A shadow passed slowly over the ship's cockpit, a great monolithic structure of ice and dust towering into the great blackness of space. Light shattered, efracted and then was redirected in a gentle pattern of crystalline spots to dapple the front of their shuttle with glowing pinpoints of light. Passing out f the shadow, a shaft of blazing blue light butted up against the windscreen forcing Adam to manually dim the visor as they flew forward.

"Are you sure this is a good idea?" Adam wondered, "The last time we tried this...."

"The last time we tried this was almost a decade ago." Conn said, long, thin hand gripping the back of Adam's seat. Adam could see the leering face of the Starborn reflected back at him on the glass of the windscreen as he said, "Besides, I've met your extended family, it's only fair you should have to meet the inlaws."

Adam huffed, "I'm not married to you Conn."

"In certain cultures we are."

"What cultures are those?"

"I don't know, the cultures where having children together makes you married." Adam sighed, rolling his eyes aggressively into the back of his head.

Beside him Sunny looked on in amusement. Adam wasn't sure why she tolerated Conn, but for some reason, she seemed to find his antics amusing, "Conn, do you really think this is the best time to be annoying my battle partner?" She said, but he could hear the wry tone to her voice which would be more an invitation to the starborn than not

"You mean OUR battle partner."

Adam snorted, and tried not to imagine what it would be like to be in a thrupple with Conn as the third.

"Well you know, since you seem to be the communal husband." Ramirez piped in, "WHy don't we make this threesome a foursome and get it over with." Adam rolled his eyes again. Of course if there was flirting to be had Ramirez always had to join in.

Behind him, the marin's voice was lighter than it had been in days, but having been best friends with the marine for over a decade now, he knew when something wasn't right.

He still hadn't gotten over losing Maverick.

None of them had

"All very well and good of you to invite yourselves into my marriage." Adam began, "But I'm actually attracted to only one person in this shuttle."

"Me of course." Both Conn and Ramirez said

Sunny was the only one who didn't speak up, waiting for them to finish before leaning back in her seat, "Some of us don't feel the need to prove our place."

Adam brought them around another monolith of ice and crystal, bathing their little shuttle in a diffused and dappled pool of intense blue light.

"It's actually rather flattering to have the three of you fighting over me, but I mean, who could blame you. I am." He motioned to himself with one hand, "pretty awesome."

"Interesting, I find you both stomach churning and repulsive." Adam turned to frown at Celex, who st in the seat behind Sunny smirking mildly past his technicolor beard.

"You just don't have good taste." Adam said

"Mmmmm, no, no I don't think so. Your wife, on the other hand, could certainly do better." Celex winked at Sunny from the back seat and she snorted loudly.

"Because all I really want is a technicolor war criminal." she said dryly

"Taste the rainbow." Celex shot back causing Ramirez to choke on his own spi

The banter probably would have continued indefinitely were it not for the sudden fluttering at the edge of Adam's conscious mind. As one, three of them turned their heads simultaneously, listening intently to the noise that was not a noise.

Ramirez sighed, "Let me guess, psychic waves or something."

"Shhh." Conn said

Adam slowed the ship looking around at the dense cluster of ice structures that surrounded them, and the distant blue star hunkered within their midst. For a moment he thought he had imagined the sensation, but the fluttering came again, brushing up against the very edge of his unconsciousness, like the tip of a butterfly's wing.

He tried to reach out, tentatively make contact with the sensation, but as soon as he tired, it rapidly withdrew.

"Dammit." He muttered.

He tried to extend himself a little further, to follow the sensation, but it did its best to keep just out of reach. It wasn't until he was almost fully extended, his mind open and stretched to its limits did he hear.

"Mmmmm that's not good."

It was only then did he realize, the gentle pressure being applied to his mind from all sides. He hadn't noticed it at first, having pressed into it himself by chasing the fluttering, but now he became acutely aware of their situation. Suddenly the vast wall beyond where his mind ended and nothingness began, coalesced into something that was far greater than nothingness.

He could feel them, the pressing weight of a thousand minds clustering in upon themselves, silent and waiting.

Ad he had opened himself up to them.

He did the equivalent of mentally freezing, drawing back slightly as they pressed in. outside the shuttle had come to a halt, drifting aimlessly in the space between the crystal and ice monoliths.

They were surrounded.

Despite being alone physically inside the shuttle, they were not alone mentally.

Only Ramirez remained obvious as to their precarious condition.

