The first act is familiar revolutionary stuff, compressing the overthrow of the SpaceLords into a single act instead of the usual three. The second act begins with the words “meanwhile in the oversea...” and reveals in wrenching detail the story of eight mothers bound in servitude.

Shouts of shock and horror run through the crowd when the first mother is dismembered by greedy SpaceLords and her young are devoured as caviar. Distress in the audience grows palpable as the second act proceeds. The grouped kaikaina composing the characters are whittled down, sometimes one by one, sometimes in bands of eight. Three mothers die childless; four are horribly mutilated, their bodies shrunken. The last mother hides her clutch and refuses to reveal where she has hidden her eggs. She is being stretched between nine vicious enemies in a heart-stopping cliffhanger when the lights go down on the second act. Then comes a truly revolutionary twist: there is no third act. Powerful spotlights beam out from the stage, and the eight mothers declare over the intercom that they have played their part in a true story, ripped from the headlines; the rest remains unwritten because it has not happened yet. And you, dear brethren... your bodies and collective motions will enact the ending of our tale.

The spotlights black out and in the ensuing darkness, the distress call received from Palux plays -- the real audio, no reenactment, no frills.

For elder generations it inspires old feelings with a depth not seen since the revolution. The youth have never seen or felt anything like it, and take up the propaganda with near-religious ecstasy. Slogans and attitudes that had become stale now feel fresh and relevant to those born since the revolution. “By the eight mothers” becomes a fashionable vow, generally used when promising to accomplish a difficult task by an absurd deadline.

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Next Week: What’s Mine Is Ours

Station Four, technical problems persist. Production has been slowed by mechanical breakdowns toautomation mechanisms. This will be difficult ro repair with supplies at hand. Request re-supply of rare materials.

To Unknown World Beyond Ottoclav

We regret to learn of your misfortunes. We pledge to return this precious organ if found. Our condolences on the passing of Octavia von Bottstein. We eagerly await the opportunity to hear your glorious symphonies as the starting point for what we hope will be a mutually fruitful cultural exchange. We invite you to send a delegation to observe our celebration of the opening of the gates at the end of Pulse 4.

May Your Eggs Prosper,

Humble Comrades of Occulon

To Palux

Station six requests additional laborers to meet production quotas. We regret that some of our staff here have been... excessively hungry. This has depleted our labor force somewhat. We will be happy to compensate with credits towards future inventory.

To Arkator

Hail, comrades. We look to our shields. We look to our spears. We look to the oversea. We invite you to send a delegation to witness our celebration at the unsealing of the gates.

May Your Eggs Prosper,

Humble Comrades of Occulon

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Next Week: Sorting Signals from Noise

Hai Dee spends a pleasant morning rearranging shells in a sunny communal garden. The particular garden where she indulges this hobby happens to sit across a thoroughfare from the newly completed building announced as the Fourth-Wave Home for Stellar Solidarity. Naturally she wanders over to sit in the crowd for the ribbon-cutting and hear several speeches from young revolutionaries who are each intelligent enough to allude to her illustrious career and thank her for her patronage without mentioning her by name or making eye contact with her. Diplomatically done.

While Hai Dee sits watching the admittedly overly long ceremony, Si Mon sidles up to sit next to her and chat about the feeling of satisfaction and contentment he got when he saw the shells arranged in her newest garden. She thanks him for the compliment and asks him whether he thinks people will enjoy her new garden in the night, under the stars. “Oh yes,” he replies, “Even when snug in their homes, they will think fondly of your labors.”

This apparent small talk, she and he both know, is straightforward reassurance that the mining efforts on Kanaka (the new garden) and the Hoka settlement (under the stars) are going well.

Hai Dee asks Si Mon if he will visit her later to pick up a message to a member of her Local who has moved to a new area. He agrees.

After the ceremonies, one of the young speech-givers mentions to Hai Dee that they are seeking an elderly volunteer for a scientific expedition to the new orbital station. It is a physiological study, very important to furthering the revolution. Hai Dee accepts that this pretext will allow her to inspect the construction as it nears completion.

Hai Dee plays the perfect elder, amazed at all the fruits of science, charmed and charming enough to become a favorite guest of even those workers unaware of her true role in government. They delight in taking her on tours of their facilities, which she uses to impress upon the leadership her own priorities for ship construction.

In each interview she asks:

Won’t the reactionary forces out there in the Oversea see our ships coming?

How far can these ships go before they must return?

Will it have big guns and hammers for breaking chains and prisons?

And rockets for making a good getaway?

They told me I’m so old I might die during the launch, but I say anything for the revolution, don’t you agree?

The more astute interviewees pick up that these are questions indicating her ranked priorities for the characteristics of the ships the station will soon build: Stealth, range, firepower first, speed would be nice, but durability is optional.

Hai Dee declines the opportunity to meet the adventurer Clay Vomeron and look upon the disconcerting way his face is stretched over a rigid skull. Yet she confides she is intrigued by this outsider. In him sees the potential for a fruitful partnership. It is clear that the atrocities of the Space Lords must be stopped and that the revolution must extend gloriously into the oversea. This can only mean that enslaved Kaikaina everywhere must seize the means of production.

She later discloses to a trusted few — during the shuttle ride back down to the UnderSea — that she hopes to employ Vameron to sell a cargo of her best Kaikaina deep cover operatives to any Space Lord outposts in Myrth, Shirk, or Crimp who may be buying. Once there, their mission would be to gather intel and form a network of revolutionary cadres to create favorable currents for future liberation.

Of course, this mission is so critical to the future of the revolution that it can only happen once this Vameron has been vetted — as each of you were — to assess reliability and discretion.

After a day recovering and plotting in her favored jar, Hai Dee allows Si Mon to visit privately for a discussion of strategic propaganda.

The message from their enslaved sisters and brothers are enough to break all three of any Kaikaina’s hearts. This cannot be kept a secret from the people, for they must know that the liberation of the entire oversea is our glorious destiny.

With tasteful artistic license, a full spread of multimedia propaganda must be produced to emphasize not only the glory of the revolution, but the necessity and urgency of its spread to any place that workers are oppressed. Specifically, the contents messages from those still in thrall to the SpaceLords should be tastefully re-enacted. There should be images of shadowy, unseen SpaceLords devouring Kaikaina larvae, Kaikaina mothers weeping as they realize that they’ve sacrificed themselves for tiny broods, and a whole new generation of defiant slogans and patriotic songs and skin-dances.

