Tales From the Terran Republic

Chapter 147: Jessica and Nibbles I

In the mountains of Raylesh, a sleek frigate settled into a hidden hangar carved into the side of a cliff-face.

Inside stood Jessica Morgan, flanked by a score of gray-armored operators wielding saberguns.

“Whoever they are,” Jessica said to the elderly man next to her, “they make pretty ships.”

“Pretty doesn’t even come close,” the man replied quietly. “I can’t even tell you what the hull is made out of. These guys can teach us a thing or two about stealth. We couldn’t get missile-lock on the thing, even when it was hovering two hundred and fifty meters from the launcher. Fuck, our AIs are still not sure if that damn thing is even here at all.”

“Well, shit,” Jessica chuckled, “I guess those old accounts weren’t exaggerating after all.”

“They aren’t perfect, though,” the old man said. “Based on my readings, I can tell you with a high degree of certainty that the ship in front of us is very similar to the ‘pebbles’ that our pipers have been talking about.”

“Well, that’s a relief,” Jessica replied. “We only have one group sniffing around.”

A loading ramp opened at the rear of the frigate, and a single large creature, completely obscured by an ever-shifting opalescent ‘veil’ floating around it, disembarked.

“Big sonofabitch...” Jessica muttered. “How big are the Veiled Ones supposed to be?”

“Not that big,” the old man replied. “Supposedly, they aren’t that much bigger than we are, but when they say they are ‘veiled,’ they aren’t kidding. There isn’t shit in the archives about them, not a single picture, much less a scan…. Nothing.”

“Even more interesting,” Jessica smiled as she stepped forward.

“Jessica Roberta Morgan,” the large obscured creature said with a slight buzz. “You have no idea how long I’ve wanted to meet you. My formal name is completely untranslatable. However, my’ nickname’, the name everyone calls me, is. Please call me ‘Nibbles’.”

“A rather undignified name for a member of such an august species.”

“It was ‘earned’ as the result of a rather undignified incident,” the shimmering bulk replied with a droning buzz as a strange smell wafted past.

It was like a flower, and a barnyard animal had some sort of unholy congress.

Jessica laughed. It seemed appropriate.

“We have much to discuss,” the creature said, “however, I do not feel comfortable venturing further into your facility, not that I could fit. Perhaps we could retire to my vessel? It is much more comfortable… and private.”

“And I do not feel comfortable venturing onto your ship at this point,” Jessica smiled. “However, if privacy is a concern, I can assure you that this hangar is about as private as you can get. Less than three hundred people in the entire galaxy even know this place exists.”

“Works for me!” Matriarch Nibbles replied with another floral fart.

Moments later, four smaller individuals, each obscured by an opalescent veil that floated around them, walked out of the back of the frigate dragging an oddly shaped “beanbag” into the hangar.

“Bring me something to sit on,” Jessica said aloud to nobody in particular.

Shortly thereafter, an office chair was quickly rolled out from a nearby watch station as Nibbles settled herself on her beanbag, her veil expanding to completely envelop it.

Jessica smiled pleasantly, but her thoughts were anything but. The Veiled Ones…

Fuck.

This wasn’t good. Not a whole lot was known about them, but they were supposed to be very old and very advanced, one of the original founding members of the Federation. According to the archives, they were very enthusiastically involved in the early Federation, but something went horribly wrong. The details had been redacted from any account she could find, but they proclaimed the Federation a “failure” and withdrew to their home system, where they have sulked for centuries.

They had been one of her hobbies once. Despite millions of credits and years of man-hours expended on the mystery, the only thing she was able to confirm is that they absolutely detest the Kalent. There was actually the beginnings of an armed conflict between the two races before The Veiled Ones suddenly withdrew from the galaxy even though they supposedly had quite the advantage.

If this meeting had happened last year, Jessica would have been delighted, but this wasn’t last year. This was today, and her carefully laid plans did NOT have The Veiled Ones figured into them.

She looked at the ever-shifting veil with a confidence that she did not actually possess.

If these guys get involved, it could ruin everything. The Federation fleet she could fight. They had been running simulations and forming strategies since day one.

These guys, however, were another story entirely. Their recon ships were all but invisible, and if the rest of their, by all accounts quite large fleet was like this little frigate, they were fucked.

