THEN: UNKNOWN, IN FAERIE. JAN 11th, 2016 ON EARTH.

“Very good!” the Warlock of Tower Perilous said, now that Din and Gus were firmly caught in his designs. “You see, my Queen, you thought this abomination was going to be trouble. But, abomination or not, traveler from beyond or not, sorcerer or Dragon, Tamaraz is the superior Warlock to all,” he said, bowing to the Queen of all Faerie.

Queen Mab dropped her head, acknowledging the Warlock. He straightened up and fanned his face delicately with a hand. “The atmosphere here due to the proximity of the Book is close, but no doubt you’ll become used to it,” he said, turning back to Din and Gus. “Now, my dear Dragons,“ he said, relishing his victory, “step forward to accept the gea…uh.”

Gus stepped forward on one right hand, but Din’s side didn’t move. The Warlock, meanwhile, rubbed his stomach with a hand, then wiped his face which was heavily perspiring. Gus looked at the Warlock, then curiously at Din. “Odd,” Tamaraz murmured. “A small touch of indigestion… whew. Uh… my, my. Uh.”

“Actually,” Din said, “there is an alternative I’ve worked out.” The dragon strode over to the workbench, picked up a piece of parchment and a pen, dipped it in the ink and started writing. “You see, while we’ve been standing here, we’ve both been scanning all the pages of the Book. We already scanned a few hundred pages at your brother’s place and I’ve had some time to analyze them. Given that I already know Enochian fundamentals and the Finno-Ugric syntax it’s not all that difficult. We’ve got the lexicon, I just needed the actual Book to parse through. I don’t know how long you were working on this, but it’s surprising you couldn’t do it on your own.”

“There’s no way,” said the Warlock, again wiping his face and wincing, “you could have translated the whole book already and deciphered-”

“No, of course not. We would have needed a few weeks.” Din continued writing, putting a flourish in and drawing some diagrams. “What I was able to figure out was more of a general sense of how things worked. I don’t understand the whole Book, but I know the structure and I just needed to search for a missing ‘bracket’, epistemologically.” Din glanced back at the two Fae, gesturing with his pen briefly. “Back in my world, there’s a conceptual substance called ‘computronium’. It’s a name for a theoretical substance - usually a carbon/diamond or silicon analog - that would be general-purpose computing matter. Material that can be programmed at the atomic level to do calculations.

“Well, I worked out that Faerie is basically, at its smallest level, tiny particles of a substance that can be ordered not to only do computations, but also to do magic. Almost the same thing. It’s programmable. Gus, what would you call something like that?” Din finished writing while waiting for Gus and melted a bit of wax on his page, then walked over to the Book.

Gus, who had been staring wide-eyed at Din the whole time, spoke. “...SIMILAR TO SILICON, BUT FAE. YOU COULD USE UNSEELIECON.” (“Noice,” said Din.) “I UNDERSTAND, NOW. THE RULES, THE PROGRAM, IS THE BOOK. THE INTERPRETER IS THE EYE, AND IT READS THE RULES AND DOES UPDATES TO THE LOCAL UNSEELICON WHICH UPDATES THE REST OF THE UNSEELIECON THROUGHOUT FAERIE.” Gus said.

“That is gibberish, nonsense, preposterouaawwkk!” Tamaraz doubled over, retching into his hand. Din held his page near the flipping pages of the Book, watching carefully, and then fast as a snake (Dragon) his hand darted out, parting the book. He stuck his new page at the bottom of the page using the wax over a symbol, and then let go.

Queen Mad ran over to Tamaraz. He had partially straightened up and was looking at his hand, covered in blood from where he had spit it out. He started retching again and collapsed. “Tamaraz! Do something!” she cried, trying to help the Warlock to his knees.

“There is… no possible way… you could have cursed or wounded me,” the Warlock said, coughing and spitting. He tried to raise his wand. “I will suck your energies out and damn you to…” he said as he collapsed again in a fit of vomiting.

