Lucifer's Nebula

by Phipps, C. T.

  Clarice, not content to leave my plan alone, also took position with half a dozen armed security guards to cover the escape of the Melampus crew on the ground back on the ship. She also seemed to take a bloodthirsty delight in head-shotting soldiers from cover behind the many useless missiles we’d brought.

  In what was not my finest moment, I tried to maneuver back to cover but ended up getting smacked in the back of the head by a Void Marine using his rifle butt to hit me. A slow moving object like that went through my shield’s kinetic barrier like it wasn’t there and threw me to the ground before he pulled out a stun rod to jab in my throat.

  “The Supreme Commander wants you alive,” the Void Marine said in an electronically enhanced female voice. “The baron can have your robot whore.”

  Fade promptly shot the Void Marine in the head, having killed another at his feet. “It would seem you owe me, Captain Mass.”

  His next words were cut off by the Dragon, his thick armored hide covered in scorch marks but seemingly undamaged, grabbed him by the back of his cape and threw him in the air at least thirty feet against some nearby crates.

  Why you should never wear a cape into combat.

  “Argh!” the Dragon shouted before speaking in incoherent guttural snarls that its automatic translation device didn’t even try to turn into a recognizable language.

  I drew my sword before dodging out of the way of his right hand (paw? I wasn’t sure what to refer to it as). “Oh please, you’re the one who busted our deal. Don’t try and act so—”

  I was cut off by one of the few surviving Void Marines shooting my shield in the back, cutting it down to half power. He was at point-blank range so I just spun around and cut his head clean off of his body. My proton sword was a gift from my father who had poured enough money into its design that it could cut through starship hull, let alone the cheap-ass armor Prince Germanicus had outfitted our soldiers with.

  “I hate when I’m interrupted,” I muttered.

  “I’ll deliver you to him dead if I have to,” the Dragon snarled in coherent Crius, pulling out an alien disruptor pistol that was designed to punch through shields like they weren’t even present.

  With nowhere to run and cover being of dubious value with so many blasts flying about, I decided my only option was to attack.

  “Crius!” I shouted, leaping on top of one of the crates in front of me and launching myself at the massive alien. My proton sword slammed against his armored plating, leaving a scorch mark but going no further than the surface. I realized, then, that the plating was artificial. It was armor designed to look natural only when it sparked and failed to penetrate. The Dragon backhanded me and sent me flying to the ground for the second time this fight.

  “The captain is in trouble!” Clarice shouted. “Aim fire at the dragon! Give Smaug a taste of his own medicine!”

  I wondered where Clarice had learned the Dragon’s name or whether Smaug was some sort of expletive from her homeworld. Either way, the security crew fired repeatedly at him, only to annoy him as he fired his disruptor in their general direction three times and killed two of Clarice’s subordinates. I think their names were Lily and Bastian. The latter was only nineteen and had only signed up because of a famine on his home continent.

  “Son of a fucking…” I trailed off as I saw the Void Marine corpses at my side and grabbed a thermal grenade from one of their backs, running up to the side the Dragon and throwing myself on its back.

  “What the hell do you think you—” the Dragon howled, turning its head before I threw the grenade in his mouth then jabbed my sword through the top of his mouth and through the bottom, holding it closed.

  It proved to be a remarkably stupid tactic, as the Dragon’s head exploded, covering me in gore and sending me flying through the air before landing on my back. My shields were reduced to thirteen percent effectiveness then simply gave out completely. My flight suit was covered in charred hot gore and it felt agonizing against my skin even as I realized I was incredibly lucky to be alive. What in God’s name had compelled me to do something so stupid?

  “You want to go out in the blaze of glory,” Judith said. “Which is a stupid, stupid thing to do.”

  “I don’t want to die,” I thought back to her. “I just don’t really think too much about my safety in combat anymore.”

  “That’s even worse,” Judith said.

  My response was cut off by a chocolate-skinned woman standing over me, the rest of her body covered in the form-hugging silver body suits of a Shin warrior. In her hand was a curved gravity sword as a 4-7 fusion rifle rested on her back. Her hair was long and dark, held in a ponytail as a pair of red-spectacled goggles hung around her neck.

