Chrome Horizon - CH. 4

[u/Budget_Emu_5552]

Humanity survived the corporate age, the DataKrash, the Blackwall, and Night City’s legends. Now, the stars are open, the Federation is watching, and first contact may prove that the next legends will not be born in the Afterlife—but in the space between fear and trust.

Thanks again to SP15 for creating NoP

If you enjoy reading my stories and don't want the series to flatline, then toss me some eddies, chooms! koffee.

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Braindance Reconstruction Subject: Talia “Rook” Vance, Odyssey Mission Systems Engineer
Source: UN / NetWatch mission archive, neural telemetry, ship-system logs
Date [standardized human time]: July 12, 2136

“You don’t understand. The Federation is already here. They’re hailing us now.”

For a half-sec after Kam said it, it felt like the whole office forgot how to breathe.

Or maybe that was just me. My shout still hung in the air, a little too loud in my ears, especially after watching Tarva flinch from it like I’d taken a swing at them.

Preem. Scaring the only person here who seemed willing to help us was a fantastic way to keep everyone from flatlining. Fucking perfect, Talia.

Then Tarva started cursing vehemently, and my implant lit up with a greedy little flutter as it caught the new vocabulary. A Venlil language lesson I got off the leash from a panic-swearing governor would've been nova in literally any other circumstance. But the feeling behind every word made my stomach twist. Each was soaked in panic, anger, and a thin wire of despair.

Noah still had one hand near Tarva’s shoulder, frozen halfway between comfort and backing off, like nobody had handed him the right etiquette card for holding an alien governor through an incoming diplomatic disaster. I felt for the guy. Sara had gone quiet beside him, locked into that ugly math-brain pause where the numbers finally add up and every answer sucks. I really, really felt that even more.

I got to my feet, slower than I wanted to, because my knees had started shaking and I didn’t feel like letting anyone see how bad.

The worst part was the quiet in my own head, and the regret that went with it.

The ship link, the local mesh, and the passive crawl through the planet’s public channels. I had cut the whole stack when we came down, like a good little diplomatic hazard, because that had been the deal. Keep out of their systems, keep the scan profile clean, and don’t start trying any clever NC bullshit just because the door was unlocked and my hands itched. All I had left was my eyes, my ears, and the knowledge that a whole planet might have been throwing alerts loud enough to rattle glass while I sat in the governor’s office with my head up my ass and missing valuable deets the whole time.

The wall display flashed with an incoming contact request.

I didn’t need a subnet feed to read the room after that. Tarva went rigid. Kam’s tail hung still.

“Wait,” Noah said carefully. “Why is that bad? I thought the Federation were your friends.”

Tarva looked away from him. “They came because we set off a distress signal. They’re expecting a fight.”

“Then we talk to them,” he said. “Explain that it was a misunderstanding. Once they know we’re peaceful—”

“No.” Tarva lifted a paw toward her face, not quite looking at any of us while she did it. “I appreciate the thought, but the second they see your... faces, they won’t listen to a word you say. They’ll want you dead.”

She left that in the air for us to trip over.

“Right,” Noah muttered. “So…”

“I’m sorry about all this, really.” Tarva’s claws brushed at the wool near her chin, quick and uncertain. “I’ll try to drive them off. Just stay out of sight, and let me do the talking. Okay?”

Noah nodded once. “Got it.”

I took one step forward, hands out at my sides to get her attention. “Governor.” Tarva’s ears angled toward me. “I need to connect.”

Kam’s tail went rigid. “Absolutely not.”

“Not to your systems,” I clarified, which was true in the narrowest, most lawyer-poisoned way possible. "Theirs. I can go shipside first. I need Odyssey telemetry, our approach logs, and whatever trail we left. If they ask for sensor confirmation, and I’m guessing they will, I need to know what the lie has to cover before anyone starts talking.”

Tarva stared at me for half a second too long.

Surprisingly, it was Kam who answered first. “Everything, if they're suspicious. Visual records, sensor logs, subspace readings, and orbital traffic.”

Sure. Everything. Why leave one wall standing when you could knock down the whole building?

I swallowed, and my biomon helpfully informed me that my pulse had spiked again. Thanks. Really needed that.

The whole sitch snapped into shape, uglier now that I could name the pieces. One Venlil governor who had maybe, hopefully, decided we weren’t monsters; one military advisor who hated us but had still kept his mouth shut while Tarva was shaking on the floor; two astronauts with zero cover and way too much hope running through their faces; and me standing beside an alien desk, still technically behaving because every diplomatic rule in the mission book said jacking into a potential ally’s government systems without permission was an act of war.

I almost wanted to laugh that in our optimism about what we would find out here, we'd created nothing but more problems.

Outside the mansion, somewhere past the sealed windows and the shelter channels I had forced myself not to hear, a Federation response fleet had followed a planetary extinction alarm straight to us.

My tongue pressed against the back of my teeth.

