“How the hell did they get all this?” Clarice said, staring at the system reports.
“Gas mining,” I said, checking the sensors. “There are tens of thousands of platforms inside the cloud. Not just orihalcum but karvane and javannium too.”
Both were gases found near orihalcum and while they didn’t have the same reality-altering properties, they were extremely useful for fueling heavy fusion cannons and raw energy productions. Javannium crystals, in particular, could generate a shield around a planet. In theory. That was another technology the Commonwealth had denied humanity and could have saved billions of lives.
“The gods of this world provided,” U’Chuck said, her voice low. “The price will be high. Just like it was with my race.”
“No, I mean, how did they get all this here?” Clarice said, clarifying. “We should have been passing massive fleets and convoys on our way in. There’s no way they could keep this much of a fleet maintained without regular supply ships and transports from dozens of worlds.”
“I think I have an answer,” I said, taking in all of the sights with my cyberlink to the ship’s sensors.
I scanned a massive one-hundred-thousand kilometer circular jump gate of the kind found near the Community’s wealthiest worlds, easily worth the yearly output of several planets. It was also technology prohibited by the Community Council, putting lie to any claim they were above our “petty regional conflicts.” Convincing my doppelganger to surrender was going to be hard now if he was working as a catspaw of an organization far more powerful than us.
I couldn’t help but be privately amused at the Commonwealth’s misjudging of the situation. The Free Systems Alliance had done its best to portray itself as a plucky resistance fighting against overwhelming odds but its success was now as clearly due to foreign assistance as any military genius or eldritch power on the part of its leaders. That was usually how such groups achieved success and I wondered how many “advisors” from the alien coalition were down there fighting with them.
“Well fuck,” Clarice said. “It looks like the Community is behind this all. All to screw with the Commonwealth.”
“A big government sending weapons and supplies to keep a small but potentially dangerous government pre-occupied,” I muttered. “Yeah, I’ve never seen that before.”
I was about to say more when I heard…singing? It was like a buzzing in the back of my mind before my attention turned down to the planet’s surface and I heard the sound more clearly. It was like a choir, only the voices were clearer, purer, and more ethereal than any human’s.
I looked out to through the ship’s sensors and saw for a moment every single living being in the fleet despite the fact I shouldn’t have been able to pick them up. I saw the glowing souls of thousands in all the cargo ships and vessels from other territories going in and out of the system. The Revengeance and shipyards, though, did not show any signs of light. Instead, there were a million black holes where life should be.
They disturbed me and for a moment, I felt my mind touch them and saw something that looked like a human and acted like a human but was not human. Beings who were, effectively, soulless and parodies of men. Millions of soldiers who operated with perfect efficiency but might as well have been dead. They were as people accused bioroids of being, but they were manifestly not.
Then a voice spoke in my mind, sounding like the voice of Prophet Allenway himself, Go away. Escape while you still can.
“Cassius!” Clarice said, shocking me from my reverie. “You okay? You zoned out there for a second.”
I blinked repeatedly before nodding, “Yes, I’m fine. It’s just all so overwhelming.”
I didn’t know why I lied. Well, maybe because what I’d seen was crazy. Was I hallucinating or had we reached a point where I’d lost my mind? There were other options like the False Judith sending an image to my mind but that would imply she was here. I didn’t want to contemplate that option.
“Maybe you should switch to regular coffee,” Clarice said, leaning down and picking up a coffee. “You know they put drugs in this stuff, right? It’s not just vitamins and beans.”
“Yes,” I said, standing up. “But there are drugs in everything.”
“True,” Clarice said. “You want me to go wake up Isla? Get a check-up? You took a pretty bad spill earlier. That and meeting Fade’s fists a dozen times. Also, you haven’t been getting much sleep these past few days.”
“Neither have you,” I said, pointing out the flaw in her statement. “But I’ve been through much worse than this. We need to know when we’re going to meet with the Supreme Commander.”
“All right,” Clarice said, giving me a helpful put on the back. “However, after this, we’re going on a vacation for a year.”
“Where to?” I said.
“Sex Planet,” Clarice said, grinning. “You, me, Isla, and we’ll get some place for William so he’s not nearly as uptight.”
“I think he’s in a relationship.”
“Yeah, and? Jealousy is a Grounder concept.”
I rolled my eyes and sighed. “Thank you for all you’ve done, Clarice. I mean that.”
“Try not to get mushy, Cassius. You’re at your most attractive when you’re a scheming anti-hero versus a romantic.”
“I had no idea you were secretly a teenage girl.”
“No, then you’d be your most attractive if you were an elf, vampire, or pirate.”
Were elves a thing that teenagers lusted after now? I was sort of a pirate, but decided not to bring that up. “Thanks anyway.”
Fade and Anya walked onto the bridge, both wearing tracksuits I believed were functioning as their nightclothes. Anya, notably, was holding a databook under her arm. Apparently she’d been doing some late-night reading.
“We’re there?” Fade asked, a tense look on his face.
“Almost,” I said, looking at him.