While they couldn’t actually scan it, they could measure its mass, acceleration, jump performance, and other characteristics. From what they’ve seen, it was so far beyond Federation tech that it wasn’t even funny.

They couldn’t even tell what the damn thing was armed with.

And that “veil” was perhaps one of the most amazing things Jessica had ever seen. She didn’t even know if it was a solid or a gas. It just floated and billowed and defeated any attempt to scan even its surface. She didn’t even know what elements it was comprised of.

Squatting on her office chair, she felt like an indigenous chieftain looking at European sails and cannons, just like she did during First Contact and in her first dealings with the Federation.

She hated this feeling…

But she’d been here before.

Step one: Deal from a position of confidence and strength, even if you have to fake it.

“Before we go any further,” Jessica said with a calm voice and a smile, “I’m not talking to a bed sheet. Lose the veil.”

“As anticipated,” The Matriarch replied. “I will comply, but you must deactivate all scanning and recording equipment, and I will only reveal myself to you and you alone.”

Jessica nodded.

“Turn everything off,” she said in a loud and clear voice. “And clear the room. Any Peeping-Toms will feed the bull...”

Everyone started switching off their scanners and filing from the room without question.

“… but someone lend me their Saber...” Jessica said with a smile.

“Ma’am!” the closest operator shouted and sprinted forward.

Jessica accepted his weapon, which immediately displayed, “Identity confirmed: LTC Morgan. Configuration loaded. Weapon ready.”

Nibbles clicked with great satisfaction.

Well played, she thought with a little buzz as she noted the ease with which Jessica handled the weapon (which was quite capable of ripping through her shield). If anything went amiss, Nibbles held no illusions.

She would die here.

Jessica calmly stood there holding the weapon at patrol ready as her people left the hangar, sealing the door behind them.

She pulled out her phone with her off-hand.

“Are we clear?” she asked in a perfectly calm and relaxed voice.

“Yes, ma’am,” a surprisingly clear voice responded. “All scanners and cameras are off. All adjoining rooms have been vacated and locked.”

Jessica nodded.

“Nibbles,” she said pleasantly, “We have our privacy.”

The shimmering veil shuddered and “melted”, retreating into a small case…

Worn by a very familiar-looking creature.

“You’re a bug?!?” Jessica exclaimed in surprise.

“OhmiGAWD!” Nibbles exclaimed in perfect human as she held her two primary manipulators to the sides of her head, “a Terran!!!”

“So it’s like that, huh?” Jessica chuckled.

“Yup. We are technically the same species as The Collective… or at least we were.” Matriarch Nibbles buzzed, “We don’t exactly get along.”

“So it’s like the Terrans and us then,”

“Oh no,” Nibbles laughed, filling the area with the scent of spicy flower-turds. “It’s much worse. It is possible for a Porkie and a Terran to be in the same room some of the time. One whiff of those malformed spawn and it is on… or at least it used to be back before we had to flee. It’s also the reason for our veil and the rest of our fecal nonsense when dealing with other species. If they knew who we were or where to find us, it would be… inconvenient.”

“I can imagine,” Jessica replied, “If it is such a risk, then why are you revealing yourself to me?”

“Because it’s worth that risk,” Nibbles replied, “and you are smart, smart enough to know how to use and, more importantly, how not to use this information. Besides, we are prepared should they come after us.”

“You have the means to defeat them?” Jessica asked in surprise.

“Fuck no!” Nibbles laughed, “That ‘massive fleet’ we are supposed to have? Those aren’t warships. They are hive ships. Every single one of us has a berth on one of them. Even if our inbred cousins make a direct thrust straight for us, which they will, we will be gone before they can reach us. It will be you guys that will have to deal with the consequences of them finding out who we are, not us. We can only be blackmailed once, and someone already beat you to it.”

“Is that why you hate the Kalent?”

A deep buzzing growl that shook the floor, followed by a stench that had Jessica holding her breath issued from Nibbles.

“Those slimy little fucks,” Nibbles hissed. “Yeah, it was them. During our little ‘disagreement’, they informed us that they knew the location of our original homeworld and would reveal our location. At the time, we didn’t have the ships we needed to evacuate, so we had no choice but to ‘surrender’… and they’ve spent centuries bitterly regretting pulling that shit…”

Jessica just smiled and let the silence build, hoping that Nibbles would continue.

