Sarina kept perfectly still. The groupies were in a state of constant motion, their limbs blurred like wheels as they rolled around the landing pad. Anchor point to their little dance was the lower half of the springship. As if on command, the leader turned and headed for the bust with his congregation forming a circle around him. Their limbs shivered in waves, while the leader closed in with exaggerated motions. To Sarina, it looked like a performance, especially when the groupie pounced on the bust and wrestled it above himself. Her physical body would smile but her drone just blinked a red circle. They were cute like little kittens in the sun to her. With her speakers deactivated, she sent an update to Sovan and a prompt communication request came back. His face smothered all fuzzy feelings.

“Emperor alive, Sovan! I was joking about that horror show!” Sarina said with a gasp. The man looked like he had survived a barefoot trek through a volcano while hugging every bramble bush on the way.

“Believe me, it was an actual accident”, he grumbled and held a tissue to his lips, “Just someone very excited about their job. So, how’s it going with our aliens?”

The sight of fragile flesh struck a chord deep within. One she’d rather not think about.

“Alright, would be my guess but I really don’t know. The groupies seem peaceful if a bit odd. Let me give you an example”

Her mind reached out to her observation dome. Linking her visual input with the communication line was the matter of a strong thought. She pared down her vision modes to normal human levels and then focussed it on the groupies. With her speaker back online, she raised her voice.

“Hello, we come in peace!”

A wave of vibrating limbs reacted along with the sound but then they just hung in place, doing nothing. Following a sudden instinct, she raised the volume.

“GREETINGS”, her drone thundered across the landing pad. The groupies jumped and gathered into little hills of fluff again. Their limbs knotted up and swayed. She had no reference point but they seemed happy to her. Her camera zoomed in on the promotional bust of the Star of Ashina. It was cheaply made and had only suffered throughout the ages - but it was undoubtedly the little celebrity.

“They like being screamed at and their taste in icons is up for debate”,

Sovan laughed and tried to speak at the same time, “As I said, we’re not dealing with intelligent life... wait what are they doing now?”

She zoomed in on the groupie leader and saw the fluffball put the bust back on the ground, then pick it back up again. The alien repeated this gesture four more times, each with more intensity than before until the impact sent shivers through the pad.

“Surprisingly strong” she mused and suddenly held her breath. The leader removed the sleeve from his limbs and threw it to the ground. The prehensile strings caressed over it while the congregation slammed their limbs on the landing pad.

“What?”

That was Sovan’s input. He just verbalized what she was thinking. The leader suddenly dashed towards the edge! He curled up his filaments and leapt into the air. The ball-like body seemed to hover at the apex before smashing into the ground. Sarina zoomed in and got another reminder of how fragile bodies could be. Her sarcastic comment deleted itself from her mind and she could only watch in a stupor as the next groupie picked up the sleeve and began slamming the bust. She quickly piped in her speakers.

“STOP!”

The single word brushed over them and they fell to the ground. Their new leader rolled a few inches away from the edge but then hesitated. All of them pointed their arms, legs, feelers, whatever it was at her machine. The groupie slowly inched closer and then casually leapt off the platform and to its death.

“I’ve started a death cult”, she whispered.

“You what?”

Sarina saw the next groupie approach the edge and jammed her volume all the way to the maximum, “I SAID STOP IT YOU EMPEROR CURSED BLACKHOLE JOYRIDERS!”

They formed their communal hills again. It seemed like a happy dance and when she exhaled, Sarina realized that her body had been pumping adrenaline. But soon, the mood changed. Faster than before, the third leader began striding towards the edge. It jumped off in one fluent motion – only this time she was ready. Heavy metal groaned as her massive machine leaned forward. She caught the alien mid-air. At the same time, the groupies ceased movement and a strange silence fell upon them.

The heavy lifter hissed as Sarina stretched her limbs. Her observation dome got close to the ledge and she placed the groupie back on the platform. Up close, she felt more than ever before, that these things used the limbs to see and feel. Something brushed over her dome while the majority of groupies engaged in a group hug.

“Maybe they like the sound”, Sovan interrupted her thoughts, “We should try to play some music for them. Heart, can you prepare and send a collection to her?”