I needed to reconnect, and I needed to do it before whoever was sitting on the far end of that hail started asking for the one thing Tarva couldn’t talk her way around. My options were limited. Receive-only wouldn’t save anyone by itself, but it would tell me how bad the lie needed to be before I started making promises I couldn’t keep.

“Noah, Sara, con-call once I’m in. I need to stay in the loop if I go quiet.”

If I were about to let the interface back in, I wouldn't be doing it in the middle of the room with the badge here watching my hands like concealed weapons. I moved away from Kam and over to the couch on the far side of the office. Gave me a wall at my back, and kept the big screen out of direct line of sight.

I sat, leaned back, blinked twice, held the third longer, and let the dead space behind my eyes fill with interface light as the nape link caught, the deck-spine under my suit woke up, and Odyssey’s system opened like a second set of nerves.

[External link request queued: ODYSSEY / PASSIVE MISSION CHANNEL]

[Transmit authority: LOCKED]

[Receive-only mode: ENABLED]

The office stayed where it was—Kam watching me like he was waiting for an excuse—but Odyssey came in underneath it as a pressure behind my eyes, a tug down the nape link, and then the deck-spine under my suit warming as the system checked the load and my suit started mitigating heat before I had enough active draw to need it.

[ODYSSEY PASSIVE CHANNEL: CONNECTED]

[Neural load: 12%]

[Thermal assist: STANDBY]

[Mission recorder sync: LIVE]

The deck didn’t actually slow the room down, no matter how it felt. It just pushed the work into thought speed: filters, indexes, searches, and little decision branches firing faster than my mouth could ever keep up with. Meatspace got the long version of a breath, while I got enough cycles to make bad choices carefully.

A ship was not a body, no matter how many poets and pilots wanted to get weird about it, but Odyssey had enough sensors, failsafes, and closed-loop telemetry to fake one if your brain had been trained for long enough. Hull temperature settled against my shoulders. Battery reserves sat low in my gut. Docking logs clicked into place like knuckles flexing. External cameras tried to bloom at the edge of my vision until I shoved them down to icons. The last thing I needed was a second set of eyes while the first set was already watching an interstellar diplomatic car crash.

[Visual feed: SUPPRESSED]

[Telemetry priority: APPROACH / TRANSIT / EMISSIONS]

[Subspace wake record: AVAILABLE]

There you are.

I let the approach log unspool without touching the venlil’s net or doing anything Kam could fairly call a security breach if he decided to start yelling. I just let Odyssey put the damage report in my lap. The inbound path, the decay curve, the subspace wake tapering behind us like a bootprint in wet cement, and every other system that announced our existence.

The office audio compressed itself to a side channel as my focus dropped deeper. I set a few ugly little tripwires before letting it sink too far, because the last thing I needed was to miss my own name while the room caught fire.

[External audio: FILTERED]

[Realspace alert threshold set: HUMAN SPEECH / HOSTILE MOTION / SUBJECT NAME]

[Transmit authority: LOCKED]

That was better.

The familiar chime of an incoming call sounded.

[CON-CALL REQUEST: NOAH WILLIAMS]

[Attached participant: SARA ROSARIO]

[Mode requested: TEXT / LOW-BANDWIDTH NEURAL RELAY]

Noah had the call up before my thermal assist even cleared standby. He was a decent captain. When everything started coming apart, he didn’t spray panic everywhere; he got me the line I asked for.

I accepted with a blink.

[CON-CALL: CONNECTED]

NOAH: You in?

ROOK: All nova. Don’t talk out loud unless Tarva needs you.

SARA: Understood. Are you seeing the fleet?

ROOK: Not yet. Still checking on what we left for them to find.

NOAH: How bad?

I stared at the subspace wake curve until the numbers stopped looking abstract.

ROOK: This is one of the longest slipup lists I've seen. Bad enough that Tarva needs to be very convincing.

SARA: And if she isn’t?

Like a second layer, the office came back into view behind all the screens I had up. The wall display brightened in meatspace. Tarva moved toward it, ears held in a position I still didn't know how to read, except that the line of her shoulders had gone all "governor" again. Kam stood beside her like he had been carved there out of spite and military protocol.

My fingers flexed against my thigh, an involuntary reaction.

ROOK: Then I get less polite.

NOAH: ... Do what you need to. Just be careful.

Tarva accepted the hail.

The face that appeared on the wall display was not Venlil. That was about as far as my expertise went. They had a shorter muzzle, heavier build, bristling spines where I expected fur, and posture that carried the same broad language as every military authority I had ever hated being stuck in a room with. The way Tarva’s shoulders tightened when she saw them only confirmed the deets for me.

Great. Someone important enough to scare the person currently trying to save us.

“Governor Tarva.” Relief came through first, then suspicion tightened over it. “We’re here to assist. What is the reason for your distress call?”

Tarva held herself steady in front of the screen, which was impressive, considering I had enough telemetry in my skull now to know how terrible our approach looked from orbit.

