161: Timaeus and Critias – Eight
Elytra pressed herself up against Malakh at the empty console, the others crowding around them, silent with anticipation as they stared down at the blank display. They were motionless, barely breathing, the beams from their Longan casting spotlights on the slick surface in front of them.
It felt like eons before the screen of Viatrix's main console turned on, but it couldn't have been more than a few seconds before the boot up process ran, coding flashing across the display too quick for anyone other than Malakh to read, but finally, finally, Viatrix's avatar bloomed on screen.
"Whoa, hey, there a party going on without me?" Viatrix asked, sounding slightly dazed, "All these dance lights shining down on me, and here I am without any legs!"
The others were quick to shut their lights off, noises of relief tumbling out of them, and with her hands braced against the console, tears in her eyes, Elytra gasped, "Vi, what happened?! I can sense you now!"
"I'm not- wait, like empathically?!" Viatrix blurted, and Elytra could feel the flicker of her confusion.
"Yeah," she managed, her smile wide enough to force the tears from her eyes, "You feel like light."
Tucking Elytra into her side, Malakh said, "You've been offline for a couple days, sort of like when we got the dlegh out of Pryseia and V'tala. You downloaded something from somewhere, most likely the Hyttan again, considering."
"The Hyttan…" Viatrix repeated, and Elytra could feel her grief like stormclouds obscuring the sun, "I saw what happened to them, saw how they blew up their suns to slow the Omega. But that was- Elytra, what happened to you? To V'tala?! Last I remember was the pair of you freezing up because of the empathic scanner!"
"Similar to the dlegh situation, we were pulled somewhere else. We saw the last moments of the Hyttan as well," V'tala told her, Elytra too busy trying to compose herself to fill in the blanks, "Lucky for us, there are pirates here who were able to help the others to bring us back to ourselves."
Her avatar spinning on screen, Viatrix let out a confused laugh before saying, "Pirates?! I think I'm gonna need a little more context than that! Oh, hang on, everyone's calling me at once. There's a hail I can send to the bridge for you while I talk to Adyt?"
"Of course," Pryseia said, pulling off her Longan, "We've much to discuss, I fear, and we would be best served to do so while cloaked in subspace."
"Well I'll be here," Viatrix chirped, "Let's get everyone up to speed so we can be as antisocial as Nevara!"
Her mandibles clicking together once at that, doing absolutely nothing to hide her smile, Nevara said, "I'm glad my worries about you were unfounded."
A quick jaunt up to the bridge and Akav appeared on screen when they connected the call, lifting a hand in greeting. "We're reading that your systems have come back online. Everything alright with your crew mate?"
"It seems to be," Rhea said from her normal spot, leaning against Pryseia's throne, "Just gotta run her through the digital equivalent of a physical, but she didn't sound any worse for her experience."
"That's good to hear," Akav told them sincerely, "I've got a feeling that all of you are going to be necessary for what is to come. I know Kith, so I know you lot are probably clawing at the door for your next mission, so I won't keep you long. Know that we'll guard this place from anyone that tries to bring about the early arrival of the Omega, however far in the future that may be."
"And know that we will not be idling that time away with frivolities," Pryseia promised with a decisive nod, "Having seen what it took to stymie the Omega the first time, we will do all in our power to seek out the means of eliminating this threat permanently from our galaxy, and not just foist it off on some nebulous future to be dealt with then. Be it through ancient wisdom or cutting edge advancements, the threat of the Omega will be eliminated, on this I vow."
Akav bowed their head at that, looking relieved as they said, "I'm thankful that you've proven to be as dedicated to this cause as we are. After so long with nothing but vague omens, its good to know that our faith wasn't unfounded."
With one last wave of farewell, Akav ended the call. On the view screen, they watched as the pirate's ship faded from view, its cloaking device obscuring it from sight.
"Nevara, please follow their example and remove us from the sensors of any who should be looking for us," Pryseia said as she slumped in her seat, "Paranoia has me in its grips, for how long we've been left exposed out in the open like this."
Huffing out the barest hint of a laugh, Nevara told her, "A sentiment I share. Worry not, I'll have us hidden away in subspace soon enough."
By the time Viatrix had finished letting Adyt know that she was alright, Nevara had them safely away in subspace, no real destination in mind except further into the galaxy, away from the final resting place of the Hyttan Technocracy.
"I'm really glad things panned out for the Gorgon's mission," Viatrix said as her avatar popped up onto one of the screens in the armoury, where everyone had gathered, "Getting people out of Thalatte clutches is always good news."
"I raise my hand in favour of that." Malakh said darkly, shooting Viatrix a worried look, "Now that we've taken care of our obligations, how are you? What exactly got downloaded into you?"
Letting out a disbelieving laugh, Viatrix replied, "A lot. But it's something we should discuss in the cargo hold. The Storlayacas are gonna wanna hear this."
Her avatar vanished after that, and sharing a quizzical look amongst themselves, the six of them stepped onto the nearest demat zone.
