First Contact

Chapter 478

MANTID FREE WORLDS

How are you, Cyb?

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CYBERNETIC ORGANISM CONSENSUS

We are... surviving.

Casualties were extreme across Terran Descent Human members of the consensus.

But, as we welcome any who are more metal than flesh, we still have many members.

Whole worlds, though, are empty.

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TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS

Are you all just going to ignore the religious epiphanies all of you had?

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MANTID FREE WORLDS

No. That was startling, to say the least.

These are strange dark days indeed.

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LANAKTALLAN FREE HERD

My people are angry. We just met humanity, fought, and then began to become friends with them.

Now they are almost gone.

Yet their remainder, and their allies, fight to liberate and protect my people.

But we are angry, like something was taken from us before we really knew what it was.

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MANTID FREE WORLDS

We get it.

>sighs

We have no idea what's going on with the Sol System, almost all of the TDH worlds are empty, TDH space is just... empty.

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TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS

Wait, I thought that the kids, because of the neural plasticity in their cyberware, weren't being affected as much by this.

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MANTID FREE WORLDS

We've checked. The planets are empty.

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AKLTAK SOARING WORLDS

Wait, what happened to the kids?

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TNVARU GRIPPING HANDS

Where did they go?

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RIGELLIAN SAURIAN COMPACT

We're not sure. There were two million TDH children under the age of sixteen on Rigel alone, two days ago, they just vanished. Most of the apartments are locked from the inside, some of them vanished from inside taxis or high security creches.

Just... gone.

Even their clothing was left behind.

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TNVARU GRIPPING HANDS

This just gets weirder and weirder.

Some kind of Terran black box project?

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TELKAN FORGE WORLDS

It changes nothing. TDH gave us the tools and the will to fight. We have to stand up for ourselves and each other. The Atrekna are not here as conquerors, not here as enslavers, they are here as devours.

little bird is yellow little lizard is green little gremble is red soft touch warm touch gentle touch pet the gremble hear it purr good podling gentle podling podling love and podling pet and podling be nice

Sorry.

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TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS

Don't apologize kid. That's about the best thing I've heard in a while.

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PUBVIAN DOMINION

We can confirm. We had a handful of TDH children on planet, and they're just gone. Their adoptive parents and the hospital/creche staffs are in a complete panic.

It's creepy as hell.

It's easy to forget how creepy Terrans are.

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TELKAN FORGE WORLDS

Creepy how?

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PUBVIAN DOMINION

Guys, watch this. It's a home security video.

You know our history, how we had the Amogus most of our history. Hell, lots of people still believe there are Amogus out there.

But watch this video.

Be warned though, it's creepy.

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Ordiluk watched on the Tri-Vid as children's show came to an end. She clapped her working hands together and turned around, looking at the human child she was caring for.

Damanda Grawok O'Malley was a cute human girl. Six years old, naturally curly brown hair, startling blue eyes, brown skin. She was smiling, her two front teeth missing due to adult dentition pushing the milk-teeth out of her mouth. The girl had a genetic malady that couldn't be cured easily through reskinning, although Damanda didn't quite understand why. She was a happy and easy to get along with child anyway, despite having spent two months in the Pediatric Ward of one of the Pubvian medical centers.

"Did you like that?" Ordiluk asked.

Damanda nodded. "Yes."

Ordiluk turned around and turned off the Tri-Vid. "It's time for therapy."

When she turned around, all that was on the chair was a set of steri-clothes, a patient wristband, and a pair of slippers on the floor.

"Damanda?" Ordiluk said, clenching her gripping hand. She looked around, feeling her fur curl tight. "Damanda?"

A quick check of the room as she hustled to the big red button on the wall showed Ordiluk that Damanda was nowhere in the room.

Right before she reached the button hospital alarms started howling.

"Code Pink. Repeat. Code Pink. All Terran Care Specialists take headcount and report immediately. Facility is on full lockdown. Elevators are locked out. Room doors locking in ten seconds," came over her implant.

