VOX PROTOCOL: Chapter Six

Aedanian Slopes

Jul 11, 2026

Author’s Note: This week’s MOTE Response, “Calypso Twilight,” was a bit of Andri’s backstory from her Star Navy days. If you’re enjoying her, please do check it out! And thank you so much for reading. If you’re enjoying the story, please do leave a comment. Authors love to hear from readers—it’s the highlight of our days sometimes.

Aedanian Slopes

The train changed before the landscape did. Andri noted the interior ventilation systems of the Vox’s car noisily switching around to exclude outside air and aggressively filter, and the Vox’s Lance confirmed her suspicions outside the screen, answering a question from Lance when mechanical sounds rent the air.

“Excluding contaminants,” Vox told Andri when he saw her listening closely. “We’re moving at high speed, upsetting the soil and creating a wind current. Should be safe enough walking around, however.”

Andri nodded, frowning as she took in the sights as they passed, looking for small changes. They moved through narrow strips of wooded area at the edge of scrubby farmlands, and the first exterior signs of their entering the yellow zone were the trees.

“The coloration and leaf drop—is that normal for this time of year?”

The Vox watched her, a gleam of satisfaction in his eyes. That vanished when he looked out the window, mouth set in a grim line.

“It is now. These trees used to attract sightseers, changing from green to crimson and purple in the autumn. Now the leaves are pale; they turn yellow and drop every few months. They—”

“They’re twisted, strange shapes, asymmetrical,” Andri finished for him. “One side of a leaf will appear normal, while the other is tiny and misshapen. The trees produce more after a rain, and those turn yellow as well. The trees don’t grow, because they’re straining to produce the leaves they need for photosynthesis and survive.”

The Vox nodded slowly, plainly getting used to the gesture. “You know that so immediately. Seems like an odd thing to make it into a consular briefing, so you obviously have experience.”

Andri nodded. “I was raised in the area around Indoc Center 4—that’s on the western side of the North American continent on Earth. During the wars, the west coast was hit hard by radiation. It’s a heavily forested area, from the coast to the mountains, with a great deal of former farmland. The trees are damaged there, on the genetic level. Those that seeded and managed to grow during that time are the worst off. This damage is from the gamma radiation burst.”

He nodded again. “Yes. We think so. We don’t have a large number of nuclear scientists, for obvious reasons, but those we do have... they say genetic mutations happened the moment of the burst, farther out from the beam’s center than we could predict. That’s what you call the yellow zone. Genetic damage to trees, small plants, animals... and people too, of course.”

“The radiation sickness must have really taxed your medical resources... and then there’s the cancer screenings to consider—”

“Stretched to the brink.” He shook his head. “The Skelow came with additional medical nanites and experts to help manage the crisis, and while they came with discounts, they didn’t come for nothing. We have little left to bargain with now, and we have years of cancers to manage. I have expensive monitoring nanites in my body, thanks to my position in the political class. Others aren’t so privileged or fortunate.”

Andri shook her head, watching yellowed leaves fly past. Deciduous trees with bare branches and cracking boughs, full of black ooze and fungi, taking advantage of the weakened angiosperms. No flowering plants under the thinned canopy. Few ornithoids or other flying animals taking flight as the train passed.

“You used to play in those woods, on your west coast at home?” The Vox’s voice interrupted her musing, sounding gentle. And alarmingly correct. “Around this Indoc Center? I’ve read about your Indoc Centers, but we don’t know much. I know the Cetians built them to help you manage radiation and large population shifts. And to... ‘re-educate’ humanity. How kind of them.”

Andri listened closely to his tone. He used his translation nanites to speak in Earth Standard, and he managed a low, silky, almost dark sort of sarcasm. On occasion, Lance did that as well, but she assumed he got it from all the time he spent with humans; Abni-S’zaelyn usually struck her as painfully sincere, poetic, and earnest.

“We’ve added onto them, built up around them, and built satellite campuses entirely on our own. They’re nice places to grow up, even with radiation all around you.” Andri paused, meeting his eyes. “They’re the center of our civilization now. That’s not an exaggeration.”

“And your great cities and monuments and history, your museums and old temples, the faces carved into the sides of mountains that I’ve heard tell about? What of them?”

