Ivan Kal - Out of the Ashes

Lanai Sumia walked the streets of the human city looking around at the amazingly colorful buildings. She wondered about the name of the city, she was told that it was called Olympus city. It was a beautiful city, sometimes she couldn’t believe that it wasn’t here just a couple of cycles ago. It was mind boggling what these humans managed to achieve. They used their grav cars to get around the city, the areas that the vehicles used were walled off, and people could walk around the sidewalks unbothered. A great number of bridges connected the two sides of the streets, and every now and then a bridge was wide and held a small park with trees and sitting benches, walled off with a transparent material. It gave the city a feeling of life which she hadn’t seen since the forest cities of the Mtural.

The human society seemed such an unbalanced jumble. They had technology far ahead of what a species that has been able to travel to other star systems for such a short period of time should have. They were young, not as individuals, but as a people. They set their minds to something, make a decision, and then just do it. No overthinking it just going forward tackling any consequences as they came up. Sometimes they seemed reckless, but Sumia has spent enough time with them to understand what it truly was. They weren’t reckless, they believed in themselves, when they find an answer they don’t second guess themselves they act. Not only did they trust in their own, they were prepared to face the consequences of their actions. They accepted them and owned up to them. It was a thing Sumia admired about them. They accepted their history and their mistakes, it made them stronger, better. Unlike the Nel, they hid from their mistakes, ashamed of what they’ve done. Sumia hoped that someday her people could grow to be like the humans, to learn from their mistakes.

As she walked Sumia glanced back. Behind her walked Hokra Gotu and Hokra Dson, her ever present companions. Not that there was any danger to her life, they just worried too much. The human city was remarkably safe, even with seven million people living there. She remembered the first time she saw human children. That was such a shock for her, as Nel children aren’t allowed outside their family home unsupervised, and even then they are expected to act dignified and collected. The human children had no such constrictions. They played and ran down the streets and many parks of the city unsupervised. At least not supervised by their parents. Every now and then Sumia would see a person dressed in the dark green colors of the human military. She knew that they served as a kind of police, and often a sole figure would be seen walking the city streets. They never interfered with the people walking past them, only watched and made sure that there were no incidents. And Sumia did inform herself on the subject. There was little crime in the human city, mostly what humans called brawls or verbal disagreements. Nothing like the criminal activities she knew occurred on her home world.

Three small humans ran past Sumia not even sparing a glance in her direction, they had much more important thing to do than to look at the alien. She remembered the first time she went out for a walk, how the children reacted then. They rushed over to her and the rest of her party, running around them in circles looking at their tails, asking them all kinds of questions too fast for Sumia to understand them. The reactions of Hokra Dson and Hokra Gotu were probably the funniest things she ever saw. They had no idea how to react to them. She remembered how a small girl told her how she didn’t look like an alien, but rather like a human with a tail. Sumia saw then something that she never saw before. An innocence and acceptance that was not present in Nel society. Human children had no fear of her, an unknown, an alien. The child asked her to touch her tail, and Sumia smiled and let her, she remembered the look of amazement on the child’s face when Sumia moved her tail closer to the child. It was something she would never forget. She knew now why humans wore their emotions on their faces, why they were so accepting and tolerant of those different. She knew that it had taken them a long time to get to this point, and that not everything was perfect. But the simple fact that they fought to make things this way made her feel somehow… Inadequate.

“I love it here.”

“Lanai?” Hokra Dson asked.

Sumia turned and looked at Hokra Dson and Hokra Gotu and realized that she spoke out loud. “Nothing, I was talking to myself.” She studied them for a moment, “We need an alliance with these people.”

They looked at each other and then back at her, “They already refused Lanai. I don’t know that we can offer them anything that they don’t already have?” Gotu asked.

“They refused when they were hoping for an alliance with Nelus. Now that they know it will not happen they have no reason to refuse.” Sumia said, “But I think that we need to offer them more, or rather ask them for more.”

“What do you mean?” Hokra Dson asked.

“I think that we need a much closer connection with them. Closer than what a simple alliance would give us.” Sumia said.

“I don’t think that they will accept that.” Hokra Gotu said.

Hokra Dson continued, “Nor would our people.”

“Perhaps, we need to convince them.” Sumia said.

“Why Lanai? We have a chance of being truly independent now. Why bind us to the humans.” Hokra Gotu asked.

“Look around you Gotu. Look at what they achieved with so little, in such a short time. Can you imagine what they would become in ten cycles? What about a hundred? We need to convince our people, both here and at Nuva. And then we need to convince the humans.”

Hokra Gotu and Hokra Dson remained silent. And Sumia looked around her, at the beautiful human city, thinking about what the future could be.

October 2171 – Nuva

Adrian sat in his command chair as his ships exited hyperspace. There were no explored trans-lanes between Nelus and Nuva so they were forced to use hyperspace on both the trip there and back.

“We have arrived at Nuva Fleet Commander.” Navigation Handler said.

“Set a course for Nuva.” Adrian said. He looked at his command board, the updates from the his ship’s sensors started coming in, much faster than they usually would. The c-board sent a request for updates from the station in the orbit of Nuva, which in turn had the gathered scans from all the ships and stations in the system. The c-board of course sent their locations back to the station using their FTL comms. As soon as his holo was updated, a prompt jumped out above a grouping of ships close to the trans-station. Adrian saw it identify the ships as the Third Fleet. Immediately he magnified and saw two dreadnought class warships, accompanied by ten smaller ships. He knew that those must be drones, which meant that his ships would be going on the mission into Sowir space. These ships were supposed to augment his own First Fleet, which had suffered losses at the battle for Nuva that still haven’t been replaced. He lost two ships, the light cruiser Talon and the heavy cruiser Valkyrie. His other ships have all sustained some amount of damage, all except the light cruiser Swift that is. But that damage has since been repaired by the small shipyard that they brought from Sanctuary. The damage to the Leviathan was the hardest to fix, as the ship simply didn’t fit into the yard. But they managed.

“The Home Fleet. Looks like they finished construction, and those must be the drones.” High Prime Paul Isaacs said.

“Yeah, they should be here to augment our forces for the plan B.” Adrian said.

“Probably. I wonder who… Oh.” Paul drew silent.