(Starspeak)

It had taken two years and change to get everyone off the ground, but four bastions of humankind stood out in the cosmos.

There was New Nakredo Island in Sinnesana. Almost three-hundred humans had been routed there for a quarantine. Unlike other ventures, a ton of alien money had gone into the construction to keep the quarantine viable. It was probably the nicest place a human could go in lieu of Earth.

Second was the Sunless Valley on Zesistov in V9. Babuar was a Vorak system that had above and beyond in their aid to Farnata after the Razing, and the system still maintained a sizable—if concentrated—Farnata population to this day. Routing humans from that system and adjacent ones to the Farnata’s small alcove on the planet had been ideal.

And then there was the largest and most established: the Mission on Archo in C2. For all that there was a war penetrating every small corner of the cosmos, the one thing both sides seemed to agree on was to leave humans out of it. The Shirao system had become one of the most contested in the past two years, but the fighting had consistently steered away from a certain colony on Yawhere’s moon.

How considerate of them.

Finally was the Flotilla, having exploded overnight into fame and infamy equally. Controversial figures and their mobility made them the source of ever increasing rumors as they ventured from system to system.

Those were the four names that average aliens could be counted on to at least heard of. But between all of them, they only accounted for barely one-fifth of the sum of abductees. The other four-thousand abductees were still either unaccounted for, or hunkering down having carved out niches for themselves in more and more obscure alien colonies.

And this one?

This one was ultra-obscure.

Farnata systems were already sparse, but this was a lonely corner on the most barren planet in the sparsest system there was.

F4 was technically Coalition space, so this would have ordinarily been a job for Caleb and the Flotilla, but those roles were blurring as time went on, and Dustin and Nora had been in the neighborhood anyway.

And with the rumor that brought them here?

It was not something to sit on.

“You’re misunderstanding because he’s not just one of the foremost experts on Adept-made machinery,” Nora explained. “He’s singlehandedly kept this entire colony in the black for more than a decade now.”

“Okay, I get why we’re going to him then,” Jacob nodded. “But isn’t ‘entire’ a bit of an overstatement? Look at this place. There can’t be two-hundred people living here. I’m honestly shocked we didn’t see tumbleweed on the way in.”

The colony itself was so small and so old it didn’t even have a transparent canopy. There was a sharp contrast between the most used buildings and the rest. Bright fresh paint marked the handful of prefabs that saw frequent traffic. Even then, those buildings were few enough to count on one hand: the dormitory, mineshaft, workshop, and community pantry.

Every other building was dusty, rusty, both, or worse.

Dustin’s eyes narrowed on the few painted buildings. The colors were vibrant. Ostentatious. Saccharine.

Nora’d only send word ahead of their visit by a day or two. Had they painted the buildings just for them? Surely not. Why do such a half-assed job and leave so much of the place looking like the dump it probably was?

But the paint was fresh. Not still wet, but still definitely applied in the last week.

“…A kid painted this place,” he finally decided.

“It’s Adept paint,” Nora said, running her fingers across the dormitory’s wall. “You sense that?”

“No?” Dustin said.

“For a mining colony, there’s a huge number of kids here. Painting the buildings is probably something they do regularly. For fun.”

“You can sense how many kids are here? I haven’t seen three people yet,” Jacob said.

“Let’s introduce ourselves,” she said, knocking on the dormitory door.

·····

Half of their little group weren’t handling Omag’s gravity well. Serral was an experienced soldier. He’d been to more planets than the rest of them put together. It made sense that he could go from zero-G, to a healthy .65 G, and then back to a lunar .21 G in a matter of days all without showing even a little disorientation.

Shinshay’s identical lack of difficulty was less expected. They were bouncing along in the low gravity like a duck on a pond.

It left Vez and Madeline looking awfully unimpressive by comparison. The two Adepts were awkward on their feet, almost tipping over every time they had to move their feet. Unfamiliar eyes would be easily forgiven for thinking they were drunken or suffering from internal pressure imbalance.

They did not complain though. For Madeline it was matter of pride. She wasn't sure what kept Vez quiet, but the reality was the four of them were on the job. So they would endure.

