Yaga took a deep calming breath, as she crossed her arms and took a confident stance.

It had been weeks since the convention and the little incident her daughter had been involved in. Weeks of plotting, planning and establishment of rules and boundaries. Including using up favors to destroy the little pathetic weasel that had dared touch even a single hair on her daughter’s head. She would have torn off his head and shoved it up his own ass if it wasn’t for Aitana, sweet, beautiful, incredibly sexy Aitana.

Regardless, that foolish boy had been punished to the fullest extent of the law, and his corrupt cop uncle had been hauled off the force with a mere whisper. Anyone who touched her family, her clan, would burn. That incident had pushed her own paranoia back into play, and she knew it was needed this time. She was of Fire after all, while most could learn all the Elements, there was always one that was theirs at the most fundamental and firmamental of levels.

Her daughter and herself were both Fire, while her wife was in her spirit that of Earth. Solid, dependable, stubborn. In the earliest days of human civilization, they had been divided into the four elements, but over thousands of years…

Things change.

So she had decided to make contact with some old friends, many were hard to reach, or unreliable. But there were a select few who could help them when prompted. So she walked to the location she had marked out for her old friend to arrive on, and smiled sharply at the shuttle, shaped like a jagged cockroach made of smooth blue and white metal.

Yaga grinned as she sensed a source of heat creeping up behind her, and tilted her neck and head to face her ‘ambusher’.

“Hello Niji.” A heavy and muscular figure emerged from the brush of the old growth forest. To some Niji would have looked like a demon, a monster ready to pluck her and drag her into the Spirit World. But they were none of those things, Niji was a chitta and one of her closest friends.

Niji had a shape that resembled an upright beetle, though he had a thick mammalian hide colored black with reddish tones along his hump along with his thick mane of crimson hair. His head was robust and square shaped, then he pulled back his lips, revealing the horizontal mandibles strong enough to cut steel. He wore a robe that billowed along his frame, and she grinned.

“I interrupted a vacation day didn’t I?” She winced at his nod, she had asked him to come, but it was still a faux pas among his people. Vacations and days of rest were sacred for his people.

“I do not mind, not for a great name, for a Lord of Fire, and for a dear friend.” Yaga felt warmer at his reply, the chitta basking in the sun as she stepped just outside her personal space. She let her inner fire out, letting her friend soak in her power, her birthright without a second thought. “There is a bond of loyalty between us that can’t be easily broken.”

“There’s a threat within the Solar Alliance, and I fear my daughter won’t be safe even within the bounds of Gnomon College.” She was honest, and her hands were gripped tightly onto her dress.

Niji grunted, a low pitched chitter that rocked her bones. “You fear for your clan then, for your kin?”

“There’s something on the rise, the second Enkidu… they’re even more dangerous, and Cosmogony is no better. The Astaran Empire is fracturing and everyone knows it, from a star nation eight hundred billion strong to a mere fifth of that with dozens of breakaways colonies and lesser nations. It’s a feeling in the air, my gut is telling me change is coming.”

“There have been whispers among the outer colonies of my people,” Niji admitted with a ugly clack of his mandibles. “Sensor echoes, more dark spirits, more rifts and signs of Unbalance. The kanaloaa have started building up more planetary defense grids, as if they’re… afraid.”

Yaga knew that tone wasn’t typical for Niji, he was a chitta warrior after all. So it meant whatever was coming was serious enough to disturb even him. She inclined her head, then rose higher to gesture to her friend. He walked in step with her, and away from the ship, into the forest around them.

Heavy and tall red-oaks, gigantic pillars of wood reinforced by iron, covered in eye-like spots that were the characteristic of the red-oak trees. She pushed out her inner fire further out, spreading it to better express her passion, to bare her soul to her friend, her clan.

Twenty one years ago she had met Niji, when she had recovered her form and wandered the stars with Aitana, going on adventures most would have not survived. From the hazardous firelands of Big Demon, to the asteroid colonies of the Dark Rim.

