Chapter Text
"Are you sure...? I don't..." Chaxa followed my pointing finger as it passed through the holographic interface.
"D---" I buzzed, "I mean, my friend said that this should be a passage of text, just from looking at it."
"Just from looking at it, huh?" Chaxa blinked, unconvinced as she stared at the endless sea of 1's and 0's, "I've never done anything like this."
"Hold on." I entered in some commands, causing the data to coalesce into discreet sections of eight before converting it to our number system, "Does that help at all?"
She leaned in, eyes twisting to take it in from many angles, "If these really correspond to the characters you showed me, there should be some similarities. For instance..."
Chaxa picked up one of her many discarded notes and pointed her rounded finger into the page, "...This character, the one that looks like the end of a metal beam, seems to be unique since it's always surrounded by two gaps, or uhm... separators to be precise."
She traced her fingers through line after line of meaningless numbers. My eyes followed the movement and searched desperately, but struggled to see it for anything but textual nonsense.
"Here." She pointed, "32, 73, 32..." She traced through some more lines and paused again, "Here it is again. Could you make it so that any instance of 32 is empty space and all 73's are this symbol?" She held up the symbol again.
"Yeah, sure!"
I nudged her over a bit and started typing into the terminal with an incandescent interest. I ran the command and watched the whole file split into discreet chunks, the first of the symbols standing out stark amongst all the numbers, but even so...
She held up her hand-written approximation of the scrawling on the wall and compared it, "Looks pretty good!"
"Chaxa!" I threw my arms around her squishy, slightly-slick skin and squeezed, feeling her bulge around my embrace a little bit.
She lit up, "There's still a long way to go..." Despite her words, she looked quite pleased with herself, "Another easy one. This symbol that looks like a dot appears consistently after a series of words and always has a gap after it. Like here, Try replacing all 46's with that dot."
I practically shook as I filled it in. I don't think I'd ever been this excited in my entire life. I still didn't know why the language the creature spoke and wrote was the same one in the computer. It was obvious the creature was much more intelligent than even I'd expected, but it still didn't quite explain why their writing used in the ship's computer system. Maybe it was set up to be usable by them.
The more I learned, it only made the crimes of whoever had altered them all that more horrendous. To think that someone could take such a clever and likely proto-civilized species and reduce them to nothing but weapons of war. I could only hope the inquisition found who was responsible. I'd be satisfied with simply saving the thing's life, assuming there was anything left to save...
I shook my head.
Can't let the negative thoughts consume me. We were finally making progress. The easier symbols were finished, but after that it was like putting together a puzzle that someone had sanded the image off. All we could do is look for the most common words and try to slot them in, hoping they'd fit.
It didn't help that there seemed to be two versions of the same character for some reason. Usually they appeared immediately after the dot, but sometimes they would show up out of nowhere and confuse the whole thing. The worst was when we were caught trying to fit in a symbol that didn't seem to actually exist in the language.
It was long into the night before we finally fit the last one. I clenched my fists and shook with excitement. There were still several numbers we hadn't filled out, some symbols that likely weren't present on the walls. But all the critical ones were there, and most importantly, they matched up with the scratches in the wall.
We still didn't know what they meant, but it was a start.
Chaxa went to sleep, but I chose to stay up. I tilted my head back and slipped a tablet between my palps. Obviously I knew the side-effects, but I didn't have the time to worry about that sort of thing. I could sleep on the ship back to Luoma.
Dark was awake. I don't think he ever slept, actually. He complained about being busy again, but it was obvious I'd piqued his interest with all this stuff. He only become more interested when I gave him the characters. It wasn't all of them, but it was enough for him to go poking around in the rest of the data I'd sent him. Sadly wasn't even a fraction of what had been in that repository back on Luoma.
( NO WAY I'LL BE ABLE TO EXECUTE ANYTHING, BUT THIS COULD HELP )
He sent snippets of code, complete with their textual counterparts. It didn't look like much on the surface, but the significance of knowing that this word meant to 'do' something couldn't be understated. It was the first time we knew the semantics behind the syntax. They were the first words that were more than just lines.
