--=<Arrival: Salra Barte>=--

It was finally the day of the transfer. We had already prepared everything at a prior date, but even then, the final steps to ready ourselves to board a shuttle felt like an eternity, filling me and Cory up with dread for the Corridor segment of the journey and the kids with excitement at their first time getting a chance to go superluminal.

After finally dealing with all the bureaucratic steps, we made our way through the winding corridors of our old station and then stepped into the MTCS Arada, the transport we were assigned to on our hundred-light-year journey to the Alephane. 

As the medium-blue glow of the reaction drives started glowing brighter, the whirring of the spacecraft's reactor started growing more intense in response. As the Arada prepared to shift out of realspace, the cabins were filled with suspension gel, leaving our arm-mounted neural interfaces linked to our contacts as the only way to communicate, and the gel itself as our only nutrition, with each person getting their own mix of gel. The Corridors were just as shaky as always in these small, suspension system-free transport vessels, where even the gel was not enough to suppress the irritating jitters of the gravitational turbulence within the Corridors. After a period of awkwardness that seemed to stretch for more than an hour, an evidently cheery person broke radio silence.

Aeshima: Hello everyone! Since we're all going to be here for a week, why don't we all introduce ourselves so we can get along better? I'm Valtren, Yal, she/her, transferring to Alephane to play music for a wider audience!"

Leafrenny: Corazon Barte, they/them Laphrante, here to climb up the social ladder with my family!

Cory, being the ball of social energy that they were (it really hurt me how they hid it whenever they had to speak out loud), instantly started introducing themself as soon as the conversation started.

As the rest of the people started introducing themselves, I noted how diverse this group really was. There were other Laphrantes like me, but there was also a surprising amount of other groups like Xuehua and even the Yalen, who were really rare this far out, even back when Celra was still inhabited. Of all of the people who introduced themselves, the silver-haired, verdant-eyed female Xuelat named Thala struck me as familiar somehow. I had never seen this Xuelat before in the past but there was a sense of déjà vu on my part nonetheless. But just like with the wormholes, my thinking was interrupted as I tried to think deeply about when it became my turn to introduce myself.

Was there something stopping me from thinking about these things? Shelving that thought, I started mentally typing out my introduction while focusing my eyes on the textbox in order to command the computer to accept my thoughts as a message.

Gelayrent: Salra Barte, they/them Laphrante, doing the same as my partner, Corazon.

For some reason, I almost typed out some name that starts with "Ha" instead of "Sa," but I just chalked that up to the vibrations of the craft as it hurtled at five-thousand-two-hundred times the speed-of-light relative to realspace messing with my thought processes. I mean, I am pretty sure that I have been Salra Barte my whole life.

>~<

The constant vibrations of interstellar travel were irritating, but all of us tried to do our best to filter it out, and after a week of chatting, gaming, and movie nights, the Arada finally exited realspace a few hundred kilometers from the Alephane. As the gel finally started evacuating itself from the chamber down drains, a process that left a powdery residue that would probably take hours to clean off in the showers. Not that anyone minded, however, since the uncomfortable FTL leg of the journey was finally over.

Approaching the Alephane, I took in its appearance, which resembled a large coiled bowl but with minimal support structures instead of a bottom, its massive, round figure rotating slowly to provide artificial gravitation at various intensities to allow people to enjoy whatever environment suited them most. Laphrantes are quite adaptable people so our family was moving to the outermost turn of the spaceport's drive coil, where the options for living were the most varied and the labs nearby, but also where the gravity was strongest.

The process took just a bit longer than normal, but the pilot managed to get the clearance to land and the Arada touched down gently onto a docking ring in the innermost turn of the Alephane, finally marking the end of our journey. Strangely enough, despite the fact that the Alephane was the flagship vessel of the Celra fleet, it was awfully quiet inside. As our herd trotted through the crowds within the coils, the others on the vessel continued to whisper among themselves and shuffle along to where they had to be.

An hour of walking on the moving walkways later, we had finally arrived at our new home. Gemma and Elay pranced their way over to the new housing area and jumped in anticipation next to the door to our new housing area while me and Cory, chuckled to ourselves as we walked up to the entrance and opened the doors.

