The krakens roared.
They charged toward him, and Marco grabbed another small asteroid. No—not an asteroid. These were eggs.
"Let Addy go!" he cried, knowing they couldn't hear, hoping they still understood the message. He began flying toward Addy, the new asteroid held between his hands.
And the sea of krakens pulled back.
All around him, they snorted. They drooled. Their tentacles flailed. But they retreated from his advance.
He reached Addy. He waved the stone egg around. The krakens holding Addy released her, sneering, glaring at Marco with unadulterated hatred.
Her mecha was a mess. One leg and one arm were gone. A hole gaped open in her torso, revealing shattered decks and dead marines.
"Addy, you still with me?" he said.
She growled and hurled herself back toward the krakens, shouting and waving her remaining arm. Marco had to grab her and pull her back.
"Addy, no!"
She roared. "Those fuckers killed the marines inside me! They killed them!"
She howled wordlessly and attempted to leap back into battle. Marco gripped her with one hand, holding the asteroid with the other hand.
"Addy, these krakens nearly destroyed us," he said. "We have to fight the grays. That is our battle. Fall back with me now."
She stared at the creatures. The krakens loomed ahead, hundreds of them, maybe thousands. Their clouds of ink hid the stars. Marco couldn't believe how massive they were.
What the hell are these creatures? he wondered. He had studied alien species that lived in this sector of the galaxy, looking at thousands of photos on Wikipedia Galactica. He had never seen creatures this huge, this hideous. Obviously, they were a new species—at least, no older than a million years. What other terrors would Marco find here in the future?
The mechas began retreating. When they were far enough, Marco rolled the asteroid—and the baby kraken inside it—back toward the horde. The krakens protectively wrapped their tentacles around it. And it seemed to Marco that they were gentle. Loving. That they were scared.
Some things don't change even in a million years, Marco thought. Even here, parents love their young.
The two mechas flew away, leaving the asteroid belt. Marco looked back once, and he saw the krakens collect their dead. Their movements were gentle, and when they gathered the juvenile kraken Marco had killed, they seemed to weep.
"They were just trying to protect their young," Marco said softly.
Missing two limbs, punched with holes, Kaji looked at him.
"So are we, Marco," Addy said softly. "You did good. You saved me."
Yet as they flew onward, the dread kept growing in Marco.
They were a million years in the future. The galaxy had changed. Planets were gone. New terrors roamed the darkness. Their mechas were damaged, and they had lost two hundred marines. They had to find the Tick-Tock King inside his pyramid, yet they didn't even know where to look.
Perhaps the odds of success had always been small. But now they seemed nearly impossible.
"Addy, where the hell do we go now?" he said.
Addy was silent, an event as rare as an eclipse. They flew on through the darkness.
CHAPTER SEVEN
"Step forth, Einav Ben-Ari, daughter of Earth!"
She took a deep breath and approached the tree stump. The tree must have once been larger than a redwood; one could have built a house atop this stump. A stairway was carved into its side, and Ben-Ari climbed. She stood atop the stump and looked around at the council.
Before, back at the Lotus Temple, she had met the Admissions Council. Here was a different group—the Galactic Alliance Security Council. A couple hundred aliens had come, each of a different species, representing the foremost military powers of the Galactic Alliance. Here were the superpowers of the Orion Arm, the neighborhood of the Milky Way where the Alliance reigned.
This was, Ben-Ari thought, the last place she would expect generals to meet. The scenery seemed plucked from the pages of Winnie the Pooh. The grass swayed in the breeze. Flowers filled the valley. A pond shimmered nearby, and white mountains soared in the distance. This place was inside the Lemuria Dyson sphere, but it seemed more like a page from a storybook. A beautiful place. A piece of paradise.
And it was filled with killers.
Ben-Ari looked at these aliens, these ambassadors from warlike empires. A cyborg glared at her, a monstrosity of pink flesh and steel blades and saws. A crab was snapping its claws, its eight eyes moving on armored stalks. A towering bird, larger than an elephant, clacked its beak and clawed the earth. Inside the pond, a fish with teeth like swords stuck its head out from the water, gazing at Ben-Ari with a dozen eyes on barbels. One alien, standing on the grass, looked like a cute, petite little girl, but when she grinned, that grin extended from ear to ear, filled with fangs. She gave Ben-Ari a maniacal wink.
