The Six-Eyed Beast
Copyright© 2025 by BenLepp
Chapter 37: The Planet of all Times, Part One
March 13th, 2279
Lieutenant-Commander Mariam Nocks hated it all. She never wanted to be in command, heck, she was only in the goddamn fleet to have access to the tech she was passionate about. And now, just as she had gotten as close as possible to create something akin to artificial life – and maybe even a crew member that was interesting – she was sent off by the madman to have a few words with some aliens near Lalande, who weren’t even interesting, just suspiciously good at setting up shop. As she watched the Rubicon change course towards the SFFV Great Eastern hiding a few lightyears away, the reality of the situation hit her. Ivern was silently plotting the course to LL5, they would follow the standing orders and drop out from a different angle, which increased their travel time by a few hours. The Toucan was now stuffed, the formerly elegant cloaked fighter now looked like it had had a few bad marriages, two large pods containing one marine in stasis on either side, and to Nocks’ absolute horror, Tafu had built himself a web cocoon just behind and above the two pilot seats and gone to sleep. It was news to both human women that Sillerin – in terms of physiology a completely different species from humans – did indeed also snore, but in a higher pitch, and with the release of air sounding like a very small valve letting off steam in a rhythmic tone.
Lieutenant Anna Ivern for her part hadn’t had that much to do with Nocks, but heard the stories. She kept silent for a while until both realized on their own they would be stuck next to each other for almost another week. She decided to be constructive and strike up a conversation with Nocks that might help in the coming days.
- Lieutenant-Commander, do you have a timefreeze?
Nocks kept looking at the long-range scanner, as if the Rubicon would return and tell them their mission was off, all back to the mothership please.
- I do.
- I can bring us to LL5, no issues. I can link mine with the Toucan and get zapped if something bothers the computer. You can zone out if you want.
- I know.
Some more silence followed, but Nocks finally decided to elaborate.
- I’ll get some coding done for now, freezing later, Lieutenant.
- For Mellir?
- Yes, I downloaded his latest data.
- How’s he doing?
Ivern had not even taken a minute to accidently zero in on what Nocks least wanted to talk about.
- Mixed results.
- May I ask what that means?
Nocks turned to look at Ivern. They were both similarly tall, but where Nocks was fully enhanced in every possible way, Ivern was boney and looked like her ancestors had survived some harsh steppes, the complete opposite of the almost fully artificial Nocks. They could not have been more different, but the situation demanded some degree of openness from Nocks, as she would have to rely on Ivern for the mission – she did like Ivern best out of the bunch of them, since she was neither a marine nor a mutated snoring spider.
- Well, he’s walking around as Chief of Security of a simulated Rubicon, yes?
- Heard about it, yea.
- And there are simulated crew members who tell him constantly everything that is known about the old Mellir. Problem is that new Mellir now thinks they are all part of a conspiracy, trying to slowly brainwash him.
- Which they are, haha.
There was a slight twitch in the reddish-black lips Nocks had chosen in her last subdermal treatment.
- So, last I saw his feed, he was collecting weapons and ammunition to take over the ship, but in his defense, he’s only trying to subdue the crew and find out which dark force is making them act weird.
- Sound like he’s not as stupid as we thought.
- He was stupid. Like the man Mellir. He was seriously dumb. But now he’s part AI and can calculate a lot of things at the same time. He is just missing the information that it’s not real.
- Any other tests?
- Yea, we ran some boarding exercises. The Oopids tried to take the ship. It didn’t go well for them, Mellir slaughtered them all.
- Ouch. Can we ever wake him up? Or will he be too dangerous?
- I’ll take care of it. I’ll put some red lines the AI can’t cross into the next update, and I trust the human part of Mellir to be sane still.
- Why are you so interested in this?
Nocks hesitated and tilted her head backwards, her artificial eyes focusing on the stars rapidly approaching them at FTL. The therapy routine running on the Rubicon’s CPU (the most requested routine of the whole ship, scoring even above more base desires) had given her the advice to share more of her thoughts to get closer to the crew, but she wasn’t sure if she wanted to. Nocks decided on the light version of her opinions at first.
- Humans are flawed. Look at us and then look at ... the Axxi. Did you know they never fought each other? And they developed a few Million years later than we did initially. Same for the Sii, Zeptorians and them all. Only the Catanians are ... used to be as screwed up as we are.
Ivern wasn’t sure where this was going, her opinion of the human race was much brighter, as she found their company massively outweighed their downsides. But she kept quiet, since Nocks was speaking, and not passive-aggressively for once.
