B.S.S.

Chapter One. The Mur-Mury.

The communicator beeped and delivered a message:
"Captain, the surface is quiet and calm. No signs of activity. If this was ever the homeworld of the Mmrnmhrm, now it looks more like a scrapyard. Just broken parts of our 'Mur-mury', sand, dust, desolation."
As usual, I froze, staring at the communicator. "Where did these Mur-mury go?" flashed through my mind.
Earthlings had long called the Mmrnmhrm 'Mur-mury'. As my commander had once answered, back when I was a cadet himself, to the question: "Why are the Mmrnmhrm called Mur-mury?"
"You'll break your tongue trying to say 'Mmrnmhrm'!" he replied. "And why exactly 'Mur-mury', probably no one even remembers anymore. They probably needed to come up with something similar-sounding and easy to pronounce."

Long story short, the Mur-mury are gone, and where they went is unclear, I thought and pressed the communicator button again.
"Billy, didn't find anything else interesting?"
"Well, hard to say, Captain. We found their Mother Ark. But you probably can't call that particularly interesting, because it's broken. Its massive doors are jammed. No signs of activity inside. No sounds, no rustling. Except, on the main hatch, there are English letters with dots scratched into it: B.S.S. And that's it."
"What the hell is B.S.S.? Black SS men, or something?!"
"You tell me, Captain. Maybe it is Black SS men," quiet chuckles and a barely audible whisper from Lieutenant Billy came through the speaker: "Quiet, guys, shhh!"
"Alright, Billy. Return. Stand down."
For the rest of the day, I turned that acronym over in my mind this way and that...
Bad Signal Syndrome?
Busy Sleeping Students?
Bearded Scientists Society?
Bigger Snack Strategy?
"Okay, that's enough!" I said to myself, utterly exhausted. "Let's stop at 'snacks'. It's high time for a snack."
...

The next few days we spent in hyperspace. The haul was decent, and we were heading home to replenish supplies and catch our breath.
And now the Sun is growing on the ship's radar, and there's Earth with its still-unfamiliar red glow, and the Station, and Hayes's always-calm voice: "Welcome back, Captain!" - and our standard: "Commodore, my holds are full of minerals!" - and that barely noticeable smile in the corners of Hayes's eyes: "I wouldn't expect anything less from you, Captain!"
...

They unloaded us pretty quickly. They'll patch us up a bit more, refuel... Hayes said that another Earth Cruiser had been built during our absence, and that's good. We could clearly use the extra firepower. Each time, we're venturing further and further into hyperspace. We can't find the old allies. More and more time is passing, and living is getting scarier... We'll have to search in a different direction next time. They couldn't all have vanished into thin air. Maybe the Shofixti or the Yehat are alive and will agree to join our fight.

The door chime buzzed. "Open sesame," I said, and the door slid quickly aside. Hayes stood in the doorway with his hands raised. In one he held a teapot, in the other - two mugs. And that barely perceptible smile in the corners of his eyes that for some reason no one else sees.
"Hey, buddy! You'll never guess what I brought for you today!" Hayes exclaimed cheerfully.
"Let me guess, green tea?"
"Green tea," a shadow of surprise suddenly touched Hayes's face. "How did you know?"
"Met that subordinate of yours, the one you 'confiscated' it from."
Hayes sat down opposite me, poured the tea, and handed one cup to me.
"Well, 'confiscated' is a bit much! Come on, tell me, what new things did you manage to find?"
"Well, I managed to find out that you always smile slyly, but very kindly, with the corners of your eyes. But I'm the only one who managed to notice this; for some reason, others don't. Any idea why?"
Hayes laughed: "They're just looking at the wrong thing. They look at the eyes, but you look inside. Maybe that's why I believed you back then, at our first meeting. I believed that if anyone could gather a new alliance and put the Ur-Quan on their equivalent of knees, as you so wittily put it, it was you." Hayes kicked off his shoes, and at my slightly surprised look, added: "They're getting stiff. You don't mind, do you?"
"Not at all! We need everything in maximum working order. The station, the guns, and the feet."
"So, what did you manage to find?" Hayes steered our conversation back to constructive waters.
"Sorry, friend, I don't want to upset you, but there's not much to boast about. First, we headed for Chenjesu, using the coordinates you gave us. Well, you sure sent us into an anthill, I tell you! Or rather, a spider's nest. Ilwrath at every turn. Good thing they're slow, but a couple of times we couldn't escape and had to fight. You saw the holes in our ship, right? The ones like an artistic ornament on the port side?"
"I saw," he was lost in thought for a moment.
I took a sip of tea to wet my throat. "And the tea is pretty good, by the way!"
Hayes smiled: "With our meager rations, any variety is a holiday." He leaned back in his chair. It was visible that the tension which constantly kept him on his toes was starting to ease a little. Still, thousands of people under your command, and you're father and mother to them all. Hayes is on the station, I'm on the ship. Maybe that's why we managed to find common ground and become friends so quickly. "Come on, tell me, don't keep me in suspense," Hayes decided to hurry my thoughts along.
"What is there to tell? Well, we reached Procyon. Found a slave shield just like on Earth, only unlike us, their station isn't working either. Completely in automatic mode. Had to go further."
"To the Mur-mury?" Hayes smiled as if he himself had come up with that nickname for them once. "It's not far from there."
"To them," - it really was close by, so I didn't credit Hayes with the 'Seer' achievement. "No slave shield," I continued. "We landed. There are broken parts of the Mur-mury, the Mother Ark, seems to be broken. Some black men scratched their initials on the main entrance."
"What black men?" Hayes was surprised.
"How should I know what black men? Some kind of SS men. I was racking my brains the whole flight back about what it could mean, but, as they say, 'no idea'."
Hayes's expression became more and more surprised. "And what exactly was written there?"
"Three English letters with dots, the acronym 'B.S.S.'," I reached for my mug. I felt like taking a couple of sips and leaning back in my chair, like Hayes, and relaxing.
"B.S.S.?" And at that moment, Hayes's expression became familiar again: calm, confident, with his signature, barely noticeable smile in the corners of his eyes that only I saw.
"Yes. 'B.S.S.'."
"Black Spathi Squadron?"

Ye-e-e-s! YES! Yes! How didn't I figure it out myself!? Good old Hayes! What a guy!
Instantly, all the opening prospects flashed before my eyes! Sorry, Shofixti, sorry, Yehat. But it seems you'll have to wait.
After the Spathi cowardly hid under a slave shield, we lost the lion's share of our power. Under the slave shield, they didn't need their ships, so they didn't take them. And the most annoying thing was that all the ships were in working order, but there was no one to fly them. And if primitive work - fetch this, carry that - could be done by humans, a Spathi was still required at the controls. We had a huge fleet of Spathi 'Eluders', we just didn't have the 'eluders' themselves. But it seems now we can get a huge fleet of Spathi Daggers! We just need to find these Black SS men.
"I don't know what backwater you've crawled into, but I'm coming for you right now!"

Bazhenov A.I.
CC0-1.0 license - public domain