UPLOAD PROCESS COMPLETE

SUCCESSFUL EMULATION OF SENTIENT SUBJECT HUNTER LETO KRETZER (PROVISIONAL DESIGNATION)

COMPRESSION COMPLETE

NO DATA LOSS

Sveta conjured up some virtual sweat and wiped her brow. “Phew, that was close. God damn it, Skellish, can’t you leave these gender revelations for moments when we’re NOT facing down a ravenous horde of space monsters?”

NOW WHERE WOULD BE THE FUN IN THAT? the divine instant message replied. BESIDES, THIS IS FOR HER OWN GOOD.

“Yeah, yeah,” Sveta groused with a frustrated wave of her hand. “Now, would you mind leaving me alone for a while? I need to shoot charged particle weapons into the aforementioned alien monsters before they slaughter my sentient crab buddies.”

The chat window closed in reply. Sveta groaned and rolled her eyes, then checked on Hunter’s compressed file one last time before returning to sidereal space.

******

As Sveta reactivated her Telepresence Doll, she was greeted by the looming carapace of A-66 looking down upon her with frantic concern.

“What happened?!” A-66 tapped, mottling dark blue. “We saw a big explosion, a blast of X-rays that fried all our telescopes! Did you win? Are we safe? Where’s your robot weapon? Where’s Hunter?”

E-59, flashing red, used a strongclaw to bonk A-66 at the base of their eyestalks. “Settle down, A-66. Give her a moment to get her bearings.”

Sveta smiled at the endearing interplay between the giant alien crustaceans. “It’s alright, E-59, I don’t mind. To answer your questions: Hunter and I have been engaging the Sarcophage for the past 85 hours, using a series of short-range warp jumps to draw the swarm away from Crabworld.”

A-66 and E-59 both flashed bright purple. “85 hours? That’s insane!”

Sveta shook her head. “You might think so, but the Revolutionary Army trains all pilots, biological and AI, in long-scale combat endurance. A certified Frame pilot is capable of operating for up to 120 hours without rest, with the help of stims and nutritional blood infusions.”

A-66’s shade darkened. “That seems… inhumane…”

“You’ll get no disagreement from me,” Sveta replied, her voice softening sympathetically. “We’re not proud of the extremes humanity was pushed to in order to survive the Sarcophage invasion of our star system. Even so, we did survive, and with a lot of luck you will too.”

“Your diversionary tactic was successful then?” E-59 asked cautiously.

“Somewhat,” Sveta replied. “The Foxbat Frame wasn’t designed for that volume of consecutive warp jumps and we blew through several critical maintenance cycles. A few minutes ago the drive failed completely and took most of the weapons systems with it. We were forced to detonate the reality furnace as a last-minute delaying tactic.”

“That was the explosion we saw?” A-66 asked.

Sveta nodded. “An overloaded reality furnace creates a small black hole, around a hundred kilometers in diameter.”

“You created a BLACK HOLE?! In our own STAR SYSTEM?!” A-66 exclaimed, aghast. Mental images of a ravenous singularity gobbling up Crabworld flooded their mind.

“A small one, yes,” Sveta explained. “It evaporated after a few minutes, and the gravitational effects on your planet will be minor compared to the damage done by the ongoing Sarcophage asteroid bombardment. More importantly, the black hole should have punched the core out of the Sarcophage swarm and bought us more time for the Radiolaria to get here.”

“Should have?” E-59 asked suspiciously.

“Well, my Doll body understandably doesn’t have sensors capable of scanning interplanetary space… and it sounds like all your telescopes are fried too. There’s nothing left to do but hunker down and wait for my ship. The soonest they’ll be here is nine hours, 49 minutes.”

E-59 flashed dark blue mottled with yellow. “And what if the Sarcophage regroup and attack before your ship arrives?”

Sveta grinned and extended her arms; the holographic skin around them vanished, and both her forearms opened up to reveal an intricate whirlwind of reconfiguring mechanical parts. Her robotic hands retracted, leaving a pair of hotly glowing miniature positron cannons in their place.

“Then I battle them mano a mano. I’ll protect you until the end, my friends.”

A-66 and E-59 looked at each other, uncertainty evident in the rapidly changing colors of their carapaces. “We… we have several handheld mining lasers in storage,” E-59 said. “They were the closest thing we ever developed to weapons before the Enemy overwhelmed us. If we can be of any help…”

“I’d be glad to have you provide covering fire,” Sveta responded affirmatively. “Thank you both.”

E-59 flashed bright blue and trotted off to fetch the lasers. Meanwhile, A-66 kept staring at Sveta. “There’s one question you haven’t answered. What happened to Hunter?”

