Chapter 371

The room was fashioned to look like a temperate rain forest glade. A burbling stream moving around and over rocks, huge ancient trees festooned with moss, mossy boulders, and abundant ferns. High above the ground an arboreal octopus swung from branch to branch looking for tasty tasty woolen snails to snack on. Below, at the edge of a pond, sat a golden mantid wrapped in a genuine Animeland kimono. The pond displayed an image from far away in the depths, acting as a 2.5D display. Water dripped around the mantid as she watched, the ferns rustled with an unfelt breeze, and once in a while the knocking of a hard shell against wood echoed.

Dreams of Something More wringed her hands even as she slowly scraped her bladearms together as she watched the image in the pool of water. Back slightly and on either side of her were huge hairy creatures, Pacific Northwest Sasquatch.

"No power. We're going to have to cut our way in," a suited figure said.

Dreams nodded even though she knew the boarding specialist couldn't see her, hear her, and she wasn't in command of the exploration party.

She watched as the fusion torch cut through the thick battlesteel.

"Crystallization of the battlesteel. Looks like old formula consistent with Type-I and Type-II Precursor Autonomous War Machines," the speaker said. "Taken samples for in-depth spectroanalysis and lab work."

Dreams knew that it would be nearly impossible to get a date off the sample, but knowing its makeup might point at who created it.

After a long moment graviton pads were attached to the hull plating and the plating was pulled away. The boarding specialists were all braced in case there was any outgassing, but none occurred.

"No atmosphere. No radiation or energy readings," the lead of the boarding crew stated. "Going in."

Dreams leaned back slightly, turning to stab a sushi roll with her bladearm so she could nibble at it. She was nervous, and when she got nervous, she ate. She knew she was starting to put on weight, but the last several months of travel, exit into a system, travel again had been putting the stress on her.

Dreams reached out and touched the 'runes' crudely engraved on the rocks next to her, rewinding the video slightly.

The space station reappeared. The boarding team shuttle had slowly moved around it, getting it from all angles.

It was covered in space dust to the point that any detail in the lines was gone. Some things could only be guessed at, including what was estimated to be solar panels. It was covered in space dust, more than enough to coat it in cobwebs.

Still, it was massive. There were what appeared to be versions of the smaller AWM's attached to ring collars and docked. It was armored, although the armor was damaged in places beneath the space dust.

Even Dreams untrained eye could tell that the station had suffered multiple debris impacts.

She could also tell that the structure was, to use an ironic word, alien to anything she had ever seen before.

The angles were wrong, the design was wrong, the lengths of main beams were wrong, the placement of stellar energy collectors was wrong, the ships were wrong, the use of docking collars was wrong.

Everything about the facility was just wrong to Dreams's eyes.

"If there are any bodies on board, what are the chances we would even identify them as remains and not carbon dust?" Dreams asked one of the other mantids in the room.

The russet colored mantid Fights signaled the equivelant of a shrug. "It depends on how fast the bodies were exposed to vacuum. Depends on how much water and atmosphere was left when the system went down. Depends on how cold it got and how fast," she said. "Most of the decay would come from internal bacteria before those too died if the station went dark fast. But we know nothing about this race."

"I hate the way it looks," Dreams said softly.

"How did it end up out here, do you think?" Fights wondered. She looked at the green mantid sitting and watching.

117 was miffed. Part of him felt that he should be allowed to enter the structure with the other engineer caste green mantids, but the Captain of the vessel had denied his request, citing that 117 was with the diplomatic team and thus was not to be put at risk.

Still, he had been asked a question and it would only be polite to answer.

Fights watched as gravitational formula, speed formula, all appeared on the pond. The view showed the space station, then pinpointed stars to give a set of reference points. Without those, the station was merely still, unmoving.

By using fixed points, 117 showed that the station was moving at 31 km/s and the direction.

Then it did an estimation of age based on dust accumulation, then pinpointed where it would have had to come from. 117 then threw up that it had no rotational speed beyond slow tumbling on three axis, meaning that its rotation was not in order to use rotation as artificial gravity.

"Can you determine which stellar mass it came from?" Dreams asked.

117 flashed a thumbs up icon and moved over to a 'stump', looking at the water inside of it, and began running computations and estimations.

"Lots of molecular welding, lots of atomic decay," one of the boarding team was saying. "We're basically going to only get basic shapes."

Dreams kept watching as the boarding team moved through the station.

When they found the first body, she gasped, jumping back as something primitive, something primal, in the back of her mind, reacted to its appearance.