A moment later, the voice of the command golem appeared in her mind.

.: Sending a compliment of music. Please be advised that these tracks are part of a trial period and may contain advertisements until you purchase a listening license. This may not be used for broadcasts... broad... override. Use it for broadcasts. :.

Icons flooded her view. She picked a couple of them, arranged them in a random fashion and then piped them through her audio system. At the first beat of the music, the groupies stopped in their tracks. By a cosmic coincidence, the first song was from the Star of Ashina. The crystal clear voice resonated through her machine. She grew quiet as the song about a long lost love pressed on her mood. Something similar happened with the groupies. They sunk to the ground and held their limbs in a large circle. She didn’t need a translator to decipher this type of body language: They shivered in rhythm with the music.

Some people were good with mornings. Most settled for a bit of a warm-up period. A few were bedside tyrants. Whether that applied to Kathrain was up to debate. There hadn’t been enough survivors to reach a consensus of two. She woke up on the rough floor and thanks to low gravity, her first attempt to get up, ended in her smacking her head. The doctor shuffled onto her feet with a groan and pulled back the curtain. Some unlucky soul stood behind it and got a traditional Lady Kathrain of Orion greeting: Snarls, grunts and a wave of her hand.

Her feet carried her halfway through the sick bay before the rest of her brain had caught up. She stopped, turned back and got dressed first. Mornings weren’t her thing and according to the time display in her mind, it wasn’t even morning. Wonderful. On her second way through her medical ward, she gave everyone a glance over. Her personnel looked tired but healthy. Two patients pretended to be asleep which meant they were good to go as well. Kathrain nodded.

“Thank you”, she said to her staff, “you did well”

Subtle smiles found their way onto weary faces. She picked the two that looked most haunted and gestured towards the bed she had come from.

“If you can deal with it being warm, get some sleep”

Kathrain wasn’t a morning person, but she fancied herself a professional. She adjusted her clothes, brushed off leaves and with a gait full of confidence, the doctor was in. The curtain parted to reveal a lively camp.

“Good day Lady Kathrain”, someone said to her. She put on her best smile.

“It’s looking like one, isn’t it?”

Another man brought her a warm cup of tea. The short lady thanked him with an exaggerated curtsy and watched the smile find his way onto his face. As she made her way through the camp, she was fleeting, ethereal.

“How is your shoulder? Any residual pains?” she gently ran a hand along the shoulders of a man, “Nothing? That’s good, keep it up”

Already she approached the next person. She knelt down and whispered in a quiet voice, “We’ll see about waking your husband in the next batch. He’ll be with you soon. Stay strong, we need you”

A few soft words here or a little smile there - sometimes that was all it took to heal. While she listened in on a random conversation about radial phase couplers, someone bumped into her at full speed. The young man bounced back onto his behind while the impact hadn’t even fazed the doctor. She simply leaned down and pulled him back on his feet. He apologized until he saw her warm smile and then walked off with a spring to his step. Healing. That’s what she did. Yet, an important part of the healing process was to find the source of the ailment.

Sovan stood in front of the dragon’s lair and looked like he had gone through it too. His gaze fired weapon-grade attitude into the camp. There was an old story with a meteor arguing against a planet about who would get the right of passage. If memory served her, it ended with a bang. Sovan was the meteor and his face had met the bang. Kathrain snuck up on him by using an old trick: Keep your head low, look like you belong. She made herself known with a cough and a voice laced with honey.

“Morning husband”

Sovan jumped with a yelp.

“Emperor alive! How? Why? What? Kathrain, why?”

“By walking. Just because. To say hello and like I said - felt like it”

She kept her head lowered but one eye glanced up at him and examined the muscles in his face. A subtle spiel played on them. His jaw tensed, relaxed and then he pursed his lips before opening his mouth wide. The emotions were on open display. Before he had the chance to talk, she interjected.

“Just messing with you. We’re not married”, she said and saw him close his mouth. That was the perfect time to twist it a bit further.

“Well, not anymore”

Sovan rubbed his forehead and his body suddenly relaxed visibly. His posture drooped, his face muscles slackened. Even the growl in his voice lacked all edge.