Sveta thumped her chest. “Hunter gave consent for emergency upload. Their consciousness is safe and sound inside my memory banks.”

“Can I talk with them?” A-66 asked, not registering any pronoun change as gendered pronouns were entirely absent in the crab tongue.

“That… might have to wait,” Sveta said regretfully. “With the destruction of my Frame’s computer core, my local instance doesn’t have a lot of excess computational capacity to spare. I need to focus all my resources on standing guard. Also, Hunter’s upload precipitated a… transformation, shall we say. They’ll have a lot to sort through before they’re ready to face the world again.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Er…” Sveta fumbled, not sure how to explain gender to a genderless people. “It involves certain identities and sexualities that don’t exactly apply to your culture, at least not at the moment. I’d be happy to explain sometime, but it will be a very involved conversation. For now let’s focus on survival.”

“Very well,” A-66 conceded, obviously not satisfied with her answer.

******

Sveta hummed and tapped her fingers as she continued to scan the horizon. Her optical sensors were state-of-the-art, providing binocular vision in a wide variety of EM bands. She’d been maintaining this vigil for five hours, alert for even the smallest sign of Sarcophage activity on the horizon. So focused was she that A-66’s sudden appearance by her side caused her to jump a bit.

“H-Hello there, A-66!” Sveta said, calming her wired nerves.

A-66 flashed orange in laughter. “So even the great machine lifeforms of Earth can be startled, eh? That’s reassuring!”

Sveta grit her teeth and took a virtual breath before deploying her typical good humor. “As the startled party here, I’ll beg to differ. Where’s E-59?”

“Resting in the sustenance pool,” A-66 explained. “They encouraged me to rest as well, but I’m too stressed to sleep.”

“You and me both,” Sveta responded, more bitterness edging into her voice than she intended.

A-66, sensing the tension, decided an apology was in order. “I am sorry for making light of your surprise at my appearance, Sveta. I merely found your lapse in alertness comforting.”

Sveta took another deep, virtual breath. “And I’m sorry if I was snippy with you. Still, why would you be reassured by my shortcomings?”

A-66 lowered their carapace to the ground, folding legs underneath in the crab version of a sitting position. “Because your vulnerability is disarming, Sveta. Both myself and E-59 initially found you and Hunter intimidating, to be honest.”

Without removing her eyes from scanning the horizon, Sveta tilted her head. “Why is that? Because we’re soldiers?”

A-66 clapped their eyestalks together once, an expression of confirmation. “Among other things, yes. Please do not be distressed by this; we’ve already discussed our moral differences at length, and our unease has faded as we’ve come to know you better. Personally, I now regard you as more of an Adventurer than a soldier.”

It took every ounce of Sveta’s self-control to not do a double-take and keep her eyes fixed on the horizon. “I’m sorry, did you just say… Adventurer?!”

“Correct,” A-66 replied. “As you know, we have 236 different Guilds that cover a variety of professions, and every crab belongs to one guild or another from their fifth molting onwards. It’s the entire structure around which our society is based.”

Sveta nodded. “I recall that, yes.”

“Among all those Guilds, the Adventurer’s Guild had a reputation like no other,” A-66 continued, their shell tinging green in admiration. “When we first ventured forth from our subterranean oceans to explore the surface of our world, it was the Adventurers that led the way. They were part warrior, part explorer and filled with the urge to roam and discover new things. Our entire society idolized them.”

Sveta shook her head in disbelief. “You know, the Adventurer’s Guild is a standard part of every isekai, yet I wasn’t expecting to find them in a sci-fi themed universe on a planet of giant crabs, of all the damn places. I’m honestly floored right now.”

“…I’m afraid I don’t understand anything you just said,” A-66 replied, confused.

“Don’t worry about it,” Sveta replied with a wave of her hand. “Please continue.”

A-66 clapped their eyestalks together once. “Right. Well, after the Final War which unified our species under one government, the Adventurers were the closest thing we had to a military. They were few in number but still proficient with the weapons of yore… although even this relict skill waned after centuries of peace. It was the Adventurers that led our people into space, and they were the first to land upon the other worlds of our system.”

“Badass space explorers? They sound amazing,” Sveta said with genuine admiration.

“They were,” A-66 replied wistfully. “I grew up idolizing them. I even proclaimed from a young age that I would become an Adventurer myself someday. Alas, my original mitosis-genitor did not approve of my career plans. Adventuring is too dangerous, they insisted, a profession for the foolish. They convinced me to join the Astronomer’s Guild instead, a choice I have since regretted.”

“Are crabs allowed to switch Guilds later in life?” Sveta asked.

“Of course. There are many times where I almost made the change, only to honor my mitosis-genitor’s wishes instead. I couldn’t know it at the time, but that decision ultimately saved my life.”

