Lucifer's Nebula

by Phipps, C. T.

  Everyone was silent.

  “Everyone here has had a shit life,” I said. “It’s official.”

  “The Buddha says life is pain,” Clarice said, continuing to interrupt the rudeness of our hosts choosing not to meet with us. “Which is why people are justified in causing pain to one another because they’ll become enlightened from it.”

  I pondered that. “I think your family may have misconstrued your religious education.”

  “Says the Satanist,” Clarice said, offended for one of the few times I’d known her.

  “I don’t even believe in the Devil,” I said, my head suddenly hurting me. I saw on the horizon the sight of a Kathax spreading out its wings outward as it glowed with an unearthly light that made it look like God. I blinked and it was gone.

  “I need to see Isla,” I muttered.

  “What?” Isla said. “What’s wrong?”

  “Beyond everything?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” Isla said. “Beyond that.”

  “Nothing,” I whispered.

  The door opened up to the regent’s palace, the wall looking like a sideways wall of crooked fangs opened up. The bizarre alien architecture aside, I was more taken with the parade of individuals that proceeded to march out under guard of more sentinels.

  The first group was courtiers of a kind I’d hoped had been exterminated when the Commonwealth had dropped a hundred asteroids onto the surface of my home world. They wore elaborate robes and gowns covered in various adornments. The bureaucrats of the archduchy had administered in the name of Titus and a staggering number of nobles who couldn’t be bothered to handle the running of their holdings. The fact the FSA had grown to the point they had use for them bothered me almost as much as the statue of me.

  My eyes widened at the sight of my siblings toward the center. Thomas had been a member of the State Security service and was presently wearing a modified version of its uniform, the color changed from black to a light blue that was considerably less menacing but still bore an insignia that marked him as the head of FSA Intelligence. Thomas was a brown-skinned man with short black hair who, honestly, resembled William more than he did me. The Plantagenet family were of Afro-Earth descent and preferred to look that way even when genetics said otherwise.

  My sister Zoe caused my throat to run dry as I still had nightmares about “killing” her with Judith’s help. She was wearing a pleasant white lab coat over a green blouse and brown skirt that looked like causal clothes for the planet. She had the Mass family chin and Plantagenet skin color and hair. She was a beautiful woman and it made me sick to think about all of that had passed between us. My sister had proven to be quite the mad scientist and was responsible for the memory uploads that had made both her and my doppelganger’s lives possible. The false Judith was using her memories as well.

  Was this my “real” sister, who was last seen on Albion working for the Commonwealth’s brainwashing program, or one of her doppelgangers? Did it matter? How could you tell the difference without a thorough medical scan? I didn’t know how to react as I wasn’t sure it would be fair to blame her for what her mental clone had done—but the very fact that she did meant it was within her to do so. Murder, torture, and worse.

  Then I saw myself.

  My doppelganger looked every bit like the poster-child the media had made me out to be. As much as genetic engineering made me more beautiful than the randomness of nature, the past seven years had been ten sectors of jumpspace storms for me. He didn’t look remotely that way, having a carefree look in his eye and the look of a man who spent a few hours every day in the beauty parlor.

  He was wearing a stark-white uniform with gold epaulettes and a rank badge identical to the late Supreme Commander Germanicus. The jackboots were almost as shiny as the glare we’d seen upon our entrance. He also had a sword identical to my own.

  “Oh shit,” I said, looking up at the man’s face.

  The smile that greeted me was one I’d seen a million times before.

  The False Cassius walked up to the front of the group and held his hands behind his back. “Hello. It’s been a long time.”

  My group looked at each other in confusion.

  I sucked in my breath. “Hello, Father.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  I remembered one of the defining moments of my relationship with my father. It was a memory so vivid that I might have been transported back in time.

