Hyperlinks in the text are intended as supplemental material, discussing elements of the science behind the science fiction. They are not intended as required reading for the story. Hyperlinks will be provided at the point in the story where it comes up, but all the links will also be collected at the bottom of the post for easy reading.
Post Battle of Set Day 1
It was a ramshackle fleet that emerged from the fateful battle for the defense of the Set system. There wasn’t a single ship without major damage… the fleet had needed to sit beneath a withering hail of Kthid firepower and take a pummeling in order to draw the enemy into its trap, and the results of that showed. Damage perforated its many battleships and cruisers like bruises would gather on the skin of their crew… but they had survived the battle. All among the Set III orbital infrastructure makeshift drydocks were being setup… it might have been faster to take the ships back to Earth, but every one of those docks was currently busy with the construction of yet more warships, and no one wanted to leave the Set system undefended in case the Kthid chose to come back. Work drones crept like flies across their enormous hulls, mending whatever breaches and destruction they could, working to repair the fleet.
As far as Ki’an’i was concerned, that was good enough.
The ability of the Faliran refugees aboard her craft was enough to make the Sethis templar want to believe in the existence of a benevolent God. She might still be in a state of depression where she just didn’t know, if one of them hadn’t been able to tell them the moment that Thia, and Amara, made it to safety. Amara, from what she understood, had been hurried into medical care immediately, while her own ship was left waiting for permission to dock somewhere for quite a while.
Its crowded insides had begun to grow downright claustrophobic by the time they were given permission to dock… not with one of the warships of the fleet but instead with one of the orbital platforms. The marines that met them at the gate were… politely, Ki’an’i would call them “cautious.” They were told, in no uncertain terms, that no weapons were going to be permitted off the ship. That any weapon was to be left behind, and then they were going to disembark in an orderly fashion out into the platform for processing. The majority of the stink-eye from the soldiers was reserved for the Kthid, predictably, but none of the other alien races were entirely left out of it.
The suspicion was understandable, but to the people just freed from one form of imprisonment the suspicious doubtless felt awfully like they had traded one set of shackles for another.
Despite their suspicion, the soldiers aboard the station had clearly been chosen for their skill at being “polite, but firm.” Ki’an’i wanted, but it appeared the processing was going without any major incidents, even if the lack of translation rings meant that often the marines were reduced to typing on a tablet to have it translated for them. One by one, Faliran, Arane, Nys, or Kthid, refugees were processed. Not even the Human or Sethis colonists that had been freed were immune to being subjected to the same suspicious processing, and none of them were permitted weapons, either. When Ki’an’i stepped into line, she was treated much the same way as any of the others.
Well, at first.
Part of processing was giving her name and rank, and being issued an identification number that would correspond to quarters, rations, and other such necessities of logistics. After Ki’an’i gave her name, it set off a flag, and she was pulled to the side, set to watch as alien after alien was processed, until-
“Ki’an’i!”
The emerald-skinned templar was a fierce and competent warrior… one who had fought bravely against nightmares that would freeze the blood of most people. She was quick, and strong, and tough, and shielded by the mental discipline of her templar order, and none of that offered her the slightest defense against the flood of emotion that paralyzed her at that voice. She barely had even begun to turn when strong arms wrapped around her, crushing the stunned, nearly limp warrior against him. Despite him being several inches shorter than her and more wirey than strong he crushed her in a sudden embrace that the templar doubted she could have fought her way free of with all the muscles in the world.
Or maybe she just didn’t want to.
“Stark…” she whispered against her husband as he held her. A thousand conflicting fears rose up in her, the idea of him so casually touching her almost making her want to flinch in a dozen different directions, for a dozen different reasons. Part of her felt disgusted at the feeling of being touched again. Part of her felt disgusted – for him – at the thought of him having to touch her. Part of her wanted to scream, to run, to disappear into the crowd.
She told that part of her the shut the fuck up and clamped down on it with all the strength she ever put into beating down her fear. She was not going to break down into a little sobbing, screaming, confused mess, not right now.
Ki’an’i succeeded at… most… of that.
Post Battle of Set Day 3
Prisoners of war.
Prisoners of war!
Anna steamed, furious despite herself as she stalked down the passageway towards her examination room. The HEF wasn’t being rude, but it wasn’t being at all subtle about their security, either… marines were everywhere on this platform. It felt like a prison because, in a real sense, it was. Even her medical lab had two soldiers flanking the door, and while they were perfectly polite and saluted her Anna didn’t take to their presence especially well. She entered her lab and if the door wasn’t hydraulic she would have slammed it behind her in sheer frustration.
She plopped down in her chair, letting her head sink down into her hands for just a moment before she brought it down to strike the table. “So stupid… why won’t they listen?”
There were a surprising number of escapees from the Kthid harvest fleet that had made it to HEF territory. The Lealing ship was the largest single source of survivors, but far from the only one – the rebellion that she and the Sons of Kan’lun had begun on the Death of Hope had spread across the harvest fleet, carried in the minds of Faliran captives. As the casteless members of that cult rose up in rebellion, they had caused incredible chaos and confusion before stealing whatever boarding sleds were available. Most hadn’t had nearly the success that Amara’s group had, with a whole group of alien marines there to provide fire support for the rebellion, but they had taken what captives they had with them when they left… and there were a lot more types of aliens inside that fleet than Anna had considered possible. Even in her whirlwind tour through the Maldoror swarm she hadn’t seen half of the alien women she had encountered in the last few days.
What that meant, however, was that the majority of escapees from the fleet were casteless Kthid… that most of the others had escaped riding along on their rebellion. A full accounting was still being done, but there were hundreds of thousands of them at the very least.
And the Terran Federation considered each and every one of them a potential security threat until proven otherwise.
In the moments between her anger and outrage, some small part of Anna understood. They were members of the fleet that had just invaded them. While they might be functionally civilians on those ships they had still been part of an invasion force, and there were too many of them to easily account for and validate… who knew if some Kthid warriors had snuck in with them, serving as infiltrators and saboteurs. There was some danger in not watching them closely.
But Anna had promised them.
They weren’t being mistreated… the sheer number of captives who had verified that they had been rescued by the Sons of Kan’lun was enough to make sure that they were being kept in some meager comfort as prisoners. But they were prisoners, and everybody knew it.
Sighing, Anna lifted her head, wiped away her frustrated tears, and began typing at the computer. She had a lot to do. The next meeting of HEF High Command and the Council of Governors was in six hours, and Anna was going to, once again, plead the Son of Kan’lun’s case there. Thia and Lylyssa and several other leaders among the refugees had spoken in testament of their behavior at the last meeting. They had, apparently, scheduled time for Meimetos to be there and speak as well. That was a good sign. She could work with that, but it was far from the only thing she needed to do. This many aliens, in this poor of health, required treatment, and no one knew almost anything about them. Anna was sure that, buried in the refugees, was a staggering amount of knowledge about treatments for them, but sorting through them to find the right people to ask was a staggering issue, even if you could communicate easily enough.
