Untold Stories of a Galaxy - Kysaek: The Beginning

The early midday sun of Auranis shone through a few shutters and the scattered sounds of city traffic drifted into the corridors of the base from outside, but many Disciples were not yet on their feet. The reason for the low activity was probably yesterday’s mission, which had had its difficulties and from which many were surely trying to recover.In the communal mess hall there was nevertheless food provided, as the serving was run by the bots, and Kysaek saw a handful of sisters sitting at one of the long tables: Re’Lis, Jor and Ela’Riin. “May I join you?” she asked around the table. The last few weeks had just slipped by for her and she couldn’t believe she had been with the Disciples of Dealith for so long. It was definitely not a life she wanted for the rest of her days, but she wouldn’t swear if it all took another few months or a year or two.

“Only if you don’t eat too much,” Jor replied in a low voice. As a female Hishek, she not only sounded almost like the males of her species, but looked confusingly like them. Unlike the others at the table, however, she was not squatting on the bench but on her strong, flexible legs and tail.

“I’ll hold back, I promise,” Kysaek smirked, watching as Jor took an entire roast that Kysaek couldn’t even half manage, and certainly not that quickly, into her wide-open mouth and mangled it.

Ela’Riin ate completely differently. “Jor must always overdo it,” she commented, taking in her food in pureed form through a straw. Galig just had a harder time because of their mask and so she drank her food by connecting the straw to a tiny hole in the mask. “Luckily she is the only Hishek here, otherwise we would all starve. Her species are real eating machines.”

While Kysaek took a seat, Jor grabbed a leg of meat as thick as a trained human arm and bit into it. “This is just training so I can use my biters in an emergency,” the Hishek smacked her lips full.

Kysaek would have believed that even without knowing their eating habits, for Jor’s mouth was extremely fearsome. Supposedly, she had once used it to grab a davoc by the belly, complete with armour, and cut it in half.

“Sure,” Ela’Riin said. Comparing her skin and Re’Lis’, it was briskly noticed that Ela’Riin’s was more clearly bursting with colour. Lush light green and a red, inviting flap of skin at the back of her head. Against so much colour, Re’Lis’ appeared almost grey and only the smooth glow on the skin of both Galig was the same.

I wonder if that’s due to age, Kysaek pondered. After all, she didn’t know Re’Lis’ age and to her, the doctor’s dull colour compared to Ela’Riin’s had something of a garment about it. The longer the colouring existed and was exposed to the sun, the weaker it apparently became. Kysaek was not quite sure of this, however, and thought it rude to ask about it now. “Can I have some of the meat?”

Jor had most of the plates right in front of her, so she could reach everything with her short arms. “Sure, otherwise you’ll be skin and bones soon. I just don’t understand humans sometimes, how you can be like this: thin and weak.”

“I’m human and I don’t understand a lot more things about my people,” Kysaek replied. “But you need a lot too, don’t you? I mean, after what you did to those idiots yesterday ...” With that she alluded to the last job, when Kysaek had helped to bring an arms deal across the stage. Unfortunately, the buyers had tried to rip off the disciples and there had been a lead-filled altercation.

“They really thought they could beat me up,” Jor commented, using one of her claws to cut a piece of flesh on Kysaek. “Is that enough for you?”

The slice of meat was plumper than Kysaek’s hand. “I can eat off that all day,” she said as Jor pushed the full plate up to in front of her with her shotgun.

Among the Hishek, that was probably what they called a small portion, listening to Jor’s words. “It’s just a nibble,” she said, tapping the table with her claws. You just had to have respect for them, because they went through food effortlessly, better than the sharpest knife.

“True, a morsel for in between ... again and again,” Kysaek replied delightedly as she began to taste of the meat, looking at Jor. Not only had the Hishek used her claws in yesterday’s mission, her tail was an equally dangerous weapon and with it she had slapped three Calans right across a camp. That was the first time Kysaek had witnessed what a Hishek was capable of in close combat, and it had only made her respect the species even more.

Ela’Riin mocked her lizard sister. “Don’t feel bad, Kysaek. If Jor doesn’t eat at least ten kilos of meat per meal, she’s going to start losing her shiny hair.”

“I can eat you sometime!” said Jor, but whether that was a joke was not clear. Her aforementioned hairs sprouted as spiky hair combs from her head, over her neck and along the edges of her neck. They were yellow and between them individual feathers of varying lengths stuck out, incongruous with the leathery scaly skin. More feathers in white and blue completed the picture, but they were only accessories under the neck and did not grow out of Jor’s body.

Kysaek thought she needed to bring calm to the conversation. “I like Jor’s hair.”

