A new name

Bleu called down to the planet the following day to announce that while she would be likely to make a full recovery, Yril’k would not be returning to active duty for at least a month. Apparently, while the damage to her soft tissue had been easy enough to repair, it would be easier to remove and regrow the entirety of her carapace rather than trying to fix the broken one. In conjunction with Trea’k, the doctor had put the Vex’ess warrior into a modified evolutionary pod after surgically removing the damaged structure.

The loss of his best fighter right at the start of a major campaign did nothing for Dustin’s mood, and he waited apprehensively on news from the armies in the field. He needn’t have worried; the combination of human battle tactics, the element of surprise and comparatively advanced technology had allowed the rebels to carve a swath through the packed ranks of the temple loyalists. The first major battle had been so decisive in fact that the rebel army had swept on to lay siege to the temple complex itself; they were just waiting on the arrival of wagons carrying the material for towers to breach the walls before making their final ****.

“With the new temple taken, we’ll have double the land under our control as well as have successfully locked out the northern states - the pass was near-impossible to take from the north before, with the addition of the wisdom you children of the stars have brought us it will be unassailable. With a little luck, we should bring the rest of the south under our control within a matter of months; the temples further away still do not believe us to be a threat so they are not yet united.” One of the elders spoke softly with Dustin during a meeting to plan their next moves; younger butterfly folk pushing tokens on maps in what Dustin privately considered to be the war room but was officially known as the planning and meeting chamber.

“I believe we are ready for the next step.” One of the younger members of the military council spoke, their eyes sparkling. “The transition from old to new deserves to be marked, and while our place here was taken with the might of the true vanishing ones on our side, this new temple will be taken with our own free hands alone. It is time for us to acquire a new name.”

Dustin stepped back at that point. This had been a matter of contention between two factions within the rebel camp for some time. The older members of the group considered that the name for their civilization shouldn’t change; they had been (in their tongue) the children of the air since time immemorial, and there was no need to shift it just because they were deposing false gods. The younger parts of the leadership argued that their very name was tied inherently with the false god worship, and they should change to something new.

The argument had been going on for days by this point, and Dustin saw no likelihood that it would be resolved - until Aricia stepped into the room. She wasn’t part of the war council, but since Dustin had let it be known that she would be allowed to travel to see the stars with his crew she had taken on a semi-mythical nature as far as both factions were concerned. She sighed as she heard the same old arguments being rehashed once more and crossed the chamber, walking directly to Dustin. “The lady Rye requests your presence.” She said softly, before turning to the arguing pair. “Lievira.” She said, her voice cutting across the conversation.

Young and old eyes turned to stare at her. Two voices said “what?” in unison. Aricia shrugged. “Lievira. That is what we should be called.” Dustin’s communicator failed to find a translation, but the two argumentative butterflies seemed to understand, each turning and giving the other a look that seemed to be communicating a hell of a lot of compromise. “That would be sufficient” the younger of the two said at last, while the older just nodded. “Lievira it is, for our kind.” With a decision seemingly made and a weeks long argument settled in one offhand remark, Dustin opted to ask Aricia if she would mind accompanying him back to find Rye. He waited until they were out of earshot of anyone else before asking “Lievira isn’t a term that I’m aware of. What does it mean?”

Aricia stared up at the early evening sky before she responded. “It’s a corruption of three words into one. Lierae, meaning rising flight, Evia, meaning people - in context, it’s usually used when discussing family groups, and Viroa, which roughly means the night sky. Put together in compound, it means basically the same thing as ‘Children of the air’ - but with emphasis on the flight, family and the stars rather than on subservience, respect and the air.”

Dustin let out a low whistle. “That was exceptionally clever. Emely is going to freak out when she learns you managed to find a word they both liked. On which note - she’s due to rotate back to the sky tomorrow morning; after Yril’k’s injury we’ve had to change the plans around somewhat. I want you to take the trip up with her and have a therapy session with Trea’k. I was going to find you after dinner to give you the order, there’s enough time in the plan for you to have a couple of hours up there before getting a ride back down with the people we’re swapping in here.”

Aricia nodded, before reaching ahead of him and pulling open the door to Rye’s workshop. “As you say, Dustin” the Lievira woman said, her eyes glittering with excitement as she flicked them towards the shuttle nearby. “Do you think it likely I’ll have time to talk with the kind chef as well?” Dustin chuckled. “Naera? Oh yes. She’s coming down on the shuttle with you; she’s been pestering us for days about being allowed to come and talk with some of the tavern keepers and hearth-tenders about their recipes. You can spend the entire flight back talking if you want.”

Rye glanced up from watching one of her protegees as Dustin stepped in, still talking to the butterfly woman. “Ah, Dusty, right on time. Thanks Aricia. Ya got a moment, yea, Dusty? Need ya to look at something.” Dustin nodded, following as the Rabyth beckoned him over to one of the workbenches. “Found this in the temple.” She said quietly, lifting a cloth to reveal a metal panel not too dissimilar to the ones he’d seen in the Fractal complexes. “Spoke with Defia about it; she thinks it’s part of a ship. Based on local legends, Meli reckons it’s probably a relic from when the religion was founded in these parts.”

Dustin shrugged. “We’ve seen plenty of evidence of Fractals on this planet, Rye. Yril’k got nearly blown in half by one. What’s so special about a sheet of metal?” The bunny girl winced at the mention of Yril’k’s injuries, then tapped the metal. “What’s special is that this bit of junk is part of a Fractal ship, yea, but it’s also not entirely part of one. It’s been damaged over the years, and patched up.”

That didn’t really reveal anything to Dustin, until Rye pulled out a scanner and ran it over the metal plate, pointing out the reading changes. Or, rather, the lack of reading changes. “What…?” Dustin asked, staring at a clear area where someone appeared to have used copper to patch a hole in the plate. But the scanner reading just showed the same result as the rest of the sheet - which was impossible. “Sub-structural recomposition” Rye said with a grin. “The metal flowed to fill in behind the copper, which is what’s giving that weird result. I scraped a patch off to check; the metal’s thinned down somewhat, but it’s repaired itself.”

“Ok, that’s weird and kinda cool I guess, but doesn’t tell me why you’re so excited?” Dustin said, causing Rye to sigh. “Dusty, this would be easy to do if the metal were impregnated with nanotech like the newer Fractal ships, but it isn’t. It’d also be not impossible with what I know about material science to do this - if I had a lab, and a few gigawatts of electricity to pass through the plate. But this metal’s done it in a stone mound in the middle of a freaking medieval town.” The bunny girl’s leg was twitching as she gestured erratically towards her find. “Defia and I spent the last two days going over this thing and I’ve finally figured it out. Here.” She handed him a sheet of paper covered in what looked like an electrical diagram.

Dustin turned it around and around before looking up helplessly at his engineer, who sighed. “It’s a really complex memory circuit. This one stores the knowledge of how to form the metal plate. I suspect if we supplied it with power and enough Fractal metal it’d probably build out an entire ship hull. Before you ask, I got Sola to run a sensor sweep of the two facilities you hit - the metal’s already gone inert and is useless for this now. But what matters more than that is the other temples might also have plates like these - essentially data drives for Fractal technology!”