NOW: GCD HOLDFAST 344, TAU CETI F, 4 MONTHS AFTER THE ATTACK ON THE FESTIVE NIGHTBEAK

About 360 years ago, the Blee Overswarm and the Cyph’d Empire had a clash for territory and for habitable planets. Neither of them were exactly like the other - the Cyph’d were tentacled, beaked, and independent; the Blee had a very slight Hive mind and were chitinous bugs evolving into something else, but both were carbon-based and favored similar worlds. The Cyph’d had better tech and weapons, but the Blee were terrors in close combat - serrated bodies, fast, more than capable of running down the octopoid Cyph’ds. A number of battles were fought, until finally it was decided they both hated the Mpr of the Mbth, a sort of gasbag floating jellyfish thing that was both smarter and slower than the other two. Some more fighting ensued until the three species - Blee, Cyph’d and Mbth - decided it would be simpler to just take over everyone else.

The “Greater Collected Domains” was born (it sounds a lot better in Blee) and the GCD started immediately taking over all the other smaller empires around them.

Holdfast 344 was a base on Tau Ceti F, a large semi-Earth-like planet fairly close to Sol. A major battle had been fought there, and to commemorate, an observer post base was constructed, including a memorial and sacred graveyard. Talk was that the planet was going to be settled, but there were closer worlds and this one was pretty far back on the GCD timetable. For now, it just served as a waystation for refueling and depot and was mostly staffed by Cyph’d but there were a smattering of Blee and Mbth as well, mostly to keep up appearances.

Commander Zinrop liked to take walks out to the cemetery. The atmo was just barely tolerable, very thin but not toxic, a quick pull on a beak-peace kept you oxygenated, and cold was something his species could tolerate. It was just peaceful, the stars overhead, no adjutants annoying him or Blee buzzing around or Mbth smugly floating by. Usually he just walked, but tonight he shut down his suit radio as well, just to get a minute of silence.

That was probably why the Thirders didn’t hear or detect him when he crested the hill into the center memorial. An artistic tangle of ship wreckage from all three empires stood in the middle of a bowl in the terrain, graves marked on all sides. In the middle were two Thirders, wearing space armor, faceplates up and talking. Above them hovered a multilayered stabilized Tunneling circle, just like in the rumors, all red and glowing with lettering.

Zinrop realized only his lack of shortwave radio had saved him, so he couldn’t radio back. He decided to load up the black market Thirder Auto-Dic instead - the comp could hear the faint voices and provide a translation while he watched.

Thirder1: How good are you at the Arawn Rune logic?

Thirder2: I know the basics - I got my Celtic Systems 900 last year.

Thirder1: You’ve got to retake those certs yearly, they keep changing what you need to pass. What about the CS-102 and CS-103? Erus through Annwn. You need that to power the possession.

Thirder2: I.. uh. Only in the lab?

Thirder1: Eggs.

Thirder2: I can work around it with a Futhark/Enochian bind.

Thirder1: No. I’ll just do it. You egg up the data bindings, your Futhark will error and you’ll get possessed by the spirit of some Celtic eggbirther, and that I don’t want to write up. Just reinforce all my Arawn and I’ll open the Annwn link.

Thirder2: Whatever.

Both the Thirders started waving around metal curved things that looked less like weapons and more like farming tools, chanting and dancing. Zinrop heard about such bizarre behavior, and that it was “bad”, but for the life of him he couldn’t see why.

He eventually did. A tear opened in the air, with a green flickering light behind it, and the faint image of trees and vines, as thin, reedy music behind it, echoing. Greenish wisps flowed out and spread out, with a wisp zipping down into each marked grave.

After a few seconds, the ground started rumbling.

Thirder2: Why’d you only do the bugs?

Thirder1: The other two don’t even have skeletons. There won’t be anything left. What’s to animate?

Thirder2: Good point.

As Zinrop felt the ink slide out of him in horror, he watched as hundreds of Blee corpses pulled themselves out of their graves. Some of them still had tattered uniforms, and some had weapons, but a Blee was pretty capable without them. They glowed from a sickly green inner light and all of them were moaning and crying.

As they slowly started shambling towards the base, Zinrop felt a scream catch in his beak. He took off as fast as his tents would carry him. A group of Blee saw him and gave chase.

Zinrop’s last thought was that this was just like old times.