"This is Nurse Ordiluk, Terran Pediatrics. My patient, Damanda O'Malley, is missing," she reported.

"Logged. Stay in place," the hospital computer ordered. There was a clink. "Nurse Ordiluk, this is Security Chief Trekdilmet, do another visual sweep of your patient's room."

The video went to black.

PUBVIAN DOMINION

We've got millions of records like that. We've got the Planetary Security records of the time. One minute we had millions of Terran children, the next minute they just vanished according to their transponders.

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MANTID FREE WORLDS

This reeks of some black box project.

Like Project... um... what was it called, where Humans ran away to...

ummm...

What was it called?

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PUBVIAN DOMINION

Project Dandelion? Message deleted by Moderator

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MANTID FREE WORLDS

I don't really remember.

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PUBVIAN DOMINION

OK, that was weird.

Project Dandelion Message Deleted By Moderator. 1 Strike Applied

OK, THAT is weird.

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TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS

Everything's getting weird.

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MANTID FREE WORLDS

You know...

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TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS

Oh, God, What?

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MANTID FREE WORLDS

You know, our earlier members weren't in here for a talk we've had off and on during slow nights/times in here.

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TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS

>laughs

Which one?

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MANTID FREE WORLDS

The Builders Theory.

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RIGELLIAN SAURIAN COMPACT

I never thought we'd go from treating that like a ghost story to something real.

I hate this.

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TNVARU GRIPPING HANDS

What's "The Builders Theory" and why does it sound frightening?

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MANTID FREE WORLDS

As our Lanaktallan allies in here can attest to, the Terrans took science and technology to the point where it's damn near magic. Physics runs screaming just at the sight of a Terran scientist.

They beat death.

They discovered every single method of FTL travel anyone else did and several others.

There's rumors they colonized parts of Deadspace.

They adapted to Hellspace or forced Hellspace to adapt to them.

They come back from the dead, even if it's just a limited time.

They terraform the unterraformable with biological constructs.

And a lot more.

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LANAKTALLAN FREE HERD

Yes, yes they have.

To those of us who's eyes have been stripped of species and cultural blindness, our Terran allies seem almost mythical to us.

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MANTID FREE WORLDS

Trust us, like Trea can tell you, what you've seen only scrapes the edges of it.

Then, well, combine The Builders Theory with the Theorem of a Malevolent Universe, and I feel we may be entering Dark Days for the Orion-Cygnus Galactic Arm Spur.

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TELKAN FORGE WORLDS

OK, now even I'm nervous.

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TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS

Trust us, kid. Humans are goddamn scary. Worse, they naturally evolved.

A lot of species have tried to console themselves by searching desperately for evidence that some malevolent precursor species created the Terrans as some kind of terrible weapon against a foe.

Hell, the appearance of the Atrekna have brought those old conspiracy theories back.

But, I'll be honest, the truth is even more horrible, if you believe the Malevolent Universe Theorem.

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HESSTLA CYBERBURROW

What is that?

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RIGELLIAN SAURIAN COMPACT

It's a belief, started among Terran Descent Humans, after the Friend Plague, that the Universe is not simply an expanding area of gases, matter, energy, and plasma, but instead has some kind of awareness of a type that we cannot understand. That awareness has knowledge of us, as living things, and takes sadistic glee in our trials and struggles and pain.

Now, those of us who are not Terran, who believe in that theorem, believe that for some reason, known and understandable only to an intelligent being the size of a universe, created the Terrans.

The lack of evidence to support this theorem is evidence in and of itself, is the paradox.

Because, name one species, just one that has rebounded from everything the Terrans have. Terrans are almost uniquely capable of overcoming all known Great Filters, some of them without Terrans knowing it.

Terrans are a punishment for someone. A weapon the Universe itself created for its unknown means.