“It’s called plumage and at least there’s a taste here,” Jor said with satisfaction. “But how will the rest understand, Kysaek? Galig only have a scrap of skin on their heads, the Talin are all baldies and the rest of the women of your species just don’t have a clue.”

“That’s right,” Kysaek retorted, but for that she earned a “suck-up” from Ela’Riin. She didn’t dwell on it, however, and enjoyed the meal in the convivial company.

At the end of it, however, only Re’Lis and Kysaek were left at the table and the Galig asked for a favour. “Could you please take this to Dios and Kuren for me?” she asked, holding a grey package of plain cardboard in her hands. “They have been waiting for this order for some time and it arrived earlier. However, I have to take care of one of our sisters.”

Hesitation was out of the question for Kysaek. “Sure, no problem,” she nodded, thinking of the sister she had mentioned, whose name had slipped her mind. She had had half her leg blown off the day before and was supposed to get a synthetic prosthesis for it.

“That’s nice of you,” Re’Lis thanked her and went back to work.

Dios and Kuren often stayed in the secondary hangar, their realm, and there was limited space there. The hangar offered just two landing zones, but it had a gate that sealed it off from the outside world. However, the small hangar was not used for loading and unloading or departures and arrivals; instead, it was a single, chaotic workshop.

This is where Kysaek found Dios and Kuren now, while they were working on a Bolt-Dropper and just putting in a missing door. Unlike the rest of the disciples in the base, the title Sisters applied doubly to the two, for they were sisters in the flesh and belonged to the Sororan people.

Generally they were also called the twin species because one birth always produced two new creatures, but this had a peculiarity. Sororan siblings were either both male or both female and joined at the back. Nevertheless, each side called a body its own, a soft structure of flesh on which sat a sinuous and long neck. Four wide stalk arms, each with two fingers, fitted it perfectly and, thanks to two insect-like legs, Sororans reached a respectable average height of about three metres, at the end of which one looked into a pair of pure black eyeballs.

That Dios and Kuren, like many of their kind, wore only a few strips of cloth on their bodies didn’t bother Kysaek. There was nothing obscene to be seen anyway that came close to a breast or other private parts.

As one of the twins was tinkering with the bolt-dropper, the other saw who was standing there as the back. “Kysaek!” she greeted. Since they both looked and sounded exactly the same, it was hard to tell who was talking now. Worse than with human twins.

Kysaek guessed at it. “Dios.”

The fused sisters moved as if they were one, with no problems or faltering. “Do you want to try again?”

“Sorry,” Kysaek cleared her throat sheepishly. “Kuren, of course.”

The Sororan, who was facing the Bolt dropper, debunked the spectacle. “No, you were right the first time. Dios is just having her fun with you.”

“Just her?” doubted Kysaek. All the time the twins did that to her. She had never dealt with Sororans before. That was why she hoped this kind of humour was not a folk trait.

“Yes, I have more important things to do today,” Kuren said, continuing at the door. “And I have Dios’s work to do.”

“Don’t you listen to her, Kysaek,” Dios said, putting a different spin on it. “In truth, I supervise Kuren and teach her necessary technical tricks.”

“That would be news to me.”

“Be honest, sister. You may be the better pilot of the two of us,” Dios admitted, but not without highlighting herself. “But without me, the machines wouldn’t even run and there would be no flying.”

Kuren continued to be doubtful. “Another thing that would be new to me.”

“Do you notice why I am joking, Kysaek?” asked Dios, accusing her sister. “Kuren is fierce and mean.”

She didn’t feel like responding to the conversation, which made Kysaek shake the package. “You better not be mean today, because I have something for you,” she said. The shaking made it jingle neatly. A sign that the contents were made up of tiny individual parts.

It made Dios and Kuren sit up and take notice. “Finally!” they spoke in sync, walking sideways so that neither sister was completely on thebackside. Dios started as the two took turns saying, “We’ve been waiting for this ...”

“... for ages!”

“Really a shame how ...”

“... it’s taken so long, even though...

“... we paid so much foreign currency,” Dios said, taking the package.

That was one more thing that could be unbearable, and although Kysaek was focused and standing in front of the two of them, the two-way sentence-completion was tugging at her nerves. “You guys are impossible,” she sighed defeatedly. “Tell me, have you actually seen Thais?”

While Dios was busy with the package, Kuren took the lead and turned completely to Kysaek. “She’s staying at the command centre, isn’t she?” she said exaggeratedly, for Thais was simply staying there most of the time, but the Talin certainly had her own private quarters at the base. “Do you have a specific request? Perhaps we can help you.”

Kysaek didn’t think so, since Dios and Kuren weren’t exactly the disciples’ most eager or best fighters. “It’s just ...the PGI thing. I’ve been here for some time and nothing has changed. I would like to talk about it.”

