Derin Edala

Wandering Star 54: The Echoes in Stone

After they eat, Mia and Kemia offer to give them a tour of the hive. Smon politely declines, claiming that she must rest. Tyk knows that Smon must be burning with curiosity about the hive, but also understands her dilemma; Smon doesn’t want to get caught up in any conversations in a language she hardly speaks with people whose mores and manners she barely understands, who think she’s a god. She’s worried about being put in a position where she’d have to either lie about her identity o...

19: A Plan

We should build a train,” Kieth said.

We’d found them on the bridge, having finished their tour, laughing and applauding as Glath turned into various aliens and objects for their entertainment. I’d checked that the shyr was still imprisoned (she was, but maybe we should switch over to the other ship, just in case?), answered some of Kate’s questions when she glanced at the external cameras (“hey, I don’t want to alarm anyoene, but there’s a giant space squid outside the sh...

Wandering Star 53: Nepotism

“What’s your read on Mia?” Smon asks. “Fairly nervous, if I’m reading her body language correctly?”

“Well, she’s very young. And she and Kemia are in charge of looking after a god, so far as they know. It’s natural to be afraid.”

“You were never afraid of me.”

“Many of the Redstone River Hive were.”

“Not you, though.”

“I saw a clumsy, guileless baby crawl out of her egg alone and in need of help. What was there to be afraid of?�...

18: Royally Stubborn

“I mean,” Kate said, “there are multiple potential solutions. The problem is finding one that we have any ability to enact. The obvious method, and a method that might be within our power, is to help the Empire establish a trade route with some smaller, distant nests and directly import dohl, and if that’s stable then we can try to spread the method to neighbouring Empires. Obviously, we’re not going to even attempt that. Not only would it be a stopgap measure that depends on the ab...

Wandering Star 52: Metal and Magic

“The plan,” Smon explains, “is to build a Rayjo Tau, which is our version of a communication tower, on the Northern side of the mountain range, overlooking the ocean.”

“That won’t work,” one of the men, who had introduced himself as Keton, protests. “Not only will the mountain range block your communication, but the wingsong stream is dead on that side, anyway. You could probably find an active stream if you looked hard enough, but it wouldn’t carry anywhere useful, un...

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After Wandering Star and Charlie MacNamara are both complete, the next Derin story will be... one of these! Patreon members, vote for your favourites in the poll!

Holy Light

Nobody really noticed when the Rapture took place. In retrospect, the sudden uptick of missing person’s cases might have been visible in the data had the data still existed by the time anyone would think to check, but in the moment an extra hundred and forty four thousand people disappearing...

17: The Imperial Flaw

“So the main important factor is that the Out-Western Aljik Empire is not, in fact, an empire,” Kate explained. “I’m sure that Glath did as best he could translating from a stack of dictionaries with no knowledge of human culture, but to call this nest an ‘empire’, in the sense that we human English-speakers understand the term, is woefully misleading.”

“Okay,” I said. We were in my quarters, on the Oval Nine. (The boys were taking a tour of the ship with Glath.) Kate ...

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Wandering Star 51: Glittergem

The first group from Glittergem that they run into are fully expecting them, meaning that they must not have seen whoever initially spotted them and told the hive. It’s a group of three men, all looking very concerned and confused at the lack of an adult escort.

“So the wingsong stream isn’t up again yet?” Tyk asks after everyone does all the formal greetings and soforth and she’s swarmed by concerned strangers fussing over every minor injury and wing-cooing at Ketyk.

�...

16: Interviews

While my sister, with the help of Glath and Derek, interviewed the aljik, I had a shyr to deal with.

Loathe as I was to leave the boys, I wasn’t taking either of them back onto my ship while the shyr was still a threat. I left Keith with the others and headed back by myself.

It would be so, so easy to just leave the shyr to die. Safer, too, probably. Every time I saw the metal on the side of Derek’s head, I considered it. But then I’d meet my sons’ eyes and realise that I ...

