Chain Reaction - (Deathclaws x NOP) Chapter 8
Short chapter, and late to boot, but trying to keep momentum.
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Memory transcription subject: Captain Cyrus of the Terran Reclamation Committee
Date [standardized human time]: July 21, 2136
I was awake, but I very desperately didn’t want to be, so I kept my eyes closed. Deeja had found me at some point in the night and curled up next to me. I could smell Mouse and Visc were bedded down nearby somewhere too, it would explain why the room was so toasty this far from the reactor. I didn’t really care about that though, and just nuzzled up against my pillow hoping to get a few more minutes of shut eye.
My plan mostly worked as I nodded in and out before the muster call rang out. We all roused from our slumber mostly wordlessly as we unburied ourselves from blankets and each other - Mouse had a habit of sleeping in a position that suggested she had been hurled bodily into the room. I did spare a moment for a hug with Deeja and we briefly knocked horns. “Once more into the breach.” she said.
As we were on station, we were effectively operating on shore leave rules. Role call was a brief affair held at the hangar holding the Atom, mostly to make sure no one had died or been sent to the brig since yesterday - thankfully a non-issue. The rank and file were then free to do what they will, though most had jumped at the chance to earn social credits by assisting the station staff - as it turns out, when the majority of your potential workforce is 400 million miles away, you’re willing to pay top dollar for any assistance you can get. And that was under normal circumstances.
The knowledge that we weren’t alone in the universe was no longer a hypothetical, we had solid evidence to the contrary, in that we had talked to some of them, and also killed some of the others. The debate was which we had made a better impression with. Which was all kinds of odd. Regardless, that gave all of our actions a newfound weight. Each new ship launched, each sensor calibrated, weapon primed and ore refined seemed to carry a bit of our future with it. What we were doing here mattered, measurably. The weight of it had certainly had its effect on me, even if just my exhaustion the night before and my lethargy in the morning. But with the new dawn, came inspiration. What we were doing mattered - we could alter the course of history, not only for us, but for the whole galaxy. I hoped to rise to that occasion.
But before all that, breakfast. Grandiose aspirations or not, I wasn’t getting anywhere on an empty stomach. The crew made our way down to the mess hall, which was 3 levels from the hangar. Say what you will about House, when it comes to meshing style and function, the man does not skip on style. At first blush the mess could pass for a banquet hall, you’d usually only notice the oddities after you’ve been here a while. All the cooks were based on an assaultron chassis, the floor was only slightly rubberized, it was the same durasteel as the rest of the station, even money on the tables being bullet proof, etc.
“What’ll it be darlin’?” asked one of the assaultron-chefs. “Anyone want in on a mirelurk mess?” I asked. Kira, Deeja and Syk nodded in the affirmative, so we grabbed a free spot at a table. More accurately, Deeja and I grabbed the table, while Kira and Syk got bone broth for the table - one of the luxuries of rank that I had no objections to exploiting. We shot the wind for a moment or two, mostly about some of the rumored findings of some of the other exploratory vessels. Apparently, there was a gas giant nearby that had a similar storm to that of Jupiter’s famous red spot. They were taking all sorts of readings to see if they could determine a root cause - it might be a common sight on other gas giants.
Deeja was getting into the finer points of how this might give us insight on the formation of gas giants, which we could use for projections on broader stellar compositions from extreme ranges when Syk and Kira rejoined us drinks in hand. If I wasn’t lost before, Syk started chiming in discussing the refinements that we could make to our sensors to pick up on such information, I was now. Mercifully, our meal arrived before I could be buried in jargon.
Mirelurk mess was my go too breakfast, and by tradition one of the most common items to serve to returning sailors - stellar or otherwise. You boiled a mirelurk and about a dozen of its eggs - fertilized ones most ideally - scoop out the meat, slice the eggs, add some spices and tatos for digestion, throw it all back into the shell to act as a large bowl and serve. Depending on the regional variety, sometimes the shell is even edible. But the reason the mirelurk mess on Jupiter station is the best is that due to some very careful negotiation, bacon is considered a spice so long as it is crumbled into a meal instead of being served as a side or a main.