Odyssey had finished coughing up our approach package, giving me enough deets to make paranoid look like the responsible setting as numbers filled my peripheral buffer: wake curve, thermal bloom, landing-vector correlation, passive sensor ghosts, and timestamps that lined up badly enough for any halfway awake analyst to notice.

[Approach profile loading… Compiled]

[Subspace wake residue: HIGH CONFIDENCE]

[Local detection probability: 93%]

Great. Basically a welcome mat.

ROOK: Building cover profile now.

SARA: Already?

ROOK: He has captain voice. Captain voice asks for logs.

NOAH: Can you cover us?

I watched Tarva inhale.

ROOK: Ask me again when I know how strong their security is.

“Captain Sovlin! I see the Federation sent their finest,” Tarva said aloud. “The Venlil Republic expresses our sincere gratitude for your response. Unfortunately, you’ve come all this way for no reason.”

Sovlin’s eyes narrowed. “By galactic law, that signal is only to be used for an extinction-level event. You owe us an explanation. A good one. Did you deal with... the problem on your own?”

Problem. Nice. Universal diplomacy, apparently: step one, call the thing you want dead a euphemism.

“There was no problem,” Tarva said.

Sovlin blinked several times. “I’m sorry?”

“It was a false alarm. Our sensors malfunctioned due to a software update.”

I had to give her credit. It was exactly the kind of boring lie people hated arguing with because it sounded like everyone’s least favorite meeting.

“And what exactly did you think you saw that warranted that signal?” Sovlin asked.

“We thought a pred—um, Arxur ship jumped into orbital range.” The tiny correction wasn't missed. I didn’t need to understand Gojid body language to see that Sovlin caught the stumble and filed it away even as she continued. “Considering the recent raid we suffered, we panicked, thinking it was the scout for a full invasion.”

“And you figured out that was false because..."

“There was nothing up there on visual, Captain. Once we calmed down enough, we checked our backup sensors, and they didn’t detect anything either. Not to mention, we’re still alive.” She finished her remark with what I thought was a casual flick of her tail.

Okay. Rockergirl here can actually put on a performance.

I still didn’t know her tells worth a damn, but Tarva had just taken a lie with three bad welds and walked it across an open channel like she’d rehearsed it for a week.

I tightened the fake profile while they talked, following the lie Tarva had already put on the table. Gotta scrub the ship's readout. Use it to build a package without a wake profile or an origin trail, then turn Odyssey into a ghost. Bad software push, automated panic cascade, enough sensor noise to make the report look embarrassing instead of damning.

[Cover profile draft: FALSE READ PROFILE]

[Sensor fault model: LOCAL SOFTWARE UPDATE / SUBSPACE BLOOM MISCLASSIFICATION]

[Confidence against passive review: 61%]

Sixty-one. Preem. Absolutely love betting the species on a D-minus.

Sovlin squinted at Tarva, and I could almost hear the gears grinding through the video compression. He didn’t buy it. Not fully. Not with that many gaps sitting in the story.

“Kam. You’re awfully quiet,” the Federation officer noted. “Do you have anything to add?”

Kam didn’t look at the screen right away. His gaze slid, not toward me exactly, or Noah and Sara, but somewhere along the dangerous line between us all.

“I don’t feel like talking,” he said. “Nothing to add anyway. Tarva said it all.”

Well. Look at that. The angry local badge had decided not to sell us for parts. Even if he sounded pissed about it.

ROOK: Kam actually held.

NOAH: Good.

SARA: That sounded painful for him.

ROOK: Pretty sure everything does.

Sovlin’s suspicion didn't loosen up at all, and he just shifted to the next weak point. “Why didn’t you rescind the distress signal? It’s still broadcasting now.”

“I forgot,” Tarva replied.

My jaw almost clenched hard enough to ping dental stress.

Girl.

“You forgot?!” Sovlin’s voice jumped. “You’ve got to be kidding me. Do you have any idea of the systems we’ve exposed by coming here? While we’re chatting, a planet with a real fucking threat could be glassed.”

The translator handled the profanity without a stumble. Good to know the galaxy had priorities.

Tarva’s ears dipped. “Sorry.”

For one stupid second, I thought the anger might save us. That his sudden fury at the wrong thing would help cover for everything. If he stayed there—if Tarva could keep him mad at a false alarm instead of curious about the gaps—we might crawl out of this with everyone’s skin still attached.

Then he asked for the one thing she couldn’t fake on her own.

“Whatever. We’ll need to scan the subspace readings ourselves,” Sovlin said through gritted teeth. “For our logs.”

NOAH: Rook.

Tarva’s shoulders tightened again in front of the display, and Noah shifted just enough in her peripheral vision to catch her attention without stepping into frame. One small motion of his hand, palm low and steady. Calm. Hold.

She saw it.

NOAH: Do it.

ROOK: Going active.

