Zero Star

by Chad Huskins

  “And yet the Republic of Aligned Worlds crumbles,” Thessa said. “Your togetherness has not earned you any special credit. You’ve not proven your case for democracies and senates.”

  “And yet here we are defending you,” Kalder countered. “Here we are fortifying your city, spending our precious resources to do it.”

  “No one has asked you to stay.”

  “Your thanes did.”

  Thessa felt her blood boil, and was sure that her smile had probably transformed into something that reflected her barely quelled ire. “My thanes do not speak for me. They speak for themselves, and for lesser people.”

  “Be that as it may, at the moment both their efforts and ours have been met favorably. Indeed, our work here is being viewed very well abroad, across all Aligned Worlds.”

  “You can’t possibly know how dozens of worlds feel about your work here.”

  “Quite the contrary, we have something called the Faith 6A report, and it’s dreadfully accurate in aggregating people’s feelings, beliefs, and changes of heart, letting us know which way they generally favor. It’s one of the many things we’ve developed over the years to get the Republic back on its feet.”

  “A way to maintain control over the people, you mean.” Thessa smiled. “It won’t help. The larger a civilization is, the easier it is to crumble. That’s why we’ve kept ourselves so contained.”

  “The smaller a civilization is, the less resources it has, and the easier it is to fall before an empire as vast as the Ascendancy. All intelligent life eventually rises up and creates empires, democracies, droves of pirates, warmongers. More star systems are charted every day, two or three new worlds are terraformed every year, either by humans or xenos. Every few hundred years, a new spacefaring species appears, and usually wages some kind of war. If you do not stand with military partners, you will find yourselves lost. By yourselves, you are eventually doomed. But with us, there is hope.”

  “Hope,” she said, almost scoffing. “I hear you lost the last of mankind’s oldest royal bloodline. The Queen of Mothers, that’s her? I heard she was called that due to her organization of millions of mothers who protested some war a hundred years ago, and managed to end the senseless violence, bringing their sons home before even one of them could be killed in combat. A true hero. A woman who believed in this hope you’re selling. But then, even she gave in to what these Harbingers spew, and her despair led her to some world where the Brood took her and defiled her.”

  “The Harbingers took advantage of a woman with mental illness,” Kalder said.

  She smiled. “The Harbingers tried coming here once. Do you know what we did to them?”

  “I can imagine.”

  “No, you can’t. They claimed to be able to endure anything, because they had already surrendered to the idea that nothing matters, not their lives, not their deaths, and not their suffering. It turns out, no one can endure any torture forever. It exhausted me, using my power to undo them, but it was worth it. Worth it to see their horrified faces when they realized that they didn’t know what torture could truly be, when they realized that they had merely lacked imagination. They thought torture was just false drowning, or pulling out one’s fingernails. They didn’t know that I could do the things I can do, and that, through Mahl’s will, I could make it last forever.”

  Kalder did not appear frightened. He did not appear skeptical, either. To his credit, the man just listened.

  “The ones that did not eventually convert to the Faith were dealt with in even more creative ways. Since then, not a single Harbinger has been seen near our system, and not one of my people has ever left Phanes to surrender themselves to the Brood.”

  Kalder nodded curtly. “I heard stories about some weapon you used to distort the bodies of the Ascendancy’s soldiers. Primacy Intelligence is checking vids of the events, and their preliminary reports say they believe you have some matter-altering or phase-transit weapon. But I’ve heard rumors that the High Priestess Zane is possessed of a god’s power.”

  “I am Mahl’s conduit,” she said matter-of-factly.

  “That remains to be seen.”

  Was that mockery? Was the senator…Does he test me? It had been ages since someone had stood before her and treated her like this, so long that she had forgotten what it looked or sounded like. Thessa had to search way, way back in her memory to recall a time when it had happened. Probably childhood, her father denying her some gift or other.