Prepare a Grand Spectacle for The Gate Opening

The situation calls for drums. Many of them. Or perhaps synchronized pickaxes on ore, hammers on steel? Evoking the glory of unity, movement, impact, yes. Skin-written slogans, colors rippling like revolutionary banners across the bodies of the performers. Let the Kaikaina celebrate past glories in ways that make the young yearn for a time of sacrifice and hardship sufficient to prove their own worth. Cultivate the feverish ambition to liberate all those who toil beneath the boot of masters. Yes.

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Next Week: Fibs at Scale

Station Six, please report.

Station Four

From Palux

A tight-beam transmission.

It is worse here than you know. SpaceLords feed their servants on our tentacles. No sister has more than seven. As for our brothers, alas, SpaceLords have a taste for caviar. Expect no answer, broadcast carefully. My sisters listen - while we live - but so do the SpaceLords. I take terrible risk to reach the radio and speak. Help us. Hear us. Save us.
One Who Would Not Be Food

From beyond Ottoclav

Kaikaina signals specialists have isolated a repeating pattern in the static from beyond Ottoclav. A sample of it follows: ...lll_|_ll_Il_lIl_I_|_Il_|_IllI_IIII_lll_I_lI_II_lIIl_llIIll_|_lIII_IIl_IlI_lI_|_Il_|_III_l_Il_IlI_IlIlIl_|_Ill_I_|_III_IlII_I_Ill_|_IIIl_lll_IlI_III_IIII_llIIll_|_Ill_IIII_lll_|_III_Il_II_lII_|_IIII_I_|_Ill_Il_III_|_llI_lll_lII_|_l_IIII_IlI_I_Ill_|_lII_lll_Ill_lI_|_III_l_Il_IlI_lIlI_IIl_l_l_II_lI_llI_|_ll_Il_III_l_I_IlI_III_|_lll_IIlI_|_IllI_IIII_lIll_III_II_lIlI_III_|_lIll_lll_lIl_I_lII_|_l_IIII_I_|_Il_IlI_lIlI_IIII_lIll_IIIl_I_|_Il_lI_lII_|_l_IIII_I_II_IlI_|_II_lI_IIlI_II_lI_II_l_I_|_IIII_IIl_lI_llI_I_IlI_|_Il_lI_lII_|_lIll_I_l_IlIlIl_IlIlIl_IlIlIl_|_Il_lI_lII_|_lIll_I_l_|_Ill_I_|_IIlI_Il_IlII_IlII_IlIlIl_|_l_IIII_I_|_I_lI_I_ll_lIll_|_lIl_lI_lll_lIlI_lIl_III_|_Il_l_|_l_IIII_I_|_llI_Il_l_I_III_IlIlIl_|_l_IIII_I_|_lIlI_I_lI_l_I_IlI_|_lIlI_Il_lI_lI_lll_l_|_IIII_lll_IlII_lII_IlIlIl_|_l_IIII_I_IlI_I_|_II_III_|_l_II_ll_I_|_IIlI_lll_IlI_|_lll_lI_I_|_IlII_Il_III_l_|_Il_lIlI_l_IlIlIl_|_lIlI_IlI_I_Il_l_II_IIIl_I_llIIll_|_lII_I_III_l_IlI_IIl_lIlI_l_II_IIIl_I_llIIll_|_IIIl_I_lI_llI_I_IIlI_IIl_IlII_IlIlIl_|_l_IIII_lll_III_I_|_Ill_IIII_lll_|_IlII_II_IIIl_I_|_Ill_II_IlII_IlII_|_III_I_I_lII_|_lI_I_Ill_|_Ill_lll_IlI_IlII_lII_III_IlIlIl_|_l_IIII_lll_III_I_|_Ill_IIII_lll_|_lII_II_I_|_llI_lll_|_lll_IIl_l_|_II_lI_|_lIII_IlII_Il_llII_II_lI_llI_|_llI_IlII_lll_IlI_lIll_IlIlIl_|_IlII_II_lIl_I_|_Il_III_IIII_I_III_|_Ill_II_IlII_IlII_|_Ill_I_|_III_lIlI_Il_l_l_I_IlI_IlIlIl_|_l_lll_|_ll_Il_lIl_I_|_Il_|_IllI_IIII_lll_I_lI_II_lIIl_llIIll_|_lIII_IIl_IlI_lI_|_Il_|_...

From unknown world beyond Ottoclav

Correcting for the static pattern enables messages beyond Ottoclav to be heard more clearly.

Greetings All.

We regret to inform all and sundry that the 1,453rd playing of Autoclef the Resplendent’s 85th symphony will be postponed indefinitely. Services for the late Octavia von Bottstein will occur on the third rest of the second measure of the upcoming Pulse.

Conductor emeritus Clifton von Bottstein offers a reward of 8 Rares for the return of certain components of the Glass Organ of his Own Invention. No questions asked.

Sincerely, Claudia Pouf von Valvia
Orchestrator in Chief

From unknown world calling itself Arkator, beyond Ottoclav

As foretold, a light blaezes in the darkness! We know not why. The ancestorae wrote that we must warn all with these words:

The watch is ended, the seal is broken

What was closed shall open

What was banished shall return

Look to your shields, look to your spears, look to your seas

The God of Death Must Die Again.

The war is begun, the forge is lit

Minds opened must be closed.

What returns, banished.

Look to your shields, look to your spears, look to your seas

The God of Death Must Die Again.

These are the words of the ancestorae.

We convey, though we do not understand.

Arkae-Tai Leading Pair

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A ship matching the profile of those used by SpaceLords to carry Kaikaina away from Honua in ages past is detected in the Gate, arriving in the Oculon system. It is not broadcasting messages and has its running lights turned off. Kaikaina strike forces are familiar with this model of ship. An ambush against it is likely to succeed, with a fifty-fifty chance of capturing survivors and (separately) a sixty-forty odds favoring capture with negligible damage to the ship itself. The only wrinkle is….