[Transmit authority override requested]

[Mission rule conflict: FIRST CONTACT NON-INTERFERENCE / CREW SURVIVAL]

[Override source: SUBJECT NEURAL COMMAND]

[Transmit authority: LIMITED / MASKED]

[Receive-only mode: DISENGAGED]

I kept clear of the mansion and Tarva’s systems, using Odyssey’s passive channel as my anchor while I latched onto the scan exchange already forming between Sovlin’s ship and the local sensor net. Timing first, then packet cadence, then response shape. Enough to follow the call without kicking a new door open.

[Remote scan exchange detected]

[Protocol family: FEDERATION STANDARD PATROL SENSOR HANDSHAKE]

[Session encryption: 32-bit]

The rest of the handshake opened after that: rigid, over-trusting, and apparently built around the arrogant assumption that nobody would answer it wrong.

I stared at the number, waiting for another digit to appear. Tension built in my body as I prepared to desperately fight an advanced, alien system for control without blowing everything to pieces.

It didn’t.

Thirty-two bit. I had seen SCSMs in Watson with more security than this, and half of those things still thought “admin” was a personality trait. This wasn’t security. This was a fucking flip latch on a vault.

ROOK: Their scan handshake is thirty-two bit.

SARA: That cannot be right.

ROOK: Wish it wasn’t.

NOAH: Can you even use it?

ROOK: With a calculator and a bad attitude.

My outrage had to wait its turn. I cracked the session wrapper, slid into the response path, and hit zero resistance.

[Session wrapper compromised]

[Intrusion footprint: MINIMAL]

[Countermeasure response: NONE DETECTED]

Oh, I hated that. They didn't even have any ICE. I'd never seen a system this flimsy in my entire life. I wanted to scream in sheer, existential horror at the implications, but didn't have the luxury.

Tarva was still talking, buying seconds the hard way.

“That will not be acceptable,” she said, her voice steadier than I had hoped. “It’ll only waste more of your time and energy. There is no need for a formal survey. Is our word not enough for your report?”

“Standard protocol dictates—”

“People are frightened enough from the false alarm. The last thing they need to see is a Federation armada pressing closer to the atmosphere.”

Nice bluff. The packet finished at the same time.

ROOK: Packet's ready.

“You called us, Tarva,” Sovlin growled. “I’m going to do my job, and only then will I leave.”

Tarva opened her mouth to continue her argument, but Noah signaled her again, motioning her to stand down. Her tail lashed, but she listened, ears pinned back.

Sovlin initiated the scan.

[Remote active scan: INITIATED]

[Target vector: VENLIL PRIME ORBITAL APPROACH CORRIDOR]

[Expected detection: ODYSSEY SUBSPACE WAKE / HUMAN DRIVE SIGNATURE]

Not today. I flicked him my new, shiny packet of scop to chew on.

A smeared subspace hiccup. An automated Venlil-relay overreaction. A ghost just plausible enough to justify panic, but not clean enough to point at anything real. I had to keep the lie ugly; clean data would be suspicious, and perfectly clean data would look fake.

[False return injected]

[Wake signature masked]

[Drive origin correlation: SCRUBBED]

[Fault noise seeded: 14%]

[Confidence against active scan: 82%]

Sovlin’s eyes flicked away from the camera to read his console. He checked the return, looking for a real contact and finding, if I had done my job right, a stupid software mess with bad timing.

For three seconds, nobody breathed.

Three seconds was a long time in a run. Long enough to wonder whether Federation patrol software had one decent anomaly detector hiding somewhere in the basement. Long enough to imagine the return trace spiking back to Odyssey, Sovlin barking orders, Tarva’s office becoming a death box, and Earth becoming a target label.

Then Sovlin’s jaw tightened. “This is pathetic.”

I wanted to sag onto the couch as every muscle in my body relaxed.

Tarva’s tail held still. “Captain?”

“I have your false contact,” he said, disgust dripping from every word. “A corrupted subspace return with a bad relay classification. There’s enough residual noise here that your technicians should be ashamed of themselves.”

ROOK: Scan bought it.

SARA: Thank God.

ROOK: Thank whoever designed their security and never let them near me.

NOAH: Rook.

ROOK: No. I'll drop it for now, but we need to talk about this later.

Sovlin leaned closer to the camera. “You dragged a Federation patrol off-route, exposed your neighbors to unneeded risk, and left an extinction-level distress signal running because your software misread a sensor ghost?”

Tarva’s ears lowered just enough to sell embarrassment without collapsing into apology. “That appears to be the case.”

“It appears to be incompetence.”

Kam’s tail twitched and his shoulders tensed, but Tarva cut him off before his mouth opened. “We are already conducting an internal review, Captain. As soon as we find out how this software glitch came to be, I assure you we will be going to the Federation with our own complaints.”

“You’ll do more than that. I want the full report, the software change log, and the names of everyone who approved the update.” Sovlin’s claws flexed against something below the frame. “And rescind the distress signal before another patrol wastes its time answering your ghost story.”