  Before she could ask him the intent behind his words, Kalder said, “There is much to be gained by the two of us sharing our cultures and our resources. The Republic’s worlds could certainly use the billions of acres you have both on Widden and the moons, to cultivate and export food and medical supplies. Not only would your system see incredible growth, but I can guarantee you a seat in the Senate.”

  “The High Priestess must never hold a position with equals,” Myelic put in, her face a mask of disgust. “For there are none equal to her.”

  “So it was once said of many of the people who came to be in the Senate. Probably twenty percent of them were sole rulers of their worlds, but they gained Senate seats by putting petty self-aggrandizement aside—”

  “Self-aggrandizement?” Myelic said. Thessa put a hand on her bloodied forearm.

  “—and they’ve all seen the benefit of coming together as one,” Kalder finished. “Humanity would do well not to follow the examples of so many intelligent races that have come and gone, and some that are also on their way out. They have too many factions among them, too much infighting. We should set an example.”

  Something struck Thessa as interesting. Something in the man’s bearing when he spoke of other races. She saw the same subtle change in his eyes that she had seen when he first entered the room and looked at her Order Guard.

  She realized what it was, and smiled. “You’re a xenophobe.”

  “Phobia denotes fear,” he said stoically. “I’m a purist. I’m sure all manner of races have their own noble cultures to maintain, and so they should. But I pride myself in humanity, and in keeping it pure, connected, and self-contained.”

  “But doesn’t that conflict with what you just told me, about how we shouldn’t be so isolationist?”

  “Xenos have evolved with different needs entirely. Indeed, some of them are not even DNA-based. Some don’t even understand war, while others war too much. The most we can do is have relationships with them, but—”

  “But not like this,” she said, gesturing at the armed uk’tek in the room.

  “Actually, as servants, they may do just fine.”

  “So, under Republican laws, would I be dissuaded from fraternizing or doing business with such as these?”

  “It would be discouraged to treat any uk’teks as anything more than servants, as I just said. I’ve been introducing legislation to help create clearer boundaries between humans and xenos. But that’s all for you to study at a later date. For now, we only need to work—”

  Thessa rose to her feet, speaking slowly. “You presume to tell me what I will and will not study? You presume to tell me that it is my duty to become informed on your way of doing things, and not the other way around?” Beside her, Myelic was smiling. “Do you not understand, Senator? Are you still so blind as to what power is in front of you, even after you’ve heard your soldiers’ stories of what I did to my enemies, even after you’ve seen the vids?”

  She sneered at him, and laughed at his ridiculous clothes and bare feet.

  “I turned those male Harbingers’ cocks into cunts, and the women’s cunts into cocks. I make them fuck each other until they bled. The men gave birth to monsters, again and again, for years on end. I turned the women’s mouths into putrid holes that spat out filth, and altered them so that they had to feed themselves through their asses! It took much out of me, that kind of focus. Just so that I could transform their bodies, their organs, their very cellular structure.” She screamed in high falsetto, “I. Am. Mahl’s. W
ill!”

  “You are a zealot,” he said with infuriating calm. “But, as it happens, I have use for zealots. I’m sure you’ve seen our friends from the Brotherhood.”

  Thessa moved towards him, sensing the power of the Item swelling within her. The same sickening, orgasmic feeling reached every part of her body, permeated her every particle. “You will not talk about me like I am something to be used, Senator. I am the one who uses. Do you comprehend that? I am.”

  She sensed the uk’tek slithering up behind her. Myelic was by her side, a blade suddenly pulled from somewhere.

  Kalder, remarkably, seemed not to have noticed. Was the man stupid? Did he not see murder when it was staring him in the face?

  “You are a brainless idiot,” he said.

  The words hit her like a slap in the face. She barely suppressed a gasp. Never—not even on her worst days with her father—never had someone called her that. Not once. Not even in jest. Not ever.

  The fire was stoked in her lower belly, and began to erupt from her. She reached out to grab hold of each component molecule that comprised the man. She felt the spongy-ness of each particle, each mote of dust on his body. She sensed it from a distance, the way a spider senses objects trapped in its web. She let the power engulf him.