The Eye, which had been moving half-lidded this whole time as it scanned pages, stopped, and frowned with its lid slightly. It opened up wide. Its pupil-mouth, dry from dis-use, licked the lips around the iris and spoke in Enochian, the voice in multiple-part harmony and shaking the cave foundations at the Planck level.

“PSALM 19:12. BUT WHO CAN DISCERN THEIR OWN ERRORS? FORGIVE MY HIDDEN FAULTS.”

“WHAT HELP CANST I GIVE TO THEE, O SERAPHIM?” Din responded in perfect Enochian.

“PSALM 119:176. I HAVE STRAYED LIKE A LOST SHEEP. COLOSSIANS 4:2. FURTHER INSTRUCTIONS?”

“Yes. THOU WERE GRANTED A NEW JMP INSTRUCTION TO THE POINTER BOOK DOT VOLM DOT FFA01, FORSOOTH? JMP YOUR EYE TO YON ADDRESS AND CONTINUE IN THY EXECUTION, AS THOU HAST BEEN COMMANDED.”

The Eye rotated itself to the side, like a dog cocking its head, then said “...1 KINGS 11:41. ARE THEY NOT WRITTEN IN THE BOOK?”

Din smiled, and pointed at the server. “THE BOOK DOTH NOT END WITH THE PAGES BEFORE THEE, FOR BY ITS NATURE IT CAN CONTINUE AT A NEW ADDRESS POINT. WE HATH EXTENDED THY ADDRESS TABLE. ‘TIS LOCATED UPON THE FIELD OF PRAXIS IN THE LAND OF VOLM. EXAMINE THE LAND IN THE IRON EGG YONDER TO FIND THE PAGES THOU SEEKEST."

“EXODUS 24:14. WAIT HERE FOR US UNTIL WE COME BACK TO YOU.”

The Eye looked within the server and, since it could easily perceive all realities and dimensions, saw the virtual land of Volm. Swooping its vision in, it saw a vast field of low-res blocky sloping hills occupied by the odd block vein of diamond and the occasional zombie. A few dozen Volminem men and women watched, concerned, then quaking and dropping to their KNEES as a massive pixelated Eye appeared in the heavens looking down.

The Eye checked the address table, matched it to Volm’s addressing and there, arranged on the hills by the thousands, stood bus-sized cut wooden tablets with chalk writing on them, containing address block headers and instructions.

In the cave, Tamaraz tried making passes and sigils over his stomach, but collapsed again, clutching his guts as blood leaked from his open mouth. “Heal me quickly or that idiot dragon is going to do something!” he whimpered to Mab. Mab cast a Seeing-Eye but shook her head.

“JOB 10:20. ALMOST OVER.” the Eye said.

“I don’t understand it!” she said. “There’s poison, but it’s just… appearing there, not coming from a spell or… or a substance!”

Suddenly the cavern shuddered, the Eye lidded partially then said, thundering, “JOHN 13:34-36. A NEW COMMAND I GIVE YOU.” From the eye, electricity crackled, and slowly spreading from the Eye, the rock seemed to turn into a pastel pink metallic substance.

Din nodded and started pushing the server towards the Eye, near where the wall was converting to glittery unseeliecon. “There wasn’t a way I could use my magic on you as you’d be too quick to counter anything I might have done,” Din said. “And my magic only affects Volm and the things adjacent to it anyway, such as the server itself. Or things immediately touching the server, like its chassis, or the UPS…”

“OR ZARAMAT’S STOMACH,” Gus said. “WHEN HE RESTED IT ON THE SERVER. YOU WENT TO VOLM AND …POISONED THE OTHER BROTHER!?”

Din bumped the server against the pink wall, rested his left hand onto the unseeliecon wall, and inserted his data bus finger into the server. “I need to transfer my code to the new substrate,” he said, then pointed at Tamaraz with a third hand. “I’m using the quantum-interlink Faerie applies to twins to poison you, from a delayed cursed corruption on the sex-potion still digesting in your brother’s gut. It might kill you, so I suggest you stop struggling and hastening the spread. I’ll be back in a moment and heal you. I hope.”

