Strategies

(Starspeak)

From the Vorak’s perspective, we imagined it would have been quite a juxtaposition. Seeing the Warlock drop into battle, ready to burn both field and foe to a crisp…

…Only for her to immediately begin swatting the hell out of my face.

“Ow! Ow, stop it! Ow!” I protested.

Coalescence removed the need for words. So mine were in vain twice over.

This might be the stupidest thing I’d ever done. Past grudges with Itun didn’t matter. I couldn’t just try to kill someone unprovoked. I had people counting on me. Responsibilities.

Nai said.

I beamed at Donnie and Johnny.

Donnie said. He was so far away up the beach…

How far had the fight carried us?

Nai gave me a questioning glance.

I admitted.

she told the Puppies.

I ordered.

Thankfully, Donnie didn’t make any more jokes and kept his distance. I might have really scared them going off sans warning.

My heart was still pounding too hard. Local gravity literally weighed my blood down, and without the adrenaline pumping, I was crashing hard.

Seeing Itun had set me off, and my adrenaline had been pumping right up until Coalescing with Nai hit me like a splash of cold water. Both of us flashed back to the moment when Nai’s own anger had spiked and gotten the better of her.

The mental whiplash was too much.

I was still so angry at Itun just for existing, but my own superconnector forced Nai’s perspective on me anyway. He might have killed innocent people, tried to take me prisoner and drag me back to whatever hole he cared to…

But I’d already beaten him the first time.

The last time I’d laid on eyes on the waste of oxygen was with a bag over his head when he was hauled off in irons. I hadn’t kept tabs on him once he was a Coalition prisoner. He must have been traded back, just like Lorel had.

I said, lecturing both of us.

she agreed.

A better response would have been to simply be surprised and derisive. Itun was a murderer. I didn’t need to be nice, but I was responsible for my crew now. No matter how much he deserved it, I shouldn’t have attacked him.

But damn I still wanted to…

Across from us on the beach, Macoru and Mavriste were both still wary, clad in their two different cloaks of colored plasma. Even on the tail end of our Coalescence, I could feel Nai’s curiosity about their skills.

Nai tapped a boot to the red hot glass she’d formed on the beach, pushing her cascade into it. A moment later the molten sand cooled in an instant, leaving a mishmash of round colored glass.

My adrenaline crash caught up to me in full and my legs gave out under me. Plopping down on the beach, I raised both my hands in a casual surrender.

“” I called out. “”

The two Big Bear furfish traded a glance, and now that I was calmed down a hair, I caught their psionic exchange.

Macoru asked in Tarassin.

Mavriste replied.

Mavriste agreed.

Macoru just rolled their eyes and shoved Mavriste’s shoulder good-naturedly.

It was only then that the two Vorak dismissed the cloaks of plasma they’d donned. Nai relaxed a hair at that too.

No more violence.

Without the mysterious plasma, I got a proper look at their features too.

They were both surprising tall for Vorak, their eyes coming up just an inch short of mine. Physically, their builds were almost identical, on the thinner side for Vorak, but if you transposed the same limbs onto a human they’d be just barely on this side of bulky.

Rock climber’s physique, I decided.

Macoru wore dark black fur—almost matte—with it lightening to tan under their chin. But they also decorated the thicker clumps of their fur with dye, making little patches of green and blue on their otherwise dark fur.

Mavriste’s fur was much lighter and splotchier, ranging from plain brown, to warm tan, all the way to burnt ginger seemingly at random. But each color blended so faintly into the next it didn’t give off any patchwork vibe.

Both of them had small metal trinkets braided into their fur…were those nails? Or bullet casings?

the Middle Bear, ‘Vo’, replied.

I glared at Itun as Vo helped him up and continued to do so as they walked back the way they’d came.

Nai touched my head and prodded my eyes away from them though.

“Yeah, yeah…” I muttered.

“Proper introductions?” Nai asked as the Vorak approached. “Err—do you know Starspeak?”

“Yes,” Mavriste assured her. “We both ‘speak star’, if you will.”

“Shut up…” Macoru complained.

I stayed seated on the sand—not to be rude, but to keep myself in a non-violence-ready position. Based on a crash course in Vorak etiquette from Peudra, I also made sure to cut in and introduce myself first.