That must be why they meet in a peaceful, storybook valley, Ben-Ari thought. Without this serenity, they'd butcher one another.
She cleared her throat.
"Ladies and gentle—" She swallowed, cursing herself. "Fellow ambassadors! I am honored to stand here today, the first human to address the Security Council of the Galactic Alliance. I—"
"She looks weak," grumbled a creature that looked like an armored warthog the size of a brontosaurus.
"Hush, Balas!" said a towering, lanky humanoid with white skin, a bald head, and yellow eyes. Blades hung across his body. "Let her speak. You'll have your time to grumble later."
A little warrior trundled toward them. He looked like a psychotic dwarf, his orange beard wild. "Let the lad grumble! I'll gladly cut the tongue from his mouth. And cut the wee willy between his legs."
For some reason Ben-Ari's translator gave the dwarf a Scottish accent.
The massive, armored warthog lifted a foot over the dwarf. "I would gladly crush you if I weren't concerned with getting shit on my foot."
Ben-Ari watched them for a while in amazement. Soon dozens of species were arguing.
Just like the old United Nations back home, she thought. Perhaps she shouldn't be surprised.
"Ambassadors, please!" she said. "Will you rest from your quarrels and listen to me?"
They looked back at her, grunting, snorting, hissing. One alien, a python clad in armor, kept hissing at her. She didn't like the look in its eyes.
These are not my enemies, she reminded herself. These aren't the scum or marauders. These are the good guys.
Yet it seemed that to get far in the cosmos, one needed a vicious streak. If so, she supposed that boded well for humans.
"I am Einav Ben-Ari, a human of Earth," she said. "We humans are proud to be new junior members of the Galactic Alliance. Our planet shows much potential. We have colonized our solar system and several neighboring star systems. We know the secrets of warp speed and wormholes. We are making great advances in solar power, and—"
"Spare us!" hissed a reptilian humanoid. "You are like an ape that boasts it can lick ants off a stick."
Apes have also been known to rip people's faces off, she thought, glaring at the reptilian.
She took a deep breath, calming herself.
"We show remarkable potential, yet we are in danger," Ben-Ari said. "An enemy threatens our world. An attack on one member of the Galactic Alliance is an attack on us all. I've come here to request military aid."
The aliens burst into laughter.
"An attack on a junior member?" A wrinkled, twisted creature with many eyes snorted. "Is that what you convened the council for? I must return to my wart bath."
A creature that looked like a living tree turned to leave. "Waste of time. Even for one with a lifespan like mine."
In the water, a pair of eels spat at Ben-Ari, then turned and swam away. A few insects—they were so small Ben-Ari had not noticed them until now—buzzed off in disdain.
"Wait!" Ben-Ari cried. "I read it in the charter. If one Galactic Alliance member is attacked, yo
u have a pact to defend it! You—"
"You are a junior member," said a tall, female humanoid. Her skin was glimmering blue, her eyes indigo and mysterious, and lustrous white hair flowed down to her hips. "None of us are sworn to defend junior members." She laughed—a trilling sound. "If we were, we'd spend all our time fighting meaningless wars. Junior members are constantly bickering."
"We only care for the great wars," rumbled a living metal cube with legs. "Not petty skirmishes at the edge of the galaxy."
"I've heard enough from this wee lass." The red-bearded dwarf spat. "Never trust an alien with no beard!"
Ben-Ari looked around in dismay at the remaining members.
"Will no one help?" she cried. "The Galactic Alliance has massive fleets! Earth has much to give, to contribute, to learn and grow! Don't abandon us now."
Yet the aliens only snorted and turned away. She heard somebody muttering something about how junior members were a dime a dozen, and if they couldn't fight their own battles, what good were they? Ben-Ari stood on the stump, dejected.