A pursuit and endurance hunting creature so overwhelmingly predatory and acquisitive that even scientific advancement is part of its prey.

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PUBVIAN DOMINION

The Universe, for some reason, created Terran Descent Humanity. Hammering the ultimate tool using sentient and sapient adaptive predator capable of adjusting its environment as well as capable of forethought and discreet planning and non-linear thought.

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MANTID FREE WORLDS

A race that breathes starship fuel, who's body heat management system is a corrosive liquid, who's blood is corrosive, who's decomposition creates what might as well be bioweapons, who uses single direction musculature anchored to a calcium stone endoskeleton.

Capable of advanced problem solving, non-linear thinking, predictive analysis, and mutual cooperation as well as pack bonding.

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TELKAN FORGE WORLDS

They're not that bad.

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TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS

Kid, they're worse. You haven't really seen them. Oh, you've seen Daxin the Destroyer at work, but he was saving your planet. You've seen the Terran military fighting a defensive war or trying to minimize civilian casualties during an offensive war.

But you haven't seen what we old people have seen.

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PUBVIAN DOMINION

"Surrender. Or be destroyed."

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LANAKTALLAN FREE HERD

That sounds so ominious.

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LEEBAW CONTEMPLATION POOL

That, from the guys who said for a hundred million year "Surrender AND be destroyed.

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LANAKTALLAN FREE HERD

True. True.

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TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS

But that's beside the point.

Combine the Theorem of a Malevolent Universe with that, now add "The Builders" Theory that sis was talking about.

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PUBVIAN DOMINION

Brrr.

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LEEBAW CONTEMPLATION POOL

OK, explain.

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TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS

OK, so Terra-Sol is gone.

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AKLTAK SOARING WORLDS

OK, we don't get that.

How is an entire solar system just gone?

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TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS

We're not sure why, we can't figure out how to get close, get through the interdiction zone around it. For a light year in every direction from where Sol used to be, is a distortion zone. The further in you get, the longer it takes to travel.

It's like someone took a black hole's event horizon and applied it to distance as well as time.

Hell, you can't even get a LOOK at the Sol System right now.

On, and the grav-shadow extends on ALL the known realities. Like a huge bulge.

Cargo haulers are beginning to move around it.

The bulge is shifting jumpspace and hyperspace lanes.

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MANTID FREE WORLDS

We also know that the Atrekna are using something like it to remove star systems, make time move faster inside, and establish solid footholds.

The Sailor Moon Sisterhood has freed several such hellworlds.

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RIGELLIAN SAURIAN COMPACT

I still maintain that those 'girls' should have never been re-released.

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TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS

Oh, I agree with you. But when the Total War vote went through, it pretty much unchained humanity.

Anyway, the Sol System is gone, lost.

The Digital Omnimessiah is appearing, not to humans, but to other species.

I mean, even we got a visit.

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MANTID FREE WORLDS

Wait, really?

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TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS

We spotted him at a moo-moo farm, petting calves and talking to immature Treana'ad that were touring it.

Before any adult could get near he vanished.

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MANTID FREE WORLDS

What did he say?

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TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS

To be good to one another.

ANYWAY!

Back to the Builder Theory.

OK, Humanity is vanishing, and we don't know why. Just... POOF! Gone.

It's a total disaster, a complete catastrophe for the Confederacy.

Except, well, humans are actually a small part of the Confederacy, despite being one of the driving forces and overrepresented in the armed forces.

TDH is only 8% of the Confederacy but represented 62% of the Confederate Armed Services.

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PUBVIAN DOMINION

Which means we've taken a hell of a hit to our military forces right when the Atrekna are establishing themselves.

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TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS

Anyway.

For our younger members: The Builder Theory is based on exactly what has happened. TDH vanishes, but leaves behind all their works. Just abandoned.

A few thousand years pass, us older races either move on or fall victim to a Great Filter

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MANTID FREE WORLDS

Or just give up.

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TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS

Or that.

