Chapter 19 - Xalax

Decker followed Aranarth into the landing bay of the Sic Semper Tyrannis. He tried to see if he could find the spot where he cratered the ground with AG back during training. He couldn't though. It had been repaired too well.

Both wore the simple, rugged outfits favored by most rangers, their suits retracted and waiting on the small of their backs.

Aranarth led him to one of several identical Partisan-class escorts. The shiny rocket-shaped ship stood on landing gear, its twin torch drives held out on either side by nacelles.

"Welcome to the A.R.C.S. Overdog," said Aranarth.

Aranarth triggered something with a thought, and the ramp leading up into the ship extended to the floor.

"So I guess they don't let you name your own ship then, huh?" asked Decker.

"Shut up, squire," sneered Aranarth.

He made his way into the ship. Decker wasn't far behind him.

"Greetings stranger!" announced the ship as soon as Decker was inside, "I am the A.R.C.S. Overdog, fully sapient starship and hopefully your new good friend."

"Nice to meet you, Overdog," said Decker. "My name's Sam Decker."

"Squire Decker," corrected Aranarth, yelling from the cockpit. "Get used to saying it."

Aranarth relaxed himself into the extremely comfortable looking pilot's chair. He snapped his fingers and pointed to the co-pilot's chair. Decker walked over and sat down. The large window screen in front of them crackled for a moment as it came online before eventually resolving into a crystal-clean picture of the landing bay directly in front of the ship.

The silver escort rose slowly up into the air on a cushion of antigravity before easing its way out of the landing bay through the selective force field. As soon as it was well away from the Tyrannis it engaged torch drives and rocketed off leaving behind a tail of red comet fire.

"Overdog, plot a hyperspatial course for the planet Xalax. Maker's Eye System, Orion Arm," said Aranarth.

"My pleasure!" replied Overdog.

Aranarth checked a few things on his console to make sure everything was in order before engaging the hyperdrive. The Overdog began to take carefully plotted shortcuts through the higher dimensions, affecting an effective speed several orders of magnitude faster than it's actual speed. The ship's AI took things from there. 

Aranarth spun his chair around to face Decker.

"I suppose I should bring you up to speed," said Aranarth.

"I could just download the details," offered Decker.

"No," said Aranarth. "You don't know something unless you know it."

Decker wasn't sure what that was supposed to mean.

"Alright?" he said. It was almost a question.

"For the past several decades the gug-gug-gugs, the only intelligent species native to the planet Dididi-Dididi-Dididi, have been positioning military assets in the vicinity of three independent aliens worlds located within Human Space. The gug-gug-gugs are not FTL Players on any level so this involved a lot of lighthugging, wormholes, and ferrying. Wasn't hard to spot.

"Once we caught on to what was happening we sent two rangers to talk to the gug-gug-gug government and warn them of the potential consequences of their actions. And I do mean 'we'; the rangers were dragons. Both rangers went missing, are presumed dead, but before they did one of them managed to send us a fatline claiming that the gug-gug-gugs were being provided equivtech weapons by the Old Ones.

"Approximately one standard year later the gug-gug-gugs launched their expected attacks. All three worlds were targeted at once. The gug-gug-gugs came in, swept away all orbital defences, and then deployed their troops. Only this time the gug-gug-gugs were using ion weapons."

"Human weapons?" asked Decker.

"That is certainly the impression that is being cultivated," agreed Aranarth. "In any case we had been waiting for this. In less than a standard day we had neutralized or driven off the entire gug-gug-gug orbital presence on all three worlds. We had begun to liaise with the affected species to help them fight off the ground troops when the gug-gug-gugs made a complaint to the Council of Peerage.

"Now we know that the Old Ones were backing the gug-gug-gug's play, they're probably planning on taking on the gug-gug-gugs as client species as soon as they've annexed the worlds they attacked, but we can't prove it. Not to the standard the Council wants. So our defence of the three affected planets was declared a 'war', and that 'war' was declared illegal for reasons of technological asymmetry. As far as the Council of Peerage is concerned we're not defending against the Old Ones, we're attacking the gug-gug-gugs.

"So that's where we are now. Luckily Xalax was able to defend themselves on their own once we had removed the gug-gug-gugs orbital supremacy. But there's still fighting on the ground on the other two planets, Home/Click-*-Click-*-Click-Click and Eccustea. The retreating gug-gug-gug space fleets are on their way back there now that we're barred from stopping them. So at the moment A.R.C. is trying to find ways to clandestinely aid those two planets without drawing the ire of the Parliament of Stars. We are in essence in a proxy war against the Old Ones."

"So when why are we going to Xalax?" asked Decker.

"Because everyone is stupid except me, with the possible exception of Usagi but she has her moments," said Aranarth. "Whatever babbleskite proxy war the Old Ones are waging is exactly what they want us to be focused on. Meanwhile we have free reign on Xalax to investigate the invasion and find proof of Old Ones involvement. Once we have that we can take it to the Council of Peerage and get their decision reversed. Work smart, squire, not hard."

"So if we get this evidence we can attack the gug-gug-gugs directly?"

"Exactly."

