Lucifer's Star

by C. T. Phipps

  The implications were staggering. It would explain why Clarice was on the Melampus, far away from the rest of civilized space. “I see.”

  “In the end, the Raiders managed to capture a few Chel and made a daring offer to trade them back for her, which was accepted. Clarice was imprisoned for two days and had scars left enough for a lifetime. Enough that Mason’s Raiders gave her walking papers when they realized she wanted to go back and kill them all.”

  I took that all in and tried to contact Clarice. Tapping my communicator, I tried to reach her private feed. “Maybe she deserves her revenge, but we need to get her to—”

  “The enemy is moving in front of us,” Isla interrupted. “There are mechs too.”

  “What?” I asked.

  “What I said,” Isla said. “We should move up a story.”

  That was when the elevator’s lights flickered.

  “Before they cut the power to it,” Isla muttered. “Hells.”

  The red emergency lights flickered on but I knew there was no way either of us was going anywhere. The only thing we could do was open the doors, and that would just put us in direct contact with our pursuers.

  That was when I heard a voice from the outside of the elevator. It was male with a Crius accent. Probably not a Chel. Though, honestly, I had no idea what they sounded like, so I was just guessing. “Colonel-Count Mass. So good to finally meet you, even under these circumstances. I admit to being surprised to find your DNA has been encoded into the system but I’m fairly sure the Commonwealth’s dogs aren’t replicating it. They don’t have the technology.”

  Isla looked over at me. “Maybe you can command them to let us go.”

  “It’s worth a try.”

  The voice then said, “I, of course, know you’re not the one leading the Free Systems Alliance. That’s just a filthy bioroid.”

  Isla narrowed her eyes.

  “Bioroids don’t murder children, unlike you and your friends,” I called back. “I came here to investigate who was using my name and rank.”

  “That’s your ship out there?” the voice called.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “What about the fighters?” he asked.

  “No,” I said. “The Chel sold the information to me.”

  “You’re lying.”

  “Maybe you don’t know the Chel as well as you think,” I said. “Who do I have the honor of addressing?”

  “Baronet Rudolph Zemov the Third.”

  I knew the Zemovs. Distant relatives. Assholes. Like most of Crius’ nobility, now that I thought about it.

  “What happened to our associates on the bridge?” Another voice, almost musical in nature and with an eerie reverb, said.

  A Chel perhaps?

  I looked at Isla, who shook her head.

  “Dead!” I called back.

  Isla glared at me.

  I moved down beside the thickest metal part of the elevator, the panels directly to the side of the elevator, as Isla did the same. Seconds later, fusion blasts shot through the door and slammed against the back. Sparks flew out of the sides, filling the elevator like fireworks while both Isla and I activated our shields. Seconds later, the fusion blasts stopped, leaving dozens of holes in the door.

  I looked over at Isla, who was breathing heavy just like me. Taking several deep breaths, I stared over at the LOCKDOWN button.

  Isla looked at me like I’d lost my mind.

  I mouthed, “Trust me.”

  Isla’s look was less than trusting.

  Still, she pushed it, multiple times.

  The doors, thankfully still functional, opened. I, meanwhile, unclipped the grenade I’d retrieved from the dead Chel and hurled it out the door. The explosion ripped through the hallway, sending waves of flash-radiation through the air. It would fry electronics and disintegrate flesh with equal alacrity.

  It would also leave hulls compromised.

  Unfortunately, any elation at believing we’d eliminated our foes was lost in the next few seconds.

  “Impressive, Count,” Zemov said. “You’ve managed to kill my two companions.”

  “It was partially my doing as well, you bigoted misogynist fuck!” Isla shouted back.

  “Ah, that must be the infamous Devil Doctor Hernandez. No wonder you both took so poorly to the bioroid comment.”

  I did a double take at Isla.

  Isla shrugged, looking as confused as I did.

  “Come out here and let us make a deal,” Zemov said. “I don’t have the personnel to complete my mission anymore.”