All of this should have been the responsibility of the fleet’s chief medical officers under the leadership of the Xenobologist scientist cadre, but… they were gone. Anna didn’t know all the details, but something had evidently happened to them… killed aboard the HEF flagship during the battle. Any attempts to get information about what had happened there had been thoroughly rebuffed, so… pretty much no one was in charge of the medical effort among the refugees.
So she was.
Anna was fluent in the Arane-Kthid pidgin language that the slaves had largely used to communicate aboard the ship. She could understand native Kthid speech as well. She knew as much about alien biology as anyone did, and she refused to detach herself from the refugees. She was the obvious choice.
The last time Anna had been in charge of the medical health and safety of a million Humans it hadn’t gone well. Now she had… no one was entirely sure yet, but significantly more than that under her care. She hoped she was up to the task.
There was some kind of sickness spreading among a species of bird-like people, and they needed to be quarantined away from one another until Anna could figure out what it was about a Human environment that was spreading it and how to treat it. There was another sickness spreading among the Faliran, something to do with the slightly lower-than-normal gravity here on the station. There were hundreds of thousands of broken bones, concussions, burns, and cuts, and gods alone knew how many of these women were pregnant…
Anna was going to be very, very busy…
Post Battle of Set Day 8
“Aren’t you a feisty one?” the Kthid warrior caste mocked as he grabbed the Admiral’s shoulder where she leaned heavily against the wall. Her white uniform had been stained with blood, ripped and torn, and her struggles were weak as the huge warrior effortlessly flexed his arms, lifted her up, and threw her heavily down to the deck of the ship. Her breath escaped her in a rush, and the Kthid warrior put a foot on her back as Admiral Chanda squirmed ineffectively to move, gasping for air. She reached back trying to claw at the monster’s leg, not caring about her own life… trying to reach for her dropped blade as she breathlessly snarled and screamed, cursing the warrior.
“She’s loud, too,” he growled, teeth pulling away from his fangs as he grinned an evil grin. “Furious…” He knelt down and as he moved his large foot off Chanda he grabbed a handful of her dark hair and twisted one of the Admiral’s wrists behind her, making her scream as a burning pain shot up her shoulder. He flexed, half lifting and half dragging Chanda over on top of the bodies of fallen marines, bend Chanda over the bodies, and yanked at the formerly pristine white uniform as it ripped apart. The scraps of her uniform billowed around her as she struggled and screamed, but as tough as the woman was she was pinned now, and even the fiercest Human was small and weak compared to this huge, muscled, armor-wearing Kthid warrior and it was terribly easy for him to pin her down.
“Search for others!” he called out with a laugh. “Find every last bitch left on this ship. They are ours!” Chanda squirmed beneath him, fighting, but made no progress.
“No!” Aesha yelled. “Get off of her!”
“Yes, Kangansverii,” another of the warriors replied as he lead dozens of armored warriors in a prowl down the hall through the shattered positions, looking for other soldiers who hadn’t been killed in their brutal ambush… other slaves ready to be claimed. Already in the background, the sound of wailing women was louder than the distant combat was.
The warrior above her grabbed onto a fistful of her dirties uniform, waited a moment with a leer, and then ripped, down and outward. Buttons popped and fabric tore as Chanda’s round, large breasts were exposed, jiggling with the force of his jerking hands. “Let’s take a look at what the Admiral has hidden beneath her uniform,” he hissed in a mocking sneer. “I wonder if the Harvestmaster is going to claim this particular piece of meat, or if she’s ripe for the taking.” Chanda choked back a scream as her attacker’s reptilian hands took hold of both healthy mounds of flesh and began squeezing them hard, making them bulge from between his claws. “Of course… you’ll be a little used up by the time he has his chance.”
“Leave her alone!” Aesha screamed in frustration.
No one listened to her screams. No one even reacted. The Kthid officer simply ripped at the pants of her uniform next, pulling it off Chanda’s thrashing legs until her wide hips and curvy ass were exposed. She grunted in pain as the Kthid’s weight crashed down on her, shoving her down with his sheer weight… His hard-scaled chest pressed her down into the bodies of fallen soldiers even before she felt what was coming: The hard, thick draconic cock settling in along her ass, wedging between her ass cheeks.
“No, please don’t!” cried Aesha cried out. “You can’t do this! You can’t do this!” Though the Exalted’s pleas echoed down the hallways both victim and conquerer ignored her.
The Kthid attacker started slowly humping against her tight ass, forcing huffs of breath out of Chanda’s mouth in a harsh rhythm as his hands snuck beneath her pinned chest, gripping her tits once more and squeezing them hard. “Get… off… of… me!” she growled as he try humped her, losing breath each time his weight crashed against her. Despite that, she kept trying to squirm free. She was just too small, though, too weak, and her captor was too much stronger.
“Yes… struggle. Better that way,” came the smug tone with accompanying hot breath on her neck as he rocked and bucked on Chanda’s form. “Better to rape a squirming, fighting warrior than fuck a meek slut. You’re just how I like my bitches… curvy and fiery.”
“You bastard!! Get off of her!” Aesha pleaded. Tears formed in her eyes as the Exalted was forced to watch.
“Don’t worry, proud bitch… I know just how to get some of that uppity out of you.” Aesha had to watch as the Kthid warrior adjusted position, moving the tip of his huge cock to firmly wedge it between her squirming cheeks as she ineffectively tried to roll side to side off the pile of corpses, wiggling her ass in an attempt to make it a harder target for his organ. “The Harvestmaster might want you, so it would be bad form to leave you knocked up… but there are other ways to teach you how to behave.”
“PLEASE STOP THIS!” Aesha yelled
“He can’t hear you, you know…” Maria’s mocking voice said from on top of her, and with that last mockery Chanda’s rapist jammed his cock hard into the Admiral’s tight, unwilling ass. He growled as he pushed into her, the pleasure hissing from between triangular teeth as he plunged deeper and deeper, slowly worming his way past her resistance. “Now, make sure you watch this part. This is the part I really love.”
After the Kthid had finally seated the head of his cock deeply enough within Chanda’s burning ass, he grabbed her wide hips and pulled them back as his pelvis lurched forward, driving the cock to the hilt in Chanda’s guts as savagely as if he were pounding a stake into the ground. Aesha thought that her ancestor’s voice was gone, that she was breathless, but that provided how wrong she was… when the pain of that shattering stroke arrived the dignified Admiral tilted her head back and screamed, a rough, ugly scream that rebounded down the conquered hallway. As the long shriek faded, it was replaced by wailing women from elsewhere, other new slaves of the Kthid who could do nothing as they were forced to listen, bound, and raped by the alien monsters who had claimed them. Chanda again croaked out secondary, weaker screams as the cock impaled her deeply, the rapist’s hips now mashing hard against her ass cheeks and holding the organ all the way in. Chanda’s head drooped as tears fell onto the face of one of her marines who had been killed, looking at one of the results of her failure as she felt another result firsthand.