- If we want to close the gap to the Elder Races, we need to improve ourselves. It’s only been around 7 generations or even less since we went into the stars. And we’re the runt of the litter still. Did you know that humans make up only 6 % of the League’s population but are 14 % of pirates? 11 % of inmates in our correctional farms?
- What are you getting at, Ma’am?
Nocks was feeling like she was wasting her time. Ivern was a social being, she was not. Ivern could not see humans objectively, she could.
- In simple terms, if we want to finally put an end to the flaws of the human race, we have to artificially enhance ourselves.
Ivern glanced at the comic-book features Nocks had, resulting in angry glare from her green pupils lost in black eyes.
- Like you did?
- No! I mean mentally. Intellectually. We need to crack the human brain finally.
- We’ve all got implants.
- We need more than that. Look at Basil. He’s completely chipped and insane, but he’s operating at a much higher level than any other human captain. If we could amplify our race from the start, making us smarter, more empathetic ... just finally make us realize the CONSEQUENCES of our actions!
- You want to chip every human?
- I do! When my AI is done and when it is capable enough and when it has been tested and is safe, we should all get it. Imagine having that voice inside your head actually be smart.
Ivern wasn’t sure if this was a personal insult or part of the explanation, so she nodded, with a frozen smile, as if being handed a baby against her will.
- Imagine: You grow up with a wise counsellor in your head. Unlimited information. Someone who is always on your side. Someone who always tells you the truth, someone who cannot be turned against you, can never leave you.
There was a bit of a pause at that moment, Ivern realizing several things at once. Firstly, Nocks must have had a dramatic past, likely been brought up under horrid circumstances, which was actually true, her having come up in the outskirts of society as the drag-along daughter of a prospector who cut contact with her as soon as she told him she’d rather join the fleet than to search for profit that never really came at the ass-end of the galaxy. Secondly, Ivern realized why Nocks and Basil seldom went head-to-head. They were both megalomaniacs, trying to alter the course of history, Basil by leading the most vicious ship known to exist and Nocks by coding their future generations.
There was only one answer Ivern could come up with, and she knew it would result in a fight, but it had to be said.
- Ma’am, what you are describing here ... You know us normal people call that “friends”?
The green pupils got even smaller, Ivern could almost see her whole reflection in Nocks’ huge black glassy eyes.
- WE’VE HAD FRIENDS SINCE THE START OF TIME AND SEE WHAT IT BROUGHT US. Friends? You mean circles? That then see other circles as enemies? Friends who believe in the same thing and then go out and eliminate those who believe in a slightly different thing? Nation states calling for fucking national unity? We’ve burned Earth half to the ground with your system.
- You want to turn us all into zombies!
- Which part of “counselor” don’t you understand? Everyone will still have free will but INFORMED FREE WILL.
- I admit I don’t know how but I have never been surer to hear something that will lead to a huge fucking catastrophe.
Nocks was wondering if she could pilot the Toucan herself after strangling Anna Ivern. First time she opened up to someone and she immediately got mocked by a lower intelligence, infuriating her to a dangerous degree.
- You could alternatively just send your kids to the Axxi for a while, worked for us.
Both women turned around with their whole swivel seats.
- TAFU?
- You’re awake?
- You’re screaming right below my cocoon, I wasn’t eavesdropping, in fact if I knew how to drop the eaves, I would!
Nocks and Ivern looked at each other, confused about that last part which was simply Perlas rubbing off on Tafu, as Sillerin were behind on researching human idioms but somehow, as a species that was also arachnoid, fascinated by them (although not fully understanding “eaves”, as they lived in tunnels where windows made no sense).
Ivern was slightly worried about the deathly glare coming from Nocks, currently directed upwards at the speaking cocoon, so she smartly asked Tafu a question to defuse the situation.
- How did the Axxi actually build such a society? I mean life and the way forward is confusing they must have disagreements and factions?
- Nah, we don’t. No factions, well, not for long, haha. See, we Arachnoids – and yes, we Sillerin are proud to have joined them instead of staying in the cold void – believe that truth is objective but an ideal, get it?
The humans didn’t, even uniting again a bit by exchanging an annoyed glance upon being schooled by a cocoon containing an alien who would be a preschooler in human years.
- When we disagree on something ... We know there is an actual truth. Like the number of stars in the universe. Yes, might be shifting all the time but for an exact time point, with an exact definition of what is a “star”, there would be an exact answer from the perspective of an all-knowing God, a concept by the way you humans put a lot of creativity into.
Ivern was curious enough now to continue, giving Nocks time to turn around and get back to coding, slowly calming down, also activating her timefreeze, soon to kick in.
- And the ideal part? And what does it mean in practice?