Like most smaller moons, Omag’s population was concentrated into a handful of pit colonies across its surface, with a much smaller portion of its people and industry being found in the wide open wastes of the moon.

Their destination was basically the lunar equivalent of a truck stop. Only instead of gas and some fast food, there was a small shipping factory that took deliveries and blasted them into orbit using a railgun.

Every couple minutes the thing blasted a few kilograms into space. The gun was actually kept under a cylindrical air barrier almost a mile high to further limit the air resistance of Omag’s wisps of an atmosphere.

So little air made the spire eerily quiet to look at, but it was impossible to miss when it fired. You could feel it through the ground thundering like clockwork.

The factory was still operating?

A number of tents had been erected in front of the factory doors, and Madeline followed Serral’s gaze to some of the machinery visible under the tents.

Blackout curtains?

Serral said.

In addition, their captain let out a shrill psionic whistle. The four of them came to a halt well short of the doors.

No one had answered their hails on radio as they landed in a crater just inside the factory’s air barrier.

This was smelling more and more like a trap.

Madeline and Vez were both on edge. They were exposed just standing here.

After a minute of waiting in the open, Madeline detected traces of movement with her psionics. Someone was conscious inside the building at least. The door creaked open. A muzzle poked out.

Hands went up.

“Excuse me,” Serral said. “I am Tenharu Serralinitus. We’re from the Flotilla and we talked to—”

“Shut up. Are you armed?” the rak inside barked.

“No,” Serral said, keeping his arms raised while he turned, showing all sides of himself. “But these two are Adept. This is Shinshay. They’re a computer hardware expert.”

“Get inside! Now.”

The four of them didn’t wait to be asked twice.

Through the building’s doors, a dozen rough customers awaited them. Each one of them armed to the teeth. There were a number of cots strewn about what looked to be a humble lobby. These Vorak must have been here several days.

“You got here fast,” one of the rak muttered. “Thought we’d be waiting for another week.”

“Is there anyone else here?” Serral asked, looking around. “Where are the workers?”

“No one,” the Vorak in charge said, “as for the workers…well I think you’ll be answering those questions.”

“Robots,” Serral guessed.

The rak nodded.

“How long have you been here?”

“Eighty hours and change,” they said. “This was supposed to be routine. This isn’t an unstable region. Tides, the entirely of Omag is a boring assignment. Things like this aren’t supposed to happen.”

“What, um, actually did happen?” Madeline asked.

Every Vorak in the room exchanged confused glances like she was crazy.

“Dozens of robots operating a factory is normal for humans?”

“Well when you put it that way, maybe a little,” she conceded. “But is that all? You all just found the place like this? No one got hurt, or anything? It’s not like this factory is some sort of secret is it?”

“Not in records, no,” Serral said. “But that makes it more alarming, not less. I assume your orders are to sit on this place until more prepared teams can make their way here?”

The rak in charge nodded.

“We were given a list of employees that ostensibly operated the facility. We haven’t been able to find any of them, but there’s a below-ground extension to the structure that isn’t recorded on the public blueprints,” they said. “We’ve heard the rumors about the human robots. Every hour of the last few days, we’ve all been wondering just what we stepped in. So what I want to know more than anything is what exactly is you all’s relationship with these robots?”

Serral glanced at Madeline. As the only human present, it was obviously her ball.

“The one that created these robots abducted me and thousands of other children,” she said. “They’re not our friends.”

“So you wouldn’t be opposed to blasting this entire place off the face of this moon and sifting through the wreckage?”

“I’d prefer we try to learn more first,” she said. “Our only clues to getting home are going to lie with the party responsible for taking us in the first place. But after that? [Fuck it,] let’s burn this place down.”

“What about you, Serralinitus? Aren’t you and the Farnata from the Coalition? Lots of rak would say that makes us enemies.”

“Vez here is not, and has never been a member of the Coalition,” he said. “She was hired by the Flotilla directly. As for my Coalition tenure, my commission is suspended while I help the Humans. I'm not technically a soldier right now. But even if I was? We can at least agree that the creator of these robots is not our friend either.”

The rak evidently liked that answer enough to relax the tiniest bit.

“Where are these workers you found?” Shinshay asked. “If we truly intend to destroy this place and its equipment, I’d like to inspect it first.”

