NOW: PLUTO ORBIT, Concordance In Effect, 6 MONTHS AFTER THE ATTACK ON THE FESTIVE NIGHTBEAK

The Fleet Intelgroup Nightbeak’s Revenge came out of the Tunneling aperture a few light-hours from Sol 9 and slowly coasted over the course of a day to settle into orbit. Although no bases were ever built here, probes and a relay station in EM cloak had been left fifteen years ago and had undergone general maintenance by the now-famous Festive Nightbeak six months ago.

Nightbeak’s Revenge consisted of a large mobile Warbrain base, the Coral Uplift; a squadron of missile-armed gunboats; and a railgun-bristling destroyer (the Spikey Shoal), enhanced to also redirect broadcast energy from the Coral. The Uplift (besides technical and military support) had a special support vault bolted in the middle as well.

Nobody was really surprised to find the probes and relay stations gone, since it was assumed that by now the Thirders had figured out the tech behind the cloak. Long-range optics showed some activity on the surface.

Fleet Commander Franwip,a well-known and decorated Cyph’d, had really wanted to just start saturation bombing the useless hunk of ice as soon as they emerged into real-time, but Concordance directives did dictate that he try and make a first attempt at contact and diplomacy… not so much because they weren’t going to attack, eventually, but just to see how the Thirders responded. He pulsed out a hail, both in Cyph, Galactic Interops, and Thirder, and while they waited they continued to coast.

Almost immediately one of the Thirder tunneling rings opened and a vessel parked halfway through. Lights started to play around the front of it, geometric shapes forming.

Franwip frowned, looking at the reports from the Sciencedrone. “Is it hostile or not?” he asked. Sciencedrone Treeap shrugged her tents. “It doesn’t appear to be, Commander” she replied. “Lots of light, some odd EM harmonics. Not a lot of energy - less than a few kilowatts of power. Nothing like our petawatt gamma-ray laser, sir, or-”

As they watched, the light coalesced into several interlocking squares, set with runic scripts. The inner area split, and blinding blue-white radiance poured out. From the slit, a group of objects floated out. “Magnify,” barked Franwip.

Five objects in the front appeared to be life forms. They each resembled a massive Thirder eye, each three meters tall, surrounded by Bird wings, and what looked like dozens of Thirder arms armed with candles; ringing each giant eye were rotating rings of smaller eyes, feathers, and crystalline flakes. Everything was rotating, increasing and decreasing in size, and cycling through various stomachs-churning geometries.

Behind the five eyes was a single Thirder like being, but not wearing any space protection. A female in appearance, she appeared to be floating in space, bearing a sword, and wearing only a gossamer gown of some kind of sheer fabric. She had curly blond hair and no other clothing.

“I’m taking this as hostile,” said the commander. “Have the Spikey start targeting the ground operation. Start getting locks on those eye-things with the forward battery. Bring the gunboat wings in on the flanks. Are there comms? What about the composition of the eyes?”

Treeap turned to look at the commander, while data-streams poured across the dataviz on her face. “Sir! The Eyes seem to be mathematically dimensional-multiple,“ she said. “They aren’t a distributed cloud of objects so much as a single, hyper-dimensional entity with parts slipping in and out of our local third dimension. The light coming off the ‘candles’ is moving up and down the spectrum. The Thirder-looking being in the back seems to only be Thirder in appearance - she appears to be bundles of radiant monopoles and gravitons, arranged in fractal patterns, that just repeat the deeper we scan.” She kept typing. “There’s some chatter back and forth, Commander. I’m running it through the Warbrain databases now.”

“Gunboat squadron Keel coming in for a pass, sir,” a Tacticdrone said.

The ten gunboats opened fire with railguns, peppering the Eyes with Urane. The Eyes turned to look at the attackers and seemed to be phasing in and out. They didn’t seem to be reacting much to the attack.

“I’m translating some of the chatter, sir. It’s in a form of High Beyond. Hold on…” Treeap gestured furiously and a wail of static and multi-part harmony in an eldritch musical style poured out. “The Eyes seem to speak in song - the fake Thirder that our database is calling an Angel is not. Playing translations.”

