Lucifer's Nebula

by Phipps, C. T.

  “You’d prefer I love for your body?”

  Isla paused for a second before shouting. “Yes!”

  I laughed.

  I did not say anything else but simply departed out into the hallways of the Melampus. When I passed crew members, I noticed they were all nervous and troubled. I didn’t blame them since I’d ordered to keep our destination secret so, of course, everyone had known by the end of the hour. If I’d had the option, I would have let off everyone who didn’t want to go, but Fade had removed that. Besides, I might not have had a crew if I’d done that. Then again, the Melampus crew was a unique combination of bravado and greed. It’s very likely their response to being ordered down a black hole would simply have been how much they were being paid for the privilege.

  A part of me questioned, for the thousandth time, whether or not I was wrong about my assumption that Judith’s A.I. was an imposter. It was an outrageous leap of logic to make and I’d seen enough of those bring ruins to houses on Crius. One of the reasons that brought down House Lucifer, aside from the prophet’s prodigious habit of taking his followers’ wives as their own, was Archduke Edmond II insisting his wife’s legitimate children were bastards despite genetic tests proving them to be. He ended up waging war on his own allies to have her arrested for treason before his cousins from House Dumas, House Plantagenet, and (ugh) House Mass had locked him away in Babel Tower until his death.

  Notably, the three heirs of the man then mysteriously died of a fever outbreak in Babel Tower with their bodies disintegrated. Was I the paranoid lunatic now? Just because I didn’t want to think of my wife’s neural clone falling out of love with me? No, that stung. This, however, felt like lies and manipulation—things I was intimately familiar with from my father. Cassius the Elder had been the last true head of House Mass and as magnificent a politician as had ever lived. I trusted my instincts when they told me the False Judith was every bit a fountain of lies.

  The question was now: what was I going to do about it?

  Chapter Thirteen

  I walked onto the bridge of the Melampus and took a moment to breathe in the stale recycled air before surveying my ship’s heart. Then I reached down and picked up an empty beer can off the ground before placing it in the overflowing rubbish bin to the side. No, it wasn’t exactly the bridge of the Revengeance, but it was mine and that was what mattered. Assuming we all didn’t die on this mission.

  The Melampus’s bridge was an arrow-shaped chamber with a captain’s chair in the center, control panels all along the side, a wall-sized viewscreen in front, and a pair of helmsmen consoles below. The viewscreen showed we were still in jumpspace, a screen saver of streaking blue lights substituting for jumpspace’s weird and nausea-inducing colors the human mind wasn’t quite equipped to see in that strange matter dimension. To the port side of the room, left from my perspective, was the doorway to my ready room while the starboard, or right, was to the escape pods.

  Moving around the chamber were the eight-man day-shift crew including Brick, Lara, Jun and Ken Masterson, plus U’Chuck. The other three were identical blonde freed bioroids named Tina we’d pirated from slavers. Standing apart from the crew was Major Terra in a Commonwealth Colonial Marine uniform complete with beret, Fade in an all-white suit with half-cape clutching a sheathed proton sword, and a uniformed William Baldur. Clarice was absent, that was going to mean trouble when I decided to disable Major Terra. I’d have much rather had the Melampus’s chief of security with me than not.

  “Well, look who it is,” William said. “The absent captain.”

  I handled William’s usual insubordination with the grace inherent to my position. I lifted my middle finger, presented it to him, and then sat down in my chair.

  “Touché,” William said, shrugging.

  “I can’t say I’m impressed with this pig-and-bull show you’re running here,” Major Terra said, surveying the room as she held her hands behind her back. “Nor am I appreciative of the fact that you’ve chosen to spend the past three days playing with your doll rather than attending to the needs of this mission. Where I’m from, boys put them aside for real women when they become men.”

  Doll was a derogatory word for bioroids. “I’m amazed an undead cyborg in the service of the Commonwealth has such strong opinions on machine intelligence. Then again, do you remember your past at all?”

  Fade grimaced.

  “I’ve read the reports,” Major Terra said simply. “It is uninteresting to me. I was merely making an observation on your habits.”

