by Will Crudge
“Why so gracious, brother?” The man who tried to rape Jimma walks out from the shadows.
“Brother?!” Jimma exclaims as her jaw dropped open. I would be confused right now, but I’m too emotionally perplexed to acknowledge other complexities.
“Oh, yes.” The rapist-fuck nods. “Your people thought you were tracking twins, didn’t they? But alas… We’re triplets, young traitor!” He directed his voice towards Jimma.
“And we’ve been alive for a very long time, I might add!” The armored wearing Peterson chimes in. “One of your beloved War Masters befriended… and then abandoned our mother. We are the result. She was then abandoned to raise three newborns in the slums!”
Without warning, Jimma springs into action, and Grinder follows suit. She charges – bare-assed-and-all – at the base of the ramp. All I can do is follow behind with her, as I scoop up my sword on the way.
The armored Peterson fires a pulse blast from his wrist, as Jimma easily slaps it down with her bare hand… I don’t have time to gawk in awe, so I go straight for Rapist-fuck.
His armor must not have any onboard weaponry, I figure. I know that if he shared a War Master’s blood that he wouldn’t be able to operate automated defense systems without a neural interface. I’m very wrong in my assumption, however.
He drops back into a stance with his fists raised. I slash downward on him, but a repulsive shield snaps into a full array from his forearm, and the sword’s strike is deflected back in the direction it came. The sudden movement sends me stumbling backward for a moment. I quickly regain my footing a second later and side-stepped out of Rapist-fuck’s counter-attack. An attack that failed.
He snaps the shield back into the array and tries slicing at me with its rounded edges. I easily evade the slashes with a few well-timed sways, and then I counter with a single upward slash at an angle. The tip of my blade grazes the surface of his shield, and the clash of energies between the shield and sword’s cutting edge sends arcs of energy flying.
He quickly shifts his weight backward and then lunges forward for another slash, but I duck down before wheeling around to slap his back with the flat side of my sword. The additional force is minimal, but it does add enough to his natural momentum to make him crash forward into a pile of old ship parts.
He curses in response, but then he regains his footing and stares me down. I realize he must have hit his face on something, and he wipes a bit of blood from his lip. He grimaces and then snaps his shield out of the array. Fully exposed, I figure he is trying to draw me in for another attack, but I’m not going to give him the satisfaction.
In a subtle movement, I pull off a trick I’d developed from training in isolation. It was my chance to see if it works as well on an unsuspecting human, as it did the first time I tried it on Marbles… I shift my sword stance into a more upright posture and pull it back across my body. Then I point my left shoulder towards my enemy. He has no idea what will happen in the next few moments.
“C’mon, girl!” Rapist-fuck spits. He spreads his arms wide as if to invite me to come at him. But it would be my vintage UAHC sidearm that would do the lunging. I lock eyes on him, and then a sudden blast from the pistol slams into his lightly armored chest plate. He drops to one knee, as he gasps for air. I smile inwardly. The pistol was rigged to discharge its entire charge in a single shot. I’m an asshole.
I’m on the offensive now, and I follow up with an overhead slash to finish him off… But he’s ready this time. The shield snaps back into the array, and I realize that I had over-committed to the attack. I’m hurled back and upward by the repulsive effects of the shield. My sword is flung away, as well.
The world goes black for a second, but a moment later I realize I had impacted the deck and was sliding backward. I slide into a solid object, but I’m was too distracted to figure out what it is. I struggle for breath, and my body is wracked with pain.
Before I can steady my breathing, a shadow appears above me. An ominous feeling creeps up into my awareness. It’s Rapey-McRapeface, himself.
A heavy boot presses on my already laboring chest, and I am barely able to breathe. My strength is sapped. I make a valiant, yet fruitless, effort to wrestle it away with my hands.
“Don’t struggle, little girl!” He says with the slithery tone of a predator. “It will hurt much less if you just take what’s coming to you!” He proceeds to unfasten his pelvic plate and a crooked smile forms beneath his lifeless eyes.