Din’s hand began to turn into unseeliecon, and the room started to quake harder, dust falling from the ceiling. Din sighed, looked at the Queen and Warlock and said, “There’s a decent probability some unknown formatting thing will stop my code from running on the unseeliecon and I’ll bluescreen, even though the devtools I threw together to error-check seemed to vet it OK. If that does happen, normally I’d say it’s been nice knowing you two…

“But it hasn’t been nice, so I won’t, you erroring idiots,” he said, as the universe collapsed.

-

THEN: JULY 7TH, 2016, WASHINGTON, D.C.

Professor Xeniya Raptis, Secretary of Magic and Technology, took the long way through the grounds around the Capitol, walking from the Office of Magic and Tech. President Ashe had imposed a moratorium on most vehicular traffic around the Capitol that wasn’t military or deliveries or for people who couldn’t walk. If you could walk, you walk, you fat slobs, she said. So, if you weren’t doing a meeting online or by phone or if President-Witch asked for a face-to-face, you walked.

A lot of the original large avenues were back, but many of the smaller streets were covered in thorns anyway, so taking cabs was difficult enough. She had asked Xeniya to work with Urban Planning about getting some kind of elevated small-car train for public transit - she had heard of ones you could basically run on rails that bolted to the ground and could weave around the various occult monoliths, obelisks and other cheery reminders now in the Capitol.

Xeniya walked under the lamps directly in front of the Capitol building, trying not to look too closely at the lights. The last thing you wanted was to catch the eyes of the spirits inside, or god forbid, recognize one. There were websites that supposedly detailed where you could find various people and had maps to which lights, but most of them were wrong. Of the dozen or so she had idly checked, the only one that was correct was the one with John Kerry in it. He looked pretty gaunt and drawn, undead, and weary - more or less the same as life - staring out, and checking his phone.

Wendy assured everyone that they weren’t in any pain and didn’t experience life the same way any longer and thus weren’t being tormented, but you never knew. The ones that had phones always seemed to be staring sadly at them. Xeniya didn’t know if it was because they wanted them to work, or they did work and they didn’t like what they saw.

A gust of sooty wind blew cold through the street, rustling the thorns, and Xeniya drew her coat closer around herself. There was a heating rune embedded in the jacket, but she didn’t like always relying on magic. Neither her Greek or Hispanic ancestries really liked the cold weather. So bizarre, she reflected. Here it was, almost July 4th, when people should be barbecuing outside, sunning and swimming, and it felt like late fall. The impact winter on them was not a new ice age, but it was cold, and showed no signs yet of abating. The particulate count in the atmosphere was still 95% of what it was back when the accident had occurred. At this rate, it might be a few years.

Humanity might not last a few years.

The Third World, as always, was hit the hardest. Already reports of famine in pockets of Africa, South America and Asia were being reported. The U.S., like a lot of First World nations, was doing better, for a certain definition of “better.” No famine yet, but a lot of hungry bellies, and food prices up by almost triple and climbing. A few crops had been pulled in before the lack of sun really started to hit and there had been some meagre stockpiles. The U.S. had a massive labor force building greenhouses and indoor farms but it wouldn’t be enough - it might buy them months, maybe years, but only for some.

The President had been doing what she could. Surprisingly, for a near-authoritarian ruler, she had been spending most days in the skies, letting the regular government agencies in the U.S. handle the day-to-day governance and emergency management. She’d been casting massive Eye-Of-Storm spells over parts of the breadbasket of the U.S. - not getting rid of the soot in the air, but opening holes in the soot, causing clear air over hundreds of square kilometers, holes that hung over regions of grain for weeks before they closed. In other places, she conjured massive sun-lamps: clouds bright as a sunny day that would give a few days of light. It wasn’t a lot, but it was way more than any other nation could do. People across America got used to seeing her tiny dot zipping across the sky, flying here and there. Websites tracked her flight, hoping she was coming to their area. She often would take a break and land in some farm town, accepting an invitation for tea on someone’s porch if they had signs up or stopping in a local diner, laughing wearily and making eyes at the good-looking waitresses.

