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The original was posted on /r/hfy by /u/EV-187 on 2025-06-25 08:59:42+00:00.
A typical mar-gite physically resembles a 5 armed animal with radial symmetry, often compared to a terran starfish or treana’ad sandstar. The author will note that this resemblance is almost certainly coincidental: such radial symmetry is a common form of convergent evolution on many planets throughout nature and these are only the two most common examples.
Not that the mar-gite are natural. Though we have yet to identify their masters it is clear from dissections that mar-gite are very much an artificial life form engineered to be a weapon.
Some have been seen with extra arms but there is no evidence these are leaders or anything more than a mutation, and one that leaves them sterile as clearly their creators clearly detest random mutation among their weapons. Understandable since mutation might leave them unable to be controlled. Living mar-gite with less than five arms have also been recorded but are a rare sight; those are generally injured specimens and therefore seen as food by other mar-gite.
Mar-gite can range from a meter to two meters wide from the end of one arm to the next, though most are usually only about 1.5 meters wide. The typical mar-gite is also usually about a quarter of a meter thick. On the end of each arm is a cluster of eye-like sensor organs that allow the mar-gite to see in the infrared, ultraviolet and radio sections of the electromagnetic spectrums. The Common Visible Band that 93% of all sentient species are able to view some or all of due to convergent evolution is, oddly enough, a blindspot for mar-gite. Don’t worry, they can still see and hunt you.
Excerpt: Training primer on mar-gite recovered by Confederate Military Intelligence digital archaeologists. Dated approximately 80 years pre-TXE
Admiral Blu’uche’ese watched the display as the Bronze Cog opened fire upon the giga cluster. Its weapons seemed uninterested in targeting the mega cluster. Blu’uche’ese didn’t dare to guess why that was, he just assumed the ship had something else up its sleeve. After all, had its digital captain not been confident it could take a mega cluster? It had also cleanly taken care of a previously unknown highly stealthed control ship.
Shame about having to splat it like that, but the threat outweighed any intelligence gains we could make.
Of course with the brain-boiling flashbang weapon no longer a thing, one of the ship’s medics came by to carefully remove the jerry-rigged extra heat-sinks and surge protectors they’d installed. The medics had started by rank and extent of cybernetic implants and had been working their way down: it hadn’t been favoritism, it was simply that with promotion in the Confederate Navy came more extensive cyberware.
“Thank you.” Blu’uche’ese smiled at the medic as they slid the last section of false skull plate shut and then went to work on the next officer. He resisted the urge to furiously itch his scalp, but it wasn’t easy. Not after spending over three hours with all of his cyberware ports opened up and goofy looking blocks of heat-sink fins sticking out of his skull. He shook his head and grabbed his helmet to wear. His crew would simply think it was good prudence for when the atmosphere was pumped out of the flag bridge and not simply the admiral trying to keep from scratching himself until he bled.
“Would you get a look at how much firepower that thing is putting out…” One of the bridge officers gasped.
“It’s all small caliber fire too…” Another shared the awe.
Admiral Blu’uche’ese had to agree, it was truly an impressive amount of weapons being fired at the giga cluster, but as mentioned it was all lower caliber civilian-grade weaponry. Most of it was low-speed near-C cannons, but there were plasma packets, lasers and grasers chipping away. Just enough energy weaponry to keep the enemy honest in case someone ever did figure out a way to truly invalidate a density collapsed uranium slug travelling at over 95% the speed of light. About half of the warshot seemed to have fat antimatter payloads that were going off underneath the giga cluster’s surface.
Blu’uche’ese took a moment to listen to the pair of chattering officers as he watched the flag bridge’s screen, specifically the sections showing the relative positions of the fleets and celestial bodies of the FiishYaahd system. He was coming to a decision. One of the things that defined space combat was that if you could see the enemy, you could strike the enemy and the enemy could likely strike you. Cover and concealment was rare in space, and that rarity made it all the more important and frustrating to deal with.
