A Vast And Endless Sky 4 (Patreon)

This is the very explainy part but it was fun to write anyway. (I like explain-y parts when they're dialogue.) Thoughts comments like share subscribe etc. below!

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Thassiter didn’t seem any more sinister in light of the revelation, and Rees was more confused than anything, especially given how unnecessarily gentle the ssarith was being with him. Thassiter let Rees follow along and observe as he resumed processing the samples collected by the army of Shiny Eggs, largely looking for additional detail and looking for things the aliens may have overlooked in their long study.

“This is the sort of thing that is difficult to discover just passively listening to radio wave broadcasts,” Thassiter said, showing off some of the scanning results, which included an approximate model of Rees’s own house to a very absurd detail. The computer broke it apart into categorized reports—construction materials, methods, flaws, number of occupants, what types of equipment were present on average including computers, local wildlife and flora. Rees couldn’t read any of it, but he was struck with a sort of sick fascination by how thorough the ssarith were being in all of this. He could only imagine they’d long since made estimates of military capability, hence spying on residences, even if in the abstract.

“I don’t want you to think we’re vastly ultraintelligent or anything,” Thassiter said. “The computer does most of this work. We have one of the most robust AIs in known space, it’s very efficient and good at interpreting unknowns. My job here is largely to review and become an expert, then compile reports that I believe will be most useful for my lords to know. A lot of this scanning and datamining consists of sifting hoards of material so my lords will be able to make informed decisions about the next phases of the plan.”

“To invade,” Rees repeated flatly, sitting atop the back scales of the ssarith with his short knees tucked shyly in to his body.

“Yes, it is not an inaccurate word, I hope. The AI is also assisting in translating; I personally know a good portion of Tannic but the subtleties of the language may escape me.”

“Invade, verb. To enter forcefully with destructive intent.”

“Destructive intent?” Thassiter paused for a long moment, probably listening to the AI. “According to your dictionary, that is perhaps the harsh definition. I might choose another word to better encapsulate the whole situation, like intrude, or become involved, or take over, or conquer—”

“That’s just worse!” Rees snapped. “I don’t—I don’t get it, you seem nice but is your intent really to take over Ar, however gently you insist you’re going about it?”

“Yes,” Thassiter said.

“Why? Or do you not even know yourself?”

“Of course I know.” Despite claiming he was not ultraintelligent, he continued to scan and process materials as he spoke. “It would be a breach of trust to not allow the thane to know the full reasons for engaging in combat.”

“Now that is an alien viewpoint if I’ve ever heard one. Your officers actually tell their soldiers everything?”

“Most everything,” Thassiter said. “It helps give my tasks structure and purpose, which is very important if you want good and accurate data. Tell a thane nothing, and you risk disconnecting task from purpose.”

“And what is that purpose?”

“There’s a twofold reason. You see, Rees, about twenty of your years ago, your planet was identified as inhabited, but not by us. You were first encountered by the Krakun Empire, who are a designated enemy of our allies. I could tell you all about the krakun, but given your cynical reaction to much of what I’ve told you so far I don’t know if you’d be inclined to believe it.”

“You said something about… saving us from being enslaved.”

“Yes, that is the projected outcome of allowing them to establish a foothold on your planet. They are a hungry empire, constantly on the search for more sources of labor. They have already made a vassal of several dozen species and several hundred planets, generally by promising the leaders of those species a continuance of their regimes as puppet states so long as they implement krakun policies—which include increasing industrial output as part of tribute, and sending off prisoners as direct slave labor to serve on their own planets, ships and outposts.”

“And you aren’t doing that yourselves,” Rees said, his ears still flattened out skeptically.

“Certainly not. It would be horrifically dishonorable to treat our host with ill intent; I, my peers and my lords all agree vehemently on this issue. There will be as little violence and as much cooperation as possible.”

“But you’re still invading!”

“Yes. That word is still accurate because we are not taking ‘no’ for an answer. We are staying and we will protect Ar.”

“Right, out of the kindness of your hearts… or, like, whatever you have.”

“That brings me to the second reason.”

Rees rolled his eyes and perked his ears, ready to be laid on whatever strange rationalization Thassiter was about to bring up. But Thassiter paused for a very long moment, not even looking at his screen. His scales had flattened out, his hood sunk low, and his fingers had stopped moving the dual-bumpers on the console.

“…As a people, we don’t have a choice,” he finally said. “Our planet is dying.”

“Like, as a result of pollution, or—”

“No.” Thassiter shook his head in an exaggerated manner. “We were born on a planet surrounding a red supergiant star. Such a place was instrumental in our evolution, but compared to a yellow star, our time was always far more limited. We expect the sun to collapse within another hundred years, possibly sooner. ShoMosku, its architecture, plants and animals, will be destroyed alongside.”

Rees tilted his head. Really? That sounds like something that’d be made up for a sci-fi story, but even so… he seems so sincere.

“We’ve been looking for a place to re-establish our species for the last nine hundred years,” Thassiter said. “But travel in space is quite long and tedious, and even with our allies looking alongside, finding an available planet that matches our elemental needs was always going to be long odds, even when we originally established our one thousand year deadline.”

“And… the krakun found our planet for you.”

“It was certainly not their intention,” Thassiter said. “They have fleets upon fleets of ships, even now still spreading outward into the galaxy, trying to map and locate any star or planet of use to them, an effort much more widespread than any other known empire in space is matching. So it was always going to be likely that if anyone found a suitable planet, it would be them. Spies relayed the information to our allies. We are not always capable of stopping the krakun from establishing their empire where they please, but in this instance, with a planet we could settle on, our leaders offered to spearhead the counterattack with the majority of our fleet.”

