To his credit, she discovered an old strength returning to her. Her vision sharpened, her sense of self expanded thanks to local omni-sight offered by her godweb. Synthetic protean muscles and reactor cells and a superconductor-based fuel cell gave her renewed energy.
She flexed her fingers and examined her new body. Good as new. "I'm impressed."
As a test, she used the godweb's anti-grav to raise herself a few feet off the sand. With a nexus filter, she observed her own atomic aura. A white flame blazed around her, bits of it hopping into the air.
Ashiban opened his eyes, little motes of intense focus.
She smirked. "But sometimes it's the things we create that destroy us."
Then she detected Phoenix coming up behind her, and her stomach sank.
"No more," he called. The next thing she knew he was standing between them. He frowned at her. "It's time you left."
Chapter 40
FELIK
Juliard now knew the truth about her daughter. It was so much worse than Felik had feared. It was strange to hear her cry. Long sobs with muttered curses.
Despite running scans of Megas's device, Felik hadn't been sure what the immediate effects of activating it would be.
He hadn't expected Hayland to send an urgent message request.
He'd said nothing as his uncle's avatar materialized under the oak tree on the grass surface of the command sphere.
"You're choosing to side with Megas then, huh?"
"What gave it away?"
"From what I've been told, that device you have takes one sol to link you to Megas's breaker. That gives me enough time to talk some sense into you."
Felik folded his arms over his chest in challenge. "I'm listening."
The mere presence of his uncle had felt like a victory, albeit a moral one. He'd forced Oberon's hand.
"You're making the wrong decision. I understand that you're an idealist, and you believe we should have good sapients running the show. You also try to be objective and non-binary in your thinking. So let's consider the non-binary morality of the universe. Oberon and Megas aren't all good or all bad. Maybe they're not what you want, but a lot of sapients like them. They can't be all bad. Do you at least agree with that?"
It ignored the reality that most sapients were uninformed, but he'd humor his uncle. "Alright, fine. They're not all bad. They're still pretty bad."
"Have you considered that in the right light, you're pretty bad. Remember how everyone wanted you dead after you didn't warn anyone about the StarMaster dying?"
"That's different. I..."
"Of course it's different. The point still stands that it's possible for everyone to appear morally flawed at times. Doesn't always mean it's accurate. And we tend to focus on the negative more than the positive. That's our subjective bias. More objectively, Oberon was the better prepared between him and Megas when it came to running the Union Omega. Don't take my word for it. He's got the backing of a lot of Type IV species. That can't all be because of whatever evil things you think he's done to gain power. So he's gotta be a somewhat decent sapient overall."
Somehow, Felik had avoided factoring other species' acceptance of Oberon into his opinion. Framing him in that way, yes, he seemed a little better. Not that he deserved to be the StarMaster. "You're asking me to excuse his crimes?"
"I'm asking you to tolerate them for now. If you don't, he'll end you."
Felik screwed up his face in disbelief. "You can't honestly expect me to change my mind like this."
"No. But Oberon is willing to give Juliard details on her daughter. No one expects you to believe it. You're fully entitled to call it an attempt at manipulating you and your XO. Unfortunately, it really is the truth."
Looking back on that conversation, his uncle had proven himself to be a top-notch politician. The true brother of Arteyos. He'd persuaded Felik to cancel the breaker transfer process and stay with Oberon.
As Felik studied Watchers network satellites managed by nothing more than bots—not even sapients—the hollow ache of regret chewed away at him. He hated himself because he realized that maybe he could never stop being naive. At least not soon enough.
He fixated on his XO again and her crying. Before, he'd opened up to her, offered her the ship, and she'd made a fool of him. Now he was seeing her vulnerable side. Consoling her was not a skill he possessed. Then again, her problem was an exceedingly rare one.
He tried to distract himself on the scholar realms. It was strange reading others' opinions of him. So many rumors and theories.
They were closer to the truth than they were given credit for. He thought of Landi. What would he have said of Felik if he were out there on the InfiNet? How much of what he'd told him had been lies? Not all of it. It could've all been true and been a lie. A lie because of the facts he'd chosen to share while omitting others. A false, subjective narrative.
It was also strange not to hear Minerva warn him about flying the Nassatar to within one hundred thousand klicks of a satellite. A satellite that he could identify as a small silver block in space.
Hayland's words echoed in his head. Sometimes the truth happens to align with someone's agenda. That doesn't make it a lie, though. No one expected you or Juliard to believe it. What should we have done? Told you a lie that seemed more plausible?
In light of what Hayland told them, Felik had aborted the transfer. Megas's device had shut off entirely after that. He'd asked Minerva to attempt to redo it, and she'd confirmed it was a one-time thing.
It hadn't been the Watchers fleet that convinced him or his uncle's earlier talk. Not at all.
He could still see the horror etched across his XO's face as his uncle laid out the truth.
There's no reason to look for your daughter anymore. During your final mission, your core got corrupted. To save you, your consciousness was transferred into your daughter's core. Her data was overwritten. The specialists were able to remove the memory from your mind. Arteyos decided you'd gone through enough.
