Play With Khellphire and You Will Get Burned

A pure fractal made in Apophysis 2.09

When my husband literally becomes his grandfather on the phone, I automatically know: someone in the commercial fleet industry has messed up for real.

“Listen – I BEEN tellin' y'all –!”

And then I checked out the military news in the fleet I served and heard Admiral Chenggis Chulalaangkorn saying pretty much the same thing.

“Under no circumstances is any fleet ship under my command going to attempt any kind of a rescue when we have made the information about how to avoid getting consumed by the Khellphire available for thirty years. I was here on the Ventanan frontier 15 years ago documenting the fact that there is no gold, there is no rainbow, and there is no heaven in the Khellph System – there is only a descent into hell alive, trying to run the Khellph Gap when we know the creatures that live in there just love to lure steel ships in and melt them like a slice of cheese on a good asteroid burger. Every five years a new set of greedy people needs to find out, and they can go find out so that for the next five years no one else tries it.”

On this fifth year, one of the companies in the commercial fleet association Kirk and Dixon Shipping was a part of had decided to run the Khellph Gap. The Khellph System's worlds were thought to be rich in valuable minerals, and the value of them seemed to go up every year.

However, if space is largely a desert, devoid of life, the riches of the Khellph worlds were among the most deadly mirages, and there was really no reason at this point for people to keep falling for it.

“We put this out in our regional safety manual and training for the whole association years ago – the Khellphire have learned how to imitate sensor readings for our favorite things, because everybody native to the Ventanan frontier who is spacegoing knows better – and you could have known better if you would just read! But no – you just needed to go after the bait! You're supposed to be sentient and know how to use tools, read books, remember? 'I think, therefore I am' – which is why your whole company and half your crews are about to be 'am not'! ”

Rarely did Capt. Rufus Dixon lose his cool, but he knew a lot of the captains and crews that weren't going to make it, and even though they might have been competitors for business, he just wasn't and isn't the type of man who didn't see them as people first, sent to their doom.

“Oh, if by mounting a rescue you mean buying whatever is left of your company after the lawsuits these about-to-be-bereaved families are going to bring and win, oh, yeah, we are definitely doing that!

But when he got off the line with that hapless company owner, he and Marcus Aurelius Kirk Jr. (cousin to the famous admiral of the same name) got busy putting together the rescue plan: fighting Khellphire with fire, namely, some overheated space junk. These two individuals got all the salvage they could, hustled it out to Khellph Gap, and shot it up so it would have a heat signature almost at the melting point. The local group of Khellphire saw it and smelled it and went for it, giving the other ships trapped and just about to be eaten time to get back across the gap and escape. Not all the ships made it, but most freighters have transporter chiefs with skill that my fleet admires, all the people made it out.

“Capts. Dixon and Kirk, your hearts are bigger than mine, and that's a good thing – and you're young yet,” Adm. Chulalaangkorn said about the rescue. “Thank you also for helping my fleet clear its recycling backlog in this region; I'll see that you are compensated for that.”

We would figure that a Capt. M.A. Kirk would be just as cheeky as his cousin J.T. and ask the admiral why he wouldn't do the rescue, and we would also expect Adm. Chulalaangkorn to show that if you aren't ready for a real answer, don't ask him any questions.

“Because I am not going to get into the habit of getting beings who have done nothing to warrant our interference into a habit of junk food over humans who simply need to self-cull from the human race and gene pool. Because you chose to spare them, they and their children are going to continue to create situations in which you and your children are going to have to put themselves in harm's way to protect them. Better get your commercial fleet rescue operation officially in gear, gentlemen, because my fleet is going to check and see how much rescue effort in advance we have put out, and for how many years, before moving a single astronomical unit. You can have people in your face going 'uh huh' for 5, 10, 15, 30 years if you want to and then go rescue them if you want to waste your time like that. But not my fleet, on my watch.”

“Chulalaangkorn is hard-core, and I'm starting to understand why,” my husband said to me. “I don't have it in me to be like him, but I'm starting to understand him. That was close – and the info in our manual is ten years old about this. Kirk and Dixon Shipping doesn't have the capacity to keep doing what we just did in terms of rescue, although we could invest in a service to do that.”

“It's actually not a bad idea,” I said. “The thing about Chenggis Chulalaangkorn: he isn't a nice person but likes nice people and looks out for them. He threw you a big bone there: a rescue fleet designed for the common problems commercial businesses face in space, and also versed on situations like the Khellphire, could be a big deal.”

“Mark said all that too in a different way,” Rufus said. “He thinks that there's a market and a need that we can fill, and he also said about the admiral that he will go the last light-year for people trying to do the right thing, but if you are just out here for greed and pride and don't listen, he's for you steering into a black hole and may push you off in there because humanity has got to start representing itself better out here.”

“Yep,” I said. “Vlarian Triefield is my mentor, and she has told me some stories at myclearance level about full fleet admiral meetings. Just last month Adm. Chulalaangkorn's comment on a particular mess was 'let it burn,' and when Adm. Bodega was trying to save things, Adm Chulalaangkorn came across with, 'I need you Christians to Christian a little better – aren't you following the One about Whom it was said, 'A bruised reed shall he not break and a smoking flax shall He not quench?' Even He lets it burn, so what are you doing?”

My husband just shook his head.

“When Chenggis Chulalaangkorn is leading the 'Come to Jesus' high command meeting … whoo hoo.”

“There is no gold, there is no rainbow, and there is no heaven behind any situation like that,” I said. “Play with fire, Khellphire, or Chenggis Chulalaangkorn, and you will get burned – trust and believe that!”