Chapter 72

Menseio Station, orbiting Veria
Menseio Station
14:56 Ship Time
September 13, 2019

It had been the longest meeting yet, running for the better part of seven hours in its totality. There were also a lot of people present as well, far more than I thought there would be. Some only stayed for a short time as they gave a briefing or update, but a lot of people were there for the duration. By far the longest of the updates were the goings on in what was officially being called Draconic Space.

Selalea had gone over some of it the day before and she was lying when she said that they were making good progress. They were making such excellent progress on the surface that they were weeks, and in one case, more than a month ahead of schedule. Everything in orbit and the rest of the system was on schedule as well. The fleet of mining vessels had arrived as promised, and they had immediately started processing one of the three asteroid belts in the Mezotis system.

Aside from all the construction going on, the dragons were also doing a rough census of the two planets. They were discovering, categorizing and naming every species of animal and plant life they came across. Later on, when they had more time and manpower, they would do a more in-depth analysis of all the species that called Yrranth and Zokyrth home.

Unsurprisingly, the happenings in Draconic Space were undiscovered thus far, and everything was happening right under Kaldrus Dhir’s nose. The system saw the occasional vessel or small fleet travel through it, but to outside observers, it was like it was empty. Everything from the defense satellites to the mining ships were all outfitted with shroud generators, allowing them to go dark at a moments notice.

That was all thanks to the two transmitters that Abi had deployed immediately upon arrival. Although they were primarily transmitters, they each had a sophisticated sensor system that allowed them to pick up energy signatures from very far away. While a shrouded ship would be able to get closer than an unshrouded ship, no ship except for Abi herself would be able to get within seven light years of the two planets without someone knowing about it.

After the updates from everything going on in Draconic Space, Esriro was the next one up. She went over what they had learned from the interrogation of the members of Infinite Chaos, as well as what they pulled off the ship itself. Unfortunately, it turned out that the members didn’t know much at all and massive quantities of information had been wiped from the computers. Abi was going through it to see if she could recover anything, but she wasn’t hopeful.

Less than a day after our little chat, N’ardil Vilos made some sweeping changes in her organization. The largest of which was the complete recall and subsequent compartmentalization of the individual teams and their ships. Navigation and communications computers were outright replaced and teams were instructed not to try to contact any of the others. Each team essentially became a cell, with N’ardil being the only one who knew where the teams were. Along with her abandoning and torching her base, it meant that it would be extremely hard, if not impossible to catch any of them before they had the opportunity to strike again.

The most worrying thing about what she was able to learn was the fact that N’ardil had made it personal. It was no longer about collecting a payday, though that was still in play, it was now about teaching ‘that puny upstart’ a lesson about interfering in her affairs.

There were a few more minor updates before the meeting ended, the most noteworthy of which being the progress of the Spectres who would be staying behind to powerlevel. So far, the least amount of levels gained was still an impressive 56, especially considering how high level they were when they started. There were some teams that had easily quadrupled that number, but they were significantly lower level, being Spectres who had been limited by the low level dungeons on Earth. It wouldn’t happen anytime soon, but in a few months’ time, there would be a large number of extremely high level Spectres ready to face off against anyone.

Everyone soon filed out of the meeting room, some quickly as they had other things that needed to be taken care of, while others were more leisurely about it. I was in the former group since a good portion of my schedule was moved around. While we weren’t planning to go to Alade for another day yet, it was decided that it would be a two day affair. Well, a day and a half, since we needed to wait for the meeting to end before we could go. Everything had already been ready for days, so all I needed to do was head back to the hangar and we would be one our way. Before I could do that, however, I saw something that stopped me up short.

Hayir had been the representative for his family during the meeting, as both his father and his sister were preoccupied with something else. I didn’t get a chance to ask, but I had the feeling that it was the three lifeforms that hovered next to Ercan and Oya as they made their way down the wide hallway.