“You’re going to be the death of me, woman”

“Right now I’m your necromancer, pulling you back from the dead. Give me a status, Sovan. How does the meteor feel?”

She balanced on her toes and snatched a tissue from his fingers. Her ears listened to his explanations while she did her job. After a quick glance at the tissue, she refolded it until a clean patch was on the outside and then began cleaning up some of the stains he had missed. She made mental notes of his condition: Minor laceration, three distinct bruises and an impact swelling on both eyes.

“So, groupies then?”

“Heart, give my wife a feed... what do you mean there is no record about any... oh, now you pretend to not get context! Fine, send the audio feed to Kathrain of Orion instead, yes, she is not my wife. Yes, I know. How should I know why she jokes about these things?”

Kathrain raised the cup to her lips. Jealousy. From a semi-living machine. Could be trouble. Her eyes wandered towards the command golem and she found the large creature staring at her. The requested feed finally appeared in her mind with what seemed like a petty delay.

.: Uploading audio-visual feed from Lieutenant Sarina Istengrad. :.

Upon seeing the scene unfold, Kathrain immediately opened a private audio channel between her, Sovan and Sarina.

“So, we’re holding a concert for the first contact?” was her first inquiry.

“We found out they like loud sounds”

“... and they jump to their death if I stop blasting them with it”

Kathrain rang a finger along the edge of her cup. Her outward appearance was that of someone deep in contemplation while her mind switched back and forth. They probably had a central nervous system in the main body. Their extended strings reaching out from the ball-like body in the middle could function as limbs and feelers, most likely.

“Heart. Do me a favour please and overlay a graphic for soundwave distribution on top of the feed”, she commanded.

.: Affirmative. :.

An immediate headache was her first reward. The sheer sensory overload took a while to sort through before the lines dots and images made sense again. Wave-shapes poured out of her vision. A complex mess of lines marked the expansion of sound until they met with the groupies. Their feelers imitated the waves almost perfectly.

“Sarina, can you throw something for me? Keep your gaze on them, please”

She felt a short burst of nausea as the image on the screen bobbed down. A massive metal hand entered the view and grabbed a rock from the ground. It then twisted around and suddenly flicked the stone away from both the drone and the groupies. The groupies closest to the stone turned towards it and then pointed at the rapidly vanishing object.

“They seem capable of sight... what?”

Kathrain cleared her throat. The view from Sarina’s machine showed a group of aliens that had picked up stones. They formed their limbs into a facsimile of Sarina’s artificial hands and then chucked the stones.

“They’re very impressionable and curious. The vector of sight might be a venue for communication”, she turned her head to look up at Sovan and with a smirk, she spoke with her real voice now, “If only we had a way to project three-dimensional pictures from the lieutenant's drone”

The technician immediately stood up straight.

“I can do that!”

Sarina nodded. That seemed to have improved his mood.

“Well, get it sorted, tech-guy. Move along, let me deal with the crowd instead”

She gave him a gentle nudge and watched him run off. His trajectory carried him straight out of the camp and at the precise moment he left, people suddenly stopped frowning. In the meantime, Kathrain made camp right next to the dragon’s lair. She sneaked a peek through a small gap and saw the tall woman sleep on her desk. A strange mood took hold of Kathrain.

“You live, because we wish it, you breathe because we allow it”, she whispered towards the sleeping Administrator, “You exist, because we demand it”

Kathrain lowered her head, the words now little more than thoughts in her head, “The warden vow of malediction. A promise made on the grave of a man two thousand years dead. Tell me, did you ever figure out what happened in the shadows of your life and why the assassins stopped coming? Is that why you woke me or was it a coincidence?”

Like that, the mood was gone. As the short woman turned around, her posture had changed again. Gone was the strange behaviour and the doctor was back. The professional smile and open body language were an invitation for people to approach her while her calm demeanour exuded reliability and confidence. She waved towards a crew member and added a bit of mirth to her voice.

“You look lost - can I help you with something?”