  She put the sword to my neck.

  “It would be wise of you to surrender,” the Shin trooper said.

  “No,” I said.

  “What?” the Shin trooper asked.

  “Kill me first,” I said to Clarice then stared back at her. “Then wipe out the rest. The Commonwealth cannot be trusted and the galaxy will be a better place without them preying on the innocent. I can’t be allowed to fall into the hands of evil.”

  The Shin trooper stared at me as if I was insane then pulled up her sword to execute me.

  “Stop!” Fade shouted, getting up. “What the hell are you doing?”

  “Proving Judith’s point,” Clarice muttered as the turrets moved on the remaining Commonwealth troopers as they surrounded some sixty prisoners who’d laid down their arms and suddenly seemed a lot less sure of their surrender. Stupidly, dozens of crew had poured out of the Melampus with their own weapons to join the fight. “Our captain is a suicidal nutjob.”

  “Obviously,” the Shin trooper said.

  “Your orders are to stand down,” Fade said. “Now.”

  The Shin trooper sheathed her sword. “He is a wanted criminal.”

  “There’s a lot of that to go around,” Fade said, sighing. “Also, I’m not sure we’d win this bloodbath.”

  I slowly stood up and pulled out a self-cleaning handkerchief to remove the gore from my flight suit. My deactivated proton sword was damaged but intact near a piece of the Dragon’s burning skull. I’d be able to repair it if I could get the parts. Though, honestly, it’d be cheaper to buy a new one. Which was to say, ridiculously expensive.

  “Stand down,” I said to Clarice. “For now. Though it’s your responsibility to keep the crew safe.”

  “Obviously,” Clarice said, echoing the Shin trooper. “I’m not leaving you, though.”

  “They won’t take me alive,” I said simply.

  “That’s kind of my problem!” Clarice shouted back.

  “Oh for the Devil’s sake,” Judith muttered. “Cassius, I really think you should listen to these guys. I don’t think they’re the bad guys despite what you say.”

  “I don’t believe in good or evil save as things people do rather than who they are,” I said, muttering under my breath. “I just said it to piss them off.”

  “It worked,” the Shin trooper said, hearing my words. “You’re a threat to the entire galaxy with that…thing.”

  “I think she means me,” Judith said. “What with being one of the five or six Cognition A.I.s left in the universe.”

  “I guessed that,” I said. “Really.”

  Fade put his arm over his heart. “I’m with the Commonwealth.”

  “I guessed that to,” I said, crossing my arms. “Some sort of double-agent inserted into the Consortium. Watchers or Fixers?”

  The Fixers were the left hand to the Commonwealth’s right. They watched the Watchers for any signs of treason while also breaking the few unbreakable rules of intergalactic treaty like, well, owning Cognition A.I. and using them against your fellow humans.

  Like I did.

  Fade snorted then looked ready to spit on the ground. “Fuck the Fixers.”

  “Ah,” I said, shaking my head. “A Watcher. So you’re a bastard but not a fucking bastard.”
<
br />   Fade chuckled. “Something like that. Major Terra, tell your people to stand down and escort the prisoners to holding. Take half of my men with you. I’m not in any danger from Captain Mass.”

  “You aren’t?” I asked.

  “You’re not?” the Shin trooper, who I presumed to be Major Terra, said.

  “I’m not,” Fade said, sighing. “In fact, I think the two of us have a lot to talk about.”

  I somehow doubted that but wasn’t about turn down an opportunity to get rid of the majority of my enemies. “Certainly.”

  Major Terra did not seem happy with Fade’s orders but reluctantly obeyed, taking out all but an honor guard for Fade. I had no doubt they could guarantee his escape but I had no interest in killing him either. I just wanted to get the hell out of here and loot as much of the Consortium’s fortune as possible.

  “That might be difficult,” Judith said, her voice having a bit of edge. “The Dragon’s accounts tied to a cybernetic implant monitoring his vitals. The implant immediately transferred his fortune to his heirs upon registering his death.”