“Hello. My name is Caleb Hane. This is my friend Nai Cal-Yan-Ti. Umm…sorry about…you know.”

“Trying to kill our rak?” Mavriste snorted.

“Yeah. Not my finest moment.”

“Perhaps,” they conceded. “But it did make a vivid first impression.”

“First impression’s a lasting one,” Macoru added, giving me an accusing stare.

But…not an angry one.

They were, I realized, trying to be funny. Or at least light-hearted. I’d done that a few times too, mocking whichever Vorak had been trying to kill me at the time. Being on the receiving end of it was too strange for words.

The two of them finally cracked faint smiles, and offered me a hand to pull myself up.

“Thanks,” I said, “but I’m actually good down here for now. I gotta rest. Still new on this planet, and my heart is pounding a bit too fast. I overdid it in more ways than one.”

Their smiles became less faint.

I must have looked really pathetic just sitting on the sand, chest heaving.

“Well, I am Mavriste. This is my sister Macoru.”

Nai raised an eyebrow.

“Mononyms? Sister, not sibling?” she asked.

“We aren’t from the Vastest Sea,” Mavriste explained. “Not every Vorak culture cleaves to the impersonal and formal.”

“Though most do,” Macoru conceded.

“I’m a little surprised you guys know Starspeak,” I said. “Our Vorak friend said it wasn’t a popular language on the homeworld.”

“Amongst the public, it isn’t,” Macoru agreed. “But Starspeak is the language of choice for diplomats and soldiers everywhere.”

“…Government agents too, I bet.” Agent Avi had spoken it fluently.

“Sure.”

“I think before any other conversation can proceed, we need to ask ourselves what our course of action is regarding what just happened,” Mavriste said, gesturing to the strewn up beach around us.

Glancing at the pavilion where things had actually broken out…actually, it was untouched. I’d exited the pavilion quickly, but I vaguely remembered setting off at least one kinetic bomb inside. But it seemed someone had shielded the structure from damage. Damn, was Mavriste really that good?

“Hey Warlock, the only real damage to the beach is this glass, and that’s really from after the fight ended…” Macoru pointed out. “So, really, there’s no forensic evidence any fight took place at all.”

“You want to cover up the evidence?” I asked, incredulously. “There’s a national law-enforcement office not half a mile from here.”

“What, you want to wind up in jail for a stupid stunt like that?” the otter snorted.

“No, but just a few days ago I was on Vaco fighting my own people to get in line because one of them shot someone and the law needed to make an example.”

“Oh, we actually heard about that,” Mavriste said. “Media said no one died.”

“Yes, but some humans were still jailed as a symbolic punishment. So Caleb’s not going to like the idea of dodging a punishment he’s by all rights earned,” Nai elaborated. “That said, I think he’s an idiot. Will Itun press charges—or actually, is he in a legal position to able to press charges?”

“Legal? Possibly,” Mavriste said. “But personally? No. As a matter of fact, I will speak for him when I say, there won’t be any charges pressed.”

“I guess I can hold off on why he’s here until later,” I said, finally pulling myself to my feet. “But I was led to believe Vorak authorities were sticklers for procedure and laws. Even if your guy doesn’t press charges…”

“That might be true in principle, but in practice? No one got hurt, and there’s no witnesses really. It was a short fight. Authorities in this town could not be bothered to press this,” Mavriste said.

“No witnesses? That can’t possibly—” Except, when I looked around…this wasn’t a tourist beach. There really were no otters milling about nearby. We’d agreed on the spot strictly because of its proximity to both the marinas our ships were being kept on.

It was warehouses and defunct spaceport hangars immediately next to the beach. The closest onlookers were almost a mile up the coastline.

“Caleb,” Nai looked me in the eye. “For now at least? [No harm, no foul.]”

“…Fine,” I said.

“We’re not nice enough to spare you entirely though,” Macoru said. “Clean up the beach. We can talk while we work.”

“Concealing evidence of a crime?” I asked. “What kind of religious leaders are you?”

“Spectacular ones,” they bragged.

“Alright, stand back,” Nai said. “I’ll grind the glass back into sand.”

