The StarMaster's Son

by Gibson Morales

  Security reports suggested a low risk of more attacks against Felik. And if anyone attacked him, his godweb would handle itself a lot better outside of a MARINE base, where it couldn't get locked down so easily. Managing to keep this trip a secret, however, concerned him.

  The Guardian Templar had made it clear—his investigation was a private job. Its value was its secrecy. If too many learned of it, the deal was off.

  So long as no one leaked this trip to the public, he didn't expect any problems.

  Approximately four minutes later, he was cleared for the jump.

  His nexus linked with the station's interface, and a counter showed up on his HUD. Seconds later, he materialized on a small crystal pad inside Nalcom #84914-Encapsula. Since it was a human station, gravity was set at the Terran standard. It didn't make a difference to his synthetic body frame. Protean models were designed to handle a variety of gravitational and climate settings without the adjustment lag of lower tier frame models.

  A welcome message displayed on his feed, and a hatch opened allowing him into one of the station's primary corridors. He floated through the null gravity environment and grabbed one of the wall grips that automatically ran through the old-fashioned research station.

  "I want to see Dr. Ostek," he said.

  The grip tugged him through the corridor, hatches opening and closing automatically for him. He didn't pass any other people, just a single small maintenance drone running inspections on the walls.

  A minute later he stopped in front of a sealed chamber that his nexus tagged as Dr. Ostek's work capsule. He released the grip and palmed the wall, forming an opening for himself.

  Dr. Ostek's capsule was a compact spherical chamber with just enough room for the two of them. Presently, the woman was seated in an elaborate, sleek black console unit.

  She sighed and looked up at him. Working on high level research had afforded her an attractive living frame—extremely smooth skin, high cheekbones, a face that had that glow.

  "So now that you're the Envoy, you think you can drop in wherever you like unannounced?"

  "Pretty much," he said nonchalantly.

  "I hope you're not just here to gloat."

  He folded his arms across his chest. "Now why would I do that? Because you said I would never amount to anything? Because you said my gambling habits would be my undoing?"

  "So I was half-wrong."

  "Only half?"

  "For all we know your gambling habits might still be your undoing. What's your debt running at nowadays?"

  "Something like minus eight thousand bits."

  Dr. Ostek gave a brief hum that suggested minor surprise. "You've learned to lie better since I last saw you."

  "I might've downloaded a lying package or two to tweak my microexpressions."

  "Too bad for you I've downloaded a lie detection mod. What's your real debt?"

  "Maybe you were half-right," Felik conceded. "Listen Ilsa, I know you'd love nothing more than to spend the sol reminiscing, but I have a special request."

  "I'm monitoring three different experiments right now on as many frames. Who says I've got the time to help you?"

  "I need access to the compiler logs for StarMaster protocols."

  "Why not ask me for all my access codes? I know you're the Envoy, but that's some high-level data. I doubt I could even get you most of it."

  He arched an eyebrow because she worked for the joint Terran-Phaetonian research team. The Phaetonians had engineered the compilers that analyzed the will, the desires, the suggestions—the protocols, in essence—of the karma pylons.

  Specifically, Ilsa ran tests on protocols relating to the Union Omega's leadership and rule. That's how they'd met originally—she'd eagerly wanted to run an experiment on one of the more powerful scions. He told her he could make that happen. Ultimately, it was a lie.

  "How 'bout just one then?"

  She stared at him with a mixture of yearning and puzzlement. "Is that really you?"

  "It's me in the flesh, so to speak."

  "Felik, why'd you come all this way? You could've messaged me or sent an avatar."

  He could have done those things, but he wanted to parse the compiler logs locally. Even nowadays, some things were more secure in person. It reduced the chance of any sort of manipulation of the compiler logs beforehand anyway.

  "Envoy duties," he shrugged.

  "I'll request permission. That's all," she said.

  His chin fell. It was as good as outright denying him.

  As they waited, Ilsa looked him over.