Wandering Star 50: Spider Sense

“This is where we leave you,” Saima says in the morning, as the neima take one last look over the farm to make sure it’s all in order and load Tyk up with so much food that she wonders if she’ll need to forage again at all before reaching Glittergem.

“Can’t we go a bit further?” Tama asks. “Those of us who aren’t exiles could escort them all the way up to – ”

“Now, Tama, you know how unsafe it is to break up a group as small as ours,” Saima says. “We wo...

15: Overview

“They have strict biological castes,” I explained. “Like ants or bees. Everyone has their own job, very little crossover.”

“So not really like ants and bees,” Kate said. “Ants have castes that are naturally better equipped for certain jobs, but they’ll all do what needs doing. If you grow ants in a farm with nobody to fight or guard against, the soldiers and the extra queens (assuming they’re not the kind that kills extra queens who won’t leave) will do the same work...

Wandering Star 49: Tolls and Trades

Tyk comes away from the encounter with the nedorm with one particular worry on her mind, and she’d like to talk to Saima privately about it, but their pattern of movement makes that somewhat difficult. She isn’t willing to leave Smon to go foraging, and Smon isn’t willing to leave the farm, so the only one of the neima she can easily get alone is Samet, pulling the cart. Well, Samet will have to do. She waits for a moment when Kemet is high above scouting and the others are foraging, an...

14: Blind Spot

There was a knock on the door which, given the nature of spaceships, would have been quite a heavy thump on the other side. My family’s little cabin had an airlock in the outside corridor, so they didn’t suit up before Glath opened said door and peeked into the room.

“Sorry to interrupt,” he said, “but Charlie, we got her.”

“Alive or dead?” I asked.

“Presumably alive. They made sure she got inside the gun before disconnecting it, so…”

“She went ...

13: Just Desserts

“So you’re queen-captain of an alien starship?” Keith asked. “That’s super cool! Derek, we can be astronauts on Mum’s crew!”

Derek twitched his shoulders and bobbed his head in an aljik gesture of enthusiastic assent.

“What?” I said. “Oh, no. No, no, no. Space is dangerous. We’re going home.”

“You didn’t manage to get home before now,” Kate pointed out. “Do you think it’ll be easier with four of us?”

“Yes. Obviously. You guys stole...

Wandering Star 48: This Again

Tyk had forgotten how strange an experience it was to see a sky person for the first time. The soft being swathed in silks and looking like the front half of an enormous baby raises its mandibles tipped with fleshy tentacles and speaks in the disjointed voices of multiple strangers, and the nedorm stare.

“I am Smon,” she repeats. “I mean no harm.”

The nedorm stare some more.

“I am trying to get to Glittergem Hive. I don’t want any trouble on the way.”

Ked...

12: Face To Face

We docked. The shuttle door opened. And there they were.

Three humans, wearing space suits that looked rather more like human space suits than the ones the ketestri had made for me. One adult, two children. I drifted out of the pod, and both of my sons crashed straight into me, wrapping their arms around me.

“Mum!”

“”Boys! It’s okay now, it’s okay.” I wanted so much to touch them, but I couldn’t feel them through the rigid suits.

“What happened to you...

Wandering Star 47: Border Dispute

“Did they see Smon?” Saima asks.

“Hard to say. She travels under the farm cover sometimes, so they may not have. I don’t know when they spotted us. They were already heading back and their scout wasn’t surprised to see me, so far as I could tell, so they could’ve seen us at any time.”

“You could tell a lack of surprise at that distance?” Samet asks.

“Kemaska was the scout and he didn’t immediately drop out of the sky and try to hide when he realised I�...

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11: Catching Up

Behind me, the crew were panicking. They didn’t understand what I was saying or who I was talking to. Glath was talking a lot; probably explaining the situation. I ignored them all. Nobody was pulling me away from the comms, and that was all that mattered.