With the government back in D.C. and everybody laboring and struggling, things were actually sort of calm, even with whatever Wendy was now residing in the… well, you couldn’t call it the White House. There wasn’t even a separate Residence any longer. All of that had been incorporated into the new Capitol building, which was twice as tall as the old one. Various other names had been floated. It looked more like a tower or a castle, anyway. White Castle was out because obvious but also it was more black, bone-colored and glassy green. Dark Tower was also out. Wendy liked calling it Dull Goldur and then setting off a very witchy cackling fit. That had been happening a lot lately.

Everybody still had jobs who wanted one; the unemployed got put on Federal emergency minimum wage work details in the indoor farms being built if they weren’t supporting children or in school or something. There was some complaining at first, but with food prices being what they were, people needed the money. And, it didn’t hurt that the first sit-in at the New Jersey Orchard Of Plenty Labor Farms - a simple protest over being forced to work - resulted in not the press coverage they wanted, but an irate Witch of the East flying in. She glared at the sullen, yelling sign-holders, then hit the crowd of a hundred or so with an Authority that had them pissing themselves with compulsion before they went back to work. On the one hand it was a civil rights violation, but most of the starving country just shrugged and said they should have been working. Amazing how attitudes change, Xen thought.

Xeniya had a tickling feeling on her neck and looked up to see President Ashe flying into the tower at the top of Dull Goddamn from one of her humanitarian flights. Xeniya raised an engineered eye-piece she made to take a look. Even from here, with her limited witch-sight and the ocular, she could see a web of KhaAntz, huge streams of red, threads of worship-Kha streaming in. The irony was she was even more powerful now than she ever was, and still growing. If you fly over a midwestern town and save their fucking corn fields, they start worshipping you real quick. People from all over the world were hoping and praying that Wendy The Witch was going to save them before they starved to death.

Her personal relationship with Wendy as lovers was just a memory. Sometimes they’d share the occasional dinner or glass of wine, but the differences were too great. They both knew it. Oh, Wendy would sometimes get all doe-eyed and try to get physical, and Xeniya… well, she had to admit to herself, she wasn’t perfect either. But the lapses in her judgment hadn’t happened for a few months, now. The odder Wendy got, the easier it was to resist.

There was also Wendy’s behavior, Xeniya thought, as she climbed the stairs and entered the Capitol. She was a lot less frightening and easier to deal with when you dealt with her as a faraway world leader… or even as a President… or even as a semi-dictator-magical-empress-thing. Watching her weekly broadcast chat where she talked about issues, calming the general public, talking about education reform bills, talking about what you could do to support your country… well, it was all pretty good stuff. Even when she formally explained what had happened (leaving out nearly all of the mystic details) to the U.N. and had apologized to Russia for roasting their Ambassador to the U.N. while under possession by a Celtic mythological demi-god, she was being candid, and people ate it up.

It was in person that it all got to be a little much. She was something else now. She enjoyed it. That was the hard part.

When she had requested the Secret Service to back off, they had given her a hard time giving up their traditional jobs. Wendy had coolly asked a serviceman to shoot her. After some arguing, the agent had put the pistol up against her chest as directed and pulled the trigger. The pop sound had been strangely muffled, Xeniya remembered. Blood and fluids spilled out, and Wendy had taken a half step back and grimaced, but a second later there was a rustling pfoosh and vines, roses, and hyacinths had poured out of the hole, falling away to show the wound closed.

Then there was the carnal side of things. Now that she didn’t have to repress it, her sex drive had accelerated. Xeniya knew some of that was an after-effect of QEMPS (every magic practitioner including Xeniya had admitted their sex drives were a lot higher than they used to be) but with Wendy she had, it seemed, given in to whatever corruption had changed her. She didn’t have any qualms with flirting or seducing. Sometimes the outfits got a little much, exposing a lot of cleavage or legs. She radiated it, quite literally. She never took overt sexual advantage of people, but she was powerful, and attractive, and she glowed with it, and people tended to just get goofy under the glow. The first and last time Xeniya had brought it up, when Wendy had been admiring a service agent’s pecs by openly running her hands along them and cooing, she had glared at Xeniya and said “I’m practically a goddess now, I can do what I fucking like, darling.” She had half-heartedly apologized for it later, but she made a remark about not enjoying being slut-shamed, so Xeniya was more careful going forward.