  My proton sword crashed against my opponent’s gravity saber as sparks flew from where the two electrified blades collided. I was purely on the defensive now, struggling to keep up against the furious onslaught of attacks by my opponent. What had begun as a friendly duel had rapidly degenerated into a brutal fight for survival, as it was clear my opponent had no intention of holding back.

  Faced with the fact my opponent was stronger, faster, and just plain better than me, I considered yielding but remembered the beatings I’d received as a child when I did that. Instead, I threw all of my weight forward to push him back then swung around for a killing blow against his neck.

  Instead, my opponent shamelessly broke the Duelists’ Code by slicing his gravity lance’s edge against my front leg then kicked it out from under me when I slid forward. He then placed his blade up against the back of my neck. I felt its aura burn against my flesh and leave a horrible scar that would require weeks of medi-gel to heal.

  “Point,” My father, Cassius the Elder, said.

  It was still the first year of the war and my father hadn’t yet been poisoned in such a way that left him crippled and obese. Instead, he was very much like an older version of me with a body that still looked like an Adonis even among a genetically engineered race of them. He kept his golden-blond hair long and curly, trailing over his shoulders while wearing a shimmersilk shirt with cloned-dinosaur-skin pants. It made him look like a holo romance novel’s image of a space pirate and I couldn’t help but loathe the fact he’d made me in his image.

  I, by contrast, was wearing a red version of the standard practice duelists’ bodysuit with a faceless mask. Pulling out a set of medical tape from the pouches on my belt, I moved it around the back of my knee then stood up. I didn’t even bother to treat the wound my father had delivered to me at my neck since he’d view it as a sign of weakness.

  The two of us were in a “circle of death” or a two-story golden octagonal chamber for honor duels in the middle of the Summer Palace. The Summer Palace was a fantastical cathedral-like building formerly belonging to House Lucifer before their direct-line extermination and now serving as a sort of all-purpose center for government business. Under House Dumas, the current reigning family, the place had taken on a somewhat darker tone.

  There was a never-ending stream of prostitutes, drug-dealers, professional athletes, and movie stars enjoying lavish parties despite the fact there was a massive interstellar war going on. I also despised the decor since every single room, including this one, contained a massive portrait of Supreme Commander Prince Germanicus. The arrogant white-haired, brown-skinned man had a black military uniform covered in every single possible award for valorous service one could win despite the closest he’d ever been to an actual battle being safely sequestered in the flagship Revengeance’s hold. In this particular portrait, he had an adorable Orleans Bulldog sitting beside him as if it humanized the man responsible for this war.

  “It’s not really a point when you cheat like that,” I said, removing my helmet and getting up. “It’s not really a sport at all.”

  “No, it’s a battle,” Cassius Senior said, throwing his gravity saber in the air before catching it by the hilt and turning it off, placing it on my shoulder. “I would have thought with your oh-so-honorable decision to fight on the front lines that you’d respect the difference.”

  I narrowed my eyes. My father had never approved of my decision to join the Starfighter Corps. In fact, that was understating matters since he’d spoken of the armed forces in the most disgraceful terms. He’d even
gone so far as to get me briefly assigned as captain of a regular naval vessel before I’d been transferred back out. I had no regrets about that assignment, though, since it had taught me how to lead. “Strong words from a man who has never killed anyone outside of the Circle of Death.”

  Cassius the Elder smiled, chuckling. “If you think I’ve only killed individuals in the arena, my dear boy, you haven’t been paying attention. I’ve killed tens of thousands, if not millions, with the stroke of a stylus across a screen. That is the way nobility is supposed to kill. We’re not the rough-and-ugly masses crawling over each other to die for an extra set of rations or a retirement pension.”

  These were the disgraceful terms I’d mentioned. “Our family has a proud martial heritage, stretching back to the colony’s founding.”

  Cassius the Elder raised a thin eyebrow. “Our family was originally the Masskerwitzes and we were legal clerks when we settled here. We became generals because we could afford to outfit our own troops. Not because we’ve bought into all the bullshit we feed the plebs about honor and duty.”