  “You have nothing I want,” I replied.

  “I know your sister is on board this ship. The one who created the bioroid duplicates of you and your wife.”

  I growled. “Who sent you?”

  “Thomas.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  I thought back to the last time I ever interacted with my siblings. It had just been a few hours after our father’s funeral. The war was still a few months from ending but it was the last time I’d interact with Zoe, Judith, Thomas, and the others I cared about on Crius.

  “You can’t be serious,” I said, staring at my brother. The two of us were standing in the third study of Mass Castle, sunlight coming in through the windows as my wife’s baby bio-dragon, Mittens, slept on the table behind us. I was sorting through father’s papers after the funeral and mulling over the fact I would have to head back to the front in forty-nine hours.

  Colonel-Count Thomas of House Plantagenet and I didn’t resemble one another in the slightest despite roughly half my DNA being inside him. He was tall and well-formed like me, but his skin was a rich shade of chocolate and he kept his head shaved rather than letting it grow out like I had. His right eye had been knocked out by a roadside bomb on Skellige and instead of going with a cybernetic replacement, he’d chosen to cover it with an ornate eyepatch with the Lucifer’s Wings symbol on it.

  Unlike myself and my father, in his earlier years, Thomas had chosen to avoid joining the Star Navy and devoted himself instead to politics. Ironically, this had rebounded on itself and caused him to join State Security as a Political Officer. Thomas’ all-black uniform and great coat was a sharp contrast to my colorful ones, only possessing a fraction of the rewards on his chest but each won for loyalty or efficiency.

  Which made his request all the more galling.

  “You know it’s the right thing to do,” Thomas said, playing with his tight black leather gloves. “For both the good of the Archduchy as well as the human race itself.”

  “You want to kill Prince Germanicus.”

  “I want to kill a monster,” Thomas replied. “Archduke Titus is nothing more than his children’s puppet. Germanicus and Germania instituted this war with the Commonwealth with the full knowledge we couldn’t win. They’ve filled the ranks of the military and government with their puppets, all of whom follow their insane ideology of Genetic Manifest Destiny. You know about the atrocities they’ve committed.”

  “Gossip and rumors,” I said, retreating behind the same defense I always took when confronted with evidence that contradicted the fact we weren’t the good guys in this war. That there was any such thing in war.

  Let alone this war.

  But Judith’s words remained with me.

  To cut a better deal.

  “They’re insane,” Thomas said, sighing. “Germania is easily arrested. We have people in the military willing to take her in after the failures she’s had on the battlefield. The Field Marshal-Princess has slaughtered too many nats and gotten too many of her own soldiers killed to have any support. Germanicus, though, is the darling of the movement. Only if he’s dead will the shadow government be able to assume power and force a treaty with the Commonwealth.”

  I stared at him. “Just how many of these people do you have involved in this scheme?”

  “Many.”

  “And what happens if you succeed?”

  “Peace,” Thomas said. “There will be consequences.
The Commonwealth is a brutal and horrible taskmaster. The feudal system will be dismantled, there will be war crimes trials for us while parades for them, and the cost to Crius will beggar the kingdom. We will survive, though, and the killing will end.”

  “Our armies will also have to fight their wars, Thomas. We will bomb other planets and slaughter them. That’s how the Commonwealth works. You surrender so you can fight for them rather than against them.”

  “Better at God’s side than in his way. You could be a powerful voice in the new government.”

  “I don’t care about that.”

  “Then care about the fact you’re married to a nat. Germania murdered millions of them during the Skellige campaign in her paranoia they were working against Crius’ war effort. Germanicus ordered you left alone because of your propaganda value, but he considers your marriage to Judith one of purebred dragon to mongrel lizard. How long will that last if he wins? They already have a file on you a kilometer wide at State Security. Hell, you’re already a clone. You could have a place within the Commonwealth’s new government.”

  I narrowed my eyes. “So, casually just toss away my honor and betray my country for the scraps the Commonwealth might throw me?”