EYE: “JOB. THE SWORD THAT REACHETH US HATH NO EFFECT. “

ANGEL: “I SEE AND COMPREHEND. FOCUS THE DIVINE LIGHT ON YONDER VESSELS CLOSE BY TO THEE.”

EYE: “KINGS. WHAT THOU SAYETH IS GOOD; I WILL OBEY.”

One Eye separated and moved in front of the group of Eyes. The candles were shifted and brightened; beams of radiance seemed to bounce around off the various flakes and focus into the pupil of its Eye. From there, a single beam of green lazed out and cleanly sliced the closest gunboat in half, which then exploded.

EYE: “MATTHEW. THE FLESH IS WEAK.”

ANGEL: “UNDERESTIMATE THEM NOT. REMAIN VIGILANT. CONTINUE.”

“Egging Myriopus,” yelped the Tacticdrone. Commander Franwip grunted. “That looks like a Graser pulse. Not even that big; we’ve been hit with worse. No need to panic.“

Franwip ruminated, then shrugged. “Well, shine my egging gloves. Munitions, spin up a Tunneling bomb. Let’s see how they like one of those. We’ve only got three, so make it count.”

The Eyes continued to wreak havoc with the gunboats, which had reversed direction and were trying to put some distance between them and the Eyes. Suddenly, the Shoal kicked as the internal Tunneling engine vomited into the void. A split-second later, a Tunneling ring blipped near the lead Eye and an object briefly appeared and then exploded. For a microsecond, space around it distorted violently, starlight changing position and color.

After space went back to normal, the Eye in front was spotted, hideously deformed (well, worse than before.) The central Eye was twisted; the floating arms twisted into knots and the fingers on the ends twisted into knots. The candles were knotted and the streams of light were also. Clear saline leaked from the Eye.

The remaining Eyes seemed to grow wider and jumped backward a dozen meters. Even the Angel put a hand over her mouth. The now-agitated Eyes looked at each other, their wounded one, and the Angel.

HURT EYE: “JEREMIAH. OH MY ANGUISH, MY ANGUISH. I WRITHE IN PAIN.”

ANGEL: “HOLY FATHER! FATHER-EGGING… KING.”

EYE #2: “PSALMS. SUCH KNOWLEDGE IS TOO WONDERFUL FOR ME.”

OTHER EYES: “JOHN. AND THE THREE ARE IN AGREEMENT.”

HURT EYE: “KINGS: WHEEL AROUND AND GET ME OUT OF THE FIGHTING; I’VE BEEN WOUNDED.”

The Eyes clustered around the wounded one and started to back away. The Angel in question began gesturing at them.

ANGEL: “NO! MAINTAIN THY FORMATION!”

OTHER EYES: “NEHEMIAH. BUT THEY BECAME ARROGANT AND DISOBEYED YOUR COMMANDS. “

Franwip grinned. “Looks like those abominations weren’t expecting this! Gunboats, open fire on the Thirder vessel. Where’s my railguns?”

The Spikey started flashing as Urane slugs burst out the front battery and began impacting on the ground, sending up enormous explosions of fire and ice from the surface. The Thirder transport shuddered under the impact of the smaller shells from the gunboats. As all this happened, the Eyes floated back to their slit in space and departed.

The commander watched carefully. “Anything from the ground? What was down there?”

The Sciencedrone was gesturing over at her station, squinting down at the intel coming up. “Hard to say, Commander. They have some kind of stone structure on a mobile platform and were trying to lower it down to the ground when they got hit. Hang on, here’s a comm sample… one sec…”

Broken comms played through the inside of the Spikey’s bridge, frantic and yelling. “I can’t do anything without a ley-line! This planet is mystically dead. What happened to the shrine!?” And another: “The crypt inside the church has been destroyed - I have the artifact, but without a consecrated crypt, we can’t couple it over the Tunneling link back to Earth!”

