of pity. Or they are hoping that they might become more in the future. I don’t believe that they really want to go out of their way to save people who want us dead simply for what we are.”

She looked at me. “Have you decided what you are going to do?”

I shrugged. “I guess that I am going to do what I have to do. I am going to tell my government what you wanted them to hear, hoping that they will make the right decision.”

She laughed. “That actually sounds stupid from my point of view. You are a real patriot, you know that?”

“Not nearly as much as you are. Dying for a cause over and over again?” I shuddered. “I think that’s something that I could never do.”

It was her turn to shrug. “You get used to it after a while. The first few unexpected deaths can be real jarring, I won’t lie.” She returned her gaze to the ocean. “What do you think your government will decide?”

I studied the clouds in the sky. “I believe that it depends on how the matter is presented to them. The real question is whether my people will shut up and allow me to talk, or whether they try to create their own narrative. Once we are back, technically, I will be no longer their leader. That's where things could fall apart. I tried to impress on them how important it is for us to join the V.C. if we want to save the people on those colony worlds. Because... I believe that if there are people like Miredin, then I am not certain that we have the right to deny them their choice.”