THEN: JULY 4th, 2016, TONY LUKE’S (SOUTH PHILADELPHIA)

The Presidential motorcade watched the parade, then took a quick pit stop so Wendy could get a Pork and Provolone at her favorite Cheesesteak place and chat with the locals. With the primaries almost over, and it looking like a lock for President Ashe, everybody in the U.S. was relaxing a little. Ashe had her shortcomings - she was known as being a little abrasive, and dismissive, and secretive, but things in America were almost back to normal (not counting the two disaster zones.)

The President and her Science Advisor, Professor Raptis, had a talk and some food, and President Ashe took some notes on a napkin, which she stuffed into the trash without thinking. A journalist got a picture of it before a secret service agent whisked it away. The journalist posted the list online in a few locations but nobody thought it was real. It appeared both women also made editorial comments as they passed the napkin back and forth.

A.I. NEURAL NET - SEARCH FOR RUNE LINKS FOR WORKABLE SPELLS ALL LITERATURE SOURCES MATERIALS LAB - STOP RESEARCH ON URUU - MOVE RESOURCES INTO ADAMANT (X - not that different really) (W - Ada stronger) (X - Uruu lighter) IMPROVE EFFICIENCY HEALING RUNES (X - Russian/Slavic better Futhark compatibility) ENOCH LAB - NO MORE ACCIDENTS (X - good luck with that) (W - bitch) (X - slut) AUTHORITY RUNE RE_SEQUENCE, POSSIBLY BROADCAST? (X no, not working on that, you aren’t either) (W- fine) ATLANTEAN LAB - REPURPOSE AATLAN FOR MACRO GENERATION PSY LAB - REMOTE VIEWING BARRIER WEAVE REGEN 2+ MILTESLAS BY ELECTION (X-Russians again?) (W- russians/argentinians/germans) QEM LAB - QEMPS UPDATE? ( X- healing rune #3 above, is that for your migraines?)

NOW: GCD GAS REACTOR , EPSILON INDI B, 4 MONTHS AFTER THE ATTACK ON THE FESTIVE NIGHTBEAK

The GCD gas collection reactor platform Mbstn Trmphnt, named after a religious aspect of the supergiant god-bag Mbstn, and a holdover from the days of the Mpr of the Mbth, floated way at the top of a cloud structure on Epsilon Indi B. Like most things Mbth it was pretty static and tranquil, with Ovrsr Frnkln 334 running the show for the past 105 years. Mbth were long-lived and didn’t change jobs much, and if the overseer position was boring most of the time, that’s a plus in Mbth eyes (they didn’t have eyes.) Gave a bag more time for thinking, poetry, and ingestion.

The Mbstn Trmphnt processed and stored gas; canisters shipped off to the GCD; with working families living near and around the station in floating creches for when the weather got blustery.

The last month had been horrible, though. Just one thing after another. First there were the reports of a Thirder incursion. Frnkln had sent a scouting party to the particular cloud in question, they said that “nothing was there,” which wasn’t the sort of long-drawn-out description an Mbth would typically say.

Then the excreta really hit the impeller. The local H20 super mix cloud that they were mining and partially living in got contaminated by a field of living organic particles, red and sticky. They were still cleaning it out of the vents. Totally gross. Then a massive invasion of the local Indihoppers - tiny bugs adapted to live in the upper band of the clouds, usually you encountered a few every day, but this was a swarm that darkened the sky.

The largest herd of Bloats - a Mbth delicacy - got sick from the ‘hoppers and died, dropping from the sky like a slain Skywhale, then the ‘Hopper bites on any Mbth who got bit became infected down with some kind of pussy boils. Half the Mbth workforce had to stay home for a week. Finally, the station was pummeled with a freak wave of frozen ice, punching holes in several Biomes (and several Mbth!)

Frnk was really looking forward to the weekend, but he’d have to start it late. Part of the solar array that orbited over the station had apparently had an orbital thrust failure causing all the solar panels to drift together. The local cloud colony was in the twilight - basically plunged into night for the second day now.

Frnk decided to just go home for the night. His wife Jssc had just birthed their first larva, Jnnfr. He figured some time with his wife and first-born would be just the thing, and he’d just go take care of the panel drift tomorrow.

