by M. D. Cooper
He wanted to tell her that the Marauders weren’t ‘just’ mercs—he didn’t feel like a merc. In all honesty, Rika’s battalion was more akin to freedom fighters.
Before he could reply, a message came from Lieutenant Chris.
Vargo drew in a slow breath and flipped on a full video feed, speaking aloud for the transmission to Sandra’s ship. “Sandra, this isn’t a debate. I’m operating under orders from my commander, and I’m not going to disobey just because you don’t think it’s a good idea. You have ten seconds to stand down.”
“Five seconds,” Vargo responded, not allowing any emotion to creep onto his face—he hoped.
Vargo sent coordinates for the two Nietzschean destroyers. “I want to see your shields and weapons powered down. Then I want your crews off your ships. You have enough shuttles for that?”
“Five-person skeleton crews, then,” Vargo said. “Once you’re clear, we’ll send a shuttle to collect you and the other captains from their ships.”
Vargo didn’t know how to respond, and instead closed the channel, sagging back into his chair.
“I think she likes you,” Glen said, a grin stretching from ear to ear.
“Yeah,” Vargo pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes. “That sure felt like a lover’s spat. Drop probes so we can monitor their ships—wait, has Chris taken control of the station’s defensive systems?”
“He has,” Ashley reported. “The Marauders now control Dekar.”
Vargo glanced at the image of the station on the main holo, its seven rings slowly spinning around the central spire, which was anchored to a small asteroid.
“Great, our first bonafide shithole.”
REORIENT
STELLAR DATE: 02.05.8950 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: MSS Fury Lance, 15LY from Parsons System
REGION: Interstellar Dark Layer, Old Genevia, Nietzschean Empire
“Wait…” Rika held up her hand and locked eyes with Silva. “You never told me that you saw Amy again before jumping out with Carson’s fleet.”
Silva flushed and glanced around the Fury Lance’s forward officer’s mess. “And I’m not exactly supposed to, either. Tangel told me to keep it hush-hush.”
“From me?” Rika pressed.
“Well, it has to do with where Amy went.” Silva’s voice had dropped to a whisper.
“So where did your daughter go?” Rika asked, unable to quell her own maternal instinct to protect the young girl. “I thought Tani—Tangel’s daughters took her to New Canaan to stay with them.”
“Yeah, they did,” Silva replied through thinned lips. “And then they took her on a jaunt to the LMC.”
“The LMC? Where’s that?”
Silva’s eyes twinkled mischievously as she responded. “Oh, you know, the Large Magellanic Cloud.”
For a moment, the words Silva had uttered made no sense, then a knowing smile crept across the major’s lips.
“Get the fuck out,” Rika whispered. “Your daughter…little Amy that I rescued from a farm on Faseema…has been to another fucking galaxy?”
Rika glanced around at the dozen lieutenants and captains in the room, every face in the room turned toward her in open curiosity.
“You heard nothing. Not word, not a peep.”
They all nodded and grudgingly turned back to their meals and conversations.
“OK, Silva, from the start. Spill.”
The major laughed and took a sip of her coffee before striking up her tale. “I got this from a number of sources—Amy was only on the periphery of some of this, so her account doesn’t quite match perfectly—but here’s the basic rundown.
“Firstly, I guess the ISF has been building up in the LMC for a few years now. Tanis’s daughters got permission to take an Orion prisoner, some guy named Colonel Kent, out there to show him the futility of Orion’s war and convince him that he should just change sides.”
“Did it work?” Rika asked, wondering if that was a viable strategy for other POWs.
“Surprisingly, yes. On top of that, while they were out there, Tangel’s daughters sniffed out some old enemy and killed him too. Seems as though Cary Richards is following in her mother’s footsteps at an early age.”
“Being one heck of a kick-ass woman?” Rika asked with a laugh.
“No…well, yes, I guess.” Silva gave a somber shake of her head. “Ascending. She’s doing the whole multiplanar existence thing just like mom.”
Rika gave a low whistle. “Well, shit.”
“That’s just the start,” Silva continued. “Tangel and Sera came back from the LMC with Sera’s two clone sisters and her father.”
“Wait…waaaait. I thought Sera’s father was dead?!”
“He was…this one’s a clone. Or that one was a clone…I’m really not sure. It seems like a touchy subject, so I didn’t press. Either way, Sera has two clone sisters now. The three of them are quite the sight, let me tell you. Enough to make a girl consider changing teams.”