> DARK, THANK YOU SO MUCH <
( THIS IS INTERESTING. DIDN'T EXPECT FROM YOU. KEEP IN TOUCH )
> THERE'S SO MUCH MORE I'LL NEED TO FORMAT. CAN YOU MAKE SOMETHING? <
( BUSY. YOU KNOW ENOUGH. )
I twisted my palps. What was another sleepless night at this point. I didn't know digital systems like Dark did, but I should be able to manage something. The binary encoding the ship's computer used was similar to the one the Konoi used. If I used that as a basis it shouldn't take me longer than a day or two. I rubbed my eyes.
Chaxa walked in, "Did you sleep...?"
"Yeah." I lied, "Get this." I tilted the screen to show her, "You kept talking about how you had no context... How's this?"
Her eyes scanned and I saw her heart flutter with excitement, "Oh, Zyrrs. You have no idea how much that helps! Just knowing the conditionals and the conjunctives...!"
She paused and then skipped to her impromptu station in the main room. She sat down and started to work. Even she'd gotten caught up in the excitement of translating an unknown language from an unknown species, apparently having forgotten that what she was doing was technically against the law. She started talking before I was even in the room.
"I've mostly figured out the structure. Words like this that are adjacent to restricted modifiers seem to be referring to things, while these are usually actions. Everything in between is mostly structural."
She went on, "Now that we know what's what, there were several pictographs and drawings next to the writing, and... Oh gosh... I haven't done this since the academy, but we might have enough for an RLPS!"
"RLP...?"
She flapped her clammy hand, "Recursive Lexicon Parsing System. It's something we use for civilizations that haven't unified yet. There can be hundreds, even thousands of completely unique languages on one planet...! That's where the RLPS comes in."
She left me in suspense.
"It sounds fancy, but really it just tries to figure out the language by testing out all the possible meanings behind words and seeing if it makes sense. It's complete brute force and often wrong, but...!" She raised a soft finger, "It's your best bet."
"I'll settle for understanding even a tenth of it..." I said, genuine weariness creeping into my voice.
I watched fixedly as she started loading in terms, using the carved out images as guides for the potential context of the passages. There was an image of seven figures bent over while one image floated over them, perhaps some kind of religious superstition. She weighted the system to take that into consideration, but as soon as she finished, all I could do was wait.
I got back to writing my reformatter while she worked. It was halfway through the day when she came in complaining about a lack of computation power. It didn't bode well that it was taking much more effort than she'd expected, and when I offered her all of my accelerator cores she suddenly looked concerned. It wasn't an amount that any reasonable person ought to have, but she accepted them nonetheless.
That had sped it up considerably, but Chaxa had to be glued to the machine. We were relying so utterly on only a handful of confirmed contexts to unravel the whole thing, and so any one of them being used incorrectly threw off the entire process. I wished I could help, but there was nothing I could do...
It was deep into the night, the screen casting a ghastly glow in the dark room as my head lolled back and stared at the ceiling. I slipped another tablet between my palps and shook my head, straightening to type at my terminal.
"Zyrrs..." Chaxa came in, rubbing her eyes, "It's about as good as it's ever going to get, and the text..." She made a regretful expression, "Don't get your hopes up, okay...? You should go to bed, we'll talk about it in the morning."
I turned, "If you drop that one me, there's no way I'd be able to sleep. Let me see it."
She sighed, and stepped aside. I pushed past her, the pseudo-translation glowing bright on her terminal. I sat down and started to read. Chaxa stood behind me at first, but soon shook her head and disappeared to her room. I hardly noticed.
What was there was nearly inscrutable. Half of the words had notes underneath them offering possible alternate meanings. It seemed to be one of those lamentable languages that overloaded one word to be able to mean wildly different things.
This one three character word seemed to simultaneously mean to place something down, arrange, solidify, cause to start, or act as a place, a collection, or something that is unchanging depending on the context.
It was giving me a headache. Slowly I became accustomed to it, doing my best to fill in the hazy bits, but what was left was just as confusing. If the translation was to be believed, it was an almost religious record of battles and struggles and other strange circumstances. There were references to things that blatantly weren't possible, but were presented with absolute candor.
