All the King's Horses Pt. 01

"Vis-sect-ti-tude," Bryce said, slowly. "Vi. Sect. Ti. Tutde."

"Vlubberyzela." Tiff stuck her tongue out at him.

"Right," Bryce said, shaking his head as they came up to a door, which hissed open to reveal an elevator. "About thirty years after the founding of the Federation, some eggheads figured out how to clone the part of a vampire's brain that create telekinetic effects. We stick electrodes in them, pump replicated blood into them, and you have a constant telekinetic field that keeps us pinned to the deck. It also counteracts inertial effects, tractors space junk either towards us or away from us and...and...and are you okay?"

Tiff was gaping at him. "Are you telling me that every part of this ship is one gigantic cloned fangjob horror show!?" She asked.

Bryce pursed his lips. "Well, I mean, that's why we put the gray bits under the floor, so we don't have to think about it."

"Eaauugh!" Tiff shuddered from her head to her toes.

The elevator doors opened and they stepped out into another corridor. This one had a night sky overhead, rather than a blue one. Looking up at it, Tiff paused and stood up on her tip toes, then prodded at the sky with her finger -- and her finger bounced off the top. "Just like in the Trueman Show!" She said.

"The what?" Bryuce asked.

"It's...nevermind," Tiff said, shaking her head. "So, you said...Federation? Like in Star Trek?"

"Yes, exactly," Bryce said, nodding. "That was actually one of the guiding principals of the First Council, after the, uh..." He coughed. "After, uh, World War Three." He looked aside.

"There was a World War Three?" Tiff hissed as they came to another set of doors. These opened onto the bridge and that awkward conversation was put aside for a moment of quiet awe. Because they were standing on an actual spaceship's bridge. And for the first time in her life, Tiff was seeing the stars as astronauts would see them -- and it was more than she had ever thought she would see. Ever. The bridge itself was laid out in a rectangular format, with two seats near the front, where a view screen was situated. The two front seats had curved consoles before them, with their own little view screens for their operators, who were both human. There was a captain's chair in the middle, and several more consoles along the walls, each with seats for people to occupy. Of those, only one was human, and he pinged her senses as a werewolf: A big, burly, black skinned werewolf.

The rest were all aliens. There was a blue skinned woman with long white hair and four sets of ears -- two emerging from around her neck, all of them pointed. She was beautiful, with white lips that were currently pursed slightly. The other two aliens were a pair of...walking...talking lizards. One of them looked a bit like a crocodile while the other looked more like an iguana. And, finally, there was the vampire that she remembered from her time on the spaceship she had woken on, sitting beside the captain's chair on his own little console.

The captain stood up as they entered, walking forward and taking Tiff's hand with a huge smile. "Welcome back on your feet, Miss Winters," Tobias Johnson said, grinning at her. If there was any irritation that she had gotten up early, or that he hadn't had more warning, he hid it well. Tiff squeezed his hand back and managed to not crush his knuckles. She could have...but it would have been petty and rude.

"Thanks, uh, no hard feelings about you stunzapping me," she said.

Tobias chuckled. "I wouldn't blame you -- but we were in a dangerous situation at the time." He gestured. "Come on, take a seat, I had Sebastian whip us up some visual aids, if you need them." The vampire nodded. "By the way, this is my Survey attache, Sebastian Orlock." The vampire nodded, this time to her specifically. "Do you have any burning questions before we start from the top?"

Tiff took her seat, while Bryce took up a position by the door, which had closed tight.

"Well," she said. "I have to ask...what the absolute fuck is going on?"

Tobias gestured to the screen -- which showed what looked like camera footage. It was paradoxically clearer than any footage she had ever seen, but also, way shakier than anything but a handheld camera. Like the stuff you'd see on Cops or something. It showed a fancy dinner party, though everyone was wearing masks. Not like, sexy opera masks, but rather the kind of masks a nurse might wear. It was very surreal. "This is footage shot from 2029 in Chicago at a dinner party. At the same time, the recently installed biometric scanner systems-"

"The what?" Tiff asked.

"They were systems in place to detect threats to the nation-states of the time," Sebastian said, his voice prim and calm. "They gathered data on everything from heart rate, body temperature, certain chemical sniffers." He shook his head. "Barbaric."