“But Ar is already inhabited!” Rees countered. “You know this. There’s four billion montrose down there!”

“And we intend to see that number does not decrease,” Thassiter said. “Look, Rees, I know this upsets you on a basic level. But the fact of the matter is: Ar is on the precipice of becoming a part of galactic politics whether it wishes to or not. There are four possible outcomes to this.

“First, we do nothing, and the krakun conquer you. It would be a simple calculus, the alliance has had to do it many times. But I do not believe you would have preferred this outcome.

“Second, we drive off the krakun, send a warning to your leaders and give you a token protection that most planets under the Lio Alliance get—but the alliance cannot allow itself to be spread too thin. They or we may have to make battle calculus to move ships and weaken that token defense further, or maybe your leaders would not enjoy the idea of ships capable of destroying any target on the planet not being under their control and demand we leave. Besides this, if the krakun decide this planet is valuable enough, your planet may potentially become the target of constant attacks, perhaps regime-switching every decade or so. I do not believe you’d prefer that.

“Third, we drive off the krakun and seal off this section of space. There is no guarantee we will succeed, and if the krakun have already identified this planet, it will be of little consequence for them to return within a hundred years. We could not justify this approach because the outcome would be just the same as doing nothing, only when the krakun come again we will have no way to stop them the second time around, making the whole original effort purposeless.

“So, the fourth option. We commit. It is an option available only because your people and ours coincidentally share an atmosphere and have similar chemical compositions. This planet will become Ar-ShoMosku, with allthe power of the ßarith behind it, permanently. Your people will gain the protection of a fully defended, technologically-capable homeworld, and in time, all the benefits of our technology.”

Rees’s tails slumped. It was a lot to take in, especially since the droning of Thassiter’s speaker sometimes caused his ears to tune out. But it made enough sense, assuming he was telling the truth. He tried to imagine how the world would respond to an alien threat on its own, and given the current politics of the world… well, they might end up attaining nuclear winter long before the “leave us alone for a hundred years” option elapsed.

“Even so,” Rees mumbled. “A lot of montrose aren’t going to like it. It took you nearly a half an hour to explain this to me, and cynical as I am, I’m fairly receptive! You’re going to need to convince bull-headed religious figures and politicians that giving up most everything that directly benefits them is the right thing to do, and convince all the scientists and historians that your enforced-settlement on Ar will be something other than exploitative colonization.”

“Exploitative—” Thassiter started to ask.

“You know, the thing that you’re claiming the ‘krakun’ would do instead. Montrose will think you’re doing the same, no matter how nice you actually turn out to be or how much you need to do it for our own good. You can say the invasion will be anything you like. But we’ve been constantly colonizing one another for at least the last five thousand years, if not longer. Anythingyou force on the montrose, no matter how benign, will be compared to exploitative policy and interpreted by someone as a horrible violation of their personal rights or creeds. There’s a lot of montrose down there, and they don’t all think similarly like your people seem to.”

Rees smacked his lips to get the taste of his history teacher’s words out of his mouth. He felt like an even larger nerd than normal; it was so un-male like, even though he’d always had a mind like a trap, taking in everything around him, thinking it and overthinking it.

“Yes, I know,” Thassiter said. “It will be a lot of work.”

He left it at that and resumed his task on the console. Rees sighed; at the very least, he wasn’t sure if this was going to be his problem. In practical terms, he just got a heads-up on the world turning upside-down in a few weeks or years, however long the ssarith still needed to prepare.

And yet, at the same time…

“I understand,” Rees said. “At least, as much as I think I can. This is going to be difficult for you and us.”

“The most difficult tasks are made simpler with the addition of like-minded partners,” Thassiter said, apparently proverbially.

“Right. So. Um. When can I go back home?”

Thassiter turned to look at Rees.

“I know, everything’s going to go to shit soon,” Rees said, idly plucking at his tail. “But all that’s just made me feel extremely guilty. I need to be there for my mom when this all goes down, I don’t think she’s going to take it well.”

“I can’t exactly let you go back,” Thassiter said. “Not until after official contact, at least.”

“I thought so.”

Rees slipped off of of Thassiter’s body and slipped off while he wasn’t looking, though only really made his way to a far corner underneath yet another dark-colored console, where he slumped and curled his tail around his legs. There was just too much to consider. He felt awful, like he was given this glimpse of the future—and even if he could tell anyone, they wouldn’t believe him. He’d been stuck here for hours now, and already he was missing the afternoon sun and just going to sit in a bookstore and just wanting things to be normal for a little bit.

It seemed like it was never going to happen again.

Rees cried. He didn’t mean to at first, but he’d always been overly-emotional.

It’s just too much. Too damn much.

He was interrupted not long after by a large claw holding out to him a sheet of cloth a little too big to be a handkerchief. Thassiter had left his post, scales raised in an expression that read as concern, even if Rees didn’t entirely believe it.

“Thanks,” Rees croaked, taking the handkerchief and wiping at his face. “Think it’s making my eyeliner run…”

“A little,” Thassiter said. “It just occurred to me that you are probably very hungry, little one. Would you like me to accompany you to the canteen?”

Rees sniffed and blotted more large tears with the cloth. The ssarith’s face was just so plantive, almost cute with how much concern he poured into that look. Rees felt foolish just implicitly trusting this creature that was going to upend life as he knew it. But then again, the future seemed inevitable now. His only real choice in this was to be optimistic or pessimistic about it. And Thassiter sure seemed like he was pushing Rees in one direction more than the other.

“Okay,” Rees said quietly, and stood up. “What have you got?”