“And yours?” Davis asked.
“Our transit system requires infrastructure, but it is faster than we observed the Tri’se races.”
“Did you ever go out to them?” Plausious asked.
“On occasion we met them halfway. We were warned about traveling beyond the light range.”
“What is that?”
“The point where the photons traveling between galaxies are so dispersed they can no longer be seen.”
Davis frowned. “We can see the other galaxies from here.”
“Our photo receptors are designed for light. The Tri’se races have no such ability. They measure the light as we measure the toxicity. The light range is the point where it no longer causes them noticeable damage.”
“What did they tell you of themselves?” the Director pressed.
“Not to try and reach them was their initial warning, but over time they began to discuss safe passage within our galaxies, which we naturally allowed so long as they didn’t interfere with the denizens.”
“Why did they want to travel here?”
“Resource collection. Primary matter that had a very high nuclear density and a nearly depleted photonic count. Some exotic weapons can be produced from such material, so we limited what they could harvest, but they requested far less than our imposed limits.”
“You couldn’t see them, could you?”
“Not with light. But we could sense their Tri’se, and it was far more visible than the Tri’to, either due to density or perhaps our sensitivity to it is not equal. They had thousands of individuals within their vessel.”
“How did they communicate?” Plausious asked.
“Telepathic energy is not photonic,” Apollo explained. “And for some reason we were able to understand them automatically. We believe it is an aspect of our construction and not their familiarity with our race.”
“Did you ever discuss the lifesprings?” Davis asked.
“You believe they could be a superior form to us?” Apollo asked.
“I’m trying to grasp at anything that makes even a little sense to figure out what the hell is going on,” he answered honestly. “If you are guardians meant to give us cover, what is the second phase? Or are we the second phase and they’re phase 1…or maybe they’re phase 3…or maybe it’s not phases at all and a parallel track. If you can see all three energies, it suggests a connection to the Tri’se in your mission.”
“We also believe this, but they wanted little contact.”
“Did they say what’s out there?”
“We asked. They said not to ask what was beyond the light line, only to fear it.”
“Fear as in not go there, or fear it coming here?”
“They explained they can only come here in small numbers, in protective cocoons. It is the same for Humans traveling inside stars.”
Davis frowned. “You can survive in stars without a ship?”
“For a short time. They cannot even survive the cold of the outer regions of our star systems.”
“So they say,” Plausious cautioned.
“Did anything ever float in from out there that you could analyze?”
“Nothing with the physical makeup they suggested. It would have deteriorated before we could recover it. But there was other material of unusual elemental structure occasionally recovered. We could draw no conclusions.”
The Reignor pondered that, looking off to the side as he tried to envision what material coming out of the dark places could mean, and perhaps prodding his preborn knowledge into another revelation, when he noticed the Ren’mak yawning on his shoulder.
He stared at him, exchanging a few telepathic thoughts, and realizing everything they were discussing was beyond his understanding.
The imagined landscape of the galaxy the Gahana had spawned in came back to him, with the newly created race in their pool of liquid metal amidst the destruction of every advanced civilization, and suddenly he felt very protective of the Ren’mak. Was that to be this galaxy’s fate if they achieved the Endgame?
His head began to hurt, and hurt a lot, enough for him to take a knee as Davis stepped over and reached to place a hand on his arm.
“Leave him be,” the Gahana ordered, extending his hand into a long tendril that spread out into a curtain blocking Davis’s touch. “His preborn knowledge is producing another revelation.”
“No,” Plausious moaned, holding his head. “It’s not.”
The Ren’mak squawked an old squawk. Something he hadn’t said since learning the Star Force language. It was a signal they had worked out early on, and it was a warning of danger as he sensed Plausious in pain.
Frustration and anger boiled up in the normally calm Neofan…then something snapped in him and he stood up, inadvertently throwing an Essence wave out that knocked Davis back but missed the Ren’mak as if it was an extension of his own body. The wave gently rocked the larger Gahana as Plausious decided he no longer cared.
And when he decided that, the spike in his head disappeared in full, and he breathed in the first free breath he’d had since running for his life on the Hadarak planet.
“My apologies,” he said to Davis. “That wasn’t intentional.”
“What have you learned, Neofan?” the Gahana asked. “I can no longer read your thoughts.”
“I am tired of being used as a pawn,” he said, realizing the nanites had been destroyed. “By the Neofan. By the Hadarak. By you. By the universe. I no longer care about the Endgame or what it is. A storm is coming. How, when, where, why…is irrelevant. If you are the spawn of a previous Endgame, what did it serve those who triggered it? They were destroyed. Expended. And the universe transitioned into another stage of its pre-arranged theatre. The universe uses the Natural Code as a foil, but what it truly is is those of us put here with no knowledge of where we