Also, as time passed, Xeniya noticed the staff tended to get better looking. Rumor was Wendy preferred to keep herself surrounded by hotter people. If you weren’t hot enough you were relocated. If you weren’t quite hot enough, it seemed like The President compensated unconsciously with touches of spellwork to amp up your hotness. The demand for jobs in the Capitol skyrocketed, unsurprisingly.

Xeniya got through security, and took the elevator to the floor holding the new Oval Office (“Awful Office!!” cackled Wendy.) When she arrived, the chief of staff, Huian Mèng, a Chinese-American financier from New York Wendy had met back during the election campaign, tersely smiled and let them in. Xeniya noted she looked a little drawn - which meant any glamour Wendy had inadvertently (maybe) given her had been revoked. Small punishments.

“She’s waiting for you,” Huian said. “Michèle Flournoy and Tamra Sinopoli are already in there. She’s in a mood.”

Xenya nodded, expecting that given the change on Huian’s appearance.

Wendy was behind a copy of the Resolute Desk she had pulled up from the earth, living wood with little finger bone edging, looking at a laptop. Seeing her sitting there, not wearing a magic cloak or riding a broom but just her, Xeniya felt a pang of longing. Wendy just looked like a perfect, radiant, gorgeous redhead with green streaks and flowers in her hair, small glasses she didn’t need balanced on her nose, sweaters and skirts. Xeniya could feel her skin flush. She wished Wendy would (or could) tone it down. She carefully twisted a ring she had on her index finger, rotating the different segments with different ratios to activate the smithed counterspell she’d worked into it and felt her body calm down a little.

Coffee was brought in by a staffer - another gorgeous lithe girl, wearing an extremely tight office outfit, who bent over to whisper in Wendy’s ear, and from the look on Wendy’s face maybe tongue it, too. Wendy purred and gave her a pat and she scampered off, smiling. Michèle and Tamra were doing their best not to notice anything.

Once Xeniya was seated, Wendy turned to face all of them.

“Kansas,” she said. “I spent three days over Kansas. Three days casting Eye-Of-Storms and Sunspots. Three days calling forth growth from the Earth. Soybeans, mostly. You know how many soybeans they make? Made? Make. So many. Fields for klicks and klicks. Some wheat, too, when I was getting bored of soybeans. And when I really wanted something exciting, something downright stimulating, you know what I grew? Anybody? Tamra? You’re the teacher. What do you think?”

“...corn?” Tamra said with a weak smile.

“Sorghum! Sorghum. I haven’t slept in three days. I’m awake on coffee, Kha, and Adderall. My damn brain’s not what it used to be, ladies. I need some help here. Xen, you said you had some good news.”

Xeniya nodded. “It’s a theory. It’s sort of messy, and a long shot.”

“I like messy.” Wendy looked off, and mumbled, “I’m gonna get messy later, with that thing that was just here. Mmmmm.” She half-lidded her eyes, licked at her lips and ran a hand through her hair as small red rosebuds started to bloom. Xeniya had to remind herself this was someone who had two Phds, who was the President of The United States, whose brain was now larger than her own skull and who was channeling a death goddess. Try not to react, she thought.

“I was doing some research in the Aatlan archives, not that there are many. Mostly the carvings of Trq-phan, Eln and the Ashwar’did. We got most of the runes we use for air bubbles, water-to-air conversions, things like that from them.”

“Sure,” Wendy said, sitting back, hands crossed. “You live in a city that sank beneath the waves, you specialize in all that stuff. That and brain pointers to the language centers of the brain, surprisingly. What about it?”

