Cosmosis

Interlude-Conspiratorial

(Starspeak)

Underpinning theory was a strange field of study when you first heard about it. Different alien species of completely different biological backgrounds arriving at similar methods and ideas? Whacky clothes. Hexagonal doors. Glowing lights on every surface. Aliens should be ‘alien’, right?

It sounded absurd…right up until you saw examples firsthand. You eventually adjusted to the idea. Got used to certain expectations. The lack of absurdity became a little less absurd.

But everyone still got hit with moments where something could be straight from somewhere on Earth.

Madeline didn’t like that her latest iteration of such came from prison.

“[Jail], technically,” Aaron said.

“[What?]”

“[It’s jail, not prison,]” Marika explained. “[We’re only here for three months.]”

Madeline glared at both of them through the visitor’s glass. Splitting those hairs? The distinction didn’t exist in Starspeak vocabulary. Their word was technically ‘detainment’ rather than jail or prison.

The jail was, funnily enough, less than a mile from the crater the Ramstein group had taken over on Vaco. The short trip here had been nice, but it had been offset by the one-to-one resemblance of the prison’s visitor area to that of ones back home.

Stalls with dividers. Transparent plastic partitions. Right down to the fucking wall phones. If not for the fact that gravity was pulling on her with only a fraction of her normal weight, Madeline would have forgotten where she was in the universe entirely.

No need to show that kind of embarrassment to these two though.

“So not the point,” she scowled. “How are you two doing?”

“Well enough. This place really is minimum security,” Marika said.

“I liken it to a mid-range [sandals] resort,” Aaron agreed.

“Except at a resort you won’t get tazed for using Adeptry,” Madeline pointed out, staring at Aaron.

“Yeah. Wait, how’d you know that?”

“Are you kidding? Serral gave the warden contact-psionics for practically every division head in the Flotilla. Including me,” Madeline snorted.

“So…you heard?”

“Yeah, it was a nice thought, and the Warden understood that. But [fucking] ask first. Don’t be stupid.”

“It was pretty funny watching him get tazed,” Marika said. “I was surprised they noticed though. He only made some pillows.”

“Preventing Adepts from using their powers gets dicey, but detecting them?” Madeline said. “That’s a lot more feasible…we might have also sold them some psionics that make it even easier.”

“Gee thanks a lot,” Aaron grumbled.

“Gotta pay the bills somehow,” Madeline shrugged. “But I’m glad you two are doing well enough.”

“You can’t just be checking in,” Marika said. “Why exactly are you visiting us in person?”

“This was a scheduled visit no matter what,” Madeline assured them. “Even if I didn’t have anything extra to talk about, I’d still check in on you. Willy and Klaus are swinging by in two days, so you should get more regular visitors moving forward.”

“But you do have something extra to talk about?” Aaron asked.

Madeline subtly materialized a small storage device on the other side of the plexiglass divider.

Aaron’s eyes widened and snatched it off the shelf as calmly as he could, glancing over his shoulder. No alarms sounded. No one got tazed.

“How’d you do that?”

“If you know how they detect Adeptry, you can figure out how to not get detected,” Madeline grinned. “But this is important and…well it’s not exactly time sensitive, but it’s urgent enough that I want your eyes on it before your twelve weeks are up.”

“…These are robot specs,” he frowned, sifting through the embedded psionics. “What the hell am I looking at?”

“Consider it a draft offer to the major leagues,” Madeline said. “Look over the info, and form some hypotheses and questions. I don’t want to color your thinking, but…this is serious.”

“Okay,” he said. He placed the physical storage back on the shelf, indicating to Madeline that he’d pulled all the data from it, so she was clear to dematerialize it. “Speaking of robots, I’m glad you’re the one visiting because I had some questions about that mecha-Adeptry you did.”

“You don’t say?” Madeline said. “I wanted to consult you on your automatons too. The motion actuating and regulating psionics in them were awesome. Those things moved almost as precisely as real people.”

“You wouldn’t know it from Caleb,” Aaron grumbled. “He walked right through me. I know he’s on our side, but dang. It bruises my ego a little, you know?”

