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The original was posted on /r/hfy by /u/DestroyatronMk8 on 2024-11-05 04:18:49+00:00.

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It took nearly two full days to cross Enlightened space.

Yvian had been in high spirits at first. A repaired Dream of the Lady and a brief tour through Vronin J space had her feeling bright and eager to explore. The first few sectors full of cyborg corpses weren’t enough to dampen that feeling. The next few hundred were.

Not every sector had been occupied. Each time the jumpdrive took them through a few empty sectors Yvian thought that this time, finally, they would be done looking at the dead. Each time, she would be wrong. Within a few Gates, they would find another few million or billion dead cyborgs. Sometimes they were just floating in the void. Sometimes they’d formed stations. Several times Yvian had seen a planet that might have been capable of supporting life before the Enlightened converted it into a twisted mass of flesh and circuits.

No other life could be found in Enlightened space. Not even a microbe. The Enlightened had converted or destroyed every ounce of biological material they could reach. New biomatter was still being generated on a few of the planets. Brains and nervous systems, mostly. Kilroy’s reprogramming of their life support meant the stuff was dying as quickly as it was being made. The machinery of the planets was ejecting the dead tissues as it tried to form new ones. Yvian was glad the Enlightened were staying dead, but she could have done without seeing literal tons of brain matter being sprayed out of nightmare towers on the surface of dead worlds.

“Bright Lady,” Lissa had said one point. “How far did these assholes spread?”

“It’s even worse than it looks,” said Mims. “We’re travelling in as close to a straight line as we can. We’re only seeing a cross section of their space. I’m guessing they spread out in all directions.”

“Which means the number of sectors they’ve absorbed will be cubed from what we’ve seen,” Scarrend growled. “Probably more than cubed. I doubt we’re travelling through the center of their space.”

Yvian frowned. They’d passed through two hundred and six sectors so far. She tried to do the mental math. “You mean they’ve absorbed over nine million sectors?”

“At least that,” said the Vrrl.

“The Enlightened likely numbered in the hundreds of trillions,” said Kilroy. His eyes flashed white with pride.

“Hive mind, Kilroy,” Mims reminded him. Yvian could hear his grin. “Still only counts as one.”

“You are just intimidated by this unit’s superior kill count,” the Peacekeeper unit asserted. “The Enlightened were a threat approaching the Vore in magnitude. This unit killed them all.”

“And thank the Bright Lady for that,” said Yvian.

“Negative,” said Kilroy. His eyes flashed yellow. “The Bright Lady did not hack their life support controls. Thank this unit instead.”

Yvian was on the verge of doing just that when Lissa held out a hand. “Don’t do it, Captain Sis. He’s insufferable enough as it is.”

Several hours later, the Dream of the Lady finally entered a sector that was neither empty nor full of dead cyborgs. Instead they found a solar system with a small number of mining stations. There were fourteen planets, but none of them were life bearing. A few hundred ships patrolled the sector or stood guard over the stations.

“Do they see us?” Yvian asked.

“Negative,” said Kilroy. “Stealth is holding.”

“Let’s keep it that way.” Yvian yawned. “Mims, take us behind the Gate.” Sensors couldn’t see through a Gate. Hiding behind one was the simplest way to keep them out of view while they charged the jumpdrive. “We’ll go back to one of the empty sectors and call it a day.”

“Aye Captain.” Mims set a course.

Yvian felt a little better the next morning. They resumed their journey, passing through four occupied sectors without incident. The inhabitants had ships positioned near the Gates, but none close enough to see through the Dream’s stealth. They passed through a few more empty sectors before running into another civilization.

“We’ve been spotted,” Scarrend reported. The new sector had several thousand ships swarming around the Gate they’d exited. The ships were small. Very small. Only three meters in length. The sector was teeming with them. The entire swarm immediately started accelerating towards the Dream of the Lady.

Hundreds of thousands more ships were patrolling the sector. Yvian did not know why. There were no stations. No planets. No asteroids. Just a single neutron star and three Jumpgates.

“We are being hailed on multiple frequencies,” Kilroy reported.

“Transmit the First Contact Package,” Captain Yvian ordered. “I’m activating the jumpdrive.”

