Global Info Research announces the release of the report “Global Carbon Fiber Wheel Hub Cap Market 2023 by Manufacturers, Regions, Type and Application, Forecast to 2029” . The report is a detailed and comprehensive analysis presented by region and country, type and application. As the market is constantly changing, the report explores the competition, supply and demand trends, as well as key factors that contribute to its changing demands across many markets. Company profiles and product examples of selected competitors, along with market share estimates of some of the selected leaders for the year 2023, are provided. In addition, the report provides key insights about market drivers, restraints, opportunities, new product launches or approvals, COVID-19 and Russia-Ukraine War Influence.
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According to our (Global Info Research) latest study, the global Carbon Fiber Wheel Hub Cap market size was valued at USD million in 2022 and is forecast to a readjusted size of USD million by 2029 with a CAGR of % during review period. The influence of COVID-19 and the Russia-Ukraine War were considered while estimating market sizes.
​
Key Features:
Global Carbon Fiber Wheel Hub Cap market size and forecasts, in consumption value), sales quantity, and average selling prices, 2018-2029
Global Carbon Fiber Wheel Hub Cap market size and forecasts by region and country, in consumption value, sales quantity, and average selling prices, 2018-2029
Global Carbon Fiber Wheel Hub Cap market size and forecasts, by Type and by Application, in consumption value, sales quantity, and average selling prices, 2018-2029
Global Carbon Fiber Wheel Hub Cap market shares of main players, shipments in revenue, sales quantity, and ASP, 2018-2023
​
The Primary Objectives in This Report Are:
To determine the size of the total market opportunity of global and key countries
To assess the growth potential for Carbon Fiber Wheel Hub Cap
To forecast future growth in each product and end-use market
To assess competitive factors affecting the marketplace
This report profiles key players in the global Carbon Fiber Wheel Hub Cap market based on the following parameters - company overview, production, value, price, gross margin, product portfolio, geographical presence, and key developments.
​
Request Free Sample Copy Or buy this report at:
https://www.globalinforesearch.com/reports/1535156/carbon-fiber-wheel-hub-cap
The Carbon Fiber Wheel Hub Cap market is segmented as below:
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Market segment by Type
Original
Customize
Racing Car
​
Market segment by Application
Sedan
SUV
Sports Car
​
Major players covered
BDK
Pilot Automotive
Alpena
OxGord
Stemco
SKF
AmstedSeals
HubcapMike
BMW
Castlecooper
​
The Main Contents of the Report, includes a total of 15 chapters:
Chapter 1, to describe Carbon Fiber Wheel Hub Cap product scope, market overview, market estimation caveats and base year.
Chapter 2, to profile the top manufacturers of Carbon Fiber Wheel Hub Cap, with price, sales, revenue and global market share of Carbon Fiber Wheel Hub Cap from 2018 to 2023.
Chapter 3, the Carbon Fiber Wheel Hub Cap competitive situation, sales quantity, revenue and global market share of top manufacturers are analyzed emphatically by landscape contrast.
Chapter 4, the Carbon Fiber Wheel Hub Cap breakdown data are shown at the regional level, to show the sales quantity, consumption value and growth by regions, from 2018 to 2029.
Chapter 5 and 6, to segment the sales by Type and application, with sales market share and growth rate by type, application, from 2018 to 2029.
Chapter 7, 8, 9, 10 and 11, to break the sales data at the country level, with sales quantity, consumption value and market share for key countries in the world, from 2017 to 2022.and Carbon Fiber Wheel Hub Cap market forecast, by regions, type and application, with sales and revenue, from 2024 to 2029.
Chapter 12, market dynamics, drivers, restraints, trends, Porters Five Forces analysis, and Influence of COVID-19 and Russia-Ukraine War.
Chapter 13, the key raw materials and key suppliers, and industry chain of Carbon Fiber Wheel Hub Cap.
Chapter 14 and 15, to describe Carbon Fiber Wheel Hub Cap sales channel, distributors, customers, research findings and conclusion.
​
The analyst presents a detailed picture of the market by the way of study, synthesis, and summation of data from multiple sources by an analysis of key parameters. Our report on the Carbon Fiber Wheel Hub Cap market covers the following areas:
1.Carbon Fiber Wheel Hub Cap market sizing
2.Carbon Fiber Wheel Hub Cap market forecast
3.Carbon Fiber Wheel Hub Cap market industry analysis
4.Analyze the needs of the global Carbon Fiber Wheel Hub Cap business market
5.Answer the market level of global Carbon Fiber Wheel Hub Cap
6.Statistics the annual growth of the global Carbon Fiber Wheel Hub Cap production market
7.The main producers of the global Carbon Fiber Wheel Hub Cap production market
8.Describe the growth factor that promotes market demand
​
Global Info Research is a company that digs deep into global industry information to support enterprises with market strategies and in-depth market development analysis reports. We provides market information consulting services in the global region to support enterprise strategic planning and official information reporting, and focuses on customized research, management consulting, IPO consulting, industry chain research, database and top industry services. At the same time, Global Info Research is also a report publisher, a customer and an interest-based suppliers, and is trusted by more than 30,000 companies around the world. We will always carry out all aspects of our business with excellent expertise and experience.
​
Contact Us:
Global Info Research
Web: https://www.globalinforesearch.com
CN: 0086-176 6505 2062
HK: 00852-5819 7708
US: 001-347 966 1888
Email: [email protected]
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​
​

Global Info Research announces the release of the report “Global Automotive Carbon Fiber Wheel Hub Market 2023 by Manufacturers, Regions, Type and Application, Forecast to 2029” . The report is a detailed and comprehensive analysis presented by region and country, type and application. As the market is constantly changing, the report explores the competition, supply and demand trends, as well as key factors that contribute to its changing demands across many markets. Company profiles and product examples of selected competitors, along with market share estimates of some of the selected leaders for the year 2023, are provided. In addition, the report provides key insights about market drivers, restraints, opportunities, new product launches or approvals, COVID-19 and Russia-Ukraine War Influence.
​
According to our (Global Info Research) latest study, the global Automotive Carbon Fiber Wheel Hub market size was valued at USD million in 2022 and is forecast to a readjusted size of USD million by 2029 with a CAGR of % during review period. The influence of COVID-19 and the Russia-Ukraine War were considered while estimating market sizes.
​
Key Features:
Global Automotive Carbon Fiber Wheel Hub market size and forecasts, in consumption value), sales quantity, and average selling prices, 2018-2029
Global Automotive Carbon Fiber Wheel Hub market size and forecasts by region and country, in consumption value, sales quantity, and average selling prices, 2018-2029
Global Automotive Carbon Fiber Wheel Hub market size and forecasts, by Type and by Application, in consumption value, sales quantity, and average selling prices, 2018-2029
Global Automotive Carbon Fiber Wheel Hub market shares of main players, shipments in revenue, sales quantity, and ASP, 2018-2023
​
The Primary Objectives in This Report Are:
To determine the size of the total market opportunity of global and key countries
To assess the growth potential for Automotive Carbon Fiber Wheel Hub
To forecast future growth in each product and end-use market
To assess competitive factors affecting the marketplace
This report profiles key players in the global Automotive Carbon Fiber Wheel Hub market based on the following parameters - company overview, production, value, price, gross margin, product portfolio, geographical presence, and key developments.
​
Request Free Sample Copy Or buy this report at:
https://www.globalinforesearch.com/reports/1535154/automotive-carbon-fiber-wheel-hub
The Automotive Carbon Fiber Wheel Hub market is segmented as below:
​
Market segment by Type
Streamline
Multi-spoke
​
​
Market segment by Application
Sedan
SUV
Sports Car
​
Major players covered
Carbon Revolution
Zipp
Bucci Composites
Emergent Carbon Wheels
Dymag
Geric
ESE Carbon Company
BST
​
The Main Contents of the Report, includes a total of 15 chapters:
Chapter 1, to describe Automotive Carbon Fiber Wheel Hub product scope, market overview, market estimation caveats and base year.
Chapter 2, to profile the top manufacturers of Automotive Carbon Fiber Wheel Hub, with price, sales, revenue and global market share of Automotive Carbon Fiber Wheel Hub from 2018 to 2023.
Chapter 3, the Automotive Carbon Fiber Wheel Hub competitive situation, sales quantity, revenue and global market share of top manufacturers are analyzed emphatically by landscape contrast.
Chapter 4, the Automotive Carbon Fiber Wheel Hub breakdown data are shown at the regional level, to show the sales quantity, consumption value and growth by regions, from 2018 to 2029.
Chapter 5 and 6, to segment the sales by Type and application, with sales market share and growth rate by type, application, from 2018 to 2029.
Chapter 7, 8, 9, 10 and 11, to break the sales data at the country level, with sales quantity, consumption value and market share for key countries in the world, from 2017 to 2022.and Automotive Carbon Fiber Wheel Hub market forecast, by regions, type and application, with sales and revenue, from 2024 to 2029.
Chapter 12, market dynamics, drivers, restraints, trends, Porters Five Forces analysis, and Influence of COVID-19 and Russia-Ukraine War.
Chapter 13, the key raw materials and key suppliers, and industry chain of Automotive Carbon Fiber Wheel Hub.
Chapter 14 and 15, to describe Automotive Carbon Fiber Wheel Hub sales channel, distributors, customers, research findings and conclusion.
​
The analyst presents a detailed picture of the market by the way of study, synthesis, and summation of data from multiple sources by an analysis of key parameters. Our report on the Automotive Carbon Fiber Wheel Hub market covers the following areas:
1.Automotive Carbon Fiber Wheel Hub market sizing
2.Automotive Carbon Fiber Wheel Hub market forecast
3.Automotive Carbon Fiber Wheel Hub market industry analysis
4.Analyze the needs of the global Automotive Carbon Fiber Wheel Hub business market
5.Answer the market level of global Automotive Carbon Fiber Wheel Hub
6.Statistics the annual growth of the global Automotive Carbon Fiber Wheel Hub production market
7.The main producers of the global Automotive Carbon Fiber Wheel Hub production market
8.Describe the growth factor that promotes market demand
​
Global Info Research is a company that digs deep into global industry information to support enterprises with market strategies and in-depth market development analysis reports. We provides market information consulting services in the global region to support enterprise strategic planning and official information reporting, and focuses on customized research, management consulting, IPO consulting, industry chain research, database and top industry services. At the same time, Global Info Research is also a report publisher, a customer and an interest-based suppliers, and is trusted by more than 30,000 companies around the world. We will always carry out all aspects of our business with excellent expertise and experience.
​
Contact Us:
Global Info Research
Web: https://www.globalinforesearch.com
CN: 0086-176 6505 2062
HK: 00852-5819 7708
US: 001-347 966 1888
Email: [email protected]
​
​
​

3: Brighton's TA, Brentford's TA
2: Atletico Madrid, Fulham's TA, Wolverhampton's TA, Borussia Mochengladbach's TA, Jack Grealish, FC Augsburg's TA, Jacob Murphy, Bournemouth's TA, Chelsea's TA
1: Raphaël Varane, Leeds' TA, Southampton's TA, Richarlison, Miguel Jimenez Ponce, FC Dallas' TA, Alessandro Bastoni, Leicester City Fans, Everton Fans, Un-named Corinthians player, Rodrygo, Jamie Vardy, William Troost-Ekong, Brighton fans, Harry Kane, Gabriel Magalhaes, Carlos Borges, Ryanair's TA, Galatasaray's TA, AFC Wimbledon's TA, Patrice Evra, Memphis Depay, Japan, FC Barcelona, Wayne Rooney, Jawad El Yamiq, North Korea, Malmo FC, Cardiff City FC, FC Zenit's English TA, Al-Hilal, Domino's Pizza's UK's TA, Tyler Adams, Deliveroo's TA, Stevenage's TA, André-Pierre Gignac, Aaron Ramsdale, Southampton (review of a hotel), Roberto de Zarbi, Dom Telford, Justin Bijlow, Tomas Soucek, Un-named Guiseley player, Lauren James, Ben White, Bengaluru FC's TA, Red Bull Salzburg's English TA, Eintracht Braunschweig's Fans, Argentina's National Team, Fleetwood's TA, Hafidh Daradji (Arabic Commentator), Southampton Fans, Ederson, Mainz 05's TA, Bromley FC's TA, Aymeric Laporte, Levi Colwill, Liam Henderson, West Ham United Fans, Sam Kerr, Zhang Yan
Per teams:
6: Brighton (TA+Fans+Roberto de Zarbi+Levi Colwill)
5: Manchester City (Jack Grealish+Carlos Borges+Ederson+Aymeric Laporte)
4: Chelsea (TA+Lauren James+Sam Kerr)
3: Arsenal (Gabriel Magalhaes+Aaron Ramsdale+Ben White), Brentford, Southampton (TA+review of a hotel+fans)
2: Atletico Madrid, Borussia Mochengladbach, Bournemouth, FC Augsburg, Fulham, Leeds (TA+Tyler Adams), Leicester City (Jamie Vardy+Fans), Newcastle (Jacob Murphy), Tottenham (Richarlison+Harry Kane), West Ham United (Tomas Soucek), Wolverhampton
1: AFC Wimbledon, Al-Hilal, Argentina, Bengaluru FC, Bromley FC, Cardiff City FC, Chengdu Rongcheng F.C. (Zhang Yan), Corinthians, Crawley Town (Dom Telford), DC United (Wayne Rooney), Eintracht Braunschweig, Empoli (Liam Henderson), Everton, FC Barcelona, FC Dallas, Feyenoord (Justin Bijlow), Fleetwood Town FC, Galatasaray, Guadalajara (Miguel Jimenez Ponce), Guiseley, Inter Milan (Alessandro Bastoni), Mainz 05, Malmo FC, Manchester United (Raphaël Varane), Morocco's National Team (Jawad El Yamiq), Netherlands' National Team (Memphis Depay), Real Madrid (Rodrygo), Red Bull Salzburg, Stevenage, Tigres UANL(André-Pierre Gignac), Watford (William Troost-Ekong), Zenit

Introduction
Welcome to South East Roof Repairs, your trusted partner for roof repairs in Melbourne. In this comprehensive guide, we will explore the importance of roof repairs, common problems faced by homeowners in Melbourne, signs indicating the need for repairs, and various options available for both DIY enthusiasts and those seeking professional assistance. Additionally, we will discuss roof repair costs, maintenance tips, the dilemma of roof repair versus replacement, and provide answers to frequently asked questions. Let's dive in!

1. Importance of Roof Repairs in Melbourne

Maintaining a sturdy and secure roof is crucial for protecting your home from the unpredictable Melbourne weather. Let's explore why roof repairs play a vital role in safeguarding your property.

1.1 Protecting Your Home

A well-maintained roof acts as a barrier against the elements, shielding your home from rain, wind, and harsh UV rays. Timely repairs ensure that your interior remains dry, preventing water damage, mold growth, and potential structural issues.

1.2 Extending Roof Lifespan

Regular roof repairs and maintenance can significantly extend the lifespan of your roof. By addressing minor issues promptly, you prevent them from escalating into major problems that may require a complete roof replacement.

1.3 Enhancing Energy Efficiency

A damaged roof can compromise the energy efficiency of your home. By repairing leaks, insulation gaps, and damaged shingles, you can improve energy efficiency and reduce heating and cooling costs.

2. Common Roof Problems in Melbourne

Melbourne's unique climate presents specific challenges for homeowners. Familiarize yourself with these common roof problems to better understand the importance of timely repairs.

2.1 Leaks and Water Damage

Melbourne's frequent rainfall can lead to roof leaks and subsequent water damage. Proper diagnosis and repair of leaks are essential to prevent further deterioration and interior damage.

2.2 Roof Shingle Damage

High winds, heavy rain, and hailstorms can cause shingle damage. Cracked, curled, or missing shingles expose your roof to further issues, such as leaks and weakened structural integrity.

2.3 Structural Issues

Over time, roofs may develop structural problems, including sagging, rotting wood, or compromised supports. Prompt repairs are crucial to ensure the stability and safety of your home.

3. Signs That Your Roof Needs Repair

Recognizing the signs of roof damage helps you take proactive measures to address issues before they escalate. Look out for the following indicators that your roof requires repair.

3.1 Water Stains on Ceilings

Water stains on your ceilings or walls are a telltale sign of roof leaks. Discoloration or peeling paint should be addressed promptly to prevent further water damage and mold growth.

3.2 Missing or Damaged Shingles

Inspect your roof for any missing, cracked, or damaged shingles. Shingles protect your roof from the elements, and their deterioration can lead to leaks and other issues.

3.3 Sagging Roof

A visibly sagging roof indicates structural problems and requires immediate attention. This issue can pose safety risks and may necessitate professional intervention.

4. DIY Roof Repairs

If you're a handy homeowner, you may consider tackling minor roof repairs on your own. However, it's crucial to understand the necessary precautions and techniques to ensure safety and effectiveness.

4.1 Safety Precautions for DIY Repairs

Before starting any DIY roof repair project, prioritize safety. Use proper safety equipment, work on a stable ladder, and avoid working on the roof during adverse weather conditions.

4.2 Fixing a Leaking Roof

Temporary fixes for roof leakscan prevent further damage until professional assistance is available. Use roofing cement or patches to cover the leak and protect your interior.

4.3 Repairing Damaged Shingles

Replacing damaged shingles is a DIY task that can enhance the longevity of your roof. Carefully remove the damaged shingles and replace them with new ones, ensuring a secure fit.

5. Hiring a Professional Roof Repair Service

For complex or extensive roof repairs, it's recommended to seek professional assistance. Experienced roofing contractors offer expertise, efficient solutions, and ensure long-lasting repairs.

5.1 Benefits of Professional Roof Repairs

Professional roof repair services provide numerous advantages, including expert assessment, high-quality materials, warranties, and efficient completion of repairs, saving you time and effort.

5.2 Choosing the Right Roof Repair Company

When selecting a roof repair company, consider factors such as reputation, experience, licensing, insurance coverage, and customer reviews. Request quotes and compare services to make an informed decision.

5.3 Understanding Roof Repair Estimates

Roof repair costs vary depending on the complexity of the project, materials used, and the extent of damage. Obtain detailed estimates from different contractors to understand the scope of work and associated expenses.

6. Roof Repair Costs in Melbourne

Understanding the costs involved in roof repairs allows you to plan your budget accordingly. Several factors influence the overall cost, and it's essential to be aware of potential expenses.

6.1 Factors Affecting Roof Repair Costs

Roof repair costs depend on various factors, including the size of the roof, type of roofing material, extent of damage, accessibility, and additional services required, such as insulation or gutter repairs.

6.2 Average Roof Repair Cost in Melbourne

On average, roof repairs in Melbourne can range from $500 to $5,000 or more, depending on the aforementioned factors. Obtaining multiple quotes and comparing services can help you find a reasonable price.

6.3 Saving Money on Roof Repairs

Explore cost-saving measures such as regular roof maintenance, timely repairs, and choosing durable materials. Additionally, consider preventive measures like proper insulation and ventilation to minimize potential issues.

7. Roof Maintenance Tips

Regular roof maintenance is key to preserving the integrity and longevity of your roof. Implement these tips to ensure optimal roof performance and minimize the need for extensive repairs.

7.1 Regular Roof Inspections

Schedule annual roof inspections by professionals to identify and address minor issues before they escalate. Professionals can spot hidden damage and provide appropriate recommendations.

7.2 Cleaning Gutters and Downspouts

Clogged gutters and downspouts can lead to water buildup and roof damage. Regularly clean them to ensure proper water drainage and prevent water-related issues.

7.3 Trimming Overhanging Branches

Overhanging tree branches can scrape against your roof, causing damage to shingles and creating entry points for water. Trim back branches to protect your roof from unnecessary harm.

8. Roof Replacement vs. Roof Repair

In some cases, roof repairs may not suffice, and roof replacement becomes necessary. Consider the following factors when deciding whether to repair or replace your roof.

8.1 Determining the Need for Roof Replacement

If your roof has extensive damage, significant structural issues, or is nearing the end of its lifespan, a roof replacement may be the more cost-effective and long-term solution.

8.2 Cost Comparison: Roof Repair vs. Roof Replacement

Comparing the costs of roof repair and replacement is essential in making an informed decision. While repairs offer a more immediate and affordable solution, a roof replacement may provide better long-term value.