The starborn pressed further into their minds, preverbially pressing Sunny, Adam Conn and Celex up against each other, back to back to back to back their minds melding together in an uneasy sort of soup, oil, with water, with syrup with mercury, all pressing together but doing their best trying not to intermingle. The sensation was strange, all four of their minds distinct and separate alien entities. Even Sunny's mind, who he knew and understood so well, was a vast alien network unfamiliar to his own human perception, Conn and Celex even more strange in comparison.

"What now.?" He wondered, the question echoing through both the shuttle and past his lips.

"Only one thing to be done." Conn said.

The starborn stopped retreating then, holding his ground against the menacing press of minds around him. The starborn were making their position very clear. WIth their numbers they could crush the minds of interlopers without having to lift a physical finger.

There would be no remorse.

But still Conn stood against the tide of their minds extending himself outwards to flow like water through his distant brethren.

He did not communicate in words, instead choosing to speak in the way of his people: a mental melding of tho impressions and memories and feelings. It was the most honest form of communication possible, incapable of holding lies or secrets. Adam could sense Conn's open discomfort with his own native tongue. After years of secrecy within his own mind, the master of his own secrets, he had become accustomed to being a merchant of information, buying and selling it only at a price.

After so many years, the starborn even thought in words.

This strangeness was not lost on the starborn.

Though this mode of communication was unfamiliar and alien to Adam, it was also the purest form of communication, and while he felt like he shouldn't have been able to understand it, it was, in essence the most open, clear, concise and honest conversation he had ever heard or been a part of: the pure exchange of information.

It didn't take long for Conn to explain himself, no more than a few seconds as the starborn absorbed his story all at once, like a sponge, sifting through his thoughts and memories in one large collective of thought.

In a way they were like a hive mind, each individual acting as a cell to process a single packet of information and sharing that process between each other in the same instant.

It was impressive, but also terrifying.

The communication they took from Conn was honest, and the communications they gave back was honest in return. They did not trust outsiders, but Conn didn't have thea ability to lie, none of them did, so they knew that Conn and his entourage meant them no harm.

"We wish to speak with your queen." Conn said, or at least that was the gist of what he said. Adam couldn't comprehend the conversation fully without putting it into words inside his own mind

The starborn were unsure.

"Look into our minds." Conn said, "You know we mean you no harm, and we harbor no ill feelings towards you if you refuse our offer, buy your people have been plagued by the corrupted ones, continually for the past few years. We can see it in your minds, in our memories. Your numbers are dwindling, and it is becoming unsafe to return to the old migration grounds."

All of that was true enough, Adam could sense it in their thoughts, the welling of fear and unease, along with a memory, the sensation of pure evil.

He shivered.

"We want to help." Conn said

Their deliberation was rapid, sharing their honest opinions in a matter of milliseconds.

Ramirez for his part remained oblivious, looking between them with a frown on his face, "I sense by your vacant expressions that we have made contact."

The deliberation, Adam sensed, was a hard won thing. The starborn were not a trustworthy group and didn't enjoy the thoughts of outsiders, especially not ones who were capable of concealing thoughts from each other. To them, the idea was abhorrent, almost a form of heretical, but their hatred for the void was greater than their fear of secrets.

Come.

The urge was more of a sensation rather than a thought, but it was completely understandable as Adam adjusted the engines. Up ahead of them, a lone starborn appeared, ribbons billowing in a slow undulation. He had the same white skin as Conn, the same large, Dark eyes. Adam might have confused the two for each other were it not for their mental connection. Though this starborn was significantly shorter than Conn, with stumpier fingers and shorter legs .

He waved them forward with a thought, and Adam followed as directed, following the starborn as it maneuvered them through the maze of crystal and ice.

They felt her before they saw her.

The press of the starborn collective was still a constant sensation at the edge of their thoughts, but as soon as they came within range of her, the sensation changed. Where the starborn were water, she was a stone, breaking the flow of collective thoughts to think as her own individual self, ancient, and slow in her thinking. Adam got the distinct impression of something incomprehensibly large.

The closer they got the more it filled his mind, a massive presence that towered over him.

They passed out of the ice field, sweeping low over a large dome of white stone.... Or was that ice?

He had to blink a few times to reconcile what he was seeing before he realized.

That wasn't a dome of ice at all.

But the crown of the Sarborn Queen's Skull, dwarfing them by a thousand times, one the same scale as the starborn.

With a single thought she shook Adam's soul within its very foundation.

"Why have you come."