“Hey, I walked through my fair share too,” Madeline bragged, flexing an arm for effect. “But don’t compare yourself to Caleb too much. He’s an outlier among outliers.”

“Still, if you want to get better, aim for the best, right?” Marika said. “I’m not Adept, and even I know that’s how you ought to improve.”

“Caleb’s not the best though,” Madeline explained. “Nai is—right. You actually might not know who she is. Remember the Farnata who fought you?”

Aaron nodded.

“She’s probably the number five most skilled Adept alive,” Madeline said. “Caleb’s better in combat because he’s practiced longer than you or me, and he’s more experienced than any three of us put together. But in terms of Adept skills, Nai says he’s actually below average. With what you can do with the automatons? You are decidedly not below average.”

“So you’re saying Caleb kicked my ass even at a major disadvantage,” he said. “You’re not exactly making me feel better.”

“I’m saying once you build up some experience, you’ll be more dangerous than him,” Madeline said.

“What about you?” Marika said. “You have some crazy machine stuff too.”

“I’ll be honest, I don’t totally believe what I’m saying here—I mean, I do. Nai knows what she’s talking about, and looking at what you can do, I believe it really easily. But Nai has said I’ll be better than Caleb too someday, and I have a bit of a hard time seeing it most of the time—okay, no—all the time.

“…But enough about my self-doubt,” Madeline said. “I didn’t just come here to talk some robot designs. I brought someone with me.”

“What?” Aaron asked.

“Who?” Marika said.

“Preface: all is forgiven,” Madeline said, and beckoned in a middle-aged Vorak covered in patchy black and tan fur. They still had one arm in a sling, but aside from that seemed quite healthy.

Marika’s hands flew over mouth, tears instantly welling up.

“Phels! [Oh, fuck! I’m so sorry!] I am sosososo sorry!”

“It’s alright child. I’m going to make a full recovery…Marika, I’m fine…” the old rak tried to reassure her.

Marika would have been inconsolable if not for being able to literally lean on Aaron.

“[I fucking shot you! I-I…I don’t…]”

“Jja!” Phels rebuked. “Pull yourself together child. You are making me feel bad—which is just unfair, frankly.”

“I-I…I shot you,” Marika sobbed, managing to crack half a smile.

“That’s right, you did! So, quit sobbing already. A word of wisdom from someone older than you? Speak your apologies exactly once. Don’t dilute their significance by repeating them ad nauseum.”

Marika nodded and devolved into a conversation to catch up with the Vorak.

Madeline caught Aaron’s eye.

“I think I’ll leave you to it. [I’ll be back in a week to go over the food for thought, yeah?]”

“[Got somewhere to be?]”

“[Yup. My best friend is picking me up at the airport,]” Madeline smiled.

·····

Flying VIPs wasn’t exactly what Aarti and Drew had in mind when they’d first taken the Curie back to Coalition space.

The plan had originally been to check in on another A-ship progress and swap some personnel at a local Org office. Bonus, the facility had some specialization in rare augmentations, so Drew got to have her invisible flesh analyzed a bit more.

Aarti had made herself scarce during the testing, probably in an attempt to spare Drew the embarrassment. Drew didn’t really mind one way or the other, so that was fine. The doctors had been flexible too.

They even somehow came with relevant firsthand experience.

Much to her surprise, not only was Drew not the first Adept to turn invisible, she wasn’t even the only invisible person at that Org facility. ‘Polyphasic-spatial light laminating’ they called it. Her Adeptry produced the source-substance automatically inside nearly every one of her cells. Even her bones were suffused with it. If the invisibility were on purpose, it would have been a coup. A one-in-a-million talent.

But alas, control of her condition didn’t seem to be in the cards.

Neither had an escort mission.

But when Serral rang you up in real time from multiple light years away, you listened.

Aarti complained, but as one of the only five abductees stuck with the ‘Puppy’ label, Drew firmly outranked her when it came to operational command. And honestly?

Sometimes it was fun bossing around people older than you.

That had limits though. Serral had added a pickup to their itinerary that involved rendezvousing with some Coalition personnel Drew wouldn’t dare boss around in a million years. Seriously, who’d be dumb enough to try jockeying for position with an Admiral?

