Chapter Two: Those Unlucky Few

The Ultimatum of Infinity had a prettier name than hull. A building-sized slab of mundane metal, wrapped around a slew of anachronistic weapons and whatever else the military-budget allocators could ruminate on. There were tales of technologies from along the Universe’s history: teleportation-pods, hyper-matter pinpoint beams, displacement bombs, even those that defied definition in their power. Much had been lost over the aeons, in one of a seemingly unlimited number of apocalypses or extinction-events. As such, the ships of the Enfirnian battlefleet might have seemed silly to one of my ancient ancestors, like a nuclear reactor held together with twisted vines and congealed animal blood. The hull itself was basic titanium-infused ultra-carbon, something ancient and synonymous as steel, essentially caveman-tech as the humans would say. So very brittle I could feel the craft’s structure buckle with every change in velocity, like the whole thing would simply crunch apart under the cruel forces of physics. The engines were even older, horribly inefficient and oversized things, barely mustering one-fifteenth light speed. Come to think of it, they were probably doing the bulk of the nauseatingly awful turbulence, spitting out their thrust like a stubborn geyser, seemingly whenever they pleased.

Invented by my race, supposedly. Not fancy, not advanced, but cheap and easy enough to build with such limited resources. I should have felt proud of that fact. Mostly I just wanted a bucket.

The shields were newer. That, at the very least, I was thankful for. Nobody knew who’d designed them initially, some unknown, seemingly godlike race that had casually shrugged off the restrictions of the universe and disappeared in a huff. I could see it through the window when my watering eyes behaved long enough. A slight reddish tint with the occasional ripple. They repelled everything, matter, energy, even concentrated light. Only another shield could pass through, a shield of equal frequency and-

“What are you doing?” My two-mouthed acquaintance had noticed me muttering. They’d also noticed the pale tint to my face, and graciously handed me a bowl. “Praying?”

“Taking stock of the ship,” I heaved, but nothing came out. It was a feeling in my head more than my stomach.

“This ship? Ah, the Ultimatum’s a pretty bird, wouldn’t dare fall apart on us now,” they laughed and slammed the window with their claw. I inhaled before I could stop myself, imagining, just imagining, how easy it must be for someone so strong to break such feeble glass. The moment passed when I failed to die.

“It’s calming,” I say truthfully, a little embarrassed, “it reminds me there’s a hull blocking space from my lungs.”

“Say no more. We all have our little distractions,” they smiled, nudging my shoulder too hard.

“What’s yours?”

“Oh, singing mostly!” A jolly laughter rumbled from the bottom of their belly. “The old hymns of starlight! Someone has to keep that flame burning!”

"He does keep it burning,” the muscular female human sitting in front of me chimed in. The room was so narrow that her knees had been almost touching mine this whole time. “That’s why his lungs sound like they’ve been charred to soot.”

“Ah, humans,” my acquaintance winked at me, “never heard a real song in their lives!”

“Clearly you’ve never heard the Whistling of Prizidia,” the human folded their arms, and I realised she was sporting a commander's badge on the breast of her armour, “nothing made me cry ‘till I heard it. I was seventeen.”

To my surprise, the two-mouthed creature beside me started to sing, a high-pitched tone that twinged the hair on my neck.

“Oh, there’s no place for me but Prizidia,

Not a world, not a place, not a star-”

Their second mouth joined in, this time a lower-pitched soulful tone.

“But you’re leaving so soon, dear sweet Lydia,

where you once stood will feel like a scar!”

They looked across the rows of soldiers, expecting applause, or even jeering, but most weren’t paying attention.

“Like I said,” the commander smiled coyly, “lungs burnt to ash.”

“Ah, wouldn’t want to sing no human songs anyway,” the singer waved their hand dismissively, cheeks tinted bright indigo.

“I liked it,” I said with a shrug. I hadn’t heard singing in a while, let alone joyous singing, and it made for a nice change. The singer broke into half-moon grins of razor-sharp teeth.