Andri smiled, looking down. “Frankly, they nearly destroyed us. We preserve them, of course, where possible... but they’re monuments to a past we can’t repeat. An object lesson.”

“What... all of it?” His eyebrows flew up. “That can’t be true. You’re giving me the party line, Attaché Kordova.”

She tightened her lips, still smiling. “Most people can’t parse the differences, and unless they study history or live in the outskirts, they aren’t interested in that past. The Centers take care of them, let them live comfortable, productive lives, to socialize and make art if they’re so inclined, and have children in peace and safety. So long as nothing threatens them, their curiosity doesn’t extend far beyond institutional walls. And nearly everyone is institutionalized in Republic life. It’s strange to exist outside of that.”

“Strange... like you?” The Vox quirked his eyebrow and the corner of his mouth.

Andri smiled modestly and looked down. “Even I’m institutionalized. I was educated at Indoc, went to college near an Indoc satellite, entered the Star Navy, then the diplomatic service. All institutions. Always a canteen or a mess hall near at hand.”

That made the Vox smile in appreciation. “I had read that many orphans from your Corporate Wars were raised at the Indoc Centers in your generation. Were you—”

“No. No, nothing like that.” Andri laughed nervously, studying the landscape. The train had begun to climb, moving up in elevation. Purple slopes enshrouded in blue mist took shape in the distance. The Vox spoke, still studying her.

“I’m sorry. I don’t mean to make you uncomfortable.”

“You aren’t.” Andri looked at him, realizing she’d unintentionally turned standoffish. “I forgot you weren’t human for a moment... that you wouldn’t judge me for the reasons my family lives at Indoc.”

His eyes narrowed for a second; on a human, it would be suspicion, but Andri had seen Lance do it as well. On an Abni-S’zaelyn, the squint was a searching expression, a desire to empathize.

“You mistook me for human for a moment? I didn’t think I was that proficient.” His expression cleared. “Tell me. Why is your family at these Centers?”

Andri smiled bitterly. Why was she talking to him? Did she hope he would open up if she did? But her personal history cost her nothing to tell, and it gave him no advantage in political talks. As Masadi said, a real friendship formed a diplomatic foundation; that started with understanding.

“They’re defectors—my parents, my uncles and aunts, my grandparents. During the Corporate Wars, they defected from a space-based corporate state, now defunct, to pass information and technology to the Republic. And to save themselves, of course. Maxicorp was absorbing the business and its citizens, and my family would’ve lost everything. They lost everything anyways, but... the loss was gentler, coming to Indoc. My cousins and I were raised at the Center.”

“Makikor,” the Vox mused. Like many Skelow and Kimbelites, and Lance too, he couldn’t say the word Maxicorp, and used the common STF form, Makikor. “Now many refugees from that corporate state flee in diaspora to all corners of Republic space and beyond, including the STF. I wonder what you think about it.”

“I feel bad for them, needing to rebuild their lives, of course. But,” Andri said crisply, teeth clenched, “only so bad. Maxicorp as an organization profiteered during every single one of the Republic’s existential wars this decade, even with their own lives on the line. We have a phrase for that in the Star Navy: Fuck around and find out. They’re now in the process of finding out.”

He paused for a moment; then, unexpectedly, he chuckled to himself. “I sense you see some justice in it. As they consumed and destroyed others, so too is Makikor being consumed and destroyed. What did this large venture do? The one your parents and grandparents belonged to?”

“Space-based lab chemicals, pharmaceuticals, experimental combat drugs, and, if I understand it correctly, weapons manufacturing. Maxicorp suborned and took over the company silently. As I hear it told, the whole affair was ugly.” Andri kept her arms crossed, eyes watching the landscape changing as they neared a large mountain range. She’d seen these mountains from space, knew them to be higher than any mountain range on Earth. “These mountains really are incredible. They’re so large I keep thinking we’re closer to them than we are, that we’ll be traveling through them in a matter of minutes... and still they keep growing and growing.”

Eyes brightening, the Vox turned his seat to see the mountains approaching; Andri couldn’t mistake the eagerness in his motions and expression.

