Francescan War Chronicles 1: Space Knight Denxeiter

by C. K. Pershing

  Feln sighed. “Thank you sir. I still don’t know if I’ll ever be able to forgive myself. But your words have given me much to reflect upon.”

  Siegfried gave Feln an encouraging pat on the back. “Excellent. Now, let’s go get the rest of your friends. I have something to show you.” He started for the door.

  “Um, Your Highness…” Aaltskog began.

  Siegfried stopped, “Yes?”

  “Forgive me as it’s not my place to ask, but why have you been helping us to such a degree? It seems so much to do for two people who you’ve never met.” She made an awkward curtsy. “Again, forgive me for asking.”

  The Prince smiled. “There’s nothing to forgive. The reasons are three-fold. First, Admiral Kesh spoke on your behalf. He saved my life when I was a cadet and because of that, I would do anything for him.” Siegfried didn’t expand on just what Kesh had done to save his life, and Feln was glad Aaltskog got the implication that it wasn't prudent to ask.

  “Second,” Siegfried continued, “Governor Zalk was a dear friend of mine. Very much like family. I watched the recordings of his final moments and found his interactions with the two of you to be things of great beauty. It brought tears to my eyes.

  “You see, I was the one who gave the final approval for this fleet’s officer corps postings. The Admiral and Governor had never met prior to this and it was my ardent wish that two people who I hold so dear to my heart should become friends. I had intended to visit the colony at various stages during its construction and after it was finished, making sure to see those wonderful people every time.” Despite his words, tears never came to Siegfried’s eyes, although Feln could hear a slight crack in his voice.

  “In some ways I blame myself for Governor Zalk’s presence as I helped push him into this posting. He may well be alive if I didn’t do that.”

  “That may be true,” Feln said. “But I know the rest of us would be dead without his sacrifice.”

  “Yes I agree. And I know he wasn’t lying when he said he was dying exactly as he wished. So there is some solace in that.” Siegfried cleared his throat. “He will be remembered with full military honors and when the colony he was meant to start is actually built, it will be named for him.

  “Lastly, what most made me want to help you out was you yourselves,” the Prince said. “As I read the reports and watched the battle footage and listened to the audio, I was so impressed with both of you.”

  Feln cringed a little when he thought about some of the conversation topics he’d engaged in while in Denxeiter’s cockpit. While most of the rough stuff was on a private channel, the Prince had the authority to override any privacy settings. Either the Prince respected their privacy or he was very good at hiding what he heard. But Feln had no reason to doubt Siegfried’s honor and trusted him.

  “When I saw what you were able to do in the situations you found yourselves in, working with what you had on hand, it’s truly incredible. I was with you when Space Knight Nonn was possessed, and then again when you were alone when the fleet left. When you had to kill Space Knight Nonn’s body. And when the two of you decided to be in Denxeiter together.

  “And watching how you handled Resonance was fascinating. Of course, the time in which you disappear into Denxeiter is strange enough with the flash of light and then you’re gone. But it’s interesting to compare how Denxeiter’s cockpit camera preserves the actual time experienced in the Machine even as time outside is moving more slowly, so the other cameras in the fleet barely catch a blur moving around.

  “Seeing the two of you together under such circumstances was inspiring. So what started as a favor for Admiral Kesh and to honor the memory of Governor Zalk evolved as I got to know the two of you through your experiences.”

  Feln stammered, “I-I don’t know what to say. Thank you.”

  “No, thank you,” Siegfried said. After a brief pause to see if they were going to ask any more questions, he continued, “Now please, let me show all of you my surprise. I think you’ll find it most interesting.”

  They followed him out the door and back into the party which was still going strong. “Excuse me,” Siegfried said to the attendees, “I have to borrow our guests of honor for a short while. Please continue to have fun and I’ll have them back soon.”

