Lucifer's Star

by C. T. Phipps

  “You already know the answer to that.”

  “I want to hear it from you.”

  I took a deep breath. “I am Cassius Mass the Younger, genetic clone and adopted son of Cassius Mass the Elder. Baronet of Mass City, honored count of the Star 7171B in Sector 8, which would have been named after my firstborn child. I think the Explorer’s Guild named it Dumptruck after someone’s pet turtle following Crius’ defeat. I am a former Colonel-Count in the Archduchy of Starfighter Corps equivalent to a Brigadier General or SOF-6, and I have won a shit-ton of awards, of which some I actually deserved. Head of Archangel Squadron and, technically, Archangel Wing, though we never actually were able to get the reinforcements we needed for that because everyone good enough was dead by the time I was promoted. I hold the distinction of being the first ever clone to hold the Lucifer’s Star and, in all likelihood, I am the last.”

  Hunk-A-Junk poured me a shot of bourbon in my teacup.

  “Thank God,” I said, taking my cup of it and downing it. “I am far too sober for this conversation.”

  “You’re not usually.”

  I smiled. That was actually pretty funny.

  Ida wasn’t laughing. “Lucifer’s Star, interesting name for an award.”

  I sighed. “The Crius system was settled by religious dissidents led by the Prophet Stephen Allenway, Patriarch of House Lucifer. He had the unpopular belief on his homeworld of Skye, that Jesus of Nazareth’s death and resurrection had actually been the Morningstar redeeming himself on God’s orders. Later, Marcus would claim he was the Second Coming.”

  “What’s your take on that?”

  “I believe in God, I don’t believe in trifles. I do believe it was convenient for God to tell Marcus all of his supporters should have hereditary dominion over the second and third waves of colonists from nearby war-torn or impoverished planets. Nevertheless, the Lucifer’s Star is the highest award for valor any soldier can be given in the Crius Archduchy, or was.”

  “How’d you get yours?”

  I frowned, remembering the screams of dying colonists as I struggled to use the power-suit to lift up the wreckage covering them. The Commonwealth’s assault had landed on a hospital and I’d been in a perfect position for a holo-opportunity. I’d saved too few that day and none of the peasant soldiers involved in the rescue had been honored. At least the rest of my squadron had been given similar awards later on in the war, when they’d been handed out like candy on Samhain.

  “The usual bullshit.”

  Ida gave a hearty chuckle and put away her gun before taking a sip of her bourbon like it was tea. I couldn’t blame her. Ida’s stock was a far higher quality than the usual swill I imbibed. “You realize this puts me in an awkward position.”

  I nodded. “I’ll depart at the next port.”

  If she was going to turn me in for the reward, she would have done so without tipping me off. Either that or had Clarice blast me with a stunner and dump me in the security room’s holding cell.

  Ida reached into her thick spacer’s robe and pulled out a small folded-up wallet before tossing it on the table in front of us. A holographic image of an eye over the Commonwealth capital of Albion appeared. It showed Ida’s picture, serial number, authorization code, and rank.

  Shit.

  She was a Watcher.

  “Well, that certainly changes things.” I gestured to Hunk-A-Junk. “Keep it coming.”

  It poured me another bourbon, which I quickly downed.

  “Stay sober enough to talk, sonny.”

  “Do I have to?”

  “I’d appreciate it.”

  “How long have you been a Watcher?” I asked, trying to reconcile my image of the sinister organization with the woman I’d known for the past year.

  Ida pointed over to a picture of a lovely black-and-white holo of a beautiful woman with chocolate-colored skin and a Merchant Guild uniform similar to the one she now wore. “Since I was young and pretty like Clarice.”

  “I’m stunned they had space travel back then,” I said, opening my mouth in faux-astonishment.

  “Don’t sass me when I’m not pointing a gun at you. I might rethink putting it away.”

  I looked at her square in the eye. “I’d say I really don’t care one way or the other.”

  “You don’t strike me as suicidal or a quitter, Cassius.”