THEN: JULY 10th, 2016, FIRST RESIDENCE

President Ashe woke screaming, scrabbling at the papers on her desk. She rarely slept these days, so when she put her head down to massage her temples and dropped off it was unexpected. As soon as she did, though, she was plunged into an apocalypse of sights and sounds - she was drowning, she was being boiled alive, lightning strikes, terrors from beyond. Off in the distance, she could see the dark and green shadow, standing like an obelisk over the world, grinning where a head would be. Circling even further were more strange creatures. Floating octopus, some kind of bugs, bags of floating skin, and countless other creatures.

The Moon hung above it all, cracked in half. That’s when she woke up.

She took a moment to breathe and calm down, so she jumped and practically fell out of her chair when the secure line rang. She flailed around and grabbed the phone.

“My sweet, wonderful wife,” the slightly weak voice said. “I’m really really sorry to bother… it’s .. uh.”

Andrew. OK. Wendy took a ragged breath and fought down the anger for being disturbed. Lately, Andrew’s situation was bothering her more and more. He seemed just… frail. Nothing specifically medically wrong with him. Just him sort of fading.

Wendy didn’t get it. She still felt affection towards him - loved him, maybe not as much as before, but she did. She clandestinely pumped him full of no-hurts when he was around, but life was still leaking out. She didn’t know why.

“What’s up Andy?” she asked. Long delay. Then - “...it’s just.. There’s been a discovery in the Bird Labs. We finally got around to deconstructing some of the inner-structure on some of the computing blades. Where… where the Hex fasteners held them together? Remember, darling? My little… my goddess…”

Wendy rolled her eyes. This whole worshipful stance had been pleasant at first, maybe it still was, but she didn’t know the compulsion or where it came from. “Yes, Andy, I remember. What about it? I’ve got a lot of-”

“It’s just,” he continued squeakily over the phone, “when we got the layers of the structure under a microscope, we found that there was some kind of processing built into the actual structure, and it joined up where the fasteners were. They weren’t just fasteners, we think they were actual data routing points. We only had one fastener left since the others… uh…”

Wendy sat up straight. “Yes Andrew. I know. You guys found one more? Can you bring it-”

Andrew went on without stopping. “Doctor Somak finally found a way to heat and then use the press to crack it open… sorry, baby… but the bad part was when he went to check, he wasn’t careful with his clean handling protocols. There must have been a teensy bit of QEM in the fastener. Like… maybe a microgram, or less. He’s got full-on QEMPS. Docs say there’s not much they can do.”

Wendy stared ahead. OK, she thought, I figured there might be QEM in the fasteners. This just confirms it. Not a lot I can do about it now, other than hope I can hold off any further degeneration.

“Andy,” she said slowly, “you did a good job. Thanks for the call. You OK? I worry about you.”

He seemed to perk up a little at the encouragement. “I’m fine, my goddess. My beautiful, talented President. Oh! Oh! I’m so happy I was able to help! I-”

“Just keep me up to date on Somak’s condition. I’ll see you tomorrow?”

She listened to Andy blather about another minute before cutting the call. Gods, he was acting weird. The only good thing about talking to him (or occasionally fucking him when he could stay awake long enough) was that she really felt energized afterwards.

THEN: JULY 12th, 2016, SIGMA LAB (MATERIALS)

“Another wasted batch,” Xeniya grumbled.

The engineers swept in to pry the rod out of the shaper. They moved it to one of the analysis benches with the others. They’d been working on engineering a material, building off some of the exotic materials from the probe. This one was mostly carbon and iron alloys.

So far, the manufacturing process was something unbelievable for the other engineers in the Sigma Lab. They’d have loved to publish, or talk to anybody else about it, but they were all under a geas, at least until it became public knowledge. Besides the forge, the metals were hammered with pieces taken from the craft. It seemed that striking the raw material with the right spells in the forging implement caused changes in the metals to form… this… stuff.

The first batches the staff had nicknamed Adamant, after generic mythological “hard stuff”, and it was amazing, but not that much use. Hyperdense and totally unable to be worked. The next line of experiments used a different compound, which turned out to be nearly as dense but slightly easier to work. They were calling it Uru for the moment.

Xen looked down at the lump - a rod about a meter long, 2 cents thick, it weighed almost 150 kg. It took a few people to budge it. Normally such a mass and density would be interesting, but honestly, you could build better things with carbon fibers and nanotubes. There wasn’t much of an explanation yet for where the additional mass was, either.

“Still thinking about where the Uru mass is?” said Robert, her own lab assistant, an MIT grad. “I mean it’s right there, Prof.”

“Not exactly,” Xeniya said, frowning. “It affects the universe as if it’s there. But if it was all there it wouldn’t be stable. So it’s… there, but not all there.”

