Emissary

The atmosphere inside the Motherwill had been a little frosty the next cycle. And the temperature regulator was still working properly.

Ryn had avoided Stel as much as one could on a small two-person freighter like the Motherwill, and they hadn't spoken even when they did bump into each other in the galley or between rooms. Stel felt a little pang of guilt when she did see him, as she felt responsible for the sudden distance between her and someone she realized she had grown slightly, even quite possibly moderately, fond of.

It was not until they dropped out of slipspace in a deserted quadrant on the edge of the Sol system did they finally speak again. Stel was almost surprised to hear his voice as they sat quietly in the bridge.

"Last jump, kiddo."

Stel flinched slightly at the sudden words and spun to look at Ryn, staring blankly through the active viewport with nothing but distant stars to observe. "Do you think we'll make it back in time? The warp gate back at the colony is surely down by now... and there's no promise Old Earth's works anyway."

Ryn shook his head slowly. "Old Earth remains a hub of the human alliances, even after the cataclysmic death of the world. They were able to restore it to almost livable, but even still, it stands as a testament to human stubbornness." The fennec finally broke his stare to level a teasing eye at Stel, "You'd have liked living there."

Stel stuck her tongue out briefly at Ryn before standing and moving towards him, gesturing to the panel in front of him. "Slip drive will be down another four hours, right? Do we have any plans for Earth?"

Ryn shrugged and leaned back in his chair, his ears twitching in a sign of thought. "I think we'll just show recorded logs from the Emissary during the Nalesh'ka's attacks. Hard to argue with evidence. Whether they'll send help? That's a different question. Not much gossip about Old Earth these days, and I can't be bothered to fly over and check on the humans."

The two fell silent again, Stel because she didn't want to disturb his thought process, and Ryn because he didn't want to think about the implications of not hearing anything about Old Earth lately.

Ryn took a deep breath and looked at Stel, "You're a good pilot, kid. You lack the experience of seasoned fighters, the likes of which I would put my trust in, but if you keep this up and keep taking risks without getting yourself killed, you'll do good by your people, and grow to be an impressive pilot in your own right."

Stel stared at Ryn for a moment as she registered he had complimented her, and stammered a reply, "I... I, uh, thanks? What brought that on? We're not done yet, don't get all sentimental on me..."

Ryn snorted and shook his head, "I was just thinking of Mila, my mate. She would have taken this on and dragged me with her, and here you are doing pretty much the same thing. By no measure did I ever have to help you. And here you are, getting me all the way out this way. You went and made me care."

The fennec began to stand and stretched his arms, joints popping in the effort as he brought himself upright. "Three and a half hours and we can make the jump. Go. Get some rest, get some food. We'll probably need it in the event of something happening, I'm going to... do some maintenance, I guess."

Stel watched as Ryn made his way to the hallway access, the door sliding open with a bit of a grinding noise accompanying it. "Sure you don't want to rest? I can take watch-"

Ryn turned and leveled two very tired looking eyes at Stel. Eyes that were exhausted not from being awake, but from having seen too much. "Can't sleep. Go."

He sauntered away, deeper into the ship. Stel checked what systems she understood on the bridge, particularly the sensor array to find they were alone, as far as the ship could tell. She stood and went towards the galley for one last snack before complying with Ryn and getting some sleep. She heard distant crackling, suggesting Ryn was tinkering in the engine bay. She decided to give him his space and headed for her bunk, spending the next thirty minutes mulling over her journey, her friendship with this fox, and what tomorrow would entail.

It made for a restless sleep.

Stel sat in her chair on the bridge, her leather jacket from Anywhere over her pilot's jumpsuit. She felt unbelievably anxious as Ryn keyed in the coordinates for their final jump to Old Earth. They'd made several smaller jumps, hailing for ships, but had still come up dry.

"One more time, kid, what's the plan."

Stel exhaled and focused. They'd gone over their brief plan a few times, but she knew he was asking to get her to calm down more than remember it. "We arrive in Old Earth's general space sphere, hail the nearest authority satellite, request an audience with a militant force, provide evidence of at least three locations with Nalesh'ka activity, and then use their warp gate to warp close to home, hopefully with an armada right behind us."

Ryn nodded absently as she detailed the plan and finished typing the coordinates, taking hold of the lever to push the ship into slipspace as he wound up the run-up engine. He took a long, deep breath and turned to Stel. "Right. Now, let's go save a colony."

He pulled the lever and the stars bent into elongated tubes and they were away. It would only be a short jump, but Stel and Ryn were both unusually anxious. The lack of ship traffic in neighboring systems being the most concerning, but also the inability to raise any of the military and deep space-grade communication satellites that were scattered in the Sol system was even more concerning.

After a few tense minutes, Ryn looked over to Stel and nodded. It was time. He pushed the lever back forward and the ship dropped out of slipspace. The expected view of a distant brownish sphere with ships traveling to and from it was not what they were met with.

Orbiting the star chart's expectation of Old Earth were hundreds, even thousands, of hideous Nalesh'ka ships. Ranging from small snub fighter sized ships to battlecruisers the size of an asteroid, the most terrifying was a vast maw of a thing floating just above the surface of the world, encapsulating about half the planet with four long tendrils reaching like an octopus' arms to hover above the world's surface, almost like it were feeding on the world itself.

Scattered around the world, in decaying orbits or billions of pieces were the remnants of the Old Earth armada.

Both Ryn and Stel swore simultaneously in different languages.

"Nalesh! How the- pull it around, Ryn. We're getting out of here."

Ryn was about to comply when his hand froze over controls, his body stiff.

"Ryn?! We gotta go! There's no way we-"

"They gotta die." Ryn said quietly yet firmly.

"What!?" Stel all but screamed, gesturing to the viewport. "Ryn. Count them. Hundreds, maybe thousands. You have a little cruiser and a mech suit. There's no way we-"

"Everyone else dies if we don't. That's a world-eater. It's... bigger than last I saw it. But... that was what we saw when... when Mila and the team died..."

Stel fell silent and eyed the giant behemoth of a vessel, feeding on the surface of Old Earth. "Ryn... we-"

"They're Nalesh'ka. They have to have a queen or something in there. It can't function without her. If you kill the queen... maybe the shock is violent enough to kill all of them. If not... at least the world-eater is dead."

"You hope."

"I hope." Ryn turned and fixed a haunted stare at Stel. "We die here, or die somewhere out there, kid. Pick a place."

Stel grunted and shook her head. "No. No, we run, we go back to the colony, we-we-we-"

"We die. There's no escaping it, kid. Mount up."

Stel, for once, saw no mirth or humor in Ryn's demeanor. He was always cracking a joke, pulling a prank, or making a snarky comment, but this time he was utterly still and quiet. Wordlessly, she stood and went to the access hallway, the door still grinding slightly. She paused in the doorway to look back at Ryn, trying to find the words to say.

"Yes, Ryn." Was all that got out of her. The door ground shut behind her and Stel lowered herself to the Emissary. The hatch closed behind her, she buckled herself in, and the screens all lit up, showing the dim launch bay around her. Suddenly, a little panel lit up with video from the Motherwill's bow. Distantly, she saw several of those mandibular ships beginning to turn and approach as the Motherwill raced towards them.

It was Stel's turn to take a long, deep breath.