She was her own daughter. Initially, she'd disputed it. Argued she would've remembered. Felik watched as revulsion eclipsed her disbelief. She had broken into tears. Then she retreated inside herself and to the other side of the command sphere's oak tree.
He couldn't help cycling back to something else his uncle told him. Not because he entirely believed it. But if it were true...
I shouldn't tell you this, but you seem to need proof that Oberon is better than Megas. So here it is: You know the Master War Xerix told you about? The real reason for the Watchers network's existence is to ensure humanity survives it. It's our network's true meme.
Could it be? The entire notion of the Master War horrified him deep down. It reminded him how small humanity was in the greater scheme of the universe.
He'd tried telling himself it was a lie. The agenda was obvious enough. What his uncle had told him next left him rattled and speechless. We don't even really know what the Big Three want. He was referring to the major Type IV races beside New Terrans—the Lumerians, the Phaetonians, and the Wenysh. The Saganerio network thinks the Wenysh and Phaetonians are its allies and only pretending to help our network. Our network believes the reverse. Doesn't take a Matrioshka brain to figure out that they're playing both sides.
Four Watchers satellites rested within seventy thousand klicks of the Nassatar. Each protected by a godweb with an atomic aura of flickers of energy beams circling around them. They would be easy to destroy. And not missed. They contained non-critical data based on his scans.
For the average Union Alpha citizen, destroying these would lead to stasis. For him, he was fairly certain he'd get a slap on the wrist. Minerva had protested, warning that the Watchers network might seize the op
portunity to enact harsh punishments.
But it was a major gray area considering that he'd be among the first criminals in the Union Alpha. She'd admitted that Oberon wouldn't want word of instability in the new empire to spread. There was also the fact that certain monitoring systems weren't running yet. He could very well destroy these satellites without any alerts going off for weeks.
This was for the best, he told himself. He deserved to blow off some steam. Better to do it by destroying nigh expendable storage satellites than challenging a Watchers squadron. Oberon could even exploit it by blaming the Union Omega Patriots or another network that remained loyal to their brother's empire.
"Destroy satellite AV4X227," he ordered the auxiliary bot serving in Ilder's place while the latter slept.
"What are you doing?" Juliard hissed from the other side of the oak tree like she was waking from a good dreamer. Then she erupted, "You idiot, don't you realize what's going to happen?"
Trust me, he almost said. How could she trust him, though? She couldn't even trust herself. Not if what Hayland had said was true. It must've been. Juliard's reaction meant that she logically accepted that she was her own daughter even if she hadn't resolved it emotionally. And she wouldn't have accepted it unless she knew deep down that it was true. It wasn't the sort of thing you wanted to be true.
"I guess we're both screwed up in our heads now, huh?" she said, between fresh sobs. "You with your neural virus and me with my..."
That's it. Whatever it takes to get yourself going again. Her words didn't offend Felik. Rather, he felt happy to be able to act as her anchor to reality.
Watching the satellite disintegrate into atoms made him even happier.
Minerva said nothing. There wasn't necessarily anything for her to say. He knew the risks. Still, he couldn't deny a nagging sense of wrongness. No one would die or lose a frame from his actions. That didn't mean this wasn't reckless.
He sighed, realizing that he was living up to everyone's worst expectations of him. The concerns sapients had had after he and his brothers escaped the Darwinist network.
"Destroy satellite BV5X35JIP," he said, only half focused. In a blur it became nothing. Shame eclipsed his satisfaction this time. This was nothing more than a tantrum. He was going to be the Chief Philosopher of the Union Alpha. He should try to play the role until he discovered whatever third option Minerva had hinted at.
He lingered beside his pond, watching the goldfish darting about, trying to wrap his head around the future he faced. Serving as the Chief Philosopher, yes, but likely without any real power to defy Oberon. It was only a title now.
Ten minutes later, one hundred twenty-eight destroyer-class battleships appeared on the sphere's holodisplay. Steeger's Fleet.
"Why hello there," Felik said quietly, not that Steeger could hear him yet. He hesitated at her invitation to a construct.
Several seconds passed, and she messaged,
Minerva nodded to him, and he accepted the invite. He found himself facing Steeger in her captain's chair. The bridge of her ship was an older architecture. Two levels connected by a steel staircase. Halogen lights illuminated rows of workstations lining the walls. At first glance, he couldn't tell if the individuals in those workstations were bots or sapients. His nexus didn't register them at all, so they must've been holograms.
There were a few clever comments he could make. None were appropriate given the situation. He braced himself and met Steeger's gaze.
"You made a lot of space debris," she said dully. "Those four satellites were aligned to perfectly balance out the others' gravitational pull, so that'll need fixing, too."