“The Aedanian slopes. Yes—on the highest peaks, the air’s too thin to breathe, and you can see the stars through the remaining atmosphere, even on a bright day. The clouds spread out below you like the churning waters of a tidal spa. It’s very peaceful, so long as you wear an environmental suit with radiation shielding.”

“You’ve been up there?” Andri asked, impressed. “And what’s a tidal spa? No one’s told me about those.”

The Vox answered her second question first, turning to face her again, after one more longing look at a high, white-capped slope ahead of them.

“Tidal spas are common on the eastern coast of the Zhi-K’hon shelf, where there’s a subduction zone. Hot water flows into sheltered tidal pools and intermixes with the cold; at mid-tide, the temperature is perfect for bathing and relaxation. The elderly swear by its curative powers.”

Andri nodded. “Ah. And at high tide, the pools are flooded over and can’t be used, while at low tide, you could boil soup in them?”

The Vox shrugged one shoulder, more natural at it by second. “Or a clutch of eggs, but we’re not picky.” He glanced at the mountains, the flecks in his eyes glittering. “As for the slopes... yes. In my younger years, I spent my summers climbing these mountains. It’s a common athletic goal on Zehyr, to gain enough stamina and strength to scale Mt. G’haero. It’s said that the sky is dark at the very top, in the middle of the day. I don’t know that I believe that, but I know one can see even the dimmer stars.”

Andri sat in wonder at that. “Sounds like some of the mountains on Mars. And did you ever manage Mt. G’haero?”

He smiled tightly. “I didn’t. My personal best was one of the Three Sisters, north of here. They’re some of the higher peaks, but not the highest. You need a breather at the top, but you don’t need to scale any cliff faces.” He colored. “Sheer cliffs are a weakness I need to overcome.”

“The Vox of Zehyr is afraid of something, huh?” Andri teased.

“Not afraid of it—the idea exhilarates me.” His cheeks pinked further. “It’s a matter of skill. I’ve never been intelligent at judging a handhold or a jump. The last time I got wedged in a crevasse and nearly needed a leg amputated... I decided to ‘call it quits’, as the human phrase goes.”

Andri blanched. “Ugh. I’m sorry—understood.” She traced the slopes with her eyes, watching the highest peaks disappear into the cloud cover entirely, and wondered how the black of space and the thinning atmosphere might look from way up there... well above the red lightning. A fresh rain of ash like snowflakes now swirled just outside the windows as they entered the yellow zone, and storms roiled above.

“Seems to me it might be peaceful up there,” the Vox mused, eyes soft—watching Andri, and not the slopes. “Well away from the political turmoil. Of course... these days the diplomatic corps would simply fly me to the top in a helo and wait impatiently for me to get my fill.”

Even with his translation nanites mediating his tone, Andri couldn’t help but hear the sadness and a touch of loneliness in the expression, but she internally disciplined herself. You cannot let this man get too far into your head, no matter how much you may find him appealing.

~*~

The elevation rose, but the arrow train never did travel into or through the mountains; the range remained, distant and sovereign, in the backdrop of the journey, as the train traveled onto a high mesa ringed by the Aedanian slopes. Andri reflected a few times that it reminded her of iron-rich clay mesas in the Rocky Mountains—an irradiated area under reclamation efforts under Indoc 4. The Vox listened attentively to her descriptions and nodded a few times, as though he recognized something familiar in them.

The arrow train came to a halt at last in a half-abandoned station outfitted for grain store deployment; Andri had never seen silos quite like these, but she could guess their purpose immediately.

“This town was an agricultural export hub,” she said, noting the long grain arms, now sitting unused and covered in dust and ash.

“You have a sharp eye, even in an alien locale—but I suppose you’ve seen many an agricultural hub on various planets.” The Vox sounded impressed, his eyebrow twitching. “This is the town of D’zan-har in Aedani Province. Grain shipments from all over Aedani aggregated here for storage and deployment when needed elsewhere on the planet, and they would travel from here to P’aetre-zhae. No longer, however, as you can plainly see.” He stood, offering his hand to her like a true gallant. “Come along. I have much to show you, Attaché.”