Time had passed. The drone could blast music without her and some new plan had forced a momentary change of physicalities. It was just - there was something very wrong in looking at your own lifeless body, knowing that you’re simultaneously it and also not. Sarina turned her new mini camera away and focussed it on the technician. Her current metal body was a much smaller drone. This one was barely a couple of kilograms and rather tiny in make. It had six limbs that all ended in tiny tires and only a single tool appendix. Her disconnect from the Falkenhain had been minutes ago but she still felt the large limbs like phantom protrusions. This thing on the other was... narrow, limiting.

“Hey, that tickles”, she exclaimed. Her voice sounded like a whimper and she felt nauseous as both her bodies heard it – but with a slight delay. Sovan gave her metal body a little slap and resumed working. She craned her singular camera but couldn’t see what he was doing. It would be possible if she fell back to her physical body but... she’d rather not.

“You’ve got nanites crawling all over you. Of course, it’s going to tickle”, the technician said and removed a cube from her.

“Did no one ever teach you to be gentle?”

“Not now, please. It’s the best I can do right now. You wanted to be in there while I worked. Let’s talk about the job. All you need to do is manoeuvre the small drone...”

“A Müller Ventphantom!”

“You move the *Ventphantom* to your heavy lifter. Once there, you crawl up without scaring the groupies and the projector should auto-meld the two drones. It’s a hack job but it’ll serve its purpose for now”

Sarina squeaked at the feeling of a metal implement reaching inside her electronic innards. She felt her heart rate quicken and saw her meat body shudder.

“Stop moving. You shouldn’t even be in here while I’m attuning your body, uh your real body to your metal body”

“Sorry, I’m just peculiar when it comes to that. Thank you for respecting it”

Sovan stopped and looked at her camera. He really looked awful, now that the wounds had time to settle in.

“Let me finish and you’re good to go”

“You’re sulking”, the little drone squeaked, “I’m not stupid. I saw how they looked at you when you carried me back here. Something went down and now my favourite prank victim is a self-loathing mess”

“The self-loathing isn’t new – but you’re right. It’s just I’m bad at dealing with people. Really bad. Hate big crowd. When I was younger, I thought I had figured it out. Beautiful people always had it easier, they got to meet new people and everyone would love them. I put in all this effort to look as good as my body will do without gene mods. And yeah, it changed how people approached me...”

She moved her camera slightly to the side so that she could look at his face. Another instrument dove into her electric core and the tickling sensation felt awful.

“... but it didn’t change how they reacted to me. When I smile, they feel insulted, when I laugh, they’re slighted. Back there, I tried to help everyone and keep it going but my suggestions just started fights. Doing this, fixing things – that’s what I’m best at”

He patted her metal body and reached for the cube again. A cold sensation spread over her body like she had just been dipped into water and then the remaining sensors reconnected. She spread her six limbs and one tool with glee and then shifted her camera again.

“Sovan”, she began, “Look at me”

The technician stared at her drone but she simply shook her camera.

“At the real me. I know how you feel but surely, even the emperor’s council would note this, the people aren’t really mad at you. They’re just running on shock. You and me? We probably didn’t lose a lot with this silly time business. You’re addicted to fiddling with machines, I’m addicted to being one”, her drone squeaked while she wiggled all of her metal limbs.

“For both of us, it’s all new and exciting. Those people? They had family, friends, an entire future and it just went out the airlock or stands around like a frozen statue until we figure this all out. They’re not angry with you, they just struggle with the way things are. Imagine what they’ll do if they have to accept bird-people!”

Sovan sighed, “Do I want to know?”

“Nah, better, you’ve seen it! The groupies consider themselves birds, it’s why they jump off the ledge and act surprised when they kinda stop at the bottom”

She noticed that his shoulders drooped. He put her down on the ground and she made a couple of quick laps. Even though this little thing lacked the power of her lifter, it had perks. With the lower viewpoint, movement felt lightning fast and she zoomed in circles for a bit.

“Thank you, Sarina. I’m fine. Go, meet your groupies, introduce them to the wonders of computer-generated entertainment”

She waved her tool arm at the technician and then scurried out of the camp. Her new metal body was light and agile. Control followed subconscious inputs as she jumped, dashed and bumped her way out of the command centre and headed towards her other metal body.

