Song of the Void

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”I still can’t get over the fact that the ship can travel so quickly through phase space. This whole thing would’ve taken much longer on a Cybran vessel.” Xiaoli said as she came to the bridge. They had all been on high alert for hours now, and she had been taking a break to relieve the tension.

“Which brings up what I wanted to ask. Why are we using the phase space for this trip? I thought you managed to get the jump drive operational?” Yrala questioned.

“Two reasons really.” Nox replied while plotting their approach vector. “First of all, Amaterasu and Selendil are using the Universal Consciousness to locate Moonshadow and it’s easier to do this way. Just because we know the general area she’s in doesn’t mean we know her exact location. Secondly, we optimized our core for distance instead of rapid jumping. It’s not exactly our fault that the Va’al changed the location where the negotiations were to be handled. The first jump wasn’t short enough to allow us to make a second one right away. We still haven’t finished the second jump core, so we can’t rotate them just yet.”

"We're coming to the phase point," Nochehuatl announced. He also looked meaningfully at the empty spots of Selendil and Amaterasu.

“We’ll jump in and start running scans of the system. Ignore any hails.” Nox decided. With both Selendil and Amaterasu away, she was the one in charge. She’d be the one in charge even if Amaterasu was around, but she’d usually defer to the supposed ‘first-officer’ just to mollify the organic crew members. Ironically, with her new biological body, the others were now more relaxed about taking orders from her. A behavior that baffled her, as they were all aware that she was still the same AI. She was just wearing an organic shell now.

Their ship appeared in the middle of a system seemingly thrown into chaos. A handful of highly functionally designed Mrrroww ships were squaring off against bulky Va’al vessels, while the remains of a destroyed station floated near the gravity well of the only inhabited world in the system. To make things even more complicated, there was also a black spider-like vessel in the system, surrounded by the Va’al ships. “I’m detecting the remains of a Mrrroww ship. There are the obvious remains of the station, and I can detect that at least one of the Va’al carriers is damaged.” Nochehuatl listed.

“We found her!” Amaterasu announced as the entered the bridge. “She’s in the system, and not on the Mrrroww ships. Selendil went outside to try and use her own powers to find her exact location. The issue is that the bloody cat excels at hiding! That has kept her alive so far, but it makes things harder for us as well.”

"You might want to call her back in," Xiaoli shouted from her console. For once she was quite serious. "This whole situation seems like a diplomatic nightmare just waiting to happen."

“I think we’re already past that.” Nox declared. “The ships are starting to fire on each other. The Mrrroww cruisers are firing all their missiles from point-blank range, straight into the Va’al, and the Va’al are returning fire. The dark ship…is opening fire on one of the Va’al carriers? The one that was already damaged somehow. What the heck is going on here?”

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Moonshadow was racing down the corridors, dodging blasts of psionic energy and psionically charged bullets from Va’al shock troopers. The soldiers didn't really faze her, though their presence didn't exactly make things easier. She had to make an ignoble tumble as another blast or deadly energy tore another bulkhead into smithereens, almost causing another explosive decompression situation. That would’ve been the fourth one so far. The one sending those blasts her way really didn’t care about the Va’al vessel, nor anyone aboard it.

She cursed her luck. As usual, her fortunes brought both blessings and curses. She had managed to contact Amaterasu and knew help was on the way. On the other hand, the Va’al had finally cottoned on to a way to flush her out. Just because they didn’t have powerful enough psions to fight her didn’t mean there were no such psions available. The Va’al had finally reached for their new masters for some assistance. Two dark and spidery creatures had boarded the carrier she was on and were hunting her.

The first one seemed to specialize in support and finding beings that wanted to hide, like Moonshadow. The other one took directions from the supportive one and fired blasts of deadly energy wherever it was directed. The small delay in their cooperation was pretty much the only thing keeping her alive at the moment, as the small time-lag meant that she was no longer where the other dark being pointed by the time the deadly energy reached there. That was the reason she kept her camouflage up despite many being aware of her location. Still, that meant that she had to keep moving full speed through the Va’al carrier that likely wouldn’t be able to take much more of this sort of punishment.

Suddenly the entire vessel shook and her senses screamed at her to protect herself. Moonshadow erected the most powerful defensive bubble she could manage, just in time as a beam of energy cut into the ship and sliced away the entire section she was in. The beam of energy hit her shield and was deflected away, though with some real effort on her part. The problem was that she was also sucked into space as the corridor she was in experienced another wave of explosive decompression, and this time she didn’t have a convenient place to escape to. She only barely managed to activate the protective field for her head. Not that it would help for long as she’d been forced to abandon the cobbled together pieces of her suit that would’ve slowed her down too much. Thus her tail and paws were not protected, which meant that she had some time but not very much time.

