A dark dawn

Sola’s systems coming back online, coupled with the emergence of a number of cloaked ships the Olanse had kept in reserve won the day. Fractal ships lay burning and twisted, some orbiting around the now de-cloaked planets while others were drifting towards the two stars. Already, shuttles were swarming out from the system’s worlds to drag the pieces into more stable orbits in order to allow their secrets to be unpicked.

Dustin watched the tiny ships working, then turned away from the vidscreen. “How bad is it, Rye?” He asked the tired looking Rabyth slouching in his seat where she was resting a moment after double checking all the bridge terminals.

“Really bad, Dusty. Fi-oh’s doing her best, but those little Fractal gremlins busted up a whole bunch of systems and I’m nervous about turning them on until she’s made sure we’re completely purged. Gimmie a week? Maybe less, if we’re lucky.” The bunny girl paused, tapping her tablet and frowning. “Either way, I’m not gonna clear the jump drive until I’m positive we can drop out of the weave as well as into it. Fractals are way ahead of us on jump drive tech as it is, who knows what that parasite did to our engines.”

“Do we know what it was and how it got past our shields?” Emely’s tone was nervous, although her eyes never left the console where she was back in near-constant communication with the Olanse after Sola’s contributions to the defence of their home stars.

Rye let out a snort. “My own stupid fault, Emmz. I set the shields to handle high energy or large projectiles - stuff with a lot of kinetic energy. Didn’t think about boarding parties, and certainly not boarding parties the size of my fingertips. Cogging thing went straight through as if the shields weren’t even there, and once it latched on… well, Fi-oh can probably tell ya more about that.”

Defia glanced up at the mention of her name, although she stayed bent over, her hands remaining where they were. The rogue Fractal had commandeered one of the terminals, and her arms had now practically merged with the device, fingers spreading into what looked like a network of roots across the screen and down the sides of the unit as she worked to track and purge any remaining Fractal code or devices from Sola’s systems.

“Statement. They were a type of drone I had not encountered before. Hypothesis. Cluster response to human shield technology. Analysis incomplete. Units are sub-optimally designed for prolonged life or activity. Individually, purging is easy, but they are numerous. Confirm unit Rye’s estimate of completion time for cleansing and repair task. Will provide more information at a later time” Her words were far more mechanical than usual - a sign that she was mostly focusing on her work rather than the discussion going on around her, and Dustin left her to it. She was after all the only one of his crew who could effectively sweep the thousands of systems aboard Sola for traces of Fractal presence.

Turning back to the others, Dustin gave a shrug to indicate that they would just have to be patient. “We’ll let Defia and Rye finish getting Sola online, and then make a plan from there. How are the locals holding up Emely?”

The fox girl’s tails twitched as she finished sending a message and pushed back from her console. “Some good, some bad, sir. The Olanse are in a state of shock, their home system got knocked pretty bad. Some of the same sort of Fractal drones that hit us burned up in atmo, but a few latched on to satellites and that’s been causing problems for their communications grid. They’re in the middle of some kind of meeting to discuss their future plans - Tisss is the only one responding to me at the moment about anything other than space traffic management, and she’s been almost entirely cut out of the loop while the higher-ups talk.”

The redhead paused, before tapping her chin thoughtfully and continuing. “She seems to think it likely they’ll be more open to working with us after we knocked out Fractal ships as easily as we did. Now that the Fractals know they exist, there’s two factions down there - those that think they can just re-cloak and hide again and those that are actually realistic about the facts. If the realists win, I think we’ve a good chance of securing their friendship sir.”

Dustin nodded, smiling at his submissive. “Keep me posted on that please. Any word from the other species in the area?”

Emely shrugged at the question. “A mixed batch. They’re all a bit standoffish about us, given our turning up to fight alongside them was basically first contact. The Olanse had sent them a message to say we were coming to say hi though, so mostly what we’ve got are military commanders not wanting to get involved in diplomatic business - a whole load of ‘please go speak to our diplomatic corps’ in the replies I’m getting. Reading between the lines though, I don’t think any of them realize just how serious the Fractals breaching the Olanse’s cloaking is for their way of life. We’re going to have to be fast with the diplomacy if we don’t want to leave them as sitting ducks for any Fractal harvesting fleets that might swing this way.”

Dustin grimaced. “And that requires us to go visit their star systems, which in turn means we need the engines online. Alright, comms officer - keep doing what you can while Rye and Defia get us flying again.”

Two days later, Dustin sat in the co-pilot's seat as Sammie brought their shuttle down towards the Olanse homeworld. They were heading back to the base where they’d first met Tisss’s people, having been invited there formally by the lizard’s government this time for talks. “What do you think they’re going to say, Dusty?” Sammie asked, banking the craft carefully to avoid another shuttle leaving the atmosphere below them.

“Honestly, love, I have no idea. Could be they’re going to blame us for the Fractals showing up - although I doubt it. The fleet jumped in on the opposite side of the system from where we entered, on one of the routes they usually take, and were clearly just using it as a transit stop. It’d be hard to pin that on us, even if our conflict might be the reason for the increase in Fractal activity.” Dustin leaned forward and tapped the console, adjusting the cabin temperature to begin acclimatizing them to the heat of the desert they would soon be arriving in.

Settling back, he took the opportunity to lean over and kiss his wife on the cheek given they were currently flying in a straight line. The blush he got as a reward was well worth it as he turned his gaze back to the planet ahead. “My hope is that the side most likely to want to ally with us won their debate. If that’s the case, we’ll be discussing an initial trade mission and getting them set up to welcome some more human ships for protection. If we can snag access to their cloaking tech I’ll jump at it, but that’s probably going to be more the work of EarthGov and Star Command over months or even years.”

“Of course,” he added, “that’s my hope. The best case scenario would be they’re frightened enough to hand over the tech in exchange for our weapons tech right now. Maybe also putting in a word for us with the other species in this little pocket of space so we don’t have to spend months running around doing good deeds just so we can help them all avoid getting wiped out by a Fractal armada.”

Sammie nodded, her eyes locked on the console as she brought them below the cloud layer, grassland skimming beneath them as they flew towards the point where the grass gave way to scrub, and then on towards the desert on the horizon. “That makes sense. Well, either way we’ve got time. Rye was still muttering about cleaning out phase inverters in her sleep last night; that attack on our systems has got her really frazzled and she’s exhausting herself trying to get it all fixed.”

Dustin winced. “I know. I’ve asked Bleu to watch her closely and step in if needed; Rye won’t listen to anyone else, not even me. You know how she is when it comes to engineering.”

The dark-skinned pilot threw him a sideways glance. “Yea, I know. We’re all keeping an eye on her, and on Defia. On that topic tho, when we get back from this mission, can I ask a favour from my husband?”

“Of course” Dustin didn’t have to think about his answer, it was just the natural response to one of his lovers asking for his support. “What do you need?”

Sammie thumbed a control, dropping the shuttle neatly onto the landing pad. Checking the engines were powered down, she turned to him and shrugged. “When we get back, make her and Defia take an evening off if you can and spend time with them. Maybe drag them to the baths, or go for a walk in the gardens or something - you’re good at making us feel special, and they need the downtime. I know it’s not either of their date nights for a while, but I spoke with Meli and we’re both in agreement on this. Go be a diplomat, then when we get back to the ship go pamper our nerds.”