Serral gave her painstakingly clear instructions how to handle their flight plan once they reentered Vorak space with their VIPs. Radio silence. Running dark.

Drew didn’t know how it had been acquired, but they even received a temporary transponder modification that would clear them through certain reserved channels reserved for...well, exactly the kind of people they were bringing.

The ultimate plan was for those same Coalition personnel to set foot on Kraknor.

But for now? The VIPs could disembark when they rendezvoused with the Siegfried above Hashtin. Drew, Aarti and the rest of their light crew took the ship onward to Vaco.

Madeline was waiting for them when they landed.

“Sup,” she greeted. “Good trip?”

“I wish we’d known what the plan was on the front end,” Drew said plainly. “But yeah. All went smoothly.”

Aarti had no words though, simply throwing her arms around Madeline in a big hug.

“[Missed you.]”

“[Me too,]” Madeline said. “How were the talking heads?”

“Annoying,” Aarti said. “Because of my ‘Puppy’ rank, I was formally listed as the security officer on our manifest. So the Coalition bigwigs kept pestering me about our precautions.”

Madeline frowned for a moment.

Aarti missed it, but Drew didn’t. Madeline thought Aarti was being childish to complain.

“Try not to take it personally,” Madeline suggested. “A ton of prep work has gone into this thing on all sides, and no one wants to see it fall through because some legwork got overlooked.”

“Yeah, yeah, they just didn’t have be such [dicks] about it,” Aarti said.

She seemed on the verge of grumbling more, but suddenly brightened as another thought came into her head.

“[Oh! You know the—]”

Madeline was equally excited, giving a sharp inhale.

“[Big progress?]” she asked.

“[—progress? I cracked the sucker! Check it out!]”

Aarti held up her arm, and for a moment nothing changed. But then a line of salt-white began tracing itself through the tan, looping and branching into complex whorls. More colors filled in the gaps, blues and greens dotting themselves across Aarti’s skin to form a pattern somewhere between a Mayan mural and henna.

“[A tattoo?]” Drew asked.

“[You’re actually the inspiration for this,]” Maddie said. “[Aarti and I have been cooking this up for more than a year.]”

“[Try rubbing it off,]” Aarti told her.

Drew did, not thinking it would do anything. If Aarti really had went and gotten a tattoo…

Except the ink changed color as soon as she touched it, and there was the faintest psionic thrum to the material. She would have missed it if Aarti hadn’t sent a pulse through the constructs to make them more noticeable.

“[Gimme the finished product,]” Madeline demanded, eagerly holding out a hand. “[I need ittt.]”

Aarti gave her a quick fist bump, and transferred a psionic packet before offering an identical copy to Drew.

“[Maddie did most of the architecture and hammering out the conceptual kinks,]” she explained.

“[Yeah, but it’s all useless without the actual biology-know-how,]” Madeline said.

Drew frowned, sifting through the psionic…blueprints. It wasn’t Madeline’s usual mechanical diagrams. No, these were more…substantive. Literally. They were related to defining certain traits of a series of exotic substances.

“[Pigments,]” she realized.

“[Not just any pigments,]” Madeline grinned. “[Smart pigments. The whole concept of the substance is that they’re psionic sensitive. You can program their colors, durations, and even extra conditions like changing with temperature or light level. Except I almost poisoned myself trying to actually put the stuff in my skin the first time. Needed someone with a better biology grade than me to help devise an exotic medium that wasn’t toxic or allergenic while still giving all the cool color changing options.]”

“[That’s what you were doing with the other Org doc!]” Drew realized. “[Okay, yeah, this is pretty cool. I think you just put the entire tattoo industry out of business.]”

Aarti just grinned.

“[You’re missing the upshot,]” Madeline told her. “[Think about the ramifications about being able to paint your skin with a thought.]”

It clicked.

Drew turned her attention to her arm and tried to follow the psionic instructions. Creating the material was surprisingly difficult, but it only took a few seconds to figure out why. It was designed with a complete range of colors in mind, specifically, a balance of three…

“[You psionically shoved RGB values into a molecule that doesn’t exist and then stuffed that under your skin,]” Drew gathered. “[That’s awesome.]”

