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Sasha gently consoles me, but though she's right that it's not my fault, that fact will not save Klystron. If I'm reading the signals correctly, the Meklar have bombers in production at all three of their southernmost stars, and are so sure of success, they're sending half the population of Meklon ahead to meet their still-unbuilt fleet and assimilate Klystron in two years! The Silicoid ambassador is useless, in the thrall of Strader, taking his gibberings for transcendent wisdom. It will not hear me or send a message to Carnax. I have discussed this now at length with Sasha, and we believe our best hope lies in the Silicoid governor of Maretta, where we first met. It will remember me from its first arrival on that world, and is close enough to the Meklar front to feel the threat of their impending attack, especially with its ultra-poor world. If anyone can and will persuade Carnax of the true danger, it is the one. There is no time to travel there; by holophone, there may be little hope, but I must try! I prepare my presentation as best I can: The deadly nature of the Meklar, their history on their world, their secret preparations to invade - Sasha warns that it paints too bleak a picture, so I add more, to make it clear how vulnerable the Meklar remain if the threat is addressed now, before they begin their attack.
Hyperspace, 2411: What could I have said that I didn't? What gesture, what tone of voice, that I missed? I've been agonizing over the same questions all year. The governor of Maretta insisted that I come to explain in person, and though it's true that what little success I've had in communicating with Silicoids has always been face-to-glowing-maw, I explained - or tried - a thousand times to tell it there was no time, that I would arrive too late. I travel there now, on a smuggler ship fitted with advanced sublight engines whose captain Sasha persuaded to carry us there, but I dread what I may learn on my arrival. I only hope Maretta will still be a Silicoid world!
Sasha is affected too. I fear I've given her nightmares, but she has told me it's not me - it's them. She has seen the Meklar trade drones swarming through spaceports in mindless coordination, the implants and the ships themselves; she's seen the transmissions I was able to intercept thanks to my long association with them. She can well imagine what it will be like if they execute their plans, and her nightmares spring from those dark imaginings. When I can - when my fears keep me awake late at night and I see her tossing and turning - I go to her side, to comfort her as best I can, petting the long, silky fur on the top of her head, a mane pooled on her pillow, that flows to the small of her back when she stands. It seems to help, and sometimes, waking or sleeping, she reaches out for me, and I snuggle into her arms, more snug and cozy than the softest sock drawer, her sleeping-clothes nice and soft, her arms safe and sure and strong. I feel safe, content, protected, and find sleep after all, and somehow, holding me close like that seems to ease her nightmares. She whispered to me once, though I didn't fully understand, "You're better than a teddy bear!" It's something to have Sasha, even with the galaxy crumbling all around.
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Aliens' Isle, Maretta, 2412: We come too late. The Meklar war has begun. My only possible role here now is as an advisor; in the meantime, I'll try to reconstruct the events of the past two years as best I can.
Last year, the Meklar sent their entire war fleet to Klystron, together with assault transports in even greater numbers than those already on the way. By the time I arrived here, the battle was over, but I could get no one to tell me what had happened - the Silicoids were all in a frenzy, hurrying to and fro in their surface craft, and everyone here on the domed Aliens' Isle was Human or Psilon, apart from me. The governor was not responding to my holo-calls from here, and there was no opportunity to speak to the Silicoids directly if they wouldn't come to me; in the few decades since I left, Maretta's pristine oceans and island shores had been turned to a chemical wasteland as total as on Cryslon itself.
One young Silicoid was present after all though: A beautiful child grown from crystals like irridescent jewels, soaking in the shallow waters just within the island's protective geodesic dome. Sasha found it as she explored the edges of the island, and learned of its plight. Miristys was nucleated - apparently, Silicoids are not "born" - here on Maretta, in the early years of the colony; though small in comparison to everyone here but me, to say nothing of the elder Silicoid giants, it would seem that Miristys is a child by Silicoid standards only. It thrived on this beautiful world that I long called home myself, and gloried in its pristine seas, but found that as its elders polluted the atmosphere and oceans, it began to feel ill effects that none of them seemed to notice, until finally its very survival was threatened, and it had to retreat inside this dome, and watch the world it loved, where it grew up, turn slowly toxic and deadly outside. And lately, as well, it had watched its people come under full-scale attack from RBO-23.
Earlier this year, the Meklar battle fleet struck at Klystron, razing all its defensive bases before the Silicoids had finished assembly of a planetary shield. The local fleet - just a handful of Manta destroyers - was able to escape before the Meklar could assimilate their crew, and are headed back here now. They managed to kill some fifteen Meklar bombers, but that was all.
OOC Note: They wouldn't have gotten any, but I'd decided to try playing this whole game without using the "Wait" button for any reason.
Right on the heels of the bombers, the transports flooded in, pouring out more than twice as many soldier drones as there were Silicoids to defend.
It was a slaughter - tens of millions died - but the worst was yet to come, as I well knew. The Silicoid dead and injured were collected and analyzed with surgical precision, some dismembered, some kept intact or "repaired" with pieces of the slain ... or of other species from Meklon ... or both. And everyone left alive, or restored to something like living condition, was grafted with machinery, injected with nanites designed specifically to interface with their silicon physiology ... and added to the collective. Pieces of Silicoid bodies were distributed among the injured of the Meklar soldiers - and those deemed in need of upgrades for other reasons. The biological distinctiveness of the Silicoids of Klystron - or whatever kind of distinctiveness it was - was added to the Meklars' by the most violent and violating means conceivable. Of the hundred and twenty seven millions who did battle for the planet, there were but 36 million survivors - some who had fought on the Silicoid side, some who had been among the invaders, all impregnated now with cybernetic implants and controls. All now are RBO-23's drones: All Meklar. Compelled by their new circuitry, the Silicoids revealed their knowledge of the most advanced Silicoid ECM Jammer - thankfully, just a Mark III unit that was all but worthless in comparison with other forms of both Meklar and Silicoid computer technology, but nonetheless another case of technological distinctiveness added to the endless-seeming Meklar supply.
Yet there is hope in all of this! What all my years of pleading and reasoning could not accomplish, the Meklar have done for me in one swift act of violence: Carnax has realized at last that my warnings were true, and officially declared war on the Meklar! ... And though "realized" and even "reason" might be misnomers in the case of Strader, whatever impelled him to do so, he too has already declared war!
I empathize with Miristys as only a fellow victim of the Meklar can - another who has lost friends and family to their nightmarish assimilation, and knows those very people may now be active drones of the Meklar, working mindlessly against us and all the rest of the galaxy. Yet there is between us another bond of empathy: We're isolated from every other member of our species by the courses our races have taken - I because my fellow Acerites became Meklar, Miristys because its fellow Silicoids have turned its home and all their worlds into toxic wastelands where it cannot survive. More than a common enemy, we have almost a common history - a common feeling of total loss that can't be expressed in language. By a twist of fate, neither of us has a role or a place in our native societies - mine because it no longer exists, Miristys because it can't survive in its people's midst. I offer Miristys my company, for what little it may be worth, and a share in my mission - my purpose. With Sasha's blessing, I invite it to travel with me and help to aid and advise the free peoples of the galaxy in their inevitable wars with the Meklar, if it is willing ... and it agrees. Its light glows bright and warm within it, as if reacting to the friendship that Sasha and I have offered with renewed hope and life, deep in its being. We ask and learn of its needs, and plan to meet it here daily until we can assemble a portable habitat better suited to it than this little pool between the colony dome and the shore. Then, I hope, someday, we may find a place for it to live and grow, not in a habitat or dome, but free on an open world, without its people's deadly pollutants, and without dread of the Meklar wars.
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Next: Flight!