"I mean, yeah, it sounds kinda, you know, Orweblian," Tiff said.

"Orwellian?" Tobias asked with a smile.

"Yeah, that guy," Tiff said. "We read 1984 in class. But, like, it was just to catch..." She paused, looking at the screen. Several police officers were entering the dance -- and they were approaching. "Holy shit is that Prince Dominique?"

"You know him?" Tobias asked as a vampire was ousted from the crowd, struggling and glaring around himself.

"Yeah, he was the ruler of NorCal for my entire run. A real fucking prick. What the hell was he doing in Chic-" Tiff stopped. "Holy shit, that biobleptron system detected a fang? And a prince? And you just arrested him?"

Tobias nodded as Sebastian spoke: "And like that, the Masquerade we had spent nearly three thousand years maintaining fell to pieces." He shook his head.

"Holy shorts," Tiff whispered.

"Things progressed rapidly after that," Tobias said. "The Children of Gaia -- the shifter clans -- were detected two weeks later. Paracausal humans -- ah, what you'd refer to as 'mages' or 'wizards' - came out literally twelve hours after the first lycanthrope was caught on camera. Then came the PDIs, the Gargoyles, the Fae Courts." He shook his head. "It took every single already simmering sociopolitical problem on the Earth and threw gasoline on it like that." He snapped his fingers. "Within twenty years, it had gone from street fighting and altercations to the police...to atomic weaponry. Genetically engineered super-soldiers. By the end of it, half of Asia was ruled by the reincarnated Genghis Khan, six hundred million people were dead, and it looked like the various kinds of human on our planet were heading out the gates."

"What happened?" Tiff asked, drawing her legs up onto the seat.

"In 2098, the first Council was held. It was between the survivors of the Libertines, a faction of-"

"Oh! I know them!" Tiff said, nodding. "They're enemies of the Cam, uh, big on democracy, freedom, all that good stuff. Basically, as close to good guy vampire as you can get when they're still, you know, fangies."

Sebastian arched a single pale red eyebrow.

Tiff's cheeks heated. "Uh. I mean. Y-You know. I." She coughed. "Sorry."

Sebastian pursed his lips, but didn't upbraid her furhter as Tobias took up the telling again. "The Libertines, the survivors of the Camarilla, the Shifters Tribes, some gargoyle clans from New York, the Atlantian Order, the Elohim faction from the PDIs, some of the dragon blooded turncoats from the Augments..." He shook his head. "Basically, everyone who was more interested in working together."

Tiff raised her hand.

Tobias nodded.

"What's an Augment?" She asked, blushing as she spoke. "Cuase, like, I can peg the rest. You got your standard fangies, various kinds of fuzzers, a few of the gargoyles -- though I've never met a gargoyle that will give me the time of day. Like, the last one I met was this blue chick who was trying to blow up my home town. You know. Standard monster of the week kinda thing." She shook her head. "Then you got the Elohim are prolly some kind of ironically named good guy de...PDIs." She blushed, remembering that demon was not PC these days. "All totally makes sense."

"You are taking this remarkably well for a human from the 20^th century," Tobias said. Then he smacked his face. "Because you're the Hunter, of course."

"Exactappuccino!" Tiff cheered.

Tobias snorted. "The Augments were-"

"Tobias," one of the humans at the front said, frowning. "We've just picked up a silhouette on the sensors." He looked back, his tongue darting along his lips. "It's them -- a swarm class Aggregate, mark five."

"Of course," Tobias said, tapping at the armrest of his chair. His face had gone all grim and focused. "Crew, this is your Psuedocaptain speaking. We have detected an Aggregate swarm, mark five. At this moment, I am requesting a shipwide vote to enact a Class One DSI hierarchy. You have two minutes to vote or will be marked as having abstained." He tapped at the armrest again, shaking his head slightly. "Porter, can you bring the swarm on the screen?"

