Stellar ghosts

The instant the door vanished, Rye and her team jumped back. Sola’s alarms blared, and from a nearby doorway several members of the security team emerged, weapons in hand. Dustin frowned as he watched the movement, never fully taking his eyes off the shuttle’s airlock. The craft had looked human up until that point - an out of place oddity he had been hoping the crew would be able to explain, but no human craft had airlocks that simply dissolved into thin air.

“Greetings, threadling!” The voice was jovial, loud enough that roughly half the assembled members of Sola’s crew turned to look, and coming from a spot right beside Dustin, causing him to jump. As he turned towards the speaker, he couldn’t quite make out what he was seeing.

The figure stood a little shorter than Dustin himself, with auburn wings protruding from it’s back - fully feathered wings, although when Dustin tried to focus on them he found it hard to make out the details of any individual feather. The… entity, didn’t appear obviously male or female, despite the tight silvery jumpsuit it was wearing. As Dustin tried to figure out where exactly the being had come from, it spoke again.

“Greetings again to you, threadling. I am Pluck, and official greeter. My crew are grateful for your aid, without your help we would have been in quite the pickle. They will join us shortly, if your friends would kindly not shoot them on sight.” The face was a beaming smile throughout, and Dustin couldn’t work out if that last remark was sarcasm or not.

Waving a hand to the assembled security staff to stand down given Pluck’s seemingly peaceful nature, Dustin held out a hand to the stranger. “Dustin Smith, Earth ambassador. Apologies for the guards, but you caught us somewhat by surprise - we don’t expect aliens to speak English without a translator, and your shuttle appeared to be the same design as ours…?”

Pluck nodded rapidly. “Yes, yes, of course. You will have many questions, many many questions threadling Dustin. I am the greeter, you will speak with the answerer. They will be able to aid you in understanding.” As the alien spoke, several more of the winged beings emerged from the craft - although Dustin found he couldn’t quite make out exactly how they emerged. Certainly, with wings as large as the ones they all had were, they should have had to stoop slightly or otherwise bend to get through the hatch, but at no point could he recall them doing so. It was as if they had just emerged, fully upright, through the side of the craft.

As he tried to focus on this disparity, one of the figures approached. “I am the answerer, threadling. My name is Thorn. Pluck, observer wishes to speak with you.” At the newcomer’s words, Pluck bowed to Dustin before turning and re-joining the group.

“You have many questions.” Thorn observed, then gestured upwards - to Dustin’s concern, in the exact direction of the ready room. “We should go somewhere more comfortable. The mender will tend to our craft in the meantime, and the others will await my return.”

Somewhat bemusedly, Dustin turned and gave a brief instruction to the security team to monitor the strangers, ensuring they didn’t wander the ship without an escort. With that done - and a message sent ahead to ask Emely to hide and close the bedroom for safety just in case the newcomers turned out to be less friendly than they seemed, he began to escort Thorn out of the bay.

As they entered the ready room, Dustin offered his guest a seat, Thorn sinking gracefully onto the offered bench with his wings folding neatly behind him. “How can you speak English?” Dustin asked once he had placed a jug of water between them and taken his own place at the table. “Have you come into contact with our fleet?”

Thorn smiled, then took a sip from a glass that Dustin didn’t remember either of them filling. “That is a misunderstanding. We do not speak your language, nor are we using translators.”

Dustin blinked. The alien’s mouth had moved, and he’d heard English. “I… I don’t understand,” he admitted, frowning and leaning forward in his seat.

“You understand because we wish for you to understand. You lack the education to comprehend how. You had other questions - about our craft? It appears to be yours because that is what we wish for you. We are grateful for your assistance in leaving the inhalation.” Thorn paused, seemingly waiting for Dustin to ask further questions.

There were many that came to mind. Dustin hesitated before replying, trying to sort out his thoughts. The alien in front of him continued to be hard to make out, the details around it’s wings seeming to slide off Dustin’s perception each time he tried to focus. “What are you?” Dustin asked eventually, almost to himself before realizing he’d spoken aloud and how rude it might sound. “I mean, what are your people called? Where do you come from?”

Thorn set the glass down and shrugged. “We are a communion. We come from…” static suddenly filled Dustin’s ears and the alien winced. “Apologies. We believed you more advanced than this. You lack the comprehension to understand that meaning. I will attempt to find a simpler explanation… We as a group come from a place that is close and far away, although our species comes from a planet towards the region occupied by those you call Fractal.”

That had Dustin sitting upright in his chair. “You originated inside Fractal space? Sorry to ask, but does your home world still exist, or did the Fractals…?”

The alien shrugged. “Our world is. The Fractals concern you?”

Dustin blinked. “Of course they concern us… they’ve destroyed planets, wiped out entire species. If they find your home world, they will try and absorb your species to learn new weave routes - you live in their region of space and know of them, you must have come into contact with them before. If they haven’t already, they will send a fleet to your home - and they’ve been becoming more active lately, more dangerous. If you can give us coordinates, we can send a warning message or…”

Thorn raised a hand. “That will not be needed, threadling. As to the Fractals, those who have no thread are of no concern to us.”

Choosing his words carefully, Dustin stared into the alien’s eyes. “I can show you our logs - the Fractals should be a concern to any species as they present a real and significant danger… the council that led all the species that we were aware of tried to ignore or minimize the threat like you seem to be doing, and the result was the destruction of the council and a civil war! Their fleets are dangerous enough, but they also use infiltration and…”

Again, Thorn raised their hand. “Threadless are of no concern to us.” Then the alien paused, tilting their head as if listening to something elsewhere on the ship. “Ah. Observer has seen that you have a Fractal on your ship. And… oh, she is a she! A move towards a thread of her own… how fascinating. I am sure the researcher would love to study this process, but we do not have time.” Static again filled Dustin’s ears for a second, although he thought he could make out the hint of a word, somewhere between fate and future before Thorn continued “… has identified that you are in a weaker weft than we had estimated. There will be an unravelling if you remain… We are seeking permission to aid you as you have aided us.”

Dustin blinked. “Aid… Fractal… what?” he managed, eyes flicking in the direction of engineering with concern at the fact that these aliens had apparently identified that Defia was on-board.

“There is a crisis that requires your attention. We have permission. May we aid you?” Thorn stood then, turning towards the door without waiting for Dustin’s reply. “Either way, I must return to my crew. Our craft is ready to go.”

Following the figure down to the shuttlebay, Dustin was unable to get any further answers out of them. As he arrived however, his tablet pinged. Glancing down, he skimmed it - an emergency message had come in from Star Command, asking him to return to Sol space as swiftly as possible. Given they were currently drifting far beyond a star, months out from Earth even if they could find a place in the weave with no jump points… he bit his lip and turned to look at the alien. “I’ve just been recalled to my home world. Please, let us at least send a message to your people about the danger they’re in, then I must speak with my crew about finding a flight path that will take us home.”

Thorn shook it’s head, moving to where the remainder of the strange aliens were standing by the shuttle - a shuttle that now appeared to be fully repaired despite how little time had passed. “You still lack comprehension and understanding. The affairs of the threadless are of no concern to us, threadling. You show potential, however… And we have permission to aide you, despite how very young your people are. Speculation, do you have any words for the threadling?”

Thorn’s last remark was addressed to the smallest of the gathered aliens, who stepped forward and inspected Dustin with a curious expression before nodding to itself. Then, as it turned to re-join the others it inclined it’s head to Dustin and spoke. “You have asked many things of the answerer, but never of yourself. Consider this… you call it the weave, but - who is the weaver?”