Chương 138: Part 119: Star Bastards

Nestra didn't hesitate. Decoy. She raised a false water shield on the other side of the guide bot. A burst of radiance broke it immediately, but she'd already sent herself forward. A flow of light obstructed her vision. She was too late. I'm dead. But there was one splash of darkness before the light, one little piece of hope like Mercury in front of the sun. Nestra went for it. She used momentum to position herself behind that little dot.

A tight beam of salvation remained while all around, there was only prismatic fire. The guide robot had been spared the flames and thus so had Nestra. Probably some IFF function. Using the last of her flagging strength, Nestra shifted through the door. She landed on a blessedly cold carpet.

"Fuck." Nausea overcame her, while a light bite told her the Skin symbiote was feeding off her blood. Parts of it were smoking. Most of it, in fact. It protected me from the heat.

"Thanks," she uttered. Unfortunately that turned out to be a poor idea as she barfed her breakfast over the expensive decoration. The gate she'd passed opened, revealing her guide. //Ah, there you are, it said in its best evil machine impersonation. Nestra waited for the other shoe to drop. It didn't, the spider bot patrolling the Animarium like a spooked guard dog. She was still alive. //Please stay close to me for best results, dear intruder. //Distress detected. //Do you need medical attention?

The possibility of vivisection haunted her imagination for all of three seconds.

"No. See? Already better," she replied, still a bit well done. //Then we should resume our journey. Nestra eyed the back of the bot with rising suspicion. Hanlon's razor dictated she shouldn't attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by lazy coding, but that sure was a lot of fuckups. How had it detected her when she was next to it? She'd tried so hard to hide… was it perhaps an Aszhii-detection system also present in guide bots just in case? Nestra couldn't be sure.

If she were an evil artificial being bound by rule with the sort of bottled Djinn level of malevolence only assuaged by the subtle torture of experimental bipeds, this is exactly the sort of shit she'd be pulling. Her eyes narrowed but, in the absence of evidence, and also in the presence of her being completely lost, she had little choice but to trust her guide. She also almost expected her hubris to rear its ugly head, perhaps suggesting that she could gain rainbow flame resistance, but again, nothing.

Her arrogance wasn't fireproof just quite yet. One thing was for sure though, she'd use the train's maintenance access on the way back. With one last grumble, and the Skin still gulping her blood to rebuild itself, Nestra trotted after the bot. Fortunately she'd packed water and jerky to help her struggling generation around. The spider bot didn't follow them. Nothing jumped from the heavily painted ceiling. Perhaps because this was the Star People side of the station, or so she believed.

No concession had been made to user-friendliness here, or social spaces or any of that stuff. The area consisted of heavily decorated caverns of massive proportions, some adorned with overgrown vegetation somehow kept alive despite centuries of neglect. Again, Nestra half-expected to be jumped by a carnivorous plant, or spiders… something! But no, only the light whirr of her flying guide broke the silence. Even the exotic shrubbery had been tamed at the genetic level to provide no challenge.

High, monumental gates everywhere indicated that the star people flew where they wanted. Despite the general care and attention given to the public section, it all felt very generic, impersonal, or perhaps she was missing something? It was just designed to look pretty and little more. Some of the exhibits were nonfunctional, the pieces discarded on the ground.

"Is this the placement for a portal?" Nestra asked the bot as they walked past a rustic arch made of uncarved stones. //This is an oratory pulpit dedicated to the recitation of poetry. There once was an Aszhii from Cabot. Who smiled on the back of a robot. They returned after done. With the Aszhii's pulse gone. And the smile on the face of the robot… Nestra shook her head to dispel the silliness. She was getting a little light-headed, her regeneration slowed to a crawl. Stupid flames. //We have arrived.

"Huh?" Nothing prepared her for the storage space. The walls parted like an opening iris, revealing a soberly (for a star person) decorated room hosting piled up cylinders. As she entered, the robot followed her in. //Do you need further assistance?