8.3 Choosing a Reliable Roofing Contractor

When opting for roof replacement, it's crucial to select a reliable and experienced roofing contractor. Research their credentials, reviews, and portfolio to ensure a high-quality and satisfactory outcome.

9. Conclusion

In conclusion, roof repairs are crucial for protecting your home, extending the lifespan of your roof, and enhancing energy efficiency. Recognizing common roof problems and signs of damage empowers homeowners to take timely action. Whether opting for DIY repairs or hiring professionals, prioritize safety and effectiveness. Understand the costs involved in roof repairs and explore maintenance tips to minimize potential issues. When facing significant damage or an aging roof, weigh the options of repair versus replacement. Trust South East Roof Repairs for reliable, professional, and cost-effective roof repair services in Melbourne.

Global Info Research announces the release of the report “Global Automotive Steel Wheel Hub Market 2023 by Manufacturers, Regions, Type and Application, Forecast to 2029” . The report is a detailed and comprehensive analysis presented by region and country, type and application. As the market is constantly changing, the report explores the competition, supply and demand trends, as well as key factors that contribute to its changing demands across many markets. Company profiles and product examples of selected competitors, along with market share estimates of some of the selected leaders for the year 2023, are provided. In addition, the report provides key insights about market drivers, restraints, opportunities, new product launches or approvals, COVID-19 and Russia-Ukraine War Influence.
According to our (Global Info Research) latest study, the global Automotive Steel Wheel Hub market size was valued at USD million in 2022 and is forecast to a readjusted size of USD million by 2029 with a CAGR of % during review period. The influence of COVID-19 and the Russia-Ukraine War were considered while estimating market sizes.
Key Features:
Global Automotive Steel Wheel Hub market size and forecasts, in consumption value), sales quantity, and average selling prices, 2018-2029
Global Automotive Steel Wheel Hub market size and forecasts by region and country, in consumption value, sales quantity, and average selling prices, 2018-2029
Global Automotive Steel Wheel Hub market size and forecasts, by Type and by Application, in consumption value, sales quantity, and average selling prices, 2018-2029
Global Automotive Steel Wheel Hub market shares of main players, shipments in revenue, sales quantity, and ASP, 2018-2023
The Primary Objectives in This Report Are:
To determine the size of the total market opportunity of global and key countries
To assess the growth potential for Automotive Steel Wheel Hub
To forecast future growth in each product and end-use market
To assess competitive factors affecting the marketplace
This report profiles key players in the global Automotive Steel Wheel Hub market based on the following parameters - company overview, production, value, price, gross margin, product portfolio, geographical presence, and key developments.
Request Free Sample Copy Or buy this report at:
https://www.globalinforesearch.com/reports/1535152/automotive-steel-wheel-hub
The Automotive Steel Wheel Hub market is segmented as below:
Market segment by Type
Ordinary Steel Wheel Hub High-strength Steel Wheel Hub Alloy Steel Wheel Hub
Market segment by Application
Sedan SUV Sports Car
Major players covered
Maxion Uniwheel Ronal Zenix Superior CMW Dicastal Enkei Borbet Lioho Alcoa Accuride Faway
The Main Contents of the Report, includes a total of 15 chapters:
Chapter 1, to describe Automotive Steel Wheel Hub product scope, market overview, market estimation caveats and base year. Chapter 2, to profile the top manufacturers of Automotive Steel Wheel Hub, with price, sales, revenue and global market share of Automotive Steel Wheel Hub from 2018 to 2023. Chapter 3, the Automotive Steel Wheel Hub competitive situation, sales quantity, revenue and global market share of top manufacturers are analyzed emphatically by landscape contrast. Chapter 4, the Automotive Steel Wheel Hub breakdown data are shown at the regional level, to show the sales quantity, consumption value and growth by regions, from 2018 to 2029. Chapter 5 and 6, to segment the sales by Type and application, with sales market share and growth rate by type, application, from 2018 to 2029. Chapter 7, 8, 9, 10 and 11, to break the sales data at the country level, with sales quantity, consumption value and market share for key countries in the world, from 2017 to 2022.and Automotive Steel Wheel Hub market forecast, by regions, type and application, with sales and revenue, from 2024 to 2029. Chapter 12, market dynamics, drivers, restraints, trends, Porters Five Forces analysis, and Influence of COVID-19 and Russia-Ukraine War. Chapter 13, the key raw materials and key suppliers, and industry chain of Automotive Steel Wheel Hub. Chapter 14 and 15, to describe Automotive Steel Wheel Hub sales channel, distributors, customers, research findings and conclusion.
The analyst presents a detailed picture of the market by the way of study, synthesis, and summation of data from multiple sources by an analysis of key parameters. Our report on the Automotive Steel Wheel Hub market covers the following areas:
1.Automotive Steel Wheel Hub market sizing
2.Automotive Steel Wheel Hub market forecast
3.Automotive Steel Wheel Hub market industry analysis
4.Analyze the needs of the global Automotive Steel Wheel Hub business market
5.Answer the market level of global Automotive Steel Wheel Hub
6.Statistics the annual growth of the global Automotive Steel Wheel Hub production market
7.The main producers of the global Automotive Steel Wheel Hub production market
8.Describe the growth factor that promotes market demand
Global Info Research is a company that digs deep into global industry information to support enterprises with market strategies and in-depth market development analysis reports. We provides market information consulting services in the global region to support enterprise strategic planning and official information reporting, and focuses on customized research, management consulting, IPO consulting, industry chain research, database and top industry services. At the same time, Global Info Research is also a report publisher, a customer and an interest-based suppliers, and is trusted by more than 30,000 companies around the world. We will always carry out all aspects of our business with excellent expertise and experience.
Contact Us:
Global Info Research
Web: https://www.globalinforesearch.com
CN: 0086-176 6505 2062
HK: 00852-5819 7708
US: 001-347 966 1888
Email: [email protected]

According to the Regional Research Reports, the global culinary sauces market size is estimated to grow from USD 48.4 billion in 2022 to reach USD 62.2 billion by 2033 at a CAGR of 4.3% from 2023 to 2033. The growth is primarily driven by several variables about which Regional Research Reports provides comprehensive insights and estimation in the global culinary sauces market research.
The Regional Research Reports published the report on “global culinary sauces market Report 2023 – Future Growth Opportunities, Latest Technological Trends, In-depth Analysis, and Forecast To 2033” provides the futuristic vision of the global culinary sauces market along with the market size (Revenue – US$ Million) and estimates for the duration 2023 to 2033. The aforementioned research study examines various market segments in terms of product type, end user, distribution channels, and regional. The competitive profiles of the top vendors of culinary sauces products and their most recent developments are also included in the report.
Get Full PDF Sample Copy of Report@ https://www.regionalresearchreports.com/request-sample/culinary-sauces-market/FB-1294

Global Culinary Sauces Market Analysis

This report includes market size and forecast analysis for each segment - by product type, end user, distribution channels, and geography. Additionally, for the years 2023 to 2033, compound annual growth rates for all segments have been provided. In addition to highlighting recent market trends for culinary sauces, the study also provides information on upcoming trends that will affect demand. The global culinary sauces market report also includes annual growth rates for each segment. Additionally, the report analyses the market from the standpoint of production and provides cost overviews for the culinary sauces market as well as analyses of labor, raw material, and technology costs.
The market has been segmented by region: North America, South America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Middle East, and Africa. Under North America, the report covers the United States, Canada, and Mexico; whereas Asia Pacific includes China, Japan, India, Korea, ASEAN, Australia & New Zealand, and the Rest of Asia Pacific. The key countries covered under Europe include Germany, the United Kingdom, France, Spain, Italy, and the Rest of Europe, whereas the Middle East and Africa is comprised of the Middle East, Africa, and GCC countries. The report also includes market sizes for all regions and sub-regions as of 2022 and through 2033.
This report includes information about the major players, such as overview, revenue, interview record, gross profit, business distribution, etc. These details give the consumer a better understanding of the rivals. Additionally, it details the market's competitive landscape for all significant players identified in the global culinary sauces market. Other crucial factors include the plant's location, the source of the technology, the downstream industry, and the contact details.

Top Key Players Profiled in this report are-

• McCormick Co Inc.
• Kraft Foods Group, Inc.
• Heinz Co
• Unilever Group
• General Mills Inc.
• Kikkoman Corp
• Clorox Co
• ConAgra Foods Inc.
• Nestle S.A.
• Tiger Foods

Report Details:

Make an Enquire before Purchase @ https://www.regionalresearchreports.com/buy-now/culinary-sauces-market/FB-1294?opt=2950
Report Attribute
Details
Market Size in 2022
USD 48.4 billion
Market Size in 2033
USD 62.2 billion
CAGR (2023-2033)
4.3%
Base Year for Estimation
2022
Historic Year
2018-2021
Forecast Period
2023-2033
Study Period
2018-2033
Quantitative Units
Revenue in USD Million and CAGR from 2023-2033
Market Factor Analysis

• Future Estimation and Forecast for the market
• PESTEL and Porter's
• SWOT Analysis
• Covid-19 Impact
• Upcoming Opportunity
• Market Attractive Index for each segment and region
• Investment pocket opportunities in the market

Regions Covered

• North America
• South America
• Asia Pacific
• Europe
• Middle East and Africa (MEA)

Countries Profiled

• US
• Canada
• Mexico
• China
• India
• Japan
• South Korea
• Indonesia
• Thailand
• Malaysia
• Vietnam
• Singapore
• Australia
• New Zealand
• Germany
• the UK
• France
• Italy
• Spain
• Russia
• Brazil
• Argentina
• UAE
• Saudi Arabia
• South Africa
• Israel
• Turkey

Customization Scope
Free 20% report customization with the purchase within a specific period.
Access full Report Description, TOC, Table of Figure, Chart, etc: https://www.regionalresearchreports.com/table-of-content/culinary-sauces-market/FB-1294
The report provides extensive information about various factors that have been studied as contributing to the market's growth trajectory. The report also outlines the challenges facing the global culinary sauces market. Moreover, it evaluates the bargaining power of suppliers and customers, the threat posed by new competitors and the threat of substitutes, and the level of market competition. The report also thoroughly examines the impact of the most recent government regulations. It summarizes the development of the culinary sauces market over the forecast periods.

Global Culinary Sauces Market Segmentation:

Market Segmentation: By Product Type

• Hot Sauces
• Soy Sauces
• Barbecue Sauces
• Oyster Sauces
• Pasta Sauces
• Tomato Sauces
• Other Product Types

Market Segmentation: By End User

• Households
• Restaurants
• Food Service Chains
• Other End Users

Market Segmentation: By Distribution Channels

• Modern Trade
• Specialty Stores
• Convenience Stores
• Traditional Grocery Stores
• Online Store
• Other Distribution Channels

Regions Covered in the Global Culinary Sauces Market Report 2022:

• North America (the United States, Canada, and Mexico)
• South America (Brazil, Argentina, and Rest of South America)
• Europe (Germany, UK, Italy, France, Spain, and Rest of Europe)
• Asia-Pacific (China, Japan, South Korea, India, Australia New Zealand, and Rest of Asia Pacific)
• The Middle East and Africa (GCC Countries, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, South Africa and Rest of MEA)

The cost analysis of the global culinary sauces market was carried out, considering the cost of raw materials, labor, and manufacturing, as well as the market concentration rate, suppliers, and price trends. Other factors, such as the sourcing strategy, supply chain, and downstream buyers, have been evaluated to provide a comprehensive and in-depth view of the market. The study on market positioning will also be displayed to report clients, providing target market, brand strategy, and pricing strategy into account.
Request For Report Description @ https://www.regionalresearchreports.com/industry-reports/culinary-sauces-market/FB-1294

The report provides insights on the following pointers:

Market Penetration: Detailed study on the product portfolios of the top key players in the culinary sauces market.
Product Development/Innovation: Comprehensive insights on the upcoming innovative technologies, RD activities, and product developments in the market.
Competitive Assessment: In-depth evaluation of the market strategies and regional and business segments of the leading players in the market.
Market Development: Detailed information on emerging markets. This study examines the market for various segments across geographies.
Market Diversification: comprehensive data on new products, untapped regions, recent investments, and developments in the culinary sauces market.

Key Benefits for Stakeholders:

• The report offers a thorough analysis of market dynamics and trends for culinary sauces, both current and future.
• Market estimations for significant market segments between 2022 and 2033 are prepared in order to conduct a thorough analysis of the culinary sauces market.
• A thorough analysis of the culinary sauces market is conducted by closely monitoring top competitors within the market framework and adhering to key product positioning.
• A detailed assessment of every region is given to identify the current market opportunities for culinary sauces.
• The report includes a forecast and analysis of the global market for the culinary sauces from 2022 to 2033.
• The report profiles and thoroughly analyze the strategies of the key players in the market to comprehend the competitive outlook of the culinary sauces market.

The key questions answered in this report –

• What will be the Market Size and Growth Rate in 2033?
• What are the major Key Factors driving Culinary Sauces Market?
• What are the limitations and Constraints in front of the market?
• Who are the Key Players in Culinary Sauces Market?
• What are the Technological Trending Factors fostering the market shares?
• What are the Key Potentials of Porter’s five forces model?
• What are the Opportunities for Growth in Expanding the Global Culinary Sauces Market?

# Today In Phishstory - June 9th Brought to you by tiph-bot. Beep.
All data extracted via The Phishnet API.

Phish

Phish, Tuesday 06/09/2009 (14 years ago) Asheville Civic Center, Asheville, NC, USA
Gap Chart, Tour: 2009 Early Summer Tour
Set 1 : Kill Devil Falls , The Moma Dance , Sample in a Jar , Stash , Dog Faced Boy , Gumbo , Tube , Lengthwise , Divided Sky , When the Cactus is in Bloom ¹ , Bold As Love
Set 2 : Backwards Down the Number Line > Ghost > Fast Enough for You , Halley's Comet > Maze , Alaska ¹ , Theme From the Bottom , Golgi Apparatus , Possum
Encore : Loving Cup
1 Phish debut.
Jamchart Notes:
Backwards Down the Number Line - "Type I" version with great strumming by Trey and a short outro jam that > to "Ghost."
Show Notes:
This show featured the Phish debuts of When the Cactus is in Bloom and Alaska. Before Dog Faced Boy, Trey explained that while living with Fish, he wrote Dog Faced Boy, Tube and Gumbo based on entries in one of Fish's journals. During Dog Faced Boy, Fish left his drum kit and lay down in front of the stage because he didn't need to sing the song. Lengthwise (performed a cappella ) was played for the first time since July 28, 1998 (233 shows). Bold as Love was played for the first time since October 6, 2000 (74 shows).
Listen now at Phish.in!
Phish, Friday 06/09/2000 (23 years ago) On Air East, Shibuya-ku, Tokyo, , Japan
Gap Chart, Tour: 2000 Summer Japan Tour
Set 1 : Axilla > Taste , Billy Breathes , Poor Heart > Golgi Apparatus > Funky Bitch , The Moma Dance > First Tube > Chalk Dust Torture
Set 2 : Tweezer , Bouncing Around the Room ¹ , The Mango Song , The Squirming Coil > Gotta Jibboo > Meatstick ² > Tweezer Reprise
Encore : You Enjoy Myself
1 Brief outro solo from Trey, which replaced the usual closing guitar lick. 2 First Meatstick to feature Japanese lyrics.
Jamchart Notes:
Funky Bitch - Atypically improvisational must-hear monster.
Chalk Dust Torture - Winning fans in Japan. This huge first-set-closing version raises hell and ends, but then there's a second ending that concludes cacophonously.
Tweezer - Atypically slow but monstrously improvisational version that has several peaks and valleys before speeding-up and concluding in a melodic, triumphant, must-fucking-hear manner.
The Mango Song - Ending jam segment stretches the limits of the basic jam with some nice rhythmic variation, but still stays "in bounds."
You Enjoy Myself - Deeeep, funky jam/groove, and the return of the B&D; segment!
Show Notes:
The Moma Dance included Funky Bitch teases and Tweezer included Funk #49 teases. This was the first ever Meatstick to feature Japanese lyrics and Trey flubbed the words while attempting to sing them. Bouncing included a brief outro solo from Trey, which replaced the usual closing guitar lick. This show was re- broadcast on Japanese television.
Listen now at Phish.in!
Phish, Friday 06/09/1995 (28 years ago) Red Rocks Amphitheatre, Morrison, CO, USA
Gap Chart, Tour: 1995 Summer Tour
Set 1 : My Friend, My Friend , Divided Sky , Strange Design > The Oh Kee Pa Ceremony > AC/DC Bag > Theme From the Bottom , Taste , Sparkle > Run Like an Antelope
Set 2 : Split Open and Melt , The Wedge , Scent of a Mule , Cavern > David Bowie , Acoustic Army , Sweet Adeline , Slave to the Traffic Light
Encore : The Squirming Coil
Jamchart Notes:
Run Like an Antelope - Unusual jam. Sort of off-key. Sort of evil. Dissonant and anti-melodic. No real peak; it just fades into "Rocco."
Split Open and Melt - Improvisational playing in several sections tests the rhythmic and melodic standards for "SOAM" in this solid version.
Show Notes:
Part of the soundcheck's jam consisted of 25 or 6 to 4.
Listen now at Phish.in!
Phish, Thursday 06/09/1994 (29 years ago) Triad Amphitheater, Salt Lake City, UT, USA
Gap Chart, Tour: 1994 Summer Tour
Set 1 : Llama , Guelah Papyrus , Rift , Down with Disease > It's Ice > If I Could > Maze , Fee ¹ , Suzy Greenberg
Set 2 : Split Open and Melt , Glide > Julius , Halley's Comet -> Scent of a Mule , Ginseng Sullivan ² , Mike's Song > I Am Hydrogen > Weekapaug Groove , Golgi Apparatus
Encore : Highway to Hell
1 Trey sang verses through megaphone. 2 Acoustic and without microphones. Fish on Madonna washboard.
Jamchart Notes:
It's Ice - Good rocking jam with excellent Fish and solid Trey (of course Page is great).
Mike's Song - The 1st jam is rocking and ass kicking, with a clever little "Tweeprise"-like walk up. The 2nd jam is basically a non-vocal version of something very "Simple"-like. Just listen and you'll hear it. The return to "Mike's" has more crazed '94 scream-infused power action.
Show Notes:
Trey sang the verses of Fee through a megaphone. Ginseng Sullivan was performed acoustic without microphones and featured Fish on Madonna washboard.
Listen now at Phish.in!
Phish, Saturday 06/09/1990 (33 years ago) The Wetlands Preserve, New York, NY, USA
Gap Chart, Tour: 1990 Tour
Set 1 : Possum , Lawn Boy > Reba , Dinner and a Movie > Bouncing Around the Room > Tweezer , Uncle Pen > Mike's Song > I Am Hydrogen > Weekapaug Groove
Set 2 : Whole Lotta Love Jam > Harry Hood , The Man Who Stepped Into Yesterday > Avenu Malkenu > La Grange , Fee -> Foam , The Oh Kee Pa Ceremony > Suzy Greenberg > Run Like an Antelope , Hold Your Head Up > Terrapin > Hold Your Head Up , Harpua , Good Times Bad Times
Encore : Take the 'A' Train > Contact
Jamchart Notes:
Foam - -> in from "Fee." Groovy and excellent Page section with solid backing from Mike and Fish. It's all good from there.
Run Like an Antelope - Good exploratory version that gets nicely beyond the standard. Great tension, dissonance and experimental jamming.
Show Notes:
Harpua included Funkytown teases and 'A' Train contained a Dixie tease from Trey. The band launched into the second set-opening Whole Lotta Love Jam as the DJ had been spinning the original Zeppelin version. The opening act was The Aquarium Rescue Unit.
Listen now at Phish.in!