To add to her problems, the decompression had thrown her outside the ship, but her speed had slowed down enough for the two psions inside the ship to target her. She felt a searing pain in her lower body as the psionic power tore through her already worn down shield. The pain was worse than anything she had experienced before, and she knew the damage would be bad. Despite her pain, she also allowed herself to relax. There was no need to run anymore. A very familiar energy being appeared right next to her and soothed the pain away while she fell unconscious.

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‘This would’ve been easier if you had not kept your psionic camouflage up even while running away. Not like it was doing much good and it would’ve allowed me to arrive just a bit faster.’ Selendil thought wistfully.

A single wave from a few of her tails and the entire Va’al carrier crumbled on itself at the same time as the dark vessel that had fired on Moonshadow was sliced in two. Most of her attention was focused on the feline woman. The Mrrroww female looked quite horrid. Almost the entire lower half of her body was just gone and the only reason her organs and blood were not all spilling out was because Selendil was keeping her together with her mind. But Moonshadow was alive and that was all that mattered.

They both vanished and appeared inside Enduring Symphony’s medbay. “Doc!” Selendil called, and Khaemwaset appeared in a flash. “You’re keeping her together?” The perverted doctor had changed into professional mode as soon as he saw the two. “Keep it up and bring her here!” He commanded.

Selendil floated Moonshadow into a large scanning device. “Extensive trauma, blood loss, exposure to extreme conditions and radiation, damage to multiple organs, the loss of limbs. Yeah, I’m not sure the nanites will be enough to keep her alive if you don’t keep holding her together. Are you keeping her unconscious?”

"I am," Selendil confirmed.

“Good. Keep it that way. I would imagine the pain is quite horrendous. I’m going to need your help in keeping her alive as we put her together and give the nanites a chance to do their work. You’re going to be stuck here for a while. We can fix this, but only if we can keep her alive until we do.” Khaemwaset outlined as soon as he started getting results.

“Master, our Mrrroww crew members want to take part in the battle. Their side is losing, and the presence of a few Deities could swing things around.” Nox reported.

Selendil focused for a few moments and the Mrrroww Deities were warped aboard the most intact Mrrroww ship still remaining. “Done. Tell the others that I got Moonshadow out, though she’s injured and I’ll be needed here to help in her recovery. The others are free to act as they see fit.”

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“How bad is it?” Lilly asked as soon as she heard Nox’s report.

“Pretty bad. Khaem and Selendil are both working on her though. They’ll be able to fix anything together. It’s just going to take a while.” Nox retorted.

“In that case, I would like to apply for a permission to fuck up some Va’al ships in revenge?” Xiaoli eagerly gestured with her hand.

“Permission granted. Selendil said you can do as you see fit.” Nox nodded.

“The Va’al have already thrown their lot with the enemy. Even if the real enemy decides to believe Selendil, the Va’al have already initiated hostilities and I doubt they will be spared the ire of the Mrrroww. Give the cats some support. We’ll sort this mess out later.” Amaterasu also nodded her agreement.

“In that case!” Xiaoli operated her console and the Enduring Symphony opened fire on the Va’al ships. Nox had given the fire control over to them as this was their decision to make. Xiaoli was forced to use the weaker weapons as they didn’t want to harm the Mrrroww ships, but there weren’t that many Va’al ships around anyway. They were quickly mopped up between the plasma cannons of the Mrrroww and the gleeful shooting of Xiaoli, who definitely enjoyed herself too much.

"The Mrrroww are trying to hail us," Nochehuatl reported almost perfunctorily as soon as the battle was over.

“Patch them through.” Amaterasu decided. “We might as well let them know Moonshadow is alive. We also need to know what happened here. We really don’t need the Mrrroww getting uppity with us on top of everything else.”

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"So what's the situation doc?" Lilly asked the exhausted-looking Khaemwaset as he sat down among the waiting crowd in the canteen.

Khaem released a deep sigh as he put down his food on the round table where everyone was gathering to surround him. “She’s going to make it. It was a bit of a touch and go for a while there, as the combination of gross amounts of pure psionic fuck you and the exposure to space really did a number on her. We don't often think about how dangerous space can be, especially right next to ships that have recently fired weapons and taken hits from said weapons. I think the only reason she made it was because Selendil basically kept her alive the entire time I was working on her. That and the nanites. The nanites probably did more work than I, and they’re still at it.”

“What will happen to her now?” Lilly asked carefully.

