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The original was posted on /r/hfy by /u/SpacePaladin15 on 2025-10-22 12:14:02+00:00.
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I didn’t know who would be insane enough to attack Suam with the opening salvo to war, but despite what the 5D visions had suggested, I knew it wasn’t us. Perhaps humanity wasn’t the culprit after all, though I was confused what Takahashi’s comments were about in that case. There still might be a chance to repent for running off, and tell Justiciar Colban we’d made a mistake—sparing Sol from being the Elusians’ preemptive strike that was no doubt coming along. I looked toward Corai, since she knew how to scrub her people’s internet and get quicker answers.
“Who the fuck would attack a place like this?” I demanded.
Corai’s eyes were filled with ambivalence, relief and horror vying for victory within the darkness. “It’s the Fakra, come to claim their vengeance. I…guess I’m responsible for letting them out too, and they must’ve had millennia to plan how to kill us all. But it’s not humans: at least, it doesn’t start with you! I should never have doubted you.”
“Corai. Show us what’s happening, please,” Sofia interjected. “What are the Fakra doing?”
The Elusian grimaced, before forwarding a video of the incursion. Massive black ships, the size of a city block, emerged from portals that opened up in the lavender sky. Within the first second of them blinking in by the clouds, they were unmistakably the ones we’d encountered back in Ahnar’s system; the Fakra’s handiwork left a veneer of intimidation. Their hulls crackled with electricity, which shot to the ground like lightning—Capal’s storm gods up and running! That was what metal was vulnerable to, as a conductor, of course.
“We have defenses,” Corai whispered in my mind, perhaps noticing that I was a little impressed. “The Shifting City designed with lightning in mind, of course. There’s gaps in the metal surface so that currents won’t be able to circulate.”
I arched an eyebrow. “However, for the people in the immediate vicinity, it’s a bad day.”
“Yes…but we can levitate, hon. The element of surprise is gone. Whatever weapon wipes us out in your visions, it isn’t this.”
“The Fakra don’t really have the power to destroy you, do they?” Sofia asked.
“Someone must. If not them, then you. When Takahashi said destroyed by their creations, plural, perhaps she meant that you were forced to pick a side and chose the Fakra. It would be a strange way to talk about humanity alone, though I feared that was copium.”
Mikri offered an inquisitive whir. “Why would the humans aid the Fakra? They have not demonstrated any desire to get involved without provocation.”
“Because, Mikri, beyond the fact that we’re a threat to Earth and Ahnar wants an alliance…the Fakra have an open window to Sol. If humanity doesn’t help, then they could face a retaliatory attack. The only thing that—how did they discover Suam’s location, unless you already gave it to them? Out of anger for you both being removed from my installation, perhaps?”
“That’s not possible. Humanity as a whole doesn’t know Suam’s location!” Sofia objected. “Only us, and we haven’t left your sight for a moment.”
There was a flash of movement in our periphery, dozens of heads of white chitin appearing at eye level. Soldiers armed to the teeth encircled us, somehow having arrived a few feet away from us. Lights switched on from their helmets, and illuminated us as Sofia raised her hands over her head. Mikri looked excited to join up with them, smiling and demonstrating no fear. Corai showed no reaction, while I sidled up to her and stood protectively in her path.
“So this is the hole the Elusians crawled back to when they abandoned us. What a gorgeous city, that they never dreamed to share,” Commander Velke chuckled, as his soldiers pointed guns at Corai. “I see you’re keeping human pets in your orbit. This has been a million years coming. Care about us any more now that you’re going to pay for your crimes?”
I bared my teeth. “They’re not her crimes! She is nothing like the Elusians who abandoned you. When we were in trouble, Corai defied orders and did everything she could to help. She cares about us, the way your Watchers absolutely did not. She’s the only reason you got out! She’s on our side!”
“I can fight my own battles, Preston,” Corai sighed. “I acted because I couldn’t abandon humanity, and I still won’t. I hoped to avoid this outcome, but if it’s some targeted revenge on me specifically you seek, then I suppose you can turn down my aid. I’ll side with you willingly. My people need to be stopped from fucking over any other creations.”