“It’s too bad you can’t magic some of the mass away.”

“Yeah, “ Xeniya said. “But then we’d just have complicated steel. And I don’t want stuff that needs spells to constantly operate. I need stable materials.”

-

In the middle of the night, while doodling at her desk, Xeniya was thinking about what Robert said. And you couldn’t magic the mass away, that was true.

But magic was turning out to be a very subjective, not objective, thing, sometimes. A lot based on the observer, not surprising considering the observer-driven nature of spacetime. She couldn’t alter the Uru’s mass subjective to the universe, but what about altering it subjective to someone interacting with it?

It would still need magic… but it could be something enchanted to the object, mostly keyed to a user who knew how to activate it, which shouldn’t require someone to be actively casting something. Actually casting spells turned out to be something linked to QEM sensitivity, and that wasn’t something she wanted to screw with. The Uru would only gain the benefit if someone knew how to utilize it, which was amusing, given the name.

She pulled up the CAD software she had re-programmed to help with Runic construction and got to work.

-

The next morning, the engineering team was surprised to find her there, still working. This time though she had used tools to carve runes into the rod on the workbench. She gestured over to Robert, who approached warily.

“Lift it,” she said. Robert raised his eyebrows and shrugged. He hefted it from the middle and pulled, but it wouldn’t budge. He then whistled over a couple of other workers, and between three of them they were able to move it, then put it back down. Robert looked at Xeniya. “OK.. so?”

Xeniya looked back at the rod, ran her fingers along the runes, and spoke the activation macro she had developed that used the same Futhark naming rune. It took a few seconds.

The rod immediately seemed to change color slightly, giving off a bluish glow. Some of the runes also started glowing more intensely. She reached out, grasped it with two hands, and lifted it. It felt like it weighed as much as a baseball bat. She swung it a few times, and then looked at Robert and grinned.

“I get it,” Robert said. “But this isn’t permanent, right?” Xeniya gave it a light toss in front of her. It hit the floor with an explosive clang, gouging a gash in the concrete, and the runes winked out.

“It is as long as I maintain contact and run the spell macro,” she said. “So not so good for building with, or even for ammo in a gun.”

Robert looked at it. “Hand to hand weapons.” He squatted, looking at the rod. “Someone casually swinging an object that weighs a ton would do a lot of damage. You could probably use it for personal armor, too. Question is, how do you maintain a spell while staying coordinated in combat, or doing… well, anything?”

One of the other engineers, Stacy, raised a hand. “I can sing and do a lot of stuff. Sing and jog. Sing and drive a car. Can we re-key the macro that way?”

Xeniya grinned wider, saying “Yeah, that’s possible. I can embed some of the macro in the actual notes, so the whole thing is pretty short. That’s a good idea. While I’m working on that, let’s try a bigger build. Something like a quarter-ton… uh, 225 kg.”

She stared at the rod, thought about it and nodded. “Something hammer-shaped.”

-

NOW: GCD HOSPITAL ST. FLEEXOP , CYPHDOX, 4 MONTHS AFTER THE ATTACK ON THE FESTIVE NIGHTBEAK

Security Interview Footage submitted to GCD Ongoing Thirder Incursion Investigation.

Location: Saint Fleexop Military Hospital, Cyphdox Prime

Subject: Securitydrone Ri Zomjoop, 1st class.

Meddrone: [classified]

Securitydrone: [classified]

Securitydrone: Ri Zomjoop - you have been deemed irreparably compromised, and your actions have led to strategic losses and loss of life among your fellow drones.

Zomjoop: Ventholes. What else was I supposed to do? They were in trouble.

Meddrone: They who?

Zomjoop: The Thirders!

Securitydrone: Egging traitor. In any event, you’ve been tried and convicted. Since your enemy conditioning appears to be unbreakable, your sentence is to be medically utilized.

Zomjoop: What the egg does that mean?

Meddrone: Don’t worry, your life will still have meaning. We’re just going to core your brain and see if it reveals how the conditioning works.

Zomjoop: Aw, man.

Meddrone: I’m making the first incision in the upper cortex membrane. Hold that steady.

Medaiddrone: Yes, Med.

Securitydrone: We hope your painful death and sacrifice willllll-

Meddrone:

Medaiddrone:

Securitydrone:

Zomjoop: Oh eggs. Hey? Anybody? Not my fault! Hello?