First Contact

Chapter Eight

It always happens.

Things go well. Beings think they are the one on top and it will never change. The status quo is how the universe was always meant to be and so it will always be that way. That the apex species will always be apex.

But it always happens.

The strongest military always believe that they will always be strongest. The fastest ship will always be the fastest. The most powerful weapon will always remain the most powerful.

And still it happens.

The smartest and wisest believe that they've learned and discovered all there is to discover and so they are the authority on everything.

And then it happens.

It's a law of the universe.

It always happens.

Most species never get to understand this law before this law destroys them.

It was a law humans had learned early.

"If it can go wrong, it will go wrong, and it can always be worse."

The humans knew this.

They taught it to one another before they even built their first cities.

They taught it to the Mantid Hive Queens.

They taught it to my people, the Treana'ad.

They taught it to one another again and again and again.

Nobody had taught it to the Unified Civilizations Council in centuries, perhaps eons.

And so it happened.

Not that the Unified Councils understood when it started to happen.

No. They didn't understand it, but they knew who they wanted to blame.

Which meant it happened.

And it got worse.

Gather close this document, which bears silent witness to not only what happened, but why.

--N'klik'kik O'Malley- Treana'ad Historian, 3241 HPD (Human Post-Diaspora)

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Daxin was born before scarcity had been defeated. His brain was perfectly healthy yet it did not operate the same as others. That had been unacceptable and his brain was altered so that his thoughts were acceptable. He earned a meager wage doing a job that a robot could not do without being more expensive than paying Daxin to do the work. This altered his thoughts back to what they had been, only he was older now, and wiser.

When war came, Daxin signed up voluntarily, unlike the majority of his people.

They died when the planet was glassed.

Daxin did not. Daxin was busy killing. Not because he enjoyed it but because it did not bother him.

And he was good at it.

Better than the machines.

Afterwards, Daxin returned to society and society told him that he did not think right.

That was fine. Daxin did not care. He just wanted left alone.

But more wars took place.

For Daxin, the problem with war wasn't the killing, is that he wasn't left alone. If he joined, he had to be part of a society. If he did not join then someone else wanted to bother him with the business end of a plasma rifle.

And he just wanted to be left alone.

During one of the wars Daxin volunteered to undergo process to turn him into a complete full conversion cyborg. That cut away everything but his brain, his eyes, his lower jaw, and his face. It was then he met Fido.

After the war, he just wanted left alone.

Clinically immortal, he found himself drifting further and further from the rest of humanity. Not that he hated them, not that he looked down on them, not that he disliked them.

He just wanted left alone.

He couldn't remember when he had left his face behind during an upgrade.

The call of exploration had consumed him after the Treana'ad War. Fido liked exploring what was called "The Long Dark" with Daxin. Fido felt bad for his part in the Rigel Saurian War. Fido liked being with Daxin, Daxin made him feel like a goodboi not a warboi.

For the most part, Daxin avoided all but the AI run stations. He would report interesting things to the Federation, then the Combine, then the Republic, and now the Confederacy. His body, the best he could afford, had been built in the great nano-forges of Mercury-Sol. He was at home in vacuum or the harshest environment. He made sure Fido was as strong and fast and tough as he was.

Because Daxin liked Fido.

//fido like daxin//

Daxin was disappointed that beyond the Long Dark there were more people. Well, Daxin figured they'd be people, because he wanted to be left alone and people never did leave him alone. So he turned back into the Long Dark and began drifting from system to system, looking for anything interesting.

Daxin enjoyed watching a flower open for the first time with a nano-probe. He got a thrill down his chassis watching the sun rise and small animals wake up with optical scanners. It made the few inches remaining of his spinal cord tingle to see small cubs and chicks blink into the light.

He just wanted left alone. He would view others, but he would leave them alone also.

Which made the fact that a ship had dropped into the system he was currently inhabiting, orbiting a gas giant and extracting the resources he needed, just his luck.