Surprise, wonder, joy, relief. These were the sensations that washed over them when they emerged in the cargo hold. Immobile as they always were, it was the presence of the Storlayacas they felt crowding around them.
No, not them. Around Viatrix.
When she was still a quite young, one of Elytra's older siblings had been hurt bad enough to be hospitalized. Not wanting to upset the rest of their children by getting into the gruesome details, her parents had given her and the rest of her siblings only vague answers as to what had happened. But sitting in that fog of detail-less information had felt like a nightmare, and when they all returned from the hospital, she and her siblings had been a desperate, teary mess all but blocking the front door, demanding answers and comfort while trying to figure out how to give comfort in return. That was what the Storlayacas felt like now, their presences crammed around the console Viatrix had brought her avatar up on.
"Oh." Viatrix's voice came out breathless, teary, "I can- they- is this how they always feel to the rest of you? The depth of their emotions?!"
"Yeah," Elytra said, her eyes as bright as her smile, "There's so much to them. Just like there's so much to you, too."
She could feel them now - all of them - and Elytra wasn't sure if her heart had ever felt this full. Viatrix's presence shone brightly in the protective huddle of the Storlayacas, each of them distinct from each other, though they carried a thread of similarity between them all, something she could feel with every set of siblings she'd encountered.
Phoebe, Leto, and Selene bore with them the same imagery of growing things that Elytra got off of Rhea. Phoebe was more like a forest, a sense of ancient endurance against anything that tried to ruin her. Selene was a stream flowing through a meadow, placid on the surface but running far deeper than one would imagine. Leto was a field of flowers in full bloom, bright and vibrant and impossible to ignore.
Yarvela and Ravona both had the steadiness of stone about them, but while Yarvela was all sun dappled cliff faces, as bright as she was open, Ravona was banded sandstone canyons, a hidden depth to her that you could only witness by delving past her unassuming visage.
Scale was the thing that tied the Storlayacas together, an immensity to their presence that dwarfed the other beings that Elytra had encountered throughout her life, an ancient weight to them all that could not be ignored. And yet there was something within each of them that tied to them to their pilots as well, a tether between each pair of organic and machine.
Zaanlaa was a towering iceberg looming out of the fog, Lianshae a rogue wave cresting at sea, Castore a volcano nowhere close to dormancy, Yarula a stand of old growth trees scraping the clouds, Malra a geological monolith rising unexpectedly out of autumnal decay, and Enaruli a heavy thunderstorm spanning from horizon to horizon.
Despite the immensity of them, however, Viatrix's presence shone like sunlight between the gaps of the Storlayacas. Younger though she was, her creation more accident than intent, she was not overshadowed by their collective grandeur. Surrounded by the Storlayacas like this, Viatrix felt just as immense as they did.
"This latest upgrade is something else," Viatrix said, and though mouth-less they could hear the smile in her voice, and even eyeless they could hear the tears in her words, "There's more to me now, it feels like, more of myself. I think I'm an adult now? Like all the pieces of me have finally fallen into place."
"We'll take you out drinking, then. Find some kind of alcohol that works on ships." Rhea beamed, coming over to lean against the console where Viatrix was projecting her avatar.
That had a laugh spluttering out of her, and Elytra felt Viatrix's amusement like the reflection off a sun catcher. "Wouldn't that be something, me getting shitfaced!? Though with how my Hyttan-style hull is kinda organic, maybe that's actually possible?"
Mirroring Rhea's pose on the opposite side of the console, Malakh said, "Maybe we hold off on the afterburners until you're actually airborne? We don't even know the full extent if how this upgrade affected you."
The presence of the Storlayacas pressed in closer, curiosity mixed with worry, sentiments Elytra could feel echoed in the organic crew huddling up together around Viatrix's console, her dampening necklace doing nothing to mask that worry.
Her avatar twitching in thought, Viatrix said, "It made me more, I know that much for sure. Like I've matured or something, more settled into my own skin. Metaphor skin. I know nothing physically changed about me this time, but I think my programming was expanded. That's what it feels like. I have room for terabytes when I only had bits before. And I have… I'm not really sure how to describe it. Context, maybe? For how the Hyttan thought. Not like their actual thoughts, but how they could come to the conclusions that they did, you know? An understanding of their culture in a way, how it shaped the people in it? Nothing that can help with understanding their language, but instead their motives. That part feels weird, like I read a history book about them a long time ago and I'm only just remembering the stuff I learned now. I know I made some comment before about how I'm sorta genetically Hyttan, but I've got no ties to the culture because I was raised away from them, and it still feels like that, but now I've actually gotten a chance to kinda learn about them. So I guess that makes me a cousin of the Storlayacas now?"
An image was pulled to the forefront of everyone's minds by the Storlayacas then, of Rhea and her sisters scrambling out of their respective ships to tearfully embrace after the disastrous attack by the Dolabra, the sentiment of that ringing out loud and clear for them all - not cousins. Sisters.