The three lifeforms were humanoid, but they were like nothing I had ever seen. If I could choose one word to describe them, it would be tiny. They couldn’t have been more than thirty centimeters tall, if that, and they were about as wide as they were tall. Stocky would probably be a better word for it, and they had four legs that were each as thick as their upper bodies. Even their arms were pretty thick relative to their upper bodies, but not nearly to the extent of their legs.

Now when you hear ‘humanoid’ and ‘four legs’, you probably think about something that is centaur-like, but these were very different. Two of their legs were forward facing, while the other two were rearward facing, with their torso in between. Their lower bodies looked very much like Protoss Dragoons, though not mechanical in the slightest. They had short but thick necks that supported an oversized head, giving them a very odd appearance. They weren’t an ugly species, but no one would ever call them a beautiful one.

As I stared, I felt someone tap my shoulder. “I thought you were in a rush?” Zaszi asked.

“Who are they?” I asked in return, not looking away from the tiny species as they floated next to Ercan, Oya and Hayir as he fell in line with them. Their rather short legs probably made it hard to keep up even with Pygmeans, so they sat on what looked like a modified hover cart. They could be seen all over the station and were one of the ways that some materials were transported around.

“The people? No idea,” she replied. “I do know that they call themselves Fa’iir, but I can’t tell you much more than that. As a species, they weren’t discovered for more than five centuries after we fled Nedovis. Abi could probably tell you more.”

[So what’s the deal with them?] I asked as I spun around and headed towards the hangar. It would take a while to return, even with the interspersed teleporters.

[They’re a rather interesting species, and more than one empire thought that they could take advantage of them because of their small size. If anything, their size is a facade, because it doesn’t really come with any of the disadvantages that other small species do. They originate from a planet with gravity that is just shy of being six times that of Earth, so they are a lot stronger and hardier than they look, ] Abi replied.

[She said that they weren’t discovered until after we left Nedovis ... why was that? I figured all of the intelligent species in this galaxy would be known by now.]

[Oh, I’m quite confident that there are more of them out there. Some are just reclusive, and others might live deep beneath the oceans. To answer your question, it was a perfect storm of circumstances that allowed them to basically appear out of nowhere. I mentioned that they originate from a high gravity planet, but the system that planet is in is out of the way. It’s a little like the Mezotis system in that way.]

[While other species can survive on planets with such high gravity with modern technology, they’re not the first choice, especially if said planet is in the middle of nowhere. Usually the coordinates of such planets are added to navigation computers, but are otherwise ignored, simply because the vast majority of ships aren’t built to operate on high gravity planets. Their engines are more than enough to get off a planet when the gravity is similar to Earth’s or Veria’s, but as gravity gets higher and higher, the very same engines become incapable of lifting a ship back up into orbit. If they can successfully land in the first place.]

[To put it into perspective; if you went to Siito, the Fa’iir homeworld, in your human form, you would weigh over 1500 pounds. If you tried to jump then your feet wouldn’t even leave the ground, and if you did fall from even an extremely short height, there would be a high chance of breaking bones. Well, it would be different now because of your attributes, but it would have been a rough time a month ago.]

[Unfortunately, there were some explorers who wanted to land on the planet, but it didn’t go well for them at all. The Fa’iir recorded eleven separate attempts in the span of three years soon after the system was discovered. That was about 3100 years ago now and many more ships have gone missing in that system since. None of the ships were able to slow down, and the inertial dampeners didn’t have a hope of making the crash landings survivable. The escape pods didn’t fare any better, as the engines on them are enough to slow them down on a planet with somewhat normal gravity. In almost 6g, they just dropped like rocks.]

[While there weren’t any successes, the wreckages from those attempts, and all the ones that followed were enough to start the Fa’iir on the path towards the stars. Technologically, at that time they were at the equivalent of the iron age on Earth, so much of the technology they found was well beyond them. Still, they were meticulous when it came to research and they wrote down absolutely everything they learned. By the time they had advanced to the point where they could put everything they had learned to use, they were well ahead of where they would have been naturally.]