  Kalder rose off the ground, and she saw his flesh begin to crawl…

  Then, all at once, he slammed back down onto the floor, and Thessa went flying backward. It felt like a skyrake had smashed into her going top speed. She flew through the air and collided with the wall. The world spun. She heard screaming, and looked up in time to see Myelic rushing over to her. The Order Guard rushed forward. A second later, their whole bodies seized. They froze. Began to tremble. Their lower bodies bled out excrement and the stench fouled the air. The creatures released some horrible, guttural sound, dropped their blades, and collapsed like empty sacks on the floor.

  The wind had left Thessa completely. So had her power. The Item…she couldn’t feel it. Its resonance was gone, as if drained. She felt drained. Thessa had never felt more naked in all her life. Mahl’s grace had left her. Or had it?

  What sort of deception does he show me now?

  She stood, trembling, her bladder and bowels emptying, running down her leg. She looked over at the old man. Kalder was bent over, looking pale and exhausted, one hand resting on the door. He took a few deep, steadying breaths, then rose to his full height.

  “M…M…Mahl?” she whispered.

  For surely this was the god himself, his very avatar, standing right before her!

  Kalder looked at her. For the first time his mask slipped. He looked at her with utmost contempt, and said, “Don’t be so stupid.”

  His voice was distant and groggy, almost hoarse, like he had been screaming all day. He wiped a bit of spittle away from his lip, but didn’t seem to notice the rivulet of blood coming from his nose.

  “You don’t have his power, Governor. There are no gods. The closest thing the universe ever had to gods vanished two billion years ago. And your power? All it ever was was saturation of a modified base molecule, an infection of something you cannot comprehend, something that allows you, on occasion, to tap into zero-point energy. But like a child who has stumbled upon his father’s gun, all you know how to do is pull the trigger, you don’t know how the gunpowder was made, you don’t understand the casing of the bullet, and you wouldn’t know how to build such a weapon from scratch, even if you were given all the tools.”

  Thessa started to walk towards him, but her legs felt boneless, and she collapsed to the floor, beside the corpses of her Order Guard. Myelic grabbed her, and kept her from face-planting.

  “Zero…point…?” she wheezed.

  “Yes,” he said. “The base energy of not just the universe, but the multiverse. All other matter and energy is floating in a sea of it. Zero-point energy is a thing that can make of us gods, and you can have more of it. So, so much more.” He turned to the door, and it shunted open for him. As he walked out, he said, “But only for those who reach the Crusade’s end. You’re welcome to come with me to find this power. If not…feel free to wither here, alone on your garden world, waiting for the end. Just like all others.”

  Thessa stared at him, framed in the doorway. Every molecule of her body sang with the power of the man’s psychic assault, or whatever it had been. Now she had experienced two firsts: she had been insulted deeply, and she had been overpowered.

  What manner of trial is Mahl showing me now?

  “I’ll give you a day to get over your shock and decide,” Kalder said. “I’ll send up someone to clear these corpses away. You can tell them the truth, or do as Mahl bids you, and lie. Tell them the uk’tek physiology does not agree with something in Lord Ishimoto’s vented air. Or…tell them you are a sorceress, and let your people know you were beaten by a better sorcerer. Again, the choice is yours. I will speak no more of this.”

  When he walked away, the door hissed slowly shut.

  Thessa was left with Myelic, who clutched her lady’s hand and wept at having seen her brought so low.

  : The Crusade Fleet

  It was different than the Kennit campaign. Watching all those ships returning from the surface in a quick retreat from the Brood’s hive-world had given Lyokh a sinking feeling, like he had just witnessed one more bleak chapter in the Fall of Man. Here, seeing his people being brought up from Widden’s surface, he felt like at least some ground had been made. It wasn’t a retreat, it was abandonment.

  He wasn’t sure which one felt worse.