  “Honor and duty are not bullshit,” I said, sheathing my proton sword after realizing my father wasn’t even going to bow after his ‘victory.’

  Cassius the Elder signaled up to the second story. Up there was a balcony with a force-field around it to watch the facilities with three of my father’s latest mistresses waiting in shorts and white t-shirts to deliver water and refreshment after his latest round of humiliating me at swordplay. I was deeply disappointed with my father, as he and my brother Thomas had both lost themselves to the corpulent pleasures of Crius high society. Then again, they both did their jobs and that was more than I could say for most of the nobility these days.

  As my father took a water bottle from one of the buxom genetically engineered females, I thought about Thomas’s buff, sculpted male lovers and shook my head. Everything you could possibly want was catered to when you were a member of Crius’s nobility. In my case, I found the idea of body-sculpting your lovers and them going through contests for the honor of being a plaything vaguely unsettling—especially when my father offered me their services.

  Ugh.

  “No thank you,” I said to one of the women as she offered me a bottle. “I’ll get my own drink.”

  She didn’t respond and just bowed her head. I wondered if she could talk, as my father was never one for conversation with his servants. Some houses had the vocal chords of their servants stilled as one of the “voluntary” actions they could undertake to increase the flow of credits and food back to their families.

  “Junior,” Cassius the Elder said, using a title I loathed. “You are a miracle of science. Intelligent enough to design your own starfighter, a master programmer, an astrogator, and godlike behind a starship’s controls. You’re even decent with a sword. All the while looking like a Greek God.”

  “I feel like this is praising you more than me,” I said.

  “Because it is,” Cassius the Elder said. “Everything you have is because I paid for it. Millions of credits in terms of perfect genetic replication, raising you on the right diet, the best in cybernetics, and a dozen tutors who had to be vetted five or six times before they were even on a chart I looked at it. You were meant to inherit my position as Chancellor of the Archduchy and guide us to a better error. Instead, any time you go out there, you run the risk of destroying my investment.”

  I crossed my arms and took a breath. “Are you finished berating me for trying to protect the empire you and the other nobility have stupidly put into danger by beginning a war with an enemy five times our size? Because if so, I have battles to win and men to train so you can sip wine and sleep with harlots while good men sacrifice themselves by the thousands.”

  My father’s mistresses looked nervous.

  Cassius the Elder chuckled. It was a mirthless arrogant noise divorced from real laughter. “It’s good when you finally show some spine. You’re far too respectful.”

  I was surprised by his reaction since my condemnation was the height of hypocrisy: I’d been among those campaigning for war among the other nobles. Then again, maybe it was the hypocrisy he was admiring. He was a practiced politician who had managed to hold his own in the struggle between the houses that was an ever ongoing low-grade civil war even during conflicts like our current one with the Commonwealth.

  “Oh, this I have to hear,” I said, sighing. “Because you’ve wanted me to do nothing but follow in your footsteps from the beginning and have made my life a living hell while doing it. You’ve also disgraced your other children and tried to turn me against them.”

  There was a silence. “You don’t really understand me at all, do you?”

  “I understand enough.”

  Cassius the Elder took a deep breath. “Out.”

  His mistresses departed while I stood still.

  “Another lecture or are you simply going to beat me, Chancellor?” I asked. It was a petty, boyish insult, as if my father’s badge of office wasn’t something he’d taken great pride in achieving. Even at that age, I’d known my father was quite literal when he talked about all the bodies he’d stepped over to get his position as the second most powerful man in the archduchy.

  Cassius the Elder shook his head. “I’ve long since given up on the idea of physical force being enough to knock the damn fool idealistic nonsense out of your head. There’s too much romance to the idea of being noble knights fighting for a just cause even if this entire system we have here on Crius was founded as a protection racket by a Satan-worshiping religious fanatic.”

  My father was not the most pious of men. “That’s never stopped you from trying.”