“My daughter, I’m so proud of the kid,” She felt her sharp fingernails embed themselves in her tough skin. “If it wasn't for her condition, she’d be one of the strongest channelers in the town outside of her old mom. She’s learned how to use outside fire in ways even I have some difficulty with, and her healing is excellent. She’s a good all-around engineer, and her knowledge of applied metaphysics is good for her age.” She wasn’t an unparalleled genius, but Tess was a child of a great name, and that meant something even in the age of the starship.

It was in the blood of all the people of Fire, regardless of nationality and ethnicity and religion, regardless of species. It manifested in different ways yes, but she taught her daughter everything they could because she deserved to shine.

But she knew her daughter had a few deficiencies that weren’t so easy to change, because of her heritage. She didn’t get people in a normal way, she had a different way of perceiving the world, and Yaga knew she was the same for more than one reason. It wasn’t anything wrong with her, it was simply the way she was and Yaga wouldn’t want her any other way.

But it left her vulnerable, Theresa was a great name but she knew little about what that truly meant in this day and age. She had to be taught if she was going to spread her wings and fly.

She’s a strong child, I know that, Yaga rationalized. She’ll tear down barriers with her own two hands, she’ll fight with every scrap of her being, with every part of her soul. She’s Fire, she’s Earth, but she needs guidance.

Niji clasped her shoulder with a booming laugh. “I’ll do what I must Yaga, I want to see how far your daughter will go.”

Good.

Gather, and throw.

Flame snapped around her, outside of her own body. It was not the internally sourced flame most fire channelers could manage, it was outside, linking the flames with her own energy and her own heart. Tess had spent weeks practicing the forms and the internal mantras to better control the Element.

To those unprepared it was a dangerous technique, controlling their own fire was one thing, bending the wild and living flames of the world was a more difficult task.

But for me it’s not so hard to connect my heart with the flames. I speak to them every day anyway.

The earliest forms of channeling were at least as old as civilization if not older, dating back to the earliest advent of writing. The People of the Sun and Moon, Fire and Water. Barely any records survived from so long ago, the channeling arts meandered from the far west to the mid east and the people of Earth were born on the steppes and harsh lands of Asu, and at the top of the world and along the windy plains Air was born.

But it was the peoples of the East that turned channeling into a science.

At least that was how the legends go.

Fire channelers first learned how to bend external fire, how to dance with the flames of life itself. It was one of the reasons her channeling wasn’t completely useless, and it helped that her own spirit, her own soul worked better with certain ways of manipulating fire. The way of the wave, the way of the ocean clans, of the wokou.

Centuries ago, her ancestors were masters of the sea and ocean, the fierce pirate lords of the southern coast. Who had fought the invaders from the west with vicious abandon, and violence. There were many stories like that on Terre, like the Sky Lords of Asu, the nomadic air channelers who rode on flying beasts and conquered two continents, from the beasts of the southern pole, who could wash away cities with flood and tsunamis. At least in the stories.

She gathered a flame from a brush fire, and offered her rūh to fuel its passionate burning. She breathed deeply, in and out, out and in. The orange and red flames flared with gold, green and violet. Her unstable chakra pathways had become more stable from what Yaga had checked using her own fire.

It didn’t detract from her nugget of shame, her mom was one of the strongest fire channelers alive. Strong enough to outfight a hundred times her number in other channelers, she had seen her use internal fire to send people skidding forty feet without breaking a sweat. Yaga was powerful in a way she couldn’t quite comprehend as a kid, and her mother was no different despite not having channeling.

But any fighter, any person could learn to move rūh in their own body and through the things they touched. An archer could cut through the wings of a fly from five hundred meters, and cut through stone and buffeting wind, a swordsman could shatter concrete and slice through even modern armor or hit at the perfect angle. A sniper could fire a bullet from five kilometers and kill three different targets, a goddamn boomerang was a viable weapon when you could direct it with your own force of will.