  Kesh, Valisia and Larkin joined them. Kriemhilde was standing alone with Aalveus nearby and she gave a questioning look to Siegfried. “Yes,” he said. “I told you you could come.” Kriemhilde smiled and joined their group followed by Aalveus. “Follow me,” the Prince said.

  They left the large room and went down a hallway that had two armed Royal Guards at the end on either side of a closed door. The guards bowed and then opened the door. Siegfried went into the room beyond, followed by Feln and his friends. Feln noticed the guards close the door behind them and heard it lock from the other side. The room they were in was spacious and completely empty except for a large door at the other side, also attended by armed guards. They too bowed and the doors opened to reveal an elevator that they all stepped into.

  Aaltskog pressed herself against Feln as the elevator began to descend. Siegfried turned and smiled at them. “Almost there,” he said.

  They all exchanged glances and Kriemhilde said, “You seem to be enjoying this.”

  “I am,” Siegfried agreed. “But I think you will too.”

  The elevator seemed to only have one stop aside from the one in which they entered and Feln found it a bit ominous. He had no idea how many decks they’d gone down, especially considering how just how immense the Weiß Speer was.

  When the elevator reached the bottom and its doors opened, there were more armed guards. Feln also noticed the telltale signs of laser panels ringing the hallway they were in. If activated, the entire hall would be filled with lasers that would slice apart anything in it, including the guards. It took a moment for that to sink in and Feln was impressed by the guards’ commitment to their jobs.

  As they reached the end of the hallway, they went through another guarded door and again, that door was locked behind them from the other side. They were in another hallway, but this one was different in that it had doors to rooms going down either side. There were guards at each door there too.

  “I must say, this is quite a force assembled here,” Kesh noted. “This many Royal Guards could capture a cruiser all by themselves if they were able to board.”

  Siegfried chuckled, “That’s not far from the truth.”

  “Oh, I was quite serious,” Kesh replied, which made Siegfried chuckle some more.

  When they got to the very last room at the end of the hall, the guard bowed and opened the door. They went in and Feln heard the telltale lock behind them. Inside was a large room with a host of scientists and technicians operating various machines. At each corner of the room was an armed guard and Feln also saw two groups of specialist soldiers; one was from the Psionic Corps, the other from the Magic Corps.

  But it was the large transparent cylinder that went from floor to ceiling in the center of the room that immediately attracted all their attention. Inside was one of the alien queens and another larger creature.

  “I had a feeling it was gonna be one of them,” Aaltskog said.

  “I must say that the story of all of them being sent away together was quite convincing,” Kesh said. “We all saw the footage.”

  “Yes. We didn’t want anyone to know that we kept one behind. I wanted you to have the chance to see one of your tormentors where your situations are reversed.”

  “Do you mean to say you kept this monster here just for us?” Kesh asked.

  “Yes. Once this one has gone to the same facilities as the others, I’m afraid it will be completely off limits to you. I decided that it may be somewhat therapeutic for you to have the chance to say what you want to one of the enemy while you can. The Psionics and Magics are here to make sure she can’t communicate with her people. She’s completely closed off psychically and magically thanks to Companion Aal
tskog’s providing us with their other dimensional key. It’s completely safe to talk to her.

  “Those same specialists are keeping any extra sensory powers of hers completely jammed. They’ve already psychically lobotomized the part of her brain that allowed her to use psionics, but best to be safe.” Siegfried looked over Feln and his friends. “Of course, you don't have to stay if you don’t want to. I only—“

  Valisia broke from the group and ran over to the imprisoned queen. “You damned things took my sister from me. If I were able, I would come in there and choke the life out of you.”

  The rest of the group slowly walked over to stand next to Valisia. Feln realized with disgust that what he thought was another creature, was in fact the queen’s lower body. When the queens had appeared on comms, only their upper bodies were shown. But while the queen’s upper body was humanoid and actually quite beautiful, her lower body looked like the swollen, pus-filled abdomen of some type of insect.

