For solar cycles, Felik had told himself that Selek hadn't been thinking straight. He'd been afflicted by neuroticism, self-pity, and an unwillingness to admit his own mistakes. Still, sometimes, he'd get deeply annoyed by his brother and wonder whether Selek had always been so toxic deep down or if it was only from the neural virus.
"To be honest, I hoped it would be longer before we had another family funeral," Selek said, his eyes dimming.
Felik should’ve felt worse about the death of their brother, Zelf. But it had happened when he was so young. And given his subsequent abduction, Zelf’s death had almost become an afterthought in his life.
"If I were the Chief Philosopher..."
"You're not. You're the new Envoy. Congrats, by the way."
"Thanks." Felik's gaze dropped. "It's strange. When we were younger, I thought that you, me, our brothers, that we'd be able to have more of an impact, you know? Now, though..." It felt like his hopes of ever living up to his potential were at the edge of the universe.
Selek shrugged. "Political power is like energy. You can't create it, you can't destroy it. You can only alter it from one form to another." A kind way to soften the blow of how little he'd done to prevent repeats of tragic events like Zelf's death and their abduction, despite his hopes.
Felik barked a laugh. Only Selek could make him laugh at something so dark. "That's the truth. Maybe you should be my Envoy protocol for a sol."
"I only have time here for the funeral," Selek said ruefully.
They lapsed into small talk. Felik considered it a success given that he and Selek had once been at each other's throats. If their conversations stayed this light, they might be able to convince themselves that everything in their past had just been a psi.hacking hallucination.
When he met Brody again a few minutes later, the boy was crying.
"It'll get easier," Felik said. "Everything always gets easier after a funeral. That's why we have them."
Brody cast his head from side to side, his voice small and distorted by his sobs. "They were saying things about him."
"About the StarMaster? Who? Who was saying them?"
"Sapients on the InfiNet. The scholar realms."
Shit. Automated safeguards were supposed to prevent children from viewing distressing material.
"Who turned off your safeguards?" he said, hoping this didn’t require him to run through the list of everyone Brody had interacted with.
"Does it matter? I just want to know if Arteyos really betrayed Astro Phoenix."
"No, none of those things are true." Felik met his red-eyed gaze.
"How can you be sure?"
Of course, he was aware that members of the Union Omega might've betrayed Phoenix to put a stop to the extremely potent utopian ideas he'd spread as a Chief Philosopher and Chief Engineer. "Our father wasn't like that. He was a good sapient." Felik wasn't about to admit that he suspected some of the rumors he'd heard to be true. When Brody became a starkeeper he'd be in for a rude awakening. But that was for then.
The boy continued sobbing, hugging him.
"It's okay," Felik said, genuinely surprised by his brother's crying. He wished there was a way to communicate to Brody that Arteyos's death was not the worst thing. That at his age, he'd been subjected to pseudo-torturous sims by the now fragmented Darwinist network.
"Will it be, though?"
"Yes. It is and it will be."
Felik arched an eyebrow as the woman knelt beside Brody. Instinctively, the boy turned to seek comfort from her. She placed a hand under his chin. "You should be on your weekly outing today. Instead, you're attending your progenitor's funeral. When was the last time you spoke with him?"
"I don't think I ever did speak with him."
"Then you probably never got to see his flagship up close."
Brody shook his head. The woman looked intently at Felik.
"Why don't I take you aboard sometime?" he said.
"You're serious? That would be awesome!" Like that his tears seemed to fade. Minerva winked at Felik and walked away. Brody waved to her and nudged his brother with his fist. "Todzilmar messaged me. Can I hang out with him?"
"Go for it," Felik said and watched him hurry off in the opposite direction of Minerva. Turning around, "Hey, wait up," he said, and she slowed down. "How did you know that would work?"
"Don't you find it funny that he chose to accompany you to the funeral after you received the Nassatar?"
"But how would he have known?"
