Chapter 412

The system was old, fading. The red sun had expanded until it had devoured all the lesser planets, like an insane god devouring its children. Then it had slowly retracted, pulled back, until it was a dim purple thing. It was old, at the end of its life span. Its orbits were dark, it put out little light, little radiation. Even the pressure inside of it had lessened.

There wasn't enough left of it to go nova, much less supernova.

For millions of years it had swept along with the rest of the stars, even as younger stars had been born, even as other stars had gone out with a flicker or an eruption.

The stillness should have lasted forever.

Instead, where the fading gravitational flux caused a small eddy there was an increase in gravity, in stellar force. It twisted, intensified, and got thicker. It began to lengthen, deepen.

Not in realspace.

It was swirling down and into somewhere else.

By the way Terran scientists measured the multiverse, is was funneling 'downward' through the other universes.

Past N-space.

Past Subspace.

Past Deadspace.

Past Darkspace.

Even below what Terran science theorized was the bottom of the 'multiverse'.

Into a universe that was beyond dead, beyond dying.

The 'funnel' twisted. With a flash in N-Space one end suddenly widened out, stabilizing in a whirl of energy and protomatter.

Ships appeared in the energy, moving out of the energy and into N-Space.

Strange, twisted ships. Ships made of exhausted matter, using exhausted energy. That barely had the fuel, the energy, to reach the place in N-Space around the dying star.

Great solar sails, looking more like wings of some foul unborn creature, unfurled, drinking in the light from the dying star. The ships arranged themselves around the tear in space, the larger end of the 'funnel' and linked to one another. They began putting out energy, adding the vast quantities of energy available to just anyone who sought to gather it to the twisting gravity.

The opening grew wider. The twisting funnel began to stabilize.

More ships came through.

These took up orbit around the ancient and fading gas giants. They set to work, siphoning off the gasses, siphoning off the rare materials. Fabricating the tools and structures needed to create things in N-Space, where it was so different from where they were from.

It had taken centuries, eons, to develop methods to balance the energy from N-Space particles to the particles from the nearly exhausted beyond-dead universe.

The ships set about it.

The ships moved with dark purpose around a dying star, their ships heavily shielded from the bright light of the red star. The ships stayed far out, where the gravity from the star would not weigh upon them so much, so they could dwell in comfort. They had used the vast gravity of the star to slow things down outside, increase speed inside.

A trick of temporal mechanics that they and they alone had mastered.

They built more ships. More fabrication stations, even as more of their own kind made the passage through the wormhole connecting a dying universe to an energetic mature one. They butressed and fortified their system, long solar rotations passing as they built their ships, built their war machines, and prepared.

True, adjusting the temporal flow was bleeding off the energy of the star, decreasing its lifespan by centuries for every year that was accelerated within the bubble created by those who had arrived from the rotting corpse of a universe long surrendered to entropy.

They did not care.

After all, weren't the resources theirs, and their alone?

Finally ready, the beings created new ships, fast ships, stealth ships, and crewed them with carefully created crews.

Those who commanded the ships sent ships to a far off place.

They doubted that it was intact, but one could never tell.

The ships, all three of them, returned.

It was intact.

From the vast breeding farms, to the fabrication scaffolding, to the matter and energy storage, it was all intact. Several constructs were nearly finished. There was plenty of life still existing that had been developed, nutured, and husbanded by those who had created the ships.

The ships returned with the news.

The beings within the ships rejoiced coldly.

The resources, gathered for long aeons, were still in place, still in use, still being put toward the program.

The leaders of the beings looked out at the stars, twinkling painfully bright in the sky.

You belong to me, each of them thought as one.

--------------

The girl was different than her classmates.

Her classmates had spent weeks or months in shelters, listening to the rumble of combat above them. Surrounded by walls, protected by security, with plentiful food and medical care, holding tight to their families as they huddled inside the bunkers and shelters and redoubts.

Months ago they had been allowed on the surface, to emerge from the shelters blinking and shading their eyes from the sun, which blazed in the sky undiluted by the ozone layer that atomic weaponry had torn away like a gauze curtain before a fuel air charge.

They had been back to school, back to normal life, for months before the girl had arrived.

Some had seen her initial arrival, when she had stepped through the metal detectors and they had gone off. She had been patted down, walked through again, only for the detector to beep. She had been taken into a private room and then released.