She wasn’t disappointed.

“Y’know...” Nibbles mused. “I think it will be more efficient if I just give you a history lesson. You are probably dying to know some of the ‘secrets’ of an elder race or two, and it’s relevant. It will make my motives a bit more understandable. Ok, here’s the deal. About twenty-five thousand years ago, my species did something unusual for this galaxy. We established our first interstellar colony. That part isn’t unusual, but the fact that we did it before developing faster than light travel is.”

“Why?” Jessica asked incredulously.

“A combination of overpopulation and curiosity,” Nibbles replied. “At the time, we had a very strong cultural preference for actual dirt under our feet. Establishing orbital habitats and colonies on uninhabitable planets did not appeal, so we were all ‘trapped’ on our single world. Only a few light-years away, there was a promising planet. The first unmanned mission took roughly one of your centuries. Our probe revealed what we call a slime world, a world absolutely loaded with microbes but nothing more advanced than microscopic photosynthetic goobers that had made the atmosphere marginally breathable. The decision was made to colonize the system, terraform it, and start the next chapter in our history as a species. A few decades later, the first manned ships, loaded with eager volunteers, departed on what was then, thanks to advances in design, a thirty-eight year trip to our new home. It was tough, but the initial mission was a success and was followed by many more. Slowly, a thirty-eight year trip became thirty, then twenty-five, and in the end, an eighteen-year voyage. Our lifespans were always significantly longer than yours, and we can enter a torpor naturally, so this was not as big of a deal as it sounds.”

“How long are your lifespans?”

“We don’t age the same way you and many other species do,” Nibbles replied. “If anything, we continue to get stronger. Of course, the universe doesn’t give anything away for free. In our case, the price we paid for our longevity was cancer. That was the ‘natural’ end of our life, consumed by the very vitality that we enjoy. As our medical science advanced, this became less and less of a concern. We can now live very long indeed, but nothing is truly immortal. These days dementia is what eventually kills us, either that or someone just gets tired of all of the medical treatments and opts for what we call quality of life care, comfort instead of actual treatment…”

“If you don’t mind me asking,” Jessica said, “How old are you?”

“Just over five hundred,” Nibbles replied, “quite young to be a Matriarch, actually. Some of my older sisters are several times that, and our High Mother is even older still. She’s a marvel, a testament to exactly how long one of us can endure if they have the will to do so.”

“The Veiled Ones on record are much smaller. Were they younger?”

“Yep. We never sent out anyone over a hundred years old or so and made a big deal about the ‘old’ ones’ retiring’ so as to obscure our actual lifespans, which are unusual enough to potentially reveal us.”

“So this ‘High Mother’?”

“She’s a big girl!” Nibbles laughed. “Let’s just say we would have to have sent a larger vessel if she tagged along. She says that she hasn’t grown in a long time, so we figure the old egg sluice is about as big as one of us can get. She’s bigger than one of your homeworld’s elephants, in case you are wondering. She can still move around, though, unlike the abominations in the Collective. Our High Mother can still scrub her own ass, not that there aren’t a host of would-be hole lickers just begging to be given the honor,” Nibbles added with a snort-like expulsion from her abdomen, “Old Wide-Load doesn’t put up with too much of that shit though.”

“Is this High Mother your ruler?”

“Kind of,” Nibbles shrugged. “I mean, as much as anyone is. We aren’t that big on centralized power. Every matriarch runs her own hive, each one being akin to a fully independent city-state. However, hives specialize, and we all work together… nominally… sort of… Wide Load runs the biggest and oldest hive, the original one formed when we thought we had put enough distance between us and those inbred fecal smudges.”

Nibbles filled the area with a strange spicy vinegar pickle sort of scent.

“Turns out we should have tried jumping the spiral arm after all...” she said ruefully. “Or built those million-year arks and just fucking floored it… Anyway, Old Wide Load runs Deep Dig, our largest, oldest, and richest hive. But, even more importantly, we all respect the fuck out of her. On those odd occasions where consensus doesn’t cut it, and someone needs to make a hard and fast decision, she makes it. Usually, we all just fart in the air and see what smells the nicest… but I’d be lying if I said that we all don’t take a little sniff of what was wafting out of her generous backside before making our own toot.”

Jessica wrinkled her nose.