"Word travels pretty fast with ansible."
Felik frowned at the implications. "Someone's been letting him see bad stuff on the InfiNet."
Minerva folded her arms over her chest. "Or he never actually found it that distressing in the first place."
"He was faking his crying?"
"Hoping you'd let him see the Nassatar. Kids will do that. Especially kids who plan on becoming politicians."
Felik angled his head. "Do you work with children a lot?"
The woman stepped a foot closer to him. "No, but I'm good at seeing things others don't."
"You're a protocol?"
"Right you are. If I may offer you some advice, you might want to get a personal protocol now that you've got a ship that everyone wants."
"Isn't that a little self-serving of you?"
"Yes, it is. Imagine if I were serving you."
It had crossed his mind to hire a protocol service. His old boss had a personal one, separate from the one she used as an Envoy. At worst, it couldn't hurt to inquire about Minerva's pricing.
A notification appeared in his feed. The Refutation was beginning. Once the orators gave their views on a dead sapient's life, its ghost was allowed to offer its own response and views.
A minute later, Arteyos appeared as he often did as a StarMaster. In his thirties, wearing a cross between a space marine power suit and a dark blue gold-embroidered greatcoat covered by a brown leather cape. His avatars dominated the platforms in the expansive chamber, popping up everywhere like infiltrators.
"I come to you now not as your StarMaster, but as a shadow of Arteyos Ullon pieced together by archival data, predictive algorithms, and neural maps. Theoretically, given that my genes are alive and well inside my scions, it is possible to create a sapient clone by implanting my persona and memories in one of them. But, regretfully, I didn't make that part of the protocol when I started the Union Omega. No one ever expects to have their mind wiped out so completely when they become the most powerful sapient in the universe."
That earned the ghost a round of laughs from the New Terrans there. The ghost gazed into the distance, crossing his arms and slipping his hands underneath his armpits. "You live and you learn. Then you die and others judge you. In this case, the orators have given their views on my life. I stand by most of the things I did. Not that I can actually stand anymore."
The StarMaster pressed his palms together. More in a mock pleading way than in prayer.
"I only have two things to say. First, as I think about my genes inside my scions, it occurred to me how stupid it was to let myself get cloned rather than making those clones the more traditional way."
Among the New Terrans, there was uncomfortable laughter. This was the part where the ghost was supposed to be earnest. Serious. Not making sex jokes.
"Secondly, as I look ahead to the future of the Union Omega, I believe that there is a clear path for the optimal outcome. We must all trust in Megas to be the new StarMaster."
Chapter 21
FELIK
"The garden and pond are cool, but you could've done more," Brody said, sitting under the oak tree on the Nassatar's command sphere, cleaning out a bag of hot chili pepper chips. "This one
streamer makes his command chamber look like a castle. And this other guy decorated his like a palace."
"I did warn you it wasn't going to be that exciting," Felik said.
"Yeah, but when someone says that they never actually mean it."
"Sometimes they do."
"Come on, Brody. It's time you went back to the Scion Mother," Minerva said. A second later, the two of them disappeared from the sphere.
"Entrusting a powerful scion's safety to some protocol you met hours ago. Good judgment skills," Juliard said.
"The thing about gambling is being efficient. Taking the biggest risks you can without losing. This doesn't feel too risky," Felik said.
"Not that you'll listen, but as your XO, it's my duty to ask: did it occur to you this woman is only offering her services in order to gain access to this ship?"
"So now you are my XO, huh?"
"Someone has to inject some common sense into you. You don't leave a child with just anyone."
She seemed unusually invested in Brody's well-being. Maybe that was her maternal instinct.
"Look. Don't worry. I cleared the woman with my Envoy protocol. Besides, Imperial Infantry are monitoring Brody's whereabouts. And everyone wanted my ship, right? I needed something to make sapients not want it. Now they know someone's already got their claws in me, so to speak."