Several times she had been caught drinking alcoholic beverages during school hours. Each time her fellow students waited with the glee of the drama-addicted to hear how she had been suspended or worse.

Each time she was sent to the counselours. Not the normal ones, but the ones who saw some of the teachers. Each time she was allowed to return to class the same day, usually within an hour of being caught drinking in some isolated and off the path location.

As for the girl herself, she was quiet, rarely speaking. She often just stared at her fellow students, often just acted as if she did not hear the person speaking, watching around the speaker rather than the speaker herself.

Pranks and teasing did little. She either ignored them or avoided them. Some of her fellow students noticed she seemed overly aware of her clothing, her locker, her possessions, and where people were located.

She stood out in gym class. Working hard, almost maniacally, to the point where she had better scores and could perform better than the males her age.

She stood out in other ways too.

The scars.

The scar across the top of her head, starting just above and between her eyes, extended across the top of her head and down the back, almost to the base of her skull. Those who had gym class with her had seen other scars on her. Scars that did not have the gentle smoothing of surgery. Thick upraised keloid scars that were angry red and purple mixed in with her fur. When asked the girl simply did not reply or answered with 'it doesn't matter' to the questions.

Her coloration was normal, but seemed almost washed out somehow sometimes. She was often poorly groomed, not seeming to care beyond making sure her fuzzy fur was clean.

Her clear eyes constantly moved, more than her peers, seeking out exits, where her peers and teachers were standing, any fast movement. Her stare was intent, making other nervous when it focused on them, but was often seeming to be focused on something far away.

Within a month her fellow students ignored her and left her alone.

They could tell that the ostracization, which worked every time to bring someone acting abberantly back into the fold, was fine with the girl. She seemed to be fine with not having friends, not having peers, to stand outside everyone else by her lonesome.

But it was more than just the girl.

Several girls her age had siblings that went to school with her younger siblings. The tales told by the younger siblings seemed incredible, like lies of adventures that surely the younger siblings were making up to shock and impress their fellow students who had hidden in shelters. Her little brother often showed off the scar he claimed was from where he had cut his hand boning fish and where he had cut his foot chopping wood. The little sister showed the scar on her hand where she claimed that she closed a shotgun wrong and pinched her flesh, a scar on her arm where she claimed that the knife slipped when she was skinning a harvonk.

They all talked about how the rain had been black and sticky. How the snow had been black more than once. How the night sky used to light up with bright flashes on the horizon.

The teachers shushed them.

A few girls asked their parents if it was true, what their younger siblings said the girl's younger siblings talked about in school.

Their parents told them that some people had had it rougher than those who had been in the shelters.

And to mind their own business.

But it was more than her looks, more than her siblings.

It was how she acted, how others treated her.

The girl didn't react to the teasing about her scars. She seemed uninterested in the attempts at seduction and romance put forward by the boys her age or even older. All too quickly the boys, even the older ones looking to put another notch in their ears, gave up, listing her as a lost cause.

Some students noticed that the teachers were careful with her. That she was escorted to the counselors two or three times a week.

The school did an emergency practice alert, to ensure the children knew how to get into the shelters quickly and safely, to make sure that everyone knew what to do.

The strange girl grabbed her backpack and ran from the school. She had dragged her siblings off the playground. A teacher had tried to stop her and she had struck him twice. A short sharp blow to the diaphram followed by a chop to the back of the head before she had caught up to her siblings, who had not slowed down, who had kept running.

Lawsec had caught her nearly two miles outside of town in a stolen car, speeding down the highway.

The gossip ran fast and thick for the week she was gone. That she had been shot by LawSec. That she was in jail. That she was a criminal. That she would never be back.

Instead, the girl returned to school.

Silent.

Watching.

Uncaring.

Some of the more observant students noticed that the next two emergency drills the teachers took the girl aside and sent her to the counselors office.

They remembered their parents words.

Some people weren't lucky enough to be the shelters. Now mind your business.

Most of the students had bonded over the 'shared trauma' of being locked in cramped shelters for weeks or months. How it was miserable, how there was no privacy, no room to run, how everything was monitored and watched carefully, how it was frightening.

A few knew the girl hadn't had that luxury.

