Fellowship

(Starspeak)

Caleb had a bit too much fun making a fool out of Halax.

Sid wasn’t sure if he should say something. Surely Caleb knew, right? He definitely knew he’d been unfair, but Sid was struggling to weigh Caleb’s psionic expertise against what he’d seen as an observer.

It was clear that Caleb was the superior psionic talent to Halax, but watching the Vorak’s mastery of the skill gave Sid the suspicion that the gap was much smaller than Caleb imagined.

Halax was the most skilled psionic wielder Sid had seen among the aliens.

Caleb insisted that it was Mavriste and Macoru instead—they had superconstructs—but Sid couldn’t shake his hunch otherwise.

“I think you’re overthinking it,” Deg said.

“Definitely,” Jonathan piled on.

“Shut it, Johnny,” Sid griped.

“[What’s that?]” Johnny—Puppy Johnny turned his head across the room.

“Nothing. Wrong Johnny,” Sid said.

“Jon-a-thaaannn,” the kid emphasized. “[I don’t like getting called ‘Johnny’.]”

“[I know. Don’t needle me if you aren’t prepared to get needled back,]” Sid said plainly.

Deg chuckled.

Farnata loved for personal names to be one syllable, so there was less overall variety. But for Farnata spending so much time around Casti and other aliens, they didn’t hear name overlap so much like they would back on the homeworld. Deg and Nai both had shared how nostalgic moments like this were.

But the humor was lost on the listening Vorak. They were looking skeptical.

It was hard to blame them too. Two non-Adept aliens surrounded by rambunctious kids?

Deg and Sid both lacked Adeptry, yet they’d both slid into a chaperone-parent-shepherd role. But not for ordinary kids, no, they watched over Adept kids. Kids with the power to create gasoline with their imagination. Or acid. Or explosives. Or knives. Or…

The list went on.

Only eight of the younger abductees had joined the Jack’s mission to Kraknor. Seven of them were Adept, but it was still a more manageable number than Sid and Deg’s usual crowd of responsibilities.

Handling twenty Adept kids as a non-Adept took some sharp instincts and diligence at all times. Seven wasn’t so bad. Most of the time it just involved putting a context-sensitive ban on Adeptry.

No, it was when the kids needed to be directed to use Adeptry that the job got hard. Like, for instance, a psionics workshop where, as the resident non-Adept psionic experts, Deg and Sid were answering questions about the field.

But any time they needed a new construct build, they had to elicit one of the munchkin Adepts to materialize it for them.

Maybe that was why the Vorak in their little discussion group were looking so dubious.

“Why are you so sure Harpe Halax is more skilled than they let on?” the closest Vorak asked, reiterating their question.

Sid bit off his instinctive Starspeak response. Only a handful of the Vorak attending this town hall event spoke the interstellar lingua franca.

“…I’m not,” he replied finally. “It is only a hunch.”

“You aren’t basing it off nothing though,” a different, more eager, Vorak noted.

“Harpe Halax was certainly caught unprepared for certain tricks Caleb devised,” Sid conceded. “And I don’t think Halax is more skilled than Caleb. It’s just he wasn’t so shaken by certain moves. Caleb would agree Halax’s showing would be better in a rematch, but I think even then, they will outperform expectations. From my perspective, they gave off the impression that they have several arrows being sharpened in their quiver.”

“Halax is Adept too though,” one of the Vorak police officers said. “How are we supposed to keep up, psionically speaking?”

“Plainly, you aren’t,” Deg said. His Tarassin was choppier than Sid’s.

“Adepts have advantages,” Sid agreed, reaching over to flick Bryce’s skull. The guy had materialized a mirror to fiddle with. “There’s no helping it. You wouldn’t try winning a shootout with a combat Adept. Your conditions for victory would be escape, or something more accomplishable than overcoming the enemy directly.”

“Psionics are the same way,” Deg said. “If you know an opponent will breach your psionics, put your sensitive information under a cipher you then memorize conventionally. Or, do what Caleb did against Halax and just destroy their target before they can steal it. Sure, it hurts you, but if you’re going to lose it anyway, you might as well deny your opponent what they want too.”

“Don’t forget that psionics can’t do anything to you if you simply don’t have any to begin with,” Sid added. “They can still help your opponent, but they can only directly harm you in accordance with how much you invest in them. For some of you? Carrying no psionics at all might be very worthwhile.”