Sarina was back at her Falkenhain drone. It had been easy enough to climb but the merge of the two drones felt weird like her mind had been split three ways until suddenly it was only one again. Now she was back *in* her heavy lifter. The little Ventphantom had melded with her lifter and now there was an ugly looking projector on her shoulder. It interfaced with her via an extra icon in her mind. She lowered the volume and saw their motions stop.

“Let’s start simple. Show them an average human”

Lights blinked in her head and a perfectly standard human suddenly floated in the air before her drone. One of the groupies rushed off and came back with a rectangular object which he or she placed down next to the bust.

“Maybe it’s just me but that looks like...”

The groupie laced its limbs into the object and then retracted them again, now holding a series of leather strings. Several more of the aliens closed in and bound their filaments together into spirals and then, as one, began pulling and shoving on the object. A moment later, a flickering image sprung up, showing the planet with the asteroid belt. The groupies made a couple more adjustments until the two projections merged and the human figure towered over the entire world.

“Sarina, can you give me a close up of that thing?” came Sovan’s voice.

She shifted her attention onto the object and zoomed part of her view on it. Now enlarged, she noticed that the majority of it was just a shell to house the strange string apparatus. The core was more than a little familiar. She had one of those things mounted to her drone. Sovan’s voice took on a laconic tone as he rambled.

“Terran projector technology. Black Cat Logo. Slightly newer than our stuff. No decay, barely used - but jury-rigged with simple alien technology”

His voice suddenly cracked, “That means... a functional nano forge or a cache somewhere close”

Sarina’s heart missed a beat. A nano forge! The one-stop answer to all their problems! Created at the height of the nanite craze, these factories used basic building materials to create any object desired. The City of Citadels had one – but it was worthless without power. This one though seemed to work. She shuddered and her drone mimicked the behaviour.

“Give them another image”, she said, “Focus in on the black cat logo”

The human disappeared and the image reformed. She pointed one of her long limbs towards the planet. Maybe she could get them to point out where it was. Sarina noticed that the groupies had grown still. After what felt like an eternity, the aliens interacted with the object. Where the planet had been, there now loomed a ginormous crater. The edges of a metal dome peaked out of the barren ground with pockmarks littering the landscape in all directions. Wrecks had become part of the landscape, a thousand spiral vessels lay broken amidst a sea of metal.

Their view zoomed out and revealed that the nano forge was part of a greater continent. Sarina noticed the husks of bulbous buildings that stretched into thin limbs and wrapped around each other. The alien cities looked like nothing she had ever seen, truly alien constructions. What she had seen before was the glazed stone that had melted into each other. When the view moved further back, it revealed a world ravaged by nuclear fire.

“Peaceful, eh?” said Kathrain with a sharp tone.

Sarina instinctively moved her drone away from the platform and unfolded all of her tool arms. The Falkenhain was unarmed, but that didn’t mean it couldn’t deal significant damage in physical combat by sheer weight and brutal force. She lifted her drone to its full length and then stopped. Their guests showed no sign of aggression. They just lay flat on their platform. Deflated. None of them moved, safe for little twitches here and there.

And then came the sound.

Strehin bolted from her sleep. The world spun with vertigo and most of her muscles weren’t awake yet, but the giant of a woman powered through it by sheer will. When the iron dragon stepped out of her office, she was a force of nature with a temper. Loud wailing echoed through the halls of her realm. The command centre was in open panic. She noticed the doctor off to the side. The short woman tried to shout over the loud sound but no one else paid attention to her.

With a frown on her face, the administrator grabbed a chair and walked to the edge of the chaos. There, she simply plopped down her chair and sat down with crossed legs. With neither anger nor joy on her face, she just remained calm at the edge of the turmoil. At first, no one paid attention to her. They raged back and forth, screaming figures without a purpose.

Until someone suddenly slowed down and looked at her. One more. Several others. Soon a crowd had formed in front of her and still, she didn’t say a single word. The doctor had stopped screaming. She just looked at her as well and raised her hands in apology. Strehin didn’t react. Stern, unmoving, like a creature of mythology she remained calm. A congregation formed around her and only when the last human had calmed down, did she stand up from her chair and made her way to the campfire.

