The World Of Alcubierre

Episode XXXII

Premier Valast's whiskers twitched, his hind claws reflexively clutching and releasing the soft material of the cushion beneath him, as he reviewed the reports regarding the Humans. Somehow, the Overseers had managed to take a terrible plan and build it into full blown catastrophe. The entire fiasco was a blemish upon the Premier's leadership of the Pan-Universia Combine. One he resented bearing, particularly when responsibility for the matter lay with the incompetent Evangi. Needle sharp teeth bit into the soft flesh of his tongue as he slowly ground his jaw back and forth, replaying the image of the Combine Peacekeeping Ship explode, disabled by a single shot from Human "exploratory" craft.

Valast cut the thought-cast feed, isolating himself from the constant flow of information provided by the Overseers. He needed space to consider the situation and its implications. The humans annoyed him. Valast could not divine their intentions, and he was vexed by the distraction from important matters. His arrival at the Premiership was the result of the careful coordination among his interests and allies, and so far his time had been largely wasted trying to maneuver around the meddlesome Overseers. This would simply be another reason to stymie progress within the Combine as he would be inevitably buried beneath the bureaucratic weight of inquiry upon inquiry from the Combine Council. Such an outcome would almost certainly delight Neeria to no end.

Valast realized now he had been naïve. Foolish. He had wrongly assumed his position would afford him the opportunity to force changes to the calcified structure of the Combine. That there was real power to holding the Premiership. Only now did he see the truth of the matter. The Evangi had carefully cultivated the administrative framework since the inception of the Combine, and it was clear they had more control than initially believed and less desire to change than hoped. The Combine existed to suit their preferences and goals, not those of the Combine Members generally. Valast's whiskers sagged as he tallied the cost to him and his clan, his beloved Warren Musculi, that purchasing his position had entailed.

Wealth beyond the imagining of lesser races.

A lifetime worth of accumulated blackmail.

Entanglements in the form of alliances premised on promises to be delivered.

The execution of seven hundred and forty-eight of his brothers and sisters.

The last bothered him the least, the destruction of his rivals being its own reward, but it could not be said the effort to consolidate his power had no effect upon his reputation. Indeed, family gatherings had become quite awkward of late. Thankfully, he preferred the company of power brokers and peers rather than the sniveling ungrateful mass that populated the lesser dens of Warren Musculi. He had brought the warren power and prestige. A generation of insignificant siblings was a small price to pay for such a gift. If was not his fault his remaining kin did not see it as he did.

But for all of the advancements made, it would all be for naught so long as Overseers maintained their stranglehold over the Combine. That was their greatest feat. Orchestrating their charade of the noble servant. It all seemed so reasonable. So selfless. The inexhaustible Overseers, always turning the cogs of civilization so that others may be spared the indignity. Oh how they worked for the benefit of the rest! How kind and generous of them! Valast sneered, lips pulling back to expose the dull ivory of his teeth. Valast could see through the Evangi's veneer and to the corruption beyond.

The stench of a scheme blanketed Halcyon. A grand one. The Combine danced to the Evangi's tune, their machinations subtle but pervasive. Were he not caught in their net himself, Valast might even have appreciated the ploy's sophistication. But he was and so he did not. He hated the helplessness it created, the sense that his danglers were in a four-handed grip and any move he made would snip them off. He had grown quite attached to his danglers and did not wish to part from them.

The scam was quite intricate. The lies multi-layered and interlocking. The origination of the Combine. The Evangi's "selection" as the Divinity Angelsia's chosen successors. Perhaps more, much more. Who could say what was truth and what was not? All evidence flowed from the Evangi themselves, leaving them the sole corroborators of their implausible story. Convenient. Yes, very.

The Patriarch of Warren Musculi leapt from his gilded red pillow and began to pace in a circle, turning the problem over in his mind. All schemes could be unraveled, if one found the right weak point. Valast believed he had found such a thing in his species ascension and increasing command over the economic affairs of the Combine, but that was incorrect. The economic power was illusory. The Overseers could end it in a moment if they so desired. They controlled something more fundamental, something that mattered even more: transportation.

