Goddess of the Galacticide Episode 2 - Wake of the Fathers

Episode 2

The small transport was ancient. From Linuka Omga’s perspective, everything here was ancient, but this vessel was outdated even for the period. She rode in the back of the cockpit, one seat row behind the two fellow humans, handling the controls. The transport wasn’t more than a metal bucket launched into space, no shielding, no screaming fusion reactor.

Rather than explaining, in Old Galactic, why she didn’t need a radiation shot, she took the offered solar sailor brew. It was a load of mnadza nreedz—all the solar sailors developed cancers from cosmic radiation. The ridiculously thick plating of the transport would protect everyone from one threat, though: debris. Plenty of it floated out there in the Prral system.

When the Võmémééř collectively lost their minds to the causal unraveling, their escape routes took them straight back through the nano mines. None of their capital ships made it. Smaller vessels had left the system without a sign they’d return soon—if ever. The bloodied, exhausted, smelly humans didn’t look like it, but they were the victors of this battle. But were they the winners?

The extra-galactics could re-build from a single breeding couple, and they had done this before. After the fireworks of the minefield explosions and scattering survivors, base commander Ksheep and his staff had ventured out into the debris field to loot the shredded marvels of Võmémééř technology. The small flotilla of thick-walled ships able to shrug off the unavoidable micro fragment bombardment near the blasted wrecks was looking for anything usable they could fit into their cargo bays. Linuka doubted the base dwellers would find much they could use. The Võmémééř acted brutish, but their tech was ahead of what this galaxy could comprehend.

Linuka, however, wasn’t here to loot a fancy battery or some hand-held mining beam.

The co-pilot turned towards her. “Ug zhalkeeii, we’re approaching the last ship in our search pattern. I’m still not quite clear on our mission. Without survivors, who are we looking for?”

Linuka suppressed a sigh. Commander Ksheep was generous in granting her a transport to command for her mission, a quest he still didn’t fully believe in. She had hoped for a sturdy Traaz vessel. Instead, he put her ‘with her own kind’, assigned her to a human-crewed ship. Ksheep meant well, but the language barrier between her and the base humans made the mission briefing awkward and confusing. Many of the lower-ranking human crew spoke Old Galactic as their second language only, just like Linuka. It was difficult to describe, then translate what they were after. It would have been difficult to describe in a language she was fluent in. She looked down. It had been difficult to explain to her own father.

“We’re not looking for survivors. We’re looking for a specific kind of dead. One of their leaders.”

“But, ug zhalkeeii, how do you know they haven’t survived?”

Ug zhalkeeii. Linuka thought at first it meant ‘my girl’ or ‘darling’, but era-men used it with females of all ranks and ages, it seemed, used for addressing someone with respect. Her father had commanded respect, in a natural, unpretentious way. Despite being a high priestess, Linuka was always treated like a child. A high-ranking child, an influential child, but a child nevertheless. These people treated her as a survivor. The base dwellers assumed that if someone made it here this far, they deserved respect.

“If one of their leaders had survived, the fleet wouldn’t have scattered. They would never leave a diin behind.”

“A diin? Is that what the leaders are called?”

“Yes, that’s the name—or title—of the leader caste.”

“Maybe the life scanners missed this diin. You know, our equipment is basic and prone to malfunction.”

“Oh, believe me, any life scanner would have picked up a diin signature.”

“Why is that?”

“They are gigantic.”

“Larger than a Traaz?”

Linuka had to chuckle. How to best describe the dimensions of the Võmémééř ruling caste members?

“There are few wrecks large enough to accommodate one.”

The co-pilot’s forehead wrinkled. “There are many capital ships.”

“Only the big battleships will do.”

“Wow. Only they could fit a crew of these… diin?”

“No,” said Linuka. “They fit only one of them.”

The co-pilot turned back to his controls, staring at the telemetry readout of the battleship they were heading toward. Linuka could not share his thoughts, but it was obvious he tried to imagine a single creature taking up the inside. He shook his head.

“I really hope this diin is dead,” said the pilot, not taking her stare off the proximity screens.

Linuka’s smile vanished. She hoped so, too. How would they handle a diin survivor? What would it even mean? She had been so certain when she declared the Võmémééř would not leave one of their masters behind. But wouldn’t they?

What if the trap her father triggered broke causality even beyond the diin’s comprehension? Their perception of a moment spanned numerous generations; this ability led them to this reality. But what if it wasn’t enough to keep their own reality intact?

The worst part about this battle? Linuka still wasn’t sure if they had won or lost. She could hardly explain it to herself. She wouldn’t try to clue in the pilots using her limited language skills.

“Don’t worry. He is dead,” she heard herself say. So stupid. Whenever someone told you not to worry, you really should!

Linuka had no murals to meditate on. Walk with the ancestors, she said to herself. The faithful at home would use the phrase to wish good luck. It was a metaphor, but Linuka truly walked with her ancestors. The woman of few words, piloting the transport, and her curious co-pilot would be called the Honored in Linuka’s time, and if any of their brittle bones ever emerged from where they finally fell, they’d be revered like relics.

A murmur went through the seat rows.

A Võmémééř battleship’s shadow fell on the cockpit windows, blocking out the star system’s red dwarf. Frequent sharp pings and dull thuds ended all conversations on board. The transport pushed through the tiny shards that had been the battleship’s dome’s bottom, now a gaping hole with sharp edges. The pilot pointed out something on a screen, and the co-pilot started adjusting contrast and brightness of the image.

Linuka closed her eyes. It was a diin. Mangled, contorted, with open wounds now frozen over, but definitely a diin, member of the reproductive elite of the monstrous aliens.

“I think we found it!”

The co-pilot sounded excited, happy even. His mission had turned into a success. Linuka’s was a failure. The trap was supposed to eliminate the breeding couple from existence, undoing the causality war the extra-galactics had been waging. Or at least, re-set the conflict to a stage where this galaxy’s denizens had a fighting chance. The diin they found was dead, but he had died here, during the recent battle. It had generations’ worth of time to create offspring before his demise, and they might count in the trillions. Amongst these trillions could be another diin. The cycle continued.

The battle of Prral killed the fathers of the Võmémééř. Their children, however, would grow up some place out of reach, re-counting the stories about the enemies who killed them.

They’d re-build and then descend on this galaxy once more. Revenge was the strongest of all natural forces, and it would crush everything.

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