She'd been wondering why that ship had attacked Euphrates. At first, she'd assumed the Starbleeders were responsible. Now that it appeared to be the black goo, she was still left without a cause. She'd been clutching at straws until she learned that Sarvill and Phoenix had fought together in the Great Cosmic Wars. That was the piece that made it all click.
The black goo must've recognized Sarvill as a means of manipulating Phoenix. That meant whatever force or mind was guiding it was capable of strategic planning and identifying potential enemies.
She turned her head over her shoulder and saw the Clorondite standing where the grass met the metallic grid of the station. Raksamat had gotten her this far, as she'd demanded. As an Engineer initiate, he'd been able to access a warp-gate to leave Phoenix's institute. She wouldn't punish him for refusing to draw out the black goo.
Assuming the black goo had attacked her ship with the intent of capturing Sarvill to bait Phoenix, she and it had a common purpose, oddly enough. All she needed to do was give it what it needed—Sarvill—and watch. If Phoenix survived the encounter, it would serve as a catalyst. He would have to recognize the value she brought as the heiress of the Hellion network. Her Hellions could help them defeat the black goo. But he'd have to help her reclaim her network first.
And if the black goo defeated him...she doubted its sapience included an ego. Meaning she could simply take credit for Phoenix's death.
They made for the center of the station and waited. Within half an hour, the teal gray sky darkened.
Above them, interstellar clouds as red and violent as lava streaked across the sky like a nebula of fire. It was more beautiful than she would've thought. For a moment her problems seemed as small as they truly were in the greater scheme of reality. It was a rare feeling of clarity, to grasp the truth in a universe full of lies.
Raksamat ruined it by thinking.
She didn't really know. Her family's sophont maid used to tell her the story. She almost said that but decided against opening up to the Clorondite.
She'd heard Clorondites lived under rock structures, but she didn't know if that was true proverbially, too.
"Long before the creation of humans, when the Minds of Errukav were barely one-celled amoebas, there was a higher-dimensional species referred to as the Originators. Nigh omnipotent. One sol they felt altruistic and decided to bring justice and balance to the universe. These beings didn't always see eye to eye, though, or whatever they used for sight. They had different solutions for the universe. So they began to fight. But they knew their fight could destroy the universe, which would defeat the point of bringing justice to it. They surrounded the universe with a void for themselves. And they got back to their fight. And that's what made the Veins of the Cosmos. The arena of a fight that continues even now."
Sometimes she still had trouble believing that the Minds of Errukav had unleashed an untested technology so powerful it reversed the fabric of space and time. Measurements showed the universe was shrinking at an infinitesimally small rate. A kilometer every solar cycle. But according to Phoenix, it was shrinking faster than that. A kilometer every sol. Either way, at some point the universe would implode in on itself and all would end. The problem was everything that would happen leading up to that.
Speaking with Phoenix, she wasn't surprised that the Union Omega hadn't discovered a solution yet. There was still no sense of urgency to reverse the process. Instead, sapients simply exchanged the phrase, the universe is collapsing, as a sort of meme.
"Somehow I doubt you came here to see that," Jace.blek said. Kai noticed him gliding over to them.
"And somehow I doubt you came here just to say hello."
"Thanks to my surveillance access, I know he isn't here. Which probably means he sent you."
By he, she assumed he meant Astro Phoenix. Kai kept her face a blank slate, but her mind was analyzing the implications of what he'd said. Apparently, Phoenix didn't stay in close contact with him. Or else he would've known about Raksamat's initiation and the fact that they were here of their own accord.
"He didn't say you'd be here," Kai said, adding in some extra sass.
"That wouldn't be his first lie by omission."
"Oh?"
"No," Jace.blek said sharply. "It's not my place to tell you. Come."
He led them away from the station and across the dirt. "Where are we going?" Kai asked.
"Enemies of mine are known to monitor this station's surveillance as I do."
The Invectials. The Starbleeders. He had many.
Kai struggled to imagine what Jace.blek had planned for them. He was doing it based on an assumption of Phoenix's absence. Yet she suspected it was for Phoenix.
"Why do your enemies monitor this station?"
"I don't have to explain that to you. No, no more questions. I think we have followers."
"Hate to break it to you, but silence won't help us." She didn't need to tell him that anyone tracking them would have sensors that would detect them in a variety of ways—infrared would map body heat, psionic pulses would sense their mental presence, advanced audio trackers embedded in the smart dust of godwebs would hear their footsteps. To name a few.
So yeah, they were screwed if anyone wanted to find them.
"Jace.blek never said that it would," said a goblin.
"Well now it's a party," Sarvill said jovially.
"What, did Phoenix let you go on an outing for good behavior?" Kai grumbled, meeting the gazes of Ashiban and Chorisech.
"What are you doing out here?" Ashiban said.
Kai started to answer, when Jace.blek interjected, "I assumed that they were here for a good reason. Either Phoenix sent them or—"
"Even if he did send them, you understand the rules."
Kai arched an eyebrow and looked from Jace.blek to the Engineers. "What rules?"