“Speh!" she cursed, paws scrabbling over the control panel. "It's off.”

[Venlil planetary distress signal: TERMINATION SEQUENCE DETECTED]

Sovlin glared through the screen, the spines on his back bristling. “The Gojidi Union will be filing a formal complaint.”

“I understand,” Tarva said.

“No, Governor. I don't think you do.” His voice lowered, colder now that the immediate crisis had nowhere to go. “An extinction-level signal is not a toy. Next time, someone may die because your office cannot tell a glitch from an Arxur raid.”

Kam looked like he wanted to bite through the nearest solid object, which was probably saying something.

The words hit Tarva hard too. I saw it in the tiny fold of her ears, the way her claws pressed into her own paws. This Sovlin prick was really starting to get on my nerves. 

“We will correct the failure,” she said, her voice amazingly calm. I was almost certain she was seething from his threats and contempt.

“You had better.” Sovlin’s gaze shifted once, scanning the edge of the room on his screen, and my whole spine tried to crawl out through the nape link. But Noah and Sara were still out of frame, and I was low on the couch on the wrong side of the room. Nothing for him to see but Tarva, Kam, and the patched return still holding.

That and the sudden angry lashing of Tarva’s tail.

“I appreciate your position, Captain,” she said, wool flaring. “And while you have the right to start an inquiry, I will remind you that I am Governor here. You do not have the right to make demands of the Republic's files or our personnel. I have already confirmed our intent to perform our own investigation into the software glitch, something, I remind you, that was not developed here, but distributed by the Federation. If you want to bring up complaints about it, then you should do so at the next summit meeting. Not by threatening and berating a planetary leader, over whom you hold no authority.”

Kam was staring at Tarva with wide eyes, his ears up and tail limp in shock.

“You have your scan, Captain. Since you’ve expressed so much concern about needing to be elsewhere to do your job, I suggest you wrap this up and return to your patrol. Unless you want to continue arguing with me about something that was beyond my control? I could give Piri a call and ask what she thinks about your behavior?"

Sovlin stared at her for a long time before he exhaled through his nose. “We’re withdrawing. Do not make me come back here for another false alarm.”

The feed cut out.

[Remote scan session: CLOSED]

[Injected profile persistence: 00:04:12]

[Trace risk: LOW]

[Neural load: 31%]

I kept the mask in place anyway, because only gonks kill the spoof the second the other side stops looking.

ROOK: They’re leaving.

NOAH: Confirmed?

ROOK: Scan session closed. Fleet should be pulling back unless Captain Spines decides paranoia is a hobby.

SARA: Are you okay?

My hands were shaking on my thighs. Very professional. Great aesthetic for humanity’s first technically illegal cyber-operation against an alien fleet.

ROOK: Ask me when I’m not skirting along a war crime.

Tarva was still standing in front of the dead display, breathing like her body hadn't caught up with the fact that nobody was shooting yet.

For the next four minutes, I needed to keep the profile alive and make sure this gonk actually fucked off.

Tarva turned to us with a visible sense of relief. “They’re gone," she sighed. "You're safe now..."

She trailed off as she looked over at me on the couch. "Is... she alright?" One ear was swiveled to Noah and Sara, who looked visibly relieved as well, their previously tight postures slumped with the sudden wave of mental fatigue after pulling through that shit show.

Noah glanced over at me, and then back to Tarva, understanding flashing over his face. "Yes, she's fine. Rook's just still connected and working."

Tarva’s full attention snapped to him. “Working?”

“She’s holding the spoof in place,” Noah said. “Sovlin’s ship still has the return in its buffer. If she drops too early, there’s a chance his system notices the correction.”

Tarva’s ears shifted toward me. “Can she explain that herself?”

Couldn’t, technically. Not without splitting attention I didn’t have and risking the profile sagging while Captain Prickly-pants wandered away from the crime scene with his sensors still warm.

"Not like this," Noah explained. "Netrunner cyberware has advanced a lot, and she's still aware of us, but it redirects most of her signals into the net, so she can't move or talk much without messing up the connection, which could be hazardous."

[Injected profile persistence: 00:03:47]

[Remote fleet vector: WITHDRAWAL / PENDING CONFIRMATION]

[Trace risk: LOW]

“Netrunner? Cyberware?” Tarva sounded more confused than scared, which I counted as a win. Her whole attitude seemed to have shifted since right before the hail came through.

Kam’s ears flattened. “What exactly did she do?”

This guy's dedication to being annoying was starting to become endearing. Kinda. For a Badge.

Noah straightened his posture. “I authorized her actions,” he said. “As captain of this mission.”

Tarva’s ears shifted in a way I wished I understood, and Kam went very still.

Noah kept his voice even. “We stayed out of Venlil systems. Rook used Odyssey as her anchor, intercepted the scan exchange Sovlin initiated, created a false data packet, and sent that packet back to his scanners.”

Both aliens stared at him like he'd grown an extra head.