* * *

There was once a time when life teemed across the entirety of Xalax. Now only a thin strip along the equator could support it. The stark border between the dead zone and the life band could be seen from space. It was the first thing Decker noticed about the planet as the comparatively diminutive Partisan escort he was aboard emerged from the higher dimensions.

The conditions on Xalax, harsh as they were, were remarkably Earth-like. Perhaps this was why the humans always considered the Xalaxians to be something like second-cousins. Both species could exist in each-other's ideal environment and used spoken languages which made interacting relatively simple. Therefore there had been a great deal of cross-cultural exchange, although primarily in one direction.

The ship entered the planet's gravity well, engaging AG as it did so. As it descended through the clouds Decker was shocked to see the ruins of Xalax's old space elevator. When the initial gug-gug-gug bombardment had cut the mega-structure in two the lower half fell over and crushed three major population clusters. The nature of the space elevator meant it when it fell it naturally wrapped itself along the equator, which was the only habitable portion of the planet. The top part drift off into high orbit, where it still remained.

The civilian casualties from the fall had to be measured in megadeaths.

Decker had read about disasters of this kind. He had all kinds of data related to them downloaded into his implant. He was not, however, emotionally prepared for the sight of the aftermath of one.

As they came closer and closer to the surface the destruction became more and more real. The similarities between Xalaxian and Ring-Human architecture meant none of the subtleties of devastation were lost on Decker.

The Overdog connected with space traffic control, and the associated autopilot took over. Xalaxians had a couple of pretty significant technological uplifts thanks to the Cooperative so their technology was heavily cross compatible with galactic standards, and in particular with human tech. The Overdog was gracefully piloted to the ground. It hummed as its fields settled into a landing configuration.

An open-air stardock had been set up not terribly far from the space elevator's former anchor point. It was little more than a paved off section that had been cleared of debris. It was occupied by a scattering of Xalaxian civilian sublight single-drive ships. Shuttles really, they didn't reach all the benchmarks to be called true starships.

Sub-sapient construction drones flew here and there, carrying force-fields full of debris, laying the groundwork for the ruined cluster to be rebuilt. They buzzed around with purpose, ignoring anything not directly related to their programmed objectives. They had already completed their earlier task of clearing away the bodies. Doing so had taken even this swarm of highly efficient drones days.

A ramp descended from the Overdog and Aranarth and Decker walked down it. Their cloaks billowed in the hard wind.

Two Eewee/Keeee, the species that preferred to be known to outsiders as the Xalaxians, were waiting for them at the dock.

The eight-foot-tall aliens had two mouth stalks protruding from a flat, round head covered in eye-bumps. All around the edges were shaggy strands of skin hanging down. The head sat atop a fat, cylindrical body that ended in four muscular, snake-like limbs. The limbs ended in three dexterous fingers and served as combination legs and arms. Various gadgets were strapped to their limbs and sides. The entire body was sleekly muscled and gave an impression of restrained power.

"We bid you welcome to our world, A.R.C. Rangers, on behalf of the people of Xalax," said one of the aliens. "I am known as Huayi/Eeeek, a xenologist specializing in humanity. You have already been introduced to our liaison to your organization Jeeke/Gyeee."

The Xalaxian spoke with both mouths at once, giving her words an eerie harmony. She otherwise spoke Ringlot, using the human language rather than the more neutral Galach, without any accent whatsoever.

When she spoke the Xalaxian names, however, she used each mouth to pronounce a different half. Decker had no idea how in the galaxy he was supposed to reproduce them. He figured he'd have to call literally every member of this species 'buddy' or something.

"I am gratified to see you in your personal presence. Until now we had communicated remotely," added Jeeke/Gyeee.

Her Ringlot was much more heavily accented. It reminded Decker a bit of the speech of a talented parrot, the way the words seemed to be pronounced like they were a single sound rather than a collection of syllables.

"I'm happy to meet you in person at last as well, Jeeke," said Aranarth, immediately answering Decker's question about the names. "And it's a pleasure to meet you, Huayi Eeeek. Do you mind if I call you Huayi?"

"I do not mind if you do this," said Huayi/Eeeek, with a nod of its entire body as it had no neck.

"I am called Ranger Aranarth, this is my squire," Aranarth gestured towards Decker.

"I have a name," said Decker.

"Your name is Squire," said Aranarth, not even looking at him anymore. "I need to get to work as soon as possible, time is of the essence. I want to go on a tour of all the major battle sites, starting with the largest gug-gug-gug strongholds. Any place where they had seriously dug in."

"I am surprised," said Huayi/Eeeek, "I believed you would have wanted to talk to the prisoners first, and so those are the arrangements I made. If you give me a moment I can certainly make-"

"Wait," Aranarth interrupted him, "you have prisoners? War prisoners? Why didn't you inform A.R.C.?"

"We assumed you knew," said Huayi/Eeeek. "What do you take us for, barbarians who take no quarter from their enemies?"

"There's a difference between taking prisoners and having prisoners," said Aranarth, a little tersely, "By all means, take us to them."

"You'll find our prisons extremely humane," insisted Huayi/Eeeek. "We model them on how humans treated prisoners of war during the Human-Old One War.

"I'm sure they're lovely," said Aranarth. "Let's go see them."

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