She corralled me away from the radius she’d melted before materializing a massive box from underneath the glass. The walls grew upward to ultimately encase the entire structures, and within a few moments, the sound of heavy machinery rumbled to life inside.

“[What the hell did you do?]” I asked, touching her creation. Mechanized devices were Madeline’s forte, not Nai’s…

Nai collaborated and trained with the Puppies even more regularly than with me nowadays, but still.

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Pushing my cascade through the solid workings revealed Nai had indeed created some massive gears within the container, turning them with a hilariously crude—but powerful—steam engine. Each gear caught chunks of glass between its teeth and crushed them into millions of tiny shards. Further turning of the mechanism saw the shards of glass caught in smaller gears, grinding them down.

Surely it wouldn’t grind the glass all the way back to sand though. Nai couldn’t materialize objects thinner than a centimeter even on a good day.

It wasn’t until she let the machine run for a few minutes and dissolved the walls did I see her trick that my cascade didn’t capture.

Along with the machine, she materialized water laden with an abrasive that spilled out in all directions, giving us a head start on restoring the beach.

“You improvised this?” I asked, bewildered. I knew Nai didn’t run Suite buildplate, so she had limited psionic aid in plotting the design.

“Madeline has a rare grasp of mechanical principles,” Nai shrugged.

“Very nice,” Mavriste agreed, inspecting the remains of her machine.

The two Vorak had watched Nai’s process intently. I once again chastised myself for not paying closer attention to their psionics.

They weren’t just good at Adeptry. The fact that I couldn’t immediately peer through their firewalls was proof.

I could still catch their transmissions easily, but if I wasn’t paying attention, I wouldn’t be able to unravel their encryption method.

“I was wondering when you’d start paying attention to that,” Nai said, holding out a rake for me.

“What’s your evaluation?” I asked.

Nai looked out at the other small divots and dents our battle had left on the beach. I could see her piece the progression of the fight together in her mind—partially from having gleaned my own memories, but still. She had a talent for battle.

“They’re both exceptional,” she said. Almost admiringly. “But you knew that already.”

True.

True to their word too, Mavriste and Macoru materialized rakes of their own.

“You don’t usually compliment the people that try to kill me,” I prodded.

“Oh please, if they had tried to kill you, we both know you’d be dead.”

“Grr…No need to rub it in.”

“Caleb, I feel like you’re missing the coolest part of this,” Nai pointed out, gesturing to Mavriste and Macoru still raking within earshot.

“What?”

She gestured again, adding a psionic ‘pointer’.

“Look!”

“At their constructs?”

“They’re running Spellbook!” she gushed. It caught me off guard. For all that she and I called her psionic talents ‘middling’, her enthusiasm for the field was a match for my own.

But looking closer, the two Missionary Marines were, in fact, running unique buildplates. She was right too. Not just any buildplate, but the combat-specialized Spellbook.

That was one we hadn’t distributed very much at all.

“Hang on—what version of Spellbook are you guys running?” I asked them.

“Two point, one point…four,” Mavriste answered.

“Two point one?” I asked. “That’s…so old!”

“Why do you think I’m so excited?” Nai said. “Their modifications are custom, but they’re following convergent developmental processes.”

I could count on one hand the number of non-Flotilla personnel who’d successfully modified a buildplate to compete.

Looking closer at the twins’ psionics, another point stood out. They hid it well, but even if I hadn’t been paying close attention during our fight, they couldn’t disguise the lingering traces…

Both Macoru and Mavriste had colossal dark phantoms looming in the back of their mind.

Superconstructs.

Both of them.

“I understand why I have absolutely no legs to stand on right now,” I said, “but I want to talk about what those do later.”

I pinged both superconstructs for emphasis. If they were impressed by my detecting them clean through their firewalls, they didn’t show it.

“We’re curious about your psionics too,” Macoru said. “Your firewall is better than anyone I’ve ever seen.”

“It should be,” Nai said. “He invented it.”

I complained.

Nai reminded me.

“That only makes me more curious about your constructs,” Mavriste said. “You weren’t so diligent earlier. I didn’t get much of a peek, but I saw you don’t run a buildplate. But our esteemed Warlock here is—only it’s not one I’ve seen before.”

