The StarMaster's Son

by Gibson Morales

  "No, I mean he started taking all this medication. And sometimes abusing it."

  "And now he's dead and we're all alive, trying to figure out how to fill the power vacuum," Felik said.

  "He's dead because he went against his nature," she said.

  "You mean overthinking things?"

  "No. His power. It perverted him."

  Felik understood. No human mind was truly ready for control of the entire universe. The fact that he'd extracted the cores from things as sacred as the Dancing Sleedas spoke volumes to that.

  On the topic of overthinking, Felik couldn't understand why only the Guardian Templar had succumbed to the neural virus. Both of Juliard's scans revealed his own neural virus wouldn't threaten his crew or anyone he knew. It had only infected the Guardian Templar. Yet, he suspected Landi could've done much more damage if he'd wanted to.

  Soon he'd get the chance to ask Oberon. Felik belonged to him now. Unless he activated Megas's transfer device. Minerva had promised to look into some loophole, but he figured she was only being nice about that. They were both aware that breakers were not meant to be removed.

  Juliard suggested he choose the least crappy option. In this case, that meant accepting Oberon's offer to become Chief Philosopher of the Union Alpha. Assuming the Union Omega didn't destroy them for seceding, he'd ostensibly enjoy a life of prestige and purpose. As long as he didn't rock the boat. Would accepting such a future make him a coward? Oberon was still far worse, but Felik would be an enabler of evil nonetheless for ignoring his crimes.

  The alternative was to join the Saganerio network. He didn't belong with them. Someone always seemed to be the butt of their jokes, and their conversations lacked nuance.

  The Guardian Templar may have believed in Oberon, but it had been right about the loss of subtlety.

  His options were too binary. Yet he didn't know where to find the middle ground. Maybe none existed.

  "What was her name?" he asked.

  "Who?"

  "Your daughter."

  "Rebecca. I probably would've called her Becca, though. Once she was old enough to understand the difference."

  "Any idea where we might start looking for her?" Felik didn't know when he would get the time to venture out and search for her daughter. Maybe accepting Oberon's offer would give him that time. It would be nice, he thought, if that were the only mission. Find a missing daughter. No scions, no battles, no threats of interstellar catastrophes. Like his hope of a neural virus cure and freedom from all debts, however, he could be sure it was a fleeting one.

  "I've already done all the archival searches. Officially, she doesn't exist."

  "It's a good thing I work for someone who deals with dark data then."

  Perhaps monitoring him through Ilder, Xerix invited him to a construct on cue. After accepting, his consciousness was whisked away to the crude, pockmarked surface of a rock floating in space barely big enough for the both of them.

  "Oberon thanks you for informing him of Landi. You did well to share your doubts. Even our teams didn't suspect your friend," Xerix said.

  Felik couldn't tell if he was being sarcastic or not. He found himself staring out at the Nisto Cloud, an endless span of Dyson spheres, orbital platforms, stations, asteroids, fleets, support units, and solar systems around them.

  From a hundred trillion klicks off, the Nisto Cloud resembled a magnificent nebula. Up close, relatively speaking, lights blinked, metallic surfaces glimmered, ships zipped around or docked, stations reformed as needed with the fluidity of giant gelatinous creatures thanks to their constitutions of smart dust.

  Everything here served a purpose. The Minds of Errukav wouldn't have made their final stand from the Nisto Cloud if it didn't. Even some of the planets were razed by glowing blue Dyson sphere-like structures that mined their internal cores for energy.

  "Landi may have altered my virus to infect the Guardian Templar, but how come it only targeted him?"

  Xerix shrugged. "We believe the Lumerians intended Landi to infect the Templar only as a warning. It shouldn't cause any more harm. Fortunately, we can use this loss to our advantage." His words were saturated with a sadistic pleasure.

  "How?"

  "The Guardian Templar's 'death' is catalyzing public sentiment against the Lumerians and anyone who supported them."

  It sickened Felik to think that Oberon would exploit the infection of his own ally, but it hardly surprised him. He looked from the dead, gray surface of the rock beneath them to a Dyson sphere.