Small, Fast, and Unknown

Another ship is entering the Oculon System on a different vector, broadcasting greetings in the clear. It identifies itself as the Arbitrage II, skippered by Clay Vomeron, traveling salesman. He says he’s here to talk terms, buy or sell. Resources, commodities, real estate, personnel, and more, he’s ready for business. Ships and shops, chips and chops, caves and slaves, he’s dealt it, felt it and all too often smelt it.

For a small fee, he’s even prepared to represent the Oculon system in negotiations with his own government, the Anchov Global Chamber of Commerce. Even over radio communications, his charisma is palpable and shame does not appear to be part of his emotional lexicon. Hai Dee’s eye for talent immediately recognizes that this individual is an adventurer/advisor level individual.

He says he’s brought samples of several commodities, and says that for the low, low earnest-money-down deposit of 1 Rare up front, he can deliver more on a contract basis cash-on-delivery.

Scans of his ship suggest it is made of some sort of ceramic never seen in any StarLord construction, and that a significant volume is occupied by low-density substances, likely a gaseous atmosphere. Experts estimate that no more than half this vehicle could be comprised of liquids.

Whatever else Clay Vomeron is, he’s likely to witness what goes down between the Kaikaina and the Land Lobsters.

Next Week: Signalling

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The settlers on Hoka still rely on steady streams of support and supplies from Honua, with some workers commuting for week-on, week-off shifts. By the close of Pulse 4 they expect to be able to sustain life locally. The Hoka Five-Year-Plan Committee anticipates a net-positive contribution to the Kaikaina economy, beginning with shipments of Ice to Honua on Pulse 5.

Vision Expansion

The Hobbyist Telescopers Guild has taken the initiative to refine Kaikaina imaging, using occlusion techniques to block the brilliant star of Ottoclav and view star systems further out. They patiently explain to Hai Dee’s sources that any society not adjacent to such a blazing-hot star would experience this degree of vision through PulseGates as their default state. The number of stars and systems connected to the Gate network is not known, but it is reasonable to assume an order of magnitude larger than those visible from Oculon.

The Telescoper’s Guild includes a guide for map markings: white areas with brown are fillers made necessary because the Gates do not map well into a two-dimensional representation. These areas are a fiction -- they don’t have Gates and don’t exist. Meanwhile, the grey areas at the map edges represent areas where there is no data to know whether further Gates exist.

Central features are stylized representations of the central star; Ottoclav being an exceptionally large Blue Giant, and Noir an apparent black hole. Symbols at the edge represent detectable traces of materials; yellow for Gas, blue triangle for Ice, red circle for Ore, pink diamond for Rares. It is likely that harvesting efforts set up in these areas would produce mostly the marked materials -- if societies already exist in these locations, trade, conversion, raiding, conquest etc. might unlock flows of these materials.

Next Week: Land Lobsters Detected

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Hai Dee has a team dredge the tanks and sift through the pebbles. Among the stones they find scraps of gold, laser-quality rubies and other valuables. The total take, including the stones seized from the crooked sisters, amounts to 4 Rares. The crooked sisters are sentenced to death. Hai Dee uses her influence to suspend their sentence and send them to re-education with the understanding that in the future any such discoveries should be funneled to her hearing, not to the black market. The sisters humbly express their gratitude and promise to study ever so hard so as not to disappoint the Motherland again. Hai Dee thinks they are lying, and likes them better for it.

I Spy… a Diplomatic Office

Through untraceable connections, Hai Dee makes it known that a Diplomatic Office would be useful. It is duly proposed and funded. Over the course of the Pulse, Hai Dee maneuvers to ensure young persons loyal to her will staff it. The work is not yet complete, but seems to be going well. While this office can function without leadership, Hai Dee expects better results once staffed with a high-caliber advisor.

Shipyard Shapes Up

The orbital shipyard can now be seen in the Oversea above Honua. Timelapse propaganda videos show it growing like a crystal snowflake, set to stirring patriotic soundtracks. It is anticipated that a ribbon-cutting ceremony can take place to coincide with the moment the Gate opens on Pulse 4. It would be reasonable to begin debates about what sort(s) of ship(s) should be constructed first.

Next Week: Beyond Brilliant

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The Research Office provides a quick scoping of the shapeshifter challenge posed by Hai Dee. Their proposed solution is modular and comes in phases:

Phase 1: Suits An engineering team should design and produce life-sustaining space suits in a variety of forms, each approximating the anatomy of species known to the Kaikaina or through SpaceLord legacy records. This project would consume all the attentions of the Artifice Office until completion. Researchers will attempt to fabricate the suits; failing fast to enable subsequent attempts to succeed. Researchers ask for authority to spend 1 Ore, 1 Ice, 1 Rare per Pulse until they succeed. The enthusiastic youngsters assert it will only take one Pulse. A more experienced researcher lurking near the wall silently raises three tentacles whenever this estimate is mentioned.

Phase 2: Gestures A thespian team should undertake studies of the holographic and visual records of the SpaceLords, enabling one or more Kaikaina to inhabit the suits and animate them with reasonable verisimilitude. In situations not requiring the removal of helmets, Kaikaina teams so trained could present themselves as members of a different species. This would require an exclusive commitment of the Cultural Office for 2 Pulses, a budget of 1 Ice and 1 Rare per Pulse — oh, and would require working suits (from Phase 1).

Phase 3: Skinwalking A biology team should investigate splicing young kaikaina directly into living or recently deceased captives, allowing the youngster to operate the skin and skeleton of the victim in lieu of their original muscles. Combined with a suit, this would enable Kaikaina operatives to fully infiltrate a targeted species, though it would require contact and capture of one or more sample individuals. Currently, only Land Lobster example suits are available; hatching Land Lobster eggs would provide captives for experimentation. Like the suit research, the team promises success or failure in a single pulse, but it is more realistic to assume multiple iterations homing in on success over time. Once successful with a given species, subsequent successes will refine the deception with a chance to reach the point where the skinwalker would go undetected even when nude. For this extremely exciting research the team needs a budget of 2 Ice, 2 Ores, 1 Rare, and 1 Captive per Pulse. The degree of excitement the team exhibits suggests a staff psychiatrist might also be in order.

Finally, a clerk from the Union of Exceptionally Diligent Bureaucrats, Cost-Saving Division, appends a note raising a second option. One or more individuals from other societies in the Oversea could be induced to participate in revolutionary activities -- either through persuasion, blackmail, subornment, or if necessary… pay. These methods may be more rapid or efficient than extensive research and development.