Tacticdrone Emcop spoke up, pointing at the floating tactical holos. “It looks like the Thirder vessel is retreating,” he said, as the transport pulled backward, venting plasma and smoke from its wounds, and then vanished as its Tunneling ring inverted.

“Well, well,” Franwip chuckled. “Not quite as tough as I expected. Anybody remaining on the ground? What’re they up to?”

Treeap worked the receivers and picked up the ground comms again. “...lost our cover.. Prince Rupert had to retreat. Lost our Seraph-” and a bunch of noise. Then a melodious female voice: “...need to buy time for coven squad to retreat… Judith, can you get a ring open back to… need…,” and then clearer: “... anybody remote view the base in that fleet? Is it big enough to have buildings in it?”

A man’s voice: “Yeah, it’s a got a climate, atmo, buildings in a park, all of that.”

The melodious voice, with a short laugh: “Ha, good. I’ve got an Awful Saying that works on cities, and that sounds like a city.”

Then another clear female voice: “Ekaterina, no! You… damned for all…”

Then static, then a final “...just have to come get me… get back, that’s an order!”

Sciencedrone Treeap frowned at the console. “I’m getting multiple Tunneling waves from the ground.”

Franwip whistled. “I’d love to know how they’re doing that. Can we-” but suddenly Treeap yelped, then turned to Franwip. “Commander! I’m getting a matching Tunneling signature on the Coral Uplift!”

The Commander walked over to the science station. “Can you get a feed, audio and visual, on the Uplift’s security net?” The young Sciencedrone worked, and with a blip a holo of the central Park of Conquest was floating in the bridge. There in the middle, a Tunneling Ring opened, and a female Thirder strode through, carrying only a small blade. They watched as she immediately popped her armor, standing there in some kind of combat padding.

“What the egging hells is this?” said Franwip. “Is she surrendering?”

The Thirder slashed her own arm, which started pumping blood; then she slowly spun, forming a circle of it, and started chanting. The auto-translator started spewing errors. She unzipped the combat padding, began rubbing blood on her face, drawing lines on her breasts and arms, swaying in place.

“Mabra, brahoring Mabra..” she said, crooning. “Éya avô Arzathúm!”

“Ritual suicide? Religious ritual?” said the Sciencedrone, fascinated.

“Mabra, brahoring Mabra, AgZ Nathak, Arzathúm úMak, Ÿedt-Æroon Aloo ‘riì? Arzathúm-” The Thirder continued, her voice guttural and harsh, her pitch shifting lower and lower.

The Coral Uplift’s feed showed Mbth guards floating, carrying rifles in their tendrils, slowly advancing. The Thirder kept chanting and bleeding, her voice continuing to drop, so now it sounded like a guttural subsonic rumble. A wind appeared to be whipping around the plaza. Small parts of faux-stone fell from a statue.

The commander got a funny feeling in his upper stomach - he remembered a report he read of a science outpost that was destroyed by a similar ritual. “Hail the Uplift!”, he said, concern in his voice. “Tell them to kill the Thirder, fast.”

Cracks appeared in the ground, starting from the Thirder and shooting out, jagged and glowing red. Where the ground parted, the light shimmered, heat pouring out of the cracks. One of the Mbth fired at the Thirder, but the shell ricocheted off an invisible wall around her. She continued to chant, baring her teeth, seemingly enjoying herself, dancing now, naked and bloody. The buildings in the plaza started rumbling.

“I’m getting a Planck-length vibration in the superstructure of the Uplift,” Tacticdrone Emcop said. “It’s sort of like a Tunneling transition but… it’s oddly inverted. They are reporting back multiple systems failures. Wait… they started an evacuation.”

In places in the plaza where cracks formed loops, sections of ground and hull seemed to fall down, into the red, and gouts of flame roared up. A building close by slowly started sliding downward.

“I don’t get it,” Emcop said. “Where’s the stuff all going?”