Rika chuckled at the thought of there being three versions of the Transcend’s sexually charged president. “I’m not into ladies, but I can still see the appeal. Sera’s got quite the…allure. OK, so who’s in charge of the Transcend, then?”
“I guess they turned it all over to Jeffrey Tomlinson, but Tangel is taking a more active role in galactic governance now, rather than just focusing on the war effort. Things are changing so fast, I really don’t know what’s what. When I was last on the I2, it had just gotten back from defeating Airtha out in the Transcend. That’s when I saw Amy; she had come back to the ship with Tangel’s daughters while they were all out at Aldebaran.”
Rika pressed her hands to her temples. “You’re making my head spin, Silva. They were at Aldebaran, too? What for?”
“I guess some new group called ‘The League of Sentients’ has set up shop there. They’re in opposition to the Hegemony of Worlds, and Tangel was sealing the deal with them. She fought some sort of ascended AI while there, too.”
“Daaaaamn.” Rika took a sip of her coffee, then shook her head as she set it back down on the table. “Can I just say that I’m so glad I don’t have Tangel’s schedule? I mean…that woman is flying all around two galaxies trying to keep everything from coming apart at the seams. I don’t think I could handle that sort of responsibility.”
Silva cocked an eyebrow, and Niki gave a soft laugh.
“Not exactly. If I fail, then Tangel just has to come in and stomp on Constantine. But if she fails, we all get stomped on. Repeatedly.”
“Pardon?” Silva’s eyes grew round as saucers.
“Oh ho!” Rika crowed. “I have my own little surprise to drop on you.”
“Do you want to tell it?” Rika asked.
“See what
I have to put up with?” Rika asked Silva with a well-meaning smile.
“I’d take an AI in a heartbeat.” Silva’s gaze lost focus for a moment. “I hear they’re great at keeping you company when you can’t sleep at night.”
Rika barked a laugh. “They’re not pets.”
“Thanks,” Silva ducked her head in a quick nod, genuine gratitude in her voice. “That would be really great. Now, enough stalling. What’s this surprise?”
“Oh, nothing,” Rika drawled. “Just that Niki is the oldest AI in existence.”
“Seriously?” Silva asked, eyes wide.
“Yup, she was born in the thirty-first century.”
“Crap…really, Niki? Where you in stasis or…shut down or something a lot?”
“How so?” Silva asked.
“Well, for starters, when the dark ages really set in, the FGT wasn’t in a position to help. I mean, they tried, but it didn’t work. Rather than risk their own civilization—which they rightly considered to be the future salvation of humanity—they bailed.”
“Seems cowardly,” Rika said in a quiet voice.
“And you were around for all that?” Silva asked, her voice trailing off in wonder. “Where were you?”
“Whoa, wait,” Rika held up a hand. “Are you telling us that you were involved in the discovery of FTL? And you didn’t feel like mentioning this to me before?”
“I feel like FTL is a big one,” Silva said, and Rika nodded emphatically.
“Did you?” Rika asked, keenly aware that her eyes had been over-wide for several minutes now.
“And I’m interested in why none of this was in the intel updates that Carson delivered,” Rika mused.
“He’d just jumped into the Albany System when you called for help. I don’t think he knew half this stuff, and I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to be sharing. I know that a lot of it is being kept hush-hush while they try to ferret out Airthan supporters.”
Silva shook her head. “From what I heard, they actually did defeat Airtha. Turns out she was fully ascended and didn’t have a physical form anymore…well, some people said she may still have been tied to the ring, but I didn’t want to bother Bob or Tangel with any questions to find out for sure. Anyway, a shard of Airtha, someone known as Helen, got away. She’s ascended, too. They’re worried that she’ll grow in power and just replace Airtha.”
“Shit,” Rika muttered. “Out of the fire and into the pan.”
“That makes no sense.” Silva shook her head and scowled at Rika’s forehead. “Who would jump into a fire?”
“Well, I think it’s going to take a bit to let everyone know that it’s really over, but they’re not going to have to throw as many resources at internal struggles. I don’t know if they’ll move the capital back to Airtha, or keep it at Khardine. I guess that’ll be President Tomlinson’s call.”
Rika took a sip of her coffee and grimaced when the cold liquid touched her lips.