“Well, according to Selendil and Nox, the nanites will rebuild her body and make it as good as new, though I’ll believe it when I see it. It’s going to take a while though. We basically just stopped her from dying for now. The problem is that we’ll need to keep working on it as her body regenerates as the things we did to keep her from dying will get in the way of the regeneration progress. Selendil said she and Nox will be working on the nanites to figure out some workarounds. At worst we’ll have to slap her in a sort of medical stasis where the rest of her bodily functions are halted while her lower body is rebuilt. Either way, it’s going to take a few months before she’ll be up and about again. It seems the nanites aren’t quite used to working on something like the Mrrroww either.” Khaem explained between bouts of shoveling food into his mouth. Hours of emergency surgery had that effect on him.

"Eh, if anyone will be able to fix her, then it's you and Selendil," Lilly stated, now much more confident.

“Yes, well, that is the upside. I’ll get to spend more time with her.” Khaem replied with a chipper tone.

"And there goes the little respect you had managed to regain in my books," Amaterasu muttered in a voice where she allowed the others to hear her on purpose.

“So how’s Selendil taking this?” Yrala asked Nox as the two sat in the next table, a bit away from the hubbub but close enough to overhear the others.

Nox had a blissful expression on her face as she tested many of the foods for the first time. She was quite confident that her new body’s taste buds were working correctly. And if they were not, this was a bug she liked. "She's keeping calm at the moment. She can be very task-oriented when the lives of others are on the line. First deal with the situation, react emotionally afterwards. I don't think she's all that angry though."

“That’s…surprising?” Yrala offered.

“Well, that depends on how you look at it. She’s not pleased with those that hurt Moonshadow of course, but she already dealt with them. The word about her couldn’t have reached these beings yet, and even if it had, they had no way to know Moonshadow was connected to Selendil. Not unless they did a lot more research than expected. I mean the word about the connection is out there, but it’s not exactly widely circulated. Anyway, she realizes that this was not meant as a slight against her. It’s much more likely that the Va’al were aware of the connection and didn’t inform their masters for one reason or another. They are also the ones that betrayed Moonshadow. Selendil is angrier with them, but I think she’s planning to wait a bit to see how Moonshadow wants to deal with the situation. It's her revenge, after all, so she gets to decide." Nox explained.

“I’m not sure I understand Selendil. Sometimes she acts like someone very logical, and sometimes she acts on pure emotion. Sometimes she’s very sympathetic to the thoughts and needs of those close to her, while sometimes she doesn’t care at all. It’s a bit of a conundrum.” Yrala speculated while pushing around the remains of her dish.

“You’re hitting on one of the downsides of being a Keeper. She gets to borrow the expertise and knowledge of those that have passed, but they also affect her personality. Sometimes more, sometimes less. She’s working off of an internal logic most of the time, but that logic isn’t always clear to everyone.” Nox explained. As Selendil’s oldest companion, she had a lot of experience with her master. “Anyway. This matter is a bit more complicated as she’s not really the main player. Moonshadow and the Mrrroww are.”

“Yes. They will obviously want to mount a response. Attacking a diplomatic vessel and trying to frame things as an accident. Those are war crimes even in my galaxy. Even if they can’t hold these new invaders responsible, the Mrrroww can’t allow the Va’al to get away with this without a severe response. Even if these invaders were to suddenly disappear, the Mrrroww would’ve lost all credibility. Their response will make a large difference considering future diplomatic efforts.“ Yrala was forced to agree with Nox. No wonder Selendil didn’t want to get involved in this mess lightly.

“That reminds me!” Xiaoli suddenly announced. “We need a name for these invaders.”

“Don’t they already have one?” Amaterasu asked, looking at Nox.

Nox just grinned and her omnipresent voice released a high-pitched screech, as her biological body was incapable of replicating the sound. "That's the name. It's impossible to pronounce. And I meant that literally. The standard humanoid vocal cords are incapable of replicating some of the sounds, and you aren't even capable of hearing the entire name."

“So, yeah! We need to come up with a nickname!” Xiaoli returned to her announcement.

“Aren’t they kind of shadowy and dark? What about Shadows?” Lilly suggested.

“Too generic!” Xiaoli shot the idea down immediately.

"Something about the spider-like appearance of both them and their ships? Arachnids maybe?” Amaterasu suggested.

“Eeh. That’s better, but it’s not exactly very imaginative either.” Xiaoli countered hesitantly. “We’ll need more ideas! Send everyone on the ship a message! We're having the second official naming convention. Selendil named the ship, but we can steal this bit of glory from her. At least until she kills them all."