“Tea”, she commanded and five different people offered her their cups. She randomly picked one of them and continued on to the fire. When the doctor approached, the crowd parted but all eyes were on them.

“Hello Lady Kathrain of Orion”, the administrator said while drinking from her cup. Her voice was just loud enough to not be drowned out by the wailing. The doctor quietly handed her a tablet device with a holographic screen. There was a simple list of entries Strehin browsed through. Whispered voices carried over to her during a more quiet part of the eerie sound.

“Doesn’t she hear the wail?”

“Maybe she just doesn’t care?”

When the large woman reached the end of the list, she handed the device back and emptied the cup in one go. Groupies, a drone slung out of an airlock, music – it all seemed rather chaotic to her. It was time to bring order into chaos.

“Break is over. Get back to work”, she said and pointed at a man, “You, your job was food, wasn’t it? This looks charred”

“Yes, but...”

“But... what?” her gaze locked onto the person. She easily dwarfed the cook, being nearly two and a half times his size.

“Nothing, I’ll get to it. Fresh food coming right up”

Strehin nodded and focussed on the next person, “You. Found a comb in your scavenge tours?”

“No, Madam”

“You know what to do then”, she added and shooed her off with a gesture, only to lock eyes with a technician, “Oh right, power has been fixed I take it?”

The message took. People suddenly had better things to do. Their pained expression showed that they still heard the incessant wailing but their occasional glances at Strehin were all they needed to keep going. She made sure of that by showing them her best and most encouraging smile.

“You’re outright scary when you look like that”, the doctor said. The small woman suddenly took a step back when the administrator pointed at the list on the device.

“No, definitely much more scary now”

“Relax. Blame helps no one. This is my responsibility too. Next time, we just do better”, she said and tapped a finger against the screen, “Alright. It’s time to fix a mistake of mine and play it like an ace in the sleeve. Heart? Wake the Star”

After a moment of silence, she added, “oh and put a drone operator on her at all times. Keep her under watch”

Sarina had deactivated her audio input. The wail was just a quiet noise at the back of her meat body. Deep within her heavy lifter, she barely even noticed it. She did, however, see the groupies flop back and forth on the platform. In some way, the wail didn’t require translation. It had come after they had shown their world.

“If they do consider us gods”, she sent to Sovan, “then their gods just rejected them. Imagine sending the last of your kind to the temple of the sleeping gods. Then they wake but they don’t consider you worthy? I’d be wailing too”

“Let me just cut in, the Star is on the way to you”, came the voice of the doctor, “She should come into view any second now”

What did they hope to achieve by bringing an entertainment slave down here? Sarina didn’t have time to follow her thoughts for long. A lone figure walked down the long road with motions accentuated by pretty lights. The visual feed from her drone was still active and on route to the others. By now, only a few aliens had noticed the new arrival.

A sudden bright flash from the celebrity made sure all eyes – or rather feeler limbs and cameras – were on her. Her steps echoed with rings of light reaching up to her calves. The slim super star accelerated and then soared into the air on bright bursts of colour. A rainbow graced her trajectory onto the platform, where she stopped with a cute little swirl. Every single groupie stood at attention. Their spiral limbs grabbed for the woman but she effortlessly danced out of reach.

Sarina watched the scene unfold while her special vision modes fed her information. The Stellar Mage was using controlled bursts of magic to create the fireworks while most of the energy was focussed inside of the Star – a trick to make her movement appear impossibly smooth and surreal. It worked. Each step and sway of the hip fired up flaming envy inside of the drone operator. She too was a captive audience as the Star knelt down to touch the bust. Sparkles of electricity ran over it and washed away a layer of grime and dirt that Sarina hadn’t seen before.

Such a gaudy display – but the groupies took notice. They began bouncing up and down and pointed at their projector. The little willow tree balls swayed in anticipation. It was a strange sight to see a glowing rainbow in humanoid shape walk over towards the projector. Lithe fingers reached into the machine and the projection winked out a moment later. Perfect silence washed over the groupies, their personal goddess made flesh and the heavy drone standing nearby.

“Let’s hope I can repair that projector – uh, so what do we do now?”

“Negotiate.”

Thus, the dragon had spoken.