[She took What?] - Chapter 100 : ORIGINS: Less is more.

"The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak"

Quotes of ancient painters.

| Location: Somewhere on the edge of Drexari space |

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Across the battlefield, Shadows start changing course. Their moves weren’t aggressive, but purposeful. They were drifting towards the stolen frigate.

 

Four became ten, then twenty. Soon a sphere of Shadows forms around the frigate that settled into a grid as each Shadow took a place in the emerging shape, a crystalline node in a massive harmonic lattice that pulsed to the cadence of Feebee's stillness exercises.

 

The Drexari saw this; their ships were no longer being pursued and rammed by Shadows. Some of their ships, crippled and at the mercy of suicidal Shadows were just ignored as their attackers joined others in the sphere.

 

Drexari commanders continued to watch the movements of the Shadows. Each one began orientating itself towards Feebee's frigate, taking its place in the growing crystal sphere. Against all Drexari logic and doctrine, the commanders told their ships to stop attacking the Shadows and to pull back, but if the Shadows decided to attack then it's weapons free again.

 

The Drexari stopped firing and the battlefield grew dark as it was no longer lit by energy beams and ships going supernova. A quiet descended across all wavelengths and all sensor bands.

 

One of the lower ranks on the Drexari flag ship, waved a claw, that caught the attention of his Commander.

"The frigate in the middle of the... the..." He was searching for the words to describe what he saw, "It's reported stolen. No crew are signed on."

The commander walked over, "Repeat." There was a clear threat in what he said and how he hovered over the junior officer.

"Sir. That frigate," the officer pointed forward, at the ship surrounded by Shadows, "Impossible,” stormed the Commander. “It couldn’t be stolen, not from our shipyard. And how can we not know who is crewing it. Must be a mistake."

As the Commander asked, "Anything from sensors?" thousands of facets embedded in the Shadows started to turn, reflecting star-light towards the centre of their formation where the stolen Drexari frigate sat.

 

The lattice was in perfect geometric alignment.  There were no random reflections, no distortions. The Shadows were aligned in massive crystalline arcs, symmetrical patterns repeated across the structure along which pathways of light flowed.

 

Feebee and the crew sat within the stolen frigate, in which The Kestrel was docked. They diligently continued their stillness exercises, guided by Feebee as the sphere continued to pulse in time with the cadence of those exercises.

 

As more Shadows focused on Feebee's frigate, star-light shimmered through their facets and became light blindingly bright.

 

In the vacuum of space it looked like the frigate was suspended within a radiant halo of refracted light. Within a cathedral of burning light.

 

"Sir," the Officer continued, "the frigate, the one just sitting still in the flaming sphere. It's got an incredibly powerful signature. Stable, balanced and very quiet."

The Commander sent him a withering look. "Don't go there, that's myth. We deal in facts."

"But Sir," he continued, felt the need to speak his mind, as he was often encouraged to do. "The enemy has stopped attacking. They are gathering around it, illuminating it in flames. They seem to… revere the ship that was reported stolen."

The Commander listened, the evidence before him was... unmistakable.

Other ships were seeing the same thing as vessels shared their readings, relaying them across the Drexari fleet.

The battle hadn't ended; it had stopped. That scares some of the Commanders.

And as more of those patterns matched fragments of ancient Drexari lore, words began to circulate through more and more command channels.

 

A Silent flame is here. The one who walks alone. The presence that can stand between opposing forces, bringing to conclusion events without fanfare or spectacle.

 

Questions were being asked because the impossible was there, right in front of them, sitting in the centre of a battlefield, in the centre of a sphere of alien vessels.

 

A Silent flame…

Aboard a stolen Drexari frigate…

Surrounded by Shadows that refused to strike.

 

The Commander felt it but needed to change the focus, "Call the stolen ship." He corrected himself, “The ship. Call the ship. That ship.” He pointed.

"Yes Sir." The Officer opened a channel and hailed them, "Unidentified ship, identify yourself. Who commands?"

 

'Feebee. A Drexari ship is trying to reach us. Asking for an ident and who is in charge.'

She stayed calm but slowly opened her eyes.

“Alpha-3. I need you to take over. It’s important that you all remain in a state of stillness, in balance. Remain calm. Follow Alpha-3's lead.”

 

She continued to hold River’s crystal and rose from her cross-legged position on the floor. It was singing to her, resonating up and down scales of complex harmonics.

 

She was hot, not the sort of hot that came from a warm room, a warm day or even exercise but burning up HOT. From the inside out.

Feebee was covered in sweat. So much so that her clothes were damp and the floor beneath her was wet.