Trey Anastasio

Trey Anastasio Trio, 2023-06-09 Mission Ballroom, Denver, CO, USA
Setlist: https://phish.net/setlists/trey-anastasio-trio-june-09-2023-mission-ballroom-denver-co-usa.html
Tour: Not Part of a Tour
Show Notes:
Trey Anastasio Band, 2006-06-09 Verizon Wireless Amphitheatre - Charlotte, Charlotte, NC, USA
Setlist: https://phish.net/setlists/trey-anastasio-june-09-2006-verizon-wireless-amphitheatre-charlotte-charlotte-nc-usa.html
Tour: TAB - Early Summer 2006 Tour
Show Notes: This single set performance was as the opening act for Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers. This setlist is unconfirmed as recordings of the performance do not circulate.
Trey Anastasio Band, 2002-06-09 Tower City Amphitheatre, Cleveland, OH, USA
Setlist: https://phish.net/setlists/trey-anastasio-june-09-2002-tower-city-amphitheatre-cleveland-oh-usa.html
Tour: TAB - The Dectet Summer 2002 Tour
Show Notes: The rendition of "Plasma" from this gig appears on Trey's live CD of the same name. Trey performed "Ray Dawn Balloon" acoustic.

Mike Gordon

Mike Gordon, 2015-06-09 The Pageant, St. Louis, MO, USA
Setlist: https://phish.net/setlists/mike-gordon-june-09-2015-the-pageant-st-louis-mo-usa.html
Tour: Mike Gordon - Summer 2015 Tour
Show Notes:

John Fishman

Jazz Mandolin Project, 2004-06-09 32 Bleu, Colorado Springs, CO, USA
Setlist: https://phish.net/setlists/jon-fishman-june-09-2004-32-bleu-colorado-springs-co-usa.html
Tour: Fish - Jazz Mandolin Project Summer 2004 Tour
Show Notes:

Page McConnell

Page McConnell, 2007-06-09 Bogart's, Cincinnati, OH, USA
Setlist: https://phish.net/setlists/page-mcconnell-june-09-2007-bogarts-cincinnati-oh-usa.html
Tour: Page McConnell Spring & Summer 2007 Tour
Show Notes: This setlist is unconfirmed as recordings of the show do not circulate.

If you’re the type of person who likes to wake up super early, like 4 or 5 AM, to study and feel like a boss, then this article is for you.
but sometimes you just can’t focus and end up hitting snooze, don’t worry.
This is just for you early birds who want to start the day off right.
So, there are a bunch of ways to study, and I have experimented with different types of study methods but there’s this one that only works for people who like to wake up early.
It’s pretty cool because it helps you remember stuff better and makes it easier to recall everything you learned.

Getting a sense of how much fuel you have to grind

If you’re a morning person like me, you’ll likely feel more energized as the day goes on, peaking in the afternoon.
But then your energy will drop and hit rock bottom at night.
Of course, everyone’s energy levels are different, so it’s important to pay attention to your body and adjust your study schedule as needed.
I will tell you about what to do at different times of the day and what type of subjects to study.

What is the Right time to wake up for an early bird?

I would say it depends but the most common times are 4-5 am.
so make a goal and set the alarm already. And listen, When I make a goal of waking up at say 4 am, then I ensure that I don’t wake up at exactly 4 am. because I would panic after that clock hits 4 that I am wasting every second after 4 am.
it is just that I get paranoid haha. I feel like it is my boundary and any time wasted after that would make me super guilty. but don’t be like me. I am trying to change this haha.
cutting the bs So to ensure this I set the alarm at 330 or 345 to ensure that I relax before actually sitting at my desk at 4.
It’s a good idea to start your day at least 20-30 minutes before you actually want to wake up. So if I want to wake up at 7:00 AM, I set my alarm for 6:30 or 6:45 AM. This gives me some extra time in case I want to stay in bed a bit longer.
this period also helps to make the schedule for that day and I write a list of all the tasks that I have to finish that day.
If you’re going to school, waking up at 5:00 AM is perfect because most schools start at 7:00 to 8:00 AM, which gives you two hours to get ready.

Okay, but how do I do this without feeling drowsy?

Just set your alarm for 30 minutes earlier than usual, like 8:30 instead of 9:00. This will give you some extra time to relax and remove that drowsy feeling.
Keep it up for a whole week before trying to wake up even earlier. and slowly practice this every day and you will master this. and one day you won’t even need an alarm for this.

I woke up, now what do I do? How do I start my day productively?

When we wake up, our body needs to rest for a bit, as it was in an unconscious state for 7-8 hours. Personally, I like to take advantage of this period by getting stuff done, like making a to-do list as I said before.
But if you’re someone who gets up super early, your list might need to have two parts: one for stuff that needs to happen right away, and another for things that can wait a bit.

4:45-5:00 am – warm-up time/ getting ready for the day

During this time of getting ready to start my day, I like doing my homework as a warm by seeing my subjects instead of starting directly with studying. but only those homework which is easy to finish and can be done faster.
It could be just one worksheet or a couple of pages of Math problems. Plus, I’ve started spending an hour every morning working on my Math skills. It’s especially helpful for people who find Math hard because practicing regularly can really help.
Doing this stuff every day makes me feel productive and good about myself, which is good for my overall satisfaction.
Another reason why I struggle with math at night is because I just don’t have the brain energy. Plus, it’s helpful to exercise your mind before things get really crazy.

01# Session – 8:00-11:00 am –

High concentration span/most important time

If I want to get some serious work done, I tackle it between 8 and 11:00 AM. It is the best time. and my fav too. I feel the most productive during this time.
That’s when your brain is firing on all cylinders and you can really concentrate. On weekends, it’s a good time to learn something new, and during the week, you can stay focused on your studies. Basically, this is the time of day when you can tackle anything that requires brainpower and problem-solving skills.
Are you aware of one of my articles on how to handle studying for multiple subjects? If you haven’t, no worries, read it whenever you have some free time.
Anyways, I just wanted to mention that there are three kinds of subjects:

• ones that require you to remember stuff/theoretical subjects,
• ones that require problem-solving (like physics and maths), and
• ones that require interpretation.

Personally, I like to tackle the first two types in the morning since they’re a bit tougher for me than the interpretation-based ones. you need to figure out which one is tougher for you, Don’t blindly follow my brain’s capacity. some of you are way wiser or slow learners like me. so it depends from person to person. but get the central idea right.
When I’m at my best, I like to break up my study time into two parts. I usually tackle one subject from 8 to 10 in the morning and then switch to another from 10 to noon. That way, I can stay super productive and focused.

Bonus tip 01

If you want to remember everything you learn, there are two things you should do every day.

• First, write down all the important keywords about what you studied in the morning.
• Second, watch a video that explains it, a great study hack in the evening. If you’re short on time, typing your notes is a good idea.

Session 02# – 12 pm noon

Around noon, I switch my attention to stuff that’s more about interpreting things.
It’s way less tiring than dealing with Math, Biology, or Physics. This is key because we usually start feeling more drained as the day goes on. I take advantage of this time to handle things I’ve been putting off on my to-do list.

Session 03# – 3 pm after school

My least favorite time would be this. personally speaking. It’s 3:00 PM and you’re probably either just getting home from school or you’ve been studying all day.
You’re probably feeling pretty tired by now, so it’s a good idea to take a quick power nap. Try to keep it between 10 and 20 minutes so you’ll feel refreshed when you wake up.
If you sleep longer than that, you’ll just end up feeling more tired. and the day is almost over.
​

Session 04# – 4 pm: last session of the day

When it hits 4:00 PM, it’s a go time for the final push of the day.
From 4:00 PM to 7:00 PM, I like to take a breather and either think about what I learned earlier or do easy tasks like writing down some notes.
If you went to school, this is a good chance to go over what you learned in class. Being purposeful with this time can really boost your efficiency and end the day on a high note.
If you want to remember something for a long time, just make sure you study it twice a day. It’s super important!

Bonus tip 02#

Remember when I told you to make a list of important words related to what you’re studying? grab that piece of paper.
If you wanna remember stuff better, you gotta go over everything you know about a topic and connect the dots. Mind maps are a good way to do that.
It’s important to actively recall the info to keep it in your brain, and recapping is a good way to do that. That way you’ll actually remember it for the next time you need it instead of forgetting it right away.

Bed routine

As the sun goes down, a lot of people feel tired and less motivated, which is called the trough period. To deal with it, you can try the two-minute strategy – just do quick tasks like answering emails or packing your stuff. That way, you won’t have to waste your morning time on them.
Oh, and it’s a good idea to rest up and get to bed early too. If you made it this far, let me know if you are an early bird or a night owl. if you’re a night owl then why are you here? I have already posted about you too! see you in the next post bye!
I wish you all the very best in your studies!! And don't stress too much ;)
If any problem regarding your academics, then feel free to mail me here or comment below!
MORE SECRETS HERE!

The slender and feminine frames of the four Star Sirens floated with an inhuman ease in the microgravity of their shuttle’s cabin, their prehensile feet and tails either dangling freely or clutching an opalescent perching rod. They stared with a novel curiosity out their window towards the small and relatively unsophisticated Earthly craft that had gradually been drifting its way towards their fleet.
“It’s still not answering hails, and I can’t find any sort of transponder or visual identification,” Akioneeda, the eldest of the group, sang in their musical and surgically precise language; the chevron-shaped slits over her trachea granting her a superhuman vocal range.
Using the glittering diodes embedded throughout her mauve skin, she fired jets of light to propel herself over to a crystalline computer terminal on the other side of the cabin.
“Why do they have to make their ships so ugly?” the magenta-skinned Pomoko asked; her large and bright cat-like irises constricting in their dark sclera as she squinted at the foreign craft in disdain.
Its design was a smoothly contoured rocket, with a rounded nose and a flaring aft that allowed it to hold both rear and forward-facing thrusters. Its dark hull was nearly invisible against the black of space, and coated in a radar-absorbent material that until recently had masked its approach. The Siren’s shuttle, in contrast, was a luminescent, bright-pink spiral seashell nestled in an array of gossamer-like radiators, sails, and solar panels that resembled blooming flower petals.
“I think the polite word is ‘spartan’,” the violet-skinned Kaliphimoa corrected her with an excited grin. The crystalline, oval exocortexes embedded on the sides of her elongated skull began flickering as she began reviewing any information that she thought might be pertinent. “Macrogravitals have a much harder time surviving in space than we do, so they have to be fairly pragmatic in the designs of their vessels. And remember that, unlike our ships, that rocket is meant to launch from and land on planets, so it has to be pretty rugged.”
“Kali, there can’t be any Macrogravitals on that thing; there’s no centrifuge,” the Cyan-skinned Vicillia pointed out. “Macrogravitals need macrogravity. It’s literally their defining characteristic.”
“They don’t die in microgravity, Vici,” Kali said with a roll of her eyes. “In olden times, baseline humans would spend months, sometimes even over a year living in space with no artificial gravity at all.”
“This isn’t the Apollo & Artemis Era, Kali. It’s virtually unheard of for Macrogravitals to leave cislunar space without a centrifuge,” Akioneeda said as she examined the telemetry on the intruding object. “That thing definitely has a habitat module, but Earth is on the other side of the sun right now. That’s weeks of travel, and that’s if its fusion rockets are functional. And it is a ship, not a habitat. Something like that is meant primarily for ground-to-orbit transport, and in a pinch travelling between the inner planets during optimal launch windows. It’s not intended to be lived in for prolonged periods of time. I don’t think it came here on purpose. It must have gotten knocked out of orbit and just found its way here. I wish I could tell for sure if there was someone inside, but its mini-magnetosphere is really scattering the sensor beams.”
“But doesn’t its magnetosphere mean there must be Macrogravitals inside?” Pomoko asked. “Even normal cosmic radiation is dangerous to humans without our enhanced DNA repair and chromamelanin, isn’t it?”
“They might have died before they had a chance to shut it off,” Kali suggested as tactfully as she could. “If there are bodies in there, we should recover them and send them back to Earth.”
“Wait a minute. It’s pretty suspicious that there’s no transponder or identifying markings on the craft, isn’t it?” Vici asked. “This could be a trap or terrorist attack of some kind.”
“An attack? Why would anyone want to attack us?” Pomoko asked in dismay.
“They wouldn’t. She’s being paranoid,” Kali said dismissively as she comfortingly slid her arm around her. “Vici, save your racist horror stories for when we’re not within visual distance of an Earth vessel, okay?”
“Reavers are real! Macrogravitals brains get cooked by cosmic radiation and they go crazy!” Vici insisted.
“Reavers are most definitively not real, Vicillia. Nonetheless, we probably shouldn’t rule out the possibility of an attack,” Akioneeda conceded. “Star Sirens now make up the majority of all humans permanently living off-world, and that’s not a lead we’re ever likely to lose. We’ve only been around a hundred years or so, and there are already over two million of us. We breed like rabbits.”
“That’s because we fuck like rabbits,” Vici said lasciviously, only to incur glares of confusion from the others. “Well, not directly, since we don’t reproduce naturally, but it’s good for our esprit de corps, right girls?”
“The point being, there are factions on Earth who view our current and forecasted success as a threat to their own potential expansion into space,” Akioneeda continued, failing to hide her annoyance at the younger Siren’s interruption.
“That’s backwards. Macrogravitals evolved to live on planets, and we were literally made to colonize space,” Pomoko objected. “Why shouldn’t we breed like rabbits? The solar system, the galaxy, the universe should be filled with as many Star Sirens as they can sustain!”
“And they will be – eventually. But if we prioritize our long-term survival over the near term, we might not have a future to prioritize,” Akioneeda gently reminded her. “Steady, safe, and sustainable growth is better than fast and risky growth. We don’t want to spook anyone down on Earth into doing something that might hurt us, which is why we have to abide by the Solaris Accords.”
“Exactly! We’re signatories of the Solaris and Orion Accords, which we’ve always been in complete compliance with,” Kali said. “We’ve already lowered our population growth to two percent per annum, and have agreed to lower it to point four percent when we hit two billion. Anyone attacking us over that would be in violation of the Accords and incur the wrath of every other signatory, including Olympeon, of which we are still a protectorate.”
“Ugh. Don’t remind me that we’re technically compatriots with Macrogravitals,” Vici said in disgust.
“Vicillia, a little respect please for our creators and allies,” Akioneeda reprimanded her.
“I gratefully respect them, Preceptress Akio, because no one able to launch this ship out to us would ever do something so suicidally foolish as commit an act of war against Olympeon,” Kali insisted.
“You make valid points, Kali, and I’m not saying it’s likely this is an attack, but we should still proceed with caution,” Akioneeda reiterated. “At the very least, the scanner still has enough resolution to rule out the possibility of there being any potential high-yield explosives on the vessel. I think it’s worth the risk to jet over and see what’s inside; if that’s something you girls would be interested in?”
“Yes, preceptress,” Kali and Vici said in unison, each immediately assuming an attentive posture with their hands behind their backs as they nodded politely, eager for the opportunity to explore a non-Siren spacecraft. Pomoko, however, joined in a little more reticently, and solely because she didn’t want to upset her companions.
Unlike Vici, she never told stories about Macrogravitals driven into mad savagery by the harshness of space, because she found them unbearably terrifying.
The four of them filed into the airlock and grabbed a lungful of air before depressurizing, the short siphons at the base of their necks cinching shut to hold it in. The only things they brought with them were a small bundle of additional air pods and a field kit, both of which were carried by Pomoko.
The enhanced proteins and nanofiber weaves in their bare skin rendered them impervious to vacuum exposure, and their eyes were protected by transparent graphene lenses. Hundreds of small jets of light from all over their bodies propelled them across the gap between their shuttle and the errant vessel, with Kali and Vici taking advantage of the vast open space to perform challenging acrobatic maneuvers.
Akio was the first to arrive at the foreign spacecraft, circling it several times for any signs that might give her some idea about what it was and what it was doing there, but found none. She even peered into a porthole, but could see nothing of note in the darkened interior.
When she reached the airlock, she gestured for Pomoko to hand her a small but rugged cyberdeck from the field kit. While her exocortexes possessed more computing power than she could ever need, the cyberdeck contained a compact suite of sensor arrays for environmental analysis, as well as antennas and ports for electronic interfaces. Syncing the device with her own exocortexes, a holographic AR display projected itself on her bionic lenses.
It didn’t take long for her to find a frequency to engage with the airlock control mechanism, and even less time to find a skeleton key that could best that woefully inadequate security system. As the outer door of the airlock dilated open, Akio signalled for Kali and Vici to rejoin them, and they all funnelled into the ship together. The outer door snapped behind them, sealing them in complete darkness that was staved off solely by their photonic diodes until some emergency lights began to flicker on and off at random intervals.
As the airlock slowly began to repressurize, the Sirens – who were accustomed to an atmosphere maintained at conditions optimal for them - shuddered slightly at the feeling of foreign air creeping up against their skin.
“The air’s acceptable. It’s a standard oxygen/nitrogen mix with no detectable toxins or pathogens present,” Akioneeda assured them as she opened her siphons and exhaled the breath she had been holding since they left their own shuttle. “CO2’s a little high, but not dangerous.”
“Doesn’t high CO2 mean there’s someone here?” Pomoko asked, nervously looking about in all directions as she clutched her supplies close to her.
“Not necessarily. I’m not detecting any human environmental DNA,” Akio replied confidently. “I am however sampling some environmental DNA that doesn’t match anything on file. It might take some time to analyze it enough to make any sense of it. The power system is failing, which is why the lights aren’t working right. The electrical surges are generating enough EM interference that the sensor beam is still pretty scattered, so I can’t see much through the bulkheads. Keep your diodes lit up bright and stay alert.”
The shadowy main corridor was hexagonal in shape, spanning several meters across and roughly twenty-five meters from end to end. It was broken into six segments, with every other segment containing a pair of hexagonal doorways across from one another, along with a door at each end of the corridor.
“The door next to us should be the engine module, and the one at the other end should be the command and communications center,” Akio said, opening the door to the engine room and sticking her cyberdeck inside. “I’m going to do a quick scan of each room before we start rummaging through everything, so don’t go sticking your tails anywhere they don’t belong until I’m done.”
The other three Sirens all nodded obediently, and limited their exploration of the ship to a solely visible inspection. None of them were used to being in low light conditions, and their pupils were dilated so much they were nearly round. Though their visual acuity was raptor-like in its detail and they could see into the ultra-violet spectrum, night vision had not been a priority when they had been designed. Nonetheless, their large eyes and vertical pupils still let them see better in the dark than any unmodified human.
“The writing is Cyrillic, but everything I can see is just basic labels. I can’t tell for certain which language it is,” Kali said. “That doesn’t mean much though. This thing is definitely second-hand, likely even stolen. That would explain the lack of identification. Maybe whoever stole it got spooked and just set it adrift.”
“So, it’s a pirate ship then?” Pomoko asked, sounding slightly relieved. “That’s better than terrorists, or Reavers.”
“It is not. We’re space mermaids. Space pirates are our natural enemies,” Vici claimed. “If they catch us, they’ll pry the exocortexes from our skulls and pluck out our photonic diodes one by one, then bind us to the front of the ship as figureheads.”
“Vicillia, that is enough!” Akio reprimanded her as she scanned the next room. “Stop trying to scare her! Kali’s right. This is an old ship that’s been stripped of nearly every non-essential piece of equipment. Someone stole it, and then abandoned it when the authorities started closing in. That’s it. There’s not a raiding party of pirates hiding behind one of these doors.”
“Famous last words,” Vici muttered, defensively folding her arms across her chest.
Kali once again put her arm around Pomoko in comfort and gave her a loving kiss on the head.
The glowing, sylph-like Sirens continued floating through the dim and unevenly lit corridor like ghosts, checking one room after another and finding nothing of note until they finally reached the end.
“Now that we’re done checking for pirates, we can focus on the command center,” Akio announced. “Assuming they haven’t been wiped, we’ll check the ship’s logs and records for evidence of its origin and how it got here. If it was stolen, we’ll send it to Pink Floyd Station and they can deal with it. Otherwise, we’ll be free to keep it as salvage.”
She raised her finger to tap the AR command to open the door, but suddenly hesitated.
“What is it?” Kali asked.
Akio squinted at her HUD display in alarm, but seemed reluctant to answer.
“There’s something on the other side,” she whispered.
Without warning, the door was manually thrown open with a physical force that shocked the gracile Sirens. From the impenetrable gloom beyond the door’s threshold, there emerged a grotesque figure the likes of which the Sirens had never seen before.
Its round torso was squat and bloated, vaguely resembling that of a frog’s. Its veiny, crimson hide was mottled in purple splotches from where those veins had broken. Four long limbs dangled down limply, each possessing five boney, claw-like digits. As with the Star Sirens, its pinky fingers had been repurposed into a second opposable thumb; but unlike them, its digits were arranged more radially so that its hands resembled starving sea stars. It possessed a prehensile tail as well, though closer in appearance to an opossum’s than the Siren’s simian tails.
It was the front of the creature that was most alien to them. It had no neck or even a head distinct from its bulging torso. It had two eyes on mobile stalks, each a bloodshot blue with a crescent-shaped pupil. There was a blowhole near the top of its vaguely defined head, and near the bottom hung a toothless proboscis, as prehensile as an elephant’s trunk.
All four Sirens broke out into screams at the sight of the deformed creature, jetting backward as quickly as they could. Wheezing, the creature lurched towards them, slowly raising its proboscis in the air as it did so.
Vici grabbed the bundle of air pods that Pomoko had released in her panic and began beating the creature over the top of the head with it. Though she possessed just barely enough physical strength to walk in nothing greater than Lunar gravity, her love for her sisters and her fear, disgust, and contempt for anything else drove her to assail the hideous being as hard as she could.
The creature groaned, though it seemed to be more of sorrow than of pain. Raising its arms up protectively while keeping its proboscis elevated, it slowly sunk down to the bottom of the corridor as Vici bashed away at it.
“Vici! Vici, stop!” Kali commanded, grabbing hold of her and pulling her back. “It’s not attacking us!”
She was right, of course. Despite its fearsomely unfamiliar form, it actually seemed rather pathetic as it lay quivering on the floor, making no sound aside from laboured and gasping breaths.
“Alien! It’s an alien!” Vici cried in dismay, scarcely believing her own eyes.
Though that improbable, if more palpable, explanation for the being’s origin may have seemed the most obvious, Kali felt a growing sense of horror well up inside her as the pieces started to click together. She glanced over at Akio who was rapidly reviewing the readings from her cyberdeck, and could tell from the revulsion on her face that she had reached the same conclusion.
“Preceptress; please say that it’s an alien,” she pleaded in a softly cracking voice.
Akio looked up at her with pity, and slowly shook her head.
“I’m sorry,” she said quietly. “But that, save for the skill and wisdom of Olympeon and the Grace of Cosmothea, is us.”
“It… it’s human?” Pomoko asked, floating up behind Kali and Vici and just barely daring to peek over their shoulders at the horrid beast.
“It’s bred from a human base, yes,” Akio explained. “Heavily modified, of course. Much more than ourselves, though nowhere near as adroitly. It’s a genetic chimera; probably because its embryo was cobbled together from multiple lines of modified cells. Its hide and at least a few of its major organs appeared to have been grown separately and grafted on in vivo. It’s literally a Frankenstein Monster.”
“What’s that old saying? Knowledge is knowing Frankenstein was the Doctor, not the monster; wisdom is knowing that Doctor Frankenstein was the monster,” Kali quoted, pitying the poor wretch that wallowed before her.
“Yeah. I think… I think that whoever made this was trying to make a new species of space-adapted humans, probably in the hopes of eventually surpassing us,” Akio speculated. “But it’s a failed experiment. All of its genomes are highly degraded and riddled with off-target mutations and poorly thought-out on-target ones. Its cells are barely functional, and it’s undergoing mass organ failure at this very moment.”
“It… he’s dying?” Kali asked softly.
“It was probably dying before it even decanted; it’s been held together with prayers and twine,” Akio explained.
“Good! It’s an abomination! It never should’ve existed in the first place!” Pomoko declared.
“Pomoko, shush!” Kali yelled, hot tears beginning to pool in her eyes. “Can… can he hear us?”
“It can hear, I think. Its brain size and neuronal density are actually over the optimal limit, and its neurochemistry and connectome are a complete mess,” Akio replied. “It’s probably an idiot savant, at best. It likely has some linguistic capability, but I don’t think it would be able to understand Sirensong. It doesn’t have any kind of speech organs or comm implant, either. Its digestive and respiratory systems are separate, and that blowhole doesn’t have any kind of syrinx.”
“In other words, he has no mouth and he must scream,” Kali lamented. “Did he escape, do you think?”
“It must have,” Akio nodded. “Pomoko may have been a bit insensitive just now, but she’s right. This thing’s a violation of multiple transnational laws, treaties and conventions. Its creators wouldn’t want anyone to know about it. It… it must have known that escaping its creators and whatever convoluted life-support system they were using to keep it alive would have meant a slow and painful death, but it did it anyway. All it could have hoped for was that someone would find it and be able to hold its creators accountable. We don’t understand enough about its anatomy to offer any meaningful assistance. The most we could do is prolong its suffering. I think we should just let it pass in peace; it shouldn’t take more than a couple of hours at most now. We’ll return to our shuttle, tell the fleet what we found, and then have the carcass put in cryostasis as evidence. We’ll send it and this vessel to Olympeon, and they’ll deal with it. They’ll find who’s responsible and bring them to justice.”
“Yeah, we need to get back to the shuttle immediately for decontamination and med-screening. We could be infected by whatever microbes and nanites they stuffed into this bloated wretch,” Pomoko said with barely restrained panic, jetting back to the airlock as quickly as she could.
Akio and Vici followed closely behind, but Kali lingered in place as she gazed at the creature’s proboscis, which it still held upright. She recalled that elephants on Earth would raise their trunks when they were dying, and that the ancient Romans, despite being one of the cruellest cultures of humans to exist, had still recognized this as a plea for mercy. Though the gulf between the two species was significant, one self-aware being could still recognize the suffering of another, and be moved to pity by it.
“I’m staying with him,” she announced softly.
“What?” Pomoko shouted, she and the others all spinning around to look at her in bewilderment.
“Until he passes. Akio said it wouldn’t be long,” Kali replied.
“Why?” Vici asked.
“So he doesn’t die alone!” Kali screamed.
Pomoko started jetting back towards her friend, but Akio caught her and gently shook her head in refusal. She silently ushered the two of them back through the airlock and, with some reluctance, left Kali alone with the dying creature.
Kali tenderly took hold of the being’s trunk with her left hand, compassionately petting it with her right. He shuddered slightly, letting go of a noticeable amount of tension in his malformed body. Snorting from his blowhole, he focused his teetering eyestalks up at her, and she could see in those eyes a great, crushing sorrow, both from the suffering he had endured and the lost potential of the life he could have had if fate had been kinder.
A life like the one Kali had led as a privileged and well-bred daughter of Olympeon, and would most likely go on to live for many centuries more.
The tears in her eyes reached a critical mass now, budding off into tiny orbs and floating out into the air.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” she sobbed. It was all she could think to say, and she said it in English, hoping there was a better chance of him understanding it than her native language.
Remarkably, he reacted by raising the flat palm of his right hand up to the space beneath his trunk – a struggle for him even in the absence of gravity – and then lowered it with the palm facing up and out. Kali wasted no time in running the gesture through her exocortexes, frantic to decipher what the creature could be trying to tell her before it was too late.
It was sign language for ‘thank you’.