  Technically it wasn't a sphere, so much as a swarm of thousands of energy-harnessing chrome blue panels hovering around a star. They surrounded it almost entirely except for thin spaces between them, creating a grid of countless geometric shapes outlined in a white-yellow color.

  Xerix noticed him looking and laughed. "Many sols ago, I thought this was quite a sight. Now, I've seen far too many impressive sights to feel anything. Currently, control of the Nisto Cloud is disputed from a technical standpoint. But it could be ours."

  "I don't care what your analysis says. The Saganerio network won't just let you take it," Felik said, though he knew the Watchers were already in the process of claiming a significant portion.

  Countless celestial bodies made up the Nisto Cloud. Even so, controlling it was like controlling all the vaults in a bank. Even though they were relatively close in proximity, they belonged to different owners. The Union Omega and the Union Alpha would each control roughly half.

  "Do you know what the first New Terrans called this cloud?"

  His nexus brought up the answer in a second. "The All-Damner Cluster," Felik said.

  "Because for a long time, Terran scientists believed the Minds of Errukav didn't plan to win, but merely take everyone out with them. In a way, they weren't wrong."

  Felik thought of the Big Crunch the Minds of Errukav had triggered.

  "Is that the Watchers network's plan? To take down Megas and those who remain in the Union Omega?"

  "Not if you can help."

  Felik tilted his head. "You don't have enough military power?"

  Xerix smiled, but his eyes waned. "That depends on what you consider military power. The Minds of Errukav housed their consciousness in this cloud. Many celestial bodies served as Matrioshka minds. Your father banned the usage of Matrioshka spheres and bio-code to avoid such a threat again. On the surface, all species agreed to dismantle those they had in existence."

  Felik fought back the urge to snort. If Landi was to be believed, the StarMaster had banned Matrioshka spheres on behalf of the Phaetonians. Many of them believed New Terrans were gaining too much technology too fast and wanted to curb the growth. Felik wondered how much of what Landi told him was true, though. He'd fed him a lot of information over the solar cycles.

  Hours earlier, Xerix had sent him a data node about the Telchine. Thanks to the Watchers network's teams, they knew Landi's real purposes of befriending Felik. Creating an enemy of the Union Omega from within. Just like the Darwinists, Landi's network recognized an opportunity to use one of the scions as a weapon against the Union Omega. In this case, Landi had intended to poison Felik's thoughts with lies and his core with packets of virus data.

  Felik had never expected the betrayal. Yet it was too insignificant to affect him any longer. Not with everything else. He didn't even care.

  "Only a fool would believe the Union Omega had stopped usage of Matrioshka spheres, of course," Xerix continued. "Let alone our enemies. Rather, the problem was that after the Great Cosmic Wars, we couldn't access the Matrioshka brains left behind by the Minds of Errukav."

  Maybe that was a message from the universe.

  "Arteyos wasn't so trusting to believe our enemies wouldn't be reconstructing their own Matrioshka brains. Your friend confirmed the Telchines' progress on converting a nebula's worth of celestial bodies into Matrioshka spheres. One that would rival this cloud."

  The Telchines were barely a Type IV race. Like the Anunnaki, they upgraded
their technology at a dramatically slow rate, preferring rather to make a technology flawless before they moved ahead. Historically, they had always served another species, whether it was the Lumerians, the Anunnaki, or New Terrans. Meaning that it was unlikely they were building the spheres for themselves. For a project so huge, they would've had a lot of help, too.

  "Why would the Telchines betray us?"

  "Because they never stopped serving the Lumerians. Not a million solar cycles ago, not now."

  A shadow passed over Felik's face as he came to terms with the revelation. The Lumerians, along with the Phaetonians and Wenysh were the most highly advanced Type IV species aside from New Terrans. They were major players in the universe, controlling their own entire quadrant, like the former. Given Wraith's uprising, the Guardian Templar's hacking, and what he knew of the Lumerians shaky membership in the Union Omega, he wasn't surprised that they were secretly preparing an arsenal of Matrioshka brains.