The closest ships came to a halt within half a kilometer of the Dream. Their weapons were charged and their shields were up, but they did not attack. Yvian listened to dozens of voices speaking in a high pitched chittering over the comms. Then the Gate Effect took hold. The next sector held a solar system with a habitable world. Millions of the tiny ships moved about the sector. Yvian saw thousands of space stations. The stations were also small. Not a single one of them was over a hundred meters around.

“Huh.” Mims grunted.

“What?” Yvian asked.

“They’re little,” said the human. “The people in those ships are barely twenty centimeters tall.”

Yvian used the same tactic she’d used before. Kilroy transmitted the First Contact Package while the jumpdrive charged. Then they left. Six more sectors passed the same way before the Dream left the tiny civilization behind.

The next twelve sectors were empty. The one after them wasn’t. The Dream had barely exited the Gate when Scarrend reported, “We are being fire upon.”

“Evasive maneuvers,” Yvian ordered by reflex. She checked the sensors. A small fleet of thirty six ships floated near the Gate. One of the ships had launched a spread of missiles. Very slow missiles. Yvian frowned. “What the Crunch?”

“Nuclear torpedoes,” Mims remarked. “Chemically propelled. Impact in three minutes, twenty four seconds.”

“Three minutes to cross nine hundred kilometers?” Scarrend snorted “They might as well mail us the explosions.”

“Shoot them down, Scarrend.” Yvian immediately realized her orders weren’t specific enough. She quickly clarified. “The missiles, I mean. Not the ships.”

“Aye Captain.” The Dream’s beam cannons destroyed all nine of the torpedoes in less than a second.

“Kilroy, I want to transmit on all frequencies,” Yvian continued.

“Affirmative,” said the Peacekeeper. “Transmitting now.”

“Attention, all vessels,” Yvian said in her best Captainy voice. “This is Captain Yvian of the Dream of the Lady. We are an exploratory ship from the Pixen Technocracy. Please stop shooting at us. We are not a hostile ship. I say again, we are not hostile.”

“You do know they won’t understand a word you just said,” Scarrend remarked. “Right, Captain?”

“Trying to communicate is a message in itself,” said Yvian. She shrugged. “It’s worth a shot.”

“Enemy vessels are accelerating towards us,” Lissa reported. “Their ships are really primitive, Captain Sis.”

Yvian took a closer look at the sensor readings. The fleet was hodgepodge. Some of the vessels had a military look, while others looked like repurposed transport ships. They were accelerating at nine point eight meters per second, and the layout of their ships suggested they were using that acceleration to simulate gravity. They had no shields, and they were powered by nuclear fusion. The ships were armed with primitive railguns. They looked much weaker than the Dream’s MAC Cannons, and the rounds were simple steel.

“We are being hailed,” Kilroy reported.

“Patch them through,” said Yvian. As expected, she couldn’t understand a word the aliens were saying, but she considered talking a good sign. Still, there was no reason to stick around. “Transmit the First Contact Package. I’m activating the jumpdrive.”

As the drive charged, Yvian checked the sensor readings for the rest of the sector. She didn’t like what she saw. There were a few hundred space stations scattered throughout the system. They were primitive, using centrifugal force to simulate gravity. There was a habitable world, but only barely. The planet was scarred with craters where major cities used to be, and heavily irradiated. The sector was littered with the debris of dead ships. Some of them resembled Yvian’s attackers, but a lot of them were something else. Still primitive, but a sleeker, more uniform design.

The sector only had two Great Gates. The other Jumpgate was surrounded by a fleet of nearly ten thousand. Yvian guessed the force confronting her was intended to warn the others of a flanking attack rather than defend the sector all by themselves. She wondered how much good that warning would do. At the speeds these people were operating, it would take weeks or months for their ships to reposition themselves to face a new threat.

The defenders launched another barrage of missiles before the jumpdrive finished charging. Yvian didn’t bother to have them shot down. The Gate Effect took hold, and the Dream disappeared.

“Not very friendly, were they?” Lissa quipped.

“I don’t blame them,” said Yvian. “Did you see their planet? Someone’s been hitting those people hard.”

“Affirmative,” said Kilroy. "If we can locate and destroy that someone, it will be a simple mat…

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