The slender and feminine frames of the four Star Sirens floated with an inhuman ease in the microgravity of their shuttle’s cabin, their prehensile feet and tails either dangling freely or clutching an opalescent perching rod. They stared with a novel curiosity out their window towards the small and relatively unsophisticated Earthly craft that had gradually been drifting its way towards their fleet.
“It’s still not answering hails, and I can’t find any sort of transponder or visual identification,” Akioneeda, the eldest of the group, sang in their musical and surgically precise language; the chevron-shaped slits over her trachea granting her a superhuman vocal range.
Using the glittering diodes embedded throughout her mauve skin, she fired jets of light to propel herself over to a crystalline computer terminal on the other side of the cabin.
“Why do they have to make their ships so ugly?” the magenta-skinned Pomoko asked; her large and bright cat-like irises constricting in their dark sclera as she squinted at the foreign craft in disdain.
Its design was a smoothly contoured rocket, with a rounded nose and a flaring aft that allowed it to hold both rear and forward-facing thrusters. Its dark hull was nearly invisible against the black of space, and coated in a radar-absorbent material that until recently had masked its approach. The Siren’s shuttle, in contrast, was a luminescent, bright-pink spiral seashell nestled in an array of gossamer-like radiators, sails, and solar panels that resembled blooming flower petals.
“I think the polite word is ‘spartan’,” the violet-skinned Kaliphimoa corrected her with an excited grin. The crystalline, oval exocortexes embedded on the sides of her elongated skull began flickering as she began reviewing any information that she thought might be pertinent. “Macrogravitals have a much harder time surviving in space than we do, so they have to be fairly pragmatic in the designs of their vessels. And remember that, unlike our ships, that rocket is meant to launch from and land on planets, so it has to be pretty rugged.”
“Kali, there can’t be any Macrogravitals on that thing; there’s no centrifuge,” the Cyan-skinned Vicillia pointed out. “Macrogravitals need macrogravity. It’s literally their defining characteristic.”
“They don’t die in microgravity, Vici,” Kali said with a roll of her eyes. “In olden times, baseline humans would spend months, sometimes even over a year living in space with no artificial gravity at all.”
“This isn’t the Apollo & Artemis Era, Kali. It’s virtually unheard of for Macrogravitals to leave cislunar space without a centrifuge,” Akioneeda said as she examined the telemetry on the intruding object. “That thing definitely has a habitat module, but Earth is on the other side of the sun right now. That’s weeks of travel, and that’s if its fusion rockets are functional. And it is a ship, not a habitat. Something like that is meant primarily for ground-to-orbit transport, and in a pinch travelling between the inner planets during optimal launch windows. It’s not intended to be lived in for prolonged periods of time. I don’t think it came here on purpose. It must have gotten knocked out of orbit and just found its way here. I wish I could tell for sure if there was someone inside, but its mini-magnetosphere is really scattering the sensor beams.”
“But doesn’t its magnetosphere mean there must be Macrogravitals inside?” Pomoko asked. “Even normal cosmic radiation is dangerous to humans without our enhanced DNA repair and chromamelanin, isn’t it?”
“They might have died before they had a chance to shut it off,” Kali suggested as tactfully as she could. “If there are bodies in there, we should recover them and send them back to Earth.”
“Wait a minute. It’s pretty suspicious that there’s no transponder or identifying markings on the craft, isn’t it?” Vici asked. “This could be a trap or terrorist attack of some kind.”
“An attack? Why would anyone want to attack us?” Pomoko asked in dismay.
“They wouldn’t. She’s being paranoid,” Kali said dismissively as she comfortingly slid her arm around her. “Vici, save your racist horror stories for when we’re not within visual distance of an Earth vessel, okay?”
“Reavers are real! Macrogravitals brains get cooked by cosmic radiation and they go crazy!” Vici insisted.
“Reavers are most definitively not real, Vicillia. Nonetheless, we probably shouldn’t rule out the possibility of an attack,” Akioneeda conceded. “Star Sirens now make up the majority of all humans permanently living off-world, and that’s not a lead we’re ever likely to lose. We’ve only been around a hundred years or so, and there are already over two million of us. We breed like rabbits.”
“That’s because we fuck like rabbits,” Vici said lasciviously, only to incur glares of confusion from the others. “Well, not directly, since we don’t reproduce naturally, but it’s good for our esprit de corps, right girls?”
“The point being, there are factions on Earth who view our current and forecasted success as a threat to their own potential expansion into space,” Akioneeda continued, failing to hide her annoyance at the younger Siren’s interruption.
“That’s backwards. Macrogravitals evolved to live on planets, and we were literally made to colonize space,” Pomoko objected. “Why shouldn’t we breed like rabbits? The solar system, the galaxy, the universe should be filled with as many Star Sirens as they can sustain!”
“And they will be – eventually. But if we prioritize our long-term survival over the near term, we might not have a future to prioritize,” Akioneeda gently reminded her. “Steady, safe, and sustainable growth is better than fast and risky growth. We don’t want to spook anyone down on Earth into doing something that might hurt us, which is why we have to abide by the Solaris Accords.”
“Exactly! We’re signatories of the Solaris and Orion Accords, which we’ve always been in complete compliance with,” Kali said. “We’ve already lowered our population growth to two percent per annum, and have agreed to lower it to point four percent when we hit two billion. Anyone attacking us over that would be in violation of the Accords and incur the wrath of every other signatory, including Olympeon, of which we are still a protectorate.”
“Ugh. Don’t remind me that we’re technically compatriots with Macrogravitals,” Vici said in disgust.
“Vicillia, a little respect please for our creators and allies,” Akioneeda reprimanded her.
“I gratefully respect them, Preceptress Akio, because no one able to launch this ship out to us would ever do something so suicidally foolish as commit an act of war against Olympeon,” Kali insisted.
“You make valid points, Kali, and I’m not saying it’s likely this is an attack, but we should still proceed with caution,” Akioneeda reiterated. “At the very least, the scanner still has enough resolution to rule out the possibility of there being any potential high-yield explosives on the vessel. I think it’s worth the risk to jet over and see what’s inside; if that’s something you girls would be interested in?”
“Yes, preceptress,” Kali and Vici said in unison, each immediately assuming an attentive posture with their hands behind their backs as they nodded politely, eager for the opportunity to explore a non-Siren spacecraft. Pomoko, however, joined in a little more reticently, and solely because she didn’t want to upset her companions.
Unlike Vici, she never told stories about Macrogravitals driven into mad savagery by the harshness of space, because she found them unbearably terrifying.
The four of them filed into the airlock and grabbed a lungful of air before depressurizing, the short siphons at the base of their necks cinching shut to hold it in. The only things they brought with them were a small bundle of additional air pods and a field kit, both of which were carried by Pomoko.
The enhanced proteins and nanofiber weaves in their bare skin rendered them impervious to vacuum exposure, and their eyes were protected by transparent graphene lenses. Hundreds of small jets of light from all over their bodies propelled them across the gap between their shuttle and the errant vessel, with Kali and Vici taking advantage of the vast open space to perform challenging acrobatic maneuvers.
Akio was the first to arrive at the foreign spacecraft, circling it several times for any signs that might give her some idea about what it was and what it was doing there, but found none. She even peered into a porthole, but could see nothing of note in the darkened interior.
When she reached the airlock, she gestured for Pomoko to hand her a small but rugged cyberdeck from the field kit. While her exocortexes possessed more computing power than she could ever need, the cyberdeck contained a compact suite of sensor arrays for environmental analysis, as well as antennas and ports for electronic interfaces. Syncing the device with her own exocortexes, a holographic AR display projected itself on her bionic lenses.
It didn’t take long for her to find a frequency to engage with the airlock control mechanism, and even less time to find a skeleton key that could best that woefully inadequate security system. As the outer door of the airlock dilated open, Akio signalled for Kali and Vici to rejoin them, and they all funnelled into the ship together. The outer door snapped behind them, sealing them in complete darkness that was staved off solely by their photonic diodes until some emergency lights began to flicker on and off at random intervals.
As the airlock slowly began to repressurize, the Sirens – who were accustomed to an atmosphere maintained at conditions optimal for them - shuddered slightly at the feeling of foreign air creeping up against their skin.
“The air’s acceptable. It’s a standard oxygen/nitrogen mix with no detectable toxins or pathogens present,” Akioneeda assured them as she opened her siphons and exhaled the breath she had been holding since they left their own shuttle. “CO2’s a little high, but not dangerous.”
“Doesn’t high CO2 mean there’s someone here?” Pomoko asked, nervously looking about in all directions as she clutched her supplies close to her.
“Not necessarily. I’m not detecting any human environmental DNA,” Akio replied confidently. “I am however sampling some environmental DNA that doesn’t match anything on file. It might take some time to analyze it enough to make any sense of it. The power system is failing, which is why the lights aren’t working right. The electrical surges are generating enough EM interference that the sensor beam is still pretty scattered, so I can’t see much through the bulkheads. Keep your diodes lit up bright and stay alert.”
The shadowy main corridor was hexagonal in shape, spanning several meters across and roughly twenty-five meters from end to end. It was broken into six segments, with every other segment containing a pair of hexagonal doorways across from one another, along with a door at each end of the corridor.
“The door next to us should be the engine module, and the one at the other end should be the command and communications center,” Akio said, opening the door to the engine room and sticking her cyberdeck inside. “I’m going to do a quick scan of each room before we start rummaging through everything, so don’t go sticking your tails anywhere they don’t belong until I’m done.”
The other three Sirens all nodded obediently, and limited their exploration of the ship to a solely visible inspection. None of them were used to being in low light conditions, and their pupils were dilated so much they were nearly round. Though their visual acuity was raptor-like in its detail and they could see into the ultra-violet spectrum, night vision had not been a priority when they had been designed. Nonetheless, their large eyes and vertical pupils still let them see better in the dark than any unmodified human.
“The writing is Cyrillic, but everything I can see is just basic labels. I can’t tell for certain which language it is,” Kali said. “That doesn’t mean much though. This thing is definitely second-hand, likely even stolen. That would explain the lack of identification. Maybe whoever stole it got spooked and just set it adrift.”
“So, it’s a pirate ship then?” Pomoko asked, sounding slightly relieved. “That’s better than terrorists, or Reavers.”
“It is not. We’re space mermaids. Space pirates are our natural enemies,” Vici claimed. “If they catch us, they’ll pry the exocortexes from our skulls and pluck out our photonic diodes one by one, then bind us to the front of the ship as figureheads.”
“Vicillia, that is enough!” Akio reprimanded her as she scanned the next room. “Stop trying to scare her! Kali’s right. This is an old ship that’s been stripped of nearly every non-essential piece of equipment. Someone stole it, and then abandoned it when the authorities started closing in. That’s it. There’s not a raiding party of pirates hiding behind one of these doors.”
“Famous last words,” Vici muttered, defensively folding her arms across her chest.
Kali once again put her arm around Pomoko in comfort and gave her a loving kiss on the head.
The glowing, sylph-like Sirens continued floating through the dim and unevenly lit corridor like ghosts, checking one room after another and finding nothing of note until they finally reached the end.
“Now that we’re done checking for pirates, we can focus on the command center,” Akio announced. “Assuming they haven’t been wiped, we’ll check the ship’s logs and records for evidence of its origin and how it got here. If it was stolen, we’ll send it to Pink Floyd Station and they can deal with it. Otherwise, we’ll be free to keep it as salvage.”
She raised her finger to tap the AR command to open the door, but suddenly hesitated.
“What is it?” Kali asked.
Akio squinted at her HUD display in alarm, but seemed reluctant to answer.
“There’s something on the other side,” she whispered.
Without warning, the door was manually thrown open with a physical force that shocked the gracile Sirens. From the impenetrable gloom beyond the door’s threshold, there emerged a grotesque figure the likes of which the Sirens had never seen before.
Its round torso was squat and bloated, vaguely resembling that of a frog’s. Its veiny, crimson hide was mottled in purple splotches from where those veins had broken. Four long limbs dangled down limply, each possessing five boney, claw-like digits. As with the Star Sirens, its pinky fingers had been repurposed into a second opposable thumb; but unlike them, its digits were arranged more radially so that its hands resembled starving sea stars. It possessed a prehensile tail as well, though closer in appearance to an opossum’s than the Siren’s simian tails.
It was the front of the creature that was most alien to them. It had no neck or even a head distinct from its bulging torso. It had two eyes on mobile stalks, each a bloodshot blue with a crescent-shaped pupil. There was a blowhole near the top of its vaguely defined head, and near the bottom hung a toothless proboscis, as prehensile as an elephant’s trunk.
All four Sirens broke out into screams at the sight of the deformed creature, jetting backward as quickly as they could. Wheezing, the creature lurched towards them, slowly raising its proboscis in the air as it did so.
Vici grabbed the bundle of air pods that Pomoko had released in her panic and began beating the creature over the top of the head with it. Though she possessed just barely enough physical strength to walk in nothing greater than Lunar gravity, her love for her sisters and her fear, disgust, and contempt for anything else drove her to assail the hideous being as hard as she could.
The creature groaned, though it seemed to be more of sorrow than of pain. Raising its arms up protectively while keeping its proboscis elevated, it slowly sunk down to the bottom of the corridor as Vici bashed away at it.
“Vici! Vici, stop!” Kali commanded, grabbing hold of her and pulling her back. “It’s not attacking us!”
She was right, of course. Despite its fearsomely unfamiliar form, it actually seemed rather pathetic as it lay quivering on the floor, making no sound aside from laboured and gasping breaths.
“Alien! It’s an alien!” Vici cried in dismay, scarcely believing her own eyes.
Though that improbable, if more palpable, explanation for the being’s origin may have seemed the most obvious, Kali felt a growing sense of horror well up inside her as the pieces started to click together. She glanced over at Akio who was rapidly reviewing the readings from her cyberdeck, and could tell from the revulsion on her face that she had reached the same conclusion.
“Preceptress; please say that it’s an alien,” she pleaded in a softly cracking voice.
Akio looked up at her with pity, and slowly shook her head.
“I’m sorry,” she said quietly. “But that, save for the skill and wisdom of Olympeon and the Grace of Cosmothea, is us.”
“It… it’s human?” Pomoko asked, floating up behind Kali and Vici and just barely daring to peek over their shoulders at the horrid beast.
“It’s bred from a human base, yes,” Akio explained. “Heavily modified, of course. Much more than ourselves, though nowhere near as adroitly. It’s a genetic chimera; probably because its embryo was cobbled together from multiple lines of modified cells. Its hide and at least a few of its major organs appeared to have been grown separately and grafted on in vivo. It’s literally a Frankenstein Monster.”
“What’s that old saying? Knowledge is knowing Frankenstein was the Doctor, not the monster; wisdom is knowing that Doctor Frankenstein was the monster,” Kali quoted, pitying the poor wretch that wallowed before her.
“Yeah. I think… I think that whoever made this was trying to make a new species of space-adapted humans, probably in the hopes of eventually surpassing us,” Akio speculated. “But it’s a failed experiment. All of its genomes are highly degraded and riddled with off-target mutations and poorly thought-out on-target ones. Its cells are barely functional, and it’s undergoing mass organ failure at this very moment.”
“It… he’s dying?” Kali asked softly.
“It was probably dying before it even decanted; it’s been held together with prayers and twine,” Akio explained.
“Good! It’s an abomination! It never should’ve existed in the first place!” Pomoko declared.
“Pomoko, shush!” Kali yelled, hot tears beginning to pool in her eyes. “Can… can he hear us?”
“It can hear, I think. Its brain size and neuronal density are actually over the optimal limit, and its neurochemistry and connectome are a complete mess,” Akio replied. “It’s probably an idiot savant, at best. It likely has some linguistic capability, but I don’t think it would be able to understand Sirensong. It doesn’t have any kind of speech organs or comm implant, either. Its digestive and respiratory systems are separate, and that blowhole doesn’t have any kind of syrinx.”
“In other words, he has no mouth and he must scream,” Kali lamented. “Did he escape, do you think?”
“It must have,” Akio nodded. “Pomoko may have been a bit insensitive just now, but she’s right. This thing’s a violation of multiple transnational laws, treaties and conventions. Its creators wouldn’t want anyone to know about it. It… it must have known that escaping its creators and whatever convoluted life-support system they were using to keep it alive would have meant a slow and painful death, but it did it anyway. All it could have hoped for was that someone would find it and be able to hold its creators accountable. We don’t understand enough about its anatomy to offer any meaningful assistance. The most we could do is prolong its suffering. I think we should just let it pass in peace; it shouldn’t take more than a couple of hours at most now. We’ll return to our shuttle, tell the fleet what we found, and then have the carcass put in cryostasis as evidence. We’ll send it and this vessel to Olympeon, and they’ll deal with it. They’ll find who’s responsible and bring them to justice.”
“Yeah, we need to get back to the shuttle immediately for decontamination and med-screening. We could be infected by whatever microbes and nanites they stuffed into this bloated wretch,” Pomoko said with barely restrained panic, jetting back to the airlock as quickly as she could.
Akio and Vici followed closely behind, but Kali lingered in place as she gazed at the creature’s proboscis, which it still held upright. She recalled that elephants on Earth would raise their trunks when they were dying, and that the ancient Romans, despite being one of the cruellest cultures of humans to exist, had still recognized this as a plea for mercy. Though the gulf between the two species was significant, one self-aware being could still recognize the suffering of another, and be moved to pity by it.
“I’m staying with him,” she announced softly.
“What?” Pomoko shouted, she and the others all spinning around to look at her in bewilderment.
“Until he passes. Akio said it wouldn’t be long,” Kali replied.
“Why?” Vici asked.
“So he doesn’t die alone!” Kali screamed.
Pomoko started jetting back towards her friend, but Akio caught her and gently shook her head in refusal. She silently ushered the two of them back through the airlock and, with some reluctance, left Kali alone with the dying creature.
Kali tenderly took hold of the being’s trunk with her left hand, compassionately petting it with her right. He shuddered slightly, letting go of a noticeable amount of tension in his malformed body. Snorting from his blowhole, he focused his teetering eyestalks up at her, and she could see in those eyes a great, crushing sorrow, both from the suffering he had endured and the lost potential of the life he could have had if fate had been kinder.
A life like the one Kali had led as a privileged and well-bred daughter of Olympeon, and would most likely go on to live for many centuries more.
The tears in her eyes reached a critical mass now, budding off into tiny orbs and floating out into the air.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” she sobbed. It was all she could think to say, and she said it in English, hoping there was a better chance of him understanding it than her native language.
Remarkably, he reacted by raising the flat palm of his right hand up to the space beneath his trunk – a struggle for him even in the absence of gravity – and then lowered it with the palm facing up and out. Kali wasted no time in running the gesture through her exocortexes, frantic to decipher what the creature could be trying to tell her before it was too late.
It was sign language for ‘thank you’.