"Still parallaxing, sir," the guy who had spoken up -- Porter must have been his name -- said. His fingers tapped on the controls. "Kfap, help me out here. There we go." He tapped a switch on his console and the forward screen, which had shown the stars. Now they flicked forward, the starfield shifting in a dizzying swirl. There, in the center of it, was a mass of darkened shapes. The shapes became outlined in pale white lights, making them appear as definite forms from the infinite blackness of space. They were bubbles. Black, onyx hued bubbles. They didn't look solid -- rather, they warbled and wibbled as they flew forward, as if they were soap bubbles being blown by the cosmic winds. But one thing that Tiff knew was there were a lot of them. She counted two dozen...three dozen...nearly a hundred of them.

"The vote is in sir," Sebastian said. "It's unanimous."

"Glad to see my record is so appreciated," Tobias said, standing up. "Kfab, spin up the industrial replicators. I want three hundred thirty kiloton nuclear warheads on dispersal platforms -- dumbfire, no thrusters or guidance systems. Make them timed by clocks and gears -- nothing electrical if you can get away with it."

"This will require them to be fission warheads, Captain," Kfab said.

"There is a reason I said kiloton," Tobias murmured to himself. Tiff drew her legs in closer, biting her lip.

"Uh, is there about to be a...space...battle? Like some kind of a Star Wars?" Tiff asked, gulping slightly.

"If we're very lucky, no," Tobias said, quietly. He glanced at her, then chuckled. "Right. You're barely caught up on Earth history. Long and short of it, uh, five years ago, God decided we were too smug, so they threw us into the scorpion pit. And these?" He pointed at the black bubbles. "Are the scorpions."

"This raises more ques-" Tiff said.

And that was when the voices spoke. They didn't come from the air. They didn't come from the screen. They didn't even come from inside of Tiff's head -- she was used to hearing telepathic voices taunting her and screaming at her and generally being huge dicks to her. It came from fighting demons. No. These voices -- this choir - came from her bones. From the space between her lungs. From the depths of her soul. It was a song that boomed out of every atom of her body, buzzing through her and sending shooting pain through her nerves -- pain that she saw had hit everyone else on the bridge. Even the cool, collected Sebastian was doubled over as the voice spoke.

SUBLIMATION IS EQUATION SUBLIMATION IS EQUATION

(WE WE WE WE WE WE WE WE WE WE WE WE WE)

wHy DiD YoU LeaVe Us us US us US us LeAVE LeaVe

ACCEPT ACCEPT ACCEPT ACCEPT ACCEPT ACCEPT ACCEPT ACCEPT

"Shut them the fuck up!" Tobias shouted over interlocked voices.

"We can't, sir!" Sebastian shouted back.

Tiff clenched her jaw, feeling her own pain shooting up higher and higher and higher. She closed her eyes tightly -- and then felt the Hunter inside of her snap. She sprang to her feet, then roared at the screen. It was an animal sound, a feral, fierce, tearing noise -- the kind of noise she only let loose when she was far from her allies and her friends. Her friends. That cold thought, that stab of icy pain that had been kept at bay by confusion and by wonder choked her roar off into a cough and a wheezy gasp.

But it had been enough. The choir had stopped.

Tobias drew his hands away from his ears. Blood dripped from one of his nostrils. "Did she just shut the We up?"

"I believe she did..." Sebastian said, rubbing his temple.

"Sir..." Porter croaked. "The Aggregate has started heading our way. We've pegged a hundred and twelve discrete units -- at their current vector, they'll be here in five minutes."

"Damn they're fast," Tobias said. "Bring up the cloak and put us on an erratic vector. Kfap, please tell me you have my nukes ready."

"Yes, captain," Kfap said -- but even her voice sounded pained. Tiff felt the ship under her feet shudder and twist. She spread her arms to keep her balance, then thumped herself back into her seat with a grunt as she grabbed onto the armrests. A seatbelt whirred out and snagged her into place, making her blink in shock.

"Bring up a wide spectrum hailing frequency, Celestine -- I want us to hit everything that might pick up a word," Tobias said. Once the blue skinned woman, Celestine, had done so, she gave a nod to him and Tobias said. "Attention We. We do not understand your intentions. However, your previous interactions with our ships have to be taken as hostile. Please, cease your approach. Whatever you think you are doing, it is lethal to our species." He tapped the armrest of his chair and looked at Porter. "Any luck?"