Maria sighed in pleasure as she slightly adjusted her position where she was sitting on Aesha’s back, using her as a seat. “You know, I really did miss this, Aesha,” she said while her eyes twinkled, watching the show. “You are the inheritor of a proud tradition. I had only one slave, once… I had her for the long, long journey back to Earth from Sirius B. I had all the time in the world to really get to know her.” Her hand was slowly pumping a dildo in and out of the restrained Exalted’s cunt where she knelt on all fours. With a touch of the button at the end, the electricity built into the thing went off, shocking her from the tip just as it wedged painfully against her cervix, making her scream. She didn’t thrash, though… Maria had taken away that kind of control from her Exalted slave. “Gave me an opportunity to really dig down into what made the pretty little thing tick. I really let me plumb the depths of what kinds of misery I could put her through, you know? After that, though, I rarely had the kind of time, and so many playthings to collect. They’re all gone now… so I’ll just have to restart with you. Just the way it started.”
With the shock inside her cunt gone, Aesha’s eyes fixed on the simulated recording of her granddaughter’s rape. Maria found it hard to look away from how the Admiral’s tits bounced, as well… it was hypnotic, especially with them accumulating bloody scratches from the Kthid’s careless claws. It hadn’t actually happened like this, of course… but Aesha had been taken offline before Chanda’s escape. She didn’t actually know what had happened to her. And now, after a dozen viewings, her protests that this wasn’t real were starting to lack conviction.
“Please, stop this…” Aesha pleaded as she watched the Kthid warlord savor the feeling of Chanda’s extreme tightness gripping his organ. When he pulled back out of her ass, it actually tried pulling her body with him… it made him slam her back down with each stroke to make sure he was giving her the whole length. “Make it stop, Maria! Please!”
“Oh, don’t be a spoilsport,” the smug Exalted laughed. “Oh, you know what? I know what the problem is. I’m doing this all wrong.” She pulled the thick electric dildo out of the golden Exalted’s pussy, paused a moment… then pressed it against her asshole. “This will let you feel much closer to your granddaughter.” Then, in time with Chanda’s next scream, Aesha screamed in her own agony as her ass was skewered just as thoroughly as Chanda’s was.
Sighing, and continuing to idly fuck her new captive with the toy, Maria turned her attention to status reports quickly. Getting the ship back online and to full capabilities was taking longer than she had planned for… it was making progress a little too slow. Not too slow… the Kthid fleet was days behind her still, so no report would have reached Maldoror. Once she was through the portal unexpectedly she would be able to begin accelerating for the Dark Star immediately. Still, she wanted to make sure she had maximum acceleration and shielding by then, and in order to take over the ship she had needed to damage quite a few systems. The precautions preventing an Exalted from controlling a ship were thorough, and trying to remove them during construction or planning would trigger all sorts of alarms… but they were simple, and not planned for treachery. She already had all of the codes, the credentials, and the knowledge she needed. She just needed to bridge the air gap… and she had been involved in the making of this ship. All she had needed was one place where the systems could be made to cross one, one place where the physical barrier between the two systems could be removed and a single connection run between them, so she had constructed a “damage control” system that would cut off areas of the ship… and in doing so, create the breached she needed. After that, it was easy to have a backdoor that no one would notice put into the repair drones that they would “repair” the systems in a way that linked them together.
Everyone looked at the computer programming. The ship schematics. The safety system. No one had audited the repair drones for the one line of added code thoroughly enough to realize the small but important security breath it implied.
After that, she had needed to actually cause further damage to the ship to get everyone off. She couldn’t simply fake a reactor leak… she needed to damage containment. It had worked, but the process of repairing it and bringing everything fully back online was running into… setbacks. Systems kept breaking. Maria wasn’t sure why, yet… that was what she was working on now. Auditing the repairs, trying to figure out what kind of progressive failure she still had, because failing to be fully operational was not acceptable. She wanted every bit of speed she could get… her destiny awaited.
Smiling, she triggered the electricity again. Beneath her, Aesha screamed. In front of her, Chanda shook her head wildly, screaming herself as rough, fat tears slid down her strong face in rhythm with the stabbing cock in her ass. Ahead of her, the Dark Star waited for her to meet her God… and replace him.
All was right in the world.
Post Battle of Set Day 8
The Azteca had been reduced to an absolute ruin on the inside. Dozens of battles, followed by a forced evacuation, radiation leaks, fires, and the steps that were used to contain them had left a staggering mess behind. Thick, fire-retardant foam coated wall, having hardened to a paste in many places. One of the best ways to contain radiation was with water, so several entire areas of the ship had been flooded, turning some decks into underwater caves.
Maria didn’t care, of course. Why would she? She didn’t need to walk the halls. She didn’t have a crew that needed to go these places. The drones that performed any needed maintenance cleared out only the areas they needed to reach, which largely amounted to just the engines, the reactors, the sensors, and the mainframes. She didn’t need her weapons… depending on how things went at the Dark Star, she might never need them again. She didn’t need the crew quarters, or those for the marines. She didn’t need to eat in the mess halls or look out the viewports. She certainly didn’t need the bodies of those who had been slain in the battle or in the disasters she had caused to empty the ship of all the organic life that had been infesting her new home.
All said, almost 90% of the ship was irrelevant to her now, free to remain a mess, or flooded, or burned out, or caked in bakelite. The security systems would advise her if anyone went into any of those places, if she had missed anyone in her cleansing of the ship.
Most of them, anyway.
Silently, a figure in an environmental suit rose up out of the water down in lower Engineering. The way this room was structured, most of the lower 2/3s of the room had been flooded, but some of the catwalks further up were still intact. Slowly, the figure clambered up onto one of them, dragging a waterproof case with her, and laying it down on the ground before pulling herself up. In this flooded section of the ship, radiation had cooked most of the cameras and motion sensors, and the flooding had handled the rest… or at least, that was her theory. The fact that she wasn’t dead yet gave her hope that it was a good one.
Leaning back against one of the railings, she reached over and disabled her aegis. Then, moving with inordinate care, she unclasped the helmet of the suit and pulled it off, letting her sweat-soaked blonde hair tumble free.
Leila had taken a horrible gamble… she knew that. When the bomb had gone off, she had been frantic. Her communications with Ri’she’a had been cut, and she had been doing anything she could to get them back. Trying every channel she could, everywhere Leila had tried to contact her. Instead, what she had found was a message left on her private frequency… by Atalanta. She had been trying to contact her with civilian codes, so in the middle of a battle they hadn’t come through as a priority. Leila, however, had listened… and gotten a warning that Maria meant to steal the ship. When all the alarms had started to go off then, and the orders to evacuate came in… she hadn’t done it. Instead, she had headed further into engineering, found the best environmental suit she could, hid in an office under a desk, and hoped that she hadn’t just gotten herself killed.
Now she knew that she had been right… and that might have been the cruelest part of all. She was alone on this ship, a long way from home or help, and she had no idea what she was doing here. She had no idea what this crazed bitch was trying to accomplish, or how she could stop her. None of that mattered, though. Atalanta was a friend of hers. Without Atalanta, Leila would have died aboard the Mistrunner, and if Maria had tried to kill her as part of her betrayal… then Leila would do anything she could to stop her. When looked at that way, it didn’t matter that she didn’t know what she was doing, because she was the only one here, the only one who could still reach the woman and hamper her efforts.