  “Don’t,” I said, sighing. “How long until we reach Lucifer’s Nebula?”

  “We’re almost there,” William said, looking uncomfortable around the major. I suspected the reasons were she had a trace of a Xerxes accent and certainly had the planet’s look. He’d served the Commonwealth before joining this crew as well as served as a guerilla fighter against the Crius who’d once enslaved him as a gladiator. I had to wonder what he thought about working with so many former enemies to something so nebulous as peace in the Spiral.

  “How almost?” I asked. “Specifics, please.”

  “An hour or less,” William said. “Jumpspace is pretty choppy right now. Still, we can’t just fly up to Kolahn IV. The orihalcum cloud around the place is grossly unstable and only has a few paths through it that have to be flown through manually.”

  “A wonderful defense,” I said, thinking about how orihalcum clouds often contained clusters that could be united. “Almost too convenient, really.”

  “At least for a military base,” Fade said, lifting up his sword. “A present for you.”

  I blinked and took the weapon from his hand. “Now where in the hells did you get a proton sword of the exact type my father gave me?”

  “It’s yours,” Fade said, shrugging. “I did some tinkering with it. Improved a few things here and there. Masterful work. Technosword crafting is a hobby of mine.”

  Fade spoke with such sincerity, I actually believed him despite the monumental unlikelihood of such a specific trade relevant to this mission. Then again, someone had fixed the weapon, as it was most certainly mine. It still had the scratches on the intact portions of the original blade. Somehow, Fade had managed to repair it with such precision that I suspected it was stronger now than from before its breaking. We had crafting stations on the Melampus but this was a master’s work.

  “Your hobby is catering to the deranged whims of fake nobles?” William said, looking to one side.

  “Iberia has the same sort of reverence for pre-space glories and medieval life that the Archduchy of Crius did,” Fade said, defensive.

  William sensed that and showed his usual diplomacy. “Remind me never to visit then. I get enough of that bullshit here just being around His Excellency King Cassius the Worst.”

  Fade frowned.

  “First of all, that was actually funny,” I said, interrupting before a fight broke out. “You’re getting better with your casual hatred of everything about me.”

  “Thank you,” William said. “It came to me in the shower.”

  “I’m disturbed that you think of me in the shower,” I said. “I mean, hey, it’s your business, but we should keep things professional.”

  William glared at me.

  Fade chuckled. Major Terra remained stone-faced.

  “However, don’t they still carry around spears, kilts, bagpipes, and battle-axes on Xerxes?” I pointed out, remembering my thankfully brief visits to the place.

  “That is completely different,” William said, trying not to smile at the obvious point. “One is heritage, the other is stupid.”

  “Of course,” I said.

  Dammit, we were starting to become friends. This was unfortunate and I would have to put a stop to it immediately.

  “Kolahn IV is an evil world,” U’Chuck the navigator said in a chipper artificially generated feminine voice incongruous with her massive frame. “I ruled briefly in my previous life, controlling a colony of cultists
who tried to resettle it. The cult ended up committing mass suicide like the others before I was found by Shogun slavers who erased my memory. I only know the story I just told you from Ida and my dreams.”

  Well, that was a lovely mood killer. “I’m aware of your story, U’Chuck. I also assume this means you won’t be much help when we arrive on the world.”

  “I will be very helpful,” U’Chuck said. “I will keep the ship primed and the course set for escaping.”

  “Good idea,” I said simply.

  That was when Major Terra approached me, her hands on her hips. “Your attitude about this mission offends me, Captain. I do not agree with the fact we’re employing a former enemy of the Commonwealth in such delicate negotiations. I also have seen nothing to indicate you are qualified this purpose.”

  “Then you’re extremely observant,” I said.

  “Stop making jokes!” Major Terra shouted and pointed at me. It drew the attention of everyone on the bridge. “This is serious.”

  I stared at the major and wondered what she must have been like before the Commonwealth had taken everything about who she was. We were reaching a new point in human history where personality, ideals, and even free will were becoming mutable. Could humanity really survive as a concept when these things were flexible? My sister had a lot to answer for and I hoped Isla was right and the process was reversible—even if it was only to an extent.