Outside fire was different, but she was getting better day by day even if it might take her months or years to break through her blockage. Creating her own fire wasn’t easy, but learning to use outside fire had helped her over the years. She went from it blowing up in her face to it merely blowing up… every couple weeks.

Tess sighed, and continued her training, moving on from outside fire to… a pot of boiling water. She extended her energies, reaching out to the seeds of fire within the liquid. It wasn’t like streaming the water directly, it was two different wavelengths of the same kind of energy. She sent out a flaring sphere of boiling water, and it cut through the target of wood she had set up.

Remember your breathing exercises, remember the trinity of fire. Fuel, heat, and air. The channeler provides the air through the breath, the fuel through their rūh and the heat through the light of the sun.

She released her energy, and took the time to relax instead. It had been weeks now, and she was putting her all into practicing. While her parents committed themselves to plans of action, setting events in motion to protect her. She wasn’t an idiot after all, her parents had hidden themselves for a reason. But that veil wouldn’t last forever. They had taught her what they could both in and outside of school, science, mathematics, combat, they had taught her what they knew about tactics, leading, and about the world.

She wasn’t going to be a leader of armies and nations any time soon, but smart enough to protect herself was another matter. It was just that they lacked certain resources for her issues, no shamans that weren’t dead, compromised or busy elsewhere in the galaxy.

She sat down on a fold-up chair, and grabbed a durasteel blade. She gently rubbed her nails against the metal, starting the relaxing process of filing down her nails. It took a lot to wear her nails down, and while bone was pretty cheap because of bioforges, they were… just not tough enough for her needs. Aitana didn’t have the same problem, but Yaga did so it was probably just a thing with that side of the family tree.

“I’ve already decided what I’m going to do,” She spoke to a particular spirit, a silver one, a mere wisp extended out by an incomprehensible projector of golden light “You warned me that day didn’t you? Led me to that astaran to protect her, why?”

There was an answer, one Tess could barely understand, and that pissed her off. By the gods it was that frustrating.

“…” She blinked, mounting the words of the spirits.

“It will let there be a tomorrow? I don’t understand.”

The spirits gave her no ready answers but the ones she had already learned.

Fasah Mogu had lived a rather charmed life, but that was generally the way of her people. Their people were of Water and Void, Community and Family was in their blood, etched into the very essence of their being with the first while the latter was Connection and Expression. It was the answer to questions and questions themselves, the bind and breach of the Elements. Her people called Void by another name.

Spirit, the element of the soul.

Connection was not that of family, of community, or at least that was not all it was. It was the boundary, it was how the world was defined. People of Void were more observant, keepers of secret knowledge, readers of the web of the universe. Thus for the khemin, their bonds were of family bound to the mission of knowledge and secrets, they were a more individual people than those of Water alone.

She had limited control of the element of Air, but her strongest element was in Void and Water. It was a very powerful combination, and it fit the essence of her own species. Her species were odd, she remembered their species were similar to certain composite organisms like lichen. A mix of opportunistic fungus, crystalline corals, and plantlike clusters of moss.

One of their natural abilities was the ability to alter their own biology because their own cells are fully functional genetic computers. Complex gene switches were used to detect biological signals, programmed to scan for certain biomarkers and release specific proteins and molecules. That included altering their shape at will, though that ability was… enhanced by internal water channeling.

Fasah smiled as humans did, as she pulled on the energies of her soul and directed it into the water making up her own body. Push and pull, inflow to outflow.

She retracted one of her short sets of wings, her flesh being pulled like taffy by her own power. Fasah had an important meeting to attend, and one she was very much ready for.

“Uncle? Are you there?” Fasah couldn’t sense him, but then again her uncle had always been stealthy— “Guh?”

She couldn’t breath as she was suddenly crushed against a rock solid chest, and she could feel his crystal bones jab into her squishy body. She laughed, jabbing at his hard plated chest with a rush of heat to her cap.