One girl, of the highest social status in the school, asked her parents if the strange girl had been in a surface refugee camp. If she had been inside the walls that the Terrans had built and guarded. Her uncle had been present, her uncle that she used to enhance her own status as he had been on the surface the entire time, even when the Terrans were fighting. Some said her uncle had actually fought during the long war. Had fired weapons.

Had taken lives.

The girl had asked her parents if the strange girl had been in the refugee camps, had described the scars.

Her parents did not know, they told her over dinner.

Her uncle had called her over. Had pushed up the sleeves of the long sleeved shirt like he always wore.

Like the strange girl wore.

He had shown her scars. Thick upraised purple scars. Angry scars that rose up out of his fur.

Like the girl had.

"Down there, it was worry and being crowded," her uncle had told her as he pushed up his sleeves. When the young girl had seen the scars on her uncle's arms she looked him and swallowed. He nodded slowly. "Up here, my beloved niece, it was war."

The girl, of high social ranking, where the knives were words, rumor, and innuendo, had hugged her uncle and gone in to do her homework.

The next day the word was out.

The strange girl was to be left alone. Be polite, but leave her alone. The boys were to leave her be, not to disturb her, to let her be content.

Those that disobeyed would face the queen bee and all of her power.

The students, even some of the teachers, got the message.

The girl was left alone.

Which was fine with her.

---------------

The ships had left during yesterday's tomorrow, making a risky translation.

The red giant had intersected the Place at one time.

The whole reason for entering N-Space at that point.

The ships made the translation because to their drives, yesterday was tomorrow today and the two points were the same.

This time the Place was nearly empty.

Only howling radiation and expanding waves of particles.

Nothing remained, only shockwaves.

The beings couldn't believe it.

Even worse, there was no moving forward or backward, something had anchored the temporal stream so it could not be altered.

That was more infuriating than the Place, and all of its valuable resources, being obliterated.

The beings were furious that someone had dared interfere in that which the beings viewed as the domain of themselves and themselves alone.

Worse, they had to return the long way. Not through the proper and esoteric method of moving from one place to a place that had intersected with that place or would intersect with it.

It did not matter. It just meant that it would take longer.

They increased the inverted gravity well of the star, making it so that time moved faster inside the system, that it moved at a speed enough that they and they alone could do what must be done before those outside could.

They needed to ensure that the time dilatation was working correctly.

They sent a ship crewed, not by servitors or lesser ones, but by a full quorum.

Outside the temporal dialatation effect they could feel it.

Other temporal zones.

They returned to warn their fellows.

The beings paused, considering things.

One zone was important, it vibrated and pulsed with aggression, with malevolence.

Before they could come to a decision the other places released their temporal holds, their temporal mainpulations.

The beings managed to interrupt the other one.

Hold it in place.

Change it.

However, it wasn't enough.

They knew now that they faced an enemy who could fight them on their own terms, who could not only conceive of the attacks they preferred, but counter them, prepare for them, even wage war on the same battlefield.

The beings sent forth an armada, moving to the system they desperately needed. One of many, but one they had been to before.

An enemy who had been attacked and managed to drive off the attackers would not expect to be attacked again.

The armada left the bubble.

-------------------

Melinvae watched the video presentation with boredom. She could remember seeing it before the Slorpies came.

She had turned to look out the window, toward the sports field outside, when she saw it.

The strange girl arced in her chair, her hands coming up to claw at her own chest. Her eyes had rolled back, her ears were straight up as she went backwards onto the floor.

Melinvae jumped from her chair while everyone else was still exclaiming in shock or trying to figure out what was happening. She had learned first aid in the shelter, had helped staff the medical clinic, she knew a seizure when she saw one.

She pushed the desks away, clearing the area around the strange girl.

The girl's eyes suddenly opened and her hands came up to grab Melinvae's shirt. The strange girl pulled her close.

"They're coming," she gurgled. "Again. They're coming again. I can see them. They've coming."

She lapsed into unconsciousness.

The nurse ran in, taking over, letting Melinvae know an ambulance was on the way.

Melinvae moved into the hallway, stepping outside the zone that the datalinks were set to intraschool only.

She placed a single call.

To the one person she knew would listen.

"Uncle Erylve. That girl?" she said. "She says they're coming."

"Who says, Mally?" her uncle asked.

"Dambree."