That wasn’t hard and fast advice. Context was king, but these aliens seemed like they could use the reminder.

“It’s technically possible to use psionics to sense consciousness itself, but that’s a trick that only a handful of people in the cosmos have shown. If you don’t carry any psionics, no one in the gulf city is going to be able to detect you psionically.”

The Vorak all traded glances.

“The gulf city?”

It was Sid and Deg’s turn to glance at each other, unsure.

“…Are we saying it wrong? The gulf city?”

“Gulf City,” a Vorak corrected. “It’s not generic. It’s the place’s name.”

“[Sonofabitch,]” Sid swore. “Caleb has been calling it ‘the gulf city’ for days now. Does he just not know?”

“It’s possible,” Deg mused. “He’s surprisingly absent-minded about some things.”

“Tarassin nomenclature,” one of the cops waved their hand. “Think nothing of it. Would you prefer to use Starspeak? It might be easier to just translate what you say.”

“I thought we were doing well,” Sid frowned.

“You were speaking very accurately…it’s just…”

“You’re slow,” another rak grunted. “It’s like watching sap flow.”

Sid suppressed his urge to scowl. He hated embarrassing himself.

“I don’t suppose…you’re volunteering to translate, are you?” he asked, turning what was originally going to be a sarcastic comment into a slightly less sarcastic question.

“I can do what Harpe Peudra did,” the gruff Vorak nodded. “Relaying?”

“Thank you,” Deg said. “We have a lot more experience with Starspeak.”

More subtly, he messaged Sid:

“I would benefit from clarification,” one of the younger Vorak said. “If there’s such an advantage to wielding no psionics at all, are they truly so valuable?”

“Deg and I didn’t speak a word of Tarassin two years ago,” Sid said. “And even if I still can’t speak it perfectly? I learned to understand the words almost a year ago in Sinnesan. I can understand you fluently. That wouldn’t be possible so quickly without using a psionic dictionary to learn.”

“The whelp’s question is soggy; the benefits are obvious. But I do question if the hassle is worthwhile for everyone,” the translating Vorak said. I had psionics last year, but they eventually degraded. They don’t seem that useful if you’re not Adept.”

“Flawed reasoning,” Deg said not quite quietly enough.

The rak started to object, but Sid was ready to elaborate.

“You work as a local police officer, don’t you? Your gun isn’t Adept made,” he pointed out. “Neither are your hand radios. Both of those require maintenance too, don’t they?”

Funny thing was the gun might not have been, but the bullets probably were.

“Yes, but those devices have existing support. Technicians. Experts. Readily available replacements. For non-Adepts, if your psionics break or degrade, you have far less recourse.”

“True,” Sid conceded. “…For now.”

“The first electronic radios were probably obscure and inconvenient for similar reasons when they were first invented,” Deg said. “Half the reason the Flotilla shares these lessons is to build up psionic infrastructure and social awareness.”

“It’s in your best interest to learn more about psionics sooner, rather than later,” Sid said. “Because, even as a fellow non-Adept? Trust me. They’re not going anywhere anytime soon.”

The skeptical Vorak was not slow.

They regarded Sid carefully for only a few moments before deducing the obvious.

“Your Flotilla must be doing constant research into the field,” they guessed. “You have plenty of Adepts to perform the maintenance, but you’re still looking for ways to support non-Adepts’ psionic efforts.”

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

“Our adoption and distribution of buildplates is a big part of that,” Sid said. “Using a buildplate can be a bit of a pain, because whichever one you pick is more than likely to tinge your other, lesser constructs and affect how you use them. But having your pieces rest upon the buildplate extends their shelf life by a minimum of half.”

“And that minimum is well below the average result we see,” Deg said. “Doubling is a more typical result.”

“We’re constantly refining our estimates, but with proper care and education, psionic maintenance shouldn’t be needed more than once or twice a year.”

“Like a dentist’s appointment,” Ashton said.

The kids had been quiet so far, so when one piped up now, every head in their huddle turned.

Peyton wilted next to him, and for a split second it looked like the kid might think better of speaking up. But something about the blank looks from the Vorak emboldened him.

“[What? Vorak have to have dentists. No shot they don’t.]”

One of the cops actually chuckled. They must have studied the English-Starspeak dictionary enough to follow Ashton’s words. Caleb had told them all to pay attention to what aliens knew even small bits of English.

