Every second, a streak of lightning whipped at a protrusion, and part of the nebula cloud jerked. Yet her nexus indicated the monolith's surface temperature was a good ten degrees cooler than the small impact crater surrounding them.
Then she realized Phoenix was sitting cross-legged directly on top of it, eyes shut, a thick haze of the nebula cloud smothering him.
"What the hell is he doing?" she asked. "Charging his batteries?"
"I'm overclocking," he called. He opened his eyes and let his legs fall over the side of the monolith, kicking them casually. The nebula clouds churned and rose into the orange sky, diffusing and fading.
"Master Phoenix," Ashiban cried. "I must speak with you privately. It is urgent."
Kai didn't like the sound of that.
"Oh, yeah?" Phoenix said, a casual expression written on his face.
"It's about me, isn't it?" Kai said sharply.
Suddenly, the sky darkened a shade as if an hour had passed.
"I'll be fucked, you were talking behind my back, weren't you?"
"In front of you, actually," Phoenix shrugged. "Don't worry, it's not a big deal. See, Ashiban tried to read your mind earlier—"
Kai stared daggers at Phoenix's student. "You asshole. I ought to step on you."
"But he ran up against some resistance."
She arched an eyebrow.
"It's why I asked your permission to read your mind," Phoenix said. "Whatever's inside your core is keeping us out. Which is bizarre, to put it lightly."
"So the black goo is acting as some kind of psionic disruptor in me?" she said, trying not to sound too happy.
"Basically."
"Whatever that ship infected you with, it does not wish to be studied by us," Ashiban said, refusing to meet her gaze.
"Like it knows Engineers are its enemy?"
"Yes."
"We must send her away." Below was a six-armed alien so augmented in metal shielding that it was impossible to tell whether it was armor or its actual body. Like Jace.blek, its face was a part of its chest, but it was no Buejentoe.
"On the contrary, I think we need to keep her right here. We can learn a lot from her," Phoenix said then looked at her, Raksamat, and Sarvill. "That's Itaneoth'Yasi. You can call him Yasi for short."
A little groveling would help, Kai decided. "Please, Master Phoenix. I want to get even with my ship's killer. You can read my mind if you want."
She hated hearing herself beg.
"I don't believe you want us to," Ashiban said sternly. "The thing inside your core has formed a symbiotic relationship. At this time, we can't even remove it without risking serious damage to your core. Worse, I believe it is working on your subconscious desires. Unless you truly want us to learn about that incident, we won't be able to."
"You're afraid of reliving it, is that it?" Phoenix said, dipping his chin.
Afraid my ass. Read that from my mind.
"A little," Kai said quietly.
Phoenix put a hand to his chin. "I could try to alter the concept of fear in this reality. But altering complex abstractions can be pretty risky. And with your black goo virus, it could backfire."
Alter the concept of fear? What the fuck was he going on about?
Phoenix cocked his head at Raksamat. "You've been quiet. What's your opinion?"
Raksamat tucked his arms behind his back. A submissive Clorondite gesture.
"Good answer. You're a measly ant compared to me," Phoenix said in mock disgust then smiled. "Seriously, though, you're Kai's travel companion. I want your opinion."
"You can do that later. Let's do some training," she said.
Phoenix gave a meaningful nod. "Then it's time for a crash course on the black goo." He pointed at the monolith beneath him. "This is where it all began for Burkos. Where life here began. According to Engineer archives, billions of solar cycles before the Anunnaki were creating mankind on Old Terra, one of the first races was seeding planets at the far ends of the universe. They recognized the immutable power of the karma pylons, so they tried to replicate the technology in the "seeds" they launched. While they failed to truly replicate it, they came close enough to attract something in the Void. The black goo. I imagine you've heard other stories about it."
"It's supposed to be fake," Kai said dismissively.
"This monolith says otherwise," he said, tapping his index finger against the surface. "You see, the black goo hungered for the energy this false karma pylon gave off. It came down and tried to assimilate it. The black goo didn't acquire enough energy. So it let itself die. All that's left is this husk."
"How do you know it's harmless?" Kai asked with a sly grin.
Suddenly, a dark pixelated surge sprang out of the monolith and wrapped around Phoenix. Kai stumbled back only to see the black goo retreat into a clump in a flash. Part of the pile bulged, and Phoenix emerged from underneath it with a grin. A trick.
"I'll never understand Terran humor," Yasi groaned.
Scratching his head, Phoenix cleared his throat. "For millennia, Engineers have analyzed this piece of the black goo. If it's dangerous, it seems strange for it to be giving us free energy."
She took that to mean the monolith gave them all they required to survive. As Engineers they had probably altered reality so that they didn't require food per se. Just energy of some kind.
"Not sapient like you or me. But in a way we can’t quite understand. Anyways, the reason I'm telling you this is because when the Minds of Errukav unleashed the Big Crunch, they pushed the Void toward us."
"In other words, you think it's woken up the black goo," Kai said. "But why didn't it attack earlier?"
"You have to remember that the black goo exists in the Void. That's a lot of space between it and us. It took a near copy of the karma pylon's energy to draw it in. Minus that, nothing else was powerful enough to awaken it again, so to speak. That's one theory, anyway."