Lance and the Vox’s team fell into step around them as they left the arrow train, and silent officials—saying nothing but gesturing in greeting—met them on the platform. The town felt autumnal, haunting and silent in the dim stormlight, with yellowed leaves and ash drifting into well-swept streets. Andri noted an older Abni-S’zaelyn man, hunched but still three meters tall, sweeping the walkways with attentive care. The pedestrian walks, separate from the agricultural roads intended only for grain lorries, had an organic, curving mien to them, looping around trees and tiny overgrown herb gardens, all fragrant. The patterning of the walkway caught Andri’s eyes—geometric patterns made from blackened boards, covered over with a resinous substance so they could be walked upon and protected from the elements.

“What are these? They don’t look like flagstones. More like... wood? Charcoal?”

The Vox laughed, as did a member of his security staff and both officials with them.

“They’re shelves from the pottery kilns. You’ll note we’re traveling over a hollow in the hill? It’s a large kiln, and there are many such here. A shelf in the kiln can only be fired so many times before it disintegrates, and over the centuries, they’ve been recycled into features all over the landscape. You’ll see them in retaining walls, in artistic sculpture, decorating bridges and the bases of fountains, and here as part of the walkways, too.”

Andri nodded, taking it in, and glanced back at Lance. He watched the sky and scrutinized the trees with their yellowing canopies, a furrow creased deep between his eyes.

On the other side of the hollow comprising that large kiln, a small road for ground cars wove between the hills. There, a huge, wide ground car waited, and Vox-Lance instructed his Big Wing to take the wheel. The rest of them trundled in back, which was so large, tall, and spacious that Andri could stand up easily and walk around. The Abni-S’zaelyn still looked cramped, of course, as was right and proper in a ground car made with them in mind. The officials accompanied the Vox’s team, and they left the haunting, silent town behind—where no children laughed and played, and where Andri couldn’t smell the aromas of dinners cooking, nor hear the chitters of domestic animals or the song of avian lifeforms.

The ground car trundled between silent lines of ash-covered grain lorries and farm equipment, some old and some advanced: combines, scan and precision watering armatures, all-spectrum light filtration and chlorophyll stimulation arrays, strange tractors, and harvesters in great variety, from what Andri’s studied eyes could tell. They had been experts here, and the region had plainly produced industrial boatloads of food, just as the Vox had said.

Vox-Lance examined Andri. “Your Lance tells us your people have outfitted you with personal radiation dosimeters and anti-radiation medication. You’re aware of the risks of the yellow zone?”

“As well as can be expected,” Andri told him, reluctantly turning her eyes away from all the equipment and endless silos. “I’ve been irradiated plenty of times before. I’m not concerned about a short visit, certainly, unless you’re planting me next to a rack of cobalt-60.”

Lance exhaled in amusement, but of course it took the others nearly ten seconds before any sort of entertainment entered their eyes. Little Scribe spoke before his sense caught up with him.

“You’ve been irradiated? How many times?”

“Oh, tons.” Andri smiled and shrugged. “One of the dangers of working on a starship with an Intermix Reactor, especially in an existential war. One time we made a bellyflop missile which went sour, and it washed the ship in so much radiation that we had to mod Med Bay just to churn out enough Antiradase to get functional again. And don’t get me started on the smell. Whole ship reeked of sick for weeks afterward.”

Lance couldn’t seem to help himself; when Little Scribe, plus Big Scribe and Little Wing, all blanched and turned slightly green beneath their facial tattoos, he laughed and took mercy on them, explaining in a warm voice.

“Attaché Kordova is former Star Navy—their space-based military. Like the Odyssey, who visited Zehyr. She served during wartime as a scientist.” He seemed to offer the explanation to soothe Little Scribe, who looked highly alarmed by all this radiation talk. He leaned away from Andri like she might be leaking gamma rays to this day, and she supposed she didn’t blame him.

“I answered the call when the Praezorians attacked. A nerve-wracking way to shave five years off my life expectancy, but interesting even so.”

“We honor your fighting spirit, and for answering the call,” Big Shield told her. This constituted some of the first words Andri had heard out of the Vox’s Big Shield, one of the only female security members on his team, and a woman of such bulk and height that Andri felt positively miniature beside her. Big Shield had years on her as well, at least ten, and seemed weathered from battle and the elements. She possessed thick hair banded with silver and straw, and gray eyes so light they reminded Andri of platinum plate.