  I internally screamed. “That’s…great. Really.”

  “Trouble with the mistress?” Fade said, looking at me. “My reports on you indicate your A.I. is based on your late wife.”

  He was well informed. “Not at all. Though Judith and I are not married. Not anymore.”

  Not ever really.

  “Such a shame,” Fade said, shrugging. “I have two wives and a husband who is married to the both of them. Maybe you should try to work out your issues. I have heard in the Commonwealth they have machines capable of creating hard light for electronic minds to be with physical partners.”

  “We have a hard light recreation center installed, actually,” I said.

  “Really?” Fade asked, showing a slight spike of interest in an otherwise bored expression.

  “Oh, yes, it came from a Community vessel we stripped after it tried to sell us slaves. It can recreate just about anything in three dimensions and simulate smells, touch, taste, and sight.”

  “Huh, what do you use it for?” Fade asked.

  I paused then looked away. “Me? I don’t use it for anything. The rest of the crew? Well, let’s just say we have to squeegee the thing down every night.”

  “Ah,” Fade said. “What do the aliens use it for?”

  “Pretty much the same thing. Some things are universal.”

  My chit-chat with Fade was a cover for the last of the troops exiting while my own people moved the wounded and evacuated the noncombatants who’d been secured by the Dragon’s people.

  “How many were killed?” I asked Judith.

  “Six,” Judith said, causing me to grimace. “Three were caught in the crossfire and three of Clarice’s team killed.”

  I briefly considered talking with her about their loss then realized she’d probably take it better than I was now. I needed to focus on Fade now, as his bodyguards moved around to avoid the appearance they were going to attack. I expected him to start but he seemed more interested in all the corpses around us, particularly one of a FSA soldier who looked about sixteen or seventeen years old.

  “Barely old enough to know what a lover’s touch is. I wonder if they at least have prostitutes in the FSA military,” Fade said.

  “They have prostitutes in every military,” I said, annoyed. “He was also old enough to know what it was like to be evacuated from his home world when it was reduced to rubble. He probably spent years in camps before the FSA recruited him.”

  “I wonder who that makes worse,” Fade said, shaking his head. “Us or them?”

  “Both of you are awful,” I said, sighing. “What’s going to happen to the prisoners?”

  Fade shrugged. “The FSA isn’t recognized as an enemy state but considered a terrorist organization. The Commonwealth does not negotiate with said groups, so they’ll be treated like criminals. Their conditions will not be good.”

  “And people wonder why the FSA takes so few prisoners,” I muttered, remembering the stories of the mass executions after the C.S.S Obama had been scuttled.

  One of Fade’s soldiers looked like he wanted to gut me for that. I didn’t care. “What do you want?”

  Fade shrugged his shoulders. “An end to the war, a resumption of peaceful trade in the Spiral, membership in the Community, and a talking panda.”

  “You can’t have Barry,” I said, referring to Munin’s chief engineer who was, in fact, an uplifted giant panda. Combined with Ichigo, our red panda oxygen warden, I sometimes felt like our ship was becoming a zoo. Then I felt really, really racist.

  “I’m sure the Dragon felt the same way,” I said, leaning down and picking up my broken sword.

  “Actually, he wanted the war to continue forever,” Fade said, frowning. “Did you know the Rvook, the Dragon’s people, used to be hunted for sport and exported for meat? It took close to a century for humans to bother to confirm they were sentient and even then denied it for decades. Much of their planet is polluted wasteland now with them forced to the edges in natural habitat zones. That’s what happens to non-technological alien races without Community protection in the Spiral.”

  “Sounds like the Community,” I said.

  “It was actually one of the planets we conquered and forced to stop working to the Rvook’s extinction,” Fade said. “Vengeance knows no logic, though.”

  “Please get on with it,” I said, sighing. “You clearly want something from me and my crew and I suspect the Consortium now has a new leader.”