“Derek! Are you alright, love? What’s going on? Do you need help?”

“Mum!” He started crying. “I was scared you were dead.”

“It’s okay, sweetie, I’m here. Where’s your brother? Are you two alright?�...

Wandering Star 46: On the Road Again

Despite Smon’s rush to contact the Northern sky people as quickly as possible and Tyk’s eagerness to get Ketyk to a hive as quickly as possible, their remaining days at the little burrow seem to pass in no time at all. By the end of it, Smon looks thicker in body, with less tears in her skin, and has a slightly improved farm and new undamaged foot coverings courtesy of the other sky people. Tyk, too, feels stronger, and certainly more capable of fending for herself and Ketyk. Ketyk can’...

10: Standoff

“In a firefight, which ship is better?” the alien spokesperson asked.

Sil had been dreading that question. He didn’t want to kill the crew of the Oval Nine, and he wanted his own crew dead even less. If it came to a choice between them though, the facts were fortunately on his side.

“A battle would be dangerous for both ships,” he explained, “but ours would have the advantage. Moon class ships are designed primarily for orbital operations and planet work. They’re les...

Wandering Star 45: Community Culture

Tyk is getting pretty good, she thinks, at the Hiveless methods of foraging. She’s nowhere near as efficient as them, but she is only just learning the basics.

They harvest more thoroughly than hives would, taking more from each plant or animal colony, and then leaving them alone for a full year or more to grow back up to size. “It takes patience,” Saima says while out with Tyk and Ketyk one morning, showing Tyk how to strip the spinnable husks and edible surface roots from the st...

9: Encounter

“You had those beasts down there hide it in their labyrinth, didn’t you?” Queen Tatik asked.

Her sister flicked her arms in a dismissive gesture. “Feel free to ask them. But I’d be careful, if I were you. You wouldn’t want to destroy it accidentally with heavy weaponry, meaning that if you end up in a physical conflict… well, a labyrinth isn’t a good place to fight drakes.”

Tatik doubted that that would be a problem. Small hand weapons would surely be enough to g...

Wandering Star 44: Native Tongue

The next day, Tyk’s stomach ache hasn’t gone away, and the day after that, when the rain stops, it’s sharp and insistent. She’s starting to worry that something serious is wrong with her as she climbs out into the tunnel in the morning to see the women clearing the entrance, letting the early morning sunlight pour in.

“That was close,” Saima remarks as she approaches. “I was worried that we’d be working in the heavy rain. It looks like you’ll have Tahku’s blessing, m...

8: Doomed Quests

Their attackers weren’t aljik.

Sil wasn’t sure exactly what they were, crowded in what remained of their ship and clad in space suits. They had four limbs – two arms and two legs, it looked like, although it was hard to be certain since they, like he, were floating – with dextrous claws and fairly small heads, hidden behind bubble helmets. Everything about them was fairly small. It would’ve been hard tot ake them seriously, if the destruction of mere minutes ago hadn’t been ...

Wandering Star 43: Making Magic

Tyk, diplomatically, does her best not to look horrified by whatever that could possibly mean. She has trouble picturing what a ‘lightning river’ could be, but it definitely doesn’t sound good. Dem spots her expression, says ‘wait’, and seems to think very hard for a moment before trying again. This sentence, unlike the lightning river one, is constructed from echoes of voices that Tyk knows very well rather than the voices of the Hiveless.

“They are designing a stone for co...

7: Ownership

Sil was not used to zero gravity conflict. Safin’s reports echoed in his ears as he pulled himself away from the wall and got his bearings again. “Hull integrity: as intact as it was prior to the incident. External dash shielding: destroyed. External weapons: about 50% of them destroyed. Communications system: partly functional.”

“Partly?” Sil asked, still trying to figure out what had just happened.

“We can receive messages. We can’t transmit.”

“They made ...

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