- We aren’t all-knowing Gods. So, we know that yes, the objective truth exists but all we can do is get near it. So, when we have disagreements, and we do have many, we form a group of those most knowledgeable about it and let them debate it. Sometimes, we put them in closed caves and they can only get out if they have a functional solution. Then, the rest of us accept this solution until it no longer works or facts change and again the brightest in that field are sent into some cave to talk.
- Haha, you have a dictatorship of specialists?
- In a way, yes. But their power only lasts as long as there is a debate. Afterwards, they go back to their work, some might never be called up again for another decision. Rarely, they refuse. Like Perlas, who was now called back to Axxoe twice, once for his knowledge on mimic technology – the Axxi seem to have an idea they want to discuss – and the second time about how to deal with the cracks showing in the League – as we are scared of having former friends turn against us. Both times, he just wrote long essays detailing all he knows and went back to work on the Rubicon.
- And what if you can’t decide? Can’t come to an agreement?
- Yes, there are subject matters where we cannot even begin to near the ideal factual truth. There was a council on the Splintered, you know, you were involved in hearing about them. Since we have not enough information, we cannot progress with any plan. In such cases, we simply vote for the safest course of action and start gathering new intel.
- And that has worked for all of your history?
- Erm, so ... Sometimes, we lose some valuable members of our society. They simply die of old age in discussions or the stress kills them or they forget to eat or something. Being locked in a cave until you figured out a problem for a whole society is an honor, but we do have losses.
- This is so ... insane. It really works?
- Nono, it’s as close to ideally working as we can get it, understand? It makes us accept uncertainty and most of all, reject radical positions towards each other since if one Axxi stood up and said another Axxi was rotten, we would know he could never be 100% right. So, we would find those who know most about the accusation and lock them in a cave, by now you must understand how that works. 😊In our world, words have consequences.
Ivern was not sure if it was appropriate to laugh at this point, since she imagined Axxoe a planet holed-out by tunnels with deceased specialists in them, the rest politely waiting for an answer that would never come, giving them peace in daily activities. She glanced over to Nocks to see what she thought but Nocks had turned into a statue staring blankly ahead, deep in her timefreeze. At least that topic was done.
- Thank you, Tafu, that was ... interesting. In effect ... You’re very careful with what you believe in since things are always very complicated so you constantly give each other the benefit of the doubt?
- Yea, but mostly we avoid conflict since we don’t want to end up locked in a cave having to debate until we either run out of lifetime or find a solution that convinces the rest of society that the matter is under control. By the way we apply the same to all of you. And either we go down politely and backstabbed by the other races or we spread our way of thinking enough to create a large area of slow, boring peace. That’s why we joined the League. I think you call that a ride-or-die.
Ivern had spent some time with Perlas going over mimic technology for some missions and now realized that the Sillerin were basically observers of the Axxi, the Axxi more natural in this way of thinking whilst the Sillerin had to adopt it, thus Perlas never commented on why he was the way he was, he just was, but Tafu was originally not, so he knew what he now was.
- I think we do, yea. But what if you need to decide quickly, or on bad intel?
- We usually die. That’s why we usually don’t make it far in the League, Perlas’ creative defense of the Rubicon against the Diral blew all of our headplates right off. Never done before, he’s a cult hero already. Some call him an evolution.
- Ha, good for him but you also seem to accept death?
- Eh, barely any of us get to see 20 years. We don’t waste time by creating problems. We know we are just ... like your ants. The anthill matters, not the ant. And we do have very comfortable lives and the average citizen of our Web has around 1500 close friends.
- Let me be very honest: I will think about this conversation for the rest of my life, rest assured, haha. But for now ... go back to hibernating we’ll be another week out almost. I’ll link my timefreeze to the Toucan and we’ll be there in a second.
- Aye, Lieutenant.
- Sleep well, Ensign.
For the next few days, the Toucan might as well have not existed at all. A tiny speck of dust on an insignificant mission, invisible under cloak, no real life aboard. It was a peaceful time for the snoring Sillerin, Nocks lost in the Grid playing games with her friends, Ivern locked in a simulation enhancing her knowledge of flying various craft (including trying a Sophwith Camel and immediately finding out why fresh pilots were horrified), and the two marines simply frozen, but even in their deep state of sleep, they were sure they were hungry.
