Nightwater

I remember the first time I saw a human. Fleshy, slow, and with no claws, I assumed they were weak. I was wrong.

We learned that quickly.

Growing up in an age of transition was hard. The clans were always at war. Always. Blood vs blood, cruiser vs cruiser, mandible vs mandible. The carnage was told by every seer and veteran until each and every war became a placemark in our history. We held ourselves as fierce warriors, and the crimson we spilled among ourselves was our threat to the galaxy. The galaxy took note.

Then the council came. The council was a clan, of sorts I suppose, though the tribes that made it up were other species. They came to us with ideals, with power and presence emanating from every word-speak, every footfall. They invited us, not with force, but with the promises of easier lives, of betterment for our people. We saw this as weakness, not strength.

We almost refused. But the council said they could use our help, to hammer other species into docility, and we could prove our worth at the same time. Clan Adaga was strong-hard, but had their leader pacified an entire battalion of aliens? It was a challenge any clan leader was keen to undertake. The arrangement brewed competitiveness, while leaving our own blood unspilled. The arrangement was more than to our liking.

We became their allies, and the leaders of our clans took up their places among the council, with titles too many for this one to name. They were but useless titles anyway. We were great-warriors still, but we tempered ourselves. Not peacekeepers, but a constant threat. We were being used, to be sure, but the leaders kept the politics away from the clanhome, left us to fight for more glory and honor for our respective tribes. It was quite the way to attract mates as well.

Eventually, we settled disputes, and developed a system, broken as it was. Now and then there were still mate challenges, but these were personal matters, not issues for an entire clan. The other races allied with us showed us many things, and we grew not as clans, but as a species. And indeed, growing up was hard, but if you gritted your mandibles and charged forward, great rewards followed. This was how I forged myself a shipmaster's title.

This is how I found our blood brothers.

First contact was scarce. We prowled the nightwater of space, patrolling for races who had rebuked the council's offer violently. Though, on the outskirts, we didn't think to find many Kraga, with their fat, black, horns and their horrendous appetites, much less a new species.

But my shipcrew was made up of many good warriors, many sharp-wits. We found signs of humanity long before contact. But so did they. We glanced at each other across star systems, searching for each other.

Ionic trails where there shouldn't be, broken transmissions picked out in strands, shadows and whispers reflected on Oort clouds. And then, off a green moon locked in rotation, we found each other. Looking back, their ships were so small. Nothing like now.

My shipcrew howled for warbattle. I found my own mandibles unhinging, ready to strike down Kraga or Junagi or whatever enemies tried to skirt around the council's established nightwater. But I wasn't shipmaster because I was fierce. I was shipmaster because I was smart. We had to be tempered now. Had to be better than ourselves.

But what was with this ship? Nothing was supposed to be out here. This was the outskirts. The cold was too intense, too many asteroids and not enough sunwarmth made travel impossible. Sure, if you knew where to warp there might be something, but without enough fuel to get back, you were jumping straight into a grave.

So here was a ship, gliding through the nightwater, not damaged, not with hull scratches like our ship, like it was normal. And the more I looked at the ship, the more my curiosity grew. The ship's trajectory was wrong, no race indentifiers, no kill tallies.

And then a realization came, so outlandish and cold I wanted to shove it back as far as I could. The ship's trajectory wasn't wrong.

This ship had come out of the black.

The shock ripped the thought of attacking from my mind, and I can still feel the silent, cold chill that flooded my veins, like nightwater itself was filling them. A ship, out of the black. The black was where we sent killers and thief-stealers to die. Pirates and even the Kraga didn't venture into the black.

I quieted my shipcrew, told them to hail the ship with the coordinates of a diplomacy outpost, and set a course alongside it. I got many glances and pride-jokes, but this was something new, and that meant the council would see them first.

What followed was stranger then any encounter so far experienced by my shipcrew, or my clan. The council established contact, tried to explain it's intent, and ultimately failed. Like our race, the humans did not share likeminds, telepathy, as some of the other council races did. The council would have to learn the language. My race was the first to establish contact, and so we were tasked with inducting humanity into the council. An honor, I think, that saved us.

We taught humanity many things, such as how to shape ionic forces and our techniques for sailing nightwater. In turn, they showed us many of their own technologies, such as how they used radar pings and cold-sleep to sail through the black. We tried, but ultimately it was too taxing a task. Too many shipcrews grew afraid of the cold, and missed the allure of sunwarmth. The black belonged to the humans, and we were content to let them have it.

Humanity's ship stationed in orbit around an outskirt moon, and their language and customs gradually became known to us. The first time I saw a human, I thought them infinitely strange. They had no mandibles, no manes, not even horns as the Kraga did. How did they establish leaders? Who was stronger? When I met one on a colony, I thought them even stranger. They were our size, but still not used to rock gravity. They fell over easily, but laughed and danced inside of it as well. As if they liked looking like nestlings. Infinitely strange.