The slender and feminine frames of the four Star Sirens floated with an inhuman ease in the microgravity of their shuttle’s cabin, their prehensile feet and tails either dangling freely or clutching an opalescent perching rod. They stared with a novel curiosity out their window towards the small and relatively unsophisticated Earthly craft that had gradually been drifting its way towards their fleet.
“It’s still not answering hails, and I can’t find any sort of transponder or visual identification,” Akioneeda, the eldest of the group, sang in their musical and surgically precise language; the chevron-shaped slits over her trachea granting her a superhuman vocal range.
Using the glittering diodes embedded throughout her mauve skin, she fired jets of light to propel herself over to a crystalline computer terminal on the other side of the cabin.
“Why do they have to make their ships so ugly?” the magenta-skinned Pomoko asked; her large and bright cat-like irises constricting in their dark sclera as she squinted at the foreign craft in disdain.
Its design was a smoothly contoured rocket, with a rounded nose and a flaring aft that allowed it to hold both rear and forward-facing thrusters. Its dark hull was nearly invisible against the black of space, and coated in a radar-absorbent material that until recently had masked its approach. The Siren’s shuttle, in contrast, was a luminescent, bright-pink spiral seashell nestled in an array of gossamer-like radiators, sails, and solar panels that resembled blooming flower petals.
“I think the polite word is ‘spartan’,” the violet-skinned Kaliphimoa corrected her with an excited grin. The crystalline, oval exocortexes embedded on the sides of her elongated skull began flickering as she began reviewing any information that she thought might be pertinent. “Macrogravitals have a much harder time surviving in space than we do, so they have to be fairly pragmatic in the designs of their vessels. And remember that, unlike our ships, that rocket is meant to launch from and land on planets, so it has to be pretty rugged.”
“Kali, there can’t be any Macrogravitals on that thing; there’s no centrifuge,” the Cyan-skinned Vicillia pointed out. “Macrogravitals need macrogravity. It’s literally their defining characteristic.”
“They don’t die in microgravity, Vici,” Kali said with a roll of her eyes. “In olden times, baseline humans would spend months, sometimes even over a year living in space with no artificial gravity at all.”
“This isn’t the Apollo & Artemis Era, Kali. It’s virtually unheard of for Macrogravitals to leave cislunar space without a centrifuge,” Akioneeda said as she examined the telemetry on the intruding object. “That thing definitely has a habitat module, but Earth is on the other side of the sun right now. That’s weeks of travel, and that’s if its fusion rockets are functional. And it is a ship, not a habitat. Something like that is meant primarily for ground-to-orbit transport, and in a pinch travelling between the inner planets during optimal launch windows. It’s not intended to be lived in for prolonged periods of time. I don’t think it came here on purpose. It must have gotten knocked out of orbit and just found its way here. I wish I could tell for sure if there was someone inside, but its mini-magnetosphere is really scattering the sensor beams.”
“But doesn’t its magnetosphere mean there must be Macrogravitals inside?” Pomoko asked. “Even normal cosmic radiation is dangerous to humans without our enhanced DNA repair and chromamelanin, isn’t it?”
“They might have died before they had a chance to shut it off,” Kali suggested as tactfully as she could. “If there are bodies in there, we should recover them and send them back to Earth.”
“Wait a minute. It’s pretty suspicious that there’s no transponder or identifying markings on the craft, isn’t it?” Vici asked. “This could be a trap or terrorist attack of some kind.”
“An attack? Why would anyone want to attack us?” Pomoko asked in dismay.
“They wouldn’t. She’s being paranoid,” Kali said dismissively as she comfortingly slid her arm around her. “Vici, save your racist horror stories for when we’re not within visual distance of an Earth vessel, okay?”
“Reavers are real! Macrogravitals brains get cooked by cosmic radiation and they go crazy!” Vici insisted.
“Reavers are most definitively not real, Vicillia. Nonetheless, we probably shouldn’t rule out the possibility of an attack,” Akioneeda conceded. “Star Sirens now make up the majority of all humans permanently living off-world, and that’s not a lead we’re ever likely to lose. We’ve only been around a hundred years or so, and there are already over two million of us. We breed like rabbits.”
“That’s because we fuck like rabbits,” Vici said lasciviously, only to incur glares of confusion from the others. “Well, not directly, since we don’t reproduce naturally, but it’s good for our esprit de corps, right girls?”
“The point being, there are factions on Earth who view our current and forecasted success as a threat to their own potential expansion into space,” Akioneeda continued, failing to hide her annoyance at the younger Siren’s interruption.
“That’s backwards. Macrogravitals evolved to live on planets, and we were literally made to colonize space,” Pomoko objected. “Why shouldn’t we breed like rabbits? The solar system, the galaxy, the universe should be filled with as many Star Sirens as they can sustain!”
“And they will be – eventually. But if we prioritize our long-term survival over the near term, we might not have a future to prioritize,” Akioneeda gently reminded her. “Steady, safe, and sustainable growth is better than fast and risky growth. We don’t want to spook anyone down on Earth into doing something that might hurt us, which is why we have to abide by the Solaris Accords.”
“Exactly! We’re signatories of the Solaris and Orion Accords, which we’ve always been in complete compliance with,” Kali said. “We’ve already lowered our population growth to two percent per annum, and have agreed to lower it to point four percent when we hit two billion. Anyone attacking us over that would be in violation of the Accords and incur the wrath of every other signatory, including Olympeon, of which we are still a protectorate.”
“Ugh. Don’t remind me that we’re technically compatriots with Macrogravitals,” Vici said in disgust.
“Vicillia, a little respect please for our creators and allies,” Akioneeda reprimanded her.
“I gratefully respect them, Preceptress Akio, because no one able to launch this ship out to us would ever do something so suicidally foolish as commit an act of war against Olympeon,” Kali insisted.
“You make valid points, Kali, and I’m not saying it’s likely this is an attack, but we should still proceed with caution,” Akioneeda reiterated. “At the very least, the scanner still has enough resolution to rule out the possibility of there being any potential high-yield explosives on the vessel. I think it’s worth the risk to jet over and see what’s inside; if that’s something you girls would be interested in?”
“Yes, preceptress,” Kali and Vici said in unison, each immediately assuming an attentive posture with their hands behind their backs as they nodded politely, eager for the opportunity to explore a non-Siren spacecraft. Pomoko, however, joined in a little more reticently, and solely because she didn’t want to upset her companions.
Unlike Vici, she never told stories about Macrogravitals driven into mad savagery by the harshness of space, because she found them unbearably terrifying.
The four of them filed into the airlock and grabbed a lungful of air before depressurizing, the short siphons at the base of their necks cinching shut to hold it in. The only things they brought with them were a small bundle of additional air pods and a field kit, both of which were carried by Pomoko.
The enhanced proteins and nanofiber weaves in their bare skin rendered them impervious to vacuum exposure, and their eyes were protected by transparent graphene lenses. Hundreds of small jets of light from all over their bodies propelled them across the gap between their shuttle and the errant vessel, with Kali and Vici taking advantage of the vast open space to perform challenging acrobatic maneuvers.
Akio was the first to arrive at the foreign spacecraft, circling it several times for any signs that might give her some idea about what it was and what it was doing there, but found none. She even peered into a porthole, but could see nothing of note in the darkened interior.
When she reached the airlock, she gestured for Pomoko to hand her a small but rugged cyberdeck from the field kit. While her exocortexes possessed more computing power than she could ever need, the cyberdeck contained a compact suite of sensor arrays for environmental analysis, as well as antennas and ports for electronic interfaces. Syncing the device with her own exocortexes, a holographic AR display projected itself on her bionic lenses.
It didn’t take long for her to find a frequency to engage with the airlock control mechanism, and even less time to find a skeleton key that could best that woefully inadequate security system. As the outer door of the airlock dilated open, Akio signalled for Kali and Vici to rejoin them, and they all funnelled into the ship together. The outer door snapped behind them, sealing them in complete darkness that was staved off solely by their photonic diodes until some emergency lights began to flicker on and off at random intervals.
As the airlock slowly began to repressurize, the Sirens – who were accustomed to an atmosphere maintained at conditions optimal for them - shuddered slightly at the feeling of foreign air creeping up against their skin.
“The air’s acceptable. It’s a standard oxygen/nitrogen mix with no detectable toxins or pathogens present,” Akioneeda assured them as she opened her siphons and exhaled the breath she had been holding since they left their own shuttle. “CO2’s a little high, but not dangerous.”
“Doesn’t high CO2 mean there’s someone here?” Pomoko asked, nervously looking about in all directions as she clutched her supplies close to her.
“Not necessarily. I’m not detecting any human environmental DNA,” Akio replied confidently. “I am however sampling some environmental DNA that doesn’t match anything on file. It might take some time to analyze it enough to make any sense of it. The power system is failing, which is why the lights aren’t working right. The electrical surges are generating enough EM interference that the sensor beam is still pretty scattered, so I can’t see much through the bulkheads. Keep your diodes lit up bright and stay alert.”
The shadowy main corridor was hexagonal in shape, spanning several meters across and roughly twenty-five meters from end to end. It was broken into six segments, with every other segment containing a pair of hexagonal doorways across from one another, along with a door at each end of the corridor.
“The door next to us should be the engine module, and the one at the other end should be the command and communications center,” Akio said, opening the door to the engine room and sticking her cyberdeck inside. “I’m going to do a quick scan of each room before we start rummaging through everything, so don’t go sticking your tails anywhere they don’t belong until I’m done.”
The other three Sirens all nodded obediently, and limited their exploration of the ship to a solely visible inspection. None of them were used to being in low light conditions, and their pupils were dilated so much they were nearly round. Though their visual acuity was raptor-like in its detail and they could see into the ultra-violet spectrum, night vision had not been a priority when they had been designed. Nonetheless, their large eyes and vertical pupils still let them see better in the dark than any unmodified human.
“The writing is Cyrillic, but everything I can see is just basic labels. I can’t tell for certain which language it is,” Kali said. “That doesn’t mean much though. This thing is definitely second-hand, likely even stolen. That would explain the lack of identification. Maybe whoever stole it got spooked and just set it adrift.”
“So, it’s a pirate ship then?” Pomoko asked, sounding slightly relieved. “That’s better than terrorists, or Reavers.”
“It is not. We’re space mermaids. Space pirates are our natural enemies,” Vici claimed. “If they catch us, they’ll pry the exocortexes from our skulls and pluck out our photonic diodes one by one, then bind us to the front of the ship as figureheads.”
“Vicillia, that is enough!” Akio reprimanded her as she scanned the next room. “Stop trying to scare her! Kali’s right. This is an old ship that’s been stripped of nearly every non-essential piece of equipment. Someone stole it, and then abandoned it when the authorities started closing in. That’s it. There’s not a raiding party of pirates hiding behind one of these doors.”
“Famous last words,” Vici muttered, defensively folding her arms across her chest.
Kali once again put her arm around Pomoko in comfort and gave her a loving kiss on the head.
The glowing, sylph-like Sirens continued floating through the dim and unevenly lit corridor like ghosts, checking one room after another and finding nothing of note until they finally reached the end.
“Now that we’re done checking for pirates, we can focus on the command center,” Akio announced. “Assuming they haven’t been wiped, we’ll check the ship’s logs and records for evidence of its origin and how it got here. If it was stolen, we’ll send it to Pink Floyd Station and they can deal with it. Otherwise, we’ll be free to keep it as salvage.”
She raised her finger to tap the AR command to open the door, but suddenly hesitated.
“What is it?” Kali asked.
Akio squinted at her HUD display in alarm, but seemed reluctant to answer.
“There’s something on the other side,” she whispered.
Without warning, the door was manually thrown open with a physical force that shocked the gracile Sirens. From the impenetrable gloom beyond the door’s threshold, there emerged a grotesque figure the likes of which the Sirens had never seen before.
Its round torso was squat and bloated, vaguely resembling that of a frog’s. Its veiny, crimson hide was mottled in purple splotches from where those veins had broken. Four long limbs dangled down limply, each possessing five boney, claw-like digits. As with the Star Sirens, its pinky fingers had been repurposed into a second opposable thumb; but unlike them, its digits were arranged more radially so that its hands resembled starving sea stars. It possessed a prehensile tail as well, though closer in appearance to an opossum’s than the Siren’s simian tails.
It was the front of the creature that was most alien to them. It had no neck or even a head distinct from its bulging torso. It had two eyes on mobile stalks, each a bloodshot blue with a crescent-shaped pupil. There was a blowhole near the top of its vaguely defined head, and near the bottom hung a toothless proboscis, as prehensile as an elephant’s trunk.
All four Sirens broke out into screams at the sight of the deformed creature, jetting backward as quickly as they could. Wheezing, the creature lurched towards them, slowly raising its proboscis in the air as it did so.
Vici grabbed the bundle of air pods that Pomoko had released in her panic and began beating the creature over the top of the head with it. Though she possessed just barely enough physical strength to walk in nothing greater than Lunar gravity, her love for her sisters and her fear, disgust, and contempt for anything else drove her to assail the hideous being as hard as she could.
The creature groaned, though it seemed to be more of sorrow than of pain. Raising its arms up protectively while keeping its proboscis elevated, it slowly sunk down to the bottom of the corridor as Vici bashed away at it.
“Vici! Vici, stop!” Kali commanded, grabbing hold of her and pulling her back. “It’s not attacking us!”
She was right, of course. Despite its fearsomely unfamiliar form, it actually seemed rather pathetic as it lay quivering on the floor, making no sound aside from laboured and gasping breaths.
“Alien! It’s an alien!” Vici cried in dismay, scarcely believing her own eyes.
Though that improbable, if more palpable, explanation for the being’s origin may have seemed the most obvious, Kali felt a growing sense of horror well up inside her as the pieces started to click together. She glanced over at Akio who was rapidly reviewing the readings from her cyberdeck, and could tell from the revulsion on her face that she had reached the same conclusion.
“Preceptress; please say that it’s an alien,” she pleaded in a softly cracking voice.
Akio looked up at her with pity, and slowly shook her head.
“I’m sorry,” she said quietly. “But that, save for the skill and wisdom of Olympeon and the Grace of Cosmothea, is us.”
“It… it’s human?” Pomoko asked, floating up behind Kali and Vici and just barely daring to peek over their shoulders at the horrid beast.
“It’s bred from a human base, yes,” Akio explained. “Heavily modified, of course. Much more than ourselves, though nowhere near as adroitly. It’s a genetic chimera; probably because its embryo was cobbled together from multiple lines of modified cells. Its hide and at least a few of its major organs appeared to have been grown separately and grafted on in vivo. It’s literally a Frankenstein Monster.”
“What’s that old saying? Knowledge is knowing Frankenstein was the Doctor, not the monster; wisdom is knowing that Doctor Frankenstein was the monster,” Kali quoted, pitying the poor wretch that wallowed before her.
“Yeah. I think… I think that whoever made this was trying to make a new species of space-adapted humans, probably in the hopes of eventually surpassing us,” Akio speculated. “But it’s a failed experiment. All of its genomes are highly degraded and riddled with off-target mutations and poorly thought-out on-target ones. Its cells are barely functional, and it’s undergoing mass organ failure at this very moment.”
“It… he’s dying?” Kali asked softly.
“It was probably dying before it even decanted; it’s been held together with prayers and twine,” Akio explained.
“Good! It’s an abomination! It never should’ve existed in the first place!” Pomoko declared.
“Pomoko, shush!” Kali yelled, hot tears beginning to pool in her eyes. “Can… can he hear us?”
“It can hear, I think. Its brain size and neuronal density are actually over the optimal limit, and its neurochemistry and connectome are a complete mess,” Akio replied. “It’s probably an idiot savant, at best. It likely has some linguistic capability, but I don’t think it would be able to understand Sirensong. It doesn’t have any kind of speech organs or comm implant, either. Its digestive and respiratory systems are separate, and that blowhole doesn’t have any kind of syrinx.”
“In other words, he has no mouth and he must scream,” Kali lamented. “Did he escape, do you think?”
“It must have,” Akio nodded. “Pomoko may have been a bit insensitive just now, but she’s right. This thing’s a violation of multiple transnational laws, treaties and conventions. Its creators wouldn’t want anyone to know about it. It… it must have known that escaping its creators and whatever convoluted life-support system they were using to keep it alive would have meant a slow and painful death, but it did it anyway. All it could have hoped for was that someone would find it and be able to hold its creators accountable. We don’t understand enough about its anatomy to offer any meaningful assistance. The most we could do is prolong its suffering. I think we should just let it pass in peace; it shouldn’t take more than a couple of hours at most now. We’ll return to our shuttle, tell the fleet what we found, and then have the carcass put in cryostasis as evidence. We’ll send it and this vessel to Olympeon, and they’ll deal with it. They’ll find who’s responsible and bring them to justice.”
“Yeah, we need to get back to the shuttle immediately for decontamination and med-screening. We could be infected by whatever microbes and nanites they stuffed into this bloated wretch,” Pomoko said with barely restrained panic, jetting back to the airlock as quickly as she could.
Akio and Vici followed closely behind, but Kali lingered in place as she gazed at the creature’s proboscis, which it still held upright. She recalled that elephants on Earth would raise their trunks when they were dying, and that the ancient Romans, despite being one of the cruellest cultures of humans to exist, had still recognized this as a plea for mercy. Though the gulf between the two species was significant, one self-aware being could still recognize the suffering of another, and be moved to pity by it.
“I’m staying with him,” she announced softly.
“What?” Pomoko shouted, she and the others all spinning around to look at her in bewilderment.
“Until he passes. Akio said it wouldn’t be long,” Kali replied.
“Why?” Vici asked.
“So he doesn’t die alone!” Kali screamed.
Pomoko started jetting back towards her friend, but Akio caught her and gently shook her head in refusal. She silently ushered the two of them back through the airlock and, with some reluctance, left Kali alone with the dying creature.
Kali tenderly took hold of the being’s trunk with her left hand, compassionately petting it with her right. He shuddered slightly, letting go of a noticeable amount of tension in his malformed body. Snorting from his blowhole, he focused his teetering eyestalks up at her, and she could see in those eyes a great, crushing sorrow, both from the suffering he had endured and the lost potential of the life he could have had if fate had been kinder.
A life like the one Kali had led as a privileged and well-bred daughter of Olympeon, and would most likely go on to live for many centuries more.
The tears in her eyes reached a critical mass now, budding off into tiny orbs and floating out into the air.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” she sobbed. It was all she could think to say, and she said it in English, hoping there was a better chance of him understanding it than her native language.
Remarkably, he reacted by raising the flat palm of his right hand up to the space beneath his trunk – a struggle for him even in the absence of gravity – and then lowered it with the palm facing up and out. Kali wasted no time in running the gesture through her exocortexes, frantic to decipher what the creature could be trying to tell her before it was too late.
It was sign language for ‘thank you’.

