And here we are with a new update for The Last Angel: The Hungry Stars. In this chapter, we get an AI perspective on a couple different situations, along with the sins of the daughter, the Compact’s plans to restore its fallen fortress system and an interrupt continuing Nibiru’s history. Hope you all enjoy.
Below is a snippet from the opening scene, where Echo and Leah muse on Nibiru’s oddities; for the full chapter and the rest of the story, check out the links above!
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Nibiru was a puzzle. Leah knew that Cerulean Eight would have enjoyed it, unravelling each secret by turns. While Cerulean Two had the same inquisitive temperament as her Coyote-class siblings, it manifested differently in her. Perhaps because her ship-self was made for a more direct combat role, or it might have been the traumatic circumstances of her awakening. Whatever the cause, solving secrets didn’t bring her the same level of joy that they might have for Eight. Turning them against their former owners did.
Leah mused on Echo’s observation. The Compact was not the oldest of the star nations. Even their towering arrogance and self-aggrandizement usually stopped short of denying their own history. At least, when they couldn’t utterly erase or alter it. The Annorax Nation and its victims pre-dated the Compact’s own existence, as did the original civilization of the Toletta people. Fallen civilizations, as the Enemy’s apologists were quick to assert, did not really count. They had not survived the test of time as the Compact had and thus, they had been intrinsically inferior and judged so within the Compact’s dogma. But they had existed.
+which one of them,+ Echo questioned. +do you think is responsible for Nibiru?+ There was very little left of any of the star-faring nations that had existed before the last mass Naiad migration and from the event itself, almost nothing had survived. What had been these unknown caretakers intentions with Nibiru? Had the shifting of lunar orbits been for some industrial or tactical purpose, or had it been cultural? A religious motivation, or even simply aesthetics? It was a puzzle that worried at the edges of each AI’s mind.
+i don’t know+ Leah was forced to concede. Like so many other things about Nibiru, there simply wasn’t enough information. At least currently.
+there is that other possibility+ Leah reminded Echo, pressing on that unless. She’d noticed it too. +the Nibiru know what made these moons and they haven’t told us+
+yes+ Echo told her younger companion. +there is that possibility+ ‘Captain Sudoki’ would have to inquire more about the sibling moons, and if the Nibiru were not forthcoming, then Echo would find out herself. She didn’t want it to come to that; it was entirely possible that there was nothing amiss and this was just cultural inertia from a people who had spent their entire existence afraid of ‘the hungry stars’. Much of what they hadn’t said might come out once they trusted the Confederates more.
Echo let a small, sad smile form within her gestalt. Were they even Confederates? The United Earth Confederacy had fallen two thousand years ago. You could argue that it had survived through Red One and Echo herself, but had it? When the Ship of Theseus was reduced to a single plank, what did you have when it was rebuilt?
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