“You’ll help them?!” I asked her privately, in disbelief.
“I’ll pretend to. I don’t want to die, and I want them to take you out of here to safety. Humanity helping them is a necessary evil, if that’s why they’re here. You cannot let Sol come under siege, and they have easy access to your dimension. The way to change the prophecy might be for you to temper their bloodlust—to stop them from killing us all, starting with me.”
“Is that why your future is ambiguous? I won’t let them lay a finger on you!”
Sofia lowered her hands, noticing that the Fakra soldiers weren’t hostile toward the two of us. “Why are you here—I don’t mean Suam, I mean, why have you sought us out?”
“I’m here to rescue you three!” Velke gestured broadly at Sofia, Mikri, and myself, using three of his arms to do so. “I figured the Elusians were going to fuck you over, because they always do. I see on their little broadcasts that you’re fugitives. When you got busted and they shut us down, who could’ve foreseen that they’d use the probe against humans? Or maybe against us, since we were going to attack. They’d see it—had to be now.”
“How the hell did you find us?”
“I had time and space enough to put tracking bugs in your human bodies. Came in handy.”
I shuddered, pawing at my skin. “You messed with my fucking corpse?!”
“I wanted to track what they did to it—and track you. You were becoming awfully partial to them. I don’t have time to litigate this. Come with us to the Fakra forward operating base, out in deep space. I’ll explain whatever you want to know; we would prefer to work with you.”
“If you want to work with us, you spare Corai and treat her as an ally. She risked her life for us, and unlike the rest of her lot, she’s a good person.”
“Fine. I’m not stupid enough to pass on invaluable intelligence, even if it’s an Elusian coughing it up. Step through the portal, and we’ll have a chat.”
“Are they a threat to you?” Mikri asked us.
“Probably. But we have to go along with them,” I responded. “And Corai’s right. This gets us off Suam, which means more options and not being right in the middle of an attack. Come on, tin can.”
Sofia ushered Mikri through the Fakra’s 4D portal, and I fitted Corai’s hand into mine to do the same. That gesture earned a sharp stare from Velke, but I met his eyes with willful defiance. We needed to get back to Sol and warn them about so many things, between the Elusians and the Fakra’s machinations. I could still hear the claps of the nanobot structure being pelted by explosives, the AR activity as Suam’s natives were caught off-guard and felled, and the forceful thunderclaps of their eldritch weaponry aiming for Fakra ships.
Corai and I walked through the portal to safety, with the Fakra soldiers shoving us along with beaks curled in contempt. As I crossed the interdimensional space, a bright radiance overtook my mind like it came from the heavens. Elusians ducked through archway portals in the Shifting City—which was hardly one physical place, whatever the Fakra thought. Others turned to fight as Fakra soldiers charged them, pooling the mental resources of their raisers together to send massive chunks of metal at the invaders.
Velke’s forces somehow had raisers of their own now, fitted on their wrists to snap them back at the Elusians, after charging them with electricity. They’d altered the metal bands to be able to conduct bolts of electricity also? That was…good to know, in case I got any thoughts of tussling with the Fakra. Even my Sol body wouldn’t be more resistant to that force: I knew from my joyride with Larimak. Caught off-guard, the gray aliens who didn’t turn tail fast enough were fried and electrocuted.
Oh, jeez. Is Sofia seeing this too? Are these the bodies in her vision—or is this only happening to me, because I looked into eternity’s eye? This is megaprecog, except a live feed. Huh.
The Elusians were clever bastards, as they scrambled an evacuation. The Fakra were channeling negative energy toward the ground in an oppressive fog to stop the natives from opening portals that weren’t already there, but the sky was fair game. Our creators began warping in massive slabs of concrete from the sky, and dropping them right atop Fakra units—landing with a sickening squelch. I didn’t know that blocky chitin could make that sound.
The Elusians also began warping spaceships out of the sky, right into the middle of stars or fusing them with asteroids…
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