Anya then walked up to me and handed me her databook before whispering in my ear, “Here’s the end of the world, Cap’n.”
I blinked and looked at the databook, blinking. It didn’t look like a planet-destroying weapon, but then what did I know about such things? It made me sick to think about how many people I was potentially going to kill. I was already regretting my decision and if there was a civilian population down there then I wasn’t sure I could do it.
“Abandon all hope,” Anya said, as if the code was inherently funny. “All ye who enter.”
I realized that was the code for activating the device. “An appropriate epithet.”
“Central Command has contacted us and informed us we’re to head down to the regent’s palace. They’ve provided coordinates,” Anya said. “I’ve also received a greeting from a man who sounds a lot like you.”
I stared at the databook and checked its contents. It only had the Commonwealth Bible and a dictionary listed as its contents. I proceeded to close it, not sure whether it was coincidence or just a cruel joke.
“I suppose everyone should get dressed up,” I said. “We’re going to meet royalty.”
Chapter Eighteen
“I can’t believe you got us dress uniforms,” Clarice muttered, adjusting her beret.
“I look like a pepper shaker,” William said, frowning at me.
William, Isla, myself, Fade, Clarice, and Major Terra were the five-person crew I’d selected for our “diplomatic meeting.” They were all dressed up in the Melampus’s black-and-white dress uniforms that none of them had ever bothered to use before. Not even during David’s funeral, when only two of them had bothered to show up and eight more members of the rest of the crew had worn plain clothes.
The six of us were standing in one of the Melampus’s airlocks as the ship lowered itself into the atmosphere. It surprised me the regent’s palace had a private space port large enough for the star galleon, but there was a lot of things about the FSA that made no sense. I’d put Munin in charge of the ship and hoped I hadn’t led them all to a horrible fate.
>
Quite a few of the crew had come to wish us off and I was surprised at how high the mood on the ship was. They were a collection of murderers, thieves, scoundrels, and pirates, but all of them had lost someone or had worlds involved in the Insurgency. The fact I was possibly going to bring it to an end had removed all of the anger and resentment they’d built up against me over the past year. Some of them had even said I was the best captain they’d ever served under.
Fools.
“What? We can’t look nice as the crew of a cargo freighter?” I asked, adjusting my brown coat. I was wearing it over my dress uniform with a pair of Spacer’s goggles around my neck. It was in direct defiance of everyone else who was dressed more fashionably. I admit, the hypocrisy of the action made me smile and was my subtle form of revenge on everything I’d been put through these last few weeks. Also William for his behavior in general.
“I always look nice,” Isla said, barely visible behind the others. “It’s genetically encoded into you and Clarice.”
“Beauty is in the eye of the beholder,” Clarice said. “Albeit, I love how Cassius’s hair is always perfectly coifed even when he first wakes up.”
“What’s with the five o’clock stubble anyway?” Isla said, giving me a once-over. “You could have at least shaved.”
“I decided that was a good idea,” I said, actually having just forgotten in my rush to get ready. “I want you to be able to tell the difference between me and my doppelganger should this end in a shootout.”
“You mean the doppelganger with the millions of soldiers and massive armada?” William said, raising an eyebrow. “Yeah, I don’t think we’re going to be starting any firefights unless we’ve all developed a death wish.”
“I’ll start working on escape plans as soon as I have a layout of the building,” Clarice said. “Also, our chances of surviving a fight.”
“We just said—” William started to say.
“We’re not starting a fight,” Fade said, taking a deep breath. “We’re just going to deliver the surrender agreement and come back with an army later.”
“You got it. Just deliver the peace treaty,” I said, very conscious of the planet-buster I’d hidden in my coat. It wasn’t larger than a grenade but apparently contained enough antimatter to crack a planet’s surface.
“That sounded less than convincing,” Fade said, looking at his sheathed ceremonial scimitar.
“Don’t forget what else we have to do down there,” Isla said, her gaze narrow but true.
Oh yeah, murdering her former owner. I was not looking forward to my conversation with my doppelganger. Still, if he was me, then he’d gladly hand over Octavian for murder. I’d never been a fan of rapists. You’d think that wouldn’t be a hurdle to jump, but apparently it was worth an accolade when it came to the treatment of bioroids. “I’ve got this. This is me, after all.”
William raised his hand. “Is it too late to turn back now?”
“Yes!” I snapped.
“Just checking,” William said, lowering his hand.
The Melampus settled down on the ground as the entire ship shook from its kinetic lifts straining from decades of use. The ship had been heavily-modified by the Commonwealth and had top-of-the-line systems when it had been run by the Watchers, but a year of civilian ownership meant it was jury-rigged beyond measure. Really, I should have sold the damn thing piece by piece and bought me a fleet of cargo ships but it had been my first command since the war. It was also home.
As broken down as me.
Clarice looked at the airlock. “You know, back when I was still recovering from my torture ta the hands of the Chel, I knew this blonde-haired almond-eyed girl named Yelena Balistrova. She was a former Void Marine and could bench press a truck but kissed like a romance heroine. Prior to the war’s end, she’d been as cold blooded as they come, but the last time we met included her telling me she was going to join the a resistance against the Commonwealth. I told her she was crazy and that revolutions are never about the people.”