A buzzing sounded beside her. She turned to see two metal balls—they were about the size of oranges—hovering and spinning around each other. Ben-Ari's hair crackled. The metal buttons on her uniform began pulling toward the balls; they were exerting a powerful magnetic field. The balls began to vibrate. A humming emerged from them, forming words.
"As a junior member, you do not qualify for protection from fellow civilizations," said the metal balls. "Yet you can purchase weapons from the Galactic Alliance Arms Dealers."
That was something at least.
"I would need more than weapons," Ben-Ari said to the floating balls. "I need ships."
The spinning balls bobbed in the air. "The Galactic Alliance Arms Dealers offer a wide variety of starships for sale. If you need them, they also sell robotic pilots, as well as infantry bots. Many species do not wish to risk the lives of their own soldiers, and they choose to purchase robotic warriors along with their ships. I am a member of the Arms Dealers Guild. I would be happy to negotiate a price with you."
Finally—hope.
"I would be most interested to—" she began, but an obese, orange alien stepped onto the tree stump, interrupting her.
"Off, off!" the orange alien said, shooing her away with flippers. "It is our turn to speak."
"Off, off!" said the alien's second head.
"Come, human," said the floating balls. "We will speak in another setting."
She followed the floating metal orbs through meadow and forest. This wilderness spread across the inner shell of Lemuria's Dyson sphere. The professor had told her that there was more mass in this sphere than the entire solar system back home, a fact that still spun her head. Thankfully, they didn't need to travel for millions of kilometers. The orbs took her to an elevator that rose from the surface, moving along cables wider than her body.
They traveled in the elevator for an hour, and the lands below—the inner surface of the Dyson sphere—became a patchwork of green, blue, and gold. In the distance, millions of kilometers away, Ben-Ari could just make out a haze—the opposite side of the Dyson sphere, as distant as Venus from Earth. In the center of this gargantuan megastructure floated the system's star, filling the sphere with heat and light, its energy powering the Galactic Alliance and all her might.
She wondered if any other Dyson spheres existed in the galaxy. The Milky Way was a large place, and the Galactic Alliance only controlled one of its spiral arms. And what of other galaxies? There were billions of other galaxies out there, far beyond the reach of even the fastest warp engine. The entire Milky Way, so vast humanity had barely begun to explore it, was just a tiny speck in the universe. And what of parallel universes? There were such wonders in the cosmos, and Ben-Ari's head spun to imagine what else was out there.
When I was a young cadet in Fort Djemila, I never imagined that someday I'd be here, seeing such marvels.
As they traveled in the elevator, the two floating magnetic balls spoke to her, vibrating to produce the words. The being's name was Kal Talek, and he came from a highly magnetized planet. Billions of years ago, Kal Talek explained, flecks of metal had begun to clump together on their world, to take form, to replicate their structures. Most life in the galaxy was organic; theirs was metallic. They had eventually evolved into their present form—the Kalatians. Each Kalatian was formed of two metal spheres, both filled with complex molecules able to manipulate electromagnetic radiation. Each Kalatian was both male and female, one sphere representing each gender, though they shared a single consciousness.
"We cannot see light, nor can we hear sound," Kal Talek said, his two spheres lazily orbiting each other. "We see the cosmos through electromagnetic energy, which is completely invisible to you humans."
"Fascinating!" Ben-Ari said.
The cosmos was filled with electromagnetic radiation, she knew. Everywhere she went, the air was rife with it. Yet it was a world completely invisible to her. What would it be like to actually sense this world? As a child, Ben-Ari had heard that dogs had a sense of smell a thousand times stronger than a human. She had tried—and failed—to imagine what it was like to "see" with your nose, to perceive a rich, wonderful world she could only sniff bits of. She couldn't even imagine what it was like to sense magnetism.
That is why we have science, she thought. To detect the cosmos that is invisible to us humans. Dark matter. Electromagnetic radiation. Ultraviolet light. So much our bodies cannot sense! Truly, we are still biological apes.