Andri didn’t know the proper response, so she did what she would on Earth when thanked for her service: she nodded and smiled tightly. Thankfully the Vox—master of ceremonies that he appeared to be—had her back.

“The ritual response in etiquette, Attaché, is ‘May we all answer the call when the time comes’.” He eyed Lance, who no longer appeared so jovial. “Is it the same saying in Lirdah, I wonder? Or do you have a variation? I always enjoy the little regional differences I find.”

“No. It’s the same,” Lance said softly, nearly inaudible. He turned his eyes out the window, as if chastened and reminded of the Vox’s words to survey what happened to his world. Andri suppressed a grimace for him, her heart falling, and wished she could take him aside or stroke his cheek.

She found it difficult to be angry with the Vox, however; as the ground car moved well into the yellow zone outside and her personal dosimeter tracked exposure, and as Andri watched the piles of ash and dead leaves and the carcasses of abandoned animals pass by the window, she could understand the edge of harshness the Vox felt, toward any Abni who hadn’t returned to aid Zehyr in its darkest hour.

Had she been here and called this world her home, she might have felt the same; she felt harshly toward those humans who didn’t return to assist Earth in the wake of the Howl Event, didn’t she? Including the human crew—particularly the command staff—of the Odyssey, especially the Vox’s vaunted little commander whom he admired so much. Andri tended to keep that to herself. What could it help, bringing it up?

“I see not all of this area’s domesticated animals made it to evacuation,” Andri mused, maintaining professionalism. An entire paddock of rotting carcasses passed outside. “Concerning that there are no large predators remaining to pick them off.”

“We cleared the predators quickly,” the Vox told her. “I’m not sure about your culture, but here we exalt the predator and carnivore, who maintain the balance of life and keep prey species from overgrowing the world, like a cancer. During the confusion of the first year, some livestock remained behind—or they were too diseased and contaminated to take.” He looked at Andri, who adjusted her bag and checked her dosimeter. “You brought one of your Republic science scan devices, I believe?”

Andri nodded. “Of course. Never leave the consulate on a field mission without one.” She quirked an eyebrow. “I’m good with my eyes and hands, but I’m better with a scanner.”

Lance smiled briefly at her from the other side of the Vox’s Big Shield, where they’d stuck him for the ride. The Vox smirked, eyes twinkling.

“I’m sure you’re quite proficient with your hands.”

Big Scribe, who’d spent much of the journey making some sort of record and intaking information on a flat keyboard and tablet construction, looked up abruptly. He was about Lance’s age, thin and insanely tall, and if an Abni could appear studious, Big Scribe embodied the type.

“Honored Voice... decorum.”

The Vox wiped a hand across his smile, looking not at all chastised. “I apologize. I hear yumei appreciate levity in dark moments.”

Andri laughed, playing it off. “I’ve heard worse in a starship mess, and that’s before my coffee.”

She glanced at Lance, finding him frowning, but he’d fixed his eyes on the empty paddocks outside; anyone could easily ascribe his frown to concern for Aedani Province.

Concern he would be right to feel. As paddocks gave way to farmland, Little Scribe traded seats so Andri could get a better view.

“These are experimental fields here?” she asked, watching the patches of green and brown emerge.

“How do you make that assessment?” Little Scribe asked before the Vox could, sounding genuinely surprised.

“These are small plots—all the same species, but different heights and levels of growing success,” Andri pointed out. “I don’t know all your glyphs, but I know the numbers, and I can see that each plot has a number associated with it. It’s exactly what I would do and recommend—looking for genetic stock that can find success in these circumstances.” She studied them as they passed, noting how many plots had browned and died back, or showed signs of yellowing. Each furrow in the soil blanched with lines of white ash, and the grassy leaves of many experimental plants had grown in pale or scorched. “They’re not getting enough sunlight, and they’re accumulating salts in their root systems.”

