This month’s next story update is a return to The Serpent’s Garden, and Red One’s first contact with the Calnian Hegemony, a peaceful, extremely advanced star nation that she will be happy to see burned to the ground. I guess that’s a spoiler, but only if you haven’t read any of The Last Angel (and why not?). In this chapter, the first face to faceplate meeting of Hegemony officials and Red One continues with some awkward introductions, a snippet of which can be found below.
For the full chapter and story, check out the links above and enjoy!
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“At present, I have encountered eighty-six extinct and extant technologically advanced sapient species,” the machine answered. “Including those species designated,” she used a term whose individual words Iljta-Risan recognized, but whose meaning he did not understand: blind sight. Another brief pause. “Now eighty-seven.”
Iljta bobbed his head in a nod of understanding. Eighty-six. The explorer in him wanted to barrage his host with questions. How many extinct species? What had happened to them? What were the living species like? How advanced were they, how far had they spread? Had they unlocked the secrets of the rip for faster-than light travel, or did they crawl across the stars in generation and sleeper ships? What was this ‘blind sight’ Red One had mentioned?
That sudden rush of curiousity was almost overwhelming, but the cardinal overseer was mindful of the reason for this meeting. Not everything could be answered or explored right now. Those questions and doubtless many more yet to arise would have to wait. This was still the moment of their introduction, when both sides would learn the most about each other, and he couldn’t let himself become distracted. He glanced around the massive, open hangar, suddenly realizing how truly lifeless it was. There was no movement in the bay at all. A pair of what the overseer took to be bipedal cargo lifters, each nearly as tall as a shuttle, stood against the farthest wall, ready to be called to service. There was no sign of anything else that he could even guess could have been a living being. “Do you have a crew?”
“No,” the machine answered. Though its voice was artificial, there was emotion there. It even sounded genuine, though he couldn’t have said whether it was, or merely a simulacrum. “The last member of my crew died recently. I am alone now.”
“What is your purpose?” Nanil-Wanlei abruptly interjected. Iljta-Risan’s tail twitched sharply as he turned his head to regard his underling.
“Hierarch.” the tone of his simple use of her rank was a quiet, but firm reprimand for the breach in protocol, but Iljta-Risan did not go farther. Yet.
One of the machines turned its featureless face towards the woman. Each of them stood half a head taller than the hierarch. “You’ve scanned me,” the synth answered her. “You’ve seen me. You’ve accepted my gift. What do you imagine my purpose is?”
The woman looked to Iljta-Risan, accepting the rebuke and giving him the opportunity to respond. Perfectly polite, as ever. He glanced away from Nanil-Wanlei, back to the trio of faceless machines. Like their host’s nature, the answer was plain for all to see, but just like that nature, it needed to be said aloud so that there could be no possibility of misunderstanding. “War,” he said. “Your purpose is war.”
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