"Yes, please." The way the cylinders were stacked showed that the space was only partially used. Some of them were as empty and lifeless as the station, but others hummed with inner energy, green light snaking through visible mana circuits. Nestra searched for any kind of interface but found none until a ground panel popped up, and a book-like object emerged from it with quiet dignity. Unknown glyphs appeared on its surface for a while. They switched to the Aszhii's spindly runes a moment later.

"What? Why?" //Please clarify your inquiry.

"Why is there a… terminal? And why is it written in Aszhii?" //The terminal and language adaptation are safety measures in case one of your benefactors sends a servant, or are themselves stuck in another form. //Do not be alarmed, intruder.

"In Aszhii? Err, in monochrome reaver script?" //The system is designed for ease of use. //This area is currently: unclaimed, license expired. //Living storage detected. //Administrative personnel notified. //Pods' malfunction imminent. //Recovery contingency activated: access granted for rescue purposes. So Nestra had access because there were living, well, things, in the pods. She had a suspicion as to what that would be.

Those were definitely not star people though; she didn't think people who built themselves palaces like that would consent to being stored in a warehouse. Curious, she approached one of the pods. They had tiny windows. The first showed a curious rectangle of marbled 'meat', gray red and white. It was far too regular to be natural. Was it 'alive'? She switched to the next one. This one was clearly disabled. Inside was a desiccated corpse mummified by time and dry air devoid of any moisture.

The corpse was so twisted, it was difficult to tell what the species would have looked like alive.

"Riel." She hoped they hadn't been awake to face their end. The thought of waking up inside and spending the time it would take for a C-class body to give out, scratching at the window and the sweet escape it offered… Surely the pod would have reacted, right? To avoid waste if nothing else. Nestra shuddered. The next pod showed a strangely gray humanoid mostly devoid of facial features. Only slits and thin lines showed where the nostrils, eyes, and mouths would be.

"Hmmm." Ok that one was alive. There might be others. She returned her attention to the main panel, finding options.

"Stasis revival…" //Revival requires specialized facilities. //You can send the relevant pods to the nearest available facility, intruder. And she could. The user interface was so easy to use, it was almost as if felt what she wanted to do. A list of pods and its occupants popped out on the main screen. Some of them mentioned containment failure. The one with meat was listed as 'raw material', so at least it wasn't someone turned into a ribeye for funsies.

A dozen of the pods listed 'Oracle Longing Blossom Model 78' serviles. Nestra shivered at the word, blinking on the cold screen in sacrilegious Aszhii.

'The 78 offers unmatched physical flexibility to automatically match the aesthetic of borrowed forms'. She read through the manual with growing disgust as she learned more about those who had designed this facility. The star people trained client races to serve their interests, created sapient beings to please them, and changed bodies when they wanted. She knew Aszhii were solitary assholes, but this level of hedonistic abandon scared even her.

When one has achieved functional immortality, when one has no need to compromise to find companionship, and when one designed spiderbots so advanced they manipulated exotic mana rather than killing monsters themselves like a normal person, then what was left? What was there left to do? Nestra finished the process of transferring the manufactured beings to the nearest active facility for immediate revival after making sure it was accessible and safe, then she checked the local database's entry.

Searching for general knowledge proved useless: this monitor was cut off, like most of the others she'd seen so far. There was remarkably little to be found about the star people themselves as if their own civilization was of little interest to them, but one of the local entries immediately attracted her gaze. Animarium. Nestra froze. This was it, the important project. She clicked it, but only found a status page.

Monolith 1, status: incomplete Monolith 2, status: inactive, ready Monolith 3, status: inactive, ready Monolith 4, status: test run complete. Run time: approximately 27 cycles. Subjective run time: 228, 765, 365 cycles.

"What?" This novel is published on a different platform. Support the original author by finding the official source. //Please clarify your inquiry.