“Agreed,” Serral said. “We’ve had limited encounters with this party in the past, and we’ve never gotten any data from their hardware. So if even one unit can be captured whole, we might all learn something new about them.”

The four of them were escorted out of the lobby through another set of doors leading the factory floor. Videos of an Amazon warehouse went through Madeline’s mind as they walked between the rows of package machines. Tangles of conveyer belts flowed items toward other machines where they were nested inside larger packages and then again into even larger ones.

Final stop on the line saw them loaded into cylinders the size of water boilers. Like bullets to be fired out of the biggest gun imaginable.

Most of the machines were connected to equally bulky computer stacks—half the floor of the factory was dominated by the servers. Going by the Vorak’s lack of reaction to them, this was what normal alien computer tech looked like. Powerful and fast, sure—like humankind’s—just twenty times the size to achieve the same result.

No, the obvious deviation was in the bodies on the ground.

They were all dull grey steel, with some fading white plating fitting over the joints. But the shape of them was a little too proportional to use another word.

The bots were totally different from the ones Aaron had created. They weren’t purely Adept-made, and they didn’t have any psionics embedded into their materials. No, these were like Boston Dynamics bots made by someone with a fear of color.

Madeline couldn’t be sure how coordinated these bots had been when they were operational, but they were motionless now…

“Shinshay,” Madeline ran her fingers over a gap in the back of one of the heads. “Look at this. Components of the machine have dematerialized.”

“There’s no bullet holes or damage,” Shinshay noted. “What exactly happened to render them to this state?”

The Vorak frowns deepened.

“Nothing. We entered the factory looking for a shift manager or overseer, but we found these instead. They immediately shut down.”

“They just crumpled on the spot,” another agreed.

“Did you all drag them here, or were they all already in this spot?” Serral asked.

“We dragged them here,” they said. “We wanted to make sure they were all missing the same parts and they weren’t just going to put themselves back together while we weren’t looking.”

Something was very wrong here.

“That basement…” Madeline said. “You didn’t go down there, did you?”

“No, our orders were to hold the surface and await backup. Then we heard from you too, and we cleared it with our bosses,” the Vorak said.

“So you’ve been in contact with them? Your own people, I mean?” Madeline asked.

“Yes?”

“Madeline, what are you getting at?” Serral asked.

“One last question,” she said, turning to one of the Vorak that commented earlier. “You said we arrived sooner than expected. Why? When did you think we were going to arrive?”

“Your message said you were running late,” they frowned. “That you wouldn’t get here for hours. Could be anywhere from sixteen to sixty...which usually means it will be even longer.”

she said. Turning to the Vorak, she repeated the message.

Luckily, these wetwork agents weren’t novices.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

Serral and the Vorak in charge were both curious.

he realized.

Madeline reported to the Vorak.

the Vorak said.

Shinshay asked.

the Vorak conceded.

Serral said.

He nudged the limp machines to emphasize his point.

Serral asked.

the Vorak said.

Madeline swore, switching to a private Flotilla band.

She trailed off.

Serral agreed on a more secure channel.

Madeline said.

Serral asked.

“Shinshay! Get one of these Vorak to escort you outside and get one of those blackout curtains up, now! The rest of you, we need to go into the basement immediately. All of us, armed, ready to fight.”

the Vorak hissed dangerously.

Serral asked.

·····

They struck out at the dormitory.

It was unbelievable, but there was literally no one home at this hour.

Splitting up, the next logical place to check would have been the mineshaft, the heart of the local economy. But Dustin found that too to be devoid of any lifeforms.

Nora called.

Dustin accused.

Nora admitted.

Jacob reported.

Dustin pouted.

Nora said as Dustin reached the workshop doors. Stepping through the curtains obscuring the doorway, he saw why.

There was a sea of Farnata stretching from wall to wall, more than half of them kids. Nora wasn’t kidding. The whole town really was here.

“[Holy crap,]” Dustin gaped. A pair of kids rushed by, forcing him to jump out of their way. As soon as he did though, a boxy robot on treads inched by.

One of the Farnata noticed the out-of-place human and tapped Dustin’s shoulder.

