They had two hours left before Vespel would notify the Starbleeders, but they were still twenty thousand karma bits short of the sixty thousand she figured she'd need to get to Zone 2080 with the equipment she wanted to bring.
They'd need to resume gaming to accomplish that. But the player pool had shrunk now to the elites of this game type and there was a better than average chance Raksamat or Sarvill would get matched with Jace.blek. They could change game types, but that would severely limit their potential winnings.
She clenched a fist. They were close. Too close to fail.
"Fuck that little Buejentoe," she muttered.
"I hope you're not referring to me," said a deep, slow voice.
She whipped around to find a three-foot tall Buejentoe in the capsule. The Buejentoe slightly resembled a headless samurai, arrayed with pockmarked plating that was rounded at the edges. In the chest area, a stone-like material framed a face that seemed made of a moist white fungus.
Sure enough, Kai's nexus tagged him as Jace.blek's avatar. Mods she'd committed to memory warned her to reevaluate her surroundings. A quick glance revealed hovering spear-like peripherals around her.
"I find that on this primitive planet, a visible threat means more than inherent knowledge of my godweb," Jace.blek said mildly.
Vespel lay unconscious, indicating he'd shattered her godweb with his own.
"What do you want?" Kai said without a hint of fear in her voice. If he wanted them dead, he would've done so already.
"One of the few difficult realities of possessing an intellect at my level is how many assumptions I can assume of others. How much have they already pieced together themselves, what do they expect, what can they figure out on their own based on the limited information I give," Jace.blek started. "I can assume their own intellect based on various factors, but even then there is a lot of room for error."
If you're so damn smart, why did your Engineer school ice you? Kai thought but didn't say.
"Oh, I know what you're thinking," Jace.blek said. "You're wondering why I got iced, right?"
"You're the one who said it, not me," Kai said, choosing her words carefully.
"I've been monitoring you for a while. And I think you would make an excellent member of my network."
She narrowed her eyes, thinking back to the Buejentoe nests they'd seen earlier—friends of his? "If you've monitored my activities, you know I've got my own plans."
Jace.blek's emotionless fungus face gave away nothing. He turned and walked away, his hovering peripherals following after him. "I know plenty. For example, a low-tech cyborg frame is not fitting for the heiress of the Hellion network."
Chapter 14
FELIK
Energy beams, explosions, violent spinning accretion disks, and thirty-two omega-class ships and their enemy, a single dreadnought-class vessel, blinked around a debris-filled space every second.
Using a common nexus filter, Felik perceived the strength of their godwebs visually as atomic auras. The atomic auras of the battle cruiser-class ships appeared as tiny suns, flaring and swirling with heat. The dreadnought ship resembled a tiny supernova.
After a few seconds thirty-one "suns" remained. Then thirty. Then twenty-five. Fourteen. Eight. None.
Only the dreadnought craft remained. From a distance, the crude five-hundred foot long mass might've been an asteroid. But up close, the finer details—ridges, segmentations, curves—became more apparent.
Felik rolled back the sim. In slow motion, the thirty-two ships' sun-like atomic auras melted away under the intensity of the supernova dreadnought ship's godweb. And one by one, the ships crumbled into dust or exploded in a white flash.
There weren't many ships with atomic auras that gave the visual effect of a supernova.
The thin, elderly form of the late StarMaster's protocol, Xerix, materialized in front of Felik in the middle of space as if standing on an invisible floor. "You've chosen a somewhat different sim than before, I see."
"Recognize it?" Felik inquired.
"I'd likely be suffering from a neural virus if my nexus didn't tag it as the Nassatar II. If I recall correctly, this was a showcase of Arteyos's ship."
"It was his, but now it's mine."
"Odd as you haven't ever set foot inside the vessel. One would imagine the owner would enter it at least once."
"That's where you come in." Felik held out the data node from Karina.
Xerix tucked a shriveled finger beneath his chin. "Your aunt is a bold woman, informing you of your inheritance as if it were her gift to you. And she has a bad habit of thinking she knows what's best for everyone in the universe."