Her uncle was Amanita Soma, brother of her broodmother and kith to her father. He spun her around once before gently placing her on the ground.

“Dearest Mogu, have you had to deal with someone who’s said something astoundingly stupid?”

She laughed, almost coughing her breathing sacs out. “No… but I have made a potential friend.”

Amanita blinked, tilting his squat flat head. “Oh… you’ve felt the Calling haven’t you?”

“Yes, my yatra is at hand, and it seems I’ve been quite lucky. A child of Fire has caught my eye, she’s a strong and noble soul.” It wasn’t the power that pulled at her, it was the warmth and compassion, the safety within her range.

“Are you certain?” Her uncle sounded worried and she smiled last

“Quite.” She turned away, looking over the reddish plains of her home and then steeled her gaze for the burning glare of Arlakha, the wrathful sun her people called home.

She had a good feeling about Terre, that was all.

Compendium Entry (Ships & Vehicles): Human Military Ship Classifications

O-D-P Ratio: Offense-Defense-Propulsion is the ratio used for SA warships, the relative trade-off between weapons, defenses and propulsion. This ratio determines the type of a ship within the fleet, from the smallest to the largest. Cutters and corvettes have more dedicated propulsion than they do defense or offense, Frigates and Destroyers are evenly split between propulsion and offense and have somewhat reduced defense. Cruisers are balanced between all three, but can vary wildly from the ‘ideal’ ratio depending on their needs. Battleships and Dreadnought have a far higher offense, greater defense, and lower propulsion, built around their weapons, and with extremely powerful shields, and more middling velocity and maneuverability.

Cutters and Corvettes: The smallest and least significant of the ship classes, primarily used as police ships. Cutters are glorified police ships, modified civilian models retrofitted with weapons and stronger barriers. They function well as escorts for frigates and as interception platforms for civilian ships or transports. Corvettes are larger and are more a political class of ship, used as escorts in peaceful systems to maintain territorial claims on the cheap. They will have more advanced point defense and medium cannons. Both classes are system limited and can’t independently travel through rails. A cutter is between 20-60 meters while a corvette is 50-100 meters. Naming conventions can vary.

Frigates and Destroyers: A frigate is the smallest ship-of-the-line produced by most nations, small, maneuverable and technologically sophisticated ships used for screening larger vessels, as escorts and for patrol work. While a frigate is typically less powerful pound for pound than larger capital ships, it also reduces the strain on the drive core and allows for greater endurance when scouting. Generally between 100-200 meters in length. Typically named after locations.

Destroyers are super-heavy frigates, built to 75% of a cruiser’s size and mass and with greater mass and armor and more broadside cannon and point defense.

Cruiser: The backbone of a fleet, middle-weight combatants more heavily armed than destroyers and frigates yet more maneuverable than battleships and larger ships of the line. They are a catch-all term for what amounts to a half dozen classes of ship from all around gun platforms to glass cannons and support ships. Cruisers are the bulk of the mass of the Alliance fleet, and able to tank attacks that their smaller cousins can not. They’re viable as patrol vessels, but that tends to apply to navies with a higher cruiser ratio in their fleet like the astaran. Cruisers vary from 400-700 meters in length.

Battleship: The veritable prince of the outer engagement envelope, the smaller cousins of the feared dreadnought. They form the majority of the ships of the wall, with their larger cousins serving as heavier stiffening formations to the wall of the fleet bubble. Battleships typically vary from 800-1000 meters in length.

Dreadnought: If the battleship is the prince, the dreadnought is the queen of the battle bubble, heavily armored, heavily shielded monsters capable of destroying dozens of ships from tens of thousands of kilometers. The ultimate warship, serving as command center, supply depot and overkill military transport. Only another dreadnought, heavy weapons platform or multiple battleships can even begin to rival the power of a single dreadnought. Dreadnoughts are typically between 1000-1800 meters with the largest class being upwards of three thousand meters. Each is individually named by the member state that funded it.