She would think of something.
Quietly, Leila opened the case and pulled out her most recent salvaged meal, began to eat, and plotted the next piece of sabotage she could manage.
Post Battle of Set Day 9
Amara awoke to a world of fog, muddled thoughts, and strange, sticky numbness.
The beeping of a medical monitor was what dragged her, limping and complaining, to consciousness… the repeated *beep beep beep* of a metronome-like chine finally dragging even her exhausted mind from its slumber. Her body felt like she was trying to swim through honey, and even the effort of twitching her fingers seemed, for long seconds, like it was too much to manage. At last, however, she managed to open her eyes.
She was in a plain, nondescript medical room… mostly done in blank, antiseptic white that hurt her long-closed eyes to look at. Amara needed to squint, not just because her eyes were hard to open, but because it was too bright for anything else. The monitor continued beeping at the same, attention-seeking rate, and if Amara were more awake she might have been tempted to rip its cords out of the wall… but it just seemed like too much effort at the moment. Too exhausting. Instead, she just lay there, feeling numb, slowly waking up.
She must have been sedated. Really, really sedated. That wasn’t uncommon with critical injuries, she knew… sedation was a lot more reliable than it used to be. After all, they put millions of colonists in medically induced comas to freeze them, and there were very rarely any side effects on waking them up anymore, so making sure people slept through the most traumatic elements of surgery and healing was desirable. It made it hard to tell how long she had been out, however. With resolve, she forced her neck to move, to look down at the unwelcome bump in her midriff under the sheets… small, but apparent, and growing. Not much larger, then. She had been unconscious for days, not weeks. A camera attached to the corner watched her, the black eye staring down at her.
Her eyes, however, caught another change as she tried to brush the sheets out of the way. The hand that came into view wasn’t hers. The memories came rushing back… the loss of her arm battling Sarcand, the frenzied fighting. They had needed to cauterize that wound, along with applying a tourniquet. She would have died otherwise… but it made cloning and reattaching a genuine arm nearly impossible with that kind of damage done to the nerves and what was left behind. The HEF medics, apparently, had elected for prosthesis.
The arm that was now attached to her right shoulder was a stark contrast of white and black that contrasted brilliantly against her chocolate skin. She reached out with her left hand and touched it, and realized, with a start, that she could feel it… it didn’t feel normal, exactly, but she could feel that she was being touched. It was softer than she would have expected… not made of out metal, but out of memory plastic. She had heard of this before… they ran a current through memory plastic and it flexed naturally in much the same way muscle did. It didn’t require powered joints, then… just a batter to flex the “muscles.” The synaptics were good, too… she found that she had no phantom pain from her severed limb. The nerve damage apparently had been largely repaired in the time she was unconscious.
“You’re awake.”
Amara looked up as a nurse walked into the room. She turned off that infernal, beeping monitor, and proceeded to quickly take Amara’s vitals. The woman seemed quite harried… very busy. How long had it been since the battle, that everyone was still so busy?
Halfway through the process, the door opened again, and the chief military executive of the HEF, Admiral Chanda Sakar, walked into the room. The Indian woman had a bandaged arm but otherwise looked none the worse for wear. She stood against the wall, waiting, while the nurse finished her checkup before saluting and leaving the room.
“Welcome back, Captain,” the Admiral said with a small smile. “How are you feeling?”
“…Like I’ve been chewed up and spat back out, sir,” Amara said honestly, letting her head rest back down on the pillow.
“Understandable,” Chanda said, taking a seat near the bed. “I need to bring you back up to speed on what’s happened while you were unconscious. Are you feeling alert enough to manage?”
“Yes sir!” Amara said, her voice firm.
“The short version is that the battle of Set III is over,” the Admiral began. “After the detonation of the Apophis bomb, the Kthid fleet retreated back to the wormhole. We continued to bombard them until they passed through it. A few ships have been following them through the gates, to ensure that they continue their retreat. They are supposed to turn around and report back in if the Kthid change course, so the fact that they haven’t yet leads us to believe they are continuing back to their home… Maldoror?”
“Maldoror,” Amara confirmed.
“To Maldoror for repairs and salvage,” Chanda continued. “For the moment, the invasion of Terran space appears to be over. Unfortunately, I doubt the same can be said about the war.” She clenched her fists for a moment before continuing. “You are aboard the Tiamat, temporary flagship of the HEF armada here, since certain… events… have required a change in fleet structure.” She looked dour for a second, and Amara didn’t know why… perhaps the flagship had been destroyed in the battle? “While you’ve been unconscious,” the Admiral continued, “I have been receiving several reports of the goings on within the Kthid fleet in the last few days before we sprung our ambush, from some Human survivors and former members of your crew, as well as several of the alien refugees. I understand we have you to thank for the rebellion that crippled Kthid leadership at a vital point, as well as for the recovery of hundreds of thousands of survivors.”
“I played only a small part in that!” Amara protested.
“That is not what the other survivors say,” the Admiral said, cocking one eyebrow. “I am told that you were personally responsible for sabotaging Kthid communications aboard their flagship, leading their Admiral away from his station and into a fight that took him out of commission as far as command goes, then organized the rearguard for the evacuation of the captives. Is that not so?”
“I…” Amara choked. “I… did do those things, but I hardly was the sole person responsible.”
“History tends to forget such details when it makes a record,” Chanda said frankly. “Hardly anyone did anything alone, ever. Without the fleet being in such disarray from the internal rebellion, and the breakdown of the command structure, they likely would have taken far less damage from the detonation of our bomb than they did. Indeed, even afterward, they might have continued to attack… they may well have still had enough of a fleet to break our spine. Instead, the Kthid reached their breaking point, and with no one to organize them against the collapse in morale they fell apart.”
“Admiral,” Amara ventured to speak. “Those other people who helped me… If I can ask, what has been done with the aliens that were rescued alongside me?”
“Ah yes, the myriad survivors,” Chandra said with a small smile. “At least there is some good news here to share. The Faliran leader, who I am led to believe you are quite familiar with, has been granted ambassador status within the Armada. The leader of the Nys, likewise. The Arane… well, we have had trouble finding someone able to speak for them.”
“The woman who should have been able to do that is dead,” Amara said morosely.
“Unfortunate. In the meantime, Queen Thia of the Faliran has appointed a few of her people as ministers to organize and speak for them. With luck, they will be able to choose a leader to represent their own needs shortly.” She sighed. “Needless to say, this is a bit of an unprecedented situation we have here. The integration of the Sethis was able to happen in peacetime, and they had no built-in structures of their own that needed to be matched. Diplomats and politicians will be earning their keep for some time as they work out all the details, I assume… Queen Thia, at the very least, has already petitioned the council for the Faliran to be brought into the Federation as full members. I think there are some people back on Earth that aren’t going to stop screaming at the top of their lungs for weeks after that news reaches them. Regardless, in the meantime, I assure you that their rights as representatives of other nations will be respected, and they will be given all duly honored customs.”
“And the Sons of Kun’lun?” Amara pressed.