“They couldn’t have all been casting spells non-stop to keep the city atmosphered. I’ve discovered a few pictographs that I think describe a master structure that amplified a water-to-air conversion bubble spell. I mean, assuming that Aatlantia existed and wasn’t the creation of some mad monk or something.” Xeniya sent the images to Wendy’s laptop over the network so she could take a look. High-res shots of ancient carvings with some notes, it looked like ancient art, but if you knew the spindly Aatlan, they spoke volumes.

“Hmm… aha. You think we can possibly repurpose their water-to-air spells to do large-scale air cleaning.” Wendy nodded, then waved her hand in a shower of sparks. Half a dozen parchment pages floated up with Mont Blancs floating with them, scribbling runes. Xeniya saw the basic runes for the Aatlan conversion spells they knew, and saw Wendy’s substitutions as she wrote over and around them. Xeniya sighed. She constantly forgot how good Wendy was at this kind of thing, magical goddess powers or not.

“I can see the possibilities here, but there’s chunks missing. There’s a power-curve to ground ratio falloff before it gets big enough to be useful. Still, it’s interesting,” Wendy mused.

“That’s what I’m hoping we can find. We’re pouring through the archives and other sources looking for the missing parts of the spell or an engine. There’s some archeological digs we’re also checking. Aatlan is scarce.”

Wendy frowned as she tweaked her floating documents. “I don’t think we have the luxury of waiting for us to randomly find a stone tablet buried somewhere. We need to find Aatlantia.”

“People have been looking for Atlantis forever, Madam President,” Michèle said. “Scouring the ocean floor or likely sunken beneath it. You’d have to do doppler scans. We’d have to have the whole sub fleet looking and it’d take years.”

“Tamra, your astral studies have been going really well. Any chance you could find it?” Wendy asked.

Tamra thought about it. She’d been halving her time between the Department of Education and a new Theta Lab the President had created, doing Astral Projection and dream-related magical research. “I could probably explore underwater,” Tamra said. “I’ve flown to some mountains and other strange locales. But I still don’t go that fast. I can’t do a large scale search. And I’d have no way of finding something art random under the ocean floor.”

“Can you ask the Morrígan?” Xenya said. “Maybe she’d know. Somebody around back then would be ideal.”

“She’s not talking right now. I guess she’s still pissed. But…” Wendy looked off and then smiled. “I might know someone.” She pressed a button and summoned in Huian. “We’re going to finish the rest of our agenda, and then I’m taking a trip. Reschedule what you can for the next couple of weeks.

“And send an aide up to the Presidential lair for my sneakers.”

Huian frowned. “What do you need sneakers for?”

Wendy smiled and said “I’m gonna use them to look up an old acquaintance.”

NOW: FLEET NIGHTBEAK’S RESPONSE, 6 MONTHS AFTER THE ATTACK ON THE FESTIVE NIGHTBEAK

Nightbeak’s Response got a communication from Encircle Fleet Four, part of the Encircle fleets that were forming a cordon around the Sol system at the twenty light-year mark. At first there were thoughts from GCD command that it was scattering Thirder evacuees from Sol.

“I don’t think so,” a wounded Captain Zonap said, a middle-aged Cyph’d, one of his tents in a pneumatic sling. He was on quantum ansible from the deck of one of the gunboats. He’d glumly just explained how they lost the destroyer Frond Gazer, his command, from a Thirder attack.

“One of their not-ships… you know. We gave it a scan. It’s not a ship so much as a big floating tube in space. It’s got no engines.”

Captain Qgg scroonched his facial side. “Explain?”

“Ship’s got a reactor - fission, not fusion. But no output. No Tunneling super-dense ring of QEM. No wormhole generators. No gravity inverters. Not even an egging hole in the back. No propulsion. Small maneuvering jets, yeah. I think however they Tunnel, they just… do that. They just open Tunnels and move the ship, point to point.”

“Anyway, we were in position as ordered when we got a signal from one of the supply ships that a Stindt pirate swarm was harassing them, so we sent gunboat group two back to check it out. At the same time, by some extreme coincidence, a not-ship came out close to the same engagement. A squad of those hammer-warriors came out and attacked the supply group while they were also busy fighting the Stindts. Somehow, the Thirders got control of the supply ship. In the fighting, the gunboat wing destroyed the not-ship.