  Fade smirked then activated a holographic interface on his arm. It shot forth a glowing light that conjured a hologram of a five-foot-nothing woman in front of me. The hologram was slightly translucent and blue, a stylistic choice some people did to avoid making projections too realistic. The woman was aged, over two hundred years old, and wearing a heavy brown cow-leather coat over a black Watcher’s uniform.

  “Howdy Cass,” the woman said with a New Atlanta accent. “How ya doin’?”

  I narrowed my eyes. “Ida.”

  Chapter Eight

  A conversation as important as talking with Ida Claire required a location more dignified than in the middle of the bloody battlefield that had been made of the hangar bay. Instead, I gathered the ship’s officers into the ship’s holo-conference room and took it there with Fade. At least, I tried to. Honestly, we didn’t actually have that much call for holo-conferences on the Melampus, so we’d converted the place into a break room. The place had candy bar wrappers on the floor, an overflowing trash can of empty recyclables, and the table covered in a spread of doughnuts alongside three refreshment machines. It took a bit to clean off and put to the side.

  Clarice, Isla, Fade, Munin, and William all sat at the circular black table with its tower-like projector in the middle calling up an image of Ida Clare’s miniature body. Fade’s guards waited outside while the rest of the crew brought us a few million miles away from the station. If the Consortium/spy tried anything, we’d be able to pull away into jumpspace and he’d be stuck with us.

  If he was worried about that, Fade didn’t show it, sipping coffeeine from a cryofoam cup. “Ah, bitter and cheap. Like my mother.”

  “Is everyone ready?” Ida asked, looking around. “Or does everyone need to get a snack first?”

  I was about to respond when Ichigo the Red Panda walked in. The child-sized uplift was wearing a pink dress and a bow between her ears. She leaped on the table, grabbed a doughnut, and then jumped down before waving at me.

  “Konichiwa!” Ichigo said, waving a paw at me.

  “Konichiwa!” Clarice said, waving back at her.

  I waved back at her, annoyed by the interruption. “Yes, Ida, we’re all ready.”

  “You know I was speaking figuratively about the snack part,” Ida muttered.

  “Well, it’s not your ship anymore so that’s really not any of your concern,” I said, getting myself a mug of coffeeine from the cabinet that said, “Worl
d’s Best Captain (aside from all of the others)” before filling with it with my own private stock of ground beans. Then I noticed half of my stock was missing.

  “You realize Judith watches everything that goes on in this ship,” I said. “I will know who did this.”

  “I’m not helping you find a coffeeine thief,” Judith said. “Pay attention, Cassius.”

  “Etu, Judith?” I said, looking up at the ceiling.

  “It was me,” William said, laughing.

  “Me too,” Isla said. “The coffeeine is shit here. I was hoping we’d buy better from the Spiral.”

  “It’s just so good!” Munin said, looking guilty. “Especially with liquor. But you’d know that.”

  I growled and poured hot water into my mug. “You are all sentenced to die by airlock. Twice if I can arrange it.”

  “Are you sure this is the group we want to recruit?” Fade said, shaking his head.

  “They’re more dangerous than they look,” Ida said.

  “They’d have to be,” Fade said.

  “The Dragon didn’t think so and look what it got him,” Ida said. “So how has the crew been without me?”

  “Happy,” Munin said. “Richer. Less likely to get blown up in some Commonwealth power game.”

  Ida put a hand over her heart. “You wound me, girl.”

  “Only if she misses,” Clarice said, growling. “I trusted you and you got me involved in a war with my own family.”

  “You got me tortured and cost me my arm!” William said, opening and closing his right artificial one. “I still don’t think this new one works right and it’s full of wires!”

  “So am I,” Isla said, glaring.

  “Yeah, well, I don’t like that either,” William said. “No offense.”

  “Much taken,” Isla grumbled.

  Ida shook her head. “Wow, this ship has gotten snarky in my absence. I blame you, Cassius. You’re spreading.”

  I stirred my now steaming mug with a tin spoon. “Why aren’t you dead? I was hoping the Watchers would have taken you out back and had you shot.”