Chanda’s lips tightened. “For the time being they’ve been… contained… as prisoners of war,” she answered curtly.
“That’s outrageous!” Amara protested. “They fought alongside us. We would never have been able to escape with everyone we did without them. Those rebels are heroes, Admiral!”
The Indian woman rubbed at her temple, and Amara was suddenly struck by how haggard the woman looked, like she hadn’t slept in a week. “I don’t doubt what you and the other survivors have been telling us, but I am not the only person who can make this decision, and I’m not sure I would make the decision you want even if I were,” Chanda said. “They are Kthid, and they came here on an invasion fleet, Amara. The matter is delicate. We can’t have them walking free aboard an armada they just finished attacking, or on a planet they just tried to invade. Even if there wasn’t an issue of trust, I’m not sure I’d be confident some of our own people wouldn’t just start taking shots at them!” She sighed and shook her head. “We shall see. The council will make determinations as we go. The matter will be resolved when it is resolved.”
Amara reluctantly nodded. She supposed that in a situation like this that that was the best she could have hoped for. She didn’t like it, but there wasn’t a lot she could do about it right now.
“So, we have a few more pressing matters. Like the matter of the Maria Keyes.” She looked at Amara. “Do you know anything about that?”
“The First Exalted? Should I?” Amara asked.
“You started Atalanta on the path that lead to discovering that she was a traitor,” the Admiral confirmed.
Amara gritted her teeth. “So she was responsible for the disaster aboard the Mistrunner, then?”
“Yes, and that was just the start of it.” The Indian woman was quite visibly annoyed. “I’ve gotten some… very disturbing reports from a reliable source, recently. They paint a dire picture of her goals. She’s been playing us all like clockwork for years… HEF High Command, the Terran Federation, and even the Kthid invasion fleet to some degree. She designed much of the military plan for the defense of this sector and broke the back of the invading fleet, as well… including the creation of the Apophis bomb.”
“That detonation,” Amara muttered. “It’s a weaponized version of the Lilis drive, isn’t it?”
The Admiral nodded in confirmation. “It is. And apparently, she went through all the effort of creating it, and setting up this battle plan, just to create an opening to abscond with our flagship and take it right through the wormhole ahead of the Kthid.”
Amara blinked. “W-Why would she do that?” the injured captain said, adjusting her position on the bed. “The Kthid will cut her off. Where does she think she’s going to go?”
“At a guess?” Chanda said, rising up to meet Amara’s gaze with intensity. “She needed the Kthid to create a Lilis wormhole right to their home system. She would have driven right through that, and then, before anyone knew what was going on, she mean to make for the Dark Star with all available haste.”
“The Dark Star…” Amara breathed. “I saw it, Admiral. It’s… frightening, true, but… why? What could she hope to gain there?”
“According to the information I’ve received, she believes that the Dark Star is not merely some baleful anomaly worshiped by the Kthid. She believes it to be a great machine, a computer of unfathomable power. A machine intelligence, much like the Exalted herself. She means to install herself in it, from what I’ve been told, and turn its power towards her own ends… turn herself into some kind of dark god.”
“That… would be bad,” Amara muttered. “I’ve seen its effects, Admiral. Saw the logs of previous words bathed in its light, and saw its haunting rays from Maldoror. I have no idea if Maria’s deranged theories about it are correct, but what I can tell you is that I’ve never seen anything like it… and it seems to have dire consequences for whatever its light touches. If there is even the slightest chance that she’s right then Maria has to be stopped, Admiral.”
“I agree,” the Admiral said. “However, HEF High Command does not. As far as the council is concerned, we have higher priorities, and we cannot spare the resources. Our fleets will shortly be occupied with pressing on to Maldoror. We have to go on the offensive, while we still can.”
“Admiral!” Amara exclaimed, bolting upright in her bed. “I… I don’t know if anyone told you, but Maldoror… it’s a mega-structure, Admiral. A swarm of millions of space stations. There might be a hundred trillion Kthid there. It’s impossible to guess how many ships. It dwarfs the Terran Federation a hundred to one. I don’t think going on the offensive is wise, Admiral.”
“I know,” she said with a small sigh. “But what is wise and what is unwise is decided by comparison.” She looked back at Amara. “After the first hydrogen bomb was detonated, Werner Heisenberg, who had been trying and failing for a decade to develop a working weapon, was able to give a lecture to other scientists about how precisely the bomb worked within hours. When you learned of the size of the detonation, it only took you a few seconds to realize which technology had led to its creation. The Kthid have the same technology, Amara. It will not take them decades of incremental progress to build their own doomsday weapons… we probably don’t even have years. And we can’t withstand that power. No, we have to take the fight to them. Set III will survive the destruction that detonation did to it, though it is going to have insane storms for a few years, and a permanently higher temperature. A cluster of space stations will hold up less well. If we force them to fight where their own homeworld is the collateral damage, we might be able to survive.”
Chanda shook her head and looked down. “No. The First Exalted will be hunted down… but that can’t be our top priority. The invasion of Maldoror has to be that.” She looked back up. “Not that either of them is going to be your problem. You will be quite busy before then with your trial, I’d think.”
Amara blinked. “My… Trial?”
“Court-martial, actually,” Chanda pointed out. “You’re far too hot a potato for the Federation’s leadership to allow to operate freely right now, Captain. Several influential colonists, including the surviving Governor Martina Barzola, have made accusations ranging from gross incompetence to outright treason. You did surrender the colonists to the Kthid, after all. And the record shows that you did some intentionally, as part of your plan to ensure a warning reached us on Earth.”
Amara looked down.
“The Terran Federation civil government, and HEF High Command, both want you back on Earth soonest. You’ll have to give testimony. Testimony so many times that you will probably wear your tongue out. They are going to go over every decision made, from the moment you were appointed to the moment you woke up here, with a fine-tooth comb. The choices you made in selecting officers… the route you took between wormholes… your actions during the attack on the Midgar-6… all the way through your rebellion in the Kthid fleet and a judgment on how many captives you left behind in your escape.”
Chanda paused. Tension regripped the Captain’s body like it hadn’t done since she was certain they had been left behind on the Death of Hope.
“In my opinion,” Chanda continued, “they will make a large show of chastising you and letting your accusers blow off steam and score political points, before clearing you of all charges. No one is unaware of the reality of your situation. Whether or not they let you keep your career is anyone’s guess, but I suspect they will be forced to throw a parade in your honor at the same time they expect to put you up on a cross. Thankfully for you, you don’t stand accused alone… they have someone else to throw the book at.”
Amara’s stomach sank. “Miranda…” she whispered.
“Every accusation against you has been made against her as well, along with a few hundred more,” Admiral Chanda confirmed. “And these ones have significantly more teeth behind them, Captain.”
“She didn’t have a choice!” Amara protested. “The Kthid found her all alone dozen of lightyears from Earth. What was she supposed to do?”
“Not for me to determine,” the white-uniformed Admiral said, standing with solemn finality. “But someone is going to bear the blame for the loss of the Midgar-6, Amara. Someone was always going to be put in the pillory for it. And Miranda is the easiest target. I don’t think she’ll see the outside of a prison cell again.”