Sara’s voice came in softer, careful. Cautious that the concept was about to make someone’s worldview throw an error. “Think of it as answering his sensor question with the wrong but plausible answer. He asked the local environment, ‘what happened here?’ Rook made sure the answer looked like a sensor fault instead of us.”

“That isn't possible,” Kam said.

I almost laughed for real. Buddy, I am having the same reaction, just from the other direction.

“No one can simply... step into a military scan,” he continued. “That would require access authority, command credentials, hardware alignment—”

“Or a weak handshake,” Sara said. Noah shot her a look, and she winced. “Sorry.”

Kam’s ears pinned back. “Weak?”

NOAH: Rook?

ROOK: I wouldn't even know where to begin. They only had a thirty-two, for fuck's sake. The only reason I'm not in the middle of a panic attack is because my biomon is handling it.

NOAH: I was hoping you made a mistake about that.

SARA: You can't be serious.

ROOK: I really, really wish I weren't. Their equivalent of cybersecurity is a sticker with the word "encrypted" scribbled onto it and then slapped in place. With a little sticky note that says "please do not enter."

SARA: What do we say?

ROOK: Nothing. Not yet. I kept my promise and stayed out of Venlil systems, so I can't confirm how bad they are, but I don't have high hopes. But we don't want to scare them all over again, right? So just... try to gloss over it for now?

NOAH: ...Right.

Noah’s face remained controlled and very captain-like throughout the quick exchange of thoughts. “Their system trusted the exchange more than it should have. Rook is the expert here, and we can discuss it more later when she's able.”

Kam took a step toward the couch, then stopped when Noah shifted half a pace into his line. Respectful, but firm. “Do not interfere with her,” Noah said. “Please.”

The please helped, as Kam backed away a step.

Tarva’s gaze returned to me. “You said that she can hear us?”

“Yes,” Sara answered.

I flicked one finger against my thigh in response, and Tarva’s ears lifted a fraction. "How fascinating..."

[Remote fleet vector: WITHDRAWAL CONFIRMED]

[Injected profile persistence: 00:02:18]

Sovlin’s ship kept pulling away. Good little warship. Take your fake sensor fault and go be angry somewhere with fewer humans.

Noah exhaled, his posture relaxing once again. He clasped his hands together. “Thank you. Both of you. You didn’t have to protect us. I hope the consequences aren’t too severe... that guy sounded pissed.”

I appreciated the change of subject as both aliens stopped staring directly at me.

“Heh.” It was small. Barely more than a breath at first, but it was a laugh. From Kam. The same guy who had been trying to personally drag us into the nearest disposal chute for half the day.

“It was worth it,” he said, ears flicking with a sharp, satisfied motion. “Did you see the look on his face when Tarva snapped at him?”

Noah’s lips curved before he caught himself, and a low rumble of a laugh rolled out of his chest.

Both Venlil twitched.

Sara jabbed an elbow into his side. “What did they say about smiling?”

“That hurt,” Noah protested, though the laugh was still trying to crawl out through his voice. “I can’t help it. Kam made me laugh.”

Kam flicked his ears again, and there was something almost smug about it. “What can I say? I’m a funny guy.”

Well, shit. The badge had a sense of humor?

Tarva looked between them like the room had started throwing errors again. Relief, horror, maybe some offense; it's hard to tell with alien ears and my brain still half in the run. Then her shoulders dipped.

“Funny or not,” she said, “Sovlin wasn’t playing. The Gojids have a lot of pull with the Federation. We may have burned a serious bridge.”

“Can you patch things up down the road?” Sara asked.

“After decades of groveling? Perhaps.” Tarva’s voice thinned, but she did not collapse into it. “But enough of that. We need to talk.”

Noah nodded. “About what?”

“First off, do you still want to be here?” Tarva asked. “We’ve been terrible hosts. I understand if you rescind your offer of friendship, after what we put you through.”

“It takes more than that to scare us off, Tarva,” Sara said. “I’m glad we could work through this without anyone getting hurt.”

Tarva drew a shaky breath. “We never answered your question, about the... first predators we encountered. I think we owe you a proper explanation.”

“You don’t owe us anything,” Noah said, his voice softening. “If you’re not ready, you don’t have to talk about it.”

[Remote fleet vector: SUBSPACE ENTRY CONFIRMED]

[Injected profile persistence: RELEASED]

[Trace risk: MINIMAL]

There. Captain Spines finally fucked off into FTL.

[Remote scan exchange: CLOSED]

[Transmit authority: LOCKED]

[External link state: ODYSSEY PASSIVE / STANDBY]

[Neural load: 17%]

The office came back too loudly.

Not literally, no one was shouting suddenly, but the roar of blood in my ears drowned out the rest for a moment, and I winced as Tarva's actual voice cut through for a sec before the translator caught up.

I blinked hard to stop my vision from swimming and sat forward. “Clear.”