"What's the Animarium's purpose?" //Your benefactors do not wish to share more at this time. //Rest assured that your benefactors hold this project close to their hearts. //Once it is completed, a new era of greatness will come upon you. //We ask for your patience. She supposed she wouldn't learn much more here. With a sigh, Nestra browsed the fragments of archived knowledge left behind. On a hunch, she selected the language options and realized the Aszhii script had a related entry in a dictionary of races.

Her people were, unsurprisingly, classified as 'threats' with no possibility of turning them into a client race. The classification relieved her. There was much to say about the Aszhii, but at least they wouldn't submit to anyone but one of their own, or worship anything except glorious battle. Of some interest was the fact that since this was aimed at star people as, she assumed, a refresher, the text was mostly devoid of propaganda bullshit.

'Monochrome reavers are a species of shape-shifting sapients originating from a destroyed universe. Dissections show that they evolved from formless parasites caught by temporary wormholes between their native dimension and the many words. Reavers are fourth-dimensional entities. Fortunately, reavers lack the intellectual capability to make use of their space powers beyond mobility and storage.' What?

"The most defining and dangerous ability of a monochrome reaver is shape-shifting. They use that ability to infiltrate other species, mate with their females, and then abandon the progeny. The spawn of such unions are inevitably reavers themselves. Although reavers could use this to take over entire civilizations, they lack the patience, unity, and focus to make use of this skill. Their main interest remains the thrill of the hunt. Nevertheless, reavers' individual prowess is lethal.

Engaging an individual is not recommended, as even the most sophisticated simulations do not account for their wide variety of powers and skills." Nestra had never been so insulted and flattered at the same time. She scrolled some more, but those were details she already knew such as gender differences, portal creation and such. A small blinking icon attracted her gaze. Read more: Punitive Expedition. Final assessment. Punitive expedition?

Nestra clicked on it, finding the slick shape of what appeared to be a spaceship though the physical hull appeared to be only a fragment of the vessel's entire frame. The ship floated on the background of an orbital shipyard. Nestra was much impressed, until she read the caption. The Avatura, presumed lost with all hands. It was quite telling that Nestra hadn't heard about any invasion attempt from her fellow Aszhii. Maybe it hadn't even registered.

A sense of amusement lifted some of her anxiety when she read the final assessment. Diluted by euphemisms and hidden behind technical terms was an easy conclusion: Aszhii were far too dangerous to be worth the trouble of inconveniencing their entire race. This was pretty much what she'd expected. Right. Enough with the distractions. She still needed to find Shinran, but he'd been tracking the life signs so she could just follow those as well, and hopefully they would find one another. Unless…

"Are there any other life forms around besides those present here?" //Data unavailable. All she knew was that he was after the life forms himself, so hopefully he would track them. If not, Nestra could always improvise. She was good at that.

"Please lead me to, uh, the nearest active reanimation facility." //Guiding you to where you sent the pods, intruder. Nestra's glare slid off the bot's smooth surface. How conscious was it, exactly? The Star People had the technology, but they were also self-serving assholes and those wouldn't trust entire facilities to a sapient AI, shackled or not. With no immediate choice but to follow it, Nestra slowly progressed through increasingly elaborate rooms to what appeared to be a living quarter district.

Entire palaces floated in rooms as tall as skyscrapers, the gravity cut in places for the benefit of artsy fountains or other mind-bobbling zero-G decorations. Scientists would have a field day here. In fact, now that they knew how borked the security was, it might be a good idea to exploit the station for its scientific knowledge. Just a fragment of Star People knowledge might propel humanity into a new age of robotic and, possibly, biologically engineered maids. Hmmm.

Maybe she should leave the final decision to Rag. //We are very close. Nestra ignored the bot to dash forward. She heard it in front of her: sounds of combat. It came from behind a wall. Nestra hesitated, but then realized there was only one person she expected to be fighting here. Passe-muraille carried her through it, her body still complaining from the earlier pain. She hadn't fully recovered yet.