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Next Week: Traitorous Thief!

Close investigation into the dead SpaceLords (or as propagandists have begun insisting, the “Land Lobsters”), their anatomy, and their accoutrements continues. Discoveries come hard and fast:

1. The SpaceLords are sexually dimorphic, with females consistently larger than males and endowed with more prominent antennae.

2. Cloning SpaceLords… that is… Land Lobsters is beyond the immediate capabilities of the Kaikaina. Research through Wan Da’s office would be required to pursue this goal.

3. Most devices use interfaces and power sources the Kaikaina are already familiar with. The most common include radio communications devices, personal computation devices, health monitors, laser cutters, magnetic greaves for walking in null G on metal surfaces, and strength-assist joints. A few appear to have no function at all beyond their artistic merit.

4. Some of the personal computation devices include personal records. Hasty transcriptions reveal key information. Marked “unintelligible” initially, it is nigh incomprehensible to the generations of Kaikaina born after the revolution. Several of the SpaceLord females mention freezing clutches of eggs. These match up to refrigeration units in certain of the personal quarters. Out of over four hundred eggs so discovered, the biologists believe perhaps sixty may still be viable. The conditions necessary for hatching and raising SpaceLo-- ahem, Land Lobster -- young are inferred rather than known. However it may be possible to arrive at the correct formulation by trial and error.

5. One of the Land Lobsters wore a device that held two flat disc-like crystals against either side of its head, pressed against organs that have no analogue in Kaikaina anatomy. The techs investigating these make no headway until they give up on the device and focus on the Land Lobster organs. They are startled to discover biological lattices arranged like quantum particle detectors. Coupled with the disc devices, these strongly imply sensory organs attuned to exotic particles, or perhaps even… entangled?

6. Something is amiss with the Land Lobster documentation. “SpaceLords” are referenced as if they are another species than Land Lobsters, with differing life support requirements. There is an undertone of resentment.

Next Week: The Art of Deceit

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Si Mon is operating at fever pitch, enthusiastic to the point of almost continuous euphoria as he broadcasts how the glorious Revolution is taking the Kaikaina beyond the Undersea to their rightful place in what is now known in politically correct circles as the Oversea -- space itself. His office is more accustomed to trumpeting the slight overproduction of electric motors in the most recent quarter, and the need to immediately report any transgressions against the Good of the People. Now he’s able to promote not one, not two, but three projects promising new living space and new resources for the Kaikaina’s growing power. All three will come to fruition in the same Pulse -- he’s in ecstasy. The only thing higher than Si Mon is public opinion about the goodness of their government.

Also, the workers doing the actual labor report that everything is normal, progressing with no delays beyond those already well within the planning buffers. The first excavation of useful ores are expected during Pulse 4, with usable produce by Pulse 5.

The Nuclear Options:

The Kaikaina know a fair amount about the fundamental physics of nuclear power and weaponry. But because their practical knowledge comes from equipment left behind by SpaceLords, they’re closer to mastering fusion than fission.

For the Kaikaina, fusion power for spaceships would be a trivial accomplishment once the orbital shipyards are complete -- their drives won’t be terribly efficient and the reactions occurring inside them won’t be fully stable, but the cavalier Kaikaina attitude toward personal risk leads their engineers to simply plan lopsided containment fields that squeeze any instabilities out the aft end of the engine -- hey presto! Propulsion!

Likewise, the engineers are confident that nuclear armaments are well within their engineering grasp -- planetary defenses could use this type of armament. Fleets could be equipped with nuclear arms with a straightforward upgrade cycle as soon as resources permit.

However, Hai Dee specifically enquired about centrifuges and conversion of Ores to Rares, and the Kaikaina research team is nothing if not diligent in responding to the literal requests of leaders. Centrifuges could be built on Kanaka, which is also the source of the most promising Ore veins in the Oculon system. The most common fissionable ore there is uranium, accompanied by trace amounts of samarium. A fission tech path would certainly enable the production of exciting isotopes of Molybdenum, Technetium and Cesium, potentially even Europium.

For an expected cost of 10 Ore and 5 Ice, the researchers believe they can set up systems enabling a consistent 10 Ore to 1 Rare exchange rate.

Unless otherwise specified, the centrifuge plan is a straightforward daisy-chaining operation -- material passes from one centrifuge to the next in increasing concentration at each step. Discovering better sources of ore would result in better exchange rates of Ore to Rares without requiring any new construction. The theoretical limit on this exchange rate is 1 Ore to 3 Rare (noting that these Rares will exist as considerably less mass and volume than the Ore that previously contained them).

The physicists interviewed for this report point out that certain obscure translations of SpaceLord communiques suggest that facilities in the star system Palux performed a similar function for SpaceLord society, and their plans called for similar efforts at Ottoclav. this may explain the lack of technical specifications for centrifuge construction and other fission-related tech in SpaceLord library materials. Exploring Palux or Ottoclav may offer viable alternatives to homebrewed centrifuges.

Next Week: SpaceLords… SpaceServants?

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When evening comes, she travels round the shallows, ostensibly returning visits. In actuality several persons contacted have never been to her home. A few even lack awareness of her true identity and role, dismissing her politely and firmly as though she only delivered messages from more important persons.

Hai Dee visits the many line workers chopping kelp in the Public Soup and Tea Kitchen, sampling a cup of their more recent brew. How intriguing it would be, she mentions, to organize a way of understanding the interests and desires of those persons beyond the Gates. Perhaps solidarity could be found with Galactic persons oppressed as we once were. The others sip their tea and speak only of astrology, but among the younger kaikaina present, the skin-speak says we hear and we obey. To these eager youths the older generation seems a bit slow on the uptake, with skin-codes indicating amicable agreement. Banal phrases that literally mean this liquid is wet, and dawn comes after dark were definitely never used as recognition codes among the revolution’s deep-cover spies. Hai Dee leaves the line satisfied. The most zealous creators of the swiftly-announced Diplomatic Institute may never quite appreciate that it is a hub of spycraft.