“Yeah, you are a rather fragrant people, aren’t you?”

“Oh, you can smell it?”

“A little.”

Nibbles shuddered with a burst of roaring buzzing laughter as another spicy flower turd assaulted Jessica’s poor abused nose.

“Nobody smells us ’a little’! Sorry about that.”

“It’s ok,” Jessica replied, “You still smell better than some of the Confederacy.”

“Confederacy? Not the Forsaken?”

“What are you talking about? Forsaken smells like roses,” Jessica snickered, triggering another fragrant burst of laughter from Nibbles.

“I’ve noticed,” Nibbles chuckled. “Nothing but the noble struggle and all that is best about humanity... Oh, that reminds me, how’s Mark Black doing these days? That last Federation patrol almost got him.”

Jessica sighed unhappily.

“It breaks my heart that he chose the path he has, and it truly pains me that I had to disavow him and put out a kill order, especially because of why he is doing what he is. He loved Shelly. When she died the way she did, it broke his—”

“Human, please,” Nibbles laughed. “I have a silk-spinner tailing him. I know exactly where he goes and exactly who he rendezvous with.”

“Oh, you could smell that, huh?” Jessica chuckled.

“A war-crime hive!” Nibbles snickered, “I love it! You humans are delightfully slippery! Wait… I’m supposed to be telling you our history… right… Well, we were our people’s first interstellar colony and while we were ‘stable’ things REALLY sucked, especially for a rather ‘pampered’ race used to a very comfortable existence. We had survived all of those nasty little filters that you have to get past as you make your way from an industrial society onward, you know, fossil fuel based climate change, global war, overpopulation… and all the rest, and were basically about where you guys were right before Yellowstone, just for longer. We were doing pretty darn well. The colony was just because we could. But, even with all of our advances, terraforming a new world wasn’t easy, especially for a people that didn’t like artificial habitats. It’s funny, a people that could happily live their entire lives in giant hives, never seeing the sun HATED the thought of living their entire lives in giant hives, never seeing the sun. Bugs are weird.”

Jessica chuckled ruefully. As someone who had managed humans for decades, this made entirely too much sense.

“However, for all of its hardships, the colony offered things that one couldn’t dream of on the homeworld, freedom, opportunity, and the chance to reproduce, things that were very rare in our highly regimented and stratified society. Ambitious young queens mobbed the colony ships, and soon the homeworld realized that they had the perfect dumping ground for troublemakers, underachievers, and anyone else that didn’t fit into their view of a ‘perfect’ little bug. The colonies were a perfect place to send troublemakers, AND the possibility of winding up there kept most bugs in line. For the average bug of that era, the thought of life in the colonies was a terrifying prospect, away from the gentle stink of society and the legions of workers who served their every need. Oh yeah, that’s a huge difference between the Collective and us. In the Collective, a few queens lay all of the eggs, most of which are either workers or soldiers. We all reproduce, but none of us hatch workers or soldiers, all of us are either queens or drones.”

“Why is that?” Jessica asked with interest.

“It came from those early colonial days,” Nibbles replied. “Workers are, in a word, dumb. So are soldiers. They are great when it comes to burrowing, cleaning, tending eggs, or fighting, but there isn’t a whole lot going on upstairs, and what is there is completely enslaved. A queen poots, and they obey. They can be taught to perform relatively simple tasks and operate basic equipment. But, they are neither adaptable nor fast thinkers, two qualities absolutely essential in an interstellar colony on a marginally habitable world. You needed thinking, fully trainable ‘workers’, who could operate complex machinery, perform engineering tasks, and be able to think and act independently, not mentally deficient slaves who could only dig and clean. You had machines for that, machines that didn’t have to eat. Our technology made power and materials abundant, almost infinitely so. Food, however, was finite, and it made much more sense to feed queens and drones instead of workers, especially since more and more were showing up every month, often unannounced. It was a bit of a shock, queens and drones actually being expected to ‘work’ but almost everyone took to it, especially once they started ‘breathing free’.”

Nibbles chucked at Jessica’s confused expression.