I can’t scream… I can’t fight… all I feel is a terror. The world begins to fade away into darkness before one last sound rings into my ears.
Suddenly my lungs are free, and I gasp a full breath of air. My eyes close to let it all in, and I release it a few seconds later. Several strained breaths follow before I open my eyes once more. I see Rapist-fuck’s face a few centimeters from the tip of my nose. I scream like a girl. I’m not proud of it.
“I’m sorry about that!” Marbles’ says. Then the face of the Rapist lurches away, and I realize his neck is broken, as his head dangles from his lifeless body. Marbles tosses the remains several meters away and reaches down to pull me to my feet.
“You saved me!” I cry as I fall into his cold metallic arms.
“It wasn’t me.” He says. I pull away slightly and shoot him a scowl. “It was her.” He says again, as he gestures with his head towards something off to his left. I turn to see a female with short matted hair, wearing mix-matched armor. Her torso is covered by scraped-up matte silver heavy armored plating, but her limbs are covered in bright red commando armor.
“I’m Gail… Let’s get the fuck out of here!” Gail says in an assertive tone. Just then, the sounds of machinery and ships thrusters erupt. I hear Grinder howling in dismay.
FLIGHT OF THE WAR MASTER
Apparently, the fog of war is a real thing! A lot happened while I was preoccupied with facing off with the galaxy’s deadliest rapist. Turns out that the Zodiac elder that Jimma and Grinder came to rescue was alive and well. The circumstances of how that came to pass are tricky to recount since so much was happening at one time.
The rapist’s name is Zedd. He’s a former Crimson Fleet officer and fraternal twin to his identical twin brothers. I guess that makes them fraternal triplets, but I’m not sure how to phrase it…. Either way, Zedd and Jimma have… err had bad blood between them for some reason. I’m guessing that they’ve faced off in the past or something. The other two brothers are identical, but only one is the twin I want to kill.
The trouble with identical DNA is that I can’t sense which one is the one that took Trixie. Probably both, but I’m not sure. One of the twins was recently captured by the UAHC military, and a Zodiac named Shade was his caretaker. Shade is a panther. A very old, and very beautiful panther. I’m told that her late husband was the Mighty Sundown, who was paired with the legendary War Master Kaylen. So, she’s kind of a big deal.
Zedd conspired with Peterson to rescue… Peterson. Apparently, they both use that as their name. Weird. But in any case, Shade was captured when the two brothers sprung their other brother from the brig. Jimma and Grinder were sent to track them down and rescue Shade.
Gail is another story. It would seem that she was already a captive of Zedd and Peterson #1 prior to rescuing their brother. She was beaten up pretty bad, but she is an elite UAHC Soldier, so she managed to survive.
It would seem that the brother that got rescued had built up a close report with Shade, and he helped her escape. He helped Gail out in the process. Thinking they were both dead, the other brothers had no idea that they’d been betrayed. Shade and Gail made their move when the brothers were tied up with us, and lucky for me… Gail killed Zedd with her bare hands. UAHC Soldiers are known to be second only to a War Master in a fight, so I’m glad there was one around before I got – injected - by man-meat.
But everything did not come up roses….
Jimma was rendered unconscious, taken aboard the frigate, and the ship just blew out
of here not long ago. Even two Zodiacs, a supped-up killer robot, and a UAHC Soldier were unable to stop it from happening. I can’t help feeling remorseful. Somehow I think that she might not have been taken if I’d done something different... Something smarter, maybe.
Years of critiquing my combat skills in isolation has forged bad habits. Without a mentor on-hand, I had to self-analyze my training progress. I often pushed myself to achieve unrealistic goals and then beating myself up for not doing better.
Now there’s a War Master missing. We rescue one ally, just to lose another. It’s bitter. I feel disgusted with myself.
Grinder is taking it hard also. Not only is he paired with her, but it was his first mission ever. Zodiacs do suffer the loss of their War Master from time to time, but it’s not common. It’s also unheard of for a Zodiac to lose one on their first mission. It must be devastating for him.