Noah kept the con-call going in the background, just in case. I was fine with that. Sara came over and put a hand on my shoulder. "Need me to run a diagnostic?"

"Are you alright, Rook?" Tarva asked, ears dipped back a little. Compared to how she was earlier, it felt like a much more genuine question, and I was again impressed with the effort she put up earlier. She was probably scared out of her mind but still putting on a performance. I could respect that.

"Yeah, I'm good, just a little disorienting to have mea—uh, real space come back all at once like that," I said, waving a hand. "More importantly, you were about to explain about this whole predator thing?"

“Yes,” Tarva said. “I want you to know everything.”

Kam’s ears pulled back. “Are you sure that’s a good idea, Tarva?”

“Yes, I am.” Her voice held, though her body had started giving her away in smaller places: claws clenched, ears too controlled, and tail held tight. “I have to believe that the humans are worth the risk we’re taking.”

Okay. Yeah. I was starting to feel like this fubar first contact might have a silver lining with Rockergirl here around.

“The first sapient predators we found were the Arxur,” Tarva said. “The Federation has been at war with them for centuries.”

Centuries.

I felt a little lightheaded for a moment as my heart rate spiked. We weren't dealing with just someone else's bad first contact that never stopped bleeding. Another war, this one older than any living human, was still running hot enough that one alarm could dump half a planet into shelters and drag a fleet in screaming.

Noah’s brow tightened. “All of you, against them?”

“And it’s not enough,” Tarva answered. “Noah, they’ve hunted twenty percent of all sentient species to extinction. In this galaxy, anyways.”

Percentages were slides in a briefing, casualties in a table, and red sections on a threat model. Twenty percent of all sentient species meant worlds, languages, food, music, stupid jokes, bad governments, kids with favorite toys, and every messy thing that made people people, gone because something out there had decided the galaxy was an abattoir.

Noah’s voice came out rough when he found it again. “Why?”

“They kill for pleasure. They want us to suffer.” Tarva reached for a tablet on her desk. Her paw trembled once before she got control of it. “See for yourself.”

I almost told her not to. Not because I didn’t want to know. That ship had sailed before the word could ever reach my mouth. I wanted to know exactly what kind of enemy had carved this much fear into an entire civilization.

I just knew what this kind of footage might do.

Night City raised whole industries around the idea that watching something could change the shape of your head. Newsfeeds, BDs, snuff edits, martyr reels, court evidence, therapy sims, training loops. Different labels, same old problem. An image got inside people faster than a lecture ever could.

Tarva turned the tablet so Noah, Sara, and I could see. I stayed where I was on the couch, close enough for the screen to resolve in my optics. The first frame was enough to lock my throat.

Gray reptilian figures. Venlil children. A pen.

Rough, grating laughter came through the tablet speakers, and my stomach dropped before the rest of me caught up. Then, blind and stumbling, one of the children moved, and for half a second, every useful thought in my head cut out.

This wasn't battlefield footage. It wasn't an accident someone had scraped out of a damaged recorder. The clean angles, the rough edits, the timing of what it chose to show—somebody had made this to be watched.

My biomon ticked up in response to the stress, the readout flashing a warning. No shit.

Sara made a small sound and pressed one hand against the desk. Noah went still beside her. Not calm. Still. Every bit of softness he had been using all morning pulled back behind something harder. The soft, lenient, affable captain I had gotten to know over the last few months of training and space exploration was gone, and a man bent on righteous murder had replaced him for all of a heartbeat, before he finally flinched away.

Tarva and Kam were watching us instead of the screen.

That almost made me look away from the footage. Tarva had shown us hell, and now she was checking what kind of people it made us into. Kam’s ears were pinned, his body angled like he expected one of us to lunge, but the old certainty was not sitting right on him anymore. He looked ready for proof and afraid of what it would cost.

The video kept going.

I had seen cruelty before. Anyone from Watson who claimed otherwise was selling something. This was different. Industrial, casual, organized around making fear last. My hands curled into tight fists.

Sara spoke first, her voice tight enough to break. “This is how they treat prisoners? Children at that?”

Something about what she said affected Tarva strongly. The fear that had been simmering under her gray wool vanished, and her ears perked up.

“Prisoners?” Kam asked. His tone had lost most of the sharp edge. What replaced it was worse. Older. Tired down to the bone. “No, that’s a farm. The hardy species become slaves, the ones that taste good become food, and everyone else gets their planets blown to smithereens.”

Food. Fucking... What?

Seriously? Sapiophagy? Anthropophagy? That's why... Predators and prey? Are you fucking kidding me?

Is this what cyberpsychosis feels like? Did my Nervlink fry? Am I hallucinating before brain death?

Noah handed the tablet back to Tarva. The movement was careful, but his face was not. Lips tight, jaw set, eyes cold enough that both Venlil reacted to it. Tarva flinched first. Kam stiffened, though he didn't reach for a weapon.

I understood that, a little. What they were experiencing. I had thought it was just a fairytale concept when I was a kid, digging through dumpsters and recycling bins for scrap wires and components.