“Another thing about our smelly butts,” Nibbles chuckled before Jessica could ask, “those smells are more than just simple conversation. They communicate emotions, drives, and the like and can influence the bugs around you. The workers and soldiers are completely enslaved by this. But, even queens and drones can be profoundly affected by the prevailing scent of an area, especially if it is laid down by a ‘superior’ individual, like a Matriarch. In the hives of the homeworld, the command scents of the egg layers were extremely powerful, and these scents were intentionally carried into the ventilation and into public areas and even copied by specially trained lesser queens who repeated the scents. Any queen was expected to add their ‘voice’ supporting this stink. This makes certain mindsets, emotions, and drives nearly universal and self-sustaining. If you didn’t wholeheartedly fart along, off to the colonies you went, effectively short-circuiting the natural feedback our society had evolved to depend upon, with predictable results, ‘stink-lock’. Not even the rulers are immune to our pheromones, and without dissent, they can even start following along.”

“When the despot starts believing their own propaganda, it never turns out well,” Jessica smirked.

“Exactly!” Nibbles exclaimed with a spicy floral alfalfa poop blast. “I make a point to take frequent walks to smell the air of my hive as well as travel to other hives often. I don’t want to start sucking my own ass even by accident. Anyway, the effect on many queens when they arrived in the colonies was profound. Most came to love their new lives viewing the privations and increased labor as simply the price one had to pay for being able to breathe free, mate with whoever you wanted to mate, lay your own eggs, raise your own hatchlings… ‘every bug a matriarch’ as they used to say… Even the matriarchs they sent over embraced the colonial spirit. They had a ‘traditional’ hive or two set up, but these were mainly used as ‘adjustment hives,’ and most bugs eventually left as they got the stink of the homeworld out of their minds, with only a few opting to transition to the real traditionalist community which was a tiny minority.”

“Didn’t the homeworld ever try to crack down on you?”

“How?” Nibbles chuckled. “We were self-sufficient and almost twenty years away even at the end of things. Besides, we were forbidden from hatching warriors or workers, so we couldn’t be a threat, and the wild stories sent back by the traditionalists only served to keep the bugs back home in line. Every now and then, they would readmit some of the traditionalists, and they would then go on tour talking about how horrible it was. Terraforming was going to take centuries the way it was back then, and when we got the place nice, they would move us on to the next system and take over.”

“And I assume you didn’t want to give the world up without a fight?”

“It wasn’t like that,” Nibbles responded, “Yeah, they were sort of uptight assholes, but we got along. It was pretty much understood that they would move in once we got the world up to their discerning standards, and we would all move on to the next world. We liked being wild frontiersbugs, and you can’t be wild frontiersbugs without a wild frontier! It was a bit before our time, but the two populations actually got along far better than you would expect. The wild seeds had a place to be weeds, and the sapient livestock had a place to graze. It was all good. It’s a real shame things went down the way they did.”

“What happened?”

“Gamma-ray burst,” Nibbles replied. “Hit the homeworld dead center.”

“Jesus...”

“We knew a somewhat nearby star was ‘due,’ but we had no idea it would create a burst.” Nibbles said with a shrug. “We thought it would just be ‘pretty’, perhaps a little problematic, but not anything close to a threat. We were wrong. It hit our original home system hard and lasted for hours, long enough for our world to rotate like a roasting grub on the coals. Before it was done, it killed anything on most of the surface down to twenty-five meters or more. What survived the initial blast didn’t last long as a result of the environmental upheavals from most of the biosphere instantly disappearing. Our ‘hives’ had evolved into arcology-like mega cities, not super-deep underground complexes like the Terrans built during their war with the Juon. Oh, they extended down a ways, but all of the matriarchs, high-status queens, and the like lived in the upper levels as befitted their status and were killed immediately, leaving only workers to wander aimlessly, desperate for anyone to tell them what to do. Only a few full queens who were below ground on business or as supervisors survived. Only two groups survived relatively intact, some industry located in the outer solar system along with its personnel were spared the burst… and a small hive of religious nuts who still lived in traditional deep burrows out in a mountain range that just happened to be spared the worst of the blast… see where this is going?”

“Let me guess, It was God’s will they survive as he passed judgment on the sinful and the weak?”