  "We are at war," he said, the Nassatar's name suddenly making sense to him. Maybe the StarMaster truly had intended him to attack the Lumerians on a whim. He didn't want to think about the ramifications of that, though.

  "Yes," Xerix said. "We always were. Ever since the end of the Great Cosmic Wars. The Phaetonians and Wenysh have been fighting the Lumerians for millions of solar cycles now. And as soon as we formed the Union Omega, we became part of that ancient war. The Master War."

  Felik felt a sinking sensation. Peace is like a hologram. When you try to embrace it, you discover it's not real. Nuraz had known. Disbelief surged in him like a supernova. "But there would have been reports. Leaks of battles." Space was unbelievably huge, but so was the reach of the Union Omega, its sensors, and its allies' sensors.

  "Funny thing about the Lumerians. They don't wage war in the same way as us. The archives were altered to suggest they fought bravely in the Great Cosmic War, but the truth is they acted mostly behind the scenes, supporting our hardware with their software. Their strategy for war is to passively weaken their enemy over thousands, even millions of solar cycles. They don't use standard fleets, they use misinformation, hacking, proxy armies, economic disruption, and political influence to sow internal division and decay."

  "Asymmetrical warfare," Felik said.

  "They've become very good at it over the millennia. In fact, they rarely have to worry about direct assaults against them because they can usually trick their enemies into fighting against themselves first."

  It dawned on Felik that that was exactly what was happening here. The Union Omega was splitting into two empires on the verge of war.

  "Then we're playing directly into their hands...or claws, aren't we?"

  "As I said, with your help, we can avoid falling to the same fate as so many of the Lumerians' enemies. Before we learned the Telchines were still loyal to the Lumerians, we tasked them with installing bio-code into the Nisto Cloud's celestial bodies in order to run new Matrioshka brains. The Anunnaki were fools to trust them. And we were fools to trust in the Anunnaki's vetting systems. Our scientists' investigations have shown that the Telchines purposefully built a glitch into the Matrioshka brain system. Two solar cycles ago, that glitch triggered and uploaded a neural virus into the StarMaster's mind when he interfaced with the Nisto Cloud directly. Our best efforts limited the damage to only him, but we couldn't stop the neural virus from corrupting his core and spreading to all of his backups."

  "And the Matrioshka brains?"

  "The Lumerians took a huge risk. As far as we can tell, they should work fine except for that one glitch the Telchines added. And the Telchines we can trust managed to fix the bio-code bug. It's just a matter of actually activating the brains."

  "I'm guessing this is where I come in."

  "Yes. Ever since the StarMaster contracted the virus, we've been locked out. The Lumerians' fault, or so we thought. You see, the StarMaster's neural virus tricked him into locking us out. The only way to access them now is with a single key he left behind. It's guarded by the best security features available. The Nassatar's."

  At once, Felik understood.

  Juliard.

  "You need Juliard to access them? Then give her the data on her child," he said. "It's that easy."

  Xerix shook his head. "It is not that easy for you," he said sternly. "Oberon did not like your hesitation at taking his offer. He feels you need to show us your loyalty by convincing her. You have one sol."

  Felik scrunched up his face in disbelief. "I'm supposed to convince her to give you the Nisto Cloud brains? And if I don't?"

  "You and your backups will be terminated."

  Chapter 38

  FELIK

  A thousand human-sized koalas with plasma rifles. Two thousand monkeys trained to snap necks.

  Each army was lined up in rows of one hundred set fifty meters apart with dozens of trees and rocks between them.

  Who wins? That was the question on Felik's mind. It was all he cared about in that moment and all that he wanted to care about.

  After much deliberation, he put his money on the neck-snapping monkeys. He had a sneaking suspicion their agility and precision at targeting necks would win out in the end.

  The monkeys screeched, leaping away from the flaming energy blasts of the koala army. Trees exploded. Koalas shrieked as their necks were twisted. Every dead creature vanished in a puff of smoke.

  At the end, three monkeys remained, cheering in a typical monkey whoop.