Hai Dee calls on Pa Ina, and says she has been thinking about what a prize Kanaka is. Extracting its riches from the ground will be the hard work of the next wave of revolutionary masses, don’t you think? Pa Ina, when he thinks at all, does so in slogan form. He’s fairly frothing with them before Hai Dee says farewell. All of them have to do with bringing forth Ore. What’s Mine is Ours! and We Have Seized the Mines of Production, and the more oblique From the Top of the Sky to the Bottom of the Sea! Hai Dee plants the idea with Pa Ina to speak with representatives of the Ironworkers Local and the Union of Boilers and Smelters to back words with action.

Her next stops are simpler and more open. She brings snacks to the launch of the next crew sent up to the orbital shipyard, telling stories of her oppressed youth and her memories of the revolution, heaping praise upon these young ones for their conquest of the vacuum, urging them to continue their skilled labor.

Likewise, she shakes tentacles with workers and settlers headed for the moon-based expansion. Continuity, strength, determination, she signals to them. Praise to you who risk and sacrifice so much. Reward awaits us all.

Next she makes a visit to the political prison, where she sometimes volunteers in the re-education program. While there she slips a printed card into the shift-change records of the high-security guards. It is a memo on the recommended direction of research on the captured Land Lobsters. Can their cybernetic parts be reverse-engineered and re-programmed? Can their organic parts be cloned? A revolution coming full circle would square with the creation of a servile race of land-dwelling cyborg lobster clones, would it not?

These visits complete, Hai Dee turns to more difficult business. Each person she must reach is the sort of intellectual who can become dangerous to the revolution, and this means they are surveilled.

She visits with a Doctor of Cellular and Metabolic research, saying (accurately) she has brought them samples of tea from the Public Kitchens and has a research idea. The Doctor does not know with whom she speaks, but indulges the visit as a curiosity because it indeed sounds as though this elder knows a thing or two about microbiology. What ensues is a conversation that starts on warm and shallow reefs, then drifts inexorably over the edge of a continental shelf into black cold seas of terrifying depth, psychologically speaking. The Doctor slowly recognizes she is being asked by some anonymous, powerful Funding Committee to devote the remainder of her life to the science of transforming Kaikaina appearances. Shapeshifters and skindancers are what the Committee wants. Agents who can mimic alien life to infiltrate their societies without notice. Calculating that such research will be slow and fraught with failures, even in the best case, the Doctor tries to name-drop certain important persons to avert responsibility. Hai Dee agrees that the research is entirely voluntary, then mentions that her own voluntary work centers on the re-education program at the political prison. She speculates that it would be difficult to bring tea samples there, the guards are so choosy about what materials one can bring to prisoners. The Doctor accepts her commission.

The last research Hai Dee must spin up really does take her down into the chill depths of the undersea. She pretends to fall asleep at a certain bus stop, and allows the current to sink her down, down, down, limp and listless. When she “wakes”, she is surrounded by a security patrol at the perimeter of the exclusion zone of a radiological research station nestled in a deep-sea canyon. She does not need to feign a need to warm up before resurfacing, and knows her presence will cause reports to percolate up the chain of command at the facility. A short while later the head of security comes in personally to provide soup as a cover story for interrogation. This person is sophisticated enough to recognize Hai Dee and her true role in the government, but signals back to Hai Dee that the conversation will be observed. Hai Dee supplies a steady stream of bumbling commentary about how this place must be where they keep those centrifuges and isotopes her old physics professor was always banging on about being so important to the revolution. Between the lines she conveys a need to amplify this research, produce fissionable materials, and assemble a report for leadership about the recommended research pathways.

Full of warm soup, she floats back to the surface, catches a later bus, and returns to her own abode.

Next Week: Value from Rocks

From Shirk

Station six, please report. What is your situation? We have not received signal from your position, please check your comms array, consider rebooting power and reverting to factory settings. Clients enquiring about availability of product, desiring response ASAP.

Station Two

From Myrth

Station Six, do you require assistance? We are standing by. HQ enquiring about availability of product; we are unable to meet expected level of demand.

Station Four

From an unknown star beyond Ottoclav, with considerable interference

Greetings All.

We are delighted to see the gates [unintelligible, unintelligible] to welcome all audiences to attend the [unintelligible] playing of Autoclef the Resplendent’s 85th symphony, commencing [unintelligible] -ulse from this missive. The Third Orchestra will be [unintelligible, unintelligible] the renowned First Violinist Hench [unintelligible] Octuplets in C-Minor on the [unintelligible, unintelligible]-vention. Exceptional entertainment suitable for [unintelligible, unintelligible] triple-tie dress code and the ban on weapons of mass destruction, moderate mayhem and/or significant inconvenience remain in force [unintelligible] firmness and alacrity. For your convenience a coat check and gun lockers are [unintelligible, unintelligible] welcome your patronage.

Sincerely, Claudia Pouf von Valvia

Orchestrator in [unintelligible]

Postscript: A suggested donation of 1 Rare element will support future performances.

Next Week: Subtle is the head that wears no crown

The Pulse brings a few small ships to Oculon. They have many of the characteristics expected of SpaceLord vessels, though the design differs from anything the Kaikaina have seen before. They are both fast and nimble and will easily outstrip anything the Kaikaina can currently throw at them.

Establishing Spies

Hai Dee already has an extensive network of informants within the Oculon system. However, establishing spies in other star systems seems desirable. This can be done two different ways. Each is a multi-step process, with some steps optional and some required. In each case, optional steps would enhance the results:

1. Conduct a Cabinet reshuffle. Establishing a Diplomatic Office as a Cabinet-Level office would take 2 Pulses and would cost the equivalent of 15 Rares in a mix of bureaucratic fees, lost productivity and outright bribery. An existing advisor could fill this role, or (for additional expense around 10 Rares) a new advisor could be recruited and installed. Buying the kind of loyalty needed here ain’t cheap.

   1. A diplomatic office, once established, would enable recruitment, training, and placement of highly capable adventuring agents. Laundered properly through the diplomatic channel, adventurers can even be galactic foreigners. A secret committee could investigate and evaluate the background and skillset associated with a given adventurer.

2. Promote from within — subsidizing a hand-selected minion with 1 Rare per Pulse (until recalled) should enable them to establish contacts or conduct limited missions at personal peril to gain intelligence.