“Wow, and on your first guess, too!” Nibbles laughed. “We thought the homeworld was completely destroyed, mourned the assholes, and moved on. A few decades later, a single colony ship arrived, built by our sisters in the outer solar system who confirmed that ‘everything was dead’… And that was that for centuries. Then one day, we got a strange transmission from the homeworld commanding us to return. At first, we were thrilled until they started talking some weird shit, demanding that we repent, renounce our heretical way of life, and submit to the ‘All-Mother’. Once we heard the phrase ‘All-Mother,’ we knew exactly who these assholes were. Despite knowing it was those fanatics, some people did return, mostly those traditionalists I mentioned, and a few terraforming specialists who wanted to help but most of us told them to get bent or simply ignored them. About twenty years later, we received a message from some of those who went back informing us exactly how fucked up things had gotten and that they were going to make a break for it. They never returned. It took a few hundred years, but those All-Motherfuckers finally sent a fleet to ‘reclaim our lost souls’, and we taught them that you don’t need soldiers to be able to fight. We took out that fleet only for another fleet to show up thirty years later (I guess they backslid a little as far as tech goes). That one was a lot bigger, but we still managed to fight them off… Then another fleet came... It soon became clear that they weren’t stopping, and while our kill ratios were solid, you can breed soldiers a lot faster than you can raise queens and drones, so we decided it was time to leave. We started building massive slow-ships and aimed for a system’ far enough’ away that ‘they would never find us’… We had launched scores of them before our system was finally overrun. Our home fell, but over half of us had escaped and started on a fifteen hundred year journey towards our new home where we would be ‘safe’… heh… Funny thing happened during those centuries. Our beloved cousins made contact with a species that had FTL. Before we even started slowing down, we started detecting signals from our destination, which just happened to be inhabited. We got to witness their destruction at the hands of our cousins as we adjusted course and kept going. We learned how to be silent and invisible during those long hungry years while we kept far away from where these physics-defying ships traveled and tried to learn everything we could about them. Eventually, we had to stop and replenish our resources, repair and rebuild our ships, and hopefully make a few more. We picked a desolate, lifeless system far from the web of hyperspace lanes that we had learned how to detect from the faint but very distinctive electromagnetic and gravitic signatures of hyperspace flares. There, around a high metallicity brown dwarf, fate finally smiled on us. It turns out that we weren’t the only species that picked that spot for exactly the same reasons we did, an elder elder race! They said something really weird, that they had been waiting for us, and welcomed us with open arms.

When we realized how powerful they were, we begged them for help stopping the monsters that our kind had become. They refused, saying their time was long over and that they were simply ‘ghosts’ who paused here on their own journey to something they called The Timeless Void but wouldn’t ever say exactly what it was or where it was. They only said that not even fate would be able to reach them, and their long march would finally end. They then recommended that we head in the direction of what is now the Federation saying that there were many fertile worlds and that we would find a much deserved ‘season of peace’ where we could build a home. They also warned us that nothing was forever and all seasons end, but we could be happy there for quite some time. After a few years, they wished us well and moved on, and we, taking full advantage of our now much more advanced combination slow and FTL colony ships, slipped past the All-Motherfuckers and across the great gulf that their ships of that time couldn’t follow and here we are, thousands of years later, at the end of that ‘season of peace’ that we were promised.”

“And is that why you are reaching out to me?” Jessica asked, “Because you believe that the season of peace has ended?”

“Hasn’t it?” Nibbles replied, “The Collective is at our door. It’s just like the Pla’koth, our elder patrons, said, ‘You cannot ever truly escape your fate, only delay it. We had hoped that we could ‘cheat fate’, build up the incredible number of races in this region of the galaxy, and together we could finally stop the nightmare that our race has become. Perhaps this time, we could make a stand and not just hide in the shadows as world after world after world falls, entire civilizations not only killed but completely erased from history as if they never existed. We knew that sooner or later, they would come. The Pla’koth told us that they would. They also suggested running when it happened, that we didn’t want to be around here when our ‘sisters’ met their own fate in this patch of stars.”

“Wait, those ‘Pla’koth’ said that the Collective would be beaten by the Federation?!? How could they possibly know that?”