​
creaming

The slender and feminine frames of the four Star Sirens floated with an inhuman ease in the microgravity of their shuttle’s cabin, their prehensile feet and tails either dangling freely or clutching an opalescent perching rod. They stared with a novel curiosity out their window towards the small and relatively unsophisticated Earthly craft that had gradually been drifting its way towards their fleet.
“It’s still not answering hails, and I can’t find any sort of transponder or visual identification,” Akioneeda, the eldest of the group, sang in their musical and surgically precise language; the chevron-shaped slits over her trachea granting her a superhuman vocal range.
Using the glittering diodes embedded throughout her mauve skin, she fired jets of light to propel herself over to a crystalline computer terminal on the other side of the cabin.
“Why do they have to make their ships so ugly?” the magenta-skinned Pomoko asked; her large and bright cat-like irises constricting in their dark sclera as she squinted at the foreign craft in disdain.
Its design was a smoothly contoured rocket, with a rounded nose and a flaring aft that allowed it to hold both rear and forward-facing thrusters. Its dark hull was nearly invisible against the black of space, and coated in a radar-absorbent material that until recently had masked its approach. The Siren’s shuttle, in contrast, was a luminescent, bright-pink spiral seashell nestled in an array of gossamer-like radiators, sails, and solar panels that resembled blooming flower petals.
“I think the polite word is ‘spartan’,” the violet-skinned Kaliphimoa corrected her with an excited grin. The crystalline, oval exocortexes embedded on the sides of her elongated skull began flickering as she began reviewing any information that she thought might be pertinent. “Macrogravitals have a much harder time surviving in space than we do, so they have to be fairly pragmatic in the designs of their vessels. And remember that, unlike our ships, that rocket is meant to launch from and land on planets, so it has to be pretty rugged.”
“Kali, there can’t be any Macrogravitals on that thing; there’s no centrifuge,” the Cyan-skinned Vicillia pointed out. “Macrogravitals need macrogravity. It’s literally their defining characteristic.”
“They don’t die in microgravity, Vici,” Kali said with a roll of her eyes. “In olden times, baseline humans would spend months, sometimes even over a year living in space with no artificial gravity at all.”
“This isn’t the Apollo & Artemis Era, Kali. It’s virtually unheard of for Macrogravitals to leave cislunar space without a centrifuge,” Akioneeda said as she examined the telemetry on the intruding object. “That thing definitely has a habitat module, but Earth is on the other side of the sun right now. That’s weeks of travel, and that’s if its fusion rockets are functional. And it is a ship, not a habitat. Something like that is meant primarily for ground-to-orbit transport, and in a pinch travelling between the inner planets during optimal launch windows. It’s not intended to be lived in for prolonged periods of time. I don’t think it came here on purpose. It must have gotten knocked out of orbit and just found its way here. I wish I could tell for sure if there was someone inside, but its mini-magnetosphere is really scattering the sensor beams.”
“But doesn’t its magnetosphere mean there must be Macrogravitals inside?” Pomoko asked. “Even normal cosmic radiation is dangerous to humans without our enhanced DNA repair and chromamelanin, isn’t it?”
“They might have died before they had a chance to shut it off,” Kali suggested as tactfully as she could. “If there are bodies in there, we should recover them and send them back to Earth.”
“Wait a minute. It’s pretty suspicious that there’s no transponder or identifying markings on the craft, isn’t it?” Vici asked. “This could be a trap or terrorist attack of some kind.”
“An attack? Why would anyone want to attack us?” Pomoko asked in dismay.
“They wouldn’t. She’s being paranoid,” Kali said dismissively as she comfortingly slid her arm around her. “Vici, save your racist horror stories for when we’re not within visual distance of an Earth vessel, okay?”
“Reavers are real! Macrogravitals brains get cooked by cosmic radiation and they go crazy!” Vici insisted.
“Reavers are most definitively not real, Vicillia. Nonetheless, we probably shouldn’t rule out the possibility of an attack,” Akioneeda conceded. “Star Sirens now make up the majority of all humans permanently living off-world, and that’s not a lead we’re ever likely to lose. We’ve only been around a hundred years or so, and there are already over two million of us. We breed like rabbits.”
“That’s because we screw like rabbits,” Vici said lasciviously, only to incur glares of confusion from the others. “Well, not directly, since we don’t reproduce naturally, but it’s good for our esprit de corps, right girls?”
“The point being, there are factions on Earth who view our current and forecasted success as a threat to their own potential expansion into space,” Akioneeda continued, failing to hide her annoyance at the younger Siren’s interruption.
“That’s backwards. Macrogravitals evolved to live on planets, and we were literally made to colonize space,” Pomoko objected. “Why shouldn’t we breed like rabbits? The solar system, the galaxy, the universe should be filled with as many Star Sirens as they can sustain!”
“And they will be – eventually. But if we prioritize our long-term survival over the near term, we might not have a future to prioritize,” Akioneeda gently reminded her. “Steady, safe, and sustainable growth is better than fast and risky growth. We don’t want to spook anyone down on Earth into doing something that might hurt us, which is why we have to abide by the Solaris Accords.”
“Exactly! We’re signatories of the Solaris and Orion Accords, which we’ve always been in complete compliance with,” Kali said. “We’ve already lowered our population growth to two percent per annum, and have agreed to lower it to point four percent when we hit two billion. Anyone attacking us over that would be in violation of the Accords and incur the wrath of every other signatory, including Olympeon, of which we are still a protectorate.”
“Ugh. Don’t remind me that we’re technically compatriots with Macrogravitals,” Vici said in disgust.
“Vicillia, a little respect please for our creators and allies,” Akioneeda reprimanded her.
“I gratefully respect them, Preceptress Akio, because no one able to launch this ship out to us would ever do something so suicidally foolish as commit an act of war against Olympeon,” Kali insisted.
“You make valid points, Kali, and I’m not saying it’s likely this is an attack, but we should still proceed with caution,” Akioneeda reiterated. “At the very least, the scanner still has enough resolution to rule out the possibility of there being any potential high-yield explosives on the vessel. I think it’s worth the risk to jet over and see what’s inside; if that’s something you girls would be interested in?”
“Yes, preceptress,” Kali and Vici said in unison, each immediately assuming an attentive posture with their hands behind their backs as they nodded politely, eager for the opportunity to explore a non-Siren spacecraft. Pomoko, however, joined in a little more reticently, and solely because she didn’t want to upset her companions.
Unlike Vici, she never told stories about Macrogravitals driven into mad savagery by the harshness of space, because she found them unbearably terrifying.
The four of them filed into the airlock and grabbed a lungful of air before depressurizing, the short siphons at the base of their necks cinching shut to hold it in. The only things they brought with them were a small bundle of additional air pods and a field kit, both of which were carried by Pomoko.
The enhanced proteins and nanofiber weaves in their bare skin rendered them impervious to vacuum exposure, and their eyes were protected by transparent graphene lenses. Hundreds of small jets of light from all over their bodies propelled them across the gap between their shuttle and the errant vessel, with Kali and Vici taking advantage of the vast open space to perform challenging acrobatic maneuvers.
Akio was the first to arrive at the foreign spacecraft, circling it several times for any signs that might give her some idea about what it was and what it was doing there, but found none. She even peered into a porthole, but could see nothing of note in the darkened interior.
When she reached the airlock, she gestured for Pomoko to hand her a small but rugged cyberdeck from the field kit. While her exocortexes possessed more computing power than she could ever need, the cyberdeck contained a compact suite of sensor arrays for environmental analysis, as well as antennas and ports for electronic interfaces. Syncing the device with her own exocortexes, a holographic AR display projected itself on her bionic lenses.
It didn’t take long for her to find a frequency to engage with the airlock control mechanism, and even less time to find a skeleton key that could best that woefully inadequate security system. As the outer door of the airlock dilated open, Akio signalled for Kali and Vici to rejoin them, and they all funnelled into the ship together. The outer door snapped behind them, sealing them in complete darkness that was staved off solely by their photonic diodes until some emergency lights began to flicker on and off at random intervals.
As the airlock slowly began to repressurize, the Sirens – who were accustomed to an atmosphere maintained at conditions optimal for them - shuddered slightly at the feeling of foreign air creeping up against their skin.
“The air’s acceptable. It’s a standard oxygen/nitrogen mix with no detectable toxins or pathogens present,” Akioneeda assured them as she opened her siphons and exhaled the breath she had been holding since they left their own shuttle. “CO2’s a little high, but not dangerous.”
“Doesn’t high CO2 mean there’s someone here?” Pomoko asked, nervously looking about in all directions as she clutched her supplies close to her.
“Not necessarily. I’m not detecting any human environmental DNA,” Akio replied confidently. “I am however sampling some environmental DNA that doesn’t match anything on file. It might take some time to analyze it enough to make any sense of it. The power system is failing, which is why the lights aren’t working right. The electrical surges are generating enough EM interference that the sensor beam is still pretty scattered, so I can’t see much through the bulkheads. Keep your diodes lit up bright and stay alert.”
The shadowy main corridor was hexagonal in shape, spanning several meters across and roughly twenty-five meters from end to end. It was broken into six segments, with every other segment containing a pair of hexagonal doorways across from one another, along with a door at each end of the corridor.
“The door next to us should be the engine module, and the one at the other end should be the command and communications center,” Akio said, opening the door to the engine room and sticking her cyberdeck inside. “I’m going to do a quick scan of each room before we start rummaging through everything, so don’t go sticking your tails anywhere they don’t belong until I’m done.”
The other three Sirens all nodded obediently, and limited their exploration of the ship to a solely visible inspection. None of them were used to being in low light conditions, and their pupils were dilated so much they were nearly round. Though their visual acuity was raptor-like in its detail and they could see into the ultra-violet spectrum, night vision had not been a priority when they had been designed. Nonetheless, their large eyes and vertical pupils still let them see better in the dark than any unmodified human.
“The writing is Cyrillic, but everything I can see is just basic labels. I can’t tell for certain which language it is,” Kali said. “That doesn’t mean much though. This thing is definitely second-hand, likely even stolen. That would explain the lack of identification. Maybe whoever stole it got spooked and just set it adrift.”
“So, it’s a pirate ship then?” Pomoko asked, sounding slightly relieved. “That’s better than terrorists, or Reavers.”
“It is not. We’re space mermaids. Space pirates are our natural enemies,” Vici claimed. “If they catch us, they’ll pry the exocortexes from our skulls and pluck out our photonic diodes one by one, then bind us to the front of the ship as figureheads.”
“Vicillia, that is enough!” Akio reprimanded her as she scanned the next room. “Stop trying to scare her! Kali’s right. This is an old ship that’s been stripped of nearly every non-essential piece of equipment. Someone stole it, and then abandoned it when the authorities started closing in. That’s it. There’s not a raiding party of pirates hiding behind one of these doors.”
“Famous last words,” Vici muttered, defensively folding her arms across her chest.
Kali once again put her arm around Pomoko in comfort and gave her a loving kiss on the head.
The glowing, sylph-like Sirens continued floating through the dim and unevenly lit corridor like ghosts, checking one room after another and finding nothing of note until they finally reached the end.
“Now that we’re done checking for pirates, we can focus on the command center,” Akio announced. “Assuming they haven’t been wiped, we’ll check the ship’s logs and records for evidence of its origin and how it got here. If it was stolen, we’ll send it to Pink Floyd Station and they can deal with it. Otherwise, we’ll be free to keep it as salvage.”
She raised her finger to tap the AR command to open the door, but suddenly hesitated.
“What is it?” Kali asked.
Akio squinted at her HUD display in alarm, but seemed reluctant to answer.
“There’s something on the other side,” she whispered.
Without warning, the door was manually thrown open with a physical force that shocked the gracile Sirens. From the impenetrable gloom beyond the door’s threshold, there emerged a grotesque figure the likes of which the Sirens had never seen before.
Its round torso was squat and bloated, vaguely resembling that of a frog’s. Its veiny, crimson hide was mottled in purple splotches from where those veins had broken. Four long limbs dangled down limply, each possessing five boney, claw-like digits. As with the Star Sirens, its pinky fingers had been repurposed into a second opposable thumb; but unlike them, its digits were arranged more radially so that its hands resembled starving sea stars. It possessed a prehensile tail as well, though closer in appearance to an opossum’s than the Siren’s simian tails.
It was the front of the creature that was most alien to them. It had no neck or even a head distinct from its bulging torso. It had two eyes on mobile stalks, each a bloodshot blue with a crescent-shaped pupil. There was a blowhole near the top of its vaguely defined head, and near the bottom hung a toothless proboscis, as prehensile as an elephant’s trunk.
All four Sirens broke out into screams at the sight of the deformed creature, jetting backward as quickly as they could. Wheezing, the creature lurched towards them, slowly raising its proboscis in the air as it did so.
Vici grabbed the bundle of air pods that Pomoko had released in her panic and began beating the creature over the top of the head with it. Though she possessed just barely enough physical strength to walk in nothing greater than Lunar gravity, her love for her sisters and her fear, disgust, and contempt for anything else drove her to assail the hideous being as hard as she could.
The creature groaned, though it seemed to be more of sorrow than of pain. Raising its arms up protectively while keeping its proboscis elevated, it slowly sunk down to the bottom of the corridor as Vici bashed away at it.
“Vici! Vici, stop!” Kali commanded, grabbing hold of her and pulling her back. “It’s not attacking us!”
She was right, of course. Despite its fearsomely unfamiliar form, it actually seemed rather pathetic as it lay quivering on the floor, making no sound aside from laboured and gasping breaths.
“Alien! It’s an alien!” Vici cried in dismay, scarcely believing her own eyes.
Though that improbable, if more palpable, explanation for the being’s origin may have seemed the most obvious, Kali felt a growing sense of horror well up inside her as the pieces started to click together. She glanced over at Akio who was rapidly reviewing the readings from her cyberdeck, and could tell from the revulsion on her face that she had reached the same conclusion.
“Preceptress; please say that it’s an alien,” she pleaded in a softly cracking voice.
Akio looked up at her with pity, and slowly shook her head.
“I’m sorry,” she said quietly. “But that, save for the skill and wisdom of Olympeon and the Grace of Cosmothea, is us.”
“It… it’s human?” Pomoko asked, floating up behind Kali and Vici and just barely daring to peek over their shoulders at the horrid beast.
“It’s bred from a human base, yes,” Akio explained. “Heavily modified, of course. Much more than ourselves, though nowhere near as adroitly. It’s a genetic chimera; probably because its embryo was cobbled together from multiple lines of modified cells. Its hide and at least a few of its major organs appeared to have been grown separately and grafted on in vivo. It’s literally a Frankenstein Monster.”
“What’s that old saying? Knowledge is knowing Frankenstein was the Doctor, not the monster; wisdom is knowing that Doctor Frankenstein was the monster,” Kali quoted, pitying the poor wretch that wallowed before her.
“Yeah. I think… I think that whoever made this was trying to make a new species of space-adapted humans, probably in the hopes of eventually surpassing us,” Akio speculated. “But it’s a failed experiment. All of its genomes are highly degraded and riddled with off-target mutations and poorly thought-out on-target ones. Its cells are barely functional, and it’s undergoing mass organ failure at this very moment.”
“It… he’s dying?” Kali asked softly.
“It was probably dying before it even decanted; it’s been held together with prayers and twine,” Akio explained.
“Good! It’s an abomination! It never should’ve existed in the first place!” Pomoko declared.
“Pomoko, shush!” Kali yelled, hot tears beginning to pool in her eyes. “Can… can he hear us?”
“It can hear, I think. Its brain size and neuronal density are actually over the optimal limit, and its neurochemistry and connectome are a complete mess,” Akio replied. “It’s probably an idiot savant, at best. It likely has some linguistic capability, but I don’t think it would be able to understand Sirensong. It doesn’t have any kind of speech organs or comm implant, either. Its digestive and respiratory systems are separate, and that blowhole doesn’t have any kind of syrinx.”
“In other words, he has no mouth and he must scream,” Kali lamented. “Did he escape, do you think?”
“It must have,” Akio nodded. “Pomoko may have been a bit insensitive just now, but she’s right. This thing’s a violation of multiple transnational laws, treaties and conventions. Its creators wouldn’t want anyone to know about it. It… it must have known that escaping its creators and whatever convoluted life-support system they were using to keep it alive would have meant a slow and painful death, but it did it anyway. All it could have hoped for was that someone would find it and be able to hold its creators accountable. We don’t understand enough about its anatomy to offer any meaningful assistance. The most we could do is prolong its suffering. I think we should just let it pass in peace; it shouldn’t take more than a couple of hours at most now. We’ll return to our shuttle, tell the fleet what we found, and then have the carcass put in cryostasis as evidence. We’ll send it and this vessel to Olympeon, and they’ll deal with it. They’ll find who’s responsible and bring them to justice.”
“Yeah, we need to get back to the shuttle immediately for decontamination and med-screening. We could be infected by whatever microbes and nanites they stuffed into this bloated wretch,” Pomoko said with barely restrained panic, jetting back to the airlock as quickly as she could.
Akio and Vici followed closely behind, but Kali lingered in place as she gazed at the creature’s proboscis, which it still held upright. She recalled that elephants on Earth would raise their trunks when they were dying, and that the ancient Romans, despite being one of the cruellest cultures of humans to exist, had still recognized this as a plea for mercy. Though the gulf between the two species was significant, one self-aware being could still recognize the suffering of another, and be moved to pity by it.
“I’m staying with him,” she announced softly.
“What?” Pomoko shouted, she and the others all spinning around to look at her in bewilderment.
“Until he passes. Akio said it wouldn’t be long,” Kali replied.
“Why?” Vici asked.
“So he doesn’t die alone!” Kali screamed.
Pomoko started jetting back towards her friend, but Akio caught her and gently shook her head in refusal. She silently ushered the two of them back through the airlock and, with some reluctance, left Kali alone with the dying creature.
Kali tenderly took hold of the being’s trunk with her left hand, compassionately petting it with her right. He shuddered slightly, letting go of a noticeable amount of tension in his malformed body. Snorting from his blowhole, he focused his teetering eyestalks up at her, and she could see in those eyes a great, crushing sorrow, both from the suffering he had endured and the lost potential of the life he could have had if fate had been kinder.
A life like the one Kali had led as a privileged and well-bred daughter of Olympeon, and would most likely go on to live for many centuries more.
The tears in her eyes reached a critical mass now, budding off into tiny orbs and floating out into the air.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” she sobbed. It was all she could think to say, and she said it in English, hoping there was a better chance of him understanding it than her native language.
Remarkably, he reacted by raising the flat palm of his right hand up to the space beneath his trunk – a struggle for him even in the absence of gravity – and then lowered it with the palm facing up and out. Kali wasted no time in running the gesture through her exocortexes, frantic to decipher what the creature could be trying to tell her before it was too late.
It was sign language for ‘thank you’.
____________________________________________
By The Vesper's Bell