“Your friend is over there,” they pointed.

Dustin started to mouth some thanks, but the alien was already moving on, busy with their own work. The place was packed so full, Dustin couldn’t actually see Nora in the direction he’d been given. Nothing else to do but forge ahead.

On the far end of the workshop, he caught sight of a Farnata Adept that even his psionic senses couldn’t miss. In letters, Caleb had described the sensations that powerful Adepts radiated, but it had always been a phenomenon that didn’t quite land for Dustin. This might have been the first time he felt it so clearly.

The Adept was hunched over a workbench covered in circuit boards that they were moving between periodically. ‘Hunched’ was an understatement, Dustin saw. This Farnata was ancient. The Razing had been more than ten years ago, but this Farnata would have been old even before then. His skin clung to his bones in a way that made Dustin shudder just looking at it. He’d never been more grateful for aliens wearing clothes; he didn’t want to have to picture the Adept’s ribs visible from gauntness.

Nora, however, was found sitting off to one side, observing the ancient Farnata as he moved between tasks, pausing only briefly to press buttons on robots that approached him, only to depart just as quickly once he addressed them.

Nora beckoned Dustin over to wait for the old nat to finish.

“Meet Moy Jin-Day-Tav,” she said. “Expert Adept roboticist.”

“I’ll say,” Dustin scoffed. “It’s like [Star Wars] in here. Tell me that walking trash can isn’t a droid.”

“It’s why the mineshaft is empty,” Nora said. “At least, it’s empty of minds. Moy does all the work by himself, because he makes and controls the robots that go down. The townspeople are only here to help him maintain the machinery.”

“More like they’re here to maintain his sanity,” Jacob said, joining them. “Everyone I talked to is nice as hell. If they didn’t help him out, he could just create robots to do the maintenance for him.”

“Makes sense,” Dustin said. “They’re a community.”

“I know you two don’t have the finest psionic perceptions, but trust me when I say: this trip was definitely worthwhile,” Nora said. “I’m looking at what he’s doing, and it’s insane.”

“He’s doing something psionic?” Dustin asked. “I thought he was just modifying some motherboards or something.”

Nora shook her head.

“He’s doing trial and error implanting psionics into those motherboards,” she said. “He’s doing PSA work as good as ours. Maybe better.”

Psionic Sensitive Adeptry was not exactly why they were here. But looking around the workshop—more like warehouse—had Dustin agreeing with Nora. Moy was skilled.This was someone they could ask about robotic drones and the AIs that might control them.

So they waited patiently for the elderly Adept to finish his work.

“Nora Clarke,” the Farnata said, finally turning to them.

It had been almost an hour, but they’d been content to wait and no one had bothered them about leaving or being disruptive.

“Senior Moy,” Nora greeted him.

“Bah, ‘Senior’? Do I look Casti to you?” he scoffed. “You must not have spent much time around Farnata.”

“Actually I lived with two on Lakandt for a few months,” she said.

“Well since you clearly didn’t learn anything from them, I suppose I can educate you instead: just call me Moy unless you’re upset with me.”

“No! Not upset, sorry,” Nora apologized. “No, we’re here for something completely different. Expertise really.”

“I did receive your message,” Moy said, steadily limping toward another worktable. “You had quite the tale. I’m eager to see how I might be able to help, though, perhaps only how you think I might be able to.”

So Nora told the story to the Farnata. Her and Caleb’s discovery of ENVY. Drones. Agents and laptops. Other encounters. Other hints of the AI’s siblings.

Moy absorbed it all without flinching. But with each step of the story, his work at the table slowed as he paid more attention.

By the time Nora had finally filled in all the details, the Adept had stopped working, giving his full focus to her explanation.

“All that to consider, what we’re really wanting from you is advice. What should we know before trying to go after these things? They’re our best and only lead to finding out who abducted us and returning home,” Nora said. “So…thoughts?”

“The A-ships,” Moy said pensively, “all of their layouts are identical?”

“We’ve found dozens, and so far? Yes.”

“And the drones you’ve encountered so far, they’re small, yet they operated with radio support from larger immobile units nearby?”

“Yes, but we haven’t always been able to find where the controllers have been,” she said.

