The water was contaminated, something was leaking. Gal'Vir could taste it. The life support systems could filter it out, but could only keep up if the leak was found. The ship song resounded with a choir of reports from the Liir searching for the source. Through coordination, they had quickly eliminated a host of possible causes and had narrowed their search down to a single corridor. In it a fuel line had ruptured, ship fuel diffused through the water so thoroughly it had become poison. Gal'Vir watched as if through his own eyes as the crew donned environment suits to swim down the corridor. These environment suits were living things born from the ship's strand weavers, wrapping themselves around the Liir and protecting them. They could survive in a vacuum and with a few hundred nimble moving tendrils they could even move across dry land. Through the ship song Gal'Vir watched as the breach in the metal fuel line was forced closed through telekinetic force. Bands of metal were wrapped around the breach to secure it, the metal being reshaped by the telekinesis of the crew.
The steel singers had patched the hole. The life web that had spread throughout the ship, living on and in its walls, ceilings and floors perked up as the flow of poison ceased, closing in to replace their lost bretheren. First among them was one that would filter out the fuel and clean the water. That was why they had been made, their purpose determined by each ship, and the strand singers onboard, forming small, isolated ecosystems in the void.
These were old ships. The one he currently resided on had originally been built by the Suul'ka thousands of years ago. They had kept it running through determination and salvaged tech they found or forcibly acquired. It was once a Suul'ka ship, a large freighter of theirs, but now it was something else entirely. A mish-mash of contrasting, poorly understood technologies sewn together with a skein of biotechnology to stop it all coming apart at the seams. It was a massive ship but it had not been built for combat nor had it been built to be filled with water for a few thousand years. Not in its original form.
The low groan of its creaking hull reverberated through the water it contained, accentuated by the hiss and bubble of the lifeweb spread throughout. This was the base ship of their little fleet. It had little combat power, but the Suul'ka never did anything by half measures and thus this freighter was far larger than any other ship they had encountered. To everyone else, it was a vast dreadnought built from unknown tech with unknown capabilities. It was a terrifying visage that in truth was only intact due to the endless efforts of its occupants, and a well-placed shot could easily split it open. But it was a intimidating, and it was the heart of the fleet, a mobile base for the Gal’Vir’s nomads. The other ships were ships that similarly had been salvaged or 'requisitioned' from their owners and converted to be a livable environment for the Liir where possible. Not all ships took well to be filled with water and organisms. The ones that did were the true military power of the fleet, which didn't actually amount to all that much. The weapons they had, they didn’t fully understand, and a lot of the differing technology of the alien species they had found often did not take well to being submerged in water, nor did waterproofing membranes always take well.
The steel singers swam on, there was more work for them to do, more metal for them to reshape. The machine singers sang of their work as they programmed new subroutines into the ship's mainframe to support new additions that had been made. Being unable to fill the mainframe's containment with water without destroying it, they swam outside and manipulated its controls remotely. The strand singers sang of birthing a new more efficient food source that could feed the ship and use less space. The gunner crews sang a tune of vigilance. Every Liir onboard sang and the ship song was beautiful.
They had swum this void since the fall of the Suul'ka. He had led this fleet the entire time since then. Many were born and had died on these ships, under his care. A moving pocket of civilization in the great deep. But he could not help but worry. Something had changed in the void. His planet-bound kin had gone to war. The song of the ship changed as the crew detected his worries.
One of the crew sang to him <Elder, why are you out of rhythm?> the message was layered with concern and his crew member's own thoughts had leaked into the message adding a layer of <(If Gal'Vir is worried then it's probably bad)> to the song. It was beautiful, the error only adding to the harmony.
<It is all right, I am just thinking of distant and abstract dangers>
<About the war?> <(Isn't the war an opportunity for us? There should be lots of salvage for the taking?)>
<It is an incredible opportunity to get involved in something we have no clue what the outcome will be. To get involved where our presence would not go unnoticed or unchallenged. We can pick the bones of the losers when the sediment has settled. Not before. This is the current we must follow if we want to avoid destruction. But the violence of the war is not the only thing bringing me worry. I worry about what it represents. Our kin who swim in Va’Laara’s waters, they worry me. Did you know I once took the fleet near our home, close enough to hear its song? Can you guess what I heard?>
Various members of the crew offered suggestions, their participation in the conversation consistent regardless of their distance or the tasks they were performing. None fit though, none were accurate.
<Homogeneity. They were a democracy, a true democracy full of individuals where every voice is heard directly and immediately. No set government, there is no need for such an organization. The population is the government. They were a democratic anarchy. Something impossible without the song. But then why are all so similar? Why was there so little dissent and division in the song? Why aren't there factions like our illustrious fleet? It took me a while to figure it out. A little too long for my own worries. The song itself is to blame. It is an echo chamber. The mainstream opinions grow louder and the less mainstream opinions grow quieter. The young hear the song as soon as they are born. Their minds are flooded with the dominant ideologies of the song when they first start thinking. The song is our greatest strength and our most profound weakness. It is why I have asked us to perform fleet song only in battle, why I want us to remain within our ship songs and why I want everyone to rotate the ships they serve on. The nomad fleets are diverse and we must maintain our diversity>
<I don't understand. Why is a long past visit to the homeworld worrying you now?>
<Listen young ones and listen well; I can be wrong. In fact, I often am wrong. I hope I am wrong about this. Their song, that political echo chamber of theirs, can allow terrible ideas to go unchallenged and unexamined. It does not let them see when they are wrong. On its own, it is concerning but mix that with war and it produces something that worries me greatly>
<You're scared they're going to lose?>
<No young one, I'm scared about what will happen if they win>
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Topic: The Liir Biocollective Empire Thread | Liir | GalactiRace (Read 27027 times)