“The Lightbringer said the spellbook was only good for Adepts,” the translator said. “What buildplate should we mere mortals be using then?”

“Well, Caleb’s only mostly right about Spellbook,” Sid said. “Its biggest function is to make preplanned Adept creations quicker and more consistent to deploy, but it can be used purely psionically too. If you stockpiled psionic weapons and schemes, even a non-Adept could use Spellbook to deploy them rapidly and precisely how they wanted.”

“It’s pretty niche though,” Peyton said, coming back out of her shell. “You’re probably better off with Ballet or Suite.”

“It was my understanding Suite was roughly as dependent on Adeptry as Spellbook,” the rak frowned.

“Nah! Actually, it’s probably the best for non-Adepts wanting to learn more. Ballet is the most useful in general, but Suite forces you to learn more about how psionic space works—”

Sid cut her off with a hand before she could overwhelm the poor rak’s ability to translate quickly.

“Sorry. But she is right,” Sid said.

“Suite’s underlying concept is design,” Deg explained. “It’s exceptionally useful for Adepts designing creations, but it’s equally useful for anyone designing psionics.”

“But how can you design psionics if you can’t create them in the first place?”

“So far, it means learning how to modify existing ones more and more,” Sid said, leaving the more interesting hook to dangle.

“…So far?”

There it was.

“Well, psionics are simply mental machines, yes? Eventually, there will be entire libraries filled with the things that we don’t yet understand, but we still know some critical points. Even if it’s unclear how it happens, we know that psionics let us treat ‘thought’ as if it were a substance, yes?”

Sid could see the Vorak get lost in his explanation.

“He means psionics can act mechanistically,” Deg interrupted.

“Yeah, that. So how do we make real machines? Careful design, cutting, welding, and otherwise beating the right materials into certain configurations within precision tolerances. Why can’t we do that same thing with psionic materials?” Sid explained.

“If we accept that psionics can be treated as though they were made from a substance, than surely we can learn non-Adept ways of producing or harvesting that substance.”

“Or substances,” a munchkin added. “I think there’s more than one kind.”

“You’re saying…Suite can be used to make psionics so long as you have ‘raw’ psionic materials to transform into more useful forms?” the police officer followed.

“That’s the goal, but so far it’s only used for design, not processing or creation—but we left room in Suite’s own design so it can be upgraded when we figure it out,” Sid nodded.

“But you still need an Adept to make the psionic raw materials.”

“These whelps have to be good for something,” Sid said, waving his hands at the surprisingly cooperative munchkins.

That drew a chuckle from their Vorak group.

“They said the same thing about Adeptry two-hundred years ago,” Deg pointed out. “Even on Farnata, ‘everyone knows exotic materials will never form an industry around them, they’re too inconsistent’. Nowadays, do you need an Adept to create any exotic tech or materials you use?”

Ashton and Bryce were chomping at the bit to interrupt, but Deg froze them with just a point.

“Don’t answer—you [rascals], I was just thinking how well behaved you’ve been…” Deg muttered. “Even looking at modestly sized law enforcement offices, every single one of them in the cosmos carries exotic machinery to provide daily ammunition and armor whether you have Adepts in the department or not.”

“Exotic production machines aren’t that convenient,” the Vorak countered. “Or you would already have a way for non-Adepts to come by their own raw materials.”

“Yeah, technically we don’t know it’s possible for conventional exotic machinery to produce the abstract stuff that we make psionics out of, but we also don’t know it isn’t possible,” Sid said.

“[Top tier oxymoron there:] ‘conventional exotic’,” Bryce chuckled.

“The Flotilla’s put in a lot of thought on how psionics might develop in the future, haven’t you?”

“Yes, we have,” Sid nodded. Was that not obvious?

Be nice. This wasn’t an intuitive topic.

“You are intending us to be the ones to share psionics more with Gulf City—no, not the city, the whole surrounding region, aren’t you?”

“We’ve talked with more than just this group here, but yes. We’re abductees,” Sid said plainly. “We need help getting home, and we’re not above doing everyone a favor to guilt you into helping us, however obliquely that might happen.”

The gruff skeptical Vorak seemed to appreciate that especially.

“Wise. A word of advice about Kraknor? Proactive good will take you very far in many places.”

“We’ll remember it,” Sid said.

·····

A day and change later, Sid was securing all the munchkins into seats.