Outside was another cathedral-like structure in the middle of a titanic cave, its toppled spires burning with golden fire. Red light emerged from the distance as an ominous aurora. She heard a terrible sound, like God's own gong smashed in anger, then a spider bot cratered the palace. Shinran in his oni form appeared above it. His fist descended with fury, crashing the debris with the imprint of an open palm. The pressure smacked Nestra's back against the wall.

The spider bot was mangled alongside the entire castle. She could see one of its legs tumbling through the air.

"Wow." Shinran teleported in front of Nestra or, at least, she was pretty sure he had. He was too fast to tell. A sense of imminent death came and went before Nestra could even blink, then the impression of a giant faded to show that of a man instead. Shinran's brows furrowed.

"Crescent. Or I suppose I should call you Nestra now. I must have spent too much time searching if the old woman is sending you to find me."

"Wow, you demolished that thing," Nestra said, amazed. Shinran crossed his arms over his armored chest.

"I remember hero worship from you the first time we met, yet now you doubt I can defeat a single robot. Sou, ne? How the mighty have fallen."

"Sorry, I suppose my perception is a little skewed after watching Sereth beat the snot out of you. We should probably get out of here first." Shinran's face scrunched a little at the reminder.

"Yes, we should depart. I made the mistake of trying to break through the gate. It was not an intelligent decision. Although, the station's current state means that we at least won't be facing its entire arsenal. Can you get me through? With a portal, perhaps?"

"I'm not precise enough with the reentry yet," Nestra said.

"We might end up drifting through the void instead." They both agreed that it wouldn't solve their immediate problem. In the end, Nestra crossed again to ask her guide bot if there was an emergency way to open the gates. It took a few minutes of fiddling around with mana, but eventually she managed. As soon as Shinran was safe and through, it was time for a reckoning.

"So…" Nestra began, arms crossed.

"I know I'm late, sorry, there was an emergency."

"I'm not talking about your punctuality, mate." Shinran's confusion was short-lived. His embarrassment was not.

"Ah…" he replied with a bit of shame.

"You met Kiyomi."

"Your sex slave?" Shinran bristled, the reaction turning his red armor spikier.

"No! No. Do not call her that. I am serious, Nestra, do not call her that. She is no slave." Nestra found his disgust comforting, in a way, though he still had much to explain.

"I was notified of a malfunctioning pod in the transit system, so I reanimated her not knowing what she was," he explained.

"Didn't the interface tell you?" Nestra replied with disbelief.

"It calls them 'serviles'," Shinran explained.

"But that means little to people who teleport their energy from a star to power their station. It could have been a normal alien trained in accounting, or a majordomo. It could have been a pet. I had no time to check because she was dying, Nestra. So I reanimated her. And she bonded with me immediately." He sighed.

"The Star People were not content with species created for their enjoyment. They are carefully designed to want to please. Their brains reward them when they serve. She explained it to me, and she didn't consider it… strange, so I said nothing. But I take precautions. If I know I have to leave for a long time, I need to ask her to return to stasis or she will literally wilt."

"And you didn't think to bring her to Earth?" Shinran tried to reply, but Nestra wasn't done.

"You didn't think to bring her to a world she could explore instead of staying cloistered in one fucking room?"

"She doesn't mind."

"She's designed to please; you said so yourself. How do you know she wouldn't censor herself?"

"It's not just getting her out of here. She's an alien, Nestra. Thresholders hate aliens."

"You're Shinran, no? You could just tell everyone she's fine?" Shinran hesitated.

"You know the hatred the first gens have for aliens. Kiyomi would have become a vulnerability for me, and there was a good chance she would have been assassinated, just to get me to break the monk persona."

"You're Shinran, and the first gens know about the lizards. If you say she's fine then she's fine. What's the point of being the strongest warrior on the planet if you can't free one fucking person, mate? What's the point?"

"It was too risky."

"Too risky my ass. We had an alliance with a tribe, Shinran. You're telling me that we can have diplomatic relations with Earth's invaders, but you can't bring your 'servile' to meet other people a bit?"

"I… They are aliens and a known quantity, she's a portal creature." Nestra glared. She had perfected the glare and being two meters and a half tall really helped with the delivery.