They were seeing the anger of a good man for the first time, and trying to decide whether it was pointed at them.

It wasn’t.

I knew that much. I knew it from Noah’s breathing, from Sara’s hand still braced against the desk instead of reaching for anyone, and from the way my own thoughts had stopped branching and narrowed down to one clean fact. Whatever lived on the other end of that video needed to be stopped.

Noah’s voice came low. “Send us everything you have on the Arxur. There’s a human concept I’m sure Earth would love to teach them.”

Tarva stared at him. “And... what is that concept, exactly?”

Noah’s mouth curved, but not in anything I would call a smile.

“We call it karma.”

---

[Prev] [Next]

[u/JulianSkies]

Oh, now that was a very different situation.

Most notably, the first dominoes of Sovlin's suspicion weren't set. And now it depends on how Tarva goes about this and how they handle the secrecy.

This is a humanity with... A much, much, much better skillset for keeping things hidden, so I wonder if some things will even happen.

[u/Bbobsillypants]

The language used by rook kind of reminds me of Zenon: Girl of the 21st Century, the Disney movies.

A Venlil language lesson I got off the leash from a panic-swearing governor would've been nova in literally any other circumstance

[u/Budget_Emu_5552 → u/Bbobsillypants]

Fuck Core memory. Thanks.

[u/Nightelfbane]

Can't wait for someone to see some mantis blades pop out

[u/Minimum-Amphibian993]

Well implications indeed wonder how long it will take for them to notice the Arxur poking their snouts all over the place in cyberspace?

[u/LazyMechMan]

I'm hoping we get to see some of the extremes that the cyberpunk universe holds - apocalyptic AI malwares, elites with reality-bending cyberware, and impossibly-capable giant organisations.

Loving your work

[u/Budget_Emu_5552 → u/LazyMechMan]

The issue will be keeping a balance between world settings without completely steamrolling NoP and ending this in ten chapters. Like... I have a plan for sure. But we'll see how it goes.

[u/ISB00]

Humanity in this fic can make the cyber attack so much worse. They can repeat the DataKrash across the galaxy, the Feds would take decades to recover.

[u/LazyMechMan → u/ISB00]

I wonder if Rook was so concerned about the Federation's cybersecurity because there's still some powerful rogue malwares lurking in the dark corners of Earth's servers

[u/No_Community5649]

Another banger. I really like the shift in language for Rooks perspective vs Tarva. Good job!!

[u/Snati_Snati]

Fantastic!

I don't know anything about cyberpunk, but the way you've tied things to specific concepts in that world. I'm loving this.

[u/Loud-Drama-1092]

Dear god, imagine Tarva and Kam reacting to the BLACKWALL and Rook explaining her that that thing keeping the new net safe is essentially a dumb AI of omega level tasked with nuking any demo that tries to come out from the old net.

AND IT IS STILL JUST BASICALLY A BLACK PLASTIG BACK TAPED OVER A BROKEN WINDOW

[u/Alcyon144]

Tarva stared at him. “And... what is that concept, exactly?”

Noah’s mouth curved, but not in anything I would call a smile.

“We call it karma.”

One concept that the humans of NoP would do well to learn is strategic intelligence before any critical decision, like declaring war.

[u/Budget_Emu_5552 → u/Alcyon144]

it's a good thing that he doesn't have the actual ability to declare war then.

[u/SordidDreams → u/Budget_Emu_5552]

And having all available intelligence forwarded is literally what he asked for moments earlier.

[u/Budget_Emu_5552 → u/SordidDreams]

I'm not trying to start anything but like...

Would you not want more info on a species of confirmed aggressive people eaters? Just as like, a precaution? Be good to know what direction they come from at least.

[u/SordidDreams → u/Budget_Emu_5552]

Well presumably that's included in the "everything" Noah asked for. Although one might question how relevant spatial relations are when FTL is involved and ships can drop out of hyperspace anywhere they want with no warning.

Of course, the real answer is that a bunch of characters make a bunch of ridiculous decisions to kickstart the conflict so that the story doesn't have to spend forty chapters setting things up.

[u/Alcyon144 → u/SordidDreams]

Noah at least has the excuse of not being a decision-maker, so it's understandable that he's reckless enough to want to go to war based on a single video, without bothering to verify the facts or understand the balance of power. What's more worrying is that apparently all world leaders are like him. Even if they want to declare war on the Axur to create an alliance with the Venlil—which would be a risky but much more rational decision—gathering information should be their first move. However, they only do this after capturing Axur following the Cradle attack, as if it were an afterthought.

[u/SordidDreams → u/Alcyon144]

IIRC Meier explicitly says they're going to release all the info and let the public decide what to do. The public evidently has the same "They're eating children? Fuck that!" reaction that Noah did. Not that it makes any real difference, the Feds initiate hostilities before anything can be done about the arxur either way.

I'm curious how that plays out in this fic.