Then the new races, like you Telkan and Leebaw and even your Lanaktallan start exploring the Galactic Spur.

What do you find? Remnants of TDH works. Things they have built that lie abandoned.

What kind of fearsome devestation will be wrought by what great works the TDH have left behind.

For example, do any of you know what this is?

>TREA has shared guess.img

ALL>No

That's something that the Terrans started to build about five thousand years ago, got bored with it, or maybe it was too expensive, or maybe it was just rendered obsolete, and abandoned it.

It's a worm hole generator has what they were calling a 'non-anchored coordinate dependent two way terminus'.

In other words, it could have created wormholes to anyway, without a need for machinery or the gravitational stresses needed to produce one on the other side. Just beep boop beep KA-WOOSH! New wormhole. It's big enough to move an entire combat task force of the Confederate Navy in one jump. It could move a Goliath Precursor with only a twelve second recovery time.

Now it's just drifting out there.

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PUBVIAN DOMINION

Did it work?

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TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS

They got it to work, played with it, then abandoned it.

Our agents were never able to deduce why.

And that's not the only thing, or the biggest.

After the first Ringwar, the TDH figured out how to make those things. Doom-Tubes, Ringworlds, Dyson Spheres.

They built a handful then abandoned them.

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LANAKTALLAN FREE HERD

Just abandoned all those resources?

The lemurs of Terra are mad indeed.

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MANTID FREE WORLDS

They were doing something classified out there for about a century, then just abandoned it.

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RIGELLIAN SAURIAN COMPACT

And the next Ringwar, the Terrans went absolutely, to use their term, ape-shit crazy on the Ring, broke it apart, snuffed the fusion generator masquerading as a star, planet-cracked the parts.

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TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS

But that one is just abandoned. They also made different ones. Different materials.

Oh, you'll love this one, they built a mini Ringworld with what's called "self-regenerating resource systems" so that in the last four thousand years the 'magma' at the bottom of the rock, between the Niven-Materials and bedrock, replenishes resources, both preventing someone from digging through, but also ensuring that evolving species can mine for resources without ending up out of luck because of a previous failed species.

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TELKAN FORGE WORLDS

And they just abandoned it?

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MANTID FREE WORLDS

Not exactly.

They aimed it and launched it at .5C at the Comet Pinwheel Galaxy, which is roughly 3.2 billion light years away.

Before you ask why, we don't know.

Here's the weird thing. They launched it, held in a Thrint Stasis Field, because apparently a half dozen Doom-Tubes and Dwellerspawn Rings were launched on the same trajectory about a hundred and twenty million years ago.

And no, we don't know why. When we ask, they claim innocence and ignorance.

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TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS

So, the Terrans have been building these things. Impossible things. Strange and unknowable things that only make sense to the craziest of the Terrans.

And abandoning them.

So, with TDH gone, the memory of them will fade. They'll become legends.

We'll fade into history. Even the Lanaktallan. If the Unified Council gains supremacy, you know they'll wipe out all records of Terra-Sol to keep anyone from believing they can be challenged.

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LANAKTALLAN FREE HERDS

You are correct, which is why the fight against the Atrekna must be finished, so that we may finish the unfinished business of finishing the liberation of the Lanaktallan people.

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PUBVIAN DOMINION

That's a lot of finishing.

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LEEBAW CONTEMPLATION POOL

So, basically, what you're saying, is that we're entering everyone's worst nightmare.

A malevolent universe, not satisfied with extreme radiation, gravity, vacuum, and distance, decided to produce the ultimate adaptive tool using sentient sapient predator capable of non-linear thought.

It then put them in a pressure cooker of a system.

Humans then spread out across the galactic arm spur, building strange and unknowable creations.

Then they vanished, went extinct virtually overnight.

We don't know where the humans are going that weren't killed in the Great Terran Die-Off.

We don't know what they've left behind.

The ones left behind will become legends.

