Chapter Text
Ten Years Ago
Namjoon looked out the window of the bangtan, curious about Bridgepoint Z below and the many changes it had undergone since they'd first seen it close to a million years ago.
He felt few emotions as of yet, other than...interest.
His tentacles felt similarly. Relaxed. Aroused. Eager to digest what was happening around them.
Most of his pod didn't seem to share his interest.
"The mission is an unprecedented, unmitigated disaster," Hoseok murmured, disgust coloring his voice as he reviewed the communications and images they'd picked up from the planet.
Namjoon had reviewed those images already, as well as the briefing another disguised cryo-vault - already awake - had sent them upon noticing signs of their waking. Forty vaults were already awake, per the report, and they were still reviewing options and deciding what to do - had been for about 100 years. Namjoon's vault was the forty-first.
There were six-hundred thousand other vaults who would slowly awaken over the course of the next thousand years.
And after that, once a majority of pods were awake and mentally active, they would all need to make a decision.
"Perhaps the mission went off the rails. But it's far from a lost cause. Indeed, I see considerable possibility," Seokjin, another member of their pod, disagreed, tentacles stretching themselves out from the long sleep.
They'd only just woken up a week ago, and had spent most of it repairing their frail, weak bodies, damaged from radiation and time even with the nano-bots coursing through their blood making small repairs as they'd all slept.
Today was the first day most of them felt comfortable getting up to move around.
"What possibility?" Hoseok inquired, reviewing old plans and projections when they'd first scouted the small pocket of space long ago.
Back then, it had been home to a pretty red star being swallowed up by a black hole. Formerly a binary system that had gone supernova.
With a big, healthy planet orbiting the new black hole at a safe distance - close enough to receive plenty of warmth and light, but far enough that there was no real danger.
Bridgepoint Z had been ideal for terraforming, they'd thought as they'd traveled closer and closer. And there was a good amount of space in orbit for them to do other work too.
The emperor had asked their brigade to start working on a communications center and a nice big energy beam to serve within the wider light-bridge as a mid-way station for other members of the empire going back and forth across the galaxy.
A simple enough mission.
Only once they'd arrived and started their work, they'd realized the radiation blasts Anubis - the black hole - kept emitting were going to be a problem.
It kept frying the plant life they were trying to grow planetside, and it was making some of them very sick. The forces were also strong enough to keep destroying the energy beam they'd tried to build, wasting time and money.
It was only a minor inconvenience though.
They'd together concluded Anubis needed a little time to settle down - say a few hundred thousand years, no more than a million.
So they'd erected cryo-vaults, shielded them well so they wouldn't be found orbiting Bridgepoint Z by any passersby who might realize what a good location it was, programmed the various AI who would run things in their absence to continuously test the soil, water, and radiation levels and wake them up when things became safer, and most of them had gone to sleep.
Of course it wouldn't have been responsible for all of them to go to sleep, so some had remained awake to perform basic maintenance functions, study the planet more, and start prepping their new civilization for when everyone woke up.
Except it was clear that those who had been left awake had done something very different.
Something disastrous and forbidden.
"Perhaps our descendants aren't what we expected. But they've done a moderately poor-to-okayish job of cultivating the planet. Over the past few dozen years, our probes have categorized 2,456 separate species of fish in Bridgepoint Z's oceans. They've drastically improved the soil quality from when we first arrived. They seem to regularly do some basic mining of the planet's natural resources and have built a simple energy grid. There's possibility here. Options. Worst-case scenario, we wipe them out and start with the mission again. Radiation levels are down now, we can move freely about the planet. There are few obstacles," said Seokjin, still flipping through images of different species of fish.
"Some of these do look quite appetizing."
"We can't wipe them out," Jimin murmured, their slightly younger pod-mate wiping his eyes, with three of his own datapads clutched tightly with a separate tentacle.
"Why?" asked Hoseok, seeming to warm to the idea.
Jimin shook his head.
"They have rhelia," he said.
Hoseok, Seokjin, and Namjoon all looked up at the declaration.
"Rhelia," Namjoon repeated.
Jimin tapped one of the datapads.
"Another pod who woke early confirmed it eighty-two years ago. Very low rates of rhelia, but they have them. Some pods believe this is sufficient evidence that in the immediate aftermath of our sleep, a genetic mutiny occurred, as rhelia genes are not natural and tend to breed out," he observed.
"There were some pods who didn't agree we should sleep - who wanted to use gene-editing to make ourselves more naturally-suited to the planet as it was a million years ago instead of wait for it to conform to our needs," Namjoon murmured.
Jimin scowled, his tentacles curling around his shoulders and waist, soothing his distress.
"I remember, barely. But initial tests of modifications were considered unsuccessful. The changes made us much too social and docile - they almost entirely removed our natural aggression. We'd have never gotten anything done, nevermind the slight predicted decline in intelligence. Hibernation was the better option over bioforming," he insisted.
"Major decline in intelligence. They've only two brains now, in fact," said Yoongi, entering the room with his own stack of briefings, each tentacle holding its own cup of strong black coffee protectively.
Jimin inhaled and then exhaled.
"They've only a few thousand rhelia total, but they exist. The earliest pod struck a deal with our descendant's government. We can have all the rhelia so long as we stay mostly off-planet, or at a minimum well out of their affairs. It's kind of cute," he said, showing the others the primitive rhelia 'database' their descendants had set up.
"Maybe we round up all the rhelia, distribute them fairly amongst ourselves, and then wipe the rest out so we can get back on schedule," Hoseok murmured, brow furrowing as he looked at the strange photos of small, tentacle-less rhelia.
"Our descendants may all be quite stupid. But they're our offspring whether we like it or not. We've some level of responsibility to them, and I'm sure the emperor will agree. Once we have a majority of pods awake to take a vote, we can decide a proper place for them all. Servants, perhaps, with very simple jobs," Namjoon suggested, finally moving into the conversation before frowning.
"Where is Taehyung?"
"Checking our systems manually to make sure nothing's wrong. Specifically with the hot water system. He said he just wants to make sure nothing will explode before he takes a long bath," said Jimin.
All of their tentacles perked up in interest at the mention of a bath.