Felik thought back to the compiler logs his aunt gave him.
The karma pylon compiler logs had shown no abnormalities. Once Oberon had reached adulthood and upgraded his nexus with the proper political mods, the karma pylons routinely showed him as the favored successor to the StarMaster should he ever truly die.
It wasn't until a solar cycle ago that Megas even showed up in the compiler logs. That's when he had declared an intent to fill their father's shoes if something should happen. Ever since, he'd grown more and more popular. Now the leader per the compiler logs fluctuated daily between Megas and Oberon.
Felik couldn't help seeing Megas's declaration as a possible trigger to the StarMaster's demise. But he wasn't here to investigate the obvious suspects. Every work loop, news feeds analyzed the possibilities of either Megas or Oberon having murdered their own father for the obvious reason of obtaining absolute power for themselves.
"I don't care about anyone's bad habits. I only want what's mine."
A sigh escaped the Chief Navigator. "A child wants. It will consume without much discretion. Does its caretaker simply give, give, give? As Chief Navigator, I advise high-ranking members of the Union Omega in ways that I think will help them best. I steer the empire in ways that serve its best interests. That doesn't always please everyone."
"What would be the reasons for displeasing me?" Felik asked, delicately selecting his words.
"Safety is our biggest priority. No one knows why the StarMaster left you his prized ship. Let alone why he died. It could easily be a trap. A Trojan Horse even. And then there's the potential political fallout. The other scions would undoubtedly be jealous. You'd make many new enemies. Think of all the attention you'd receive with your new ship. You would be a target. At risk, the same as..."
The same as he'd been as a child. He gave a nod that carried more meaning than it normally would.
Those things were true and they could be the reasons Xerix had delayed him from receiving a notification of his inheritance. Yet Felik doubted that they were.
"I take it that satisfies your request?" Xerix asked.
Felik reached out and placed his hand over his wrist. "Tell me one thing. Did someone plan for me to die at that MARINE base?"
Xerix's stare gave away nothing, and he pulled his wrist loose. "You should be careful when you ask that. It may be misconstrued as an accusation."
"That's not an answer."
Xerix shrugged. "No. I would have informed you if there had been a planned attempt on your life. All we know is that a MARINE lost his mind and tried to terminate you during a lockdown drill."
"I don't believe you."
Xerix gave a polite smile, too brief to be genuine. "And you're allowed not to. But I have other business I must attend to."
"I have a legal right to request acquisition of my new ship," Felik said. "There's no point in me owning it if the request will get stuck in a bureaucratic infinite loop, though. Might be worth more to me selling it. That creates the potential problem of selling it to the wrong sapient, of course. Someone who might make more trouble than me. Maybe someone in the wrong network."
Xerix walked off into space. "That would seem to defeat the point. Even with your neural virus, you can apprecia
te that your ship is invaluable. Selling it would be an incredibly poor decision. It might even cause sapients to downgrade your karma. You'd lose much of the money you received by selling it."
Felik crossed his arms over his chest. He was fairly certain Landi would jump at the chance to leak this. Not that Telchine jumped. "Suppose someone leaked news that I'm the rightful owner of the Nassatar. That would seem to defeat the point of you keeping it safe for me," he said quietly.
That stopped Xerix in his tracks. He sighed and pivoted to face him, licking chapped lips. "The situation is very delicate right now," he said, sounding as old and tired as he looked. "Soon the karma pylon protocols will determine whether Oberon or Megas should fill the massive power vacuum left by Arteyos. When it is filled, the gravity of the entire universe will shift with it. Your little ship will be pulled along one way or the other. Until then, however, the ship is an advantage to whichever side can convince its owner to join them. I do not know that the attempt on your life was purposeful, but if it were, I doubt acquiring this ship would narrow things down."
"I guess that's where our opinions differ."