As sentients ran to and fro, some trying to put out fires, others just panicking, figures rising from the flames could be seen dimly, grabbing sentients and pulling them down, alternately stick some with pointy weapons.

“This is egging insane,” said the commander softly.

“Engineering is reporting that the secondary reactor pits have encountered the… damage… the cracks. They can’t seem to stop it.” Everybody on the bridge now, staring at the infernal site, red light everywhere, screams of the sentients on the base echoing alopng with other nightmare sounds - crunching, shrieking laughter, and wails.

Franwip nodded. “Better get us to a safe distance then. “

The Spikey moved away, leaving behind a probe to record what was happening, and ran to the other side of Sol 9’s orbit. The probe sent back signals, showing the disintegrating base, parts a hundred meters high sliding down out of the universe, brimstone and fire gouting up, until a reactor blew and took the rest of the station with it.

-

THEN: OCT 2ND, 2016, CNN BROADCAST OF THE FIRST PRESIDENTIAL DEBATE, SARA MURRAY and DYLAN BEYERS

Dylan: “Good evening. We have no news regarding the incredible events at the first presidential debate, held tonight at the New York Hofstra University center. President Ashe’s whereabouts are still unknown.

“The debate began as expected, with both candidates greeting each other. This is an important debate for the President, because she was trailing Trump by a few points and more than twenty percent in the red states.

“Donald Trump came out swinging at the beginning of the debate, making early points about the shakiness of the economy, the possible threat from the southern borders, and President Ashe’s spotty record of press conferences and appearances. Ashe retaliated with comments on his support of the Iraq war and possible financial scandals. The President seemed distracted, don’t you think?”

Sara: “She did. Things appeared to take a turn when Ashe brought up Trump being the puppet of the evangelical right. Trump countered that he was a Christian and ‘loved the bible’ and that everybody knows that President Ashe was ‘some kind of witch’, obviously drawing attention to the rumors of her alternative religion and the footage of her supposedly flying in a broom. You can see President Ashe staring at Trump here and then we had this exchange:”

Trump: “That’s right! Everybody knows you aren’t a Christian, or an American. You’re.. Wiccan. Wick-an.”

Ashe: “No. I’m not a Christian. And… I no longer am exactly a practitioner of modern Wiccan. I practice something deeper. Something older. But women have always practiced wisdom, and magics. Isn’t it good that wise women exist?”

Trump: “uh. Uh… well…yeah, I mean. I have a lot of respect for wise women. Maybe the most respect. But....”

Dylan: “We can see the audience really getting into it, and Lester Holt had to call for quiet, although - this was surprising as moderator, he said he agreed totally with President Ashe’s need for wise women.”

Sara: “Dylan, I was there, and I can agree - the argument seemed incredibly reasonable. I’ve known countless women in my community and family who-”

Dylan: “Ha ha Sara, remember.. Uh, we’re just relating the events.”

Sara: “Uh… right. Right. At this point Trump appeared to be a little concerned, and quieter. He did bring up the state of crime, talking about our presence around the world. Here: ”

Trump: “I’m the law and order candidate! You have been locked up in your little bunker, or… or flying around… the inner cities are a mess! You get shot just walking down the street in Philadelphia where you are now.”

Ashe: “I haven’t had time to properly work with the police, but my people will. Soon, all pain, all strife…I mean.. Everybody will have someone they can appeal to for justice. The system is broken.”

Trump: “Well, the police-”

Ashe: “The police rule by bloodshed and corruption. Yet what else can we expect, when men abandon their babies and wives? When the natural earth and moon cry out for someone to worship them?”

Trump: “What about your husband? I’m sorry he died, very sad, but there’s all sorts of reports you... That you’re sexual… not a Christian! What kind of values are-”

Ashe: “I am bisexual, if that’s what you mean. Andrew and I celebrated my sexuality, with him and others! Sex is natural, a gift of pleasure, of new life from the Earth! And I like it! I LIKE IT. Do you have a problem with that, Donald?”

Dylan: “Not really sure about the hand waving here, it’s an odd sort of gesture, right?”