‘How come I’m so hot? Something up with the ship?’ she asked the QI.

 

The QI hesitated, only a micro-second but enough for Feebee to notice. ‘I’ve found a way to further optimise our processing. Well, my processing. The demands, if prolonged, cause us to overheat. Well, you to overheat.’

‘Define prolonged?’ Before the QI could answer Feebee cut it off, ‘You know, it doesn’t matter for now. I’m starving, really hungry. Same thing?’

‘Yes. Same thing; we need more energy.’

 

‘So, why all the additional processing?’ she asked.

‘I’ve been trying to build a lexicon so we can talk with them. Requires a lot of effort, that’s why you’re overheating... and hungry. Sorry.’

‘Oh, Ok. And how’s that going?’

The QI laughed, ‘Slowly.’

 

Feebee made her way to the control room, via the galley where she grabbed a nutri-drink and gulped down water. On the way, the QI brought her up to speed. It took virtually no time at all, the QI just exposed some of its corpus to her.

 

‘The Drexari are asking again for an ident and who is in command.’

‘Tricky. Play dumb. Say we’re a reservist crew and got jumped here without knowing where we’re going. Can you generate a Drexari image? And remember… less is more.’

‘Sure. I’ll make the bridge dark so there’s not much detail. Might fool them for a while.’

 

The QI searched the frigate’s corpus for officer profiles. It found one it liked, someone with an impressive background. The QI responded with an image based loosely on that Drexari, Vol’Shaar of the Vol Clade.

“We’re a reservist crew. Only just got on the ship, last minute and then it jumped.”

“The ship is reported stolen.”

“Well, that's plain stupid," Said the QI, "We’re here aren’t we.”

 

The Commander smiled but the Officer was stumped. The Drexari on the not-stolen ship was confident. Clearly well respected or at least well placed, judging by the response.

“I didn’t catch your name.”

“Vol’Flaar.”

The Officer searched his memory. He was aware of the Vol Clade. Well liked, good people. Never heard of Vol’Flaar although he knew that within the Vol Clade, the title Flaar meant flame.

“I don’t know you.”

“Not surprised. I’m a reservist.”

“Yeh, you said.”

The QI made the Vol'Flaar's avatar shrug.

 

The Drexari Commander thought on it, sounded plausible. He called out to the officer, “Ask them what they are doing in the middle of all those Shadows?”

The officer started to relate the message. The QI, aka Vol’Flaar, cut across him, “I heard the question. We’re doing nothing. And plan to keep it that way, we’re reservists. Didn’t sign up for this.”

The Officer laughed, “Neither did we, but you’ll do what we say.”

Vol’Flaar shrugged again, no comment. The Officer liked this Vol’Flaar.

 

The Officer muted the comms. “It matches up. That’s definitely a Drexari frigate, the one reported stolen but clearly not or it would be somewhere else. Its systems seem legitimate and they’re doing nothing … like us and not being attacked.”

 

Within the structure of the crystalline sphere, the Shadow vessels detected something deeper, something they sought. It sat within one of the noise makers they were trying to eradicate. The one enclosed within their sphere

And what they detected confused them because it was song. Deep melodic song that carried across the deep substrate within which they sat. So, they listened to its tune. And soared with the melody.

 

Questions flowed between the Shadows, searching for answers. “How can a single point exercise such power and balance.”

They understood what they heard and were attracted to the effort and control it represented. To the song that resonated across the substrate they protected, and in which they existed. The very fulcrum upon which the calm and balance of their existence rested.

But the noise makers were disrupting it with the clatter of their passing.

And as they asked questions they were answered. Simple questions to start with, then more complex. Slowly common understanding came and from that communication. The noise makers were sentient.

 

“Then why the disruption? Why the noise?” echoed through the substrate.

 

Initially, they’d seen it as a calling. Like the ringing of bells. Two bells. One bell loud, broken. The sound, ugly and discordant. The second bell had a different tone; gentler but still harsh and shrill as it echoed through the substrate layers in which they lived.

And yet here was a noise maker radiating an unusual harmonic. Different, and not in a bad way, but in a good way that made them take notice. Their senses reached out and felt for Feebee at the centre of their creation, their realisation of form and shape. They focused on this point source and felt balance. Calm. Stillness. Profound balance and stillness.

Murmurs of an ancient myth began to spread through the gathered Shadows and manifested as fractal patterns across the surface of the sphere.

“Resonant myths.”

“Is this the one.”

 

“The Silent flame.”

 

In a moment of realisation, Feebee understood that something she thought was just discipline had changed the behaviour of two waring species.

And all she'd done was stay quiet, calm and still.

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