It was tall, dark purple, shriveled up from vacuum desiccation. It wore the remains of some kind of armor, with heavy crystals on the shoulders and around the conical head. There were crystals down the arms, as well as on the chest.

"What? Who is that?" Dreams asked. "What are they?"

The camera holder knelt down, reaching toward the body. "I know, I know, don't touch it," they said, answering someone else's words. "Look at what the crystals are set in."

Dreams frowned and leaned forward. "What is that?"

One of the sasquatches rumbled out the single word.

"Warsteel."

Dreams shook her head. "Wrong color. Warsteel is black, that's deep purple."

"Warsteel," Pinion rumbled again.

Dreams watched the camera holder moved on, heading for where logic and geometry dictated should be one of the control rooms. It would make sense to put it near the central hub. Most species but humans put the habitation core in the center, to be protected by everything else, but Terrans put the control and command in the center and left the habs to the outside.

Dreams shuddered at how Terran prioritized things.

"Got something," the team leader said, pulling back Dreams attention.

It was a heavily armored door. Dreams noted that it was slightly askew, as if it jumped the track. As Dreams watched the camera bearer moved back.

A massive black warborg moved up with a warsteel prybar, jamming it into the slight gap and wrenching at it. It took a few moments and the door suddenly crumbled like it was poorly dried ceramacrete. The borg stepped back, protesting that he didn't wrench at it that hard.

117 slid to a stop, looking down. He opened a small window in the pond and rewound it, then started flashing icons.

Dreams comlink clinked and the Captain was requesting communication.

"Go ahead, Captain," Dreams said.

"Your technician, 117, is requesting samples from the door and the two corpses. Do you concur?" the Captain asked.

Dreams looked at 117, who was practically vibrating with urgency.

"Yes," she said.

The Captain just closed the line.

Dreams went back to paying attention to the room. The boarding party was slowly moving through it, making sure they got plenty of angles and lingering. There was nearly a dozen dead bodies, all of the desiccated and ruined by time.

"Wait, tell them to go back. I want a closeup on their hands," Fights suddenly said.

The cameras moved in on different bodies and Fights took a good look.

"That finger twisting, that's not natural," Fights said. "You can see where flesh was damaged, looks like broken bones. They clawed at the doors from the looks of it."

"It wasn't naturally tossed out of the system," Dreams guessed.

"No. Judging from the way the doors are jammed in place, it probably took a high kinetic hit. Not enough to destroy it, but enough to shift all the doors," Fights said.

117 flickered through formula.

"See, 117 agrees with me. He's looking at the drone mapping scans," Fights said.

117 had it now. The angles on the door hatches, the slight shifting that the second drone mapping scan had found, some striation in the metals, and other damage. He moved to and spun the outside mapping, stopping at a single section. There were two mapping drones moving across a section. He reached out, took control of them, ran a firmware and software update, ordered its creation engine to run off two pieces of equipment, and installed them remotely.

It took 117 all of six and a half minutes to accomplish.

He moved in close, dropping down to the crater. The drones inside had gotten to that section. There was serious spalling from where the inside corridors had flexed inward, gone past the tensile strength, and shattered into fragments. He ignored the shredded dessicated corpses. He couldn't care less, they were meat and meat was someone else's problem.

He took three samples with the external probe, then backed out, having the probe drone run for the main ship.

It took eight minutes for it to arrive in the lab. He was already hooked in to the software, and quickly ran the tests on the scraping he'd done.

Dreams was looking at the boarding party examining what was left of the machinery. It was all fused together, unknown eons of exposure to vacuum, deep space cosmic rays, and more had led to molecular bonding. She saw 117's icon pop up.

"Yes?" Dreams asked as the ship's primary engineer for materials handling was tied into the call.

The formula was thick, intense, and Dreams frowned.

"What is it?"

The ship's material engineer stared at the formula then obviously looked at something on his terminal.

"Phasonium. Psychically active metal alloy, can retain phasic energy, mainly used by your people up to the Human-Mantid War, Madame Diplomat," the Engineer said. "Your people discontinued use of it during the War because it turned out to be less than useless against Terran military forces."

Dreams stared at the formula.

"You're saying that our people were involved?" she asked.

More formula. A quick animated picture of a green mantid firing a gun a quick sketch of the facility, the facility tumbling away, going cold and dark.

"So we attacked this station?" Dreams asked.

117 summoned up the picture of a warrior caste.