The ship was screaming for help across multiple spectrum, using multiple languages, all of them from the lexicons that he had taken as his due from the ship he had rendered assistance to in the past.

Daxin reached out with some of his scanners, since he was plugged fully into his ship, making him the ship, and touched the other craft.

The hull was damaged in several places. Kinetic weaponry and what looked like a brush from a high intensity energy weapon. It wasn't bleeding atmosphere, which meant the crew had either gotten it under control or they had given up on trying to maintain atmosphere.

The new ship was armed. Light damage capacity older weapons that wouldn't have qualified as military grade weapons when Daxin had first joined a military. Even the strongest weapon the ship possessed wouldn't register on Daxin's debris shields. The weapons showed signs of having been utilized recently, before the ship had entered jumpspace only to tumble out in the barren system that Daxin was currently occupying.

But the ship was crewed by the living.

But they were not his people and he was not bound to help unclassified xenosapients engaged in combat.

But they were screaming for help.

For long ticks of the ship's atomic clock, Daxin considered if he cared enough to help them.

On one hand they needed help. He was bound to help others.

On the other hand he wanted left alone.

Then the alarms went off again and Daxin fluttered his debris shield in his version of surprise.

!*! HELLJUMP DETECTED !*!

!*! HELLJUMP DETECTED !*!

//BADBOI DAXIN BADBOI//

//OLDBOI DEATHBOI DAXIN//

Fido had detected the energy surge at the same time as Daxin, 'smelled' it so to speak, and identified it while Daxin was busy dropping his ship into the atmosphere of the gas giant to hide while he decided what he wanted to do.

He just wanted left alone.

But the one screaming for help was not the belligerent. It was not the aggressor.

And what was chasing them was the enemy of everyone.

Daxin knew that it wouldn't leave him alone.

Daxin felt something he had not felt in centuries, a thing he thought he had left behind with his flesh when he had traded it for metal.

The taste of iron and copper on a missing tongue, hammering of his pulse on temples long gone, the thudding of a heart left behind.

The taste of hatred.

The taste of wrath.

//NEWBOI SCARED//

//NEWBOI HURT BY BADBOI//

//HELP DAXIN HELP//

Daxin felt himself come alive in a way he did his best to avoid. The part of his brain that they said was wrong, the part that they had tried to fix, the part they had tried to convince him to let them cut away, woke up as he stared at the scan of the newcomer.

Daxin just wanted left alone.

But the newcomer would never leave him alone.

Would never leave anyone that it encountered alone.

Until it was alone.

Daxin reached out and tickled Fido's petting nerve, both the calm Fido and center himself.

//HELP DAXIN HELP//

We will, Fido, Daxin let his companion know with a few datapulses. Wake up the boys.

//FUNBOIS WAKEUP//

//FUNBOIS WAKEUP//

Daxin felt the virtual intelligences slumbering within his ship's computer systems wake up as Fido fed them datapulses, fed whirling particles to them. The Funbois, all dedicated virtual intelligences designed from the ground up by the Digital Artificial Sentience Systems best VI growers, woke up and eagerly awaited for Daxin to provide the data they needed.

//WE HELP NEWBOIS?//

yes

Daxin knew what he was facing. He had Fido loaded into his disaster frame, loaded himself into his disaster frame, dropped a message torpedo deep into the gas giant with orders for it not to launch for the nearest Terran Confederacy message beacon until after the newcomer was destroyed or left the system.

//HELP DAXIN HELP//

yes

Daxin fired up his engines, brought up all of his shield, not just the debris shield, spun up his projectors. The VI did checks on his weapons as it slipped into the weapon's systems, scampered into the shielding to ensure it was optimally deployed, and slithered into the ship's systems to ensure everything ran at 100% capacity.

"May I be of assistance?" Daxin sent to the damaged and screaming ship.

And armed his C-Plus Cannons.

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