[Thus began the long and tedious process of shipbuilding. They were still a long way away from joining the rest of the galaxy, but that was more of a long term goal. They knew that the gravity was much too high on Siito to build ships, at least anything bigger than what could be considered a shuttle, so they had to look elsewhere. Orbit wouldn’t do because a space station or a dockyard would be easily detectable, but it didn’t take them long to come to the conclusion that the furthest of their three moons, Eomia, was the perfect choice.]

[It’s smaller than Earth’s Moon at around two-thirds the size, but it’s much more dense and roughly two and a half times further away. They could have chosen one of the other two moons, but they were both significantly less dense, lacking in the materials they needed to make everything a bit easier. They spent a little over two millennia building the shuttles that would take workers and materials up a little bit at a time, though most of that was spent learning and preparing as best they could before the first hull was laid down. Those initial ships were incredibly overbuilt, but even then, they could only carry fifteen tons of cargo up at a time. Remember though that those fifteen tons were at nearly 6g. At 1g, that would only be a little more two and a half tons of material.]

[Once they had the ships and were ready, building the beginnings of a shipyard began in earnest. There were exactly twenty ships built and they were all immediately loaded up and launched. That first load was nothing but lightweight, prefabricated buildings that would house builders and all the equipment needed. When that was all set up and people and everything else they needed to survive was brought up, they began the biggest part of the endeavour; hollowing out enough of the moon first enough so that they could move those prefabricated buildings inside the moon, and then so they could build and set up the machinery that would help them construct ships. That alone took four decades, but by doing it this way, and having enough warning, they were able to build ship after ship in complete secrecy. If a ship was detected on approach, then they would cease all work and wait for it to pass.]

[What about the completed ships, what did they do with those? They couldn’t exactly land them on the planet, right?] I asked.

[That’s where the other two moons came in. They started off building ships that would help them mine resources already in space, so they wouldn’t have to keep bringing them up from Siito little by little. It sped things up a lot, to the point where they were bringing back more ore than they could easily process. When they weren’t out mining the local asteroid belt, they were helping hollow out the next moon. It took about four years after Eomia was fully hollowed out before the first FTN vessel was complete, but it immediately went into storage until the first two strike groups were done, which occurred three years later. No longer needing to hide their ships, the two moons were also turned into shipyards, tripling their output. Still, they managed to hide for another year until the next two strike groups had been built, forming their first battle group.]

[What happened then?]

[A small group of ships dropped out of hyperspace in the middle of the system. Before the Fa’iir could even hail them, they jumped back out. Two weeks later, another, larger fleet showed up. They were lucky that their system happened to be just outside the edge of Haix space, otherwise things might have gotten ugly. The Haix are one of the more uncommon species in the galaxy in that they’ll try to open up a line of communication first, and will only fight to defend themselves.]

[It took a few weeks, but the Haix taught the Fa’iir their language and the two species communicated. The first real communication basically came down to ‘What are you doing with a fleet of ships outside our border?’ and ‘We originate from the planet below. We knew other species roamed the stars, but you are the first we have met.’ The two species continued to get to know each other for another week, but the Haix soon went back home, knowing that an attack wasn’t on its way.]

[What followed was essentially a mad dash as hundreds of species sent representatives to greet the Fa’iir and welcome them to the galaxy. Three weeks after the Haix went back home, the first ships arrived. A few hours after that, the next group arrived, opening the floodgates where small fleets arrived over the course of a few months. The Fa’iir were swamped by the amount of people that had shown up, and if the Haix hadn’t taught them their language, then they would be overwhelmed. Their Fa’iir ships didn’t help matters, either.]

[What do you mean?]

[They made a mistake with that first battle group by only taking the size of their species into account. They weren’t thinking that species much taller and wider than they were might be wandering their ships, so they designed things accordingly. Hallways were never more than 75 centimeters high, and about that, wide. Other species, even Pygmaeans and Scyftans, would have to crouch down or crawl on hands and knees, which no one wanted to do. Especially not the ambassadors.]