  Felik relished his little victory in the sim, the momentary satisfaction of a gamble that had paid off. But the sense of triumph was fleeting because he knew it was likely to be his only win this sol.

  Juliard's voice echoed in his head. I'm sorry. I can't cooperate. One, I don't trust those bastards with my core. Two, I can't allow a war to start.

  Felik was afraid she would say that. Yet, he completely understood. The first reason was a no-brainer. The second was because once Oberon and the Watchers could access the Nisto Cloud's bio-code, they would run it to out-strategize the Lumerians and Saganerio network. Given the immense intellectual and computational power a Matrioshka brain possessed, it would be like asking a god to solve an addition problem.

  He remembered Xerix's warning. You have one sol. If he didn't convince her, he died.

  Seven hours had passed since he'd asked her and she'd said no. He thought he'd try again.

  "Juliard to the command sphere," he ordered. Her avatar appeared, chewing something. Every crunch seemed to say, Say what you're going to say. So he said, "We don't know if it will really mean war."

  As soon as the Watchers could access the cluster of Matrioshka brain spheres in the Nisto Cloud, they'd likely apply their processing capabilities toward defeating Megas. There were different ways to defeat an enemy, though. Sometimes on the battlefield. Sometimes with a powerful psionic hack, which the combined Matrioshka brains would be more than capable of. Sometimes by offering them a better deal behind closed doors.

  "Felik, we're trying to comprehend intelligences that go way beyond our own. I doubt the Lumerians would risk giving their enemies a fully capable Matrioshka brain system. Not without some contingency plan."

  Plans within plans within plans. She had a point. He crossed his arms over his chest. They were dealing with alien races with computer systems that could recursively plot out the potential strategies of their opponents in combat, but also in diplomacy. Oberon probably wasn't so trusting to think the Nisto Cloud Matrioshka brains would work either. Both sides were provoking the other to act and it was doubtful either would be caught off-guard by that act or the other's response to it.

  "Yeah, I don't know what will happen," he admitted. "But it doesn't mean there will be war."

  She seemed on the verge of sighing then cleared her throat. "There are a few constants in the universe. War seems to be one of them."

  "Maybe you're right." He thought about Nuraz's words to him. "Peace is like a hologram. When you try to embrace it, you discover it's not real."


  She laughed.

  "What?"

  "Sorry, that sounds a bit corny to me."

  He frowned. He thought it sounded cool, at least.

  "Well, it's true, isn't it? We're always at war in some way."

  Metaphorically. And literally in the form of the Master War between the Wenysh, Phaetonians, Lumerians, and ultimately New Terrans.

  "We are," she agreed.

  "Then what can I say to change your mind? Oberon plans to end me if I can't gain your cooperation."

  Now it was her turn to frown. A real frown of despair. "I lost a son to war. I lost friends to war. In a way, I lost Arteyos to war. I don't want to lose you to this war. But...to be honest, if one sapient's sacrifice means preventing millions of others, not to mention the pain and fear of war, then yeah, I think only an idiot would choose to save one life over millions. Nothing personal, of course."

  "Well, you're objective, I'll give you that," he said, trying not to show his dismay at her decision.

  She smiled apologetically. "The truth isn't always what a sapient wants to hear."

  No, it often wasn't. There were a lot of harsh truths he'd had to face about himself. His neural virus would eventually kill him. Before that, it would slowly corrupt his core, reducing him to a shell of himself. As the Envoy, Rhona had often reminded him that she'd only ever taken him in as a favor for Hayland. Let's be honest, you had a lot of potential once upon a time. But shit happens and you lost that. Maybe forever.

  He fought back the deep consuming darkness that was reality. The reality that he had failed to be the successful scion he should have. Whether he or the Darwinists were to blame, didn't really matter. Hayland had told him that once. No one could change reality. Well, except the Engineers and the originals were all gone.

  "I've been thinking," he started.

  "That's new," Juliard said.

  "Yeah, it is," he smiled. "Listen, Arteyos put you in control of the Nisto Cloud's Matrioshka brains. Maybe his virus made him do that accidentally, but I think he might've been on to something."