While keeping her gaze fixed, Sveta tilted her head. “How so?”

A-66 mottled wistful-grey. “When the Enemy first attacked, it was the Adventurers who rushed to the front lines to battle them. Sadly they were still few in number and only armed with antiquated weapons they had long forgotten how to use. The entire Guild was slaughtered in the first few hours of fighting.”

“Ah,” Sveta said with growing trepidation. “So your decision to stay an Astronomer ultimately spared your life.”

“It did, although I often wish I’d died in those early hours and been spared the misery my people suffered thereafter,” A-66 said sadly. “Meeting you humans and witnessing your courage has only hardened my shell on the matter. If we make it out of this alive, I will found a new Adventurer’s Guild and lead my people into space once more.”

“I’d like to see that,” Sveta said with a genuine smile. “You’re a good people, A-66, and you deserve a place among the stars. I’ll do my very best to make sure that dream comes true.”

“That you,” A-66 replied, their carapace glowing up to a light, happy blue. “Would you like to hear more of the Adventurers? I have their most famous exploits committed to memory.”

“Of course,” Sveta said happily. “I’d love to.”

******

As the Radiolaria screamed through interstellar space at velocities that would make Einstein blush, most crew members kept themselves busy to stave off an impending sense of dread. Zehra Aslanbek, the genius scientist whose discoveries had made warp travel possible in the first place, was no exception.

“Are you sure it’s a good idea to tinker with the warp drive while it’s active?!” an instance of Laria said exasperatedly as Zehra frantically rewired a set of quantum superprocessors.

“Relax, Laria,” Zehra said dismissively as she pulled out a circuit board and began to slice into it with a hand laser. “I designed everything here. I know your systems better than you do, gao~n.”

Laria groaned audibly, allowing her frustration to color her tone. “And the manuals you wrote are very explicit on the matter. They say we should never tamper with these systems while at warp. You’re violating your own policies!”

“Pshaw,” Zehra balked as she slid a new cyberboard into the hole she’d just lasered and began to weld contact points. “Rules are for other people. The great Zehra Aslanbek will never be hidebound by such bureaucratic nonsense, gao~n.”

“These are rules YOU CREATED!” Laria half-screamed, her exasperation reaching a fever pitch. “They are ironclad! I even told the Admiral we couldn’t squeeze any more power out of the engines!”

Zehra grinned conspiratorially and slid the modified board back into its slot. “You’re not wrong. It’s physically impossible to overclock our reality furnace. But what manner of scientist would I be if I couldn’t perform miracles, gao~n?”

“Of all the egotistical, shortsighted…” Laria began to rant, only to stop short as her eyes widened. “What the…?”

Zehra leaned forwards expectantly, her tail twitching in delight. “Yessss?”

“Maximum velocity has increased by twenty percent,” Laria said, dumbfounded. “We’re now travelling at 1,209 times lightspeed. How did you-“

“I rewired the quantum fresnels from parallel configuration to repeating quadrilateral isocycles, gao~n,” Zehra explained. “When we exit warp they’ll all burn out, but we can always fall back on subsystems while we manufacture more. Time is of the essence, no?”

“That it is,” Laria conceded. “I’ll inform the Admiral. Thank you for your hard work, Zehra. In this instance, I’m happy to be wrong.”

As Laria’s hologram de-rendered, Zehra called after her. “Make sure to tell Katya I’m a miracle worker, okay? MIRACLE WORKER! I WANT THAT PUT IN MY FILE, GAO~N!”

******

Deep inside the sustenance pool, a tiny device buzzed and began to whirl, forming hundreds of bubbles that spread throughout the nutrient-rich ooze. E-59’s amoeba, who until that point had been sound asleep, was jostled by the bubbles and slowly, reluctantly, began to extend their pseudopods out of the pool.

Ugh, they thought to themselves as they stumble-squirmed towards their crab exoskeleton, I hate those goddamn alarm bubbles. Couldn’t have let me sleep for a few more minutes?

Their grumbling was halfhearted, more out of obligation than genuine indignation. There was a war on, after all.

Once E-59 was properly sheathed in their shell, they groggily made their way to the cave entrance. Sveta was there, of course, as was A-66; both looked frustratingly fresh despite their lack of sleep. Did Sveta even need to sleep? E-59 made a mental note to ask her later.

“…and so, after all that searching, Av-99 never could figure out where they’d left their shell!” A-66 exclaimed, tittering orange in laughter. “They had to squirm all the way home using nothing but pseudopods!”

Sveta belted out a loud oscillating screech which made E-59 wince; they supposed it was human laughter. Gods, what a terrible sound.

“That’s the funniest story I’ve heard in AGES!” Sveta gushed. “Those Adventurers really got into all sorts of trouble, eh?”