The slender and feminine frames of the four Star Sirens floated with an inhuman ease in the microgravity of their shuttle’s cabin, their prehensile feet and tails either dangling freely or clutching an opalescent perching rod. They stared with a novel curiosity out their window towards the small and relatively unsophisticated Earthly craft that had gradually been drifting its way towards their fleet.
“It’s still not answering hails, and I can’t find any sort of transponder or visual identification,” Akioneeda, the eldest of the group, sang in their musical and surgically precise language; the chevron-shaped slits over her trachea granting her a superhuman vocal range.
Using the glittering diodes embedded throughout her mauve skin, she fired jets of light to propel herself over to a crystalline computer terminal on the other side of the cabin.
“Why do they have to make their ships so ugly?” the magenta-skinned Pomoko asked; her large and bright cat-like irises constricting in their dark sclera as she squinted at the foreign craft in disdain.
Its design was a smoothly contoured rocket, with a rounded nose and a flaring aft that allowed it to hold both rear and forward-facing thrusters. Its dark hull was nearly invisible against the black of space, and coated in a radar-absorbent material that until recently had masked its approach. The Siren’s shuttle, in contrast, was a luminescent, bright-pink spiral seashell nestled in an array of gossamer-like radiators, sails, and solar panels that resembled blooming flower petals.
“I think the polite word is ‘spartan’,” the violet-skinned Kaliphimoa corrected her with an excited grin. The crystalline, oval exocortexes embedded on the sides of her elongated skull began flickering as she began reviewing any information that she thought might be pertinent. “Macrogravitals have a much harder time surviving in space than we do, so they have to be fairly pragmatic in the designs of their vessels. And remember that, unlike our ships, that rocket is meant to launch from and land on planets, so it has to be pretty rugged.”
“Kali, there can’t be any Macrogravitals on that thing; there’s no centrifuge,” the Cyan-skinned Vicillia pointed out. “Macrogravitals need macrogravity. It’s literally their defining characteristic.”
“They don’t die in microgravity, Vici,” Kali said with a roll of her eyes. “In olden times, baseline humans would spend months, sometimes even over a year living in space with no artificial gravity at all.”
“This isn’t the Apollo & Artemis Era, Kali. It’s virtually unheard of for Macrogravitals to leave cislunar space without a centrifuge,” Akioneeda said as she examined the telemetry on the intruding object. “That thing definitely has a habitat module, but Earth is on the other side of the sun right now. That’s weeks of travel, and that’s if its fusion rockets are functional. And it is a ship, not a habitat. Something like that is meant primarily for ground-to-orbit transport, and in a pinch travelling between the inner planets during optimal launch windows. It’s not intended to be lived in for prolonged periods of time. I don’t think it came here on purpose. It must have gotten knocked out of orbit and just found its way here. I wish I could tell for sure if there was someone inside, but its mini-magnetosphere is really scattering the sensor beams.”
“But doesn’t its magnetosphere mean there must be Macrogravitals inside?” Pomoko asked. “Even normal cosmic radiation is dangerous to humans without our enhanced DNA repair and chromamelanin, isn’t it?”
“They might have died before they had a chance to shut it off,” Kali suggested as tactfully as she could. “If there are bodies in there, we should recover them and send them back to Earth.”
“Wait a minute. It’s pretty suspicious that there’s no transponder or identifying markings on the craft, isn’t it?” Vici asked. “This could be a trap or terrorist attack of some kind.”
“An attack? Why would anyone want to attack us?” Pomoko asked in dismay.
“They wouldn’t. She’s being paranoid,” Kali said dismissively as she comfortingly slid her arm around her. “Vici, save your racist horror stories for when we’re not within visual distance of an Earth vessel, okay?”
“Reavers are real! Macrogravitals brains get cooked by cosmic radiation and they go crazy!” Vici insisted.
“Reavers are most definitively not real, Vicillia. Nonetheless, we probably shouldn’t rule out the possibility of an attack,” Akioneeda conceded. “Star Sirens now make up the majority of all humans permanently living off-world, and that’s not a lead we’re ever likely to lose. We’ve only been around a hundred years or so, and there are already over two million of us. We breed like rabbits.”
“That’s because we fuck like rabbits,” Vici said lasciviously, only to incur glares of confusion from the others. “Well, not directly, since we don’t reproduce naturally, but it’s good for our esprit de corps, right girls?”
“The point being, there are factions on Earth who view our current and forecasted success as a threat to their own potential expansion into space,” Akioneeda continued, failing to hide her annoyance at the younger Siren’s interruption.
“That’s backwards. Macrogravitals evolved to live on planets, and we were literally made to colonize space,” Pomoko objected. “Why shouldn’t we breed like rabbits? The solar system, the galaxy, the universe should be filled with as many Star Sirens as they can sustain!”
“And they will be – eventually. But if we prioritize our long-term survival over the near term, we might not have a future to prioritize,” Akioneeda gently reminded her. “Steady, safe, and sustainable growth is better than fast and risky growth. We don’t want to spook anyone down on Earth into doing something that might hurt us, which is why we have to abide by the Solaris Accords.”
“Exactly! We’re signatories of the Solaris and Orion Accords, which we’ve always been in complete compliance with,” Kali said. “We’ve already lowered our population growth to two percent per annum, and have agreed to lower it to point four percent when we hit two billion. Anyone attacking us over that would be in violation of the Accords and incur the wrath of every other signatory, including Olympeon, of which we are still a protectorate.”
“Ugh. Don’t remind me that we’re technically compatriots with Macrogravitals,” Vici said in disgust.
“Vicillia, a little respect please for our creators and allies,” Akioneeda reprimanded her.
“I gratefully respect them, Preceptress Akio, because no one able to launch this ship out to us would ever do something so suicidally foolish as commit an act of war against Olympeon,” Kali insisted.
“You make valid points, Kali, and I’m not saying it’s likely this is an attack, but we should still proceed with caution,” Akioneeda reiterated. “At the very least, the scanner still has enough resolution to rule out the possibility of there being any potential high-yield explosives on the vessel. I think it’s worth the risk to jet over and see what’s inside; if that’s something you girls would be interested in?”
“Yes, preceptress,” Kali and Vici said in unison, each immediately assuming an attentive posture with their hands behind their backs as they nodded politely, eager for the opportunity to explore a non-Siren spacecraft. Pomoko, however, joined in a little more reticently, and solely because she didn’t want to upset her companions.
Unlike Vici, she never told stories about Macrogravitals driven into mad savagery by the harshness of space, because she found them unbearably terrifying.
The four of them filed into the airlock and grabbed a lungful of air before depressurizing, the short siphons at the base of their necks cinching shut to hold it in. The only things they brought with them were a small bundle of additional air pods and a field kit, both of which were carried by Pomoko.
The enhanced proteins and nanofiber weaves in their bare skin rendered them impervious to vacuum exposure, and their eyes were protected by transparent graphene lenses. Hundreds of small jets of light from all over their bodies propelled them across the gap between their shuttle and the errant vessel, with Kali and Vici taking advantage of the vast open space to perform challenging acrobatic maneuvers.
Akio was the first to arrive at the foreign spacecraft, circling it several times for any signs that might give her some idea about what it was and what it was doing there, but found none. She even peered into a porthole, but could see nothing of note in the darkened interior.
When she reached the airlock, she gestured for Pomoko to hand her a small but rugged cyberdeck from the field kit. While her exocortexes possessed more computing power than she could ever need, the cyberdeck contained a compact suite of sensor arrays for environmental analysis, as well as antennas and ports for electronic interfaces. Syncing the device with her own exocortexes, a holographic AR display projected itself on her bionic lenses.
It didn’t take long for her to find a frequency to engage with the airlock control mechanism, and even less time to find a skeleton key that could best that woefully inadequate security system. As the outer door of the airlock dilated open, Akio signalled for Kali and Vici to rejoin them, and they all funnelled into the ship together. The outer door snapped behind them, sealing them in complete darkness that was staved off solely by their photonic diodes until some emergency lights began to flicker on and off at random intervals.
As the airlock slowly began to repressurize, the Sirens – who were accustomed to an atmosphere maintained at conditions optimal for them - shuddered slightly at the feeling of foreign air creeping up against their skin.
“The air’s acceptable. It’s a standard oxygen/nitrogen mix with no detectable toxins or pathogens present,” Akioneeda assured them as she opened her siphons and exhaled the breath she had been holding since they left their own shuttle. “CO2’s a little high, but not dangerous.”
“Doesn’t high CO2 mean there’s someone here?” Pomoko asked, nervously looking about in all directions as she clutched her supplies close to her.
“Not necessarily. I’m not detecting any human environmental DNA,” Akio replied confidently. “I am however sampling some environmental DNA that doesn’t match anything on file. It might take some time to analyze it enough to make any sense of it. The power system is failing, which is why the lights aren’t working right. The electrical surges are generating enough EM interference that the sensor beam is still pretty scattered, so I can’t see much through the bulkheads. Keep your diodes lit up bright and stay alert.”
The shadowy main corridor was hexagonal in shape, spanning several meters across and roughly twenty-five meters from end to end. It was broken into six segments, with every other segment containing a pair of hexagonal doorways across from one another, along with a door at each end of the corridor.
“The door next to us should be the engine module, and the one at the other end should be the command and communications center,” Akio said, opening the door to the engine room and sticking her cyberdeck inside. “I’m going to do a quick scan of each room before we start rummaging through everything, so don’t go sticking your tails anywhere they don’t belong until I’m done.”
The other three Sirens all nodded obediently, and limited their exploration of the ship to a solely visible inspection. None of them were used to being in low light conditions, and their pupils were dilated so much they were nearly round. Though their visual acuity was raptor-like in its detail and they could see into the ultra-violet spectrum, night vision had not been a priority when they had been designed. Nonetheless, their large eyes and vertical pupils still let them see better in the dark than any unmodified human.
“The writing is Cyrillic, but everything I can see is just basic labels. I can’t tell for certain which language it is,” Kali said. “That doesn’t mean much though. This thing is definitely second-hand, likely even stolen. That would explain the lack of identification. Maybe whoever stole it got spooked and just set it adrift.”
“So, it’s a pirate ship then?” Pomoko asked, sounding slightly relieved. “That’s better than terrorists, or Reavers.”
“It is not. We’re space mermaids. Space pirates are our natural enemies,” Vici claimed. “If they catch us, they’ll pry the exocortexes from our skulls and pluck out our photonic diodes one by one, then bind us to the front of the ship as figureheads.”
“Vicillia, that is enough!” Akio reprimanded her as she scanned the next room. “Stop trying to scare her! Kali’s right. This is an old ship that’s been stripped of nearly every non-essential piece of equipment. Someone stole it, and then abandoned it when the authorities started closing in. That’s it. There’s not a raiding party of pirates hiding behind one of these doors.”
“Famous last words,” Vici muttered, defensively folding her arms across her chest.
Kali once again put her arm around Pomoko in comfort and gave her a loving kiss on the head.
The glowing, sylph-like Sirens continued floating through the dim and unevenly lit corridor like ghosts, checking one room after another and finding nothing of note until they finally reached the end.
“Now that we’re done checking for pirates, we can focus on the command center,” Akio announced. “Assuming they haven’t been wiped, we’ll check the ship’s logs and records for evidence of its origin and how it got here. If it was stolen, we’ll send it to Pink Floyd Station and they can deal with it. Otherwise, we’ll be free to keep it as salvage.”
She raised her finger to tap the AR command to open the door, but suddenly hesitated.
“What is it?” Kali asked.
Akio squinted at her HUD display in alarm, but seemed reluctant to answer.
“There’s something on the other side,” she whispered.
Without warning, the door was manually thrown open with a physical force that shocked the gracile Sirens. From the impenetrable gloom beyond the door’s threshold, there emerged a grotesque figure the likes of which the Sirens had never seen before.
Its round torso was squat and bloated, vaguely resembling that of a frog’s. Its veiny, crimson hide was mottled in purple splotches from where those veins had broken. Four long limbs dangled down limply, each possessing five boney, claw-like digits. As with the Star Sirens, its pinky fingers had been repurposed into a second opposable thumb; but unlike them, its digits were arranged more radially so that its hands resembled starving sea stars. It possessed a prehensile tail as well, though closer in appearance to an opossum’s than the Siren’s simian tails.
It was the front of the creature that was most alien to them. It had no neck or even a head distinct from its bulging torso. It had two eyes on mobile stalks, each a bloodshot blue with a crescent-shaped pupil. There was a blowhole near the top of its vaguely defined head, and near the bottom hung a toothless proboscis, as prehensile as an elephant’s trunk.
All four Sirens broke out into screams at the sight of the deformed creature, jetting backward as quickly as they could. Wheezing, the creature lurched towards them, slowly raising its proboscis in the air as it did so.
Vici grabbed the bundle of air pods that Pomoko had released in her panic and began beating the creature over the top of the head with it. Though she possessed just barely enough physical strength to walk in nothing greater than Lunar gravity, her love for her sisters and her fear, disgust, and contempt for anything else drove her to assail the hideous being as hard as she could.
The creature groaned, though it seemed to be more of sorrow than of pain. Raising its arms up protectively while keeping its proboscis elevated, it slowly sunk down to the bottom of the corridor as Vici bashed away at it.
“Vici! Vici, stop!” Kali commanded, grabbing hold of her and pulling her back. “It’s not attacking us!”
She was right, of course. Despite its fearsomely unfamiliar form, it actually seemed rather pathetic as it lay quivering on the floor, making no sound aside from laboured and gasping breaths.
“Alien! It’s an alien!” Vici cried in dismay, scarcely believing her own eyes.
Though that improbable, if more palpable, explanation for the being’s origin may have seemed the most obvious, Kali felt a growing sense of horror well up inside her as the pieces started to click together. She glanced over at Akio who was rapidly reviewing the readings from her cyberdeck, and could tell from the revulsion on her face that she had reached the same conclusion.
“Preceptress; please say that it’s an alien,” she pleaded in a softly cracking voice.
Akio looked up at her with pity, and slowly shook her head.
“I’m sorry,” she said quietly. “But that, save for the skill and wisdom of Olympeon and the Grace of Cosmothea, is us.”
“It… it’s human?” Pomoko asked, floating up behind Kali and Vici and just barely daring to peek over their shoulders at the horrid beast.
“It’s bred from a human base, yes,” Akio explained. “Heavily modified, of course. Much more than ourselves, though nowhere near as adroitly. It’s a genetic chimera; probably because its embryo was cobbled together from multiple lines of modified cells. Its hide and at least a few of its major organs appeared to have been grown separately and grafted on in vivo. It’s literally a Frankenstein Monster.”
“What’s that old saying? Knowledge is knowing Frankenstein was the Doctor, not the monster; wisdom is knowing that Doctor Frankenstein was the monster,” Kali quoted, pitying the poor wretch that wallowed before her.
“Yeah. I think… I think that whoever made this was trying to make a new species of space-adapted humans, probably in the hopes of eventually surpassing us,” Akio speculated. “But it’s a failed experiment. All of its genomes are highly degraded and riddled with off-target mutations and poorly thought-out on-target ones. Its cells are barely functional, and it’s undergoing mass organ failure at this very moment.”
“It… he’s dying?” Kali asked softly.
“It was probably dying before it even decanted; it’s been held together with prayers and twine,” Akio explained.
“Good! It’s an abomination! It never should’ve existed in the first place!” Pomoko declared.
“Pomoko, shush!” Kali yelled, hot tears beginning to pool in her eyes. “Can… can he hear us?”
“It can hear, I think. Its brain size and neuronal density are actually over the optimal limit, and its neurochemistry and connectome are a complete mess,” Akio replied. “It’s probably an idiot savant, at best. It likely has some linguistic capability, but I don’t think it would be able to understand Sirensong. It doesn’t have any kind of speech organs or comm implant, either. Its digestive and respiratory systems are separate, and that blowhole doesn’t have any kind of syrinx.”
“In other words, he has no mouth and he must scream,” Kali lamented. “Did he escape, do you think?”
“It must have,” Akio nodded. “Pomoko may have been a bit insensitive just now, but she’s right. This thing’s a violation of multiple transnational laws, treaties and conventions. Its creators wouldn’t want anyone to know about it. It… it must have known that escaping its creators and whatever convoluted life-support system they were using to keep it alive would have meant a slow and painful death, but it did it anyway. All it could have hoped for was that someone would find it and be able to hold its creators accountable. We don’t understand enough about its anatomy to offer any meaningful assistance. The most we could do is prolong its suffering. I think we should just let it pass in peace; it shouldn’t take more than a couple of hours at most now. We’ll return to our shuttle, tell the fleet what we found, and then have the carcass put in cryostasis as evidence. We’ll send it and this vessel to Olympeon, and they’ll deal with it. They’ll find who’s responsible and bring them to justice.”
“Yeah, we need to get back to the shuttle immediately for decontamination and med-screening. We could be infected by whatever microbes and nanites they stuffed into this bloated wretch,” Pomoko said with barely restrained panic, jetting back to the airlock as quickly as she could.
Akio and Vici followed closely behind, but Kali lingered in place as she gazed at the creature’s proboscis, which it still held upright. She recalled that elephants on Earth would raise their trunks when they were dying, and that the ancient Romans, despite being one of the cruellest cultures of humans to exist, had still recognized this as a plea for mercy. Though the gulf between the two species was significant, one self-aware being could still recognize the suffering of another, and be moved to pity by it.
“I’m staying with him,” she announced softly.
“What?” Pomoko shouted, she and the others all spinning around to look at her in bewilderment.
“Until he passes. Akio said it wouldn’t be long,” Kali replied.
“Why?” Vici asked.
“So he doesn’t die alone!” Kali screamed.
Pomoko started jetting back towards her friend, but Akio caught her and gently shook her head in refusal. She silently ushered the two of them back through the airlock and, with some reluctance, left Kali alone with the dying creature.
Kali tenderly took hold of the being’s trunk with her left hand, compassionately petting it with her right. He shuddered slightly, letting go of a noticeable amount of tension in his malformed body. Snorting from his blowhole, he focused his teetering eyestalks up at her, and she could see in those eyes a great, crushing sorrow, both from the suffering he had endured and the lost potential of the life he could have had if fate had been kinder.
A life like the one Kali had led as a privileged and well-bred daughter of Olympeon, and would most likely go on to live for many centuries more.
The tears in her eyes reached a critical mass now, budding off into tiny orbs and floating out into the air.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” she sobbed. It was all she could think to say, and she said it in English, hoping there was a better chance of him understanding it than her native language.
Remarkably, he reacted by raising the flat palm of his right hand up to the space beneath his trunk – a struggle for him even in the absence of gravity – and then lowered it with the palm facing up and out. Kali wasted no time in running the gesture through her exocortexes, frantic to decipher what the creature could be trying to tell her before it was too late.
It was sign language for ‘thank you’.