  "Have you made your decision about the funeral yet?" As the Envoy Guardian, it was his decision as to which of the StarMaster's funerals to attend. The one to be hosted by Megas or the one to be hosted by Oberon. He only hoped his choice was the right one. Because it was like Landi said—whoever became the new StarMaster would remember who had supported him before.

  "I'm getting there."

  Ilsa tilted her head to the side. "Hmm. Your request has been accepted..."

  "What do you know," he smiled. If only he had made a bet of it.

  "Don't mistake that for kindness," said a woman standing in the doorway.

  "That might be hard," Felik said to his aunt and Chief Architect of the Union Omega, Karina Ullon. He wasn't surprised to find her here, considering her role was to oversee infrastructure, utility fog maintenance, and things of that nature. "As a Guardian, I was trained to see the positive in all gestures. Helped avoid starting any conflicts with an alien species."

  "You haven't overwritten your old modules then?" Karina said, though she likely knew his neural virus prevented him from using mods. "A discerning Envoy is better than a gentle one."

  "Oh, I understand this was only done as a favor because I'm the new Envoy. The Phaetonians can be surprisingly human at times with their agendas."

  "Speaking of agendas, what's yours? Why does the Envoy want to see the StarMaster compiler logs?"

  Felik gave an exaggerated hum. "Maybe I shouldn't be thanking the Phaetonians. Maybe you convinced them to let me."

  Karina looked unfazed. "Because I'm asking you an obvious question? Reviewing the compiler logs is way outside of the Envoy's normal jurisdiction."

  "If it's a legal issue, I should be speaking with Tavod's mind," he said, referring to the department of the Union Omega's Chief Justice.

  Karina shook her head almost imperceptibly. "You and I are family and we should be mourning the loss of my brother, not squabbling. Let me give you a little piece of aunty advice. A few weeks ago, most life on a Coalition planet was wiped out.

  "Relatively few sapients heard about it, but that didn't make it any less of a reality for those affected. One was a MARINE, the daughter of two Coalition citizens dead in the incident. Her name was Jennisa. She went digging for secrets she shouldn't have. Now, she is gone. Don't be like her. Whatever you're up to, cover your damn tracks better."

  He shifted his weight from foot to foot, injecting all the bravado he could into his words. "Was that story supposed to scare me?"

  "If it didn't, your neural virus has made you even more foolish than they say."

  Dr. Ostek's forehead creased. "Karina, that's uncalled—"

  "How many times has that mouth of yours slurped on his cock?" Karina said. "Now that was uncalled for."

  Felik gritted his teeth. "It's because of my neural virus that I'm not afraid."

  As a child, he'd been abducted and sustained a sort of torture at the hands of the Darwinist network. Very little could compare to the horrors of that. It was only thanks to special procedures that he'd managed to forego any PTSD. Yet the continued existence of such networks loomed in the back of his nexus. Networks he hoped to shut down as the Chief Philosopher.

  Karina cast her head back and forth with a dismissive smile that he'd seen many times on the face of her other nephew, Megas. "There's no need to bluff in front of me. By now you've spoken with the Guardian Templar and undergone whatever ritual it chos
e for you. That ritual has had many effects on sapients. Making them fearless is not one of those. Now tell me, what are you up to?"

  He scratched his head awkwardly. Karina breathed out with a bemused look. "I'm aware that you still collect Meme Wars motes, and I know the Telchine who serves as your source. If I wanted to spread compromising information about you, I would have already."

  "The Guardian Templar wants me to investigate your brother's death. If I don't, it said we'll see an interbleeding."

  "There it is. I thought you'd take longer to crack. That was far too easy. I'll bet you made that word up all by yourself, didn't you? You're lucky I don't care to manipulate you. Imagine if I did."

  Felik stiffened, his expression darkening. "I'm not here to entertain you. I don't need your help or your criticisms."

  "And where would you be without your uncle's help?"

  "I'm not the child I was."