Kal Talek seemed to sigh. "How wonderful it must be to see the world! To hear sounds! To smell a flower! I cannot imagine experiencing the world in such a way. Truly you humans are blessed, and we Kalatians live in darkness!"
Ben-Ari smiled thinly. "The grass is always greener on the other side."
"I would not know," Kal Talek said. "Would that I could see the green of grass! Ah, but here we are. I can sense it in the magnetic fields. Behold, Einav Ben-Ari the human! The armory of the Galactic Alliance."
She gazed out the elevator and gasped.
Metal rings spread out around them, hundreds of them, rings within rings. The largest could have encircled a planet. Countless ships docked at these rings. Ben-Ari saw small starfighters, just large enough for a single pilot, along with warships the size of towns. Barracks rose atop the metal rings, and she glimpsed armored vehicles, formations of robotic fighters, cannons, tanks, mechas, and all variety of weapons, some she couldn't even understand.
She had never imagined an armory this large. Every weapon Earth had ever built, from the first stone-tipped spear to the great starfighter carriers of the twenty-second century, would have vanished here, drowning in this sea of weaponry. Here were enough weapons to conquer a galaxy.
By God, she thought, not sure if she was awed, horrified, or both.
The elevator detached from the vertical cable. It connected to a rail and began moving along one of the inner rings. Warships docked alongside the ring, while cannons, armored vehicles, and a host of other weapons rose atop the ring's flat surface.
Kal Talek spoke as they flew by. "Aren't they beautiful? We have Hunter-class starfighters, see them there? Top-of-the-line technology, each ship built with its own warp drive, fully equipped with plasma rifles, smart missiles, and laser blasters, and the cockpit comes with its own AI. No human pilot required! Ah, and look here!" They zoomed on by. "See those cannons? Those are Stinger-class hell-blasters, their shells built with drills that can penetrate even the thickest hulls. Simply fire-and-forget. Ah, and here! Up here!" The elevator zipped up to another layer of rings. "See there? Robo-troops. We sell them by the thousand. Each machine has the strength of fifty biological fighters. They will never tire, never disobey, and will assure your victory in the field. Yes, ma'am! We sell graviton-grenades, nuclear bunker-busters, electromagnetic disrupters, sonic rifles, and railgun tanks. Whatever you need, we sell it! Want to use your own biological soldiers? Not a problem! Here, see these mechas!
See these transporters! If you need it, we sell it. With our weapons, you will win. Guaranteed every time."
Ben-Ari listened to the spiel. She had to admit: At first she had thought Kal Talek would be offering her weapons for free. A perk of junior membership. But this was a sales pitch. As a junior member, she couldn't borrow weapons. She could simply step into the store.
And she was broke.
Was there even any point to becoming a junior member?
"And we have whizzer-stars," Kal Talek was saying as the elevator zoomed by the weapons. "Cast out a thousand and watch them rip through an enemy fleet! And if you're looking to carpet-bomb a hostile world, nothing beats these older bomber-orbitals. And if you really mean business, we can sell you antimatter grenades under the table. Each one can destroy a small moon. Technically they don't exist, but for the right price, we—"
"Kal Talek," she said, interrupting the spinning balls, "I don't have much money."
He fell silent at once. The elevator screeched to a halt between a row of tanks and a spiky warship. The two spinning orbs seemed to stare right at her.
"How much do you have?" he asked carefully.
"None," she confessed.
Kal Talek hovered before her, silent.
"That does make things somewhat more complicated," he said. "But not impossible." He bobbed upward. "We do, you see, also offer loans."
Ben-Ari nodded. "Tell me about these loans."
He took her into an office, where Ben-Ari spent a while looking at graphs, then stepped out a few moments later, with Earth deep in debt.
I'm sorry, Earth, she thought. It'll take you a century to pay this back. But without an army, you won't last a year.
With every breath, she could feel the interest ticking up. With every heartbeat, Earth sank a little deeper into debt. Her grandchildren, most likely, would be cursing her name. But at least they would be around to curse.
Her pocket heavy with borrowed credits, she went shopping.
A few hours later, the Lodestar flew out of Lemuria, heading back to Earth.
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