  I closed my eyes. “Then you have misread me badly because I’ve been both for a while now. I’m tired of the killing and I’m disillusioned with causes. If you want me to stand up in front of a podium and say how I was wrong to oppose the Commonwealth, then no, I won’t. I don’t care if you kill me. You dropped fucking asteroids on my world and murdered my family. Maybe the nobility deserves it, God above and below, we probably did, but I’m not going to betray their memory like that. Even if I now think the Crius Reborn movements are a bunch of murderous psychopaths who are making the lives of Sector 7’s peoples worse.”

  I’d screwed up, badly, trying to continue fighting the war against the Commonwealth. Surrender was a bitter pill to swallow but there was a reason it existed. Because continuing to fight only made things worse. It was a child’s conception of war you were supposed to continue until you won, as if losing was the worst thing in the world versus whatever terms brought it to an end. We’d brought the Commonwealth’s wrath down upon our heads and it had done nothing but guarantee the next sixty years of Crius citizens struggled for survival. But I was not going to say its citizens deserved what happened to them.

  Never.

  I’d die first.

  Honestly, it surprised me I still had that sort of passion left.

  Ida nodded approvingly, bringing me out of my fugue. “That’s the kind of spunk I meant. What happened to Crius was a war crime, plain and simple. It would also do no good. If you were the kind of critter who’d ignore all the dead men, women, and children from your planet for a free pass, then I’d have no respect for you nor would your people. If we wanted to put you up as a Watcher puppet, I’d have you gnashing and hissing at the Commonwealth while encouraging patience as well as a slow build-up of your sector to strike against us. You know, like all of our actual operatives in the provisional government and opposition.”

  I blinked. “I see.”

  How naive had I been of the political realities? Was I truly just a babe in the woods even now? My father had been one of the most powerful men in the nobility, count of a minor homeworld, estate or not, and despite sharing his DNA, it seemed I had none of his political instincts.

  Cassius the Elder had been one of the chief architects of the war and had he not died, I imagined he would have been one of the first individuals to take the outstretched hand of the Commonwealth so he could buy back the territory we’d lost and force those worlds under economic domination rather than feudal. Just like all the other surviving nobles were.

  Ida ignored my distress. “No, I don’t want any of that.”

  “Then what do you want?”

  Ida crossed her arms. “I’d like for you to answer me how the hell you’ve been on my ship for the past year and yet some man who looks, acts, walks like Cassius Mass has just destroyed one of the Commonwealth’s fleets three days ago.”

  I started to open my mouth.

  Ida dropped another explosive revelation before I could. “He also has your wife accompanying him.”

  I closed my mouth. “Do we have anything stronger than bourbon?”

  Chapter Six

  “Sorry,” Ida said, sighing. “I have some Carthagian brandy if you want some.”

  “I want to get drunk, not kill myself.”

  “I know this must come as a shock, your wife being alive—”

  “My wife is dead, Captain,” I said, not raising my voice but being very clear in my pronunciation. “Judith was working at High Command when they dropped the first set of asteroids down on Allenway’s Rest. My wife was tough but even she would find it difficult to survive that many tons of rock.”

&
nbsp; “Are you sure she was there?” Ida asked, looking at me sideways. “No possible chance she might have been sent away, evacuated, or fled?”

  “My wife wouldn’t have abandoned her post.”

  I was certain of that.

  “Your post or you?” Ida asked. “She wasn’t exactly popular with the brass despite her ideas for improving equipment.”

  I closed my eyes. “Me. She wouldn’t abandon me.”

  Ida pursed her lips. “All right then, what we have is two very clever frauds who have been making use of your image to help rally the Free Systems Alliance.”

  “Is that what they’re calling it today?” I asked, putting every bit of contempt I could muster into my voice.

  “Hundreds of smaller movements all united together ideologically with its leadership arming cells, paramilitary units, and militias while the bulk of its danger comes from its actual military. A military which, as I mentioned, just defeated a Commonwealth Fleet. The 9th, in fact, killing every single man and woman involved with stealth tactics, followed by destroying those escape pods which ejected.”