The towering monstrosities had their claws deep in the heart of the Combine -- the wormkeys. Any attempt to create a wormhole within the confines of Combine Space without a wormkey would fail. The Overseers determined the space each species would be granted wormkeys to and oversaw the issuance and installment of each wormkey. A wormkey could not be transferred between vessels, nor could it be used beyond its authorized space without the involvement of the Overseers. All others, including the Mus, willingly complied. None dared risk the wrath of the Overseers lest they be deprived of the only efficient means of traveling the vast distances between points of interest within the Combine.

That was the crux of the matter. So long as the Evangi owned the process for creating wormkeys, Warren Musculi and the rest of the Mus would be hewn in along with the degenerates populating the Combine's space. The Mus had contributed resources well beyond their due in service of the Combine, but had little to show for it. Their territory remained restricted and undesirable, resting amongst the mined out stars and planets of the inner galaxy, close to the galactic bar and Halcyon itself. Had they not been early members of the Combine, the fourteenth species, and established a trade ecosystem that leveraged their initial advantages, the Mus would already be in decline.

Valast would not allow such a thing to happen.

Thankfully, an opportunity had presented itself. A weakness? Or at least an incongruity. Something to pursue after an interminable period of no leads. The Overseers had long been consistent in their behavior, always reacting the same to a particular stimulus. Always proceeding according to their precious processes and procedures.

Until now.

The Overseers had never permitted another species access to a Combine wormkey. Always the Members had been restricted to species wormkeys, not the broader, more powerful general Combine wormkey utilized by Combine forces. That is until the space blobs had come with their tale of the mysterious object from the restricted zone. There were unique and dramatic circumstances involved, but the fact remained that an exception had been made.

Surprising.

The Overseers had also digressed from standard Adjudication protocols during the questioning of Witness Levinson, delving into tangents and searching for knowledge that did not seem to be connected to the matter at hand.

Suspect.

Most telling was the Overseers' response to the Human vessel. They had attempted to capture, rather than destroy, the Human ship once the species' involvement with a sentient artificial intelligence had been exposed. The outcome of that decision was a slowly expanding debris field.

Unfathomable. Possibly treasonous.

Premier Valast was left with a single, burning question. A question he increasingly believed would allow him to untangle the web around the Combine and free it from the Overseers.

A very simple question.

Who were the Humans?

---------------------

"Helm, do you have a location?" Idara asked, still not quite able to believe they had made it out of Halcyon with the Alcubierre in tact.

"We're...we're home," Helms Lieutenant Min Lee said, her eyes widened in shock. "A hair less than three AUs from Earth." She pushed the star plot to the holo-emitter, which immediately displayed a very familiar map of the solar system and a blinking indicator showing their relative proximity to Earth. Min leaned back, dumbfounded. It was one thing to travel from one unknown location to another, it was quite another to pop into existence on your own doorstep.

"Comms, any traffic out there to confirm?" Idara said.

Ganesh nodded his head, "Yes ma'am, it's noisy out. All of the standard fare of home." A small grin graces his features, causing his cheeks to puff out, "Nice to hear."

Idara would love to join in on the sentiment, but her mind was already on other matters. Just because they had arrived back in their system does not mean they were safe. "Any indication that wormhole is still active?"

Min shook her head in the negative, "No readings on that front. It looks like it closed immediately after ZyyXy's craft arrived in the system."

Idara nodded, "Lieutenant Bera, send a mission update to United HQ and apprise them of our status." Idara did a rough calculation in her head on the time before she could expect a response. It would be approximately twenty-four minutes each way, and she assumed it would take the brass back at HQ some time to piece matters together, so was not expecting a response with the hour. She turned to her helmsman, "Lieutenant Lee, are there any callsigns on the grid nearby? If we can find any commanding officers with a high enough rank perhaps we can expedite matters."