Ashiban did not hold back. "Jace.blek suffered a psionic assault from the black goo many solar cycles ago. It left him permanently broken. While his intellect is a superior one, he lacks the necessary qualities to ever become an Engineer. Moreover, Master Phoenix fears that a second attack would unravel his core entirely."
"Is this true?" Kai asked the Buejentoe warlord.
"Only if you choose to believe it."
"You're the one incapable of handling the truth," Chorisech said. "Not Kai."
"The truth?" Jace.blek looked to her. "Tell me, has Phoenix explained the origins of the black goo?"
Kai shared with him what the Engineer master had told her.
"As I expected, he resorted to the easy answer," Jace.blek said.
"The easy answer?"
"Jace.blek," Ashiban said in quiet warning.
"The answer that ignores evidence for other theories. Because deep down, Phoenix can't face his own mistakes."
"Master Phoenix is objective. His decisions of what to share or not are based on his wisdom and experience."
"Based on his experience. The good and the bad," Jace.blek said.
"Like what?" Kai prodded.
Jace.blek said nothing for a few seconds and then, "My apologies. I should never have brought it up. I'm not neutral when it comes to judging him."
The sudden change in his mood felt wrong. For a sickening second, she wondered if Ashiban or Chorisech ha
d managed to psionically mind-control him. But then Jace.blek calmly added, "Kai, I don't want you to get the wrong idea. I owe Phoenix a lot. But there's a history between us that has slowly eroded any friendship we once had. We've caused each other a lot of trouble."
That seemed useful information to explore. Personally, she didn't care about Phoenix's mistakes, but Raksamat might.
"He wronged you, huh?" she asked.
"Maybe you should consider how you are wronging him first," Ashiban said to her. "Why did you come to this station?"
"Because your institute is not my home," she snapped. "I don't belong there."
"If you wish to fight the black goo, you must learn to work with us. We are well aware that you already know how to work on your own. Jace.blek, please return to your nest. Kai, Sarvill, and Raksamat, you will return with us. It is best that we hurry."
Ashiban's words paralyzed her. Yet at that moment, a hideous black creature materialized at the edge of their group, teetering on four whip-like legs. It was the entity from Jace.blek's nest.
Only half-aware of Jace.blek's avatar vanishing, she considered her reason for coming to Zone 2080.
"Kai, I sense a disturbance in your psionic stability," Ashiban started. "There seems to be..."
A rumbling beneath their feet drowned him out.
With few stars and barely a shred of light from the Veins of the Cosmos, the cubes of the station were cast in near shadow. Yet even in that natural darkness, an artificial shroud was taking hold over them. A bizarre visual distortion was reducing them to clusters of jet-black pixels.
A second later, black tendrils tore out of the ground and lashed out at all of them. Except for Kai. Still, she jumped back, watching the chaos of tendrils trying to smother the Engineers. As quick as that, the tentacles burst into millions of pixels that distorted the air.
Ashiban, Chorisech, and Raksamat were bloodied and hunched over, but, second by second, their bodies healed. An alteration of their reality.
"I've frozen the passage of time around them, but the black goo is not gone. It doesn't follow our laws of physics," Ashiban said, approaching Sarvill who was on the ground, motionless. Kai expected to see a taint of black, but there was only the green of his blood spread across his body. Yet there was no denying the shape of his frame had changed. The tendrils had crushed his innards.
"He is dead," Chorisech said quietly. "His core corrupted."
"Can you bring him back?" Kai asked.
"No. That is too difficult. Even for Master Phoenix, it would be impossible."
Out of the corner of her eye, Kai noticed the black pixels combining, sharpening into other horrific forms. As Ashiban said, the black goo didn't have to follow their physics. It wasn't bound by time. What else was it capable of then?
"It's not letting us warp from here. We must form an escape path."
In a united gesture, Ashiban and Chorisech held out their hands and shoved the pixels away to form an opening through them. The four of them ran for that spot. The last thing Kai saw was Sarvill's corpse as the miasma of black goo swirled around him and the mess that was now Station 98-A(*E5-]^3L.
Chapter 34
FELIK
"Have they stopped shelling us yet?" Felik asked no one in particular as the Nassatar's godweb shot down incoming missiles several thousand kilometers away.
"Has the universe stopped caving in on itself?" Juliard said.
Felik knew he needed to ask her what Oberon and Megas said, but he couldn't think of a good way to do so. Instead, he turned to Minerva. "You'd think the Ofoids wouldn't want to keep wasting their missiles."
She shrugged. "They say Ofoids only quit when they're ahead. Otherwise, they relish uphill battles. Plus, if by some shift in reality they did manage to blow us up, they'd get to say they defeated the Union Omega's best ship. It would be the biggest upset victory since Astro Phoenix's battle with the Minds of Errukav.
"You think they have any idea how our godweb works?"
Juliard shook her head. "The Ofoids are a Type III species and lack access to dark energy and dark matter. So no. Anyways, Captain, it looks like everything is on track here. I'm entering sleep mode now."
"W-wait," Felik said.
"Did you stutter?"
He shrugged. "It's my neural virus."