"Oh, just fantasy stories about fifth dimensional beings of light waging an ancient interstellar war against it and keeping it at bay in the Void."
Kai put up a hand. "Hang on. The system where the ship attacked us was at least a few billion klicks closer to the center of the universe than this planet. Doesn't that mean..."
The final screw you of the Minds of Errukav was getting to the screwing part.
Phoenix nodded. "The Big Crunch is happening faster than Union Omega scientists know. The black goo has already gotten a foothold in our universe. I'll show you."
Chapter 29
FELIK
"I remember getting my ass chewed out," Ilder said nostalgically.
Shut up, Felik wanted to say. Yet some inert force inside him prevented that.
"It was nothing spectacular," Ilder said, stroking his chin. "I was caught sleeping with my superior officer's girlfriend. An Anunnaki female. Gave me the nickname Mother Fucker for that. Since in a way—"
"Yeah, I get it," Felik snapped.
"...the Anunnaki birthed our species."
"Thank you for sharing that story," Felik said, the image of those six ships ripped apart to join the Elder One's swirling stream of gas and debris seared as clean into his mind as if he'd recorded the experience into his nexus's priority memory banks.
The Elder One's gravity had torn the ships apart but kept the crew intact physically. Mentally, however, it unleashed an extremely intense psionic wave that effectively turned them into mind slaves, unable to so much as send a message from their nexus. They became prisoners in their own bodies in the body of the Elder One.
Felik tried not to think about the implication—that Oberon must've planned for Yamh'agduh to feed on t
he cores of the defeated Yimyur Federation. Sacrifices.
Fortunately, the Elder One had warped away after that incident. Several Watchers fleet vessels, including Steeger's, vanished as well, presumably to hunt down the Yimyur Federation.
It dawned on him very quickly how hard this could fuck him. Because he'd given the order for Ilder to free up their enemy.
Minerva had told Felik the best option was to stand down from that point. And he had.
He just stood on the command sphere, under the oak tree, blinking as Juliard asked him what had happened. Automatically, he'd ordered her to remain in her partition of the ship's memory. At the very least, he'd keep her from getting caught up in this.
Within less than a minute, the messages began appearing in his feed. Messages from starkeepers of various systems, condemning the action, ordering him to turn himself over, wondering what the hell he'd been thinking. Random sapients of different races flooded him with death threats. Finally, Hayland messaged him, saying that he had one hour to turn himself and the Nassatar over or he would be considered a criminal by the entire Union Omega.
He half-expected the Guardian Templar to contact him, but it never did.
Minerva advised him to follow Hayland's request. So he did. Adjudicator bots arrested him and placed him in pseudo-stasis with Ilder.
The two of them were in a seemingly endless plane, everything dark gray and completely barren. It was technically a digital construct. But there was no way for them to escape until someone released them. All they could do was wait and speak with each other while the adjudicator protocols sorted out legalities with Minerva and the starkeeper committee assigned to investigate the incident.
To be fair, the pseudo-stasis construct they'd placed them in wasn't so bad. Many times, they placed criminals in constructs that were practically torture. Constructs of complete sensory isolation that amplified the worst emotions and thoughts running through one's nexus. Heck, they'd allowed him and Ilder to share a construct. That was rare.
Felik sighed. Not that he needed to breathe given his synthetic body or the fact that this was entirely digital. At least Minerva was pulling her weight. For all he knew, Ilder had screwed up on purpose.
"I think it's important to remember these things do happen," Ilder said. "And you shouldn't feel guilty. In a sense, you've already paid the price."
"Huh?"
"I am referring to your childhood abduction."
Felik balled a fist. He wanted to knock Ilder to the floor. But in the construct neither of them could physically affect the other.
He shook his head. It didn't matter. He'd screwed up. There was no getting around that.
"This isn't something Astro Phoenix would've approved of," he said, thinking of all the philosophical studying he'd done after escaping his childhood imprisonment.
"No, he wouldn't have," Minerva said.
Felik whipped around. He almost fell to his knees in a mix of relief and terror at what news she could bring. As a protocol and sophont, she maintained a constant level of professionalism, though, and her face gave away nothing.
"So?" he said.
"We're running on private," she announced. "I'll start with the ship. The only reason that the starkeeper committee assigned to this case hasn't seized it completely is because I invoked a law that doesn't allow immediate seizure of network property."
Right, she'd initialized a shell network and registered them as such.
"But the pressure is coming from all sides. I don't see a way around it. You'll very likely lose the Nassatar."
Felik's stomach plummeted. "What else?" he croaked.
"It may go without saying, but you've lost your spot at Alderson disk #396727-S."
He'd assumed he would still be coming up with rationalizations in his mind as to why this whole thing was bullshit. Instead, he nodded. "How did Oberon's consort's news streams handle the situation?"
That question had been plaguing him in his stasis zone. It wasn't every sol you unleashed an Elder One on your enemy.
"I'll get to that part in a second. Anyways, your neural virus will buy you some leniency. And, once we let them parse your nexus completely, that should help show that you had no intentions of actually betraying the Watchers network."