  However, there was one similarity. In both the Kennit and Phanes withdrawals, Lyokh felt like he was leaving something behind. A task incomplete. In a sense, every war campaign in mankind’s history—and every xenos’ history, most likely—had never quite seen completion. Even the victors were missing something at the end. As the victor, you tended to want to think of yourself as the absolute, and undisputed, master of all. But like anyone who trained to win, once victory had arrived, you found yourself thinking of what could have been if you had failed, while also looking towards the future, to unimagined battles to come.

  Lyokh and Herodinsk were ruminating together on that very topic as they watched the ships coming up from the surface. They had just wrapped up another lesson in the Forty-Seven Steps, and had gone to The Place To Be to get a drink. After that, they’d come up to Lord Ishimoto’s observation deck. They watched as ships of every type and tonnage moved about, with auxiliary craft swarming around them on lazy patrols.

  “It robs you of your victory, doesn’t it?” Herodinsk said. He was still bare-chested, the crisscrossing scars on his chest rippling as he shifted his weight.

  “Sir?” Lyokh said, looking at the blademaster’s reflection in the plasteel window. Currently floating in his reflected face was a Saber-class ship Lyokh didn’t know, escorting two Brotherhood ships up from the surface.

  “Thinking about all that could have gone wrong, all that did go wrong, and all that might go wrong still.” Herodinsk looked at him. “We never really get to experience victory, do we? We can drink with our war brothers and laugh and pretend, but it’s all so fleeting. Because we know most of our time will be spent either in cleanup work or getting ready for the next campaign. You never really get to sit with it, and indulge in the light of victory.”

  Lyokh thought the blademaster had hit the nail on the head. “Yes, sir. That’s it exactly.”

  “Try not to become so fixated on all the what-ifs and maybes. You owe it to yourself and to the people you lead. It’s good to be forward thinking, while at the same time remembering mistakes of the past, but never at the expense of the present.”

  Lyokh turned his head, and watched the Tao of Piety open its cargo bay to receive a Nova ship bringing up a platoon of Brotherhood troops. “You’re talking about no-mind.”

  “Sort of. Mindfulness meets mindlessness. Mindfulness has to do with what’s in your head and your heart, while mindlessness is going along with what mu
st be done, regardless of what the head or heart tells you. Duty, in other words. Mindless duty. But I don’t think I have to tell you about that.” Herodinsk clapped him on his shoulder. “I’m just trying to tell you that it’s natural for someone to feel what you’re feeling, especially if they’re a leader. The only way to keep yourself from going insane is to just keep going forward, don’t think about it.”

  “Forward until there is no more forward,” Lyokh said, half to himself.

  The blademaster smirked. “That’s it.”

  “Because if we don’t move forward, we stagnate. If we don’t adapt, we die.”

  “Exactly. And then we’re no different than the Harbingers.”

  Lyokh sighed, watching the last of the Novas return and dock with Ecclesiastes. Nuerthanc opened his wings to admit them. “It still feels like it’s all incomplete. Like we never fully complete anything in war.”

  “Try not to let the incompletion aspect of it bother you,” Herodinsk advised. “As martial artists, we understand better than anybody that there is no such thing as ‘finishing’ anything. There is no belt or sash that can truly signify your ‘arrival’ at mastery. We never ‘arrive’, we never ‘become’. Rather, we are in a constant state of becoming. Accepting that is vital to gaining the wisdom of adulthood, yet maintaining the freshness of energy that comes with youth.”

  “A constant state of becoming…” Lyokh thought those were profound words.

  “Yes,” said the blademaster. “For if you ever get to a point when you say, ‘I have arrived,’ then you immediately cease to grow. It’s important to never feel satisfied with any job we leave behind, no matter how thorough we were in its execution.” Herodinsk nodded to himself. “You know, I’ve never seen an ocean, but I’ve read about these creatures that grow inside of shells, yet the shells themselves don’t grow at all. They live inside of them for years, growing in size until they become uncomfortable inside their tiny shell. So, they retreat beneath a rock for shelter, shed their old shell, and grow a new one.”