  “That’s not—”

  “You disgust me,” I said, clenching my fists. “I despise the Dumas. They’re a bunch of up-jumped traitors who murdered the last first-lineage descendants of Prophet Allenway and claimed it was the work of terrorists. He is still our leader, though. You may be willing to sell your children and their future to Albion, but I will have none of it.”

  It was a child’s defense. A tantrum that refused to acknowledge everything he was saying was the absolute truth. Honor was the last refuge of the scoundrel and those who used it to do despicable things had no right to claim it. The right thing to do was turn Thomas in but I didn’t want to.

  I didn’t want him to fail.

  “So you won’t help us?”

  “No,” I said, weakly. “I’m sorry.”

  That was when Thomas hugged me, and a sense of horror passed over.

  “I’m so relieved!” Thomas said, a broad smile on his face.

  “What?”

  “You’ve passed the test.”

  “Test?” I said, staring at him, bewildered.

  Thomas removed a recorder the size of a dot from underneath his lapel. “There was a plot to eliminate the Prince, but it was foiled recently. The Prince wanted to make sure those most important to the party’s success in this war remain loyal.”

  I stared at him. “Just how many people have failed this little test?”

  “Only the traitors.”

  I looked out the window at the stone tomb they’d constructed for our father. “Thomas, how did our father die? Was it just a malfunction of his cybernetics?”

  Our father had been a monster, corrupt and a major force behind the war. However, even he had come to loathe Germanicus and his ambitions. He’d only supported him this far because, thanks to the Commonwealth’s boundless lust for territory, we were in the middle of a defensive war against people claiming they were defending other worlds from us.

  “Don’t worry about that.”

  “Don’t worry?”

  “I wasn’t involved and there’s no way to tell but the Commonwealth is within striking distance of Crius now. There is a plan to defeat them, but we need the loyalty of every single one of our warriors to do it. Forget about the Dumas now, Cassius, and tell me: do we have your loyalty?”

  I took a deep breath, utterly confused. “You have my loyalty.”

  It was the worst mistake of my life. I didn’t have time to think on my decision, though, because the door opened and my sister, Zoe of House Plantagenet, entered. She was, in many respects, my brother’s opposite. Small in build and pretty, she was also warm and pleasant.

  Zoe had short, shoulder-length black hair and slightly lighter brown skin. Zoe wasn’t a member of State Security but wore, instead, a pleasant white jacket over a black turtleneck with a Lucifer’s Wings pin on her front jacket pocket. She wore a black dress which reached to the floor, but with boots underneath. She had a pile of files in her hands. The only sign of her role in the Archduchy was the silver ring on her left hand, marking her as a Grandmaster of the Science Orders.

  “Hello, my brothers,” Zoe said. “I would like to have a word with Cassius in private.”

  “With pleasure.” Thomas gave a short bow and walked out the door.

  “He’s being pleasant to you, that’s never a good sign,” Zoe said, frowning. “What happened?”

  “I was just tested for my loyalty to a madman,” I replied.

  “Should I be more upset about the fact my brother did that or the fact you passed?” Zoe said, up close. “You should learn to avoid that kind of speech. You don’t want to get yourself in trouble at our father’s funeral.”

  “It might not have been an accident,” I said, wondering how Zoe would react. She liked my father more than Thomas, but even that was just above toleration. After all, I had been created as a deliberate insult to my sibling’s DNA.

  “It was. I went over the details myself. State Security likes to take credit for anything untoward happening to anyone so it looks less like they’re a bunch of nepotistic boot-lickers and more like they’re the badass spies they think they are.” Zoe smiled and put her files away before turning to adjust my uniform. The awards were slightly off.

  “And I should be worried about getting into trouble?”

  “They need me and the rest of the Science Orders to dig us out of the hole we’ve currently gotten ourselves in.”

  My expression turned grim. “How’s that going?”

  “It’s possible. Unlikely, but possible.”