“I think the drones have handlers,” Dustin said. “We know these AI blackmail people into acting as their agents. It seems intuitive that they could hide the drone’s supporting infrastructure from us.”

“Then I am struck by two facts,” Moy said. “First, two-hundred ships—automated or not—is not a small number. Scattered to the wind as they are, they’re hard to find. You will likely have better luck trying to find out where they’ve been. More specifically, where they were made.”

“We’ve talked to manufacturers before,” Nora said. “Their design doesn’t match anything in public records.”

“They wouldn’t,” Moy nodded. “Because your abductor has likely modified them; the fact that they can produce drones in such a variety of locations tells me that they’re almost certainly involved in the manufacture of Adept-machinery.”

“…I don’t see the connection,” Nora frowned.

“The drones, they were made with Adept components, yes?” Moy asked.

“Yes.”

“Then either an Adept made the drones directly—which seems unlikely, or a machine manufactured the drones using exotic materials in the components.”

“Almost certainly the latter,” Nora said. “We’ve done a lot of brainstorming on this, and we’re almost positive we were abducted for our Adeptry. It wouldn’t make sense for our abductor to have access to large numbers of widely dispersed Adepts.”

“I agree,” Moy said. “The theory that you’re dealing with a single talented Adept is much more viable. The secret seems to have been too well kept for there to be an informed network of Adepts involved. One that specializes in manufacturing could create the AIs and the Adept-machines to create the drones. Hah. When you put it that way, it almost sounds like a reploid incident. The Organic Authority still sends someone to check on this place every six months, you know? They stay just a tinge worried my machines are going to run amok and spread across this barren rock.”

“Sorry, you said that the ships made you think our abductor is involved in Adept-machinery. Why?”

“Because ships are giant complex machines, and yours have been modified,” Moy snorted. “That takes special hardware. A shipyard—no, more than one. Shipyards with fabricators, and machines to process raw exotic materials into more usable forms. Specialized robots and heavy duty drones to perform the ship modifications themselves. It would be a highly involved setup. But many of the same machines, robots, and drones used in those shipyards could be repurposed into manufacturing drones, shipping them too.”

“We’re dealing with just one Adept…they couldn’t possibly produce the raw materials all on their own,” Nora said. “I have a huge mass limit, and even I can’t make a fleet’s worth of spaceship frames.”

“Correct,” Moy said. “They certainly didn’t. But that’s all the more reason to think they’re involved with Adept manufacturing. Come here.”

He limped over to a row of machines bigger than refrigerators.

“Part of your confusion is linguistic,” Moy explained. “We only have one phrase to describe both, but there are two types of ‘Adept-machine’.”

He pressed a series of buttons on one, and it hummed to life, rattling and churning for a minute. Then, finally, like a toaster, it dinged and a piece of steaming metal popped up from a slot on the front.

“Some machines are like this one,” he said, plucking the piece of metal. “You supply them with a huge amount of power, and the machine is constructed to do what an Adept does: draw on the field and precipitate mass.”

Moy handed the piece of metal to the three Adepts, letting them confirm it was, in fact, no ordinary strip of metal.

“This is how most exotic matter comes to be. It’s brought forth by machines like this one. Production machines like this one aren’t good for anything else besides making a brick of the material you want. But once you have a brick, you can feed it to another machine.”

Moy took the metal back, feeding into another machine that quickly extruded it into wire.

“Topologically insulating metal,” he explained. “So the surface doesn’t conduct current, but the inner body of the wire does. Very useful.”

“Then the second type of Adept-machine just handles exotic matter?” Jacob asked.

“No, this is just an ordinary wire extruder,” Moy said. “They second kind of Adept machine is something you use this magic wire in—the second kind is any machine that’s partially or entirely made of Adept components.”

He spooled his special wire into another machine along with several other parts.

“…There’s no way the first kind don’t have any exotic components though,” Nora said.

“Hence the linguistic tangle,” Moy agreed. “It’s a rectangle-square situation. All Adept machines are the second type. It’s just some of those also happen to be the first kind, and the first kind is what enables non-Adepts to still have access to exotic materials. But Adepts can still benefit from the same thing. One Adept couldn’t possibly create everything you’ve described on their own. But they could feasibly create themselves a machine to create a better machine, to create an even better machine, creating more machines, creating…and so on and so forth.”