Elytra wasn't the only one who got misty eyed about that.
"I really appreciate it," Viatrix choked out, "I feel like I get it now, where all the gaps are in how we communicate with each other. You can't give us the finer details, and we can't convey the full depth of context. We must sound like babies babbling to you, huh?"
Amusement and agreement radiated off the Storlayacas, but along with it was an aching fondness. Grief was still there - would probably always remain there - but it was tempered by the knowledge that, even in some small way, another piece of the Hyttan still remained in the galaxy.
Another reminder that, despite everything, the Storlayacas weren't alone.
Running through all that they'd experienced while Viatrix was out of commission didn't take long, and after finishing and eating their interrupted lunch, they set out to make sure Viatrix was as alright as she claimed to be. The diagnostic Malakh ran on her confirmed what she'd told them all in the cargo hold - while she wasn't changed physically, her programming had been expanded by an exponential amount.
"I'm wiser now. More mature." Viatrix said, her avatar dominating the main view screen on the bridge, backed by the pastel cascade of subspace, her smugness apparent to even those of them without a koleopteran's empathic abilities.
"Does that mean you're gonna be less of a brat now?" Rhea teased, and that got a wildly inelegant snort of derision out of Viatrix.
"Absolutely fucking not!" She laughed, "It's way too much fun of a habit to break now! Who else is gonna annoy you if I won't? I have a reputation to uphold!"
Rhea's responding laugh was half groan, but all fondness as she said, "This feels like karma for all the shit I put my sisters through when I was a kid."
"Given what they told me about how much of a pest you were as a child, this probably is the universe getting you back." Malakh grinned from her usual spot at one of the gunner stations, "The horror stories they had about you…"
"Well I was perfectly well behaved as a child, so you can't get any karmic retribution on me!" Elytra said with a little laugh, and then her expression fell into something close to embarrassment as she said, "I was actually really quiet as a child, to the point where I would sometimes go entire school days without saying a word, just a complete wallflower. I got a lot more outgoing once I hit adulthood."
Spinning her pilot's seat around so she could nod at Pryseia, Nevara said, "Believe it or not, she was far less confrontational in her youth. She was far more prone to just leaving a situation than she was staying and dealing with it."
"A habit I am glad to have grown out of," Pryseia admitted, "It would not have served us at all in our current circumstances. You, however, are still just as terse as you were as a child, though you're far less shy about it."
"In the company of adults, I should not need to coddle them with gentle excuses as to why I need out of a conversation posthaste." Nevara shrugged, though she tried to hide her smirk behind her mandibles.
"I'm grateful for that," V'tala said with a slight smirk of her own, "You leaving gives me the chance to get out of a conversation too."
"A service I am all too happy to provide." Nevara told her with a slight bow.
"But on the complete opposite end of that spectrum, in that this isn't a conversation we can just walk away from, what's the plan going forward from here?" Rhea asked, her gaze drifting to Pryseia.
Heaving a sigh as she slouched down in her throne, Pryseia said, "While our experience at the tear was enlightening, it failed to provide us with the information needed to understand how the countdown on the Omega detecting device works. It should have been our first recourse, but we do have the Storlayacas we could petition for answers. Perhaps they could provide context similar to how they enabled us to more effectively utilize the Hyttan artifact scanner? As for our next mission, I haven't the foggiest. There are as of yet still hours remaining in our day, so we could doubtlessly find something on Avvisi to cater to our needs in an expedient manner."
"We might not even need to look that far," Viatrix said, "Adyt was telling me that her people might be headed off on a mission they'd be happy to have some company on."
"I don't believe any of us would say no to that." Pryseia murmured, glancing around. When no complaints on that plan were voiced, Pryseia said, "Vi, please let Adyt know that we'd be interested in a joint venture betwixt our two crews once more."
"Quick and easy enough to do with that particle I have to jiggle around," Viatrix told her, making light of the complicated engineering behind a QECD, "She said they'd be happy to meet up on the Quanvengier to go over the details of their mission in person."
"Fantastic, then we will do just that," Pryseia said, shooting Rhea a look, "I suppose the only outstanding matter now is the dramatization of what transpired for us over the last several days."
"I think we've got a script that will work for that," Rhea told her, pointing a thumb back at Elytra, "Just need to do a fine tuning pass and then we can get to filming. It's a several day trip back to the core, so it would give us something to do to pass the time."
"It'll be good to shed some light on what happened to the Hyttan, even if it's a somewhat fictionally account." V'tala said, crossing her arms as she leaned up against Pryseia's throne.
"Their fate was certainly not what I was expecting it to be," Pryseia voiced their collective thoughts, "And it is a sacrifice we would do well to honour. The Hyttan quite literally gave their all so that any who followed them would have a chance to grow. And we must do what we can to ensure that the harvesting of our people is as difficult as possible when the Omega returns to this realm to reap. We owe the Hyttan that, if nothing else."