“[CMY, technically, but…yeah!]” Aarti grinned.

Patches of cyan spread across her forearm, defining the shape of her arm for the first time in years.

Oh man, Drew hadn’t seen her hand in years.

It would take her ages to dial in on the right skin tone, but it was still an exhilarating feeling. Drew even glanced back at the Curie to see about finding the nearest mirror to try with her face…

Madeline and Aarti both got suspiciously quiet though.

Drew checked her arm and the splotches she’d painted were already beginning to fade into transparency.

“[Ah. Darn,]” she said.

Her particular variety of invisibility was ‘spatially filtering’ the light that would have bounced off her. Funnily enough, everything that usually got absorbed still did. It was why you could pick out a faint shimmer if she made a sudden movement.

The light that would normally bounce off was transmitted though. Not just through her skin though, but through the space her body occupied. Something about the substance augmenting nearly every cell in her body altered the space around them. Even the dead cells in her skin carried the trait.

Even if you added new pigment, it still occupied the space light was being filtered for. It would turn invisible just like everything else in a matter of seconds.

It was why food she ate turned invisible as she chewed it too.

Drew honestly didn’t understand every technical detail, but she knew enough about the mechanics to not be surprised at the result.

Maddie and Aarti just looked crushed though, and for a split second, Drew knew exactly what it must be like to be Jordan.

Everyone said Jordan must think differently, not experience emotions the same way as other people because she didn’t show them the same way.

Drew stared at the gut-wrenched looks on her friends’ faces with abject confusion for a moment, seeing two people completely misunderstand Drew’s own perspective.

“[Guys, it’s fine, really,]” she tried.

“[I’m sorry,]” Aarti started. “[I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want to get your hopes up. I didn’t…]”

“[Chill,]” Drew said, clapping her on the shoulder. “[It’s not a big deal. I’ve made my peace with it a long time ago. It’s a weird quirk of mine, but it’s really not as bad as you think.]”

“[Still, we wanted to surprise you with something happy,]” Madeline said.

“[Seriously, Maddie, don’t worry about it. Look—look at me.]”

Drew did her best to splash the pigment through her face, giving it shape and definition enough for Madeline to see her expression for the moments it would be visible.

“[I’m fine. Really. Even if it doesn’t work perfectly on my skin, first, you can always keep trying—this time with my help. Because I know my own biz. And second, everyone else alive can still use to give themselves cool ink just fine.]”

Madeline’s expression softened. She gained a little perspective on the situation. Aarti didn’t look so consoled though.

“[Come on, Aarti, you love to draw,]” Drew said. “[This has more potential than just tattoos. You can use these kinds of pigments to paint anything you want. What if you didn’t use CMY? You could get more vibrant colors. What about paintings with multiple layers that you could filter through psionically? Ooo, I bet you could do some cool animation with that.]”

Maybe it was a little funny that Drew was the one to lift Aarti’s spirits.

Being stuck invisible should have been a bigger deal, traumatizing, even.

But…it just wasn’t.

No one alive had seen her face in years. Drew was more keyed in than most when it came to the importance of having the opportunity to express emotions. Not having a face should have put a lot of emotional pressure on her.

Looking at how badly Madeline and Aarti were taking it though, she was grateful. She didn’t feel the need to worry so much when she was surrounded by so many people who were.

She’d have to talk more with Jordan about it.

But there was no rush.

“[Come on,]” she said to Madeline. “[We’re only on this moon long enough to pick you up. You can mess around more with tattoo Adeptry onboard.]”

It was a meager attempt to buck her up, but to Aarti’s expert eye, it seemed to work.

Madeline bit the inside of her cheek and swallowed the lump in her throat.

“[Yeah. Yeah. Big important fate-of-the-cosmos business to square away,]” she nodded. “[You know some day someone’s going to write a book about the shit we’ve gotten up to.]”

“[A book? Just one?]” Drew asked dryly.

“[They’re going to need an entire compendium just for what we already have,]” Aarti agreed, brightening a bit herself. “[And I doubt we’re going to change MO’s anytime soon. So…]”

“[Yes, multiple compendiums and almanacs will be written about our legendary exploits,]” Madeline nodded dismissively. “But for now we need to be all business. Because as if transporting the Coalition delegation wasn’t a big enough responsibility, we’re also seriously considering hunting a [dragon].”