He then used a crude sketch of the creatures in the station, as well as the crystals. He then poured in the formula.

Dreams waited for the engineer to finish looking at what 117 was putting up.

She had to admit, she had never seen the engineer caste mantid that excited.

As she watched, more and more greenies joined him, all of them looking at materials being brought over.

"Uh, I thought we were going to tag it for archeologists?" Fights said, pointing at how one of the boarding party got in a tug of war over what looked like might be a sidearm before another drone zapped him and the first sped away.

Speaks voice startled both the mantids as he stepped out of the shadows. "117 invoked technological security protocols. He, and the other green brethren, believe what we have found here is vital to the war effort and to our mission."

"Huh," Fights said.

The ship's Chief Engineer came on the call. "The Engineers are all excited. It looks like this is more than just a random extinct species wreckage."

Dreams nodded slowly. "Yes."

"According to the engineers, the crystals are phasically aligned, can store phasic energy as well as drain it. Apparently your people used to use them before Phasic Energy Stabilization Systems were created," the Chief Engineer said. "According to the Engineers, the armor with all the crystal is Phasium-Phasonium-Warsteel alloy with phasic aligned crystals.

He stared. A trick of the light showed the red fire in his eyes. "They say it's combat armor."

"What's your opinion, Rack? Pinion?"Dreams asked her two guards.

They both were still for a long moment.

"117 is correct," Pinion said.

"Heavy psychic combat armor," Rack said.

"Thank you, gentlemen," Dreams said.

"PPW alloy? How combat effective is it?" Speaks asked.

The Chief Engineer shook his head. "An adult Terran who was a little annoyed could rip an inch thick plate of it like it was nothing. A Terran child who was happy and excited could damage it by accident. Worse, in the presence of an Enraged One, it combusts both physically and psychically."

Dreams gave a 'snerk' sound. "So, it's about as effective as lighting one's self on fire?" She laughed out loud. "The Warrior Caste must have been in for a rude shock."

"That's why a year into the war and the Battle for Terra, your people didn't wear that armor any more and most of the time the Warrior Caste and Sub-Warrior Caste went naked," the Chief Engineer said.

Speaks started laughing. "Behold, Mankind!" he laughed.

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Dreams of Something More sat quietly in her glade, holding Mr. Rings and petting him. The Engineers and Navigation crewmen had determined, based on speed and apparent age, where the station had come from.

The more interesting fact was from the ship's anomalous materials handling and engineering section.

She understood some advanced physics. Not much, mind you, just enough to know if someone was playing with her.

But 117 had explained it to her.

Using simple icons, simple formula, and short bursts of code.

The 'Phasic Armor" and the majority of the equipment, as well as the matter that made up the cells of the dead creatures, all had a problem at the subatomic level.

She knew that particles vibrated and moved. That many of them carried potential energy within them, but beyond that she was lost.

But apparently, the atoms and sub-atomic particles, all the way down to sqwarks and boojums (or whatever it was 117 kept calling them, she wasn't sure) that made up much of the material on the facility were nearly 'depleted' to use 117's phrase.

--dead mass-- he had insisted. --not like deadspace electrons but dead dead dead--

It had taken him a long time to explain it to her and the Captain.

The matter, all the way down to the tiniest particle, was almost exhausted.

It was more than the kinetic impact of a near C velocity shell that had fragmented on the battlescreen and somehow gotten the penetrator round through that had damaged the station. It was the transfer of energy and potential energy from highly excited matter to the nearly dead matter of the station.

According to 117 it would have caused the entire station to twist as matter rearranged, adjusted, and in some cases, fundementally changed.

According to 117 it would have been accompanied by a massive surge of radiation as the dead matter could not have absorbed all the energy and it would have been converted to high energy radiation.

It would have been accompanied by a sleet of phasic energy like the psychic shockwave of a Queen's deathscream.

Which explained the cranial vault fissures and pressure cracks that the scanners had detected inside the conical heads of the creatures, the cracking of the crystals, and the damage to the station.

So we have an unknown xenospecies, a damaged space station, and direct evidence of a munition type my people preferred prior to meeting the premier primate of the known galaxy, and evidence of psychic warfare, Dreams thought. She sighed, petting Mr. Rings slowly.

She looked up at the display.

Nine days to where the green mantids were positive that the station had come from.

This is indeed a dark and twisted path we find ourselves upon, Mr. Candlebearer, she thought to herself, quoting a classic work of fiction from nearly three thousand years before.