  Small tentacles wriggled out from holes dotting the abdomen’s shape. Occasionally, one of the tentacles would break loose and fall out of its hole on to the floor. When that happened, a member from the Magic Corps would step forward and with a slight wave of the hand, incinerate the tentacle. The queen hissed her anger when this happened.

  “Oh you don’t like it when we kill one of your children?” Valisia asked. “Well get used to it because we’re going to destroy your entire race.” Feln was amazed that Valisia’s seething hatred burned so intensely that she was able to focus her anger enough to ignore the full hideous nature of the queen.

  Feln realized that not all of his friends had stepped up to the queen’s prison. Aaltskog had stayed a little behind with Aalveus standing beside her.

  He turned back to the queen when she began to speak. “You do not know what you’re dealing with,” she said. "You fools believe it is just us doing the bidding of the gods. It is not. There are others. Many others. And other queens will take our place. And when they do, and they join with the other servants of the gods, you will be our food.”

  “Your talk of making us your food is tiring,” Kesh said. “It’s all you monsters seem to know how to say. And yet a fleet representing 1/500 the full power of our forces managed to beat you conclusively. And you were captured by a Hyper Battle Machine operating at less than 50% efficiency aided by another Hyper Battle Machine being piloted by someone in her first real combat. With this in mind your threats are the epitome of ridiculous.” The queen’s response was to smile with self assurance, but after Kesh simply stared at her coldly, the smile cracked.

  “Who were we speaking to before you showed up?” Feln asked. “Before the array went down and you arrived, we were talking with somebody else. Who was it?” The queen’s smile shifted and she said, “You’ll find out.”

  “No, you’ll answer the question now,” Aaltskog said stepping forward. When she saw Aaltskog, the queen’s bluster immediately deflated and she shrunk away with a whimper. Aaltskog laughed. “Oh you recognize me. Glad to know I’m famous.”

  Her voice stayed smooth as she continued, “You’re even more pathetic than the other voice. You obviously know who I am. Your little bugs all told you. But they probably don’t know what happened exactly to the thing with the voice that we talked with before.”

  She walked around to the side of the queen’s prison where the creature had shrunken into and leaned in close, almost touching the transparency. The queen watched, seemingly enthralled. “I’ll tell you what happened,” Aaltskog said. “Once I got into the minds of you damn things, I immediately removed the filth that you monsters placed on the honorable weapon wielded by one of our Space Knights. I then forced the voice’s consciousness into that filth. And I ground it under my boot until it was dead.”

  Aaltskog gently touched the transparency, which made the queen whimper some more. “I really enjoyed doing that, by the way. The pleasure I got from it was almost sexual, it was so good. What would really turn me on right about now would be to go in there with you and force you to eat every one of your little babies. Watching your eyes as I forced your teeth to crunch down on their little bodies. Nibbling them up bit by bit.

  “The magicians are killing them quickly and cleanly. But I’d make sure you took a nice long time to do it.” Her voice dropped to a near whisper. “We’d become very good friends you and I. I have no psionic abilities…and yet thanks to you disgusting things trying to control my mind, I have a special ability against you given to me by you.

  “And you know that because of what I am, you can’t pull any little possession tricks. See, I think I already have a pretty good idea of what I killed. But I want you to be the one to answer Feln’s question. Not because I can’t answer, but because I can make you answer.”

  She looked back at the Prince and he nodded. “Otherwise, I’m coming in. In fact, I’d be happier if you didn't answer because my mind is racing coming up with all of the wonderful things you and I can do together.”

  “The other voice was a proto-queen,” the queen quickly said to Feln. “When our children are separated from one another for long periods of time, parts of their conscious minds all come together to manifest into an individual. That individual then goes on to change their physiology to become a queen.”

  Trying to recover some of her former bluster, the queen continued, “Even now, with my sisters and I your prisoners, you can be sure more proto-queens are evolving to one day become full-fledged queens to replace us. My race is everywhere, our numbers incomprehensible to you, and when the next generation is ready, they will strike and destroy you.”