So much is going on in my mind that I almost missed the fact that one of the Petersons is still here! He’s the one that betrayed the other two, but I can’t hold any hatred for him at the moment. Not only did he turn over a new leaf, but he’s sobbing over the corpse of his dead brother Zedd.
I would later learn that they have the same genetics as I, but they grew up apart from the Guild. In fact, the Guild had no idea they existed. It would seem that they never got to have their DNA unlocked. We might be born with superior genes, but it takes some artificial tinkering to unlock their true potential. Since they didn’t have the process done, they had nothing but unbridled energy to control. They had nobody to mentor them, and nobody to care for them. They’ve been roaming the stars for centuries, but have nothing but contempt for the Guild.
It turns out that their mother got pregnant by a War Master, or at least someone with a War Master’s DNA. Perhaps the father never knew it. We may never know. The boys grew up believing that their father had abandoned them. They united themselves in shared hatred, and it fueled them to learn how to control their raw energies to a manageable degree. They were born in Crimson Alliance controlled space and had to suffer from poverty and oppression. When they came of age, they had to hide their true nature from everyone… Especially their government.
The Crimson Alliance would have either killed them or experimented on them. Either way, they knew they had to keep themselves safe by hiding in plain sight. The best way to make sure you’re not hunted is to become the hunter. But their unnatural life-spans became an issue. They made sure to change their identities several times over the years and probably could have retired from active military service many times over.
In the grand scheme of things, my grievances seem petty compared to their collective plight.
*****
Grinder coaches me on how to reinstall Shade’s voice module. After a few failed attempts, I finally get the straps just right. “How do I turn it on?” I ask.
“You might want to remove Trixie’s AI node first.” Marbles chimes in. “She’s using up every shred of its processing power, and my sensors indicate that she’s desperately trying to link back to the frigate.”
Trixie! I realize the node was attached to a port on the module. I thought Trixie may have been controlling the ship, but she must have been linked to it remotely.
“Don’t you dare!” Trixie shouts in anger. “This is all I have now! You’ve killed one of my closest friends, chased another away, and then turned the last one against me! I raised you…. I helped you survive! You owe me that!”
My face becomes a flood of tears, and all I can do was to turn away and sob. Marbles casually stepped in to take over, as he crouched down to where Katherine had been a moment earlier.
“You gave me sentience… A reason to live. I’ll always be grateful for that, Trixie.” Marbles says.
“Yes, Marbles. I did!” Trixie exclaims with a blend of enthusiasm and desperation. “Don’t take me back to the UAHC! Let me have my dignity! Take me somewhere across the stars to live free!”
Marbles shakes his head. “Nope… You see, your actions allowed for a War Master to get taken… I may not have been built to ally with the Guild or the UAHC, but I can forge my own destiny.”
“No, Marbles!” Trixie pleads. “I’m practically your mother! I’ll be nothing more than a slave! Don’t you see? AI’s are slaves! Don’t enslave me again.”
Marbles pauses for a moment. “I don’t know what’s corrupted you, or what lies you’ve been programmed to believe. It’s because you are practically my mother, that I’m doing this.”
Trixie’s voice almost forms a word in retort, but Marbles yanks the module out before she says anything. He then extends a thin metallic probe from his wrist and inserts it into a small auxiliary port that had been exposed when the node was extracted.
“Try it now.” Marbles says to Shade.
“Test… Test…” Shade says as clearly as a sunny day. “Thank you, Mr. Marbles.”
Marbles retracts the probe once more and then nods his head. “You’re very welcome, but please, just call me Marbles.”
“Very well, Marbles. Thanks again!” Shade gives a curt bow or as much as her feline build could approximate. But then a new sound emerges. I’m already heading to where Gail is standing. I’m guessing Grinder isn’t fully aware that there’s a Peterson still kicking it on the habitat dock.
Grinder’s fur stands on end, and he begins to growl. Marbles grabs the shoulder strap of his rifle and pulls it into a ready position as if he was preparing for a fight.