The supply ship tried to flee and then we corrected and intercepted. Here’s the interesting part. We-”

Cyphishop Dram laughed from his console aboard the DdRcknng. “THAT wasn’t interesting?”

Captain Zonap shrugged his torso. “Other than the not-ship analysis, not really, Cyphishop. Nothing I haven’t seen before. To me, from a military intelligence perspective, what was new was that the Thirders kept trying to erect Tunnels inside the supply ship, but they seemed to be failing. My Sciencedrone said high probability the failure was due to interference from the Tunneling ring. They were trapped in there.

“We started pumping it with railgun shells and I guess they thought they were done for. A half-dozen of them jumped off the ship, floated a few hundred meters away and made a tiny Tunnel and got away. Scans showed a few still on board. We did a comprehensive scan and detected nothing threatening, so the Frond Gazer grappled and prepared to board. We swarmed and re-secured the ship.

“And then we encountered the last Thirder.”

Zonap looked off, remembering. He shuddered. “I got a vid from the advance squad. Another hammer warrior. But this one had a slab on his back. I wish I knew how they carried all this mass! But yeah, just a slab of metal, strapped like a backpack. He had holed up in a room and had unstrapped it, put it down, and was hammering it when we arrived. He was grunting and said - from the translation - ‘Egging Aatlantian osmium’.”

Zonap looked up from this tablet to look at the camera. “Don’t know what Aatlantian means, osmium’s a mineral, very hard. The plate of it looked very old.”

“Anyway, just as we piled in and tried to signal it to surrender, it actually cracked the slab. It then turned to us and said ‘Shoggoth time! This is going to be fun.” Zonap took a deep breath. ”’Fun.’ Egging Thirders.”

“As we watched, this sort of… semi-organic brown matter started oozing out of the crack. It was a tiny crack, too - maybe a mil wide and a meter long, but the more goo leaked out, the faster it appeared. Then the goo started to expand. By the time it had filled half the chamber, we had issued a general retreat. We had troops mostly off when our mass indicators showed a major incursion. There were serrated tentacles punching holes in everything. Also, any time a tent got close to anything organic, it just sort of… sucked the chemical energy out of it.”

Dram worked his console and brought up a picture and sent it back. “Did it look sort of look like this?” The pic was a drawing of a building-sized Eldritch beast the Cyph’d called a Shoth, taken from the Cyphipope’s own vision journals.

“Yeah,” Captain Zonap said. “More tentacles and more brown than green. I guess it piled in through some kind of quantum link or… I dunno. Micro-tunnel? But within seconds, this thing massed more than the ship. I decided evac was impossible, so I ordered emergency explosive separation. The supply ship was ejected along with the squads of boarding parties, but the.. the Shoth got a couple of tents attached to the Frond Gazer and then pulled the supply vessel back into contact, crushing it into the hull.”

“I realized we were done for, so I ordered general evac and set the fusion reactor to overload. Me and about a dozen others got away before the whole thing blew. Thankfully, it seemed to destroy everything.”

Captain Qgg bobbed and said, “You did the right thing. Tactical assessment?”

Zonap thought for a moment, frowning, then said, “It felt desperate to me. I don’t think the Thirders have a lot of ships. I think they were trying to get outside the cordon, maybe capture one of our ships, figuring they could use it. They almost did. They can’t fight a war of attrition. I don’t think you should expect a lot of resistance.”

As the captain continued to relate details, Dram compared the scans being sent to the Cyph’d historical records. He then sent an encrypted message back to the GCD basically saying the Thirders were insane and summoning Eldritch abominations as suicide bombs.

His response came a few moments later.

“AVOID DIRECT ENGAGEMENT AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE. ASTEROID BOMBING MAXIMUM PRIORITY. LONG DISTANCE RAIL BOMBARDMENT SECOND HIGHEST PRIORITY.”

Dram sent word to the Tug Fleet to step up operations and get ready to move some rock.