Affairs on the Astrum Vitae had largely normalized by the time the ship reached Delta Bo?tis a handful of days later. The rest of the trip had been mercifully uneventful, allowing everyone time to get back into the groove of working together- the bridge crew in particular. Their objective was finally in sight, but to Miliam, that just meant it was time to be more cautious than ever.
“Eun-ji, are we all clear?” she queried as soon as the ship completed its translocation into the system, barely concealing the dread she felt towards all the potential answers she might get. If she and her crew were going to encounter anyone hostile during this entire job, her gut told her now was the time, illogical as that was.
“Nothing but asteroids captain, just like we expected,” Eun-ji reported, oblivious to Miliam’s concerns.
“There is scant here of interest to anyone but us. What little there is would have been found long ago were it simple to find,” Abigail pointed out from her spot to Miliam’s left.
“That’s exactly what I’m worried about,” Miliam informed her nervously. She never took her eyes off the sensor plot. “It’s hard to imagine a better place for outlaws to hide than a star system everyone knows has nothing worth a trip.”
“Think I’ve got the location we’re looking for figured out, cap’n,” Aoibhe announced with a glance over her shoulder. “It’s about thirty light-minutes away assuming nothing shifted the rock’s orbit.”
“Go ahead and get us started, then. Eun-ji, keep a close eye out. Just because we’re close to our destination doesn’t mean we’re safe,” Miliam ordered, looking briefly at each woman as she spoke.
“Aye, cap’n,” Aoibhe responded as she started the wave drive.
“Right!” called out Eun-ji without looking up.
Miliam almost felt bad for leaving Min-ji out, but both twins had been doing a good job of activating EMCM immediately upon entering unknown systems since she’d spoken to them. There wasn’t much need to tell Min-ji to do something she’d already begun to do.
“I know you said this system was all asteroids, but…it’s another thing seeing it in person,” Miliam muttered to Abigail as she looked over the sensor data for the entire system. It was rocks, rocks, and more rocks. They weren’t quite as clumped as she’d expected based on the descriptions she’d received, but there were certainly some tighter clusters here and there. Idly, Miliam wondered if those were asteroids that had yet to drift apart or the beginnings of the formation of new planets.
“Indeed. Not a terribly exciting view, but undeniably rare. I know of only one other system this devoid of planetary bodies, and it happens to be the site of the only known cthulid sighting in known history,” Abigail replied casually, as if the thought itself wasn’t horrifying.
“You mentioned those before but you didn’t really explain. What are cthulids?” Miliam asked, not sure she actually wanted to know but unable to reign in her curiosity.
“A difficult question to answer, admittedly. Our sole account is from the evacuation of Enza, the githune homeworld, over five hundred years ago. A planet-sized mass entered the system and began to systematically dismantle every world it came across, traveling in a spiral from the outermost planet to the innermost.” As she recounted the story, Abigail pinched her chin between two fingers, probably trying to remember all the details.
“…how do we not know anything about something the size of a planet?” Miliam wondered, equal parts awed and horrified.
“The creature was as close to a perfect blackbody as has ever been encountered. All electromagnetic radiation was absorbed. It actively drew mana into itself as well, rendering all magical methods of scanning it useless. For all intents and purposes it was a mobile void in space, detectable only by the shadow it cast,” Abigail explained, the information not improving Miliam’s mood in the slightest.
“Did they…fight it?” Miliam whispered.
“Does a fly fight a meteor? Energy weapons and magic merely seemed to feed it, while the githune possessed no kinetic weapons of a sufficient scale for the cthulid to even notice it had been struck. Over the course of months, the beast obliterated all bodies larger than a moon and then drifted out of the system, never to be seen again,” Abigail finished grimly before patting Miliam’s shoulder. “Not to worry. They are nothing if not slow, and nothing remains of this system that is likely to interest one.”
“But that was hundreds of years ago, right? Do you think anyone could stop one now?” Miliam asked, not comforted in the slightest.