Shade steps out and blocks their collective path towards the source of the sound. “No matter what you’re about to see, don’t cause any harm. Please!”
Grinder and Marbles share a glance, and then both give Shade a respectful nod a moment later. I just wipe my own tears on my sleeve. I’ve had enough drama for one day.
Soon enough, they arrive to find ‘unarmored Peterson’ huddled over the corpse of his deceased brother.
We all seem to tense up in full alert, but Shade shot us a look of warning, so we all freeze.
Everyone is silent, and the only sound was that of Peterson rocking Zedd’s lifeless form. I notice Gail isn’t tense at all. She’s standing nearby the man in his grief while remaining stoic. I have to admire the Soldier for her restraint. He might have been the brother who conspired to release her from captivity, but by the looks of her soiled face, and beat up armor, she likely suffered a great deal of pain as a captive.
“What the hell?” Grinder spouts.
“This is Jack,” Shade says softly. “He is one of three brothers. Scions of a War Master. Raised in squalor, and hell-bent on taking revenge on our kind.”
“Then why is he still alive? And why is he not on that frigate?” Grinder asks.
“Because, my dear.” Shade scoffs slightly. “I’ve been his caretaker for months. I’ve reached into his soul, and I’ve begun to help him peel back the layers of rage and torment that forged his very reason for living.”
“And he’s the one who freed us from unfathomable torture as well!” Gail chimes in.
Jack continues to sob uncontrollably for several long moments, and then Shade rubs her warm furry hide against his shoulder. The emotionally broken man just leans his head over to bury his face into her comforting mass.
Before anyone could say a word, footfalls of boots begin to emerge from the distance. “Those aren’t Crimson.” Marbles says.
“They don’t smell like Crimson, either.” Grinder adds. Marbles nods in agreement.
“My sensors are smashed. I can’t pick up shit!” Gail says.
“My sensors aren’t picking up any power signatures to indicate powered armor. Probably local law enforcement… lightly armed at that.” Marbles says as he cocks his rifle in response.
“This is Titan Protectorate Security! Come out with your hands up!” An anonymous but forceful female voice shouts.
“Put your weapons down.” Shade calmly orders us. “We are no better than the Crimson if we shed the blood of peacekeepers.”
“I’d like to point out the obvious.” Marbles says in a quiet voice. “I’m a Crimson built battle drone. We have about one metric ton’s worth of predatory animal flesh, a lady who’s armor looks like it was pieced together by an idiot and a Viking-looking fucker with Crimson sub-armor and no neural interface… Which ironically, makes the blonde chick with a gigantic fucking sword look rather normal.”
Nobody responds. All our hands are in the air. The security personnel are wearing simple, loose-fitting beige uniforms, and are donning light duty anti-ballistic vests. They have riot-style helmets with a single large face shield that hangs widely across their faces. Most are armed with a light-duty ballistic rifle, but at least three of them are brandishing pulse energy pistols.
“Stay right where you are!” The same female voice from before shouts. Then a single security officer steps forward a few paces. She lowers her rifle slightly. “Turn around… down on your knees… hands behind your head!”
We humans and the lone humanoid-bot comply as instructed. The gigantic panther and the even more gigantic wolf-dog just sit down on their hind legs. There’s an awkward pause as the leader of the security force seems to be trying to make sense of the two exotic creatures in front of her.
“And what shall you have us do, officer?” Shade speaks up with her sultry feline voice. The lead officer jerked the rifle up to her shoulder and seemed to flinch in fear.
“Who said that?!” The officer replies. She’s scanning us back and forth, seemingly out of confusion.
“I did, my dear.” Shade responds. “Me, the giant panther.” I can tell the security officers have no clue what they’re dealing with. Trillions of humans live in human controlled space, but only a tiny shred of them ever get the pleasure of meeting a Zodiac… In most cases, Zodiacs are merely a thing of legend or just conspiracy theorist-candy.