  “I plan to appeal to the Supreme Commander’s sense of community,” I said, my voice very cold and firm.

  Fade snorted. “I don’t think he’s shown much of that so far.”

  “That is not a plan,” Major Terra said.

  “Give him a minute,” William said, surprising me with his confidence. “He’s usually quite good at pulling these things out of his ass.”

  “Thank you,” I said, pausing. “I think. My father, Cassius the Elder, was renowned in his time as a peace-maker. He was famous for resolving the Third Rebellion of the Dukes and the ancient blood feud between House Wilson as well as House Caldwell. This despite the fact that both houses’ heirs were witnesses to their grandparents being fed to dragons by my great-grandmother Archduchess Livia ni Mass.”

  “Your great-grandmother fed people to dragons?” Fade said. “I like her already.”

  “Yes,” I said. “Obviously, my line stems from her second child rather than heir. The eldest was given the surname Dumas since her prince consort had negotiated that as part of their marriage pact.”

  “Obviously,” William said, clearly having no idea what the hell I was talking about.

  Technically, that meant I was cousins with the royal family, but that didn’t have the same meaning as it might on other worlds. We were all descendants of Prophet Allenway in some manner or another and intermarriage was common. Genetic engineering and regular children with commoner lovers prevented genetic degradation but Crius’s nobility was a tangled tree that meant everyone above a knight could claim royal blood if they looked far enough. Since Crius’s destruction, that was worth enough credits to get a free beer and a bag of chips if the bar’s patrons were really bored.

  “One of the few lessons I bothered to learn from my father was the fact that wars are not won on the battlefield,” I continued.

  “Then he taught you a poor lesson,” Major Terra said.

  “Instead, he said wars are fought until one side stops fighting. The best way to achieve that is to make surrender more appealing than the alternative,” I said, ignoring her jibe. “Every enemy who chooses not to fight is even better than one slain as a man’s death sends ripples that can cause three more to fight. Many more if he was loved.”

  “Oh what great wisdom,” Fade said, showing he had the sarcastic side to fit in here. “An enemy surrendering is better than them fighting to the end. I never could have conceived of such a thing—especially on a mission of negotiated surrender.”

  I ignored his jibe. “If the Commonwealth falls apart, that means that there will be thousands of worlds that will no longer have a common currency, military defense, or trade alliances. The resulting chaos would lead to civil war, famine, and terrorism. Even more so, it will mean the war can never actually be won as nothing will prevent individual planets from continuing to act against the newly independent worlds once they’ve won. The FSA Supreme Commander—”

  “Who is you,” William pointed out.

  “Who is me,” I said, still not quite believing it, “has the best interests of making sure the Commonwealth continues just so it can be defeated.”

  “That is some twisted but brilliant logic there,” Fade said. “Unless he thinks the Commonwealth will come back and betray him.”

  “Won’t it?” I asked. “I have no illusions the side I’m advocating for isn’t a bunch of greedy, duplicitous snakes. However, that’s what making terms about arms control, inspections, and so on are for. Things that can be worked out to everyone’s satisfaction.”

  “Just like that,” Fade said, sounding every bit as skeptical as I felt.

  “I hate to say it, but he’s right,” William said. “For years, the Xerxes tried to drive the Crius off by wiping out every single one we could. In the end, we managed to only succeed by getting them to sign a paper acknowledging our independence. Then the Commonwealth took over. Last I heard, it’s back to civil war. Different uniforms, same friendly oppression.”

  Fade looked at him. “I think you lost the metaphor there somewhere.”

  William shrugged. “Eh, politics.”

  The Melampus suddenly pulled out of jumpspace and we found ourselves before a massive golden cloud of orihalcum gas. It was not properly a nebula, but filled an entire star system’s worth of space as it crackled and shined with warp-lightning. No one knew the origins of orihalcum, though most believed it was a product of another universe leaking into this one and merging with the local matter, but it was a vital part of space-faring civilization. It also routinely defied the laws of physics as we understood them and was the source of all manner of weird legends and quirks. Like Elder Race markers and jumpspace, there were countless spacer ghost stories and legends about its properties.