There were antagonistic figures, things with strange abilities that were poorly described, and slowly it came together. Indeed, despite being able to write, it seemed the howlers were very undeveloped. They seemed to be an incredibly martial species, but far more cooperative than I'd assumed. There were many distinct creatures mentioned, but about seven or eight were reoccurring and there was a great sense of camaraderie between them.
Is it possible that those were the other howlers that my howler had... eaten...? I tried not to judge, the state it had been found in must've pushed it to such an extreme. Was this some retelling of their experiences on their planet? And all these strange, unexplainable phenomenon... Were they the perspective of an ignorant species trying to understand a vastly superior civilization...?
These references to 'great blasts of fire' could easily be plasma rifles, and there were many ways to make something levitate... It was impossible to tell.
Try as I might, the more I tried to read, the more confused I became. It was obvious that these scattered stories were nothing I could use. It was proof of an intelligent but savage species, and nothing more. The rest must be back on Lumoa, on that computer locked away in central command.
If only I'd extracted the whole thing...! But my time had been limited. I had to hedge my bets on what was the most useful, and the massive heap of corrupted and unparseable data had seemed the least important. I sat back.
Maybe this would be enough.
I extracted Chaxa's translation routine to my own data rod and closed the machine. It had been the plan from the start. The sooner the better. I wrote her a note, packed up my things, and left.
Let her rest. She would understand, and if I told her in person she would only worry. I called for transport and stepped inside after it had swooped down. The black night seemed to squeeze the vehicle into its own little world as I looked out into the city."
"To the Space Port, please."
* * *
The machine whirred around me, vibrating my viscera with all sorts of fields and frequencies as the events of the last night replayed in my mind over and over again. If I'd discovered the howler's plan a little bit faster. If we'd flown a little bit quickly. If we hadn't missed. I sat there in the regeneration field as it reknit my ruptured organs and mended my burst cells.
It sped up my metabolism, but the cracks in my back would remain for quite some time. The hardened chitin was unresponsive to the regenerative process. I'd need to wait for the next layer to come up naturally. It hurt, but not as much as the reality I'd found myself in.
It had gotten away again...
The howler had known what I was thinking, could predict my moves. That damned xenobiologist... This thing wasn't a simple savage; it was as intelligent as any military strategist. It'd been faking this whole time, hadn't it...? Trying to get us to let our guard down time and time again.
Maybe we didn't 'find' it, maybe it had been placed in our path. Maybe everything had been planned. This went above an escaped beast rampaging through the countryside. It had escalated into attempted assassination of the head of the most powerful and cultured race in the galaxy. It had very nearly succeeded too...
There were no words, no emanations to express my failure. And so I sat here in this machine with all my misery.
It wouldn't last much longer. The Apex was alive, as was everyone else. The loss of eminence would be severe, but that could be mended in time. It was going to be taken out today, and this wouldn't change that.
There was an emanation of [Yit] that curled under my door. I made my displeasure obvious, "I thought I made it very clear I was not to be disturbed."
The door slid open, the wind bringing in the whift's apologetic emanation. He stood there, harrowed. It gave me pause and I stepped out of the machine, things feeling a little more solid than they had before. The whift carried something in her hand.
"What is that?"
She held it out and I felt my insides wrench at the sight of the punitive sash which dangled from the message with a portent as foul as hanging guts.
"...My saratan..." The whift extended her hands, her emanations betraying the contents of the message.
I stared at her. I felt the world narrow, but I couldn't show it, I couldn't... I reached out and took the message with trembling hands. I pulled off the sash, and read the contents. I read it again, refusing to believe the words that had unraveled my entire life's work. I folded the note neatly and set it aside, "If that is what they've decided." I said soberly and started to march, clamping back my glands with what remained of my pride and honor. My whift's eyes tracked me as I passed. I stopped and grabbed him by both shoulders, my fingers digging into the soft parts of his neck.
"Flood those damned tunnels..." I forced myself to speak with more threatening to spill out, "While I still have the authority...!"
The whift weighed my words and my faltering emanations. She had every right to hate me. This would affect her almost as much as it did me. All of my whifts, all of them...
"Yes, my..." She trailed off.
She hurried away, unable to bear seeing me in such a state. The world was hollow in that moment, and I let myself succumb to my grief for the first time since I was a nymph. Get it out of your system, Nestiri...