“Is this story going anywhere?” Fade asked, rudely.
“Yelena believed in the group because she’d heard the Fire Count was the leader,” Clarice said, revealing something she’d never told me before. “I told her that just meant it was some other rich guy trying to make himself a king. I was wrong, Cassius. I want you to know that.”
Clarice put her hand on my shoulder.
“You might not be,” I said, surprising her and causing her to withdraw her hand. “When the Commonwealth destroyed Crius, I wanted to kill everyone inside it. The only thing keeping me from it was the fact that I didn’t want to become like them. I deluded myself into believing I could someday return to being the honorable warrior I was. That Crius would rise again. I was wrong.”
“About which part?” Clarice asked. “Because I’ve got a bunch of regrets as well.”
“All of it,” I said, sighing. “All I want now is for the killing to stop. I just don’t know how because it’s all I really know.”
“That and Indran sex rites,” Isla said.
“That too,” I said. “Best part of my education growing up. That and flying. Sorry, but it’s true.”
Both Clarice and Isla rolled their eyes. Fade opened his mouth to make another sex-related remark, no doubt, but closed it when he saw Anya and looked away. Ashamed.
Anya gave me a salute. “I don’t have anything to say to you other than thank you. It’s been an honor. You are the person who helped inspire the galaxy to revolt.”
“Wow, you guys are idi—” I started to say before the airlock doors opened up with a whoosh of Kolahn IV air.
Ah god, the smell!
I covered my face. “I take it this isn’t a pure nitrogen-and-oxygen environment! What is that?”
“Harrington gas,” Clarice said, covering her nose. “Named after a Commonwealth explorer in a sort of backhanded compliment. It’s made from a kind of bacteria that grew over most of the planet when the majority of the population committed suicide. It’s about one percent of the atmosphere now.”
“Great!” I said. “What an incredible smell you’ve discovered.”
Nobody else got that reference. My classical education once more proved to be absolutely useless.
“They should have atmosphere processors in the building,” Clarice said, looking nauseous.
“I hope so,” I said, shaking my head. “Otherwise, we’re going to be conducting this meeting in breath masks.”
“Babies,” Isla said, walking out the airlock into the platform beyond. I couldn’t see much beyond the doors due to the excessive light reflected from beyond, so I put on my goggles and followed. Everyone else just put their arms over their eyes.
What awaited on the other side was a sight to remember. The regent’s palace was a massive series of lumpy domes with strange, erratically placed purple quartz on its sides in place of window. Towers rose between the lumpy domes, ending in flower-like structures on the top. A series of a hundred bridges extended from many of these towers, including one directly to us.
Large banners showing the Free Systems Alliance’s white-and-blue flag hung from every corner with a newly constructed statue of, well, myself, having been placed on the central dome with its proton sword raised in the air. The regent’s palace was definitely a building constructed by aliens with alien aesthetics but it was clearly inhabited by humans. The walkway toward us had a guard of archduchy sentinels, each ornately armored in gold and red armor with star pikes. They were stylized to look like ancient Roman Centurions but had armor that could make them capable of taking on a hover tank. I’d thought their order extinguished with the destruction of Crius, but my doppelganger had taken over the regency for Princess Servilia.
Supposedly.
This entire set-up felt wrong. Even before I was disillusioned with my country, I’d never been one to enjoy the childish displays of fascist iconography. The archduchy had survived as much on style as substance, distracting its s
oldiers with flags and uniforms in place of genuine meaning. This felt like a monument to the ego of a man who had never served a day in his life. One more interested in the trappings of war rather than winning the real thing. But he was winning, against the most powerful military in the Spiral.
“Nice statue,” William said. “I would have added a bunch of peasants underneath or you giving the bird to audiences.”
“You’re just jealous,” Clarice said. “No one is building a statue of you.”
“There was one in the center of the gladiator coliseum of High Baghdad,” William said, sighing. “I was the first local gladiator to win one hundred battles.”
“Impressive,” I said, stopping ten paces in front of the Melampus.
“Not really,” William said. “I was promised my freedom for winning but it turned out to be a trick. I would have been recycled if not for the fact that a baroness wanted to use me to breed with her bastard daughters.”
That was one of the few times William had ever opened up. “What happened?”
“I did what was required for a few weeks,” William said. “Then I slit her throat and snuck out. The local resistance cell was happy to have me. They took down the statue after that, though.”
“I always hated those games,” Anya said. “My mother made me come with her to them, though.”
“She liked to watch?” I asked, unsure where the people supposed to meet us were.
“She liked to gamble,” Anya said. “It eventually got to her. She ended up betraying her mistress to the resistance.”
“Good,” William said.
“They raped her, her daughters, and dashed her baby son against the ground,” Anya said. “It encouraged me to join the Crius military as a sniper. I like to think I eventually got them. Three hundred and fifty-five confirmed kills.”
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