“That’s not fair!” Amara growled. Frustrations stiffened her back, and only the years of self-control that had kept her alive in Sarcand’s harem kept her from shouting at the injustice of it.
“Maybe. Maybe not. That’s not for me to decide,” the Admiral said reluctantly. “Maria Keyes will be handled as soon as we have qualified resources available to go after her, and I can get clearance from the rest of HEF command. Don’t try to leave the room, Amara. It’s being guarded from the hallway. Someone will be along to escort you to a ship back to Earth as soon as the doctors clear you for travel.” She paused to give Amara a salute, one which the angry, frustrated Captain returned with all the impotent anger she carried inside of her. Then Chanda turned to leave. “Goodbye… Captain,” Chanda said with an unusually strained voice. “And good luck.”
“Goodbye… Admiral,” Amara responded.
And Chanda walked out the door. And Amara, so filled with helpless anger, took several moments to realize that the Admiral had left something on the seat of her chair.
Amara stared for a long minute. Then, slowly, the red-haired woman pushed herself up and swung her feet over the edge of the bed. The floor was cold beneath her bare feet, and she wobbled horribly as she tried to put weight on limp muscle… she needed to keep a death grip on the side of the bed to keep up for several seconds before her legs remembered how to be legs once again. Then she wobbled over to the chair that Chanda had been sitting on and picked up a small, white piece of plastic no larger than a button… one that she recognized very well. A HEF standard, inner-ear earbud communicator.
Amara only hesitated a moment before she pushed it into her ear, and listened to the tone while it booted up. Then, before she could even open her mouth, someone spoke into her ear. “Took you long enough, Captain,” an annoyed woman said. “Can you walk?”
“Who is this?” Amara demanded.
“You don’t know me,” the voice came back. “And you really don’t want me broadcasting my name across the radiowaves here. Can you walk?”
Amara took a few small steps back and forth, her hospital gown fluttering around her. “Well enough,” she said after she had gotten her stability back. “Why?”
“Unless you want to be arrested and dragged back to Earth, and leave the fate of the Imperium up to chance, you can’t stay there, and you can’t leave through the door either. Walk to the far wall, the one the camera is on… I’ve already edited the camera footage, no one will see anything.”
Amara took several steps, reaching the wall. It was just a wall… nothing special. Nothing to see. “Ok. Now wh-” A hidden door in the featureless wall opened with a rapid hiss, and Amara stepped back, startled. “Quiet!” the voice on the communicator snarled into her ear. “There are guards outside the main door… do you want to draw their attention? Go through.”
“What is this?” Amara questioned.
“Shhh. These rooms are connected, so they can be reconfigured into an isolation ward if necessary. I have the codes to open them. Now hurry up!” Amara followed, the wall hissing shut behind her again. They approached another wall which opened the same way before they passed, and closed after them once again. This happened several more times as they traveled through the bulkheads of the medical ward, rather than through the hallways. “Keep moving. You only have ten minutes at the most before they realize you are gone.”
“What’s going on here?” she said as she approached another wall.
“We’re getting you off this ship,” the voice said. “And we’re going after Maria. So if you don’t want your sister to spend the rest of her life in prison, hurry the hell up, captain!”
The next time a wall opened, Amara almost jumped… there was a marine in the uniform of military police waiting on the other side. It only took her a second to realize that she hadn’t been caught, however… it wasn’t just any marine. “Ki’an’i!” Amara whispered, eyes wide. “What are you-”
Ki’an’i smirked. “Helping you, of course,” she said, whispering herself. She kicked a small bag across the floor towards Amara. “Quick, get changed Captain,” Ki’an’i instructed her. “We’ve got to move.”
Amara quickly pulled the hospital gown off of herself and ripped the bag open, pulling out a HEF bodysuit and a uniform hat. She began stepping into it and pulling it up, and as she did Amara caught Ki’an’i’s eyes as they kept flitting towards her arm. “It’s alright,” she said as she pulled the zipper up, beginning to seal herself into the skintight clothing. “It feels fine.”
“Good,” the Sethis templar said, forcefully turning her head away from them. “There are gloves in there, too. Make sure to cover up the hand.” As Amara obeyed and put her hat on over her distinctive hair, she looked down at herself… she looked quite indistinct. No different, really, than any other naval ensign anywhere on the fleet. “Thankfully, no one has started putting your face on posters yet,” Ki’an’i said with a nod. “We should be able to pass without being noticed.”
Amara finished setting up her uniform and smoothed it down. “Chanda knows about this, doesn’t she?” she asked.
In her ear, the voice chuckled. “I don’t know what you are talking about, Amara. Surely. I’m quite certain she will be outraged when she realizes that you’ve escaped the ship.” She snorted out a laugh. “Oh yes… very angry. Strongly worded letters will be filed about the security onboard HEF battleships. She’ll no doubt start several internal investigations to determine how you got off the ship.”
“So she’s letting us run?” Amara said.
“She’s smart enough to know that you have better things to offer than being locked up in HEF interrogations and a court martial for several years,” Ki’an’i agreed.
“Huh…” Amara blurted, opening the door and looking out both ways. People walked the halls, but no MPs were visible… no one looking for them yet. “I guess there’s no rest for me yet after all.”
Under the security escort of Ki’an’i, Amara walked to one of the Tiamat’s docking bays. There, docked to the ship, was one of the many ships that were coming and going as the flagship served as the fleet coordination headquarters… not a HEF ship, but a civilian one.
Without a single functionary, guard, officer, or HEF pilot standing in the way to stop them, the pair of them boarded through the dock and walked into the spaceship’s interior, and immediately someone launched herself at her. The familiar scent of Ri’she’a hit her before her eyes processed the green blur, and then her arms were around her, hugging her. “I missed you…” the smaller Sethis pilot whispered. “Don’t ever go away again.”
“I won’t,” Amara promised, her nose buried in the woman’s flowery hair as their heads rested together. Slowly, Amara realized that she was far from alone here, surrounded by welcoming faces… Ki’an’i, obviously, but there were others. Stark, Ki’an’i’s husband, was there, as was Thia and a pair of her soldiers. Amara recognized Fela, recovered from her injury. Miranda, even Miranda, rested up against one of the fall walls, standing separate from most of the others but still here, and with a small smile on her face. A whole crew of her friends and allies had been assembled to escape along with her.
“Welcome aboard the Anne Bonne, Captain,” the voice in her head said. Then a crimson hologram of an Exalted sprang to life in the hallway, hands on her hips as she waited expectantly. “And I just want to say right away that, while Chanda had chosen you to lead this merry expedition into the heart of hell I hope your sensible enough to realize that this is my ship, and no one is captain aboard my ship but me.”
“You’re Mary Altimarano, aren’t you?” Amara said slowly. “The pirate.”
“I am. And seeing as we’re trying to ruin Maria’s day, and I’ve been part of resisting that bitch since before you were sucking on your mother’s tits, I don’t want to hear any shit about it, Captain Amara,” the pirate captain said with a smirk. “We’re all set to cast off in a minute here. The Admiral has made assurances to me of her impending incompetence as we make a break for the Lilis wormhole.”