  “Amazingly, you’ve managed to stay alive and built a reputation that has benefited our family. The plebs crave heroes and I’ve been feeding them your adventures through my contacts that you’ve gained a political currency that rivals my own. That Thomas and I have to bend over backward to keep you from being assassinated or being sent into the meat grinder where your ability to do loop-de-loops in a starfighter won’t save you is a small price to pay.”

  “I don’t need your help,” I said.

  “Don’t be stupid. You met your nat wife because she was assigned by Thomas to protect you. Assuming this war doesn’t end with us all dead, you’ll be able to spend that currency making the changes to our society we need. Your squadron should be lucky they’re being kept from the worst of it.”

  I balled my fists. “I will not let you disgrace my men’s sacrifices.”

  Cassius the Elder stared at me. “Really? Defending your men before yourself? You are just the perfect pissant toy soldier, aren’t you? Are you doing this deliberately or is God punishing me?”

  I let a half-smile curl up. “Possibly both.”

  Cassius the Elder crushed his water bottle with his fist then tossed it away. “Allow me to tell you a story, and yes, it’s mandatory. It’s a story of someone very much like you who was once filled with the idealism of knights, starfighter pilots, and defending the innocent.”

  “You?” I asked.

  “I’m fudging on the starfighter pilot business,” Cassius the Elder said. “One of the things I corrected in my cloning was to get rid of vertigo. The simple fact was, though, I was a man who believed the archduchy could be a force for good in the universe. So I became a doctor.”

  I stared at him. “A doctor. I find that harder to believe than in Jumpspace Yaga and the Krampus.”

  “We all have our little rebellions,” Cassius the Elder said. “Mine was the idea that saving lives in the field might go a little way to amending the millions our planet has taken to feed its appetites. It took me a whole six months to memorize the contents of every medical journal dealing with human anatomy, surgery, and equipment. I only tested in the top three percent of Crius, though. Perhaps showing I wasn’t taking it seriously as my father had paid for the best.”

  Assuming my father wasn’t just speaking a pile of dragonshit, I found
myself intrigued. “What did you do as a doctor?”

  “I worked on Xerxes,” Cassius the Elder said, his voice cracking for a moment. It was one of the few genuine displays of emotion I’d ever seen from him. It was also over almost as soon as it began. “I treated the victims of the insurrection there. Men, women, and children caught up in the horrors of the conflict. There were no heroes there, only villains. The Xerxes insurrectionists used child soldiers, conscripts forced to fight with their families held hostage, and indiscriminate terrorism to get their point. I remembered wiping the mind of a Crius noblewoman’s maid who’d been held prisoner for seven years and been raped so many times it had done catastrophic damage to her insides. Yet, somehow, she’d still given birth to six children. The Crius occupying forces? Our side? We did worse.”

  None of this was new and it was part of the justification which the archduchy gave to crack down on other worlds. They were all uncivilized genetically inferior barbarians, so it was the right of the superior humans to correct them. It took me a decade to realize the writing of Kipling wasn’t revered on other planets.

  “It’s difficult to imagine you as any sort of humanitarian,” I said, speaking carefully.

  “My efforts ended poorly.” My father’s voice was suddenly full of venom. “I fell in love with a local woman there, a nurse, and we decided to get married. This was despite my engagement to my dearest wife.”

  Fleet Admiral Drusilla Plantagenet, a woman who’d vowed to end my life and come close on several occasion. Dru was possibly the only woman on the planet who was my father’s social equal and the only people higher were the royal family. Had my father been less good at manipulating parliament as a politician or Prince Germanicus less talented at fostering a cult of personality among the military, I imagine my father might have pressed the Mass family’s own claim to the prophet’s throne. Had my father and his wife (I refused to call her mother) had a less contentious relationship, they might have been able to cooperate against him but their union had proven the doom of both House Mass and House Plantagenet’s ambitions. Quite contrary to my grandfather’s desires, I was sure.