  "Aren't you? There used to be a time when we humans had no choice but to experience our teenage years." Upon establishment of the Karma Nebula Pact, core designers had configured the New Terran mind to skip past the teenage development phase since adults had agreed it would work out better for everyone. "They say boys can be mean, but you can't imagine how conniving and mean girls can be. If it weren't for my years as a teenager, I never would've been the politician I am today. Now you can't really believe that after a decade working as a menial Guardian ambassador, you're suddenly fit to be the Envoy. Let alone whatever title they promised you."

  A kick to the groin would've felt better. "I survived my ritual."

  "You won't survive much longer unless you apply some critical thinking to the matter. You were given a fancy new job and a prestigious mission. Why? In the greater scheme of things, you're not so important. Nor am I. But what else does tasking you with these things achieve?"

  "I don't know."

  "Yes, you do."

  The truth he didn't want to face was staring at him. His gaze fell as it all clicked. "It keeps me occupied."

  Despite her claims of not manipulating him, she clearly was. At least he was aware of it, though. Awareness of that was a useful tool he'd keep moving forward.

  Karina clapped. "Yes. Yes, it does. You see, when powerful men die, they leave behind legacies to inherit."

  She held out a data node. He blinked at her. She rolled her eyes. "Parse it."

  Once he did, he no longer cared whether she was manipulating him or genuinely trying to help him. Because he now possessed a tool more powerful than any he'd ever known.

  Chapter 13

  KAI

  The frigate-class vessel cruised through caverns that spanned hundreds of feet in diameter, carried solely by its inertial force. Occasionally its engines would kick in to alter its trajectory away from a jutting stalagmite or bending column. Countless gold nuggets littered the entire place. The cavern formations stretched for thousands of miles, Raksamat's ship, Palos, maneuvering with the measured, cool grace of the skilled veteran whose mind inhabited it.

  Passing through an indigo cloud of sapient fog, his ship would resemble just another of the millions of rocks drifting through the caverns. Technically, they weren't rocks, but solidified psionic membranes that the moon-sized entity had once used. Others were metallic stones that could create gravitational-magnetic distortions with proper neural impulses. Raksamat likely wouldn't descend deeper into the corpse, but if he did he would discover resource after resource.

  No one could truly call the Elder One dead, of course. If he parked his ship and monitored the interior for a few sols, he'd see that the rocks weren't floating purely by the flow of gravity. Little by little, they were merging. Microbes that formed the organic tissue of the Elder One were regrowing. A few more solar cycles and they would be visible to the naked eye.

  Even now, somewhere in this "moon" there were clusters of psionic membranes that still contained the energy to destroy Raksamat's ship. Worse, his enemy was hunting him. Beyond the surface of the Elder One's ruined body, they'd battled. Palos' ship body sustained the most damage, and he'd had no choice but to seek shelter within.

  Palos and the enemy ship were the last remaining of two squadrons. The skirmishes had been long and taxing, devouring hours. Kai imagined that Raksamat hated his pursuer a little. She did and she wasn't even playing. They needed this win. Or another if he lost. Either way, this game sim had consumed too much time.

  Raksamat wandered through the maze of the Elder One's corpse for another half hour. Without referring to the spectator mapping, Kai wouldn't have been able to tell if he was getting anywhere new or not. All the caverns were variations on the same theme.

  A warning klaxon informed the players that the game sim was activating its version of sudden death. Since Raksamat and his enemy were stuck in the corpse with little chance of catching each other, the entire thing would begin to break apart, destroying random chunks of itself and anything inside them.

  The match was coming down to luck. Fortunately, Raksamat lucked out this time.

  The enemy ship got crushed in an imploding piece of the corpse. Eight thousand new karma bits were added to Kai's ID. To the Union Omega's credit, inflation hadn't affected the value of karma bits over the last four decades.

  Ten hours after the Starbleeders' ultimatum to Vespel, she had invested almost half of their victory rewards in a specialized mod for Raksamat and Sarvill to enhance their learning capabilities, so that they'd get better each game at a faster rate than normal. It seemed to have paid off.