“We’re just flying, not making plans,” Kuren said, sinking a little lower. “And your plan sounds like destruction and killing. We don’t do that kind of thing either.”

That’s when Dios interfered. “But when we fly, we do destroy sometimes, and I’m sure we kill in the process ...”

“She knows what I mean,” Kuren replied.

“Yeah, I get that,” Kysaek said. “I can fight a bit, but I can’t fly as well as you for that.”

As far as she could, Dios craned her neck around, and it went a good distance. “There’s a video of your first flight, in the Aero Zone,” she replied, but didn’t dignify Kysaek. “You put your hoverwheel against a wall of a house. ‘Not as good a flyer as us’ is really flattering about your flying skills.”

Relaxed, Kysaek defended herself. “I got shot at ...”

Simultaneously it came back from the twins, “We get that all the time too.”

“I got shot at by a lot of people!”

Kuren was not satisfied with the argument. “Trust us, Kysaek: we have the experience and we’ll see it right away and tell you: you can’t fly.”

Kysaek grinned. “Then I’ll defer to the expert opinion - for now.” The casual conversation would have dragged on endlessly otherwise, but Kysaek preferred clarity now. “I’ll see if I can find Thais, and you leave everything here whole.”

Kuren pulled her arms towards her. “I’m sure you will, but I’m not giving any guarantees for Dios there.”

“Less talk, more work,” Dios reprimanded her sister before Kuren turned her attention back to the Bolt Dropper.

Gradually, everyday life and with it the increased activity of the rest of the disciples took hold in the base as well as in the command centre. This was not difficult, however, as the command centre was clearly laid out and housed mainly surveillance monitors, but many of the dozen were also inactive or flickering. The rest of the equipment was used for communication.

However, there was no trace of Thais, which astonished Kysaek. She was about to ask the nearest Galig, unknown to her, when she noticed a stressed Re’Lis come into the room. “Doctor Askar, have you finished your work yet?”

“Not by a long shot,” Re’Lis sighed, moving anxiously to the core console. “As the senior disciple, I’m supposed to be filling in for Thais until she returns, but she’s been overdue for two hours and I can’t get a connection with her.”

“Represent? She’s not here?”

“No, Kysaek. She has an important meeting with the Keeper of our group,” Re’Lis elaborated, but she still had an issue on her mind and her eyes on the monitors. “Have you still not found the problem?”

Beside the monitors, a Talin came up from her knees and wiped her dusty face, including sweat. “We’ve been working on it for six hours and progress is slow, but it’s not us. In fact, earlier I sent Elsa out and she says there’s interference all over the district, has been since last night.”

Re’Lis tapped her mask and addressed Talin by name. “Are there any hackers at work again, Inoie?”

“Could be,” Inoie replied, perplexed. “But it’s also been a few months since the last attack. So it’s possible that hackers have been looting accounts again and circulating a virus or two. The district administration has simply been doing too little against it for years, and if someone notices that it’s just i...”

“Have you backed up the servers?” interrupted Re’Lis somewhat rudely.

“Even before I started checking. The interconnect cables are pulled and the wireless access points are without power. No one can get to them, but I can’t very well take the cameras off the grid.”

Kysaek found it strange that the cameras were not working properly. “If they are hackers, what would they get out of disrupting our surveillance?” she asked nervously, since disrupted security systems had always been the harbingers of her misfortune so far, and in her anxiety she immediately constructed from this the idea that PGI had tracked her down.

No one else in the room seemed distressed by this, and certainly not Inoie. “Because we’re on the public grid, whether it’s with the electricity or the data connections,” she said. “And if someone attacks the public infrastructure, especially with malware, it just sneaks into our systems. So the hackers are not specifically disrupting us and it’s not the first time.”

“But that sounds very simple to me,” Kysaek said with conviction, not being a tech expert. “So the police could just hack into your data and secure a lot of evidence of crimes?”

“Nonsense!“, Inoie dismissed the claim. “Our servers have a strong level of protection and are not directly connected to the public network. We’d know if someone wanted to get in there because they’d have to go through our kits first, since they’re the only ones connected to the servers.”

That was a lot Kysaek didn’t understand, but it reassured her. “You’ll know,” she said, raising her shoulders. “Then I will wait until Thais returns.”

Re’Lis agreed. “Yes, that’s certainly better and I’ll keep trying to reach her. Maybe the vortex cuff will work now.”

“Well that should definitely work. Vortex cuffs always work,” Kysaek said nonchalantly and headed for the door. However, her steps slowed rapidly as her own sentence flashed through her mind anew: vortex cuffs always work, unless ...She had to check again. “Did you just say you can’t reach Thais through the cuff either, Doctor Askar?” asked Kysaek. With Re’Lis, she still used an impersonal form of address.