  “Were we supposed to do that?” I asked, looking at U’Chuck.

  “The ship is frightened,” U’Chuck said. “It says that is an evil place.”

  “There’s thirty stars inside,” Jun Masterson said, calling from the sensor position. She was a pink-haired girl Shogun who kept her hair in bunches. “It’s larger than it looks and we’re farther away. I have our position to move. We’ll have to make a micro-jump, though.”

  I closed my eyes. “I hate those. Do it. I’d rather leap frog across this thing, whatever the hell it is, than have to spend a month climbing through its tunnels. How unstable is the gas cloud?”

  “Depends on the area,” Brick said from the helm. He was a handsome brown-skinned man who’d recently taken to shaving his head completely. Sadly, he wasn’t quite pulling it off. “The concentration levels vary wildly. Some places will go off if we use our weapons and others wouldn’t explode any more than any other part of space—which is to say only when there’s orihalcum-carrying ships in them.”

  “I understand how space works,” I said, sighing. “Any sign of FSA traffic?”

  “No,” Lara Chopra, a sweet-looking girl from Kali, said, shaking her head. “Only warning buoys. One of them has been reprogrammed to state ‘Abandon all hope, all ye who enter.’“

  “Oh that’s adorable,” I said, sighing. “They’re further in, it seems.”

  “Yeah,” William said. “By the planet.”

  “Let’s get going,” I said, more reluctant than I was willing to let on. I wasn’t afraid of Kolahn IV any more than I was afraid of Crius’s dead ruins.

  “It’ll be thirty minutes, Captain,” U’Chuck said, taking a deep breath. “Some pretty deep calculations.”

  “Do you need help?” I asked, wondering if U’Chuck would need to be removed from her position. This was, after all, a r
eturn to the most traumatic place in the galaxy for her. For all my bluster about the fact I didn’t think Crius was haunted by literal ghosts, I certainly knew it was haunted by plenty of metaphorical ones.

  “No sir,” U’Chuck said. “Just saying it’ll take a bit.”

  I nodded and got up. “Major Terra, I would like to speak with you in my ready room.”

  “About the mission,” I said, silently signaling Isla to come.

  “I see,” Major Terra said, looking suspicious. “As you wish.”

  Fade looked at me with a frown. “I’d actually like to speak with you about some details as well, Captain Mass. You’ve been….absent for what I think was an extraordinarily long period of time.”

  “I was having sex,” I said. “Also drunk. Oh, and discovering the secrets of the universe through drugs. But mostly the first two.”

  Fade opened his mouth, closed it then nodded. “Okay. I still need to talk to you.”

  “In an hour,” I said, heading to my ready room.

  Major Terra followed.

  The captain’s ready room had been previously used for storage, as Ida Claire wasn’t the kind of person who had need of such a place. She didn’t need an office or, if she did, it was a hidden one, as her efforts on behalf of the Watchers were hidden from the rest of the crew. I, on the other hand, needed a quiet place to do my accounting for the ship and project an aura of authority—since God knew I’d lost the ability to do it naturally.

  The room had a single crystal glass table that looked like reflective stone but contained its own personal computer stronger than most of the ship. The walls had various bits of Crius memorabilia I wasn’t too fond of but helped sell the idea that I knew what I was doing. Munin had actually given me a view screen diorama of all the medals I’d won—things I couldn’t stand and usually left turned off given how many deaths they represented. Still, she’d meant well.

  The back of the room projected an image of space meant to resemble windows and there was a flag on a flagpole in the side, previously the Mercer’s Guild of Sector-7 but replaced by a private one for the Melampus that depicted the ship as well as a blue cross with a red dragon on it. Flags were an anachronism everywhere but the most primitive worlds, but I’d had it made at a novelty kiosk for five credits and it was useful for team-building exercises. I also had a fish tank but its contents were holographic fakes.