As Ivern was zapped awake by the Toucan’s main computer, her whole display was full of red messages and question marks, even some early panicked beeps started going off, as the computer listed unexpected circumstances. They had indeed appeared near LL5, but the planet did not look at all like the data the SFF Sel’tis had sent. It was high time for Ivern to wake up the two others in the cabin, for Tafu, this meant taking a wrench and poking his cocoon which he – still very sleepy – started to slowly eat. Thus, Ivern made the executive decision to wait until said meal was done before sending Nocks the wakeup-signal, to not further annoy the problematic commander. The marines were still in stasis, as their droppods outside the cabin would not allow them to move until landing.
One cocoon later, all three of them were trying to make sense of what they were seeing, Nocks giving orders.
- Tafu, you studied the data on the planet? Ivern, get us closer but keep the cloak.
- Yea, and this isn’t the same planet. I mean, yes, it’s still the same very huge planet, almost 4 times your Earth and it IS in the correct place at this time, but the Sel’tis sent over the scan of a peaceful blue-green planet with a weak but holding atmosphere and some scans of advanced mining facilities built up by a race of refugees called Nillit in record time. That triggered this whole mission, they arrived months ago with just one generation ship and when the Sel’tis appeared shortly after, that generation ship had been brought down, disassembled and a sprawling base built from it, already launching smaller freighters to sell rare minerals.
Nocks shook her head, hitting Tafu with her heavy hair and some clips, as he had come closer to look at the viewscreen and the scans.
What they actually had in front of them bore no similarities to what they had been told, apart from the aforementioned size and the still correct location. The planet was just hidden behind an atmosphere of pure meteorological chaos, impenetrable to scans, and definitely artificial. Someone had likely used the huge terraforming reactors and turbines the fleet had dropped years earlier to hide whatever was going on below the atmosphere. And the strangest of readings came from it, sometimes, there were high concentrations of energy, then there was nothing besides the roaring ion storms, then there was indistinct chatter from communications, then there were flashes, then there was silence. Nothing made sense at all. From the perspective of the tiny craft, they were looking at a beautiful, chaotic marble constantly changing the dominant color from black to violet to red to yellow, basically all colors connected to the mental image of chaos, just in rapid and streaking succession.
- Ivern ... just contact the planet, see if anyone answers. Tell them we’re the Rubicon here to investigate their progress as settlers.
Tafu raised a leg.
- Do we still decloak and mimic the Rubicon?
Nocks wasn’t sure if they could even be seen from the planet, but if there were other cloaked vessels or orbital stations, it would be to their advantage, so they did what their original orders had told them: Decloak, mimic the much larger Rubicon for a brief moment, and recloak just before the energy in the reactors would prevent them from recloaking, revealing a much smaller vessel. It was done successfully, as Perlas had promised, but the messages faking a whole Rubicon bridge simply went into the Ether unheard.
They sat there for half an hour, but were not expecting a reply at any point of those thirty minutes. Nocks was considering her options. She wanted to get back to the comforts of the Rubicon, which were not many, but definitely better than feeling hairy legs on her chair and the square Sillerin head with uncountable eyes next to her head together with Ivern, whose conversation with Tafu Nocks had received in text form even after zoning out, knowing they would likely unite against her if she made the wrong move, and she needed her position on the Rubicon badly, now that Mellir was proof of her work being actually feasible – albeit in an early stage, as she had admitted to herself. So, there was no turning back. A decision was made, Nocks pulling her heavy brows together, eyes fixed on and reflecting the purple-black mess the planet was at that very moment, soon to change again.
- Ivern, bring us down there. We need to investigate what the hell happened.
Ivern for her part agreed, but had some concerns about safety, as she would be flying blind.
- How do we navigate?
Tafu showed her a map of the planet before whatever had happened to it, it was possible to calculate its rotation and height of atmosphere from the old data.
- We simply go through, we will know when we’re getting close to the ground, likely the weather clears up down there. We’ll just go slowly!
Ivern let out a sigh, not content with any of that but out of ideas herself.
- Can we at least scan the atmosphere somehow?
Nocks slapped Tafu with her ponytail again. The Sillerin was, for but a moment, weirdly confused about why he liked that so much, but decided to concentrate on the question at hand, as his commanding officer had only shaken her head, not explained anything.
- Nothing much to see, I am afraid. The sun in this system is a pretty violent one and pretty overbearing on the readings, that’s why this planet had its atmosphere blown off eons ago before we came and put one back on it. Meaning all I can tell you at this moment is the radiation levels you see here ... and the gales and their vectors ... here. Anything else, we’ll find out deeper inside.
- Thanks, Tafu. Well then ... Everyone, strap in. This will get bouncy.