Conversation ceased as we dug into the meal face first. I had seen old movies of humans eating with knives and forks and they just looked ridiculous, let alone the small sticks people used in the communist territories. In the back of my mind, I was consuming some of the human media on the off chance that if we encountered alien life, I wouldn’t be thrown by their alien ways. Frequently, their historical reenactments were just as illuminating as their speculative fiction. As Deeja and I playfully fought over a large piece of claw meat before we pulled it apart, I realized the irony that I hadn’t considered the possibility that we would be the odd ones by their standards, and they would need to be the ones to get over their preconceived notions of normality.
To our eyes, we were just enjoying a few minutes of quiet company with our friends over a meal. To the venlil and their Federation, this was probably some overwhelming grotesque display. They would be aghast that we boiled a creature and its children and were using its shell as a bowl. Meanwhile, from what we’ve seen of the arxur, they would similarly be aghast, only they would be upset that the creature was killed quickly, cooked, and now, worst of all, being shared openly with Captains and Ensigns getting an equal bite at the prize. Madness. We were going to have to approach some of these matters delicately in order to get the aliens - from both sides - to see things our way. Thankfully, we did have some time to come up with an approach.
After all, it wasn't like we were just going to waltz up to their front door again.
-Time advance - 24 minutes; Reason: self evident -
“Son, the committee has decided that you’re going to walk up to the Venlil’s front door again.” said General Ward without any further preamble.
I opened my mouth to object, but General Ward cut me off “We ain’t lost our damn heads son. But the situation’s changed.” That was a bit of an understatement. Seemingly overnight, the Committee had commandeered a level of the station to serve as a command center for our interstellar efforts, and from what I was able to gather from snatches of conversation, there was to be a surge of new staff coming to the station as well. There had always been a nominal effort for the station to have this function, but we were expecting to spend the first few years ping ponging signals back and forth with exploratory vessels, whereas we had made the round trip in just over a week.
He ushered me through the rest of the situation room. That was easier said than done as we circled around open access panels, cables running every direction, past a dozen consoles, and at least two dozen people to be installing even more equipment. Where were we even getting all of it? I put those thoughts out of my head, as the general drew my attention to a large constellation of monitors among one of the walls. It was showing a star system I recognized as Venlil Prime, but the signal and image quality was odd.
Preempting my question “We got ourselves a jury rigged system at the moment. Got quite a few eyes in the sky as it were, but they’re a bit too spread out on account of it being a big ass sky. But there’s one place we ought to keep a weather eye on.”
“So you combined the telemetry from multiple of our long range scanners to piece together a picture none of them could get alone.” I said following the train of thought. My eyes narrowed as I studied the images before me, the general making no move to point out what was so interesting. It was what I would expect from Venlil Prime, its sun and exoplanets. I was actually impressed by the image quality given our limited efforts, but it turns out I was actually the culprit, or more accurately the scans we took from the Atom were. Our close up precision measurements of the celestial bodies allowed the Jupiter station crew to fill in what we knew was there to cut out some of the noise that such long range scans tended to have.
But then… “There.” I said pointing a clawed finger at one of the far ends of the image. “Those readings. Those are wrong.”
“Oh?” said the general, playing coy. “Illuminate me.”
“They don’t make any sense.” I said furrowing my brow. The values we could measure from the system were all distorted, nearly at once. Far too much light, then not enough. Similarly, observable mass spiked and then cratered, but still higher than its original point. Not to mention the em radiation from the system was just a mess. It was like “-They received reinforcements.” I said aloud as I came to the conclusion.
“That’s about the sum of it.” said the General with a nod. “Your job is to see if we spooked them into holin up, or if they’re itching for a fight. Meanwhile, we’ve sent our first message off to our lizardy friends. They’re amenable to a chat. Had to be quick about it though, not enough charge on that widget Isriss gave us, and the eggheads are scared we’re gonna break it. If the Federation got it in for us, might get the Arxur to even the odds. But your job is to determine what the Federation has in store for us. Stall em if they’re hostile, but let them know we’re open to being friends if they are.”
“Understood sir.” I said, once again feeling the weight of responsibility lay across my shoulders. “Am I at liberty to divulge our contact with the Arxur?”
“Carte blanche.” said the general immediately. “Tell them anything and everything. So long as they’re willing to listen.”
“We’re set to leave as soon as repairs are finished on the Atom?” I asked, knowing the likely answer.
“Right in one. Repairs should be done in two days. Meantime, grab a terminal and start reading. We’re pulling data off the Arxur device left, right and center. We don’t have enough eyes to go around.”
Posted Mar 8, 2026, 8:43 PM UTC