“It isn’t going to be the Federation,” Nibbles replied. “They had a ‘prophecy’ given to them in a vision by a mighty ancient being from their past. It said that they should wait in the shadow of that ‘still-born star’ until they encountered another ghost, others who were the last of their kind. They were to alter our destiny and that we should then be sent here to meet the fate of our species… and then once that fate was at hand, we would be freed from it, delivered from the horrors of our past and the sins of our sisters… after we fled what was going to be what they called a ‘fatestorm’, a ‘festering boil of overdue retribution’ that our idiot sisters would lance now that the Pla’koth had entangled our fate with theirs… or something like that. It was way before my time. Anyway, we were told that we would know when to run and when that time came we should run and not stop until we reached… well nevermind where, but you can bet whatever bit of you is the softest that once we are out of here, we are out of here. We aren’t stopping until we reach our little patch of that prophecy, a great interstellar desert devoid of life, where we can once again terraform and build in peace like we once did so very long ago,” the Matriarch sighed wistfully. “We will finally be able to be… us.”

Jessica looked at Nibbles with a mix of incredulity, horror, and disappointment. Prophecy? Are they fucking serious? The mysterious Veiled Ones weren’t a potential ally or even a potential threat. They were just a bunch of superstitious cockroaches who were getting ready to turn tail and run, chasing after a pipe-dream that’s been stale for thousands of years.

Nibbles chuckled as a strange complex odor wafted past.

“I know that look. It was the same one I had when old Wide-Load finally let me in on this ‘great secret’. Do you have a scanner on you?”

“The sabergun’s optics have a scanner.”

Nibbles reached into a flat envelope-like pouch that hung from the elaborately decorated harness that was her only “garment” and pulled out a slip of what appeared to be paper, offering it to Jessica.

“What the fuck?” Jessica muttered. It was a drawing of something that looked more or less like an unnaturally thin human woman holding an exact illustration of an AK standing in front of what was definitely a Moray… No, not a Moray… a Reaper…

She squinted at the parchment. The human looked familiar... No fucking way!

“That sketch was made by old Wide Load herself after a strange series of ‘visions’ involving one of those ancient Pla’koth who only identified herself as ‘The Heretic’… over three thousand years ago. Feel free to scan it if you like. Unfortunately, you don’t have a good isotopic reference to positively date the thing, but your people should still be able to make a rough approximation.”

“Which means absolutely nothing,” Jessica replied after she scanned it. “Counterfeiting isotopes is not difficult. We move tankers full of fuel and ships loaded with alloys that are perfect matches for whatever system we choose.”

She handed the drawing back, happy to be rid of it. That drawing fundamentally unnerved her. It “felt” ancient. She didn’t like it one bit.

“We also know what this ‘fatestorm’ will be,” Nibbles chuckled. “We didn’t realize it for centuries, but it just so happens that the system that we were sent to colonize by the Pla’koth places a rather minor system directly between us and the Collective’s most probable invasion point. When they find out where we are, they will come for us and stumble right into that insignificant little system… and their ‘fate’ will be sealed… along with the Federation’s, the Republic’s, and eventually the Empire’s. Trillions will perish caught between what awakens and what will come to claim them… unless we pull off quite the trick. If the vision given to Wide Load is correct, we can stop all of this before it starts… by knocking back the Collective before they trigger the fatestorm. We manage to do that, and we won’t have to run. We can save everyone… including the Collective itself! Those trillions of innocents, entire species, don’t have to die! We can still pull this out, and that’s where you come in.”

Jessica successfully maintained an even expression. This was madness… but potentially useful madness...

“Tell me,” Nibbles asked, leaning forward excitedly reeking of… bacon? “have you met the slime goddess yet?”

“The what?”

“The slime goddess, a shrewd creature made of anger and ooze, resplendent in her robe made of living garbage?”

“… … Can’t say that I have,” Jessica said smoothly.

“Are you sure?” Nibbles asked, “I would have thought she would have appeared by now, especially since a wild Plath is running loose in the halls of the vermin-bearers.”

“… I’m certain I would have remembered an angry ooze monster wearing a pizza box on her head,” Jessica said as she suppressed a snarl. It was a Bruno’s pizza box, the best pizza Jessica had ever tasted anywhere… at any time… and one more thing that the Federation must pay for!

“Well, keep an eye out for her,” Nibbles said cheerfully. “She’s bound to show up any time now!”

“Wait...” Jessica said, “Vermin bearers?”

“The Republic’s first ‘gift’ to the Federation was the hyper-roach, which we are still dealing with,” Nibbles replied. “Annnnd Wide Load drew one of them after she woke up from a seizure a few thousand years ago.”

“So… this ‘slime goddess’…” Jessica said nonchalantly, “What’s her deal?”