Nocks and Ivern put on their helmets, connecting to the endosuits under their uniforms, and Tafu surprised them by expanding his shell around his tiny head and 10 legs, making him look like an armored horse of old, just after some bad mutations. The two in the pilot seat strapped in in the regular fashion, something that had barely changed since the first racing car drivers were flung from their cars and the debate was started what was more dangerous, the chance of not getting out in time or getting out too fast. Tafu for his part simply made himself a cushy web before closing his armor again, now he looked like said mutated horse had been caught by a much larger spider, but somehow, the armored horse looked enthused at what was to come. The Marines in their pods were unaware of all of this, maybe only realized a little tighter straps around them, and that they were hungry.
As the Toucan entered the atmosphere, they were hit by massive storms, insane levels of radiation almost punching through their shields, strange rocky and metallic debris floating in the upper levels of the atmosphere and thrown around by the violent ion waves, but Ivern kept her cool, correcting course and keeping to their calculations. They were – although it didn’t look at all like it – in a regular, fleet-mandated descent course.
That was, until their frontal shields were hit by energy shots, now, they were under fire and the fleet didn’t really have a mandate for that plus storms, other than to pull the stick very hard. Ivern swayed and swerved, avoiding the denser-packed shots coming from below, but unable to avoid the dozens of salvos of small arms fire coming after them. As the frontal shields went down after offering laughable resistance to the onslaught (the Toucan was designed not to be seen and ideally not to be shot at at all), they had seconds to spare to stay alive, Ivern now shouting over dozens of alarms:
- I AM UNLOCKING THE PODS FOR THE MARINES, THEY WILL FALL TO THE GROUND BUT DECELERATE AT THE LAST MOMENT, THEY SHOULD SURVIVE. NOCKS GET OUT NOW!
Ivern looked at Tafu, who didn’t have a parachute, but was opening the upper hatch nonetheless, seemingly unimpressed, just taking off his leg protectors again, then pulling Nocks through the hatch like she weighed nothing and jumping after her. Ivern was last out the dying ship, already receiving direct hits at the main cabin, seconds after they sat there.
Nocks had been unprepared mentally, still suffering from the timefreeze and now found herself hurdling through an unbelievably violent environment, her medcomp telling her about all the radiation hitting her which was of later consequence, she was more concerned about her altitude meter being not too sure where she was, offering a useless range from “dead soon” to “time to see life flashing by”. For a brief moment, she saw the two marine pods shooting down towards the planet below her, they had been cobbled together on the Rubicon, but after plans Mender had dug up. They were rapid descent vehicles for orbital landings. They were pulled from service since most marines were just shot out of the sky by computer-enhanced targeting systems, but whoever was firing from below was still pelting the Toucan, which started to lose hull plating, breaking apart under the relentless kicking it received, the frontal section already caved in by larger shots, either lucky hits or a very clear attempt at simply killing the crew at step one. Ivern was nowhere to be seen, she had to be above her, but Tafu shot past her, performing the unbelievable mid-air task of calmly making a web-parachute from his ten legs, like a grandmother knitting in her final years. All of them were pulled apart hard by the raging gales racing through the upper atmosphere. It seemed like the smaller bodies were either ignored by the enemy, indistinguishable from the floating debris now added to by the Toucan’s involuntary disassembly, or hard to track in the atmosphere, so Nocks waited for minutes of freefalling, curled up like a ball to present a smaller target before opening her parachute, which was slightly too late. She didn’t have time to get an overview in the last hundred meters, as dust, shrapnel, oily flames and almost comically quick fire from two engaging sides blocked almost every direction to see something in before she slammed into the ground hard, losing consciousness for an unknown time. As she was drugged back to life by her medcomp, her parachute was pulling her into a shell hole in the ground, out of the open terrain. Just a few moments later it turned out that it hadn’t been the wind pulling the parachute, but Mender in a shell hole, in another display of her experience on battlefields already covered in dirt, barely visible and rolling her whole bodyweight into the parachute that was clearly from the League, unsure of who would be on the end of it. As Nocks dropped into the hole, her uniform ripped, even the endosuit showing some bloodied scars filling with foam, Mender slapped her commanding officer’s helmet and yelled at her, but Nocks could not hear her, as comms were out and the battlefield was constantly filled with shockwaves so loud it seemed all the other sounds had started running, a reflex the two humans also shared now. They had landed in what was to them the closest they could get to biblical hell, it seemed like an eternal senseless conflict was fought between all the souls that had ever lived against all the souls that had never lived, constant fire from a myriad of different weapon systems fizzing over their shell crater. But Mender kept doing what she could, since doing what one could was the basic training of any League marine, never to think about their prospects, just keep marining HUAH.
To read the complete story you need to be logged in:
Log In or
Register for a Free account
(Why register?)
* Allows you 3 stories to read in 24 hours.