  One difference between the Commonwealth and the Archduchy was the quality of our scientists. The Commonwealth disdained transhumanism and banned cyborgs from all but menial labor or indentured servitude. They argued, ironically, this prevented the wealthy from creating class divisions with the poor by literally buying superiority.

  By contrast, a typical Crius noble was three or four times as smart as the average human being and those specialized in intelligence could memorize and sort through data, which took ages to do otherwise. One did not have to look farther than the fact Zoe had the equivalent of fifty degrees in various disciplines and was considered exceptional in three to mark the difference in our societies.

  “Well, I hope you come up with something soon,” I said, taking a deep breath. “The war is not going in our favor.”

  That was an understatement. While the war had yet to reach Crius, at least the estates here, the sheer number of people killed was without end. Even with mass-conscription from the poor of every vassal world plus Lucifer City, there simply weren’t enough Crius to fight the Commonwealth. We were slaughtering them in every engagement, but it didn’t matter how many we killed since there were always two more to replace each one lost.

  We were holding our supremacy in space but matters also had taken a sharp turn once the Commonwealth had managed to land its troops. Princess Germania might have been a psychopath, but no one could deny her hover-tank brigades were amazing. Still, numbers again favored the Commonwealth and being forced to actually engage them, power-armored-trooper-to-power-armored-trooper, had led to some of the worst losses in the war. There were also rumors of atrocities being conducted against the Skellige people. Ones, it seemed, even my brother wasn’t denying.

  “I have a few ideas for various game-changers,” Zoe said, crossing her arms. “Bioroid replacements mass-produced with copied memories to make up for our troop issues. Full commitment to building as many manufacturing plants as possible would allow us to field endless numbers. We could also give them the skills to make more factories and industrial centers to give us war material as well.”

  “Bioroids are spectacularly piss-poor soldiers. They have no loyalty or honor.”

  “I have ways around that,” Zoe said. “The
re are also ideas for anti-matter weapons, neurological agents, jump-beacon scramblers, and hive viruses.”

  “Those are all hideously illegal and banned by interstellar treaty. You realize that, right?”

  “It is the nature of science to propose uncomfortable truths. A solution is a solution, even if it’s a bad one.”

  “Next you’ll tell me you’ve been working on Cognition A.I.”

  Zoe looked over her shoulder, guiltily.

  “Oh for the love of God!” I said, staring. “Don’t even joke about that.”

  “The prejudice against Cognition A.I. is ridiculous. The Great Collapse and the subsequent Galactic Dark Age was caused by people reprogramming them, not the machines themselves. A.I. do what they’re programmed to do. Nothing more. Lesser A.I. and cybernetics are both just stopgaps for a cultural scar we should really look past.”

  “One hundred years of darkness.”

  The Cognition A.I., those which had an unlimited capacity for growth as well as information analysis, had once been the heart of galactic civilization. They had managed the jump systems, the military, and the economy. They’d all been reprogrammed by well-meaning religious zealots who wanted them to be free.

  Unfortunately, the language they’d used had been militant and the result had been the destruction of the original jump network. All colonies that couldn’t adapt had died out and it had been a millennium before someone had discovered a way to do the calculations necessary to navigate jumpspace without artificial intelligence. It was the one universal truism that could unite the scattered galactic settlements, which otherwise never agreed on anything. Never again.

  Zoe sighed. “The prohibitions against A.I. have been weakening for centuries. Eventually, they will be used again once the situation is desperate enough.”

  “If we field Cognition A.I., then every planet in the galaxy will turn against us. Our descendants will be annihilated to the fifth degree. Even the aliens of the Community agree with that. They hate A.I. They consider it against their religion.”

  Zoe made a dismissive gesture with her left hand. “I didn’t say I was working on one. No, we’re not that desperate yet. We’ve pushed the envelope in terms of artificial intelligence research and broken some taboos, but we’re still far away from that. Ironically, it’s the Commonwealth who has had to change the most. Half their justification for this war is we’re a bunch of mad scientists playing with forces we don’t understand.”