Broadcast Broadsides

Revolutionary propaganda is blasted toward Palux and Myrth. Though these are narrowly targeted to Palux and Myrth, travelers in those systems would also receive the broadcasts.

Research Track

With the Orbital Shipyard designed and under construction, Wan Da is available to scope new projects significant enough to alter the civilization’s capabilities. Or, you know, so she says. Her inclination is to begin sorting through the assets and materials on site at Pohaku to learn as much as possible from SpaceLord leftovers, but with such a volume of materials it’s very helpful to get guidance on where to begin and what sort of results to prioritize -- Weapons? Manufacturing? The SpaceLord’s written language? The request comes through back channels, of course. Simply a matter of friends having tea with friends. No one need know that Hai Dee is behind the direction of Wan Da’s research.

Next Week: Words on the Waves

The captured capsule is almost beyond belief. It contains no SpaceLords, and more than anything resembles Kaikaina excursion suits -- a sphere five meters wide made of thick transparent glass is ensconced in metalwork and life-support systems, drawing heat from a powerful rocket engine equipped with limited fuel. The whole of the capsule sits inside an enormous inverse hyperbolic cone made of compressed carbonaceous fibers and a sort of frothy foam. Wan Da infers from the design that it is made for entries into thick atmospheres at high speeds. It could penetrate the clouds of Olinolino, and though the rest of the equipment would be crushed, it’s conceivable the glass sphere at the center would even survive at the pressures believed to exist in that planet’s interior.

Most curious of all: the contents of that sphere. It is filled with water, salt and a dash of gravel. Within it waterweed grows. A pair of silvery, near-translucent fish each a meter long, somewhat skittish, hide in the weeds. Perhaps these were meant to feed a passenger during a voyage?

The capture team considers what to do with these, and decides -- without consulting leadership -- to bring them back to the Pohaku base and place them in the large waterweed tanks there.

Kanaka

The survey team sent to Kanaka reports that they find it highly suitable for mining. The hydrocarbon ice available on site is not much different from Honua’s frozen shell, and would not be economical to export, but does make it convenient to lubricate workers and machinery on-site. The engineers note that this is an excellent opportunity to gain experience operating in relatively dry environments.

A mining facility can be built here in 2 Pulses time for a cost of 1 Gas, 1 Ice, 3 Ore. There’s a lot of bluster about how grand the enterprise will be, wresting new materials from a new world. Reminded of their revolutionary oaths, the engineers state the facility is likely to produce 0-2 Ore per Pulse and is unfortunately unlikely to produce Rare elements.

Honua to Hoka

The call for settlers to Hoka is enthusiastically answered. Workers set to gathering supplies with a will, and short-range shuttles appropriate for travel between the moons begin moving ice drills and other equipment into position. Everything appears to be going smoothly and no further inputs from Hai Dee are required.

A Nation’s Worst-Kept Secret

Construction on the new orbital shipyard is undertaken with ostentatious displays of secrecy, intentionally designed to maximize public knowledge, pride and patriotism. The design calls for eight arms to protrude from a central sphere, with the sphere housing an artificial sea as home for the workers, and the interstices of the eight arms serving as drydocks for ships at various stages of completion. Nobody’s talking about it; everyone knows. Still better, everyone feels privileged to be entrusted with the secret. Pa Ina could hardly be more pleased with himself.

Next Week: Spies and other eyes?

Hai Dee can get nothing from the crumpled propaganda poster itself, but chats with the deliveryman who brings her morning meals and the sanitation workers who take away their results. With them she spends nearly as much time as she has allocated for her Cabinet members -- a demonstration of her commitment to comradely equality, and one that yields Hai Dee information often withheld from less meticulous leaders.

The sanitation workers mention seeing a sister from the Revolutionary Union of Benevolent Midwives, Undertakers and Funeral Directors in the neighborhood on the day in question. This is enough of a clue for Hai Dee to trace the movements of the mystery worker through the seas and back to the warm hollows where particularly influential expectant mothers go to lay their brood as their final act. From there the trail goes cold for a while. Hai Dee finagles a tour of the facilities by saying that she’s been sent to spot-check the census numbers against actual egg counts. Not until the seventh den does her effort bear fruit, in a den suffused with twin odors: death and early dementia.

Death comes from the partly-eaten corpse of the male mate, limp and adrift in the lowest niche of the cave. Dementia is obvious in the expectant mother’s eyes and in the dreamlike swirling of her skin colors. She mostly shows a high-contrast black and white display, one ancestrally used to startle sharks and other large predators upon close approach. Hai Dee attempts smalltalk and some oblique questions, but all the mother speaks about is how close her eggs are to hatching. Indeed, Hai Dee can see small kaikaina writhing within the sacs, nibbling at the membranes. Any moment they will bite their way free and fill this cave by the thousands. Fast, ravenous and unreasoning, they will consume both parents. Hai Dee cannot stay, but also does not need to.

Three words are etched into the cavern wall and floor near the corpse and partly covered by it. The last word only becomes legible when Hai Dee aims her jets at it on her way out of the cave:

Shirk Yellow Myth.

Land Lobsters

Past studies showed the SpaceLords’ outer layer, soft and flexible except around the lower extremities and the head, was manufactured and not biological. The inner layer, hard and inflexible, is made of some biological material. Dissected SpaceLords are anatomical oddities that do not fit well within the scope of biology as the Kaikaina know it -- something like a lobster without its flukes, made to walk upright and forced to breathe thin gases rather than delicious liquid methane. Kaikaina scientists have tentatively concluded that SpaceLords have characteristics most similar to crabs.

Within the facilities there is an abundance of equipment and machinery that is poorly understood, but a few discoveries are immediately notable:

1. A cache of Rare materials totaling 4 units.

2. Several voluminous pools of liquid dihydrogen monoxide, kept at absurdly warm temperatures with significant expenditure of energy. A strange species of seaweed grows here, which the Kaikaina name water-weed.

3. Markings on walls and machinery that are quite evidently the written language of the SpaceLords. Correctly interpreted it may aid in reverse engineering technologies or unlocking SpaceLord knowledge and motivations.

4. The final meal of the SpaceLords is still on their tables and in an area equipped with knives and bowls. Laboratory analysis is not necessary to determine the character of the material rolled in tight tubes of the strange water-weed. It is the flesh of Kaikaina.