  The cosmic battlefield shifted to a debris field meant to represent the previous battlefield solar cycles later. The game sim's format had shifted considerably with less realism and more of a focus on large-scale control.

  Raksamat's fleet had grown from one surviving ship in the previous entry as well thanks to the economic decisions he'd made. In this game, not only did a player control a fleet, but also the military institution of their chosen race. Budgeting, research, leadership, combat. All of that determined the winner.

  The karma bits at stake were double that of the previous match. Good. If they could win this one, they'd be slightly ahead of schedule to reach Kai's calculated goal.

  Raksamat's fleet picked up signals of a neutral force. Quickly, he launched two scouting vessels. Within minutes, the small ships were surrounded by a larger force of sixty-four destroyer-class warships. A trap, but how clever would depend on what they did next. Kai cursed when the warships didn't destroy Raksamat's scouts. That suggested they intended to interrogate the pilots. Only, they didn't.

  Instead, they messaged the scouts that they were a nomadic fleet, having escaped a dying planet. Additionally, a hostile alien force had damaged their communication and navigation abilities and killed their leaders, leaving them lost in every sense of the word.

  The scouting vessels relayed this news back to Raksamat's command ships, and he offered an alliance with the nomadic fleet. They accepted.

  Now what will you do? Kai wondered.

  The best strategy would be to locate the hostile alien force, which had to be his opponent, and strike now before they knew what was coming. The notion gave Kai pause. Something about this was deceptively simple. Game sims with prizes at this level were never so straightforward.

  To his credit, Raksamat tasked his in-game officers with secretly interrogating the nomadic fleet. They would wring out any of their dirty little secrets.

  Suddenly, the nomadic fleet got tagged as enemy player units.

  His opponent had been clever to try and play them off as helplessly lost in space. A risky yet bold maneuver, no doubt, and Raksamat's own paranoia had proven the decisive factor. Kai pulled up data on the Clorondite's opponent. Her breath caught in her throat.

  Jace.blek was a Buejentoe warlord of Burkos with a baseline intellect equal to a hypothetical G5 nexus. In other words, his memory, concern, reasoning, and problem-solving abilities were better than most current New Terrans running on a standard G4 nexus. And he'd bee
n iced from an Engineer institute back in the early sols of the Union Omega.

  Apparently, he was touchy about this—he'd murdered four sapients on Burkos over mentioning it on their vid streams. And two solar cycles ago, he'd killed a pair of gamers who tried to cheat against him. Of course, murder on Burkos in these instances was justified as honor-cleansing.

  Raksamat had no way of knowing Jace.blek was his opponent as the game censored that data. But if Raksamat beat him, Jace.blek would be able to find out who he was. Kai doubted he would take kindly to losing.

  She didn't really care if Jace.blek killed Raksamat, but if he died, she'd lose a valuable source of income. There was also the chance Jace.blek would target her given that Raksamat was only doing this on her orders and thanks to her advice.

  Normally, observers couldn't contact players regarding the match, but Kai had something else to tell him. Using an antique radio Vespel had constructed with utility fog, she could contact him without spreading her virus.

  "Concede the match now," she demanded. Yet as she said it, she realized this too, could piss off Jace.blek as a weak effort. Well, fuck me. She was caught between a supernova and a black hole.

  Raksamat responded.

  Better to give Jace.blek his karma bits.

  "Yeah, do you not understand basic fucking orders?" she radioed.

  On the holodisplay, the sim faded away and returned players and observers to a neutral lobby platform construct, the game's outcome tagged in everyone's nexus feed.

  At her command, Raksamat logged out before the spectators or Jace.blek could speak with him.

  Raksamat asked.

  "Look for yourself," she said, motioning to the holodisplay data on Jace.blek. "If you want to piss him off, I'd say be my guest, but I might get killed in the process."

 

  Kai glanced outside the capsule, where the Mistmen swirled about. Two or more mist beings would collide to become a single rush, the air howling with them. Then the newly formed entity would fly off.