[Since they couldn’t receive the emissaries properly, at least not at first, tensions between all the ships began to rise because they had to sit around for so long. There were so many ships spread out throughout the system, and many of those ships would have been firing on another if they had been somewhere else. The only reason that The Confederation ships didn’t open fire on Scyftan ships as soon as they jumped out of hyperspace was that they wanted to make a good impression on the Fa’iir. That didn’t stop other species, some of which had been at war for millennia or harboured grudges for past transgressions. It all finally came to a head roughly two months, sixteen days and eight hours after the Fa’iir were first discovered by the Haix.]

[Early that morning, every ship in the system powered their shields almost simultaneously, with a much smaller portion activating their weapons systems as well. Shocking everyone, however, was the response from the Fa’iir. You see, the majority of the ships in the system were transmitting in the clear, and before they left, the Haix gave the Fa’iir a single piece of technology. That technology was a computer that was able to translate every language that was being spoken in those transmissions into Haix, a language that the Fa’iir were able to understand. It had taken their scientists time to go over it and make sure that there were no viruses or anything like that, but when they deemed it was safe, they put it to work. They had been curious what the other species were saying, but they quickly deduced that a storm was brewing. And while none of those species could understand the Fa’iir language, not yet at least, they started to plan.]

[I’ve only seen recordings of it, but it was still impressive to see. While half of the battle group was positioned around the planet, the other half was spread out in smaller groups. The moment ships began powering their shields and weapons, the Fa’iir did the same, only they were faster to react. The Fa’iir ships opened fire indiscriminately. Ships that were too far away made a short hyperspace jump to get into range, but suddenly the entire Fa’iir fleet--the battle group and the other ships that had been finished since then--were firing at anything that wasn’t Fa’iir.]

[How are they still around as a species?! That would be considered an act of war by hundreds of species, wouldn’t it?]

[If they had killed anyone then it probably would have.]

[What do you mean?] I asked, confused. [How do you fire on that many ships and not kill anyone.]

[Ion weaponry. The Fa’iir didn’t have anything bigger than a cruiser, that was also why they were able to crank ships out so quickly. In fact, the majority of their ships were barely bigger than a frigate, and that was an advantage of their species’ small size. The fact that they didn’t need hallways and rooms large enough to fit people who were over a meter tall, if not taller, allowed them to dedicate more room to other things. Things like power generation and hardpoints for weaponry, for example.]

[The Fa’iir focused all of their fire at the aggressors first, but once they were disabled, they quickly turned that firepower on the rest of the ships in the system. Some tried evasive maneuvers while others actually tried fighting back, and while the Fa’iir were outnumbered by nearly three hundred ships, the Fa’iir were a cohesive force. It took no more than five minutes to disable each and every non-Fa’iir ship in the system, and they quickly went to work.]

[If not for the ships that had crashed on their planet, the rest of the species in the galaxy probably wouldn’t have met the Fa’iir for a long, long time. If they had, however, it is extremely likely that the Fa’iir would have been helpless to watch as the small fleets fought. Luckily, there was a lot more to salvage then you might think. Oh, it was only a shield emitter here or a broken engine here, but by using bits and pieces, they were essentially able to reverse-engineer almost everything they needed for the first generation of the Fa’iir navy. The one thing they were missing was power generation, as they tend to go boom when damaged. You can’t just take the remains of a reactor or power core and try filling in the blanks. Remember the escape pods I mentioned?]

[What about them?]

[While they couldn’t save their occupants when they crashed into the surface, they weren’t traveling nearly as quickly as the ships they launched from. That means that there was a lot more of them left, comparatively speaking. Now normally you won’t find any data stored on an escape pods’ computers since they’re essentially advanced lifeboats. That’s why the Fa’iir were so surprised by the motherload of information they got from one of them.]

[What’d they find?]

[Schematics. A whole lot of schematics. Where before they had to spend years, sometimes decades researching, testing and tinkering, now they had the designs and documentation for all sorts of technology. The ship that the escape pod launched from belonged to a Kobaloi engineer and inventor. There were some schematics for prototypes of his own design, but the majority of the data was on systems you could buy pretty much anywhere. Tractor beams, ion cannons and missiles, reactors, et cetera. Basically, everything they were missing was on that pods’ computers.]