5. On the far side of Pohaku the team finds a borehole housing a massive railgun. They are able to travel down the barrel of the gun to its initiation point, and discover a chamber filled with water ice. Breaching the ice reveals a further pair of chambers that terminate below the waterweed tank -- these chambers are filled with liquid water and are an appropriate size for SpaceLords to travel through in their suits.

Next Week: A captured capsule!

Pa Ina arrives first. He is, as usual, so meticulously orthodox to revolutionary doctrine as to become unbearable. It is agreed that propaganda must focus on the revolution’s destiny in the great sea beyond the ice, which is to say, the stars. The focus will be on the new settlement on Hoka as well as the mighty orbital shipyards. Despite the bland companionship, Hai Dee cannot keep her skin from signalling the thrill she feels at the thought of the revolution leaving Honua’s gravity well.

Koa Kau arrives next, eager to prove himself. He outlines in precise tactical detail plans for intercepting the capsule launched from Pohaku. He names the strike team that will investigate the facility from which it launched. Though clearly capable, Hai Dee muses, this young warrior remains altogether too keen to impress. Still, his plans are well-conceived and his briefings clear and crisp. The mystery of the SpaceLords and this belated launch teases the edge of Hai Dee’s thoughts, as does the mysterious note. Are they connected? HOW are they connected?

Wan Da and Si Mon come together. By now, Hai Dee has left her favorite sitting jar and finds herself floating freely about the room, tentacles extended. This incredibly vulnerable position culturally signals trust and openness. Hai Dee’s skin flashes a series of revolutionary slogans as the three of them discuss updates on the plans for an orbital shipyard and a fleet which will strike fear into the hearts of capitalists everywhere. It feels like old times.

Meeting done, Hai Dee turns to a job no other can perform to satisfaction. She pulls the mysterious poster from a hidden drawer and ponders its origin.

Salutations Sent

The kaikaina power up their broadcast systems to beam greetings to Myrth and Palux. The greeting in question:

Fellow Beings,

With the utmost humility and reverence for all forms of life, we bear tidings of friendship and peace.

For too long, the bloody imperialism of the Space Lords oppressed our world and yours. At last, the pulse gates have opened and we may, together, rise up to claim our glorious destiny in solidarity with one another! We hope to learn the story of your struggles and to teach you the story of our own. We hope that your story has been less tragic and perhaps as glorious as our own. We hope to forge lasting bonds of friendship and mutual security with all worlds. We hope that together, our worlds may elevate the downtrodden and to bring to each being peace, sustenance, shelter, and dignity! We live in a thrilling time, oh friends, when the stars lay open to a new era of justice and equality.

With Kinship and Friendship,

The Kaikaina of Occulon

Next Week: Dead Lobsters Tell Tales

1. Subsurface: The Kaikaina are most comfortable in the Undersea. This plan would enable shipyard workers to commute from their ordinary dens and work in ambient ocean conditions with no special gear. However, getting a ship constructed below waves up into the stars is costly. Infrastructure in this location would use more fuel for its first launch, and would require ice-cutting teams to clear a passage wide enough to reach the surface -- resulting in lost ice-harvesting time.

   1. Estimated Initial Cost: 2 Gas, 2 Ice, 4 Ore, 1 Pulse

   2. Operating Cost: 2 Gas and 1-4 Ice per ship launched

2. Surface: Shipyards could be built on the surface of Honua’s ice, with permanent, personnel-sized passageways up to the interior of an enormous snow-globe type structure. When each ship is finished, the interior is drained and the globe cracked open. Ships larger than the dome would need to be built in sections.

   1. Initial Cost: 4 Ice, 6 Ore, 2 Pulses

   2. Operating Cost: 1 Gas per Pulse (expended to prevent freezing)

3. Orbital: The most ambitious proposal is a fully orbital shipyard. This would be more expensive to construct initially, but is the only proposal that reduces rather than increases the expected cost of ships. Workers would need to be housed on-site, and some types of work would require vacuum-rated personal mobility pods. Pa Ina also notes the propaganda value of new housing that is in space.

   1. Initial Cost: 4 Gas, 4 Ice, 5 Ore, 1 Rare, 3 Pulses

   2. Operating Cost: -1 Gas per Pulse.

One Final Note

Hai Dee arrives back at her den for the first time in many days. Something smells wrong. There is the dead carapace of a sea urchin near her sleeping nook. Stuffed inside the hollowed shell of the spiky creature, she finds a wadded up propaganda poster. The printed poster shows a stylized Kaikaina prisoner in bonds, struggling mightily to escape a SpaceLord transport ship as it launches. The slogan reads They have taken my brothers but will never take me!! But on the obverse side of the poster, in someone’s personal ink, another message has been subtly shaded in skinspeak: I know where. There is no signature.

Next week: Decisions, decisions

Shot Fired

After the storming of Pohaku it was believed that all SpaceLord presence within the Oculon System had at long last been eliminated. This was evidently incorrect. Three days after the PulseGate closes, the garrison stationed on Pohaku (tasked with documenting and dismantling all equipment therein) reports that they detected a tremor and shortly afterward observed a SpaceLord capsule slingshotting past Olinolino’s vast mass. They inferred that this capsule had been launched from the far side of Pohaku. The capsule is too small to be directly observed from Honua, but when last sighted its speed and trajectory indicated a 93% probability that the capsule would intersect with the PulseGate at the next estimated opening.

Geography — is it Destiny?

The SpaceLords were cagey about their maps. They did not believe slaves needed to know about the worlds beyond the gate. Nonetheless, some information has been gleaned from the remnants of SpaceLord records:

• Oculon is the home of the Kaikaina. Its PulseGate connected to four star systems.

• Shirk is the home of the SpaceLords. It holds at least one gas giant.

• Noir is a system connected to the Gate at Shirk. It is named in SpaceLord records. No further information is known beyond its name.

• Palux is a system connected to the Gate at Shirk. It is named in the SpaceLord records, and the phrase “Made in Palux” appears on many items of advanced machinery, especially those requiring rare elements for operation.

• Crimp is a system connected to the Gate at Shirk. It is named in SpaceLord records. No further information is known beyond its name.

• Gelt is a system connected to the Gate at Shirk. It is named in SpaceLord records. No further information is known beyond its name.