The slender and feminine frames of the four Star Sirens floated with an inhuman ease in the microgravity of their shuttle’s cabin, their prehensile feet and tails either dangling freely or clutching an opalescent perching rod. They stared with a novel curiosity out their window towards the small and relatively unsophisticated Earthly craft that had gradually been drifting its way towards their fleet.
“It’s still not answering hails, and I can’t find any sort of transponder or visual identification,” Akioneeda, the eldest of the group, sang in their musical and surgically precise language; the chevron-shaped slits over her trachea granting her a superhuman vocal range.
Using the glittering diodes embedded throughout her mauve skin, she fired jets of light to propel herself over to a crystalline computer terminal on the other side of the cabin.
“Why do they have to make their ships so ugly?” the magenta-skinned Pomoko asked; her large and bright cat-like irises constricting in their dark sclera as she squinted at the foreign craft in disdain.
Its design was a smoothly contoured rocket, with a rounded nose and a flaring aft that allowed it to hold both rear and forward-facing thrusters. Its dark hull was nearly invisible against the black of space, and coated in a radar-absorbent material that until recently had masked its approach. The Siren’s shuttle, in contrast, was a luminescent, bright-pink spiral seashell nestled in an array of gossamer-like radiators, sails, and solar panels that resembled blooming flower petals.
“I think the polite word is ‘spartan’,” the violet-skinned Kaliphimoa corrected her with an excited grin. The crystalline, oval exocortexes embedded on the sides of her elongated skull began flickering as she began reviewing any information that she thought might be pertinent. “Macrogravitals have a much harder time surviving in space than we do, so they have to be fairly pragmatic in the designs of their vessels. And remember that, unlike our ships, that rocket is meant to launch from and land on planets, so it has to be pretty rugged.”
“Kali, there can’t be any Macrogravitals on that thing; there’s no centrifuge,” the Cyan-skinned Vicillia pointed out. “Macrogravitals need macrogravity. It’s literally their defining characteristic.”
“They don’t die in microgravity, Vici,” Kali said with a roll of her eyes. “In olden times, baseline humans would spend months, sometimes even over a year living in space with no artificial gravity at all.”
“This isn’t the Apollo & Artemis Era, Kali. It’s virtually unheard of for Macrogravitals to leave cislunar space without a centrifuge,” Akioneeda said as she examined the telemetry on the intruding object. “That thing definitely has a habitat module, but Earth is on the other side of the sun right now. That’s weeks of travel, and that’s if its fusion rockets are functional. And it is a ship, not a habitat. Something like that is meant primarily for ground-to-orbit transport, and in a pinch travelling between the inner planets during optimal launch windows. It’s not intended to be lived in for prolonged periods of time. I don’t think it came here on purpose. It must have gotten knocked out of orbit and just found its way here. I wish I could tell for sure if there was someone inside, but its mini-magnetosphere is really scattering the sensor beams.”
“But doesn’t its magnetosphere mean there must be Macrogravitals inside?” Pomoko asked. “Even normal cosmic radiation is dangerous to humans without our enhanced DNA repair and chromamelanin, isn’t it?”
“They might have died before they had a chance to shut it off,” Kali suggested as tactfully as she could. “If there are bodies in there, we should recover them and send them back to Earth.”
“Wait a minute. It’s pretty suspicious that there’s no transponder or identifying markings on the craft, isn’t it?” Vici asked. “This could be a trap or terrorist attack of some kind.”
“An attack? Why would anyone want to attack us?” Pomoko asked in dismay.
“They wouldn’t. She’s being paranoid,” Kali said dismissively as she comfortingly slid her arm around her. “Vici, save your racist horror stories for when we’re not within visual distance of an Earth vessel, okay?”
“Reavers are real! Macrogravitals brains get cooked by cosmic radiation and they go crazy!” Vici insisted.
“Reavers are most definitively not real, Vicillia. Nonetheless, we probably shouldn’t rule out the possibility of an attack,” Akioneeda conceded. “Star Sirens now make up the majority of all humans permanently living off-world, and that’s not a lead we’re ever likely to lose. We’ve only been around a hundred years or so, and there are already over two million of us. We breed like rabbits.”
“That’s because we fuck like rabbits,” Vici said lasciviously, only to incur glares of confusion from the others. “Well, not directly, since we don’t reproduce naturally, but it’s good for our esprit de corps, right girls?”
“The point being, there are factions on Earth who view our current and forecasted success as a threat to their own potential expansion into space,” Akioneeda continued, failing to hide her annoyance at the younger Siren’s interruption.
“That’s backwards. Macrogravitals evolved to live on planets, and we were literally made to colonize space,” Pomoko objected. “Why shouldn’t we breed like rabbits? The solar system, the galaxy, the universe should be filled with as many Star Sirens as they can sustain!”
“And they will be – eventually. But if we prioritize our long-term survival over the near term, we might not have a future to prioritize,” Akioneeda gently reminded her. “Steady, safe, and sustainable growth is better than fast and risky growth. We don’t want to spook anyone down on Earth into doing something that might hurt us, which is why we have to abide by the Solaris Accords.”
“Exactly! We’re signatories of the Solaris and Orion Accords, which we’ve always been in complete compliance with,” Kali said. “We’ve already lowered our population growth to two percent per annum, and have agreed to lower it to point four percent when we hit two billion. Anyone attacking us over that would be in violation of the Accords and incur the wrath of every other signatory, including Olympeon, of which we are still a protectorate.”
“Ugh. Don’t remind me that we’re technically compatriots with Macrogravitals,” Vici said in disgust.
“Vicillia, a little respect please for our creators and allies,” Akioneeda reprimanded her.
“I gratefully respect them, Preceptress Akio, because no one able to launch this ship out to us would ever do something so suicidally foolish as commit an act of war against Olympeon,” Kali insisted.
“You make valid points, Kali, and I’m not saying it’s likely this is an attack, but we should still proceed with caution,” Akioneeda reiterated. “At the very least, the scanner still has enough resolution to rule out the possibility of there being any potential high-yield explosives on the vessel. I think it’s worth the risk to jet over and see what’s inside; if that’s something you girls would be interested in?”
“Yes, preceptress,” Kali and Vici said in unison, each immediately assuming an attentive posture with their hands behind their backs as they nodded politely, eager for the opportunity to explore a non-Siren spacecraft. Pomoko, however, joined in a little more reticently, and solely because she didn’t want to upset her companions.
Unlike Vici, she never told stories about Macrogravitals driven into mad savagery by the harshness of space, because she found them unbearably terrifying.
The four of them filed into the airlock and grabbed a lungful of air before depressurizing, the short siphons at the base of their necks cinching shut to hold it in. The only things they brought with them were a small bundle of additional air pods and a field kit, both of which were carried by Pomoko.
The enhanced proteins and nanofiber weaves in their bare skin rendered them impervious to vacuum exposure, and their eyes were protected by transparent graphene lenses. Hundreds of small jets of light from all over their bodies propelled them across the gap between their shuttle and the errant vessel, with Kali and Vici taking advantage of the vast open space to perform challenging acrobatic maneuvers.
Akio was the first to arrive at the foreign spacecraft, circling it several times for any signs that might give her some idea about what it was and what it was doing there, but found none. She even peered into a porthole, but could see nothing of note in the darkened interior.
When she reached the airlock, she gestured for Pomoko to hand her a small but rugged cyberdeck from the field kit. While her exocortexes possessed more computing power than she could ever need, the cyberdeck contained a compact suite of sensor arrays for environmental analysis, as well as antennas and ports for electronic interfaces. Syncing the device with her own exocortexes, a holographic AR display projected itself on her bionic lenses.
It didn’t take long for her to find a frequency to engage with the airlock control mechanism, and even less time to find a skeleton key that could best that woefully inadequate security system. As the outer door of the airlock dilated open, Akio signalled for Kali and Vici to rejoin them, and they all funnelled into the ship together. The outer door snapped behind them, sealing them in complete darkness that was staved off solely by their photonic diodes until some emergency lights began to flicker on and off at random intervals.
As the airlock slowly began to repressurize, the Sirens – who were accustomed to an atmosphere maintained at conditions optimal for them - shuddered slightly at the feeling of foreign air creeping up against their skin.
“The air’s acceptable. It’s a standard oxygen/nitrogen mix with no detectable toxins or pathogens present,” Akioneeda assured them as she opened her siphons and exhaled the breath she had been holding since they left their own shuttle. “CO2’s a little high, but not dangerous.”
“Doesn’t high CO2 mean there’s someone here?” Pomoko asked, nervously looking about in all directions as she clutched her supplies close to her.
“Not necessarily. I’m not detecting any human environmental DNA,” Akio replied confidently. “I am however sampling some environmental DNA that doesn’t match anything on file. It might take some time to analyze it enough to make any sense of it. The power system is failing, which is why the lights aren’t working right. The electrical surges are generating enough EM interference that the sensor beam is still pretty scattered, so I can’t see much through the bulkheads. Keep your diodes lit up bright and stay alert.”
The shadowy main corridor was hexagonal in shape, spanning several meters across and roughly twenty-five meters from end to end. It was broken into six segments, with every other segment containing a pair of hexagonal doorways across from one another, along with a door at each end of the corridor.
“The door next to us should be the engine module, and the one at the other end should be the command and communications center,” Akio said, opening the door to the engine room and sticking her cyberdeck inside. “I’m going to do a quick scan of each room before we start rummaging through everything, so don’t go sticking your tails anywhere they don’t belong until I’m done.”
The other three Sirens all nodded obediently, and limited their exploration of the ship to a solely visible inspection. None of them were used to being in low light conditions, and their pupils were dilated so much they were nearly round. Though their visual acuity was raptor-like in its detail and they could see into the ultra-violet spectrum, night vision had not been a priority when they had been designed. Nonetheless, their large eyes and vertical pupils still let them see better in the dark than any unmodified human.
“The writing is Cyrillic, but everything I can see is just basic labels. I can’t tell for certain which language it is,” Kali said. “That doesn’t mean much though. This thing is definitely second-hand, likely even stolen. That would explain the lack of identification. Maybe whoever stole it got spooked and just set it adrift.”
“So, it’s a pirate ship then?” Pomoko asked, sounding slightly relieved. “That’s better than terrorists, or Reavers.”
“It is not. We’re space mermaids. Space pirates are our natural enemies,” Vici claimed. “If they catch us, they’ll pry the exocortexes from our skulls and pluck out our photonic diodes one by one, then bind us to the front of the ship as figureheads.”
“Vicillia, that is enough!” Akio reprimanded her as she scanned the next room. “Stop trying to scare her! Kali’s right. This is an old ship that’s been stripped of nearly every non-essential piece of equipment. Someone stole it, and then abandoned it when the authorities started closing in. That’s it. There’s not a raiding party of pirates hiding behind one of these doors.”
“Famous last words,” Vici muttered, defensively folding her arms across her chest.
Kali once again put her arm around Pomoko in comfort and gave her a loving kiss on the head.
The glowing, sylph-like Sirens continued floating through the dim and unevenly lit corridor like ghosts, checking one room after another and finding nothing of note until they finally reached the end.
“Now that we’re done checking for pirates, we can focus on the command center,” Akio announced. “Assuming they haven’t been wiped, we’ll check the ship’s logs and records for evidence of its origin and how it got here. If it was stolen, we’ll send it to Pink Floyd Station and they can deal with it. Otherwise, we’ll be free to keep it as salvage.”
She raised her finger to tap the AR command to open the door, but suddenly hesitated.
“What is it?” Kali asked.
Akio squinted at her HUD display in alarm, but seemed reluctant to answer.
“There’s something on the other side,” she whispered.
Without warning, the door was manually thrown open with a physical force that shocked the gracile Sirens. From the impenetrable gloom beyond the door’s threshold, there emerged a grotesque figure the likes of which the Sirens had never seen before.
Its round torso was squat and bloated, vaguely resembling that of a frog’s. Its veiny, crimson hide was mottled in purple splotches from where those veins had broken. Four long limbs dangled down limply, each possessing five boney, claw-like digits. As with the Star Sirens, its pinky fingers had been repurposed into a second opposable thumb; but unlike them, its digits were arranged more radially so that its hands resembled starving sea stars. It possessed a prehensile tail as well, though closer in appearance to an opossum’s than the Siren’s simian tails.
It was the front of the creature that was most alien to them. It had no neck or even a head distinct from its bulging torso. It had two eyes on mobile stalks, each a bloodshot blue with a crescent-shaped pupil. There was a blowhole near the top of its vaguely defined head, and near the bottom hung a toothless proboscis, as prehensile as an elephant’s trunk.
All four Sirens broke out into screams at the sight of the deformed creature, jetting backward as quickly as they could. Wheezing, the creature lurched towards them, slowly raising its proboscis in the air as it did so.
Vici grabbed the bundle of air pods that Pomoko had released in her panic and began beating the creature over the top of the head with it. Though she possessed just barely enough physical strength to walk in nothing greater than Lunar gravity, her love for her sisters and her fear, disgust, and contempt for anything else drove her to assail the hideous being as hard as she could.
The creature groaned, though it seemed to be more of sorrow than of pain. Raising its arms up protectively while keeping its proboscis elevated, it slowly sunk down to the bottom of the corridor as Vici bashed away at it.
“Vici! Vici, stop!” Kali commanded, grabbing hold of her and pulling her back. “It’s not attacking us!”
She was right, of course. Despite its fearsomely unfamiliar form, it actually seemed rather pathetic as it lay quivering on the floor, making no sound aside from laboured and gasping breaths.
“Alien! It’s an alien!” Vici cried in dismay, scarcely believing her own eyes.
Though that improbable, if more palpable, explanation for the being’s origin may have seemed the most obvious, Kali felt a growing sense of horror well up inside her as the pieces started to click together. She glanced over at Akio who was rapidly reviewing the readings from her cyberdeck, and could tell from the revulsion on her face that she had reached the same conclusion.
“Preceptress; please say that it’s an alien,” she pleaded in a softly cracking voice.
Akio looked up at her with pity, and slowly shook her head.
“I’m sorry,” she said quietly. “But that, save for the skill and wisdom of Olympeon and the Grace of Cosmothea, is us.”
“It… it’s human?” Pomoko asked, floating up behind Kali and Vici and just barely daring to peek over their shoulders at the horrid beast.
“It’s bred from a human base, yes,” Akio explained. “Heavily modified, of course. Much more than ourselves, though nowhere near as adroitly. It’s a genetic chimera; probably because its embryo was cobbled together from multiple lines of modified cells. Its hide and at least a few of its major organs appeared to have been grown separately and grafted on in vivo. It’s literally a Frankenstein Monster.”
“What’s that old saying? Knowledge is knowing Frankenstein was the Doctor, not the monster; wisdom is knowing that Doctor Frankenstein was the monster,” Kali quoted, pitying the poor wretch that wallowed before her.
“Yeah. I think… I think that whoever made this was trying to make a new species of space-adapted humans, probably in the hopes of eventually surpassing us,” Akio speculated. “But it’s a failed experiment. All of its genomes are highly degraded and riddled with off-target mutations and poorly thought-out on-target ones. Its cells are barely functional, and it’s undergoing mass organ failure at this very moment.”
“It… he’s dying?” Kali asked softly.
“It was probably dying before it even decanted; it’s been held together with prayers and twine,” Akio explained.
“Good! It’s an abomination! It never should’ve existed in the first place!” Pomoko declared.
“Pomoko, shush!” Kali yelled, hot tears beginning to pool in her eyes. “Can… can he hear us?”
“It can hear, I think. Its brain size and neuronal density are actually over the optimal limit, and its neurochemistry and connectome are a complete mess,” Akio replied. “It’s probably an idiot savant, at best. It likely has some linguistic capability, but I don’t think it would be able to understand Sirensong. It doesn’t have any kind of speech organs or comm implant, either. Its digestive and respiratory systems are separate, and that blowhole doesn’t have any kind of syrinx.”
“In other words, he has no mouth and he must scream,” Kali lamented. “Did he escape, do you think?”
“It must have,” Akio nodded. “Pomoko may have been a bit insensitive just now, but she’s right. This thing’s a violation of multiple transnational laws, treaties and conventions. Its creators wouldn’t want anyone to know about it. It… it must have known that escaping its creators and whatever convoluted life-support system they were using to keep it alive would have meant a slow and painful death, but it did it anyway. All it could have hoped for was that someone would find it and be able to hold its creators accountable. We don’t understand enough about its anatomy to offer any meaningful assistance. The most we could do is prolong its suffering. I think we should just let it pass in peace; it shouldn’t take more than a couple of hours at most now. We’ll return to our shuttle, tell the fleet what we found, and then have the carcass put in cryostasis as evidence. We’ll send it and this vessel to Olympeon, and they’ll deal with it. They’ll find who’s responsible and bring them to justice.”
“Yeah, we need to get back to the shuttle immediately for decontamination and med-screening. We could be infected by whatever microbes and nanites they stuffed into this bloated wretch,” Pomoko said with barely restrained panic, jetting back to the airlock as quickly as she could.
Akio and Vici followed closely behind, but Kali lingered in place as she gazed at the creature’s proboscis, which it still held upright. She recalled that elephants on Earth would raise their trunks when they were dying, and that the ancient Romans, despite being one of the cruellest cultures of humans to exist, had still recognized this as a plea for mercy. Though the gulf between the two species was significant, one self-aware being could still recognize the suffering of another, and be moved to pity by it.
“I’m staying with him,” she announced softly.
“What?” Pomoko shouted, she and the others all spinning around to look at her in bewilderment.
“Until he passes. Akio said it wouldn’t be long,” Kali replied.
“Why?” Vici asked.
“So he doesn’t die alone!” Kali screamed.
Pomoko started jetting back towards her friend, but Akio caught her and gently shook her head in refusal. She silently ushered the two of them back through the airlock and, with some reluctance, left Kali alone with the dying creature.
Kali tenderly took hold of the being’s trunk with her left hand, compassionately petting it with her right. He shuddered slightly, letting go of a noticeable amount of tension in his malformed body. Snorting from his blowhole, he focused his teetering eyestalks up at her, and she could see in those eyes a great, crushing sorrow, both from the suffering he had endured and the lost potential of the life he could have had if fate had been kinder.
A life like the one Kali had led as a privileged and well-bred daughter of Olympeon, and would most likely go on to live for many centuries more.
The tears in her eyes reached a critical mass now, budding off into tiny orbs and floating out into the air.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” she sobbed. It was all she could think to say, and she said it in English, hoping there was a better chance of him understanding it than her native language.
Remarkably, he reacted by raising the flat palm of his right hand up to the space beneath his trunk – a struggle for him even in the absence of gravity – and then lowered it with the palm facing up and out. Kali wasted no time in running the gesture through her exocortexes, frantic to decipher what the creature could be trying to tell her before it was too late.
It was sign language for ‘thank you’.