Juliard shook her head. "Oh, I see. You want someone to manipulate you? You could've asked."
"Not someone to manipulate me. Someone to make others think I'm already being manipulated. The distinction matters."
More than that, he wanted to know who had sent her. Anonymity was part of the deal though. He had his guesses, and he was fairly certain he could trust that she came from an ally.
"Please tell me that you haven't signed anything yet."
"No, but I will."
"Well, if they decide they want to take this ship, you better give me your living frame."
Felik laughed. "I can find you an old starscooter to uplink into if you want."
"While we're on the subject," Juliard interjected with a sneer to indicate she didn't want to get chummy enough to make each other laugh, "what access to this ship are you expecting to give the babysitter?"
"She won't see or know anything I won't already. But apparently, there isn't anything to know, is there?" Felik said, looking at her and Ilder's avatars lying on the grass surface of the flagship's command sphere.
"I've accessed every file, every routine, every protocol. No hidden messages detected," Ilder said dully.
A sigh escaped Juliard. "And if she asks to use a third party resource to analyze the ship?"
"Then it means there is something hidden here." He looked to Ilder. "Something you need to find for me."
"I only have so many diagnostics, but if it's redundancies you want, it's redundancies you'll get."
Felik suspected that Xerix had installed a program in Ilder to prevent him from revealing anything useful he found. Or at least one to inform on him.
Deep lines of concern etched in her face, Juliard strode over to him and locked eyes. "Is this about what happened at the funeral ceremony?"
"Oberon has called a session for the Watchers network. And the rumors are that it's not about maintaining peace," Felik said.
"I'm sure Oberon hates the idea of war," she said sarcastically.
"Peace is like a hologram. When you try to embrace it, you discover it's not real."
"Huh?"
"That's what Nuraz, an Anunnaki, said."
"Is there any science behind that or is it just its opinion?" Juliard said.
Felik shrugged. "He's an Anunnaki. They created mankind. Their wisdom's gotta count for something."
"Many species would say creating us means they've got no wisdom."
"Species that are less advanced than the Anunnaki."
"Maybe you should've been raised with the Anunnaki. You'd make a good contactee for them."
"Yeah, too bad I was raised by the Telchines."
He said it sarcastically, but he could just as easily have meant every word of it. The Telchines were fine. The problem was their security vulnerabilities. That's why the Darwinist network was able to abduct him.
An alert popped up on Felik's feed. Oberon was moving up the assembly. It would be in ten minutes. And he wanted everyone who attended to affirm themselves as official Watchers members.
He didn't consider himself a Watchers member in the way Oberon thought, but he was working with them a lot, so it made sense. He accepted the request to join the network.
With ten minutes to spare, Felik pulled up his favorite food app from the Hub and bought an AR quesadilla. Sometimes he ate when he got nervous, even if the food only tricked his mind into thinking it was real.
He tore off a piece, the steam's scent of cheese and spices hugging his nose. Then his uncle requested him in a construct. He accepted, bringing his quesadilla with him into the command chamber of one of his uncle's ships. His uncle had given it a no-nonsense design, resembling the bridge of a ship from a century earlier, dominated by dark gray metals, halogen lights, and shiny blue screens.
Hayland glanced at his quesadilla. "I wanted to warn you about this session."
"What's up?"
"You haven't attended one of these before. It's very important that you don't interrupt any of the talking."
"Will they downgrade my karma or something?"
"Let me put it this way. You may have the Nassatar now, but this is where they'll decide if you get to actually keep it."
"So I should keep my head low. Got it." He didn't mean to take the warning lightly, but he wasn't planning to rock the boat anyways. Still, the idea that the higher order members of the Watchers network held so much power over him acted like a poison to his sense of optimism.
"And lose the food."
Felik nodded as his uncle closed the construct. He finished his quesadilla with a couple minutes before the session began, but figured he'd get there early to be safe.
