Aleph tossed the ball across the blue sky of the habitat. Watching it curve slightly instead of straight across. She turned back to Omega with a grin.

“See? It’s pretty slight but that’s a lot more then we’ve felt since leaving Terra. And it’s going to keep getting stronger.”

Aleph’s eyes were bright and excited.

Omega was more concerned as she gazed over the rest of the habitat and their various accumulated instruments and containers. Bits and scraps of things. Most of it had started settling on a definite side of everything more then another and there was some minute sag in places where before they had been taut.

“It’s not going to exceed the safety parameters in our contract is it?”

The youngest of the terran crew chirped a negative as she gently ‘bounced’ another ball in the air. Waiting long seconds for the slightest of brushes to be arrested by a combination of air resistance and then the momentum of the so far otherwise undetectable acceleration.

The ‘fall’ was so slow that it was easy to disturb it with too much motion and turbulence, but Aleph had been practicing a kind of slow posturing dance of sudden soft nudges followed by total stillness.

After realizing she had apparently forgotten what they were talking about Omega spoke up again.

“Aleph!”

The jerk made her spin one of the balls off into the distance and earned Omega a bit of a pout from Aleph.

“It’s not going to be over the safety margins we stated in the contract right?”

Aleph huffed and rolled her eyes.

“Of course not! Tunie doesn't even accelerate that hard far as I can tell. I don’t think she can. Besides she likes us and she wouldn't ever squish us like that”

Omega frowned a bit, Aleph had gotten a bit odder over the months since they left terra. Some of it was really welcome and nice. She was really coming into her own and willing to take charge. It made her proud of her protege. Other things though were troubling.

Like how cuddly she was with just about every single new alien she could get her hands on. It was, good to see her making friends? It suggested she probably would be well suited for being some kind of diplomat or translator when they reached the colony.

But it worried Omega as well, she took a lot of risks with herself. In spite of the lesson that kept coming home that the aliens were not well suited to know what was best for them. That you could not trust strangers out in the reef. That it was dangerous!

Quarti was flippant about things but even she knew how dangerous things could be out here, she focused on the realm of spirit and soul but she was fiercely vigilant and protective under that relaxed demeanor. Seeing her break down when Aleph talked about what the ship Tunie was going to do had really shocked Omega.

When Aleph had clarified she had actually calmed down it was true. But seeing her wailing like a frightened child over it?

Omega had tried to understand the story as it was told, but she could not fathom it. To see everything devoured and destroyed? To have been there as a witness to all that you knew being wiped clean. She thought she had grasped the horror of it.

But she had also figured that time and fresh lives had softened whatever wounds had been made upon Quarti’s soul. And then when she had heard Aleph and thought they were facing the same terrors there had been a total breakdown.

What had Quarti really seen and felt that it would still reduce her to a blubbering mess ten thousand years later?

Omega could not imagine something so horrible that it lingered that long.

But then again she was starting to suspect she did not know how long that was really either. Ten thousand years. Omega had read some about Redweed after they returned from that first adventure. A translation provided by the magic cylinder embedded in their walker.

Which apparently still worked in a fashion on all the accumulated data even after they were far removed from whatever infrastructure had maintained it.

The conversions had been a bit tricky, but she just needed to slot in the right expert souls into her gestalt to appreciate it.

To understand the figures and timecodes given.

Redweed’s public records did not go further back then Ten-Thousand Two-hundred and Thirteen Terran years.

The coincidence between those two events made her shiver.

But Aleph just seemed to find it fascinating and get all the more curious to poke and prod at it. To ask more questions from her friend Tunie. To try and track down ‘Elsie’ who Omega was not sure what to think of it. Some kind of artificial intelligence? Something even stranger wrapped up in a contained habitat?

And got vague answers and mild disinterest from all around.

Apparently there had been some kind of economic or government collapse in this part of the reef, it covered several stellar volumes. Maybe Dozens of stars and their accompanying habitats.

No one seemed to know or care. Apparently Pylo and Tunie were somewhere far away from here when it happened.

Apparently that is what they always aimed to do, be far away when terrible things that darkened the light of civilizations happened. The way it was discussed suggested it was a common enough thing that they considered it a chore then a surprise.

The magnitude of it boggled Omega’s mind even when she tried to fill herself with the best mathematicians and ecologists and historians in the hold.

Something had happened so horrible it left scars that lasted millennia and if their current sources were to be believed cleaned entire worlds of all record of civil existence.

And the Aliens all seemed to think this was normal, common place even.

They thought casual total annihilation of worlds was natural and Aleph wanted to cuddle them like puppies.

Omega worried about Aleph, but she was proud of her too.