Everything else she might have said, she kept to herself for now. What would she do and recommend? Amend the soil, add grow lights and high-tech monitoring equipment? I’d recommend not growing out here at all, she admitted to herself honestly. The salts accumulating in those leaves came from Zehyrian coal dust, and they’d invariably turn out radioactive. With the Abni horror of radiation, she couldn’t imagine anyone on the planet could bear cooking with or eating grain from this region, unless all the radiation could be scrubbed away. But how to stop the ash from falling, the sky from clouding, the sun from disappearing, with coal fires underground and in the slopes still raging?

Little Scribe had made some notes, but the Vox made that horizontal wave at him. “Our scientists know the crops aren’t getting enough sun and that they’re accumulating salt. They’re looking for genetic stock that can succeed regardless. The attaché is simply catching up as we travel.” He eyed Andri as Little Scribe put his device away. “Your face is thoughtful, Attaché Kordova.”

“I was thinking... it reminds me of a period in Earth’s geological history, at the end of the Cambrian Period. Coal deposits burned for centuries at that time—far worse than what we’re seeing here, of course. Has the ash caused any pH changes in your oceans or other large bodies of water?”

The Vox shook his head, expression clearing. “No—it’s not that extreme, thankfully. We’ve been monitoring the oceans assiduously, in case of just such a possibility. We have extinctions in our planet’s history from ocean acidification.”

“So do we,” Andri mused, mind back on the Cambrian Extinction event. “But the planet’s temperature... I take it the cloud layer’s caused a drop?”

“Yes.” The Vox held her eyes with his. “One of your people called it a ‘Small Age of Ice’.”

“A miniature Ice Age? Maybe not quite that, but as you probably know from large volcanic events, even a few years of ash and cloud cover can disrupt agriculture and animal life across the planet.” She traced the dark, low line of clouds hugging the high peaks, the way it cast the sunlight in red and orange, made Aedani Province feel downright apocalyptic. She knew now that even if contamination could be amended, the source of that contamination remained in the sky and would take extremely sophisticated and large-scale, high-tech solutions, of the type utilized and taught to humanity in part by the Cetians… and which they still instituted, a century after the cataclysms began.

“You have ideas already, Attaché,” the Vox guessed smartly. “You yumei draw your thoughtfulness all over your bare faces, in lieu of adult guild tattoos.”

Andri made a noncommittal sound, still thinking, and they let her take everything in while the ground car progressed from experimental plots to real farmland. For the first time, Andri spotted true, bright green.

“Well—something’s doing well,” she noted. “Looks like a rhizome, shallow root system—”

“It’s kh’mhir,” Little Scribe said with distaste. “A weed species. It’s been overtaking the fields... growing like wildfire over the face of Aedani. We use it for textiles and paper, some furniture... but the way it’s growing, they’ll need to do great burns across the plains when they’re ready to plant kh’shae again.”

“Ah—sounds like your iteration of bamboo,” Andri guessed. “Does it produce anything edible? Reminds me of banana grass.”

“Fruits with large seeds, typically fed to livestock,” the Vox told her. “With their shallow root systems, all the kh’mhir grown in this area will be contaminated and unfit for consumption.”

“Good way to pull contamination out of the soil and provide cover, prevent dust bowl conditions,” Andri noted. “I know it’s distasteful, but you might want to encourage it.”

“It’s controversial, though you’re not the first to suggest it.” The Vox tilted his chin at her in a gesture of clear respect. “What you need to understand is that, for Aedanian farmers, kh’mhir is a scourge. Mhir means ‘deathless’—it’s a choking, near-unkillable grass, and once it establishes itself, it’s almost impossible to eliminate. It can use fire to propagate its seeds, so burns must be synchronized to keep it from establishing itself elsewhere, for kilometers all around. With ash and fire already clotting our atmosphere... encouraging kh’mhir is worse than distasteful. These fields have been carefully cultivated with multiple companion species and topographical features for centuries, since before our meeting with the Skelow. Kh’shae and kh’mhir cultivation are inimical to each other.”

Little Scribe swallowed beside Andri. “Kh’shae is life. Kh’mhir represents death in Aedani Province. In the old days, the God of Ruin dressed himself in kh’mhir fibers and held a handful of the deathless grass in his left hand.”

Andri nodded slowly, observing Little Scribe and the Vox, a small suspicion blooming in her mind—and when she looked at Lance, she could swear she glimpsed a small, almost amused glint of confirmation in his steel-blue eyes.

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