This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/hfy by /u/KyleKKent on 2025-10-01 20:44:00+00:00.

First

(Oww my head, lost all track of time, forgot to sleep and paying the price. Sorry for the tardiness.)

Antlers, Assumptions and Artillery

Depthstrobe pulls out a communicator and then raises his eyebrows. “Crap, gotta go.”

“What’s going on?” Bjorn asks.

“Call for action. Researchers are needed. About the Floric.”

“What?” Holly asks. “Aren’t they more like… monsters?”

•-•-•Scene Change•-•-• (Holterra (Scrap Trap) Arcology, Bundle of Joy Pediatrics, Zalwore)•-•-•

“This can’t be right.” The Pediatrician says as she initiates another scan of the sleeping Forest.

“What isn’t?” Observer Wu asks.

“The genetic structure. It’s… not normal. He should be human with some aspects of the DNA activated to give him more plant like traits, likely a heavily protein based digestive tract. But…” The Kohb mutters as she raises an eyeridge while the second scan comes back with the same results. “This isn’t reading like a hybrid child.”

“What is it reading as?”

“The closest I can compare are Nagasha, Urthani and Wimparas. The variations in species. Perhaps and Agurk and Kruga. The two species are so interbred they’re effectively races of each other. Or the Ikiya’Mas and Ikiya’Ta.”

“For the sake of the report I’m sending home, and with consideration to the fact I am not a biologist, please explain.”

“… No. I will not throw out random hypothesis when it comes to the health and legal status of an infant. I need… a wide variety of human DNA scans. As well as a scan of the mother. If you can find out what human is the father… well first off I need to admonosh him for fucking a plant, but secondly, I need a DNA sample from them.”

“The Floric mentioned sequencing Human DNA.”

“Then I need a copy of the sequence they used. This is very strange and the pattern while not unknown but is not where it should be. Unless someone’s been holding out on us, humans do not have Primals.” She states and Observer Wu pauses. Then thinks. “Were human hiding a Primal somewhere?”

“I do not think so. It’s just my mind has gone to old legends and myths. Compared to the Average Nagasha, Urthani or Wimparas the casual feats of a Primal are directly from a myth. The Urthani Primal was a warlord born of a pacifist people that swept over an entire world in less than a year. His Primal bride was the only surviving serpent from the loss of the colony ship and by herself she birthed two entire empires worth of people. Even Clawdia who is the ‘least interesting’ of them all shattered an overwhelming enemy force within moments of emerging then publicly went to help revive the dead, reaching into the afterlife to pull someone out of it whole, alive and still carrying her child.”

“Everyone has myths and legends. Old Kohb stories tell of the origins of The Stone Egg which will one day hatch the daughter of the stars. And Gohb legends speak of the invention of inventing, and how there was a time when creation and learning was impossible until one impossible capable Gohb created the concepts by sheer will, then remade it with the tools they then learned to make. They’re good stories, but not based in actual truth. Well… sort of. The Stone Egg is an unusually smooth meteor inside it’s crater that was found and worshipped during our primitive stages and the Gohb story can be traced back to the moment they went from cunning and hectic tree monkeys to full on people.”

“Hmm… maybe. Many old legends are also a mix of allegory and religious doctrine. Journey to the West’s opening concepts portray Buddhism as the only path to tame the wild and powerful soul of man. The Odyssey is effectively a long warning about disrespecting the gods who control nature itself. Or if taken from a more modern lens, how trying to fight nature will leave even the greatest of men with little.”

“I suppose. Still, I’m going to need samples. And hopefully a copy of whatever sample they used to sequence Forest to know for certain. Something odd is happening here.”

“How urgent is this? Is he stable?” Electric Momma asks as she looks up from the baby. She had been reaching most of the way and then stopping time and again as the baby squirmed a bit here and there and was trying to find the right way to help comfort a baby hooked up to dialysis without waking them.

“Stable but delicate. It’s not urgent. He will live with or without us figuring this out, so long as he keeps receiving the care he needs, but the samples will let me see if there are any nasty surprises coming up. I have equipment to handle… a lot. But, the thing about surprises is that you’re not really ready for them.”