“Perhaps. There was…one other potential sighting which was believed to have been the remains of a cthulid. A long, sinuous appendage found in low orbit above a star, too close for retrieval. If it was indeed the severed limb of a cthulid, and it likely was, given its absorption of all scans, then that would at least seem to indicate they may be harmed, would it not?” Abigail raised an eyebrow, looking down at Miliam, who returned her gaze with an expression she hoped communicated how crazy she thought the scholar was.
“So what you’re saying is that there are planet-sized space monsters out there and there might also be something scary enough to kill them. Thanks, I hate everything about that,” she told Abigail with a shudder. Abigail, sensing that Miliam had reached her limit, wisely chose to let the topic drop.
Soon enough the Astrum Vitae was approaching the asteroid that supposedly hosted an intact structure. It was large compared to its neighbors and pockmarked with craters indicating that smaller rocks had collided with it over the millennia.
“I’m not seeing any buildings on the surface…” Eun-ji reported once the asteroid had completed a full revolution.
“It would not be on the exterior. Are you able to detect any crevices? The structure we are searching for should be subterranean,” Abigail supplied, peering over Miliam at the mirrored sensor display.
“I’ll check for any, then.” Eun-ji took some time to rotate the three-dimensional image of the asteroid produced by the ship’s sensors. Given the size of the rock in question, something as small as a crevice wasn’t easy to find, but by the time Aoibhe had begun to draw down on the wave drive, she had a few likely candidates. “There’s only a few of them big enough to hide anything. I’ll mark them.”
Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.
Circles appeared around each of the points Eun-ji had identified, but from the information currently available, none of them stood out from the others. It wasn’t like they were starved for time, though- Miliam decided to just give each of them a closer look.
“Aoibhe, go ahead and take us closer so Eun-ji can get better scans. We might need a visual, for that matter. Whoever surveyed this system originally would have found this place if a simple scan could see it,” Miliam reasoned as she looked up from the screen.
“Aye, cap’n.” Using thrusters only, Aoibhe brought the ship closer to the first crevice. Each was large enough to fit the entirety of the Astrum Vitae inside, which went to show exactly how enormous the asteroid itself was. It was only once the ship was hovering directly above the hole, so close that it would be the work of moments to venture inside, that Eun-ji made her conclusion.
“Nothing here. We’re close enough that I was able to use scrying to check the interior, and it’s empty,” she relayed to Miliam’s disappointment. Still, it was only the first site.
“Let’s go ahead and check the next one then,” Miliam prompted Aoibhe, who put the ship into motion again. The fay pilot skillfully maneuvered the vessel towards the next location while remaining close to the asteroid’s surface, minimizing the amount of fuel expended by taking the shortest path possible. To Miliam’s understanding, enchantments that focused and directed heat allowed the thrusters to operate with near-total efficiency, but that didn’t mean they could be used indefinitely.
Unfortunately, the next fissure was equally devoid of anything interesting, as was the one after that. Only once Miliam and her crew had moved onto the penultimate chasm did they find anything. The discovery came as a relief, appearing just as hope was beginning to wane.
“Captain, there’s a door down there! I can’t see inside though- it’s shielded against scrying,” Eun-ji shared excitedly, spinning to look Miliam’s way as she spoke.
“I was beginning to believe I had been fooled, I must admit,” Abigail muttered just loud enough for Miliam to hear.
“Perfect! Go ahead and set us down inside the crevice, Aoibhe. We’ll check it out on foot,” Miliam ordered immediately. Instead of following the instruction, though, Aoibhe turned around to regard Miliam with a suspicious look.
“You said ‘we’ just now. You can’t be planning to go in there yourself,” she accused. “That’s the sort of thing the crew is for.”
“Yeah, if we had any crew to spare,” Miliam said with a roll of her eyes. “Everyone else on this ship has a job to do. Name one thing you can’t do without me right here.”
“…didn’t we just have a conversation about conflicting authority?” Aoibhe asked in exasperation.
“That was because both of us were right here. You’re the XO, you’re supposed to take command when I’m gone,” Miliam pointed out dryly.
“While I appreciate the thought, I do not require an escort,” Abigail intervened placatingly. “Had I believed that necessary I would have brought a companion to serve said purpose.”