"The fuck she is."

"I couldn't have justified it any other way."

"You're Shinran," Nestra screamed.

"You don't need to justify it! Just tell people you somehow found her with your bullshit powers and it's done! You could have changed the world's perception! You could have truly set her free… and me as well. Do you have any idea how much easier it would have been for me, if the existence of other weird aliens were public? It's going to affect Stibbs' and Sereth's kids as well, all because you were concerned with keeping your fucking monk persona! Don't lie to me.

Oh you're worried about her well-being so you keep her hidden in one room?"

"It's for her safety. I'm trying to make her happy too, I am truly trying. I care for her!"

"Did you have sex with her?" Nestra asked plainly.

"No." Nestra stopped at this. Shinran used the opening to press on.

"I have not, although I want to and she might be aware. It wouldn't be right. I am not a monster, Crescent… Nestra." Shinran paused. Nestra realized that under the layers of power, the A-class just looked sad right now, a long melancholy that could not have been a recent thing.

"In order to serve the city, I became Shinran. Shinran is strong so Threshold remains protected, but Shinran is also a man of tradition. His actions are predictable. Predictability leads to stability, and so I sacrificed. Kiyomi understands that. She is a great listener, with great suggestions. Thanks to her, it has been easier being Shinran, because I know I can return here and be… me, instead." Nestra's anger receded, having found no purchase.

This was the kind of guy who'd sacrificed his entire personal life just so that Riel's dream would survive its creator. He'd trained so hard… Maybe she could cut him some slack. He was just a person given an amount of power that would have corrupted a great many absolutely. It also meant that her good friend Stibbs remained the first official alien fucker on the planet… Tragic. She still had questions.

"Where did you come from? I had to walk for over an hour just to get here. Almost got obliterated by one of those," she said, pointing her chin at the carcass behind the now-sealed gate.

"I took the train. It is still waiting for me." Nestra glared at the guide bot with no discernible result. It had told her the train was disabled. Nestra had guessed it was broken, but maybe it was just on lockdown? Any moment a red light would shine from its core as it told her 'I'm afraid I can't do that' or something in the same vein. But the bot remained disappointingly rotund and crimson free. Gah, she was wasting time.

With confident steps, Nestra returned to the entrance of the revival room with Shinran by her side.

"We are getting her out of there. Today. Just make up a lie or something. If she wants to return to the station later, she can," Nestra insisted.

"You… are correct. With the existence of the bridge world known, your people here, and Riel's return, I no longer have a need to hide. I will hire guards for my home to protect her. She will be treated well."

"They will be," Nestra replied. She opened the gate. Dozens of black eyes on white, featureless faces turned to Nestra with some alarm then a babble of voices in an unknown tongue washed over them. Shinran's face fell off.

"I sure hope they're a social species."

"Nestra, you have to help me."

"Nope! Scared of me by design." The still mostly unformed serviles fell on Shinran like a flock of geese on a clueless slab of bread. Nestra tried not to think too much about the fact that they were already growing wide hips.

Nestra abandoned Shinran to his fate as soon as the train landed in a more legal part of the station. He was fine. Maybe she would help him a bit by warning Rag that she should expect an influx of immigrants. What a mess. Nestra wasn't sure what she thought about the Star People at this time. The training facility showed a level of foresight and desire to engage with the vast universe while the doomed expedition to the Aszhii homeworld proved that they were capable of a war-like mindset.

They were committed to the Animarium project the spider bot protected, but then something had happened. Something that just brought the entire station to a stop. Was this just a political upheaval that switched their focus to a new era, causing them to leave? It was probably not a war. There were no traces of a sudden disaster, no corpses, no explosions, no urgent evacuation. They hadn't starved. No signs of a plague either if such a thing could affect a people capable of molding themselves new bodies.

What had happened? Could they even still be there, outside, waiting for something? Nestra wasn't sure, but she knew, at least, that it couldn't be all of it. There must be traces of the Star People on other worlds, and it might be a good idea to find them. But that was a problem for future Nestra.