“You,” they said, “are a being of immaculate taste.”

“They chose to be on this flying death-trap,” said the human, “I think they’re taste-impaired as the rest of us.”

The singer laughed again.

“Tell me, friend,” his claw grasped my shoulder, hard enough to leave marked, clearly ignorant of his own strength, or perhaps my weakness, “how did you come to be part of my audience? What drew you to this merry place?”

“Poor judgement,” said the human, “I can only assume.”

“I,” I said, planning to trail off, only to find the others still awaiting my answer, “I was looking for something worthwhile.”

“I know that feeling,” the singer grinned, baring two sets of pearly teeth, “my people were fierce warriors, back in the old times. Entire galaxies were ours for the taking!”

“Entire galaxies you conquered,” the human spat, “the Vendorian Empire spanned two billion years, each more depraved than the last.”

“And you humans, you never conquered, never killed? As I recall, there used to be an Andromeda Galaxy, no?”

“They wanted to crash their galaxy into us! We were only defending ourselves!” The human’s cheeks reddened furiously, “and there aren’t any galaxies left anyway.”

“Exactly!” The singer splayed their hands, “water under the proverbial bridge.”

“There aren’t many bridges left either.”

“Well, this one’s proverbial.” They turned their head back towards me, “what were you doing before this ship?”

“A mechanic.”

“Life support?”

“Yes, but not just that. General ship-repair, that’s what I did.”

“Ah, say no more.”

Enfirnia had a population of twenty-billion individuals on its surface, packed into super-dense cities with skyscrapers tickling the boundaries of space. Some children were born at the top and never bothered to set foot outside for the rest of their lives, spending their entire existences within a few levels of the same superstructure. Many were either the last of their kind, or one of a small group of remaining few. Whilst I had spent my fair amount of time outside, my own life hadn’t been too different. Not in one of the starscrapers though, but within one of the orbital space habitats, where a further ten-billion lived, most of them docked to a space elevator. During the great inward-push, millions of ships had cast off from home in search of the last remaining systems, and eventually, the last remaining star. Of those vessels that survived, most still sat in orbit, forming a mismatched jigsaw of technology from thousands of races. My own great-great grand-parent, had stowed away on a Plalvian freighter, and generations later I’d found myself still sleeping in the very same bed, maintaining the very same ship.

“You could have joined the engineering corps,” the human suggested, “could’ve been a real asset.”

“I wanted something different. Something nobody else has done.”

“Different from me, I think,” the singer chuckled, “I just wanted to go down with a weapon in my hands. The last Vendorii should die no other way!”

“What’s your name?” I asked, and before I realised what I was about to say, “I’ve just been thinking of you as ‘the singer’ this whole conversation.”

Their mouths slackened for a moment, eyes watering slightly.

“That’s probably the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me,” they said quieter than before, but seconds later he was normal again. “Ah! You really know how to butter a soldier up! Ahahahah!”

“And to answer the old lug’s question,” said the human, “their name is Konzor. Mine is Karl, if you wanted to ask.”

“Oh, they definitely didn’t,” said Konzor.

“In that case call me Dagger,” she smiled like a teacher greeting a new semester, “welcome to the force… uh…”

“I don’t have a name,” I felt the osmotic fluids tinge my face into a blush. It was the most uncomfortable topic that seemed to come up just about every day, “my race didn’t do them.”

“Did anyone ever call you anything?”

“Nothing good.”

“Greenie,” Konzor gripped my shoulder again, “I’ll call you Greenie.”

“Uh,” Dagger raised an eyebrow, “bit racist.”

“Oh!” Konzor blinked, letting go of my arm, “my apologies! My eyes aren’t really… It’s colours you see, I just don’t… I’m a bit…”

“It’s okay,” I smiled, “I don’t mind. Greenie,” I tasted the word in my mouth, and it felt different. “Greenie.”