Min was quiet for a moment as she pulled in the broadcast data from the system. "We're a bit out of the way. The wormhole dropped us off outside the solar plane, so there isn't much nearby." She nodded toward the holo-emitter. The dot signifying the Alcubierre seemed out of place, blinking above the planets and their designated orbits. The vast majority of intra-system travel took place between the planets and moons, and there was little reason to venture into the emptiness the Alcubierre currently occupied. Without assistance, the Alcubierre's quantum vacuum thruster would be sufficient to return to Earth, but it would take some time.

"We can send out a broadcast on the military band to see if we pick anything up," Ganesh said.

"Let's do that Lieutenant, I'd rath--"

An urgent comm signal broke in from Science. Frowning, Idara accepted it, "What is it, Officer Greaves?"

"There's a problem." Bailey's voice cracked, and she took a moment to compose herself before continuing, "There's a problem with ZyyXy. It's...hurt, or becoming incapacitated. We are having a hard time communicating with it. It...it isn't giving us enough information about what's going on."

Idara leaned forward in her chair. She had had little interaction with the alien, but it had saved her and the Alcubierre more than once. They all owed it a lot, and she felt obligated to assist it. "What has been communicated?"

A datafile pushed through the comm and Idara used her command console to display it on the bridge's holo-emitter. It was a snippet of conversation, the interchange broken and hard to follow.

Greaves: Thank you for the assistance ZyyXy, your actions have helped us a great deal.

ZyyXy: Wrong.

Greaves: What is wrong? Everything is fine on the ship. We're safe because of you.

ZyyXy: Flows.

Greaves: The flows are wrong? Where? What is wrong with them?

ZyyXy: Yes.

Greaves: Yes to what? What can we do? How can we help?

ZyyXy: Jack. Good bye.

Idara's full lips pressed together, her brow furrowed. "What does Jack think?" Idara asked.

There was a pause, "I haven't asked him," Bailey replied, "he's been confined to quarters."

Heat sparked at the nape of Idara's neck, simultaneously vexed by the situation and nauseated at her hand in the chain of events that had resulted in this outcome. She had done as she felt she must, but the consequences continued to multiply. She had never aspired to command of a starship, and having it thrust upon her reinforced that sentiment. She pulled up her console and opened a comm directly to Jack's quarters, issuing an override that allowed her to speak to his quarters without him accepting the hail.

"Chief Griggs, this is Captain Adeyemi."

No response.

She raised her voice. "Chief Griggs, report to Science immediately."

No response.

Idara's temper, hard to provoke but substantial once in force, rose to the surface. "Jack, get your a*s to Science and help ZyyXy."

Silence.

Then a whisper, barely audible over the din of the bridge.

"You left him."

-----------

It was wrong.

The delicate harmony of the float was lost in this new environment. Nothing felt as it should. ZyyXy's body felt smothered by the flows, the pressure almost unbearable. Bit by bit it expelled liquid, trying to find some equilibrium between it and the surrounding fluid. It could extend its cilia and interact with the environment, but everything was a much greater challenge. Each movement required a supreme act of will. The complicated orchestrations required to navigate the float and regulate its environment were beyond ZyyXy.

ZyyXy tried to reach out to the Humans to inform them of its predicament, but it could not muster the required strength to communicate effectively. Each word was a struggle. and Human Bailey did not understand ZyyXy the way Human Jack did. The Humans understood ZyyXy was in duress, but they did not seem to understand the cause.

Jack would understand.

Where had Jack gone?

Why was ZyyXy alone? It was not supposed to be alone. This solitude felt wrong. Unnatural. Perhaps this is why the singletons were so rare, the loneliness was difficult to bear. It had acted save its species, but it had never imagined how deep the price might be.

It expelled more liquid, shrinking further.

It did not mind dying.

It just wished it did not have to be alone when it did.

Where was Jack?

Where were others who understood?

Where was...where was Xy?

A piece of ZyyXy's consciousness stirred. A piece that had fallen dormant, pushed down and subjugated by the singleton. As ZyyXy lost strength, it gained.

Where was Xy?

The stirring grew. A second consciousness expanded.

Here.

All along.