Aarti and Drew both perked up. Switching back to Starspeak, Madeline had pivoted out of her sadness and pity by channeling all business now.

The news itself caught their attention too. Despite how often the Flotilla got in fights, they had rather exhaustive procedures in place to try avoiding any and all unnecessary conflict.

Only twice had they ever actual tried picking fights.

“What’s the [dragon]?” Aarti asked, more of a fighter than Drew.

“Serral and Ike put together some exceedingly likely intel that CENSOR is physically present in the system.”

·····

“Roughly two-hundred hours ago a shuttle departing from Yawhere’s surface en route to Archo was shot down…gently. Instead of being blown out of the sky, it was crippled and forced to perform an emergency landing. Concurrent to this, a blackout curtain more than a mile wide completely smothered the Glatten Island spaceport,” Serral debriefed, psionically flipping through a slideshow of the events the Mission abductees had shared.

“The downed shuttle was attacked further by some of the same robotic infantry we’ve encountered on Hashtin’s moons. Firsthand accounts indicate that these drones were directed to act by SPARK.”

Images popped on screen. Robots armored in off-white eggshell panels, except unlike the ones Serral and Madeline had encountered, these ones were splattered in vibrant electric shades of secondary colors.

“Planetary airspace authorities actually liased between the Red Sails and Coalition controlled areas of the planet on this one,” Serral explained. “The additional airframes SPARK deployed were brought down without any additional casualties and the infantry units on Glatten Island were crushed as well as the curtain projector.”

“Now, previously we have encountered SPARK and his tactics, and they were kept highly confidential even among Flotilla personnel. This debriefing can be interpreted as a signal of trust. Fact is many of you were part of Wolshu Kemon’s crew, and—unwittingly or not—were party to a conspiracy, perpetrated by SPARK, that would have seen a lot humans dead. The work you’ve performed and the commitment you’ve shown since have not gone unnoticed.”

Much of this was old news to the most senior Flotilla personnel. But this was the first time it was being shared with the whole of the Flotilla’s operational staff.

“SPARK tried to get humans killed attacking the Ironwill fleet, then went quiet for almost a year. Then they tried to destabilize a moon’s economy deep in Coalition space. Now he seems to be attacking human abdcutees in proximity to the Red Sails. By contrast, CENSOR has mostly kept a low profile. Our largest contacts with her have always been brushes with agents being coerced in some form—often just as unwittingly as our own crew,” Serral explained. “Given the difference in tactics and methodology, Caleb and I believe we can reliably tell the difference between the AI siblings and their resources.”

“All signs indicate CENSOR is trying to keep their resources secret and limit exposure while SPARK seems to be attacking infrequently on an accelerating timetable, alternating targets between the Coalition and Assembly Void Fleets,” Madeline explained, sharing her own data. “That said, CENSOR is more than willing to kill anyone who threatens to uncover her secrets. Both AIs have fielded specialized units that could overwhelm even skilled combat Adepts in the right scenario.”

Maddie showed a diagram of CENSOR’s advanced ground unit alongside a fuzzy picture of the aerial drone that had brought down Nora’s shuttle.

A hand rose. Vez’s.

“It seems like the AIs are working against each other,” she said. “CENSOR is trying to lower her profile, while SPARK seems to be aiming to raise his.”

“Yes,” Serral nodded. “The AIs seem to prefer communicating in English, so many of you might struggle to parse what communication has happened in coded text, but the third sibling, ENVY, made it clear that the AIs are not a united front.”

“Does that mean CENSOR can be reasoned with? If they’re trying to avoid reprisal for SPARK’s actions…”

“I highly doubt it,” Madeline said. “SPARK being more overt about their antagonism doesn’t make their enemies our allies. CENSOR didn’t hesitate to send its own agents to sit on a time bomb just to tie up loose ends.”

“Not friendly. Understood.”