Buildplates were an interesting category of psionics we’d developed as more and more of the Flotilla upgraded its technology and methods in response to the new possibilities of psionics. Networking different constructs in your mind together often became more optimal than keeping each module totally separate in your mind.

But tying many different creations together required some kind of stabilizing element, something broader that could be used as a foundation.

Mavriste was right that Nai ran a buildplate, but hers wasn’t some new custom job. It was the original: my radar.

Instead of compacting it for space, we’d experimented with the opposite; broadening the abstract structure in her mind and using its stable and familiar interface as a backbone to support other constructs.

A plate on which to build, if you may.

The Puppies liked implying buildplates were a bit like miniature superconstructs, but that wasn’t at all accurate. And as long as they hadn’t managed to make super psionics of their own? Jordan and I were happy to gatekeep that label.

“Which buildplates have you seen?” I asked casually.

“Oh, the common ones. Spellbook, Suite, Ballet Block,” Mavriste listed casually. Those were the three biggest ones the Flotilla had produced and distributed. “…Chronicle.”

I paused my raking at that one.

“Chronicle?”

“It expands on sensory-recording psionics,” Mavriste said. “You haven’t heard of it?”

“I think you made it up,” I said.

“That does sound like something my brother would do,” Macoru agreed.

Sensory recording psionics existed. I’d pioneered them. But they were too finicky to be expanded into a buildplate. Using them for prolonged periods of time involved using your psionics to force you self to pay attention to details so they could be encoded accurately into psionic form. And it just wasn’t feasible to do that perpetually.

The point of a buildplate was that it provided some form of utility that could be tolerated perpetually.

If someone had figured out a way around that problem, I wanted to know.

“What about you?” Mavriste asked. “You aren’t running Spellbook or Suite.”

“I’m a rare case,” I said. “I don’t benefit from using the plate.”

“…Implying that you’re capable of their functions without them,” Mavriste followed.

“Sort of?” I admitted. “I use blueprints for certain creations I need fast—a lot like Spellbook lets you. But I also make designs quick—”

“—Just like Suite lets you,” Mavriste nodded.

“Yeah.”

Talking shop was all well and good while we raked sand, but there was still the elephant in the room—err…on the beach.

Once the beach looked as good as when we’d arrived, the four of us reconvened to the original pavilion.

“We still aren’t going to press charges,” Macoru led, “but since I wasn’t there at the beginning, I’d like to know exactly what happened.”

“Curious about that myself,” Nai glared at me.

“Not much to tell,” I said. “I saw Itun and lost it.”

Mavriste cocked his head curiously, but Macoru wasn’t done.

“That’s it? Not even going to try defending your reaction?”

“No,” I said honestly. “It’s not defensible.”

“Good,” she nodded approvingly. “So what about him exactly sets you off?”

And wasn’t that a very long and involved story?

“You have some personal history with Itun,” Mavriste said. Not a question.

“He tried to kill—” I bit my tongue. Itun actually hadn’t try to kill me, merely drag me off to who knows where. “—a friend of mine.”

“They didn’t try to kill you?”

“He tried to do worse to me,” I clarified.

“Ah,” the rak said, like that was all they needed to hear.

“I’d appreciate details,” Macoru said. “His presence in the Missionary Marines is allowed on conditions. He’s supposed to demonstrate progress to reformation. We’ve never met anyone before who knew more about what he’s done than we did.”

“Specifically, Itun killed a friend of ours who was protecting Caleb all so he could capture Caleb,” Nai explained.

“Was it a military action?”

“In theory, yes. In practice, no. We were in an Organic Authority facility under truce with an officer from the Deep Coils. This was just a few months into First Contact, and Caleb needed medical expertise that the Org had. Itun’s team assaulted the facility on other grounds and added Caleb to their list of priority targets. We tried to negotiate—I mean ‘we’ the Coalition, Org, and the Deep Coils officer. But Itun’s commanding officer merely pantomimed negotiation. They were one of the most bloodthirsty rak I’ve ever come across.”

Macoru’s eyebrows rose.

Coming from Nai? Those words carried weight.

“Itun’s squad hadn’t identified their primary target yet. But as soon as they had an opening, they started killing people who they thought even might qualify,” Nai said. “One of the Coalition soldiers protecting Caleb was killed when Itun led some rak to capture Caleb.”

