Xeno Core

Eva shifts in her seat. The cushion rustles underneath her. She looks up, setting her tablet aside.

"I'm not sure you understand the true danger. How much do your people know about the Southern Tribals?"

She has to think about the question. Her face shifts as she thinks, before she finally answers. "Are you asking about the weird mind controlling aliens? There are rumors that we've lost colonies to them, but it isn't general knowledge how."

"They create rifts through reality, connecting distant worlds. The chieftains are born with the knowledge, but they require sufficient numbers to open. My own people practice a similar technique, performed by circles of trained experts. Such an undertaking is taxing but rewarding. Portals always open on inhabited worlds and stay opened endlessly."

She nods. "With that power we'd be unstoppable. Instant travel? It would allow us to move personnel and resources with ease between worlds, support any world that was threatened." She stops, realizing what kind of threat she was describing.

"A nearly endless tide of bodies. Once they gain access to a world, they shift their populations. Entire worlds stripped bare of intelligent inhabitants."

I pause to let her absorb that before moving on to the next step of the life cycle.

"They reproduce slowly, but each chief can dominate a substantial number of beings. They create the portals because they quickly strip an area of suitable sentient, sapient prey. Any susceptible beings with higher dimensional existence are brought forcibly into the tribe. Those that resist are ripped apart."

"How do you fight something like that?"

"My people, thanks to the blessings of the Duv, are immune to their control. We have met only one other race that could resist, though they can be overcome if multiple chiefs act together. They were nearly exterminated before we made contact, and now live only in protected reserves."

"Is it something that can be learned?"

"No, sadly. Our allies fought the tribals for a long time before we found them. Those who lacked the trait were overcome, and many that resisted were killed by the bodies of people they once knew. The survivors found each other and hid themselves for a long time. Long enough that they lost most of their advanced culture."

"And your people gained this immunity the same way? By constantly fighting against them until only those that could resist survived?"

"No. The Duv changed our people, after our people changed them. It was, as you so aptly put it, a dark time in our history."

She sits in silence, contemplating what she had been told. Her low rank wouldn't normally grant her access to information of such importance. Despite this, I require her assistance to authorize and implement security improvements to our home, and only by informing her of the threat that we may face will she be capable of helping me.

"It's possible that they might open a portal here," I tell her. "Kalibern is smaller than a normal world, true, but it contains all the markers that their technique searches for to establish a new connection. Breathable air, acceptable gravity, even if it is artificial, and ambient energy waves created by sufficiently advanced technology."

I can see thoughts race through her mind, from the way her face twitches between expressions of fear, anger, and acceptance. Her heart beats faster, audible through the sensitive receivers on her communication device, clearly an advanced unit. When she speaks, it is with the focus that she so exemplifies.

"We need to prepare," she declares. "I was going to cancel the upgrades you scheduled for the security barriers, but I understand now why you want them. We also need to reinforce the security checkpoints we put in after the riot."

"Those are as likely to be a hindrance as help," I argue. "If a chief is part of the assault, and manages to reach any checkpoint, those soldiers are as good as dead."

"Or worse," she concedes the point with quiet dignity. "Do your flying robots have weapons? If not, add them."

She takes firm command of the conversation. Yes, I think she's quite suited for the command tract.

"Bucket has been the only engineer connected to that project," I inform her. "Yosip wished to keep the project as unobtrusive as possible."

"Right, and they're being pulled both ways trying to keep up with our demands," she says. Her eyes lose focus as she sinks into thought. "Alright. What about Glian? He's practically part of the staff."

I want to inform her that Yosip has already discarded that possibility, but she isn't done yet.

"He can lead his own project. Glian already has extensive experience working with armored suits, right? With his skills and a few borrowed ideas from Bucket's little toy, we could make a self-operating hard suit."

"Remotely operated," I gently correct her. "Artificial creatures should not be intelligent; that way leads to death." Rogue battle shells were a menace during the reign of the fourth emperor. If I can, I want to spare these people that particular tragedy.

Eva looks at the camera oddly before she speaks, "Of course. As part of the security squads. They deal closely with Glian already."

"Would you like me to redirect your call to his garage?"

"Go ahead, please, Mos," she confirms. "But before you do, answer one more question for me."

I murmur an affirmative, wondering what she might want to know.

"Why don't you talk to any of the Tserri, the way you do to the rest of the crew?"

I need to collect my thoughts before I can give her an appropriate reply. It isn't that I dislike them, far from it. Partially it seems to be instinctual. My mind in its current form is far different than that which I had lived my life with, though it remains myself that uses the mind. Many of my old instincts are muted or replaced entirely with features of my new form. My inbred loyalty to caste and empire has shifted, slowly focusing upon those who dwell within my influence.

While I like to believe I am a self-guided individual, truly did I follow the will of the ruling caste. Such behavior has been bred into my kind since our earliest days. No longer do I have an organic brain, awash in reward chemicals whenever I follow the orders given me or accomplish glories for the empire. Still have I felt these things, energy cascades or feedback cycles, or some other nonsense terms created by the dust eaters, but I have felt them.

"Do you think I should? I've not wanted to cause them any more stress than they're currently suffering. The idea that a force that can see the common areas of the station and report anything it doesn't like to security? That has control over many aspects of station life, from assigning work schedules to distribution of food. That can lock or open any door on the station, including the ones that lead to unbreathable environments. That that being is watching and isn't a threat they need to worry about?"

She laughs quietly for a few moments. "And that same being won't tell them what it wants."

Oh.

"Donna and I are good friends," I assert, suavely changing the subject. "We speak often." She laughs louder.