What interested us most about the humans was their ability to sit and tinker with their metals and technology. They would spend days focused on tasks, picking apart, putting together, they were insects of the machine. They danced around calculations, improved on nightwater engines, and pushed us closer and closer to brotherhood. But they were relentless in their ideas and schemes, they tried sailing along the colony rocks with only themselves and a nightwater sail, they burrowed deep into asteroids to connect them to each other, they were too much to keep up with. And when they grew tired, they nested for merely hours, not even a cycle, and then they were back up and tinkering again. Our new blood brothers were magnificent, and they were infinitely as curious with us as we were with them.

But this, my friends, is when things changed. Even with over six hundred systems and limitless places to inhabit, the Kraga decided it wanted a new moon for its broodmothers. They sent patrols roaming around the system until they found a council moon, and tore into its resources. The council retreated, and my race was sent to pacify. My brothers and father's shipcrews did not succeed. The humans stayed on their ship, eager not to become involved, and we were content to show off our prowess at war.

The Kraga, eager to put an end to our boasting, made a mistake. They sent ships around the core world blockades, and ransacked the inner planets. Killing, stealing, raping, burning, the Kraga reveled in their power. They boarded the human vessel, impaling humans on their horns as battle trophies. The council mourned, but concerned with its own safety, forbade us from trying to save our blood brothers. We rebelled. We fought. We reasoned. But the council stood fast. The humans would be only a setback.

I forced myself to watch as a Kraga broodmother ate a small human girl on our transmission screen, just to see how it tasted. The girl screamed while she died.

We motioned for a a relief effort from the council, over and over. Finally they abated, with the condition the core blockades were reinforced. With the condition met, we sought out the Kraga on the moon, but sent a small battalion to aid the humans. Our warriors flew to the surface, wiping out stragglers and broodmothers, who were trying to use the human ship as a feeding ground, and an eventual orbital launch platform. Many more of the humans than we thought had survived, hiding, moving, creating illusions. We thought them dead. But they had persevered. Not won, but survived. But what was stranger still was the humans were not angry at us. Indeed, they forgave us, they understood the actions of the council.

As a relief effort, my shipcrew and I brought medical supplies to the humans. And what I saw still haunts me. A demolished ship, still thick with gore and flesh, yet the humans walked in it, they strode through warblood, scrapping, reconfiguring, adapting. Their dead lay at their feet, and yet some hummed while they cleaned, a low, solumn, eerie song that haunts my nestsleep to this cycle. Some held their own limbs as they walked through demolished bays to an aid station. Many a night I cannot shake such visions. The humans were broken, but still alive.

It was only later we learned a shocking revelation. The humans, in all our encounters with them, had not told us much of their history. They had shared their technology with us, but not their past. We knew not where their home was, their people.

It was only later we learned that the ship, in its entirety, all of them had only been a science team. The humans fled their orbit, returning into the black. Our leaders saw this as failure, and left the council. We had won back the moon at great cost, but an even greater cost was our blood brothers, and the guilt sat in our chests.

Two cycles passed.

The Kraga stilled.

And then, a report that made no sense. The Swordwalker was a fairly large spy ship, with many a great sharpwit on it. A clanmate brother of mine, the captain, even more so. So when I received a report that an entire Kraga system was dying, we prepared ourselves for a trap, or a new warbattle. As reports go, it was strange, but we jumped in, and came out battleready.

The nightwater itself filled my veins. And I tell you now little ones, never has it felt so cold.

I knew the shapes of their ships now. I knew their callsigns and language. I could read the words "UECNS Hades" on the side of the hull. But we had never known war like this.

A system. An entire system. The moons black, the planets white with ash, lines of fire crossing, snaking, entrenching the surfaces of their crusts. Ion trails, made corporeal as whips of hellfire, fell onto the planet. Oceans screamed, mountains melted, atmospheres bloomed into orange spheres. Lines of fire searched through space toward anything tangible: comets, nebulae, wisps of dust. Our species hundred year blood war didn't just pale in comparison; Our wars didn't even exist compared against this.

Humanity had returned. And they had brought their warriors.

The ship descended on the council core world. We were happy to know our blood brothers were back.

But this was no science team. Armored giants strode out amongst us, with greaves made of polymers and metal, steel plating along their chests, and face plates made of glass, wearing stone expressions. These were the warriors of humanity, ice cold in their stares, biting with their words, and deliberate in their actions.

They had come for revenge. Methodical, efficient, and uncompromising. The council said it would give them aid while they rebuilt, but we wholly pledged ourselves to our blood brothers. They accepted.

It was only later we fully understood the human concepts of hate and spite. They were not taking a colony, a nearby moon, or even a planet for colonization.

Over one thousand cycles and sixty systems later, the Kraga were decapitated. Exterminated. Eradicated. Purged.

Nightwater take me, I'm glad I'm smart.