"Oh. Well, what am I waiting for?"
Felik took a long breath. "I..."
"You're clearly nervous about something. Whatever it is you want to say, doing it confidently would be more respectable."
She was right. "It's just that I feel like we've made progress these last few sols. Maybe we'll never be friends, but I think a working relationship is within reach." He was surprised at how he sounded calm yet disappointed.
Her face scrunched up in confusion. A struggle of interest and pity. "What are you trying to say? Do you need me to tell you that what you're doing is right?"
Felik barked a laugh and sighed. "I wish it were that. You'd agree that Megas and Oberon are about as opposite as brothers can get?"
"No, they're both power-hungry scumbags."
"Okay, but they're not friends."
"Obviously."
"Then if they both gave me the same advice that would be meaningful, wouldn't it?"
"What advice was that?"
"There's a reason you're here on this ship. I need to know what that is. What was your relation to my progenitor?"
"You were right not to ask." The hurt in her voice almost told Felik more than if she'd answered the question. "I'm sorry," she said. "I am. I'm not the one to help you get over his death. You've got a fantastic ship and you work for a very powerful sapient. Figure out your own ways of coping."
"Look." He showed her the security logs and the hacking attempts on her.
"Am I supposed to know about that?" she asked.
"Alright, listen," he said, putting some heat in the words. He didn't expect it to be so satisfying. "I know I'm a privileged fool to you. You probably think I've had everything handed to me as a scion. Somehow you've done the mental gymnastics to let you forget about the impact of the Darwinist abducting me and infecting me with a neural virus. But I think about that every sol. Unless I do my part to figure out the real murderer of Arteyos, we'll be facing an interstellar bleeding."
"Nice speech. I think you've got a future in politics."
"If you're not going to believe me then at least help me to understand why. I'm trying to do good for the universe." And continue what Astro Phoenix started.
"I wonder if your inflated sense of importance is the symptom or the cause of that belief."
He decided he had no choice but to trust her and invited her to a construct. A second later, they were standing opposite each other on the grass surface of a virtual Nassatar's command sphere, its oak tree, pond, garden, and transparent glow of an artificial sun the same as the real command sphere. By the nature of a construct, however, only the two of them could perceive the conversation.
"Yeah, I admit it. Some of it is ego. But it's more than that," he said, his words taking on a new authority. "I want to prevent any more Darwinist abduction incidents. Like you said, I've got a fantastic ship and I work for a very powerful sapient. I'm in the proper position. Besides, it wasn't my decision, the Guardian Templar asked me to."
She pulled up a leg, linking her hands at her knee, and shuddered. "You're technically a mercenary now, aren't you?"
"Technically."
"Then you're going to run a mission for me as soon as you're able to. And you'll do it for free."
"Anything," he nodded
.
She squinted. "Do I need to link you to a breaker?"
"I go back on my word and you'll destroy this ship from the inside out."
A steaming cup of black tea materialized in her hand. After a long sip, she began, "I was stationed as a mecha pilot on Colony 6785 during the Great Cosmic Wars. I earned enough stripes to garner Arteyos's recognition of an award or two. We hit it off in secret. Of course, him being the Galactic Chancellor, a political opponent blackmailed him with it." She drained the cup of tea and wiped residue off her mouth. "Eventually he told them to fuck off and they revealed it. Well, that screwed things up with his wife pretty badly and she moved to Kora-Usev."
"Kora-Usev. That's where she..."
"Yeah. The Minds of Errukav devoured the planet when they annihilated the Nevux System."
"Arteyos blamed himself. The fact that he shrugged off the blackmailing threat so recklessly left a sour taste in a lot of people's mouths. But then he and Astro Phoenix launched the Yorvin Strike."
The great counterattack on the Minds of Errukav array of Matrioshka spheres that sentenced them to certain defeat. A fleet in the trillions. Combined forces of the Phaetonians, Arbiters, Templars, Anunnaki, Wenysh, Humans, Telchines, Glen, Andromedans, and dozens of other races. Even in the sims, the immense spread of space platforms, warships, motherships, orbital rings, Matrioshka spheres, Shkadov thrusters, and smart dust clouds were huge enough to appear as nebulas if you zoomed out far enough and looked. Virtually every alien species with viable technology had contributed to the assault.
"When she died, did you two..."
"We tried to make it work, but we couldn't. I had too much responsibility as a pilot, he as the Chancellor."
She paused. "You sure you want to hear this?"
"Can't be any nastier than the illegal porn sims I've seen. Some of the tentacles—"
Juliard rolled her eyes. "That's not what I'm talking about."
"In that case, still yes. We've got at least two more hours here, deflecting the Ofoids' missiles."
"Well, after he ascended to the role of StarMaster, he got very busy. Even with hundreds of bodies at his disposal and thousands of starkeepers to support him, he rarely found time to talk anymore. Or maybe he had too many friends. I was happy as this ship's XO, running humanitarian missions on his behalf. The last time I spoke to him was shortly before running a mission as a personal favor. He wanted me and my team to escort an unregistered refugee ship from one quadrant to another."
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