“That does sound like a reploid incident,” Nora said.

“My machines can create machines in loops too,” Moy said. “But they inherit my limiting factor: lifespan. Not a single speck of my matter lasts more than a day, neither does the matter brought about my machines based on my Adeptry. Your drones sound like they persist longer than that. Much longer. Which means their production machines aren’t actually like the one I first showed you. Their limit is almost certainly iteration. Here, watch again.”

Moy made his way to another machine, fiddled with its settings, before activating it.

Like the first machine, it revealed a chamber where a simple hoop of exotic metal had materialized.

“The point of manufacturing is to create a lot of something. So most production Adept-machines are designed to tie off their creations, and create as many copies as possible. One machine can make as many iterations as it has energy. Similarly, they don’t want to compromise lifespan because you want to be able to sell the materials the machine creates,” Moy said.

“Machines don’t have mass limits,” Nora nodded. “They’re only limited by pace and power efficiency. I’ve heard that part before.”

“Yes, but your targets’ drone-producers likely do have mass limits,” Moy explained. "My lifespan limit is intentional. Drones, robots, and fine computer parts are not simple to make. The more you have to work a material in the manufacturing process, the more likely you are to destabilize it or dematerialize it prematurely. My materials stay stable because I intentionally keep the lifespan low. If you want to use Adept machinery to make complex robots like mine, there has to be a limiting factor somewhere. Mine is temporal, but from what you describe, your abductor's machines last too long for that. In that case, they're almost certainly limited by iterations; your drones aren't tied off."

"Wouldn't that mean for every drone ENVY's got out in the universe, there's some Adept-machine sitting idle somewhere, forced to maintain the material?" Dustin followed.

"I wouldn't imagine it's by drone—it would be gram by gram instead, but you're basically correct," Moy said. “Like this hoop. They want to make a drone, and send it out. And as soon as the drone is destroyed, then the machine recoups the mass and can materialize a new drone. But until it frees up the mass to make more drones, it's just going to sit idle.”

Moy tossed the hoop on the ground, where it shattered into dust, reforming back in the machine’s chamber.

“Given that your target modified spacecraft—which need exotic metals far stronger than conventional alloys— and uses drones? It strikes me as overwhelmingly likely that they have ample access to both types of Adept-machine. Their network likely lies upon making machines that make more machines. The downside is, there are an endless number of Adept-manufacturing firms. So, like I said, you should look more into the spacecraft. Even if they didn’t match public record searches, you should examine the blueprints by hand anyway. Comparing with your own eyes might pick up similarities that won’t be captured in serial numbers or design specs. If you can find out which firm modified your A-ships to their current state, you might be able to find where all this secret manufacturing is happening.”

·····

Madeline explained as they all marched into the basement. The Vorak tactile cascades were pressing out in all directions, feeling for potential opponents.

the lead Vorak gathered.

Madeline asked.

one of the front scouts reported.

The Vorak raised their guns in preparation, but two reasons saw Vez and Madeline both move half-a-second faster. First? Nai was a ruthless trainer. Every Adept in the Flotilla could materialize a crude bulletproof barrier faster than anyone alive could draw a pistol and fire. Second? They’d paid attention during the Flotilla briefings when it had been reported that Nora’s group of abductees had been ambushed by robots in F4 when they’d gone to visit an expert.

Metal paneling crackled into existence the same moment bullets tore through the wall, confirming their suspicions.

It had been difficult to trust these Vorak once they’d broached the possibility they worked for ENVY—wittingly or not. But the hail of lead ringing on their barricade reassured them of exactly whose side these Vorak were on.

the leader said. Bullets hit the edge of the shields, knocking small bits loose.

Madeline said.

Vez agreed.

the rak said.

Serral said, phrasing it like an order. There wasn’t a clear chain of command here, but Serral wasn’t afraid to take charge.

the commander sneered—or started to, at least. Another bullet cracked into Madeline’s metal shield uncomfortably close to the rak’s head.

Serral said, exposing a shard of his buildplate to the group.