* * *
"The Aratrost of Viraathi, Admiral Omnalius Nestiri!" The ritual voice declared solemnly, suffusing the air with a thick haze of strong-smelling sap as they swung around their censer.
The dense haze blinded my antennae to the emanations of the figures above, the ones I'd once stood amongst. It was a courtesy, so that I could not sense their ridicule nor their pity. It also prevented me from recognizing the one who would be performing the ritual.
The Apex sat at the peak of the throng around me. What an honor it was, a whift could not hope for such an eminent audience. I kneeled in the center, the harsh white lights illuminating the haze around me. I'd walked there myself, such was my honor. The room was deathly silent save for the soft tinkle of chains.
It was Zharr who spoke up then, "Nestiri, your actions have denigrated the eminence of all who stand here before you. As a direct result of your choices, the value of those who comprise Central Command has been called into question. The magnitude of this loss cannot be compensated by your own viraas, and so you have been sentenced to an Aratrost."
I couldn't smell the intent behind his words, only take them as the raw, factual statement that they were. I hung my head.
"What do you say in your honor?"
I stared at the floor, "Everything I've ever done... all my thoughts and all my actions have only been towards the majesty of the Fyrix." I shook, "I accept whatever you deem necessary."
Zharr sat down and two Fyrix approached. I couldn't tell their sex, nor their status. They were clad in ritual white, hiding their appearances as they approached like phantoms. I felt something inside of me break as they seized my arms and lifted them.
"Please...!" I protested, "The restraints are unnecessary...! I'll not qualm or squirm! Allow me the honor to accept my punishment readily!"
"Would you have humored the idea if one of your whifts had requested it?" I turned, seeing the face of Iiath staring down at me.
No... I wouldn't have.
The restraints clapped around my wrist, another pair locking around my knees as my arms were hoisted into the sky by a set of chains. They pulled my arms apart and exposed my chest. I focused on the wall ahead, trying desperately to control my instincts to thrash and flee. Those who displayed such stoicism in the face of their adjustment could occasionally expect some token of respect from the ones observing the ritual.
The cart was pushed in, ornamented instruments gleaming wickedly. I recognized them well. I'd used them myself hundreds of times. I tried to look away, tried to think of anything else as they were lifted with delicate grace. I felt my heart hammering in my abdomen as it approached, using everything in my power to keep from bending away from the metal tool as if it were molten hot.
It hooked into my chest, the cool metal chilling me down to the blood as it locked against the first of my thoracic flanges. I curled my hands into a pulsing grip as the instrument was turned, widening the mouth and splaying my chest open. I felt the wind on my innards, my heart hammering and my head going light from the rush of it.
The others were forced open. I hung there, bared to the eyes of those above me. I didn't look. I didn't want to see them. I was thankful... thankful that my station had offered me a descended plinth. The other phantom lifted the final tool, a long and thin blade. Panic swelled in my blood, the reality of the situation crashing down all at once.
Don't scream.
The cold metal blade penetrated my chest. I heaved forward, rattling against the restraints as it scraped against my thoracic cavity, running a long, dreadful scrape down the first of many ribs. The pain was nothing compared to the desolation.
I watched with detached horror as the first bounty came out of my chest, the gelatinous substance glinting on the edge of the blade before it was scraped against the rim of a fire, discarded with a hiss of smoke.
It slid in again. I pulled against the chains and cried out, beginning to break. Three hundred years. Three hundred years of collecting viraas, and it all ends like this...
The scrape of metal, another hiss of smoke. The second Fyrix wiped away a trickle of blood as it streaked down my thorax. The blade went in again, scraping every last ounce of viraas from that hollow before moving onto the next cavity. .
My hands clenched and shook, and then it all went slack. I fell limp, letting the chains take my weight completely. I understood now...
How many of these had I administered...? And without every knowing what the smoke was really for...? It wasn't so the adjusted couldn't smell the watchers. It was so the watchers couldn't smell the adjusted.
I let everything go, my voice, my grip, and my bowels as every gland in my body clenched, crying out my myriad despair for the world. For the first time, without fear, and without pretension, I let my true feeling escape the cage of my heart to mix with the smoke as Nestiri was destroyed.