Xerix snorted. "Opinions. In Old Terran cultures, they believed everyone had the right to one. Some even believed all opinions were equal. What are opinions but the limits of our experiences and knowledge and our capacity to understand and analyze them?"
"In other words, you think I'm an idiot."
Not taking the bait, Xerix furrowed his brow. "I hear you're struggling to decide on a custom color for this ship's mecha frame. Perhaps you should choose your favorite Meme Wars mote and go with that color."
Felik's eyes flickered in anger, and he tried to hide his reaction to Xerix's blatant attempt to rattle him. Leave it to Xerix to use such an innocent and innocuous search he'd made earlier on mecha colors to make sure he knew that his smallest act was being watched.
In the early solar cycles of the Union Omega, the bloody Cooper Rebellion had supposedly forced the StarMaster and starkeepers to cave in and sign off on privacy pacts that would abolish using nexuses or psionic methods to mind-read Union Omega citizens. But Landi had shown him that the Union Omega exploited a loophole, hiring out third party networks to "gather information" with no oversight.
"And what else have you been hearing?"
"Many things," Xerix said. "For instance, I know you were at Nalcom #84914-Encapsula. An unusual jaunt for the Envoy. Care to explain what took you there? Your relations with Dr. Ostek ended some time ago."
Of course Xerix must've known that's where he received the compiler logs. He only wanted to draw this out.
"I thought you were the StarMaster's advisor, not the scion babysitter."
"Wouldn't you prefer a babysitter to an adversary?"
"And what's that supposed to mean?"
"As I said, the Nassatar provides an advantage to whichever side can convince its owner to join them. If that owner chose a side and expressed that in a public manner, it might show that he was capable of handling such a ship. With a minor condition or two."
"How would that owner show such loyalty, exactly?"
Xerix hummed with satisfaction as if he'd longed to answer this for ages. "The official funerals for your progenitor will occur in a few sols. There are two major ones. One hosted by Oberon and the Watchers network, another hosted by Megas and our friends the Saganerio network. Attendance is mutually exclusive. It would mean a lot if the Envoy decided the Guardian Mind would attend the funeral hosted by the right network."
Looks like we're not too different. Xerix had gambled everything on the chances that Oberon would be the new StarMaster.
Felik nodded. "As the Envoy of this quadrant's Guardian Mind, I will attend the funeral hosted by Oberon."
Xerix extended a hand and they shook. "You're becoming quite the negotiator."
He said it with enough respect that Felik couldn't tell if he was being sarcastic or not, so he figured he'd take it at face value. "Then it's a deal?"
"Call it an agreement."
Xerix evaporated. Felik seized the moment to regain his composure. For many that meant a dreamer or entertainment sim. However, sometimes he just enjoyed viewing the scholar realms and reading people's thought bubbles on hot topics. Per his feed, Landi had messaged him minutes earlier about a very juicy leak from the Free Minds. He logged on to the news scholar realm to parse the data node.
If the leak was accurate, Oberon had been selling sapients' cores. He was farming their brains like cattle just like Megas claimed.
Chapter 15
FELIK
He boarded his new flagship within the hour.
It had been resting at a Lagrange point roughly seventy million kilometers from the Nisto Cloud, the Union Omega's capitol hub of Dyson spheres, Alderson disks, space stations, and warships.
A dozen warships had guarded the Nassatar, each stationed a couple hundred thousand kilometers away, manned directly by human consciousnesses. They were too far to see, of course, but his spot on the bridge, really a command sphere, offered a complete scene of the surrounding cosmos. The initial swimming sensation from floating in space had passed, and a distant majestic purple and cream nebula offered a fitting view for such a high-class command ship.
Using a mixture of utility fog, holograms, and sensory boosters, he'd configured the command sphere's surface to appear as neatly-trimmed grass, decorated with an oak tree, a pond with circulating water, and a few small gardens. The combination of gurgling water and occasional breezes, carrying the cool smell of the grass, convinced him that he owned his own little planetoid oasis.
Felik and a busty brunette he'd invited aboard marveled at the serenity of it. She squeezed his hand. "Your ship is so damn sexy!"