That pulled him up empty. He bit his lip. Because he couldn't let them read his mind and learn about his secret investigation.
"We can't do that," Felik said.
"Do you want me to continue?" she asked.
He nodded.
"Your karma's taken a very big hit. You see, the streams are reporting that the Yimyur Federation planned to invade other star systems. As far as I know, it's true. And the Watchers news indices never mentioned the Elder One. They focused most of their stories on the Yimyur Federation as well as blaming you. A story about a guy with a neural virus screwing up like this isn't hard to believe."
Fuck. The Watchers had omitted vital info that would've changed his decisions during the operation. They had framed him.
Minerva continued. "At this point, theoretically, the Union Omega could seize your core. It wouldn't look so good for them to take control of the Envoy's core without a deliberation period, however. So you have some time."
"Can I speak with Hayland?"
His uncle hadn't messaged him since his initial suggestion. That led Felik to believe he'd chosen to remain as objective as possible, maybe removing himself from the investigation entirely.
"I'm afraid your uncle has removed himself from the investigation entirely."
Okay, so that was a nonstarter.
"What about the Guardian Templar? Can it help my case? It would know I was innocent, right?"
Minerva shook her head. "It's chosen not to intervene on your behalf."
The gods had literally abandoned him. He couldn't help thinking maybe he should have just sold the damn ship when he had the chance. Without warning, he broke into a defiant laugh. "I hope Oberon doesn't plan on running my core. My virus might infect the rest."
"No one can hear us, but I don't think that's something you should be saying given the circumstances."
Felik didn't care. He motioned to the spot Ilder had been standing. "So how about my ship and Juliard?"
He thought about the hacking attempts on her. He needed to ask her about those.
"I believe Xerix will handle Ilder. Juliard has been questioned separately, but she's not responsible in any way. In other words, she's off the hook."
A nod from Felik. Good, he'd succeeded in keeping her out of this. As for Ilder, Xerix had inserted him into the Nassatar, so there was no reason to expect him to punish his own subordinate. Felik was the fall guy in all of this, despite not knowing the Yimyur Federation had planned to attack other systems. But it was no excuse. The adjudicators would say he still disobeyed orders.
Hayland had warned him that the starkeepers wanted him to give up the Nassatar. Ironically it was his own innate paranoia at seeing betrayal in every moment that had screwed him. He'd expected to be framed or blamed for the massacre. That had prompted him to overcompensate by doing everything to keep the Yimyur Federation safe from Watchers network injustice.
He thought on that for a few seconds, and decided he was as much of an idiot as everyone thought his neural virus made him.
"How ugly could we make this?" he asked. "The judgment process, I mean."
"We might be able to draw it out for a few solar cycles, make appeals, file legal actions of our own. I don't see why you'd want to, though. You wouldn't win. And it would get very ugly. There would be a lot of karma hits for everyone. You'd end up in stasis. Besides, I'm not assigned to you indefinitely."
Felik fought back the pang of fear at that last part. "I'm asking because the starkeepers want to use the Nassatar for their own purposes. But they can't do that if it's considered evidence in my tribunal."
"You're not entirely wrong," Minerva said. "I'm not sure if I follow, though."
Felik grinned. "I want to speak w
ith Oberon. I want to make him an offer." As the proto, the leader, of the Watcher network, he could either clear up this mess or expedite his journey into stasis.
"Felik, please explain why. I might be able to help you, but not if I don't understand your reasoning."
"Don't know if anyone told you this, but I'm a gambling man. And I'm betting Oberon doesn't play by all the rules. I think he'd rather hire me than wage a legal war against me."
And if he was wrong, it would, as Minerva warned, get very ugly.
Chapter 30
FELIK
After he'd talked to Minerva, Felik spent another hour or so in stasis. Then, without warning, he was standing inside a massive palace hall. The chamber was big enough to fit an entire battleship and a couple mecha frames. Beyond a series of columns, rich copper clouds drifted past.
At the smell of burning incense, he looked around, but couldn't find the source.
A skeleton frame of his HUD appeared, but it wasn't giving him tracking data. Most likely, this was the former StarMaster's retreat palace. Whether it was the real thing or a construct of it, he couldn't say. He only had basic access to details from his nexus.
For all the space here and ornate statues and magnificent floating globes, the only other sapient in sight was Oberon a few feet away. Felik felt like an ant, which might've been the point. For a second, he feared his resolve had escaped him. But as he watched Oberon smugly sipping a goblet of golden Anunnaki manna, he knew that this conversation needed to happen.
"Explain yourself," Oberon said, making a gesture with his fingers. Two opulent, shining silver hollow half-spheres formed behind each of them. At his motion, Felik sat on the edge of the half-sphere.
"I think we both know that the destruction of the Yimyur Federation was no mistake. It was exactly what you wanted."
Oberon's eyes narrowed. "You stand accused of going against orders and you come here to claim I wanted xenocide? Your mind truly is warped by that neural virus."
Felik saw no point in bringing up the fact that Oberon had omitted the key information about the Yimyur Federation planning an aggressive strategy against other systems. All that would do was waste time.
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