  Ignoring the queen’s threat with a sigh and a shake of his head, Feln asked, “So you started life as one of those?” He pointed at one of the wriggling tentacles emerging from the queen’s abdomen. The queen nodded. Feln shook his head and said dismissively, “Ugh, that’s pretty disgusting.”

  Aaltskog returned to Feln’s side as Valisia said, “You may think I’m making empty threats, and that I’m out of my league in the overall picture of this war you’ve started. Perhaps I am. But if this meeting has made you even a little afraid —” She glanced at Aaltskog who smiled encouragingly. “—and apparently it has— then I’d say it was time well spent. And it makes me even happier to know that we will destroy you evil things. The struggle will be long and I may not live to see the end. You certainly won’t. But it will end and so will your race.”

  Feln saw tears in Valisia’s eyes and Kriemhilde reached out to gently touch her hand. She quietly led Valisia away from the queen’s prison. Valisia had never formally met Kriemhilde and yet she seemed happy to place herself in the young Space Knight’s care. At that moment, Feln saw what the Emperor most likely saw in her and felt more at ease about their friendship.

  After Valisia’s statement, there didn’t seem to be anything left to say. The rest of them turned to go.

  “Child of darkness,” the queen called to Aaltskog, “Wait.”

  They all froze. Centuries ago, when Gustav II was young and traveling through magic territory in disguise, a seemingly insane Seer had nearly started a riot when he somehow knew who Gustav really was and referred to him as a child of darkness. It may have been coincidence that the queen used the same words for Aaltskog, but that seemed unlikely.

  Aaltskog went back over. “Your terminology for me is interesting,” she said. “Maybe you’re a student of our history since you’ve been watching us. And if you’re trying to use that term in the historical context you’d be wrong.” She glanced at the two descendants of Gustav in the room. “There are others here you would have been better to try that on.”

  The queen shook her head slowly. “I know not of what you speak. Simply that even without the ability to touch your mind, I can feel that you are a dark thing to my people. And even perhaps to these creatures who you call your own.”

  Aaltskog sighed, “If you don’t have anything to say other than vague things to try to scare me, I’m leaving.”

&n
bsp; “I wish only to say that while I find you disconcerting, I see there is another here who makes me feel the same way.” She pointed at Aalveus.

  “That’s my brother, so we likely give off similar signals due to our being made by the same creator.”

  “It may interest you to know that we were not completely surprised by your aura. We’ve experienced another like it before.”

  Aaltskog looked back at Aalveus and he walked forward. “You mean to say you’ve encountered another Maass Companion, don’t you? When? How?”

  “I do not know. Only that as I feel the two of you here, his aura is made more clear to me from my memories.”

  “Why tell us this?” Aaltskog said. “It doesn’t do you any favors to help us with this information about our brother.”

  The queen laughed softly. “I’m not trying to help you. I want you to know that the aura belonged to someone who helped us gain access to sensitive areas of your Empire.” The queen’s laugh grew louder. “In fact, without that being’s help, we wouldn’t have been able to damage you anywhere as much as we did. You could even say that your brother was the architect of our plans!” With that, her laughter grew into an uncontrollable howl of giddiness.

  Feln remembered what Aaltskog said when she deciphered the information found in the enemy base. They started actively moving against us around ten years ago. I don’t know what set them off, but it seems like they might have gotten some inside help to let them know what to do.

  Feln turned to Aaltskog and realized she was thinking the same thing as the queen continued to laugh. And then the queen’s laugh suddenly turned into a shriek as smoke started to emanate from the lower section of her body. She was being cooked from the inside out and the small wriggling tentacles screamed and fell to the floor burning. She started to gasp for air as tendrils of smoke rose up out of her throat. Feln ran over and grabbed Aaltskog to shield her from the sight, but as he did, her hair slipped away from her eyes. Those eyes were narrowed and the stars were spinning furiously. She was doing this.