While we unpacked, I took a more thorough look at the place. It was significantly larger than the other one, with a large interior lawn inside with plenty of artificial sun to supplement our metabolism. Of course, being a much more advanced home than our previous one, it had digital walls that displayed the vast landscapes of Celra's old nature reserves in a manner that made the interior feel boundless, the only hint of boundaries being the line of appliances in our traditional dining area, and the staircases and lift up to the sleeping area. Evidently, the kids were satisfied too since they were happily rolling around in the grass, leaves and buds bright and full with joy.

“Heya, Sally, do ya mind talkin’ to me upstairs while the kiddos are distract’d with the fancy new tech?” Cory said in a voice that barely registered as a whisper, gesturing a hand at the staircase that appeared totally unsupported, its disconnected frosted glass steps and railing floating in the virtual landscape.

“Sure thing, Cory,” I said using the most affectionate tone of voice that I could muster.

As we approached the staircase, they glowed with a smooth, green diffused light to keep the home navigable at any time of the simulated day. Once we were upstairs, we found a series of bedrooms resembling incredibly fancy and enlarged stables with floor-level adjustable-firmness beds, overhead arcs of screens, and plenty of health equipment. 

“So, my dear heart, what business do you have with me up here?”

“Darlin’, the twins ‘ave b’n askin’ me ‘bout wormholes since the week b’fore we left, an’ they didn’ stop messagin’ me durin’ the trip, tellin’ me that you told ‘em to ask me ‘bout wormholes instead of you. I thought you knew how I felt ‘bout the way I talk, didja not?” they said inquisitively, in a more normal volume now that we were alone.

“And I thought you knew that there is nothing wrong with the way you speak. We are your family, my dear heart. It only saddens us when you act so insecure about something so normal.”

I came up to Cory and then did what I have always done with them whenever they insulted themselves in some way: I hugged their torso with my lower arms and then stroked their head with my upper right arm and their back with my upper left. I seem to remember someone doing a similar thing for me in the past after some troubles, but I still couldn’t couldn’t remember who, despite a feeling inside that there was something important about that I was missing. Whoever did it for me was definitely a lot fluffier than a Laphrante could provide, however. Furthermore, The effectiveness of this strategy was twofold: The hug and the stroking actions would calm their nerves down and prevent them from going into a little bit of an emotional outburst of self-acrimony, but it would also be very embarrassing considering their personality and get them to stop and think about what they were doing. Looking rather flustered, I was pretty sure my little strategy worked exactly as expected. Stifling a little grin at how cute my precious little heart was, I continued.

“Cory, you want to know why I sicced the twins after you, right?” I said, while continuing to stroke my partner’s cracked, rough looking, yet soft dark bark. Oh how cute their embarrassed faces were.

“Mm,” they nodded, now incapable of vocalization as they melted in my embrace, their inflorescences of black-bracted, white-flowered bougainvillea opening a little fuller, the room slowly filling with the rosy and grapey scent of their flowers in the Laphren equivalent of a blush.

“Gemma and Elay are only a decade old. They’re barely toddlers. They may be smarter and more mature than the average Laphrante at their age, but they still need to have fantasies of something. Their fantasies involve wormholes, so when I told them to talk to you I was hoping to let them keep their fantasies for longer, eventually learn the truth from someone who can describe it much more eloquently than I, and finally, get you to actually speak to them more. They’re being educated in the stations’ education system. There is no reason for you to worry about them learning your idiosyncrasies in speech. Even if they do develop similar speaking habits, you are their parent so it’s totally understandable, and as I have said many times, there is nothing wrong with you speaking a little differently from everyone else, and no one actually cares about that sort of thing anymore. See, I still love and care for you, right? I just want the kids to have a pair of parents instead of having an absent second parent figure.”

“Mm,” they nodded while squirming within my embrace.

“Love you, my darling heart. I am sorry I didn’t talk to you first before doing what I did,” I said, releasing them from my hug.

“Love ya too, Sal!” Their little rebound into their energetic personality was ever-so-endearing and I could not prevent my heart from melting once again at the brightness of their woody smile. Gemma and Elay definitely got their sunniness from them.

“Oh wait, Cory, we both have work tomorrow, but the twins will not have classes until a week or so from today. What should we do? You know how I feel about just leaving them to the home’s inbuilt nanny robot,” I said as they started trotting to their room.