A-66 clacked their eyestalks together once. “You know it. Their lives were never boring.”

E-59 gently tapped their left strongclaw against the cave wall to make themselves known; A-66 turned to greet them, but the ever-focused Sveta kept her eyes fixed on the horizon and merely waved.

“Did you have a good nap?” A-66 asked, flashing a cheerful blue-white.

“I feel more tired than before I slept,” E-59 groused. “Don’t even know why I bothered. You two seem to be having a good time, though. Regaling Sveta with your favorite stories, A-66?”

A-66 grew a bit embarrassed. “W-Well, I’ve already told them to you many times, so it’s nice to have someone new who hasn’t heard them before…”

“A-66 is an excellent storyteller,” Sveta added enthusiastically. “Their admiration for Adventurers comes through strong. In fact, I find-”

Abruptly, she stopped talking. The crabs both looked at her in confusion.

“Sveta? Is something wrong?” A-66 asked, unsettled by her sudden silence.

“I’m detecting heat blooms in the distance that look like atmospheric re-entries. Lots of them.” Sveta said grimly. “They’re broadcasting broad-wave electromagnetic and gravitics jamming, which makes their identity unmistakable. The Sarcophage will be here in minutes.”

“Th-The Enemy?” A-66 exclaimed as their fineclaws began to tremble.

“How long until your ship arrives?” E-59 asked.

“Two hours and six minutes at the earliest,” Sveta replied, her voice carefully flat. Even so, the magnitude of the situation still hit the crabs like an anvil crushing a banana.

The obvious question came next. “Can we survive for that long?”

Sveta finally turned to face them, her expression determined. “With two mid-yield positron cannons and three dozen micromissiles in my chest cavity? Probably not. Against a swarm that size, a single Telepresence Doll will last ten minutes, tops.”

Despite the cultural and biological differences between humans and crabs, the concept of profanity was something both species understood well.

“Shit.”

“Fuck.”

“Indeed,” Sveta said with a resigned smile. “I think you two should collapse the cave entrance and shelter inside. You might be able to survive longer that way.”

“Absolutely not,” A-66 said, grabbing their hand laser and brandishing it. “You’ve sacrificed enough for our sake. I will gladly stand beside you at the end and fight as boldly as the warriors do on Earth.”

“Wherever A-66 goes, I go,” E-59 added, grabbing their laser as well.

Despite the tension, Sveta chuckled. “I could not think of braver people to die alongside than you two. I pray for your glory in battle, my friends.”

As the three turned to face the oncoming storm of sharpened flesh, a single regret picked at the fringes of Sveta’s consciousness.

I only wish I could have saved Hunter.

******

Although there’s no sound in space, let’s all imagine the Radiolaria Galactica made an impressively thunderous BOOM as it exited warp in orbit high above Crabworld. It’s far more dramatic that way, don’t you think?

Less than a second after it appeared, the Radiolaria began to launch Gravity Frames by the dozens from its forward-facing linear accelerators. Lydia and her squadron were the first to hit vacuum.

“Anything?” Lydia asked Kometka, her voice cracking with tension.

Kometka desperately searched her sensors. “I’m not picking up any IFF signals, but there’s heavy Sarcophage activity in orbit… and planetside too, concentrated in the southern hemisphere. I’m also detecting faint flashes of positron fire on the surface, 287 klicks from the southern geomagnetic pole. Spectrographics match Revolutionary Army weapons discharge.”

“Then that’s where we’re headed,” Lydia said without a moment’s hesitation. “Send the coordinates to everyone, then give me fleetwide.”

“Done.”

Lydia cleared her throat and spoke, knowing her words could now be heard by every member of the Maid Corps. “Attention all pilots. We’ve detected positron fire at the coordinates Kometka just transmitted. Squadrons One, Two and Three are with me, designated Battle Group One. The rest of you are designated Battle Group Two and will report to Captain Levesque; your orders are to form up with the Radiolaria and clear the swarms out of orbit. Our only priority is to secure the safety of every non-Sarcophage lifeform on and around Crabworld. Hop to!”

As Kometka closed fleetwide, Miette popped up in a private channel. “Acknowledging command of BG-2. I’ll have orbit cleaned out by the time you’re done on the surface, Senior Captain.”

“I’ll hold you to that,” Lydia replied. “Good hunting, Captain.”

“And to you.”

As Lydia and her three squadrons arrowed down towards the planet’s surface at top speed, Kometka quietly performed the ritual that accompanied every sortie. “I pray for your glory in battle, my pilot.”

Lydia grimaced and nodded. “Thanks. While you’re at it, say a prayer for Sveta and Hunter too. Pray that we’re not too late.”