"Isn't it strange how there's so much invested in destructive technology, but not reconstructive tech? Not unless it's for military purposes," he said, remembering an essay he'd parsed from the scholar realms once. "We can turn something into dust like that." He snapped his fingers. "Rebuilding it takes long—"
"Spare me your philosophical bullshit," Steeger said sharply, rising from her seat. In a single stride her face was inches from his. "You're here to listen." She gestured out the window in the general direction of where the satellites would have been. "I couldn't care less about a couple hunks of metal. Unfortunately for you, there was some important data stored on those satellites."
Felik's innards tightened. "How important?" he asked, trying to keep his voice even.
"I'm glad you asked." Steeger flicked her hand, and an Anunnaki avatar appeared, towering over them at nine feet tall. Blemu, her overseer.
"Why did you destroy those satellites?" the overseer asked Felik.
"It's complicated."
"Our minds are more advanced than yours. I'm sure I can appreciate whatever explanation you give me."
She appeared in the construct beside them. "Felik's neural virus sometimes intensifies his emotions. He's prone to rash decisions in high stress situations. And because of his virus, he can't download mods to easily adjust his behavior. What he did has no bearing on his views on the Union Alpha as a whole."
Blemu nodded. "Yes, I understand. There's no value in making a tribunal of this, but I would like justice."
"Justice?" Felik raised an eyebrow. Anunnaki justice skewed on the harsh side.
"That satellite contained special source code. A gift programmed by my contactee," he said, referring to Steeger.
He should've backed it up on multiple storage spaces. Blemu must've been a very traditional Anunnaki, opting for only a superficial utilization of potential technology.
"My apologies," Felik said. "I didn't intend to—"
"You took something precious from me, so I should be allowed to take something precious from you."
An eye for an eye. It had been the Anunnaki who introduced that thinking to humanity, millennia ago. Minerva gave him a comforting look.
"What do you think would be fair?" she asked.
"Subjectively, I'd desire his Nassatar. Objectively, I know that's too much to ask for, however."
A grin split Steeger's face. Felik couldn't believe how this was turning out. Blemu was obviously not being objective. He was trying to obtain the Nassatar for the Watchers network.
"Perhaps you could tell us the contents of the source code?" Minerva said. "That way we could better assess the damages."
"It's irrelevant. I will settle for something worth less than the Nassatar. His life."
"Surely the life of a scion is worth more than some code," Minerva insisted.
"How much value does he bring as an Envoy? Our universe runs on code. Maybe not the code I had, but don't underestimate its value."
"Point taken, but regarding your code that got deleted, would Felik's living frame be worth that?"
Blemu held out a data node. Felik and Minerva parsed it. Sickeningly, it analyzed the market value of his code, which was more than double the estimated monetary value Felik fostered as an Envoy over the course of a solar cycle, maintaining bonds between races. Of course, it discounted his work as something that anyone could do. And it subtracted money spent by the Guardian Mind from his estimated value.
"This is all hypothetical and based on Union Omega figures," Minerva said. "We have yet to see how much worth he offers in the Union Alpha."
"Then maybe the only fair way is through a tribunal."
Chapter 41
KAI
Kai eased back into a floating chair she'd crafted purely from her inquisitor frame's utility fog. Regaining her frame and its godweb granted her a modicum of satisfaction. And with her quarantine lifted, she could hop onto a realm racing sim at her leisure.
And yet she was more screwed than ever. She felt like a broken sex bot. Useless and beaten. Phoenix didn't even need her memories now that he'd extracted the black goo.
To his credit, he hadn't been dicking around. He'd been studying the black goo inside her. And learned from it. After ex
tracting it from her, he'd explained. Her black goo stowaway acted like an infectious agent, but was not technically a neural virus, it had only been interpreted as such by all who'd inspected it.
"The black goo was trying to learn from you," Jace.blek said gingerly from above, his body melded into the fungus strands webbing across every surface of their meeting chamber.
She nodded. Phoenix had said it was emitting signals with data of what it learned. Which wasn't what he'd told her when they first met. "He lied to me."
Jace.blek had been right about Phoenix's deceit.
"He likely played dumb since meeting you in order to trick the black goo." Feeding it misinformation, like the black goo origin story.
Kai grunted to confirm the mushroom boy's theory.
She had to wonder if Phoenix was aware of her desire to end him. Probably.
"After everything, here you are. Back to being my subordinate," Jace.blek said.
She narrowed her eyes. It was all she could do to keep herself from snapping at him. Because she wasn't done yet. You'll never be able to kill me. Phoenix's words danced around her head. But he couldn't truly know that. The possibilities of achieving your dream were never really gone.
Doing so likely meant working with Jace.blek, however. She'd play nice for now.
"Phoenix wanted me to help you. He knows the Invectials are coming." She gave her brow a tap.
"An army is at my back door, and he sends me you."
"Almost feels like an insult, doesn't it?"
"That's very odd of you to insult yourself in that way," Jace.blek said. "If I didn't know any better, I'd say you were trying to manipulate me."
"Oh? Why would I be manipulating you?"
"Considering what's happened, I imagine in order to get revenge on Phoenix."
Kai mouthed the words, Gee, you are smart! and shrugged. "Don't tell me it's never crossed your mind."
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