“Don’ worry, darlin’. It’s late t’night so we should bring the twins up an’ think ‘bout it tomorrow.”

I heaved a sigh. They were right. We were all tuckered out from a long period spent within the cramped quarters of the Arada. 

“Gemma! Elay! It’s really late and we just traveled really far, so let’s all go rest, okay?”

“Yes, Rara!” the two said in quick succession.

Mentally, but not physically recharged for the day from spending time with the most adorable and precious people I knew, I headed to my little room-stable as the kids pranced up the stairs themselves. Confirming that they tucked themselves into their beds, I smiled to myself for a successful negotiation with my partner as I drifted off into the deep nothingness of the unconscious.

The next morning, before we went off to our respective labs, we had a session where we tried to figure out how in the world we were to make sure the twins were properly handled. Both of us had the habit of pacing while in thought, so we stepped out into the commons sector which could be found in between the residential and research sector of this turn of the Alephane.

In the park, we heard some music playing softly in the background. It was a classical Yaltesean tune played on an instrument with an unpronounceable name that was similar to a mix between a harpsichord and a fiddle, a stringed instrument that plucked or bowed its synthetic spider-silk strings based on the way in which the musician pressed the keys, along with pedals to adjust volume. Large and bulky to accommodate the Yalen’s lack of arms, it still managed to have an elegant and serene quality to its sound.

The piece itself was quite traditional. The Yalen had a habit of making their music polyphonic in a way that layered sounds in an ever-so-slightly dissonant manner which congealed with the constantly shifting time signatures and keys to produce the classic, “ethereal” feel of Yalen music. In this case, the most apt way to describe the musician’s piece would be melancholy, with all four of its simultaneous melodies all starting quietly, in a harmonic minor that seemed to express the composer’s loss and longing.

As we made our way towards the sound, our feet struggled to find footing under both the increased gravity and their failure to comprehend the shifting beats of the performer’s music. After some time of walking, when the song reached an emotional climax, we saw a familiar Yal standing at the keys of the instrument.

--=<Departure: Talefarala “Thalia” Natala>=--

I don’t know how long I spent in the commons area of the Interference, shifting half of my mass to a miniaturized version of Lara’s Laphren form, the other half my custom cuddle-amoeba, linked by a nerve jacketed with protective plastic. Perhaps I spent a few days cuddling with my split-off cuddle-amoeba in the same way I did with Lara but in reverse. Maybe it was even longer. In the end, it didn’t matter. All that mattered to me was the shift in the comfortable, warm feeling in the Ibalte to a different location in my perception. And it was definitely much, much closer. Sucking the cuddle-amoeba offshoot back into my form and turning myself back into a Xuelat, I jacked myself into the nerve sensors after reconfiguring my brain to send the Ibalte through an accessible nerve. It was always painful whenever I used the sensor because it reminded me that I was forced to develop such a system because the Iberalva that the Ibalte should be pointing me to was nowhere to be found. After a bit of processing, the ship’s computers pinpointed the sense’s reported Iberalvine location to a planetless main-sequence star outside of the galactic disk. 

Seeing the location filled me with a little more hope than any of the other locations I’ve searched. I mean, why else would anybody be in such a remote environment? Assuming whoever has Lara in custody or Lara’s current vessel didn’t want to be seen, it would make sense for them to try to stay in Corridor-space as long as possible, and a planetless star is the perfect place for them to refuel and perform maintenance, especially if it was far from the galactic disk. Unluckily for them, I was an Iberalva who happened to be far enough away from civilization such that their half of the galactic halo was closer to me than the rest of the galaxy, giving me a clear view of where they were.

Eagerly, I confirmed the coordinates and then engaged the wormhole drive, the lights from the craft glowing with Cherenkov radiation as space-time was bent to the will of the ship’s systems and the Interference popped through its little tunnel and popped out again tens of thousands of parsecs away from where it was, leaving ripples in the form of gravitational waves as the tunnels collapsed in on themselves. 

Greeting me a few hundred light-seconds away, drifting through the larger-than average star’s corona, was a fleet of unmarked ships, which I could easily assume were warships. Anxiously forcing a command through the neural interface, the ship faded from detectability as my heart started to beat faster with fear and anticipation.