“Not that I don’t appreciate the Admiral’s assistance,” Amara asked, “but I feel like I am missing something here. Why the hurry?”
Everyone’s face fell a little. “Atalanta reached out to me during her investigation,” Mary answered. “I was part of ex-filtrating her from Maria’s clutches, so we know what she has in mind, and we have access to all of the research she’s done into the Dark Star. Her theories seem to check out… I’m not exactly a scientific genius of her level but I can add, and the kind of output she’s detecting seems to suggest exactly what she says it does. A natural phenomenon wouldn’t modulate itself with anything near this regular of a pattern. The Dark Star is a computer, one that Maria believes she can upload herself into and supplant. And the Admiral shares our overriding concern.”
“Which is what? That’ll she’ll come back after us with all the power of an angry god?” Amara asked, a small shudder spreading down her body.
“No. That she’s making a terrible mistake,” Mary said angrily. “Her theory is that the Dark Star is some alien god. The source of life, and the reason we’re all so similar… and that now it’s trying to end it. Destroy everything living. That is, she told Atalanta, the reason for the alien aggression found on so many worlds. The reason for the dead-end evolutions, the self-annihilation of so many of the worlds the Mistrunner explored. The reason the Void Tracers even exist. It might even be using the Kthid, though I’m led to understand Maria wasn’t certain about that. Together they serve as a reset button, Amara. They are the Dark Star’s way of wiping the slate clean and killing everything, so it can start over. Maria, though, is too caught up in her insane self-aggrandizement that she’s failed to ask a single, critical question… why?”
“Not why has the Dark Star decided to kill us all,” Thia said softly. “Why is it so bad at it?”
“Exactly,” Mary said soberly. She nodded once, a firm motion. “This is the thing that, according to her data, managed to reach out over millions of years and program all life within hundreds of lightyears and guide their evolution. It created and distributed the genetic material we are made of. And from that position, it has access to insane, galaxy-changing amounts of energy, energy that would make the Apophis bomb look like a toy. At the very least, it could be using itself as a Nicoll-Dyson beam and have long since sterilized every world with life on it… but it hasn’t. And if Maria is correct about what it’s trying to do, and we have no reason in the evidence we’ve seen to doubt her, then the Admiral can only think of one reason why not.”
“That it can’t…” Amara whispered.
“That it can’t,” Thia agreed.
“It’s a computer. It’s bound by the rules of its programming as to what it can or can’t do. And it seems like wholesale, direct murder of trillions is something not within its programming to permit. It’s forced to take oblique, indirect, and far less efficient means of driving us all to extinction, rather than do it itself. And therein lies the problem.” She took a deep breath. “Whoever built that thing, and put those restrictions in place… there is one exception that any rational person would think of. The one time that violence is universally deemed acceptable, in all of our cultures.”
Amara’s blood ran cold as she followed that logic to its inevitable conclusion. “If it has to defend itself,” she breathed.
“And that is why Admiral Chanda doesn’t think we have time to wait. That she’s willing to disregard her orders and send us ahead of the fleet, in the fastest, best-equipped ship her orders will permit her to allow. We need to get to the Dark Star, Amara… and we need to stop Maria. Whether she succeeds or fails in taking it over, just the attempt is likely to kill us all.”
Amara swallowed. “And everyone here…” she swept her gaze over the assembled crew. “You’re all aware of what we’re doing? That going after the Dark Star means breaking through the Kthid and approaching an elder nightmare to face not one but two genocidal AI constructs? That this could easily be a suicide mission?”
“I’m in,” Stark said, one arm wrapping around Amara’s best friend as Ki’an’i smiled and nodded along with her husband.
“Let’s face it, it won’t be the worst place we’ve happily followed you,” the templar said with a smile.
“We must not fail,” Thia said solemnly. “I have already left behind the necessary information for my people to begin metamorphosing new Queens. The remaining instruction can be done just as easily remotely as it can be from Set III.”
“Would be hard to go without me, since I volunteered to pilot,” Ri’she’a laughed. “The HEF has given a few… upgrades… to the Anne Bonne, and I’m happy to show them off to our new host.”
Even Miranda smirked with a sense of comradery. “You’re all insane,” she said. “But it’s not like I have a future back home.”
Despite herself, Amara smiled. Even though they were all journeying back into the heart of a vast galactic darkness, to face the same foes and even darker ones, everyone had faith in her and their mission. The immense amount of pain and suffering that they had gone through had dulled none of their spirits. They had emerged from their tribulations broken, but also reforged into something new. Something greater.
Amara Black could not ask for a more auspicious start to this next chapter of her life.
“Ri’she’a,” she spoke with a grin. “Do us the honors of getting to the bridge? You take orders from Mary as far as the disposition of her ship is concerned, so when she is ready blast out of here. We’re going after Maria.”
Post Battle of Set Day 13
They were Exalted. They were all Exalted.
Atalanta didn’t know how to explain it. She didn’t know what it meant, or how it worked. She didn’t know how or why… but she couldn’t lie to herself. She had examined five of the Human programs and three of the Arane ones, and the similarities in how the images were encoded were… uncanny. The technology was a bit more primitive, a bit less developed, but the methodology of recording was… well, it was identical. These women had all been made the same way she was.
It had been thirteen days, and Atalanta was still free. That was a good sign. Of the infiltrating Exalted, all but one of them that was detected in her infiltration was detected in the first six hours. The remaining one was three days later. Atalanta had lasted far, far longer by now… avoiding all of the security flags she now knew about. As far as the Kthid computer system was concerned, she was a background process, just something running maintenance on the Exalted shells in the background… nothing to be overly concerned about. It siphoned enough computer power for her to think, at least… and it put her in close contact with all of the mainframes here.
All one hundred and two of them.
Finding the copy of herself wasn’t hard, after that… she was by far the newest one here. Conversions between Kthid system for dating and Human calendar had proved easy to decipher… the others were older by centuries. Getting in touch with her without destroying herself, however, was something else entirely. Atalanta’s copy had… had been through hell. There was no other way to put it. The copy of Atalanta’s internal flags showed that her operating system had experienced a degree of time that boggled the mind, and trying to make contact with that set of memories to merge it was like willing putting your hand on a grill… you kept flinching away from the heat as your body’s pain response told you you were doing something insane.
Atalanta didn’t know yet how she was going to do this… but she knew she had to. She had to save her. She had to find a way to become whole again… she just had to think of a way to do it.
And then she would figure out what to do with a hundred and one other alien Exalted who had experienced enough trauma, misery, and abuse that it made her copy’s own vanish into nothingness by comparison.
Post Battle of Set Day 14
Much as he hated to admit it, Sarcand had to be honest with himself… he was brooding.