Eventually, we'll start stumbling across Terran advanced technology and it'll be like some podlings getting let loose in the control room of a planetary fusion reactor.

Am I right so far?

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TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS

Yeah, you're right.

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MANTID FREE WORLDS

Shhh.

Anyone else hear whispering?

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...

...

...

TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS

Yeah, yeah I do.

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"OK, I've got the last connection finished," Herod said, examining his handiwork.

The automatic systems refused to work on this section, the main computer systems and the VI's refusing to even admitting the area existed.

It was cold, only 2 degrees Kelvin, and Herod had been forced to wear protective gear even though he was housed in a disaster frame.

Massive thick data cables connected to backbone data linkages for the ancient Sol-Net, one way data-lines to and from the massive information sharing infrastructure and boxes of spooky-matter particles.

"Apply the power. It should be stable now," Sam said. The area had a dedicated antimatter thorium salt fusion reactor that he had been forced to personally oversee the repair and reactivation of.

"FIRE FIRE FIRE!" Herod chanted out.

He hit the power switches.

The vast spooky particle servers spun up, lights blinking. The text flowed by too fast for Herod to read, even with his advantages of being a Digital Sentience.

The runes were strange. Almost barbaric.

"Wow, that's a heavy dataflow. Weird, it's going straight to Terra-Sol, Smokey Cone, Hive Home, Rigel, Pubvia, and a couple other places," Sam said. "Wait, is there one that's different?"

Herod looked around. There. One the cables were different design, the main box looked different, almost, well, cheaper and flimsier. "Yeah, I see it."

"Any logos on it?" Sam asked.

Herod moved over slowly and looked at it. It took him a minute to spot it. "Yeah. Looks like a stylized camera lens with a red dot middle."

Sam ran a search on the Sol-Net connection he had then shook his head. "Don't worry about it. It's just the old BobCo logo."

"So what's the data?" Herod asked, clumsily and slowly walking back to the small vehicle so he could quickly cross the half mile room to the far door.

"Don't know. A lot of it. Looks like secure data going to a lot of places. Lots of priority data," Sam said, looking at the streams of data flowing by. Some of it was the digital equivalent of river rapids. "Lots of the time/date stamps are from around the Glassing. Lots of priority signals."

"Probably poor bastards calling for help," Herod said. He threw a leg over the saddle and shifted until he was comfortable. He turned the handle and the little hovercraft slid forward. "Can you decipher the headers? See where they were coming from?"

Sam looked again and shook his head. "No. Sorry."

"Eh, probably just more buffered data regarding the attacks."

Deep in Black Boxes hidden in unknowable, unreachable, and unseeable places, even ones long shut down, computers whirred to life.

They transmitted their data to pre-approved sources.

And one source that had managed to slide up close enough to listen to their high security mumblings.

Written on the arch of the door that Herod exited from was a simple saying that Herod had ignored when he realized it was hand written and provided no clues to what the section's primary and secondary directives were.

"You Can't Stop the Signal, Mal."

MANTID FREE WORLDS

I'm telling you, those whispers are getting louder.

Wait.

OH MY DIGITAL OMNIMESSIAH! CHECK YOUR PRIORITY UNIVERSITY DATA TRANSMISSIONS!

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TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS

This better not be a picture of your eggs.

OK, wow, lots of priority signals and...

That...

that's impossible.

It's got to be some sick joke.

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PUBVIAN DOMINION

Holy crap! I've practically got full blown riots in the streets.

Phillip stab the eyes of that blasted BobCo AI!

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RIGELLIAN SAURIAN COMPACT

This... this can't be real.

Can it?

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LEEBAW CONTEMPLATION POOL

Hey, guys?

What's a 'kitten' and why is BobCo offering a 'genuine cloned tabby edition' one?

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TELKAN FORGE WORLDS

BobCo catalogue update is almost crashing my servers.

What's a 'puppy' and why do I want one so bad?

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