“Multispectral camouflage emergency activation activated. All crew must retreat to unexposed facilities as the Interference enters a state of emergency under the orders of the current Commander, Lead Engineer Talefarala Natala,” the system’s androgynous voice dictated, echoing through the ship’s empty corridors as everything inside went quiet.

I queried the Interference’s databases to confirm my theories.

“Presumed flagship at the centre of the unidentified fleet five-hundred-fourteen-point-six light-seconds ahead matches no registered vessels, classified or publicized, as of four months ago. However, it is theoretically impossible for the flagship of the fleet in question to be younger than four months given wear patterns on its hull, its distance from any known construction facilities, and clear parallels with the vehicle responsible for the incident within the Reminiscence of Gemini system further confirms that theory. Probability of a match is ninety-eight-point-six percent,” the Interference confirmed.

My worst fears and greatest dreams were simultaneously fulfilled. The fleet of slate grey elongated corkscrews, each with an odd bow spike attached faintly glowed in infrared and red visible light as they were heated by the proximity to the system’s star, a glow significantly darker than the bright bloodred light that took my only friend and crush away. I had most likely found Lara, but probably in the worst way possible. 

I was powerless. The vessel that most likely held the one I cared for most was safely placed in the center of a massive warfleet. The Interference may be stealthy and agile, but as a research vessel, it had no offensive weaponry. I also held no weapons experience and had no exfiltration/infiltration experience. The likelihood of me actually being able to get Lara out of there was zero. Furthermore, any action would likely lead to the capture of the Interference, which not only held all the data aboard the Reminiscence of Gemini, it was also the sole prototype that used our latest technological advancements.

But I had to do something, didn’t I? The fleet of unknown arachnids wouldn’t be here long, and I don’t want to make Lara wait any longer for another window where I happened to be in the right half of the area outside of the galactic disk whenever the fleet happened to stop to refuel and maintain their vessels. If I was to watch this fleet take off while powerless to take direct action, I should at least make it easier to act in the future. Filled with newfound determination, I processed a few blueprints from the copy of the JGRL database present on the Interference and freed up a kilogram of nanites from storage for use. Speaking of which, the blueprints I pushed to the collective of nanites were for a communicator design that would pair with a matching device on this vessel, which basically use the Interference’s space-time manipulation to poke a wire made of nanites through reality and connect two points together with instant data transmission no matter the physical distance.

A brief wave of euphoria washed over me as I realized that I wasn’t powerless as I programmed the communicator to constantly transmit the location of the enemy fleet. Ever since living things first started fighting each other for competition, the key to victory had always been information. Whether that be a war within a civilization or a complex organism’s defense against microbial invasion, knowing thy enemy was always the key to success. As I pressed a few physical buttons on the controls I had insisted on adding, somewhere deep within the Interference the nanites rearranged themselves as a robotic manipulator arm mounted them on a remote microspacecraft designed by me to serve as an almost-invisible maintenance vehicle for large vessels looking to look spotless on the exterior without ever needing to stop in a dock for refinishing. In this case, it would serve as a jury-rigged reconnaissance-cum-sabotage vessel.

A small door on the hull of the Interference opened as it ejected the microspacecraft, the operation causing the nigh-invisible Interference to momentarily gain the multispectral sensor equivalent of a boulder in terms of cross-section. That brief moment of detectability stressed me out quite a bit, but thankfully nothing happened; I take my hobbies more seriously than most others do their research, part of why companies like Iberala Astronautics, me and Lara’s employer, still hired me despite the troublesome personality that I have been trying to fix for eons. Because of that, the microspacecraft remained undetected as it planted the communicator on the hull of the offending flagship, chromatophore-inspired surface nanites blending in with the hull and rootlike burrowing nanites siphoning power from the target’s power lines.

As the arachnidian fleet glowed crimson once more and jumped off into the void, the microspacecraft also docked itself back onto the Interference. With a sigh of relief, I pointed the Interference’s navigational systems at the galaxy’s core and blinked off to another system, departing from that now-lonely unnamed star and arriving at the Iberala Astronautics headquarters. It was time to report a change in situation and prepare for a rescue.