“Yes, no signal, nothing,” Re’Lis replied in frustration. “Inside the base it works splendidly, but no matter who I try to reach outside - no chance.”

That was the end of Kysaek’s calm and she wondered why Inoie hadn’t noticed. “That’s hardly possible,” she said burdened, sharing what she remembered from her military days. “Vortex cuffs work through a completely different system in transmitting data.”

Now Inoie was getting suspicious too. “With all the hustle and bustle, I didn’t even pay attention ...” she explained, relaying the information as Kysaek knew it. “Cuffs either connect directly locally if the range is right, or run through intergalactic communications. If the cuffs fail, there must be a widespread problem or ...”

Re’Lis didn’t understand what this was getting at and looked irritatedly back and forth between everyone. “Or what?”

The eyes said it all as Kysaek looked into Inoie’s. Both knew the answer that would tip the calm mood for the worse, and Kysaek took on the role of messenger. “Or the signals of an area are specifically blocked and disrupted ...”

An eerie silence fell over the command centre and everyone looked at each other as if expecting a reaction to Kysaek’s statement, such as a huge thunder that was about to rumble.

But when that failed to happen and nothing at all happened, Re’Lis was even more stressed. “I am already old, but I would like to live a few more years. Why don’t you save me such moments when my two hearts might burst?”

She had simply become too paranoid, Kysaek admitted to herself, and asked for forgiveness. “I’m sorry, Doctor Askar, I didn’t mean to...”

Suddenly, a violent vibration rippled through the floor and walls, accompanied by a gruesome bang. It was deafening, and even though it was muffled by the solid walls.

Not only Kysaek, but the rest in the room all struggled to keep their balance during the brief tremor before it stopped. After the jolt, the base’s alarm signal shrilled on and Re’Lis stumbled over to the cameras. “What happened?” she asked angrily as Kysaek came up beside her.Even as Inoie answered, several such shocks followed immediately. “That came from the hangar!” she reported, pointing to one of the few working images.

The main hangar was completely devastated. Small fires blazed everywhere and traces of impacts were found scattered around the area. Flying machines lay criss-crossed and were now nothing more than useless wrecks, as were a large number of Disciples - clearly dead Disciples.

“I don’t see anyone!” stated Re’Lis, demanding clarity. “Where did that come from?”

Inoie had all the trouble in the world, only she found nothing with the scanners outside the base, but the Talin possessed a good eye for that. “What’s there?” she asked, using the camera to zoom far out of the hangar. “A land cruiser!”

A good three hundred metres away, hidden between the coves of houses and only visible with difficulty, hovered a ship a good hundred metres long. Land cruiser, that was what this type was called. It was assigned to the planetary ship class, which was not designed for space. On planets, the land cruiser served as a mobile base of operations, equipped with considerable attack power. However, it was more of a carrier and supporter than a true attacker.

Nevertheless, the ship immediately made use of its arsenal and fired four guns on the right long side. At the same time, Bolt droppers launched from the land cruiser and followed the trail of the shells, which slammed into the already battered hangar bay.

“That’s PGI!” said Kysaek, for the corporation’s logo adorned the approaching transports and the colours also matched the company. “Those cowards!”

Re’Lis responded immediately, speaking into the core console so that her voice could be heard throughout the base. “Attention all - we are under attack by PGI! Arm yourselves, secure the path to the main hangar and occupy the base entrance!”

Inoie cursed. “Come on!” She tried to establish an image of the base entrance, but it didn’t quite work. For that, the sensors there worked perfectly. “I can’t get a picture, but they’re not at our door yet.”

“Unless the sensors are spinning - like so many things ...” opined Kysaek.

“Really uplifting!” retorted Inoie harshly. “All the sooner we should secure the entrance.”

“I’ll go there and help,” said Kysaek.

But before she could really rush off, Re’Lis stopped her, “You stay here!”

Kysaek did not understand the order, as PGI had only come for her. “Why? I can’t let others fight my battle and hide!”

Re’Lis’ reply was unexpected. “You can help us best by keeping an eye on the situation with me and giving me advice, because I’m not a soldier but you used to be one and so you have experience.”

“I know a little,” Kysaek replied. It made sense to her that Re’Lis, as a doctor, would look to her for advice on combat, since the Galig knew no details of Kysaek’s soldiering career and accordingly seemed to hope it would be enough. Moreover, Kysaek noticed how the rest looked at her in a wait-and-see, indecisive manner. She made the decision to comply with Re’Li’s request and mime the good soldier. “Yes, I’ve been on enough missions and I can assess the situation.”

“Very good! The rest get into position! Only Inoie and Kysaek stay with me!”