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To Thalia Thorn, from Nesrin Khan.

Hello, Miss Thorn. I’m going to assume you’re not married or have a doctorate, if you do, correct me, please.

I want to begin by telling you who I am. Why I’m doing this.

I was a Zoner, once, Miss Thorn - just like you, although I can’t profess to having so noble a role; I was barely more than a hired gun, washed up on the shores of the edge worlds because the houses were drowning me in nightmares. I was in the Bretonian Armed Forces, once, fighting the good fight as the infected turned the world on its axis and sent us all to the slaughter twenty two years ago. The good fight - we were fighting a mechanism, Thorn - a construct of a people long dead, the accident of an oversight by a people so technologically endowed, we see their masterpieces as the magic of the magi. We are Promethean man, crawling its way through the soil to regain a lost Eden. We are ants tasked with building a nuclear reactor, goats assigned to breach a dam. We are a scalar people, presented with a pyramid that reaches the sun.

What the hell are we meant to do?

I ran to the edge worlds because I couldn’t, I can’t, human psychology cannot, survive, watching your friends become demigods wreathed with the… thorns… of your destruction. Your body survives, but your mind doesn’t make it out. It reaches the end of the tunnel and there’s no light for you there - just the illusion of the shadows that once wreathed you. Plato was right - you see the light, you prefer to sprint back to the cave. To live in the darkness.

The Nomads followed me out there. Even in the darkness between dying stars, you can’t escape their light. Out there, I learnt the second lesson. The alien machine that operates my mind gave me the gift of focus, Thalia. I can’t save myself from the fire - but I can take a few monsters with me.

Now, I dedicate myself to survival of others. To the little things. I’m currently working on a - rather heavily classified - indigenous Auxesian research program devoted to the rescaling a few magneto plasma thrusters - small fry, for an organisation so enriched with intellectual capital as Ingenuus. Scaling issues have prevented me from being able to mount the propulsion solution to any fighter under freighter scale, so I’m hoping you can reimburse me with an old friend.

When I wore your stripes I knew the Osprey quite well - the cockpit layout is still familiar to me - the ease of the thrust levers, the bassonic rumble of the stellarator. She was a beast built with a design philosophy few combat craft could match - most are designed to kill, she is made to save. An escort built with the rakish epponage of an interceptor. You have to love her.

If you could provide me with an Osprey escort, latest model, it’d be invaluable to my research. If you need compensation for the model, I’d be able to provide it, along with biographical evidence of my posting aboard the Deep Space Colony Vessel, the Polyhemi, although I hope you don’t need the latter part. It’s a painful road to re-tread.

God go with you, Thalia - I’ve been praying for you ever since that EVA. I hope you’ve recuperated soundly - you’re a smart woman, you deserve to be back in the lab where you belong.

Keep in touch.

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-_-_-_-_-: Secure Channel Open :-_-_-_-_-
-_-_-_-_-: Encryption Level 3 :-_-_-_-_-
-_-_-_-_-: Sender: Dr. Thallia Thorn:-_-_-_-_-

He...hello Miss Khan,

Ni...nice name. Please, ur... allow me to make an outburst th...that is borderline professional, and then I shall return to your message proper. I am notoriously unpopular am...amongst my colleagues here in Ingenuus in th...that I only look at my inbox once a day. The si...simple truth is I d...do not look at m..my inbox during the days work; as it usually re..requires my complete attention. It is true th....that our group does not have a common Service Level Agreement on our ne...neural site, th...though if you find it beneficial, my of...office hours are 18:00 - 20:00 Core Sirius time.

Concerning your, urm... request for an Osprey escort. I ha...have executed some background checks on yourself. I tr...trust you do not mind, and allow me to reassure you there have been no credit checks involved. We have an Osprey sp...spare. It needs some work, but considering your project is to re...re-engineer the craft, I would not be...believe that is an issue, no? No need fo... for a form of reimbursement on this one. Le...least I can do after your actions on the Nomadic structure. If you re...require the expertise of our engineers, please do let me know and I sh...shall put you in contact with our finest.

... on a side note. Yo...your words on the lanterns are poetic, Miss Khan, ye...yet let us not discount our ow...own species mechanical tendencies. If ex...experience is to say anything, wh...whether it is a good fight, bad fight, et cetera... it te...tends to all be dialectics dressed in rhetoric. A side no...note on m...my own opinion of wh...what you said.

Dr. Thallia Thorn
Ingenuus Research Group

To Thalia Thorn, from Nesrin Khan.

Thank you, Thalia. You’ve saved me a lot of man hours. We’re more than even now.

I spent several years up to my elbows in Osprey guts, Miss Thorn, so no need for me to squander the valuable time of your engineers.

Mechanics. Poets deal in mechanics of the heart, I deal in the mechanics of the steel on steel, you deal in the mechanics of the aliens. You know who deals in the mechanics of humanity? Surgeons and politicians. I’m not charismatic enough for the second and I don’t have the skill set for the first, so you can excuse me a few add hominems where the K’hara are concerned. When you’ve seen a race of bio-organic machines murder their way through your kin, you tend to resort to mechanical thinking - instinct, kill-or-be-killed, flight-or-freeze. There’s a lot of purity in it.

I’m seventy percent Gammuian, Thalia. My humanity, is, at most, a computer program. So you can excuse me if you catch me searching for something I can’t reach, using romantic terms to define an existential certainty. You do what you have to, when you're rationalising hate.

Ta' for the ship.

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