“I’m not exactly bodyguard material to begin with,” Miliam replied with a headshake. “I just want to see it for myself. It’s why I’m out here in the first place- so I can witness all the wonders of the universe that I never could have seen if I didn’t have my own ship. How many people can say they’ve been inside a place built hundreds of thousands of years ago that outlived the planet it was built on?”
“…indeed, when phrased in that manner, I can hardly dispute your intentions,” Abigail relented easily.
“Abigail!” exclaimed Aoibhe, dismayed at her reversal.
“I can make my own decisions about my safety, Aoibhe. We’ve been over this,” Miliam responded as she rubbed her temples.
“It’s not about that this time,” insisted Aoibhe with a sigh. “I’m not being overprotective here, I’m raising a legitimate objection in my role as XO. Leading a diplomatic mission on an inhabited world like True Eden is one thing; having the captain head an investigation into a completely unexplored structure is insane.”
“The place has been abandoned for literally hundreds of thousands of years. Since it’s been in vacuum I doubt the structure has eroded any, but what kind of security systems could possibly still be running after all this time?” Miliam countered with what she felt was a reasonable argument. “And it’s not like we need to worry about gravity pulling down a compromised ceiling on us right now.”
“Mmgh…” Aoibhe groaned, unable to rebut those points. Most of the hazards of run-down building on a planet’s surface wouldn’t be applicable here due to the lack of gravity or atmosphere, and it was unlikely much of anything could have run non-stop for all this time. Even wards, which were designed to sit idle for years before triggering, would run out of mana after so long. “Just keep an eye out for tripwires, then, I guess. They’re about the only thing that might still be working.”
“Sure, sure,” Miliam replied flippantly, standing from her seat. “While we’re gone, keep an eye out for other ships. I know the chances are low of anyone stumbling into this system while we’re here, but…I can’t shake the feeling that something’s going to happen.”
“Um, captain?” Eun-ji interjected, raising a hand like she was trying to get a teacher’s attention. “We’re not going to be able to detect much with all this rock around us.”
“Yeah, but no one can see us either, and we’ll still be able to detect anything big like a translocation,” Min-ji pointed out in return, turning in her chair to regard her sister.
“If something shows up, contact me immediately, Min-ji. And…Aoibhe, have a teleport calculated and ready just in case. We may not have time to wait for a full charge,” Miliam instructed before leaving the bridge.
Codex Entry: Githune
Best known for the most tragic event in their species’ history, the githune are the only modern species know to have encountered a cthulid- an event that resulted in the loss of their entire home system. Although the githune by that point had multiple colonies in other systems and were able to survive the experience, they have not truly recovered from it in the five hundred years since.
The githune evolved on the planet Enza, a nearly tidally locked world which rotated fully only once each year. It was unique in that its seasons were dictated by the planet’s rotation rather than its orbit, with all life having to adapt to spending half of each year in near-to-total darkness. For the githune specifically, this meant a nomadic existence in perpetual twilight, following the sun as it set in order to avoid the extremes in temperature faced by the day and night sides of Enza.
Early githune society was highly competitive due to the limited living space available to the species. As different parts of the year allowed access to different amounts of land, dictated by the shape of Enza’s continents, the githune underwent a regular cycle of warfare as tribes and later nations warred for limited land during the narrow months and recovered during the wide months. Their societies were also highly reliant on herd animals that could provide a mobile food source, and many conflicts were based around securing the largest herds.
Since technological development requires more infrastructure than magical development, the githune discovered magic far earlier than complex technology, and it was only when their magic was advanced enough to overcome their environment that the githune began to develop technologies like farming and smithing- though they had developed magical alternatives to the latter some time prior to their discovery of the forge. Even today this disparity has never quite evened out, with the githune eschewing nonmagical solutions to any problem that can be solved with magic.
Eventually the githune were able to settle down after inventing spells that could provide light year-round and regulate temperatures, after which they experienced multiple cultural and scientific revolutions that carried them through to the interstellar age. Following the destruction of Enza, however, the githune became a client species of the neighboring senali and have remained such to the current day.