“Frankly, SPARK is beyond our reach right now. We have inferred that each AI resides in physical hardware, so to transmit signals to drones, they have to contend with light delay. So it’s overwhelmingly likely that SPARK is within Shirao system for now. CENSOR on the other hand…”

More images popped up of the shipping hub that CENSOR had tried to scuttle.

“Is light delay actually any guarantee?” Ike asked. “Isn’t it possible that the robots just come preloaded with instructions and parameters?”

Madeline raised her hand to field that one.

“We can’t deny that possibility, but when Serral, Vez, Shinshay, and I were in the thick of it with CENSOR, the robots responded to our tactics, but not instantly. If each robot came pre-equipped with parameters flexible enough to adapt to a variety of strategies, then they shouldn’t have to wait to make those adjustments. They should be pre-equipped.”

“Indeed,” Serral agreed. “The robots we fought showed surprisingly lifelike signs, in the sense that they made mistakes. They adjusted tactics, but only in the same way you would expect person soldiers too: after being ordered to make said change.”

“The data traffic we scraped from the facility showed active signals being traded between the ground and two satellites that supports that idea. Signals between the ground and orbit stopped when the bots were destroyed,” Maddie said.

“I didn’t realize you got any good signal reads from that,” Ike frowned.

“We didn’t,” Serral said. “But the Vorak we met did. They seemed willing to cooperate with us. I appreciate that many personnel aboard are here on suspended Coalition commissions, myself included. But fact is, as long as you are part of this Flotilla: you are not Coalition. That means both helping and accepting help from Vorak forces including the Red Sails, Coils, Wings, or whatever void fleet we’re negotiating with. You were warned.”

“That said, our Vorak compatriots smoothed things over with the local fleet contingents,” Madeline said. “We didn’t just get clean signal reads during the battle, but for the weeks leading up. We think we even isolated the signals intended for the bot facility.”

More than a couple people leaned forward at that.

“Does that mean…?” Drew started.

“Yes. We believe we can detect when instructions are being broadcast to the bots,” Serral confirmed. “This is strictly a precautionary measure, but we’re shifting the whole Flotilla to tactical alert for at least the next two weeks. It’s not going to be fun, but we have Coalition VIPs on board, and even if SPARK isn’t the AI in this system, we’d like to avoid any pitfalls that either AI might try to put in our way.

“This is basically war footing,” Serral continued. “We’re an eclectic mix here, and not everyone here has a soldier’s background. But you’re going to need to start anticipating a blow from somewhere. Thousands of hours of work have been put in by Flotilla personnel and not for Peudra’s little plan to come together, and it does not seem like a coincidence that CENSOR has cropped up when she has. Maybe we’re wrong, and CENSOR is unrelated to our upcoming events. If that’s the case, then I’ll gladly accept any chastisement any of this crew cares to give me. But I think we’re all of the same mind when I say, better to brace for a blow that doesn’t come than the reverse.”

Murmurs of agreement went through the conference room.

Serral gave Madeline a nod.

“Okay, the biggest upset will be day-to-day permissions for our youngest personnel. Fact is, most Flotilla abductees are even younger than me. We’re adopting war footing and caring for children at the same time. There’s going to need to be a lot of patience from everyone involved…”

There was a lot of planning to do. Madeline wasn’t the only abductee trying to step up in big ways. Most of the munchkins might have been middle-schoolers, but most middle-schoolers had never been abducted.

When emergency drills started, they took them seriously. When other measures and training were implemented, they took those seriously too.

What went unsaid in the first meeting was exactly how the Flotilla might defend itself. Because there was a large shift happening in the background of the cosmos, one the Flotilla had brought about, however unintentionally.

On terrestrial planets, unarmed civilian boats consistently outnumbered gunned military ships more than a million-to-one.

The ratio between civilian and weaponized spacecraft was even steeper.

In both cases, it was a function of funds. Ships were expensive. Maintenance, personnel. They all cost money. But spacecraft suffered one cost even more sharply.

Ordinance.

To shoot at another spaceship, whether you used guns or missiles, you needed advanced technology.

Advanced computers.

Computers the Flotilla and its research had enabled the manufacture of.

Not everyone had realized it yet, but in the not too distant future, shooting at shuttles and spaceships was about to become much, much more affordable.