Chapter Text
The star-killers were, unremarkably, living up to their name.
He shuddered to think of what would happen, had they not caught it in time. Seventy or so odd years was not much of a generous fallback as one would think.
They had noticed it first when the farms started dying. The population decline of the rocky collamoeba was quickly noticed. They were a popular animal to gaze upon; the pulsing of their hearts and organs were so loud that it created a beautiful cascade of waves and sounds-it was a popular courting site for young Eridians. He had taken his mate to the cliffs more than a few times, already.
Collamoeba were not integral to Eridian diets; they did not even consume them, if one forgave him for the disgusting remark. No, they were the main diet of their meat-animal, a hulkingly docile crustacean called an auder. Their large, flat plates made audible waves bounce off them with surprising clarity. Before they had xenonite to play with, they had auder plates.
Either way, the collamoeba population was rapidly decreasing, and the thrum couldn't figure out why. Was it a disease, a change in habitat, or something else? They had quarantined sections of the population just in case it was a disease, but all the scientists and ecologists had quickly decided that no, this wasn't a disease.
It was something else further up the food chain.
The population wasn't just randomly dying, it was actively decreasing in young collamaebas. New growth wasn't sprouting. The population had been maintaining their population for months until the older specimens had started decaying.
It was simple to figure out what was happening after that. They just had to go up.
The elevator had been built a couple of lifetimes before him, so it was still new in the grand scheme of things. Collecting samples of the upper atmosphere was child's play. They did not like what they found.
The star was dying, and they had no idea what to do about it.
But, thankfully, that wasn't his problem. His mate disagreed.
"You should be in the thrum," they hummed, enunciating their irritation with a thump on the ground. He had to reach over to stabilize his latest project lest it fall. It wouldn't break; it was made of xenonite, after all.
"I am no scientist," he crooned back, fixing a slice of the machine without really thinking about it.
"It doesn't matter—listen," they tapped upon the machine. It was one of his finest, in his opinion. It displayed everything within their home down to the smallest stone. An intruder would be hard pressed to sneak in without getting noticed. They mostly used it to plan new additions or simply marvel their shared space together. "You can make these amazing machines without a thought. You were honored by the thrum a decade ago for ingenuity! Who else can do that?"
"Plenty of others, I'm sure," he dismissed, feeling uneasy. It is not often he displays his skill, and even when the thrum recognized him a decade ago, it was horribly embarrassing. He liked to tinker; he knows that. Sure, he has designed many a thing with xenonite that are now slowly being put to use in the wide world, but he is no scientist.
His mate shuffled around the room in clear distress. He hated upsetting them so. "If the thrum sends out a call for someone of my skills, I will answer," he assured them, reaching out to stroke their second limb.
"You better," their mate hummed, slightly more appeased. "If the star really is dying, then we need everyone working together to find a solution."
He was relieved that, weeks later, they had found what was eating the sun. They called them star-killers. Smaller than the microbes that collamoeba feasted upon, these little cells could survive the heat of the sun as it travelled to and from the third planet. They collected samples from the space elevator, found out carbon was their source of sustenance, and altogether decided that they were screwed.
Oh, but they were an excellent source of fuel. Truly, it was lucky their atmosphere was so thick, and that they had decided upon testing them very far away from most clusters. The explosion that had resulted from a mere breath of star-killers had overwhelmed many an Eridian from just its shockwave.
But they powered ships and homes and were amazingly talented at keeping things cold. They were almost too cold to touch, really. If they weren't so catastrophic, they would've been a miracle. He could see many leaps of technological advancements in the near future.
Astronomers studied the skies relentlessly. A few clusters were convinced that the answer to their problem lay in the emptiness of space. It made him a touch nervous-they needed answers; there was nothing in space! But these star-killers had to come from somewhere, so it wasn't an unreasonable thought... but one he thought a waste of time none the less. They could simply create a weapon, or perhaps some huge, monstrous machine that kept the star free from the pests.
He devoured every shred of knowledge that came his way about those tiny things. Perhaps a machine would work; xenonite could bear the brunt of both heat and frost, but the star-killers were multiplying at an exponential rate. Any machine would eventually fail if it did not squash the growth rate. Any numbers he ran simply couldn't. But their planet's atmosphere was warm enough that they could take their time with a solution. The thrum estimated they had a hundred or so years before the planet cooled to an alarming degree.
It was not a lot of time, but it was enough. Surely, the thrum could figure something out.
Then, the astronomers found a star that was not dim.
He could not say he understood much about the starside. Heat, he understood. Swathes of heat came from multiple pinpricks across the sky, and the astronomers somehow managed to wrestle that into numbers. Perhaps he could meet one of them, and they could explain, but for now, he simply took it at face value. Every star was dimming as exponentially as their own, except for one.
It was far from here. About 14 star-years. It was almost hopeless. They had no ships to travel space—but they could easily build one. Eridians from all over came together along the equator to design a ship. If they were to build a ship, use these star-killers as fuel, and go to this star to figure out why it was not being eaten, Erid would be saved.
Easier said than done, he supposed.
His mate urged him to help with the ship, and he obliged. It was exciting, he could admit. Building things, especially moving things, was his favorite thing to do. He was nowhere near skilled in xenonite as some of the other Eridians there, but he could sniff out a problem with an engine a kilometer away and have it fixed before the others could hum their frustrations.
He could probably build the engine without making a sound.
He tweaked and meddled with the engines and thrusters, familiarized himself so thoroughly with the ship's controls and how and why they worked, that it shouldn't have surprised him when the thrum asked if he would go on the mission to save Erid.
The question thrilled and terrified him.
Twenty-four Eridians, tasked to go where no other Eridian has gone, to save the planet from a star-eating cell. There was no word to describe how nervous it made him feel. Would it be safe? Were there any horrors they did not know about, lurking there and waiting? What if, despite all his efforts, the ship did not work? The star-killers failed? Everything and anything could go wrong on such a mission.
But he thought of his mate, the hopeful way they vibrated and fidgeted when they spoke of a solution.
He needed to speak with them before he gave the thrum their answer.
"I am... scared," their voice dipped low in a rumbling tone. They shuffled next to him, brushing their limbs together in a soft cadence of song. "It is a long way. There is no return once you leave."
"I know," he tapped along their carapace in a soothing, meditative way they once did when they were adolescents just courting. "But I... I do not want to live in a cooling world. I want our children to grow up in safety, if... when I return."
His mate clicked with a sudden trill of shy glee. "Children? What's given you a change of heart?"
"The end of the world, maybe," he replied wryly. "But that's... something you are... okay with? Children?"
His mate stretched up on their limbs, extending and trembling in glee. "Of course, you ridiculous thing!"
He rumbled out his shared giddiness, and their gleeful song filled their home. They stomped and spun and danced along the ridges of the walls and steps and devices. When he finally slowed down to match their pace, his mate clunked a flat edge of their carapace against his own. Their shared etchings clinked against each other, a reminder of their promises to one another.
"I will wait for you, if you decide to go," their croon was almost hard to hear with how quietly their projected it.
"I think I must go," he replied, leaning into them. "For Erid, and for you. I would do anything for you, and apparently... that means saving the star."
"Well, at least I know you will succeed," their mate said with one hundred percent certainty.
He hoped they were right. For all their sakes.