  “Careless.” I shouldn’t have said that. It was against the instincts of every spacer alive to destroy escape pods. Some rules of war shouldn’t be broken, no matter the foe. Then again, it seemed like I was the only one who thought they weren’t things to cast aside when things got difficult so what did my opinion count for?

  “I’m not joking, Cassius. This goes beyond your small bunch of malcontented soldiers dreaming of revenge.”

  “I feel insulted.”

  Ida ignored my rejoinder. “This is a threat to Sector 7 and the entire Commonwealth.”

  “The galaxy’s saddest melody is playing.” I wasn’t exactly going to mourn the Commonwealth reaping a little of what it had sown, destroyed escape pods or not.

  Ida recognized this and tried a different, more effective, tactic. “They killed five hundred million innocent people in order to bring an end to a war that had killed two hundred and fifty million soldiers because Crius’s military made fools of our forces. What do you think they’re going to do if they decide they didn’t do enough last time?”

  She was right. The Commonwealth would not suffer this kind of humiliation. They maintained their empire through fear and respect. Challenging both would only bring down reprisals Crius’ citizens might not survive. “All right, tell me what the situation is.”

  “I’ll do you one better. I’ll show you.” Ida gestured behind her at the window to jumpspace. “My people recovered a copy of this in one of the cells local authorities raided. There’s copies scattered across the Commonwealth’s six sectors. Viewscreen, play Crius-10 file.”

  Seconds later, the image of jumpspace was replaced by a rally taking place on some world, which looked to be in the process of being terraformed. A barrier dome covered a stadium-sized area as red dust sandstorms went on outside it. It took me a second to realize it was being done on Crius, a choice of location that maximized the propaganda value of the video.

  The rally had hundreds of plastisteel uniformed Void Marines, noble officers, commoner officers, enlisted men, pilots, and other people who would never normally mix in a crowd together, all standing before an elevated podium underneath the banners I’d seen draped over Mass Castle. Standing on the podium was a veritable collection of Crius heroes with Thomas in a black State Security Marshal-Prince’s uniform, Minister of State Security Alvarado Jensen, the white-uniformed Grand Admiral Malcolm Plantagenet, myself in a red General-Duke’s uniform, and Judith dressed in civilian attire.

  They even had thirteen-year-old Princess Servilia of House Dumas, missing since the fall of Crius. She was wearing an adorably cute miniature version of a naval dress uniform. The young girl’s cornrows were tied in a military braid that aided the effect. I dismissed her as another imposter until I noticed her right hand had a golden bracelet I’d given to her for her seventh genesis day.

  I had to admit they’d chosen well with the actor replacing me since he looked identical to the touched-up version in propaganda holos. I wasn’t wearing my usual golden and red colors but had dressed down to a uniform lacking its usual flamboyance. Still, my Lucifer’s Star and rank insignia were present on my chest along with a few patches that looked tastefully modest.

  Stepping to the podium, my doppelganger spoke with a voice eerily similar to my own.

  “Sentients of the Crius Archduchy, freemen, nobles, and people of the ground, we have long struggled against one another. For too long, it was taken for granted there was a natural order, that one side should dominate the other, but now we are equal. Equal in our oppression—”

  “Oh, turn this shit off!” I said, waving my hand. “I think I can guess how it goes from here.”

  I couldn’t help but focus on Judith, though, searching her features for any sign of my wife or that she was a fraud like my doppelganger. The resemblance was perfect but the quality of the holo wasn’t perfect either. I couldn’t see her face to the point of knowing every dimple and spot. I did know my wife wasn’t a terrorist, though, and certainly wouldn’t want to be part of something insane like this.

  Unless she thought she was avenging me.

  Crap.

  “Viewscreen off,” Ida said. “Yeah, it’s pretty stereotypical populist meets fascist rhetoric. None of the usual Neo-Feudalist crap the Archduchy was famous for.”

  “I take it he’s saying that all Crius citizens are in this together and our real enemy is the Commonwealth?”