Blu’uche’ese’s fleet was on the wrong side of the gas giant and having to rely on sensor data provided from the Cog’s extensive infrastructure. Data that, unfortunately, only provided civilian level of accuracy and was formatted for systems that had been stuck in time for forty millenia of coding drift.
For the old lanaktallan United Council that would have been nothing and considered modern. After their run in with humanity, the lanaktallan had been infected with a need to learn and grow and experience life instead of sitting in stasis. They were slower to grow and innovate than humanity, but they did innovate and grow once more.
Which meant the Cog’s data was excellent for navigational plotting, but there was an incompatibility no one had been able to figure out between its systems and the Naval systems that prevented it from being used for reliable weapons targeting. The systems just errored out when, which meant any course updates for any missiles or torpedoes would have to be entered by hand from officers watching a system with a painfully slow refresh rate.
Thankfully a solution had been found.
“Oh wow, sensors just detected hellbore fire too! I didn’t know a civilian ship could have that!”
“Well this one does. Give that monster ship a few days and it will just erode that gigacluster to nothing.”
“Unfortunately those colonies do not have days. They have hours.” Blu’uche’ese faced the segment of the bridge display where an akltak was fidgeting. “Commander Starglide, I believe the situation with the flash weapon has been handled. It’s time to begin phase two.”
The avian stopped mid fidget and suddenly became focused as he faced the camera. “Understood, Admiral, beginning phase two!” His segment of the screen muted itself as he started to issue commands to his own crew.
Honestly Blu’uche’ese didn’t blame the commander: he was in charge of a tiny system rescue frigate and had come face to face with two mar-gite clusters and an unknown, stealthed ship of unknown capabilities. Starglide had been clearly torn to help but also oh so relieved when ordered to fly his frigate perpendicular to the stellar system’s orbital plane and as far away from trouble as he could.
Within moments Blu’uche’ese could see stations updating and responding from new data provided by Starglide’s ship. With a nod he pressed the button to activate the fleet-wide PA system.
“This is the Admiral to all ships. We now have targeting data: all indirect weapons are weapons free as soon as you have a target lock! I would like to apologize to the direct fire weapon crews for not clearing the gas giant already. Please limit your requests to your commanding officer on if we’ve arrived to at most once a minute.” He paused to give everyone a moment to chuckle and savor the feeling of the ship already starting to shudder as missile, torpedo and C+ weapons started to already leave their tubes. “I would also like to remind everyone that the FiishYaahd system is a resupply base so don’t hold back! In fact, I will grant an extra day of R&R to the crews of the first destroyer, cruiser and battle barn to fully deplete its shot locker into that beast!”
Doane watched the action through the communications link that Ghlark was sharing with her. The other leaders, mainly the other hestlan, had asked her a few questions. Just enough to show that they did, in fact, value her observations and experience. At least when it came to that terrible weapon she and the leebawian commodore had faced. She expected to face a lot of medical examinations and questions in the next several days.
“Excuse me, Forewoman?” Doane jumped as she heard Prime’s voice. She looked towards the holotank with the other leader’s heads only to watch them fade while a separate image of Prime standing in the middle of the bridge stood in front of the conference. Doane took a moment to look at her sister on the other side of the bridge.
Sanglee just shook her head and shrugged.
“Yes, um, Eternal Captain Prime? Is that how we should address you?”
“Eternal Captain Prime, or just by my rank or name, or ‘That Digital Asshole’. I answer to many names and I’m slow to take offense.” A smirk flashed across his face for a moment. “I merely was curious if you had a moment to discuss your colony’s plans?”
“Our plans?”
Prime nodded. “Yes, I need to know: Do you plan to keep running immediately, or would you be amenable to providing some support of your own while you are here? There is no shame in running, I will gladly provide my services to repair your fleet’s systems free of charge. It would take about a week to do so, during which you an…
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