“Damn cups,” she said, looking at the side of the mug to see it flashing a thermal error light. “Here we are with the most advanced bodies in the galaxy, but the freakin’ cups on this ship can’t keep our coffee warm.”
Silva winked at Rika. “Well, you are on a Nietzschean hull, after all. What did you expect?”
Rika reached out and placed a hand on the bulkhead to her left, glad to see that she’d splayed all five fingers properly. “Are you besmirching my beloved Fury Lance?”
“Noooot exactly,” Silva replied. “I mean…it’s an impressive ship—a huge ship. And the way you captured it will be the stuff of legends. But couldn’t you at least rename the thing?”
“Silva,” Rika met her former mentor’s level gaze with one of her own. “Do you know how hard it is to rename a ship this big? We’d have to scrub away every vestige of the former name. That would take forever, and we’ve all come to like the Lance. Made it our own.”
“I guess it’s OK,” Silva shrugged. “It just seems so…Nietzschean.”
“Sure,” Rika said with a nod. “But it’s so mech to take the Niets’ spear and throw it right back in their faces.”
“OK, OK,” Silva held up her hands. “I concede.”
GENEVIA
STELLAR DATE: 11.09.8949 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Throne room, NES Belgara
REGION: Pruzia System, Nietzschean Empire
Two months ago…
Though he knew jump gates were safe—after all, Garza used them all the time—Constantine still felt a sliver of fear as the Belgara approached the two-kilometer-wide ring.
He straightened his spine and stared at the display dominating the forward bulkhead of his audience chamber, daring the jump gate and its roiling sphere of energy to displease him. A part of the man wished that he could have made the jump in private, or even on the Belgara’s bridge, where Admiral Hammond and Captain Jandi would be.
But that was not an option for him. Instead he was surrounded by his retinue: ministers, advisors, and assorted sycophants.
He glanced to his right and nodded to the naked man who knelt next to his chair. The slave held up a bowl of magma cherries. Constantine selected one and popped it into his mouth. His head fell back, resting against the soft silken cushion of his chair as he repositioned his feet on the back of the woman before him.
Woman?
He glanced down to be sure, seeing her breasts dangling, but then also spotted male genitalia. He remembered that several of his latest attendants were chimera hermaphrodites, what some believed to be the pinnacle of human physical evolution.
Constantine thought the notion to be absurd, but he enjoyed collecting unique specimens all the same. So far as he was concerned, they were just a rare breed that gained value from their uniqueness.
Not that c
reating a chimera was complex—so far as he understood—but the one beneath his feet was a natural birth, something far more uncommon.
“My Emperor?” A man’s voice came from his left shoulder, and Constantine turned to see Minister Kell next to him, a look of deep concern on his face.
“What is it?” he asked, glad that his voice sounded calm and self-assured.
“What if something goes wrong?” Kell asked.
Constantine shrugged off the question. “Then we die. Are you afraid to die for Nietzschea, Kell?”
“Of course not!” he exclaimed. “I would lay down my life for her. A thousand times I would die for Nietzschea.”
“Good,” Constantine said. “Then you have nothing to fear.”
Kell nodded silently, and Constantine caught sight of General Garza standing across the room, speaking to several other members of the Emperor’s Court. The Orion general caught the emperor’s eye and his lips turned up in a knowing smile.
It wasn’t a smile of comradery, though; it was a smile designed to serve as a reminder of who was really in control.
“Admiral Hammond,” the emperor called out, and a holoimage of the man appeared before his throne. “Take us through.”
“Yes, My Emperor,” Hammond replied and inclined his head before he disappeared.
A second later, the ship began to move forward, and Constantine forced himself to relax and not grip the arms of his chair. Across the room, Garza laughed loudly, throwing his head back in mirth.
Keep making your digs at me. I’ll find out what you did to my body eventually. The thoughts dripped like acid through his mind, burning away his fear. I’ll find out, and then I’ll do it to you. Your empire may be vast, but you’re not Nietzscheans. You’re weak cowards who hide in the dark.
As he thought through a litany of things he’d do to Garza, the ship made the jump. For a split second, the display showed nothing at all, and then a starscape snapped into view.
At a glance, it would almost appear to be the same as the view they’d just left behind. The background was still dominated by the Praesepe Cluster’s brilliant glow, but it was noticeably brighter and consumed more area. Another difference was that before they’d jumped, the light of Pruzia was behind them, but now the twin stars of the Genevia System, Torell and Luxum, hung before them.