  “Yep,” Ida said, picking up a biscuit off her tea set. “He’s not even limiting it to Crius as he points out all citizens of the Commonwealth victimized by the Reclamation should rise up and take back their worlds.”

  I snorted. “People hated the Archduchy. They cheered the dropping of asteroids on it from New Baghdad to Carthage to High Washington. I never realized how badly the nobility were loathed until afterward.”

  Then again, I hadn’t known about the forced sterilizations, the mass-cullings, the execution of prisoners, or the human experimentation. The previous Archduchy Wars had been described as us taking the fight against savage evil primitives to bring order to Sector 7. It seemed my definition of savage and my ancestors’ were a trifle different.

  “Nostalgia is a funny thing. I bet they’re already talking about how much better it was being serfs.” Ida crunched down on her biscuit then tossed its remains back on the plate in front of her.

  “We never practiced serfdom,” I said, my head hurting from all these revelations. That and my hangover. “Are you really all that worried about a group of ex-Crius soldiers? We couldn’t defeat you when we were at our strongest and that was before we were forcibly disarmed.”

  Ida handed me a holo-magazine, tapping it as its cover disappeared to show a secret transcript from Albion’s data-centers. It listed bank accounts, military assets, and projected military support for this Free Systems Alliance. The projections were not what you would find for a terrorist organization.

  They were the projections for a star nation.

  A powerful one.

  I whistled. “That’s a lot of zeroes.”

  “Someone is clearly financing this little tin-pot revolution.”

  “The former nobility? I understand a lot of them got very cushy jobs with the Commonwealth Provisional Government.”

  Plenty of commoners had welcomed the Commonwealth on vassal worlds, only to be horrified as their state-industries were privatized and handed to the former nobility. The Commonwealth justified it on the grounds of Crius knowing the local language, customs, and how to run things. They were individuals who could get trade going and tax money delivered for projects to alleviate the worst damage from the war. Democracy would eventually be given to the people.

  Once the situation had stabilized.

  Eventually.

  “I doubt it,” Ida said. “We’ve been watching them like a bat-hawk and the survivors tend to be too busy enjoying their newfound fortunes to care abo
ut politics. The poorest ones have forty times their previous tax bracket. Someone cut a very lucrative deal with the government.”

  I clenched my teeth, wishing I’d hunted them all down after the war. “Someone should have told the people dropping the asteroids. What do you want from me, Ida?”

  “I want your help investigating this group. Help me expose your doppelganger as a fraud and we’ll consider it even between us. You’ll get your nice shiny new pardon and a ticket wherever you want.”

  I paused. “How many people have died in this little revolt of theirs?”

  “Two million,” Ida said. “And rising.”

  I took a deep breath. “Fine. Though I’m not doing it because I give a shit about the Commonwealth, though. Someone is sullying my family name and impersonating my wife. I wouldn’t even care if it was just me, but her? That is unforgivable. I also want this agreement in writing.”

  Ida had a document awaiting my signature. All of this was very convenient. Had I been set up? If so, why wait all this time to make the deal? Had she really not known who I was this entire time? If so, she had to be the worst intelligence officer in the history of forever. Yet, it was an insane coincidence otherwise.

  And I didn’t believe in coincidences.

  Either way, I wanted to know about this Free Systems Alliance. My honor was already shit so I didn’t mind signing an agreement to work against them when I was sure they weren’t the sort of group I should join.

  No, I couldn’t start thinking like that, even if I thought they had a chance of winning. If they somehow managed to destroy the Commonwealth or drive it from Sector 7, the region would descend into anarchy and billions more would suffer. More likely, they’d just draw out the fighting and cause even worse retaliation than before. With my wife’s face used to inspire the bloodshed.

  Fuck, I really was too sober for this conversation.

  Ida, however, read me like a book. “Did I ever tell you about my past?”

  “Nope. I didn’t have a spare month.”

  “Now you’re just being insulting.”

  “Sorry.”

  “It’d take three and a half weeks at the longest.”