She had an Aszhii delegation to check on right after telling Rag her second favorite gleam was on the way The fear of seeing negotiations thrown into chaos by Shinran's absence was immediately dispelled when Nestra realized where the coven had gone. Well, the coven minus Blinky who was still exploring oceanic trenches. As usual, A-class ancient beings still didn't need a snot-nosed B-class telling them how to function. Imagine that.

Mayor Kim had actually finalized the first bilateral draft between the coven and the city with options to extend the agreement to other covens.

Among other things, free access to the city and its markets had already been agreed, as well as an embassy by the ocean for that sweet extraterritoriality, not that Nestra expected the covens to do anything too drastic. In order to recover from the exhausting task of talking casually for two hours, the sisters had now reconvened to a secret spa reserved for Touhei's elite leadership, built at the top of their industrial arcology. It wasn't that money couldn't buy access here. The place wasn't even listed.

Nestra had never been important or connected enough to even hear of it. Not that she was sore or anything. It wasn't like the rest of them were enjoying the Art Nouveau style of the state-of-the-art facility seamlessly blending furniture with the living trees, had mana lotions slathered on by C-class massage masters, or drank mana-saturated designer cocktails while she'd been dodging spider robots and worrying about the future, no. Nothing like that.

Moon Dancer greeted her from the central spot while Grook moaned in the distance.

"Ah, little Nezhra," Moon Dancer said in Aszhii. She was in her fae body. To Nestra's immense surprise, it was B-class and possibly weaker than Nestra's own. While male Aszhii could adjust their masks' ascension level up to their own, females were stuck with the level they had when first forming the mask unless they manually increased it. That was why Nestra's heavenly body was B-class while her Mlemra form was stuck at low-C.

Practice had allowed Nestra to improve her human mask to a strong C-class despite starting at D, and that was with only half a year of intense practice. The fact that Moon Dancer's original form was so weak implied she'd never taken it out again in a combat situation. Not in hundreds of years. There was probably a story there.

"Little Nezhra, be a dear and tell me this city's head warrior didn't get himself killed."

"He didn't," Nestra replied. There was no way Moon Dancer hadn't felt the idiot reappear. Maybe she was saying it for the benefit of the others.

"Good! We are waiting for Threshold's various governing bodies to approve our agreement, though I expect they will be eager to sign before we conclude a similar deal with other nations. In the meantime, do note that a kaiju attack is imminent off the coast of Togo."

"What?" Nestra panicked.

"Then Riel will —""Come and pick you up when it's time to depart. There are still more than two hours left before the tide reaches the shore. Let the young ones sharpen their teeth on the swarm."

"Am I not the young one?" Nestra asked. Moon Dancer waved her hand while a burly Asian aunt massaged her forehead.

"You are a young one when it is convenient for me, of course, though in this case you would be bored tearing through first or second ascension victims. Let the human youths experience the joy of desperate combat. We will join them later, offer relief and, possibly, acquire those bodies we need for our human masks…" So that was the real reason. Nestra considered joining the spa but her secured phone emitted an ominous din. It was Ragnarok.

"Yeah?"

"Are you aware of the incoming kaiju off Lome?"

"I am."

"There is a change of plan. Fly to the Beacon immediately. I have cleared you for a flying license. It's urgent."

"What's the matter?" Nestra asked, suddenly feeling nervous. Ragnarok paused long enough that Nestra realized the old monster was hesitating.

"Our new American friends informed us that Rebirth is moving. They've disappeared two of their senior informants while large sums of money moved around. Killing double agents is a desperate move, Nestra. Homeland Security believes they might try a Hail Mary."

"What? When?"

"Our guess is that the kaiju attack is their best chance. There is going to be a great many eyes, many civilians, and a lot of chaos. It's the perfect setup. Now get off the phone and fly your ass over here." Moon Dancer waved goodbye from her reclined bed.