“Hmm… I’ve already set The Undaunted to help his mother and grandmother. Hopefully they’ll find the information you need.” Observer Wu says as he brings out his communicator and then pauses. “What is this?”

One of his bodyguards leans over and looks as if he’s unsure whether to be upset or amused.

“To be fair it was before little Forest showed up.” Electric Momma notes.

“Ma’am. I do not need your nudes. I’m going back to Earth and it would be unfair to me, you, my wife and my son if I were to lay with you.”

“Well every bullet you don’t fire misses anyways, so why not fire?” Electric Momma asks.

“I’m going to delete this, neither I nor the people of Earth need to know about the piercing you have down there.”

“Heh, fine! But maybe save that until you’re in orbit of your homeworld again. Use it to relieve some stress.”

“No.”

“Prude.”

•-•-•Scene Change•-•-• (Undaunted Arcology, Northern Landing Platform, Zalwore)•-•-•

“Alright boils and ghouls, double check your equipment and give me the clear or compromised result.” The squad leader says as the shielded gurneys are rushed to the side by medics in gas masks in addition to their defensive fields to clear the air around them. Stem, Vine, the stasis held body and Galanodel were rushed past them and straight to medical. “This is a scan and sample mission. No hostiles expected but we go nowhere without at least holdouts. This ship has been compromised and is full of dead and rotting things. WE need to know what kind of poison we’re dealing with, how much of it there is and if there are any more sick civilians in there. Any questions?”

“Sir, what is our intention for this ship afterwards?”

“We clean the mess out then negotiate with the owners. This vessel is a legally registered, purchased and licensed civilian ship. Too low power to be of much use to us and what we CAN use it for we can get cheaper and working even better over at other arcologies. Any other questions?”

“Sir, no sir.”

“Anyone else?” There is silence. “Alright then. Are your suits clear or compromised?”

“Clear!”

“Good! With me!” Squad Leader commands and they march up the ramp and into the ship.

Immediately the sensors on his sealed suit warn of environmental contaminants and the scanning bars on the most hardened parts of his armour start casting out green beams to get a good, hard look at the internals of the ship. “Extremely high concentrations of heavy metals and rare earth byproducts. They’re up in the vines and there is a clear concentration in the floor.”

As they check the rooms they find miniature ranches full of rotting corpses and there are chips, one each, embedded in the bodies. They respond easily to scans and almost cheerfully declare that the animals died about a month ago. Meaning the poisoning was even sooner than that.

The main storage bay has a large, Axiom Pocket style container with the markings for fertilizer that has been disconnected from the main ship and forced to the side with markings written on the side in a Floric Language. The scanners go absolutely insane with the sheer amounts of dangerous chemicals inside of it and by the time the suits calm down listing off just how dangerous ingesting anything from that container is the translation software finally parses through enough languages to get a hit on the symbols used. It simply reads danger. They had caught this one. But clearly it wasn’t enough.

There are four other containers and all of them are labelled with the runes denoting danger. But oddest of all is the third of five. One of the squad recognizes the brand on the container and explains there was a recent scandal where they were found to insufficiently scan the products they sold. Leading to a rash of diseases crossing three entire systems before it was finally clamped down on. The company was apparently at risk of being dissolved and a lot of the upper board were being hung out to dry as a sacrifice so the overall company could survive. Rumour had it that some parts of Centris were taking interest and if they took action then the founder and CEO would have to take full and sole responsibility. Which meant a death sentence was potentially on the table.

“I don’t get it. All of these containers are coming up as bio-hazards to even basic scans. Why would the Floric have these? And they clearly knew something was up but… I don’t get it.”

“There may be something in here.” Another squad member says plugging his suit into the computer and… “Fuck!”

He nearly damages the computer as he rips out the connecting cable. “Something just hit the firewall. The systems have a virus.”

“Viral warfare hunh?” Squad Leader notes before activating his comm. “Did you catch that dispatch?”

“We did. We’re sending a Prosthetic Stream up with an isolated data-slate. Get a copy …

Content cut off. Read original on https://old.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/1nvjyuq/oocs_into_a_wider_galaxy_part_464/