“He failed,” I said. “I defeated him then. Turned him over to the Coalition as a prisoner. I assume he was traded back at some point?”

“When he came to us, he was a prisoner of war from a fleet that no longer existed,” Mavriste said. “He has been vague about his knowledge of humans before, but he did at least admit his background with humans was not a peaceful one.”

“Hah,” I scoffed. “His team didn’t just try to kill their targets. That Coils officer? Itun’s squad killed two of them too, trying to control who got to report on the aftermath.”

“I see,” Mavriste nodded. “He’s implied that I underestimated his past sins, but I doubted that judgement until now.”

“Wait, what do you mean the fleet doesn’t exist anymore?” I asked.

“Oh, you didn’t hear about that?” Nai asked.

“What? No.”

“Four months ago the Prowler Fleet dissolved,” Mavriste said. “Civilian murder, profiteering, and desecration. Its entire command structure is being traded to the Coalition or prosecuted in the Assembly’s High Court.”

“You almost sound happy,” I noted.

“They might be Vorak, and we might be from Kraknor, but we aren’t the fondest of the Assembly,” Mavriste said. “But even if we were, it doesn’t take much of a moral compass to decry what the Prowlers have done.”

“War and peace are our business too,” Macoru said. “We’ve never left the homeworld, but we still keep tabs on warfare throughout the cosmos. I’ve heard the Coalition is likely to reclaim the whole of C2 and C9.”

“I couldn’t say one way or the other,” Nai said diplomatically.

Macoru just hummed thoughtfully.

“I wasn’t sure how to explain what it is you guys do,” I said. “How did you cross paths with someone like Itun?”

“Please,” Mavriste snorted. “Itun is hardly the worst reprobate in our troops.”

“I thought you guys were something like an armed charity,” I frowned. “You jump into the middle of wars and help out—actually…then why are you here now? Last time I checked this planet was relatively peaceful.”

“Relatively,” Mavriste nodded. “But there’s always evil brewing somewhere.”

“We jump into the middle of disasters,” Macoru added. “Wars included, but we’re in the region right now in anticipation of seasonal storms. Meteorological studies say they’re going to hit especially bad the next few months.”

“So why Itun?” I asked. “Why would you take ‘reprobates’ even worse than him?”

“That’s…a complicated question. Tell me, Caleb Hane, on your planet, what is the purpose of justice?” Mavriste asked.

“…To right wrongs,” I said, careful to keep my answer simple and comprehensive.

“Would you say that your justice is fixated on the past then? Surely it must also entail some kind of ‘preventing wrong’ as well.”

“Sure,” I said.

“That is what we do with these reprobates,” Mavriste said. “Some come to us willingly, others are sentenced to our service based on treaties and agreements. But all our welcome in our service, no matter their past crimes.”

“No matter?” I asked.

“We believe justice is best served by changing people to do less wrong in the future,” Macoru said. “Not merely by punishing those who already have.”

It was couched in alien phrasing, but I recognized the concept. Jordan had talked about retributive versus reformative justice.

Mavriste must have recognized some of my skepticism, because he beat me to the punch before I could ask my next question.

“We do get many volunteers who join in order to escape some punishment awaiting them in other justice systems,” Mavriste said. “But we make one thing very clear from the start: we do believe in punishment. Service in the Missionary Marines will not save you from the consequences of your past actions.”

“I’ve told many recruits that we simply turn you into someone decent enough to accept the consequences or you’ll die trying,” Macoru added.

“There must be many that abuse your hospitality then,” Nai said.

“Many have intended to,” Mavriste said.

“Few have succeeded,” his sister added.

“All are welcome to try.”

Mavriste spoke low and slow. Deadly serious.

Holy crap.

My initial reaction to them had been confusion. They’d been chummy with Itun, so they’d been starting from a deficit. But then I’d seen Mavriste fight to keep everyone involved alive. And that struck the chord of me that hated to kill even my enemies.

How easy was it to forget that he could have oh-so-easily turned that on its head. They might be nice, but looking at the otters now? I got a chill.

They were professional soldiers, even at the helm of a humanitarian force. If they had reason to be? These two could be stone cold killers.