Susan: “She’s a very demonstrative woman, Dylan.”

Trump: “No… it’s OK to be sexual, never mind.”

Ashe: “Aren’t I beautiful? Doesn’t my body deserve worship?“

Trump: “Yeah… beautiful…wow… I’d worship… “

Dylan: “Trump appears pretty distracted now. He’s panting and adjusting his pants. I notice a lot of people in the audience appear hot - maybe the air broke down, people are loosening their collars. Lester Holt is drooling a little, there.”

Susan: “Well, who can blame them? The President is a stunning, sexy woman. Imagine her in a sexy romp with, say, Professor Raptis. I would! Mmmm. Whew.”

Trump: “But… someone needs to do something about the aliens.”

Ashe: “Yes, the alien threat!”

Trump: “From the southern border-”

Ashe: “The aliens from space, you fucking idiot. From space. Doesn’t anybody see that? Our future is crowned in fire and blood, the apocalypse rides from space, from the eye of the cat, rides with a host of… octopoids and gasbags and bugs! We need somebody who can do something about all that! That isn’t you, is it, Donald?”

Dylan: “There’s the hand stuff again.”

Trump: “I know more about space… uh… OW. Ow….”

Dylan: “Trump appears to be getting a headache of some kind here.”

Ashe: “Do you really think you have any… any idea of what actually goes on in the universe, Donald?”

Trump: “ow… No… No, I guess I don’t…”

Dylan: “A lot of crazy stuff!”

Susan: “Not so crazy, I mean we were attacked from space, Dylan, and it seems the president has access to information about something regarding that. I mean we go back to the wise woman thing here-”

Dylan: (interrupting) “OK! And at this point some people started pointing, because the President appeared to be floating off the floor several inches. And then the President appeared to start speaking in a different language, which our sources have translated as some kind of Old Gaelic. You’ll notice she has what appears to be a kind of seizure, her eyes are rolled up. And as she talks, uh, we’re seeing… plants coming out of her hair?”

Susan: “That looks like Ivy and Trumpet Honeysuckle, Dylan, it’s a really nice choice-”

Dylan: “Yes, Ivy. At this point Donald Trump excited the stage. And then we had this exchange - we’ve had our sources subtitle it for the viewing public:”

Ashe: “You do know there’s a storm on the way, right?”

Ashe: “No! I… took care of the storm, I can’t…”

Ashe: “YOU DO KNOW THERE’S A STORM ON THE WAY, RIGHT? A TERRIBLE STORM.”

Ashe: “Hurricane Matthew? That one? It’s.. landfall in the Americas is… I can see it, but… Oh gods, why me? It’s enormous! It’s… I can’t do anything about THAT. Is that what you mean? It’s not me being subtle, it’s like wrestling a giant! It’s like fighting a mountain!”

Ashe: “YOU WISH TO BE QUEEN? YOU ARE A COWARD, THOUSANDS WILL DIE, AND YOU WANT TO RULE?”

Ashe: “I just want to help-”

Ashe: “YOU ARE NO WISE WOMAN, YOU ARE NO QUEEN, YOU ARE A BABE, A PITIFUL HEDGE-WITCH WHO-”

Susan: “After that amazing exchange, we see Professor Raptis, the Science Advisor, come out on stage with a tablet and do something, and then President Ashe seems to revert to normal, minus all the leaves and the green streaks in her hair. “

Dylan: “Right, they had some kind of whispered discussion. And then this, uh, broom flies in from the stage wings and the President gets on it and leaves.”

Susan: “Right. So the judges at the debate felt that while Trump made a good early showing, that President Ashe dominated the debate later on, especially at the end, making some good points with the whole witch and storm thing.”

Dylan: “It’s a little confusing how they basically gave her a hundred percent. But, as many people say, President Ashe is a lot more commanding in person. “

Susan: “If she wants to be President again, or Queen, she’s got my vote.”

Dylan: “Online polls also show her gaining quite a few points so she’s back in the front running position again.”