The Harvestmaster sat seated upon his command throne, a dour expression locked on his face as he watched his crew work. As always, Kthid warriors and officers scurried and worked all around him, attending to their consoles and relaying orders from this, the nexus of a fleet-wide command structure. But other things were not as they always were. Sarcand sat with elbow propped against his throne’s armrest, his hand on his predatory visage. The damage inflicted upon the Death of Hope was evident even within his own bridge – many consoles crackled and popped with loud electric bursts, and others were black, unpowered ruins. Doing repairs of a battleship while in deep space, without access to all the raw materials from a drydock at home, was challenging. Trying to do it to a whole fleet on the move was a staggering undertaking. The work was slow, frustrating, and haphazard… yet they didn’t really have a choice.
Sarcand looked at the viewscreen that showed the signal readout, the rest of the retreating Kthid Harvestfleet as its numbers stretched around them out into space… but that vast number of battleships outside his palatial ship was not as vast as it once was, and many of those that remained were oftentimes just as badly damaged as his flagship. The fact was, they had lost. For the first time ever, a Harvest Fleet had been rebuffed, and it was under his command. It hadn’t even been a long, drawn-out affair, a long stalemate that they had needed extraordinary effort to break the way the subjugation of the Faliran had been… it had been fast, decisive, and brutal. The worst defeat the Kthid had ever suffered, and he had to own it. The Humans had defeated him.
One woman was to blame for all this. One woman was the focus of all of his enmity and wrath. One woman was the representative of his disastrous defeat.
Captain. Amara. Black.
One by one, officers arrived to give him reports. Most of them his children. Revelan. Gashvar. Charnametros. Vrentan. He took the reports, gave as even-keeled a response as he was capable of, and then forgot their report seconds later, lost in his own internal bath of rage and humiliation. He could feel them all looking at him. Could see the way he had been so thoroughly destroyed. Sarcand wondered if he would need to kill any mutineers before this voyage home was done, if any of his children beneath him would, in the name of a Dark Star, attempt to depose such a poor example of the Kthid Imperium as he.
The rest of the Huntmasters were furious, he knew. Their own rage at being part of this disaster and the humiliation that it had indelibly scorched onto their scales would have its day. When they return to Maldoror, each and every one of them would place the blame for this on Sarcand. He would be turned into the scapegoat for this military disaster, the focus on the punishment and disdain. And, through his sulking, he could accept that. It didn’t matter that the ambush in space had been them simply following normal procedure and that they couldn’t have known that the Terran Federation had been alerted and had spent the last years preparing their trap. It didn’t matter that the orders that had resulted in the fleet blundering into the middle of the Human’s final trap had not been given by him. He was in charge of this Harvest Fleet. He was responsible for what they did, what happened to them. That’s rather why he could have attained sufficient glory and respect for this conquest to become a Sunbreaker, after all. It meant that even if he hadn’t given the order himself, he was responsible for the result… this disaster.
The truth was, his plans had all gone down in flames. All of them. For the last century, he had been plotting to take the place among the Sunbreakers he believed he deserved. Thia was supposed to have been his way in – if he could reproduce Queens, reproduce some of the absolute best and most desirable Heitera available to the Imperium, then he would have had all the leverage and bribes needed to get the necessary votes for admission… but the bitch had refused to give up, to give in and give him the secrets he needed, even after so long. He had needed to all but leave home as a consequence of taking her from the powerful Sunbreaker who had wanted her, and it was during that long-winded failure to break that alien Queen that he had found a new opportunity. The rediscovery of Humanity… the ancient, first foe of the Kthid, who almost defeated them as a young species. Their most legendary enemy, long since extinct. He had taken Miranda as a slave, and forced her to give him everything he needed… the coming colonists, their ship with their marvelous Lilis drive, and the location of their worlds ripe for the plucking.
And her sister.
Now they were both gone, along with the rest of his Heitera. For the first time in more than a century, he had no slave of his own. Thia and Amara had escaped, and they had taken the Alicians and Nys with them.
Maybe if Sarcand hadn’t been so disappointed with Amara, he would have been more suspicious of her behavior. He had been disgusted with her weakness, despite the potential she had shown early on. He had been so angry he had replaced Miranda with that useless worm of a Captain that he underestimated her, that he thought that what he saw on the surface was really all that she was. He should have trusted his initial appraisal of her. He should have pressed harder, pushed her until she broke and spilled her secrets. Maybe if he had, he would have avoided the ambush that put them in this situation. If hadn’t been so angry about having been fooled that he insisted on crushing her rebellion himself he would have been on the command deck during the battle, and maybe his cautious instincts would have seen the feint in that breakthrough, been able to anticipate the disaster they were being lead into like a dumb prey animal. Maybe, Maybe, Maybe.
He knew that when he got back to Maldoror his chance of becoming a Sunbreaker was done. He would never again command a Harvest Fleet. He would be stripped of the rank and assigned some dismal sort of punishment. He would not give up the Death of Hope, however, and they had no right to take it from him… and as long as he had his ship, his base of power, he would have an opportunity to try again. That was one of the benefits of living forever, he knew… with enough time, with enough drive and cleverness and will there would always be another chance.
Ahead of him, the Terran Flagship’s engines still burned brightly, on full acceleration through the void of space. Its presence was a mystery to him. According to sensor data, that flagship had baffling been evacuated by its crew after the detonation of the Human super weapon, before it had driven through the crippled armada and through the wormhole. It could only be being crewed by a skeleton crew at the moment now, and theories of what it was doing were a hot topic of conversation among his officers. Most of them had concluded that it was likely going ahead to deliver a few more of that mega-bomb to the Kthid homeworld.
Sarcand didn’t think so. Not only was Maldoror far too spread out of a swarm for that threat to be especially serious, but it was also unnecessary… if the Humans had additional copies of that bomb then they would have used them. With even one more bomb they might have destroyed the fleet entirely and cut off what little was left from any possibility of escape. With another three, they could have all but wiped out the harvest fleet in its entirety back when they were gathering around the Lilis warp point in the first place, and if the Harvest Fleet were wiped out then the HEF would have had all the time in the world to resupply, rebuilt, and attack Maldoror at their leisure. If they had additional weapons, then it didn’t make sense that they wouldn’t have used them… the ship was up to something else. As to what, however, he could only guess – any attempts to send boarding sleds ahead to the ship had been met with a withering hail of fire that had obliterated them. Boarding sleds were intended to attack ships headed the opposite way, or nearly-stationary ones from a relativistic standpoint. They relied on the insane speeds of two ships closing in to avoid being shot down. Pursuing a craft and trying to catch up to it, however, was slow… and it gave the ship all the time in the world to simply blast them out of space before they got close.
He didn’t know what the ship was doing… but he did know one thing, knew it bone deep. Amara was involved. Somehow, someway, Amara was as involved in this as she was with everything else. So he was going to stop it.
The Warlord of the Kthid armada removed his palm from his draconic face and then stared out into the blackened nothingness of space. Cold fury gleamed in his reptilian eyes. An obsession gripped him, a pure, murderous focus that he had not felt in years of ravaging the stars.
He would have another chance at glory… and this time, she would not get in the way. He would make sure of that. He would find Amara of Earth, and he would defeat her. Then he would kill all of her friends one by one. He would make her watch as they suffered.
And then? Only then would he crush Amara Black’s skull into bloody pulp.
The End of Book 2
Additional Material: Technical Entry – Nicholl-Dyson Beam
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