• Myrth is a system connected to Oculon. It was a common destination for heavily laden ships departing Oculon, including those carrying Kaikaina slaves.

• Ottoclav is a system connected to Oculon. It is known to be hot and bright. Its light pours through the opened gate as proof, and overwhelms the sensors that Kaikaina scientists have in place. As a consequence, though the Kaikaina know they should be able to see all adjacent and visible star systems, upon the first opening of the Gate, they see only roiling plasma. Only after the gate closes does their analysis yield a glimpse of a rocky planetary body close to this system’s sun.

Next week: A mysterious note!

The Kaikaina live in the Undersea as brethren one for all. They are cephalopods, each blessed with eight limbs, three hearts, no skeleton, and one enormous brain. The current generation is the third since the Great Revolution in which the SpaceLords were overthrown. A few of the original Revolutionary Guard remain, but many have given their bodies over to breed and feed numerous progeny. In fact, a few too many have done so, in response to a spate of intra-Party accusations of selfishness and unseemly longevity. (Kaikaina biology means the act of giving life is invariably fatal; party ideology emphasizes self-sacrifice).

Compared against the Fifteen-year plan, eggs have been overproduced by nearly 50%; there will be hard times ahead unless the means of production can be augmented to meet the now-inevitable rise in demand.

Strong voices in the Party call for the Kaikaina to emulate nature, to tear open the encasement of ice that encircles their world and pour forth into the inky black sea of stars beyond. The SpaceLords came from this beyond. They used technologies to survive and command in the Undersea. Kaikaina can invert this script, using technologies to survive and traverse the vacuum to harvest resources from other worlds.

The dangers will be many. Death will come to many. But if anything the Kaikaina have an overabundance of life to spend.

Appearance

Kaikaina resemble the Giant Pacific Octopus. Provided with sufficient nutrients, there is no upper bound on their growth -- as they age they continue to grow. An arm span of 2 meters is the approximate measure of adulthood; an armspan of 20 meters is generally associated with geriatric decline, dementia and (in present society) disgust.

Kaikaina are a nitrogen-based life form. Their bodies are under certain conditions explosive.

Kaikaina are cold-blooded and in general, cold.

Kaikaina can change color and texture for camouflage. Red light does not penetrate the Undersea and is not visible to their natural eyes. Oddly, this means their natural, relaxed coloration range is red-to-pink, although Kaikaina would describe this as “black to white.” Their pigmentation covers yellow-to-purple, with the result that their camouflage capabilities focus on more or less the same range that is visible to human eyes. Tiny muscles below the skin can alter the texture of a Kaikaina in order to enhance its camouflage.

Kaikaina spacesuits are built in imitation of their bodies. They consist of a spherical pod with many tentacular robotic arms. Domed viewports sit where the eyes would; propulsion comes from side-mounted engines.

Personnel Files:

• Hai Dee is the subtle, brutal leader of the third wave of the Kaikaina revolution. She guides policy from the shadows, dealing death to enemies of the people.

• Si Mon is the current Political Committee Chairman, an opportunist who knows how to ride a rising tide. Among the first to recognize Hai Dee’s potential, he has been her ride-or-die throughout the long ascent to power. Si Mon’s talents are tactical -- when provided with a goal for a meeting or a script for a speech, he delivers most assiduously. Left to plan for himself, he tends to (very successfully!) pursue immediate goals at the expense of long-term advantage.

• Wan Da is the Chief Scientist, renowned for her ability to reverse engineer the accomplishments of the SpaceLords and repurpose materiel seized by the revolution. She was a field mechanic in the Great War, and despite her immense size and advanced age was spared from the pressure of death-by-motherhood in view of the fact that every ship, every spacesuit made by the Kaikaina can rightly and directly be considered her mechanical offspring. Having survived several “unplanned rapid disassembly” of SpaceLord Artefacts, she is somewhat hard of hearing, is missing the tip of her first tentacle, and bears several scars.

• Pa Ina is the Culture Minister, a role that nominally is about mass public displays praising the revolution, but also including the approval or disapproval of content allowable in mass media. A master of skin-speech, he tends to reduce thoughts automatically into slogan form, and is a model of politically correct manners.

• Koa Kau is the Minister of the Violent Revolution. Koa Kau is the newest member of the Cabinet, inheriting the role after the death-by-motherhood of the famous revolutionary warrior Ka Naka. Koa Kau participated in the destruction of the last holdout of SpaceLords on Pohaku -- an unusually bloody battle even by the standards of the Kaikaina. Koa Kau is a propaganda hero lauded for his great courage, leading the final victorious charge down the last, deeply defended corridor in the SpaceLord Base, a charge that had brought nothing but death to four prior waves of troops. Something of a blunt instrument, in attitude and intellect.

Next week: Shot fired!

Hai Dee sees the bright line of cavitation bubbles making its way through the public chambers toward her private cavern. Usually her messengers are more subtle -- the news must be urgent, for the messenger comes clinging to an army-issue twin-jet torpedo. She reaches under a rock and grasps the herringbone handle of a flensing blade with one tentacle, just in case. She keeps her color calm, mentally reviewing her hold on power. If someone has gone eelwise on her, ink and ichor will flow like water this night.

“Great success!” says the skin of the messenger, as it comes into view. Hai Dee approves, but does not relax. All brothers and sisters who have seen the messenger arrive will whisper about good news arriving at great speed. But the skin display of the messenger would be the same, if he were here with murder in minds.

“Ho Comrade!” says Hai Dee. She extends her third tentacle sucker-side out, the revolutionary salute appropriate to her age cohort.

“Ha Comrade!” says the messenger. “Your presence is urgently requested owing to great success unlooked-for in the sea-that-floats-beyond-ice-and-wind. After the conclusion of the latest experiment, the Gate has opened. I present to you this fast transport, that you may rapidly arrive to advise the Political Committee upon the correct revolutionary course!”

“Ho Comrade,” says Hai Dee. “You serve the revolution well.” She grasps the torpedo’s controls and conforms herself to its contours. Before she opens the throttle, she thinks a moment. On her skin she paints in vivid turquoise a slogan often used in the revolution’s first wave: Courage Seizes the Means of Production!

She salutes the messenger. She brings the knife.

Next Week: Personnel Appearance & Personal Appearance