Accepting Oberon's invitation, he materialized inside a chamber full of hundreds of floating seed-like pods that ringed a single disk. Felik couldn't help comparing it to the design of the gladiatorial stadium sims he enjoyed.
They were organized by network rank, so Oberon's pod rested closest to the center disk, surrounded by his top allies—his Anunnaki overseer Har'oosh, Hayland, Xerix, Chief Xenobiologist Iglione, and Chief Economist Reyquaza among them.
Felik's platform rested high in the nosebleed section, so to speak, only a few pods away from the blue-tinted glass that separated them and a yawning darkness alive with neon lights that danced and swam, looping through different visual effects. Blue and red streaks swirled around randomly, fading in and out among majestic blinking purple beacons and yellow bursts. Whether this outlandish display represented the interior of an alien vessel or the inside of a computer, Felik could not say.
He was about to parse an orientation node for new Watchers network members, when Oberon entered the chamber.
"I wrapped up a couple other meetings early, so let's commence," Oberon said sharply.
As he spoke a giant avatar of him appeared standing on the central disk. Then the Anunnaki avatar of Har'oosh replaced it. "I can vouch for that. And you know us Anunnaki. We insist on residing inside a single living frame."
Felik tried to find some humor in that but failed.
"If you were meeting with the Wenysh, it's best that you didn't rush," said Ceres, a Trion starkeeper. As with the others, a giant avatar of her projected over the disk. Up close, it struck him that the Trion form could've passed for a tripedal giant salamander, complete with a slimy coating and cartoonish smile. Assuming you factored in their three elongated arms, three frog-like legs, and the six bulging black eyes on their fat spade-shaped heads.
"As long as you accomplished a lot. The Wenysh do communicate at ten times the speed of the average Terran," barked Chief Economist of the Union Omega Reyquaza. On the disk, the Phaetonia
n's translucent avatar resembled ancient depictions of a Valkyrie, except androgynous with golden and greenish-yellow armor. Instead of wings, a like-colored mist flowed around it.
Felik wondered if all sessions were full of this much pointless banter. He was beginning to tune out, when Oberon got serious.
"You would all be pleased with the progress I've made," his brother said with a broad smile, glancing around the chamber. "For all the new sapients joining us, I welcome you to my network. You'll find that it will expedite future assemblies."
"No need to thank them. I'm sure they're all excited just to be admitted," Steeger muttered, only her wrinkled face appearing over the disk to match her volume. How many other newbies were attending? Felik knew there had been more than a few shake-ups in Union Omega network positions, though his ascendance was the biggest.
Oberon's holodisplay face hardened. "To all of you here, all those faithful to Arteyos's wishes for the Union Omega, know that we have been hacked. Investigations of the funeral ceremony show that someone used psionic capabilities to corrupt the data of the former StarMaster's posthumous avatar. We haven't accurately determined the hacker, but we all know the likeliest network behind it."
"Yes, we all know and yet to accuse Megas's forces directly would only escalate the tensions between you," Ceres said.
"Maybe that's not such a bad thing," Steeger said, arching an eyebrow.
"Perhaps it would be wise to silence your contactee, Blemu," Reyquaza said, addressing Steeger's Anunnaki overseer. On that, the Anunnaki remained silent.
"Don't forget, it was my unit that saved the Sakrah Galaxy," Steeger said smugly, referring to a galaxy the Phaetonians believed was sacred. Felik couldn't help but wish for her to make a fool of herself.
Xerix put a stop to that wish by speaking. "While I admire the Green Devil's tenacity, we can't forget our priority. A peaceful transition of power for the Union Omega."
"The Chief Navigator is correct," Oberon said, giving Steeger a cursory glance. "Once I am the new StarMaster, I'll reconfirm Tavod as Chief Justice. Any of Megas's transgressions can be dealt with legally. Until then, we can't play his game."
The StarMaster's Son Page 17