Bryce had been fifteen for a few weeks now, and he was almost as tall as Sid now. ‘Munchkin’ really was becoming obsolete.

“[Please fasten your seatbelts, keep your seat upright, and lock your tray tables in the stowed position,]” Jonathan joked.

Sid and Deg were finishing the launch checklist while Tasser was in the cockpit warming up the engines.

“[You don’t think it’s weird using a spaceship to fly a hundred miles?]” Gemma chirped.

“[Two-hundred miles, actually,]” Sid corrected.

Lorelei joined in with Gemma in blowing raspberries at him.

“[Aren’t you two a little old to still be acting like that?]”

“[We’re teenagers,]” Lorelei shrugged. “[We’re entitled to a little immaturity.]”

“[You aren’t the first munchkins to say so,]” Sid said. “[Just watch out. You’re growing up more every day. You know Jackson’s learning nuclear engineering from Vez and Murgoi? Kid’s seventeen and he knows more about spaceships than every NASA engineer put together. Now are you all strapped in?]”

“[They’re overkill, but yeah. We’re strapped in.]”

“[Good. Read something while we launch.]”

“[Wait, Sid, what are the odds Caleb actually catches up to us in two days?]” Lorelei asked.

“[He’s going to the same place we are,]” Sid assured her. “[He’s just going by train, while we’re flying the Jack there.]”

“[I heard Donnie say he’s looking for humans,]” Bryce said.

“[He is,]” Sid said.

“[I heard it was corpses,]” said Gemma.

“[He—]” Sid grimaced. Kids. “[Can we all agree now is not the time to gossip? Caleb and everyone else are spending one day—just one—looking into a rumor on our way to Pudiligsto north of here. It’s just a rumor, so chill.]”

Sid went back to the diagnostic checklist Tasser had given him. Conversation over.

He needed to take a deep breath. How had we wound up taking so much care of the kids?

That wasn’t really a question. It was the stupid Ronin. Two years later and Sid still savored every time one of them got called a Puppy. So earned…

But the rest was his own damn fault. Since the Puppies, Ike, and Jean hadn’t properly stepped up under Kemon’s care, Sid had allowed himself to slide into the position of overseer by default.

The worst part?

He was good at it. Really good.

Deg at least had some background as a training officer for a few months, so it made sense he knew how to boss people around.

But Sid?

He was the most embarrassing combination of holler hick and bookworm. Not in a million years would he have said he was good with children. He still didn’t think he was good with kids.

And yet?

He hadn’t hesitated to follow his instincts when Caleb asked about the train trip.

‘Hey, should the munchkins come with us on the train, or just fly direct to Pudiligsto?’

Fly.

No question. Not even a doubt. The Jack was familiar ground. It’s routines were well worn into the kids’ minds.

A train, going deep into the Vorak island’s hills, visiting a remote town that probably hadn’t seen a Farnata or Casti in person for years, much less a human, much much less a dozen?

No that was a disaster waiting to happen. Better for the kids to fly to the Vorak equivalent of sin city and spin their wheels for a day than to risk someone getting lost.

Sid could imagine one of them getting lost in the hills. Search parties. Dogs. Spotlights. It would be ridiculous.

No, much as he loathed to admit it, he was a good chaperone.

It bothered him how much that bothered him. But at the end of the day, he and Caleb were similar in that respect: they couldn’t leave a job that needed doing undone.

He fixed himself into his seat in the Jack’s flight deck and gave Tasser the green light.

The Jack’s engines roared, blasting the planet out from underneath them in minutes.

Blue water stretched out before them as the city shrank in the distance, but west of the gulf— far west—a swirl loomed over the water.

Sid had never seen a hurricane from above before.

It was one thing to see pictures, or weather forecast diagrams. Those time-lapses failed to capture the sense of scale and size. Even an impressive state of the art ship like the Jack was just a tiny metal box compared to the storm churning the seas below.

Alien spaceships were designed to be operated under weeks of sustained thrust. That kind of stress would deform even the strongest titanium after just a few hours, so ships were built using exotic materials that could hold up to those forces.

But it didn’t matter what kind of space-age magic metal the Jack was made out of.

He recalled that hurricanes held more energy than dozens of atomic bombs put together, maybe hundreds.

The Vorak hadn’t been kidding. This storm was massive.

It was a good thing they were getting out of the gulf when they were.