"Not as sexy as you," Felik leered.
The glow of a semi-transparent hologram of a distant sun highlighted her cheekbones as she grinned. "What are you going to do with it?"
He felt like he could spend his entire work loop standing there, meditating on the beauty of the cosmic dust beyond. "Oh, I don't know," he teased. "Maybe chow down on some noodles or tacos."
Right now, he had something better in mind, though.
"Oh, should we order something off the Hub?" she asked.
"Only if you're on the menu," he said, dropping to his knees on the grass. Now that he was a captain, he figured he was entitled to a few lousy innuendos. And a little friendly pleasuring would be a great way to break in his new ship.
"Haven't you heard?" she whispered, lowering her pants down to her feet. "I'm today's special."
With that, she shoved his head into her crotch.
A few minutes later, he had her crying out in pleasure. "Don't stop, Felik! Don't you dare stop you—"
"Captain, your nexus is fully linked with my interface," reported Ilder, the ship.
He and the brunette froze. "What the fuck? You said your crew was offline."
"They were?" he said, but it sounded like a question.
"No, no. We're here," Ilder said.
"Maybe I should go," the brunette said.
Felik groaned and nodded. Yeah, Ilder's intrusion had killed the mood.
The last he saw of the girl was the alien glyph tattoo on her thigh as a warp-gate transported her off the ship.
He dressed himself, figuring it would be best to get introductions over with. He was super close to downgrading Xerix's karma. Xerix had said the crew he'd provided would be offline until Felik arrived and activated them.
The intrusion by Ilder notwithstanding, he should've enjoyed this moment. There were many sapients in the universe who would've given anything to possess this ship. It wasn't just the StarMaster's flagship. It was a symbol of power and the good graces of the now deceased Arteyos Ullon. And an extremely potent weapon.
Instead, he found himself feeling shameful. Paranoia was growing in his mind like a locini swarm. And it had nothing to do with Ilder seeing him naked with that girl.
He wouldn't even have this ship if th
at MARINE had successfully ended him at the base. He could only harbor suspicions about that. And because the StarMaster willed this to him, he reminded himself. But the StarMaster's will didn't matter if he had no one to carry it out for him.
He surveyed the profiles of his crew on his nexus. He quickly decided that his new crew could hardly be referred to as such. A crew supported a captain and inspired confidence in the ship's capabilities. This crew inspired concern. Lots of concern.
He summoned Ilder, who would serve as the ship itself.
"Ilder Tammol, you served as a combat pilot in the Great Cosmic Wars. That's quite impressive," he said to a brown, puffy-faced man with a thin black crop of hair and small eyes. "I've always wanted to work with a veteran."
"Thank you, Captain. On a personal note, I assure you there will be no accidents or breaches of conduct on my end. Despite what you may have parsed in my file, I am a fully adequate sapient. I can promise complete obedience for whatever order you give me."
"Yeah, that sounds great," Felik said, knowing that Ilder also suffered from a neural virus. One he'd obtained on the InfiNet, searching for an unregistered ship to purchase. Unregistered because he'd planned to use the ship for a violent bombing run on innocents. Thankfully a hacker infected him with the virus instead. After, nexus specialists had repaired him as much as they could, altering the virus to suppress his violent desires.
Felik had little doubt that despite what he said, Ilder would inform Xerix of anything significant he did or said.
Going by the standard crew layout, there was the captain, the ship mind, and the XO.
Felik's XO showed up in her avatar. A woman in her thirties with red hair and tired-looking eyes.
"And that makes you Juliard."
"That makes me Juliard," she said, clearly injecting as much enthusiasm as possible into a fake smile.
He forced his own smile. "Great. Welcome aboard. Well, technically, you were already here, so welcome out."
Ilder's core had been inserted into the ship by Xerix, but Juliard's core had existed as a part of it prior to Felik obtaining it. She'd been asleep—offline—for the last three decades.
The StarMaster's Son Page 11