"No, sir, the Aggregate has just...started going faster. They're spreading out and releasing energetic pulses -- it looks like standard UV radiation."

"Damn," Tobias said.

"They just tried to mind melt us and you're worried about being rude?" Tiff asked. "Dude, they're evil space blobs."

"They're an unknown alien race," Tobias said, his voice flat. "We don't even know what their intentions are -- the only name we have for them comes from a highly unreliable source and anything he had to say about them, I don't fucking trust. So, we're going to try and be friendly until-"

"Captain!" Porter shouted.

On the screen, the spheres had swept around them. Tiff barely saw the movement that they made -- but she felt the reaction. The sphere's sides puckered and flicked, as if they had spat out something. She felt the 'vampireness' of the ship suddenly intensify and the entire ship shuddered like it had been struck like a bell. Porter shouted. "We're down to fifteen BP on the left shield emi-"

This time, the clang wasn't like a bell. It was like a scream -- a scream of escaping air, a scream of cloven metal. Tiff saw it all in horrible slow motion, her instincts roaring to full life. A metal spear, roughly the width of her arm, punched through the corner of the room and shot straight towards Sebastian's seat. Even if he was a vampire, and even if staking a vampire didn't actually kill them (it just made killing them way easier), Tiff reacted without thinking. She shoulder checked him down, ripping out of her seat belt with a spray of leather and torn cloth. She and he hit the deck as the spear finished penetrating the room.

The spear drew inwards -- and for a moment, Tiff thought it was continuing through the ship. But she saw that no, that wasn't the case. The mirror black material it was made of was flowing like water, contracting and compacting, until the ruined mangle of Sebastian's chair had a humanoid figure standing upon it. It looked like a human male -- perfect in every anatomical detail save for that he was made of obsidian that flowed like liquid. The man stood and spoke.

"Sublimation is equality," he said.

Tobias, who had flung himself onto his back to avoid the spear, snapped up his finger. Considering what had happened last time, Tiff thought she would see a beam of light. Instead, a spark appeared on the center of the obsidian man's chest. It hissed, bubbled, then burst with a spray of black liquid, which almost splattered onto Tiff's back and shoulders, but she dragged herself and Sebastian away from it before it touched her. The black droplets clumped together on the deck plating, then formed into a series of spikes, thrusting into the air, even as the obsidian man slowly fell to his knees, then collapsed to the side.

"Watch out for those spikes!" Tobias shouted. "They-"

The ship shuddered again and Tobias had to snatch onto the nearest console to not get pitched onto the ground.

"I believe we've been shot enough, Sir!" Porter shouted.

Tobias closed his eyes. He nodded. "Fire back."

Porter flicked a switch -- and the screen filled with blinding white light. It was short and sharp and once it was over, the sky around them was empty, save for a few glowing, cherry red chunks of debris, which looked alarmingly cheerful next to the dark skies. Tiff, who realized that she was sprawled atop a vampire, blushed and sprang to her feet, stepping away.

"Sorry, sorry!" she said.

And set her foot right down onto one of those spikes.

It went through her bare foot and out the top with almost no pain -- just a sudden sense of coolness. Tiff had just enough time to think about how she was the biggest goddamn moron in the entire history of the universe before the pain hit. And it hit hard. She jerked her foot up and hissed. "Ahhhhhhhhh! Owwwww! Ow ow ow ow ow ow!" She clutched at her leg, hopping on her other foot away from the spikes.

The rest of the crew looked at her as if she had just been turned into a pile of guts. Tiff's back bumped against a wall.

"What?" She hissed. "Don't just freakerating stand there, and- AHHHH!" She screamed at the top of her lungs as the puckered wound on her foot turned black. Her skin shimmered as the blackness spread and spread and spread, sweeping along her foot. Tiff watched in horrified fascination -- and then she smirked. "Oh, you done fucked up."

The blackness stopped. She felt the coldness that was the blackness, bumping up against something older. Deeper. More feral. She grinned and murmured. "Once...a zombie bit me. After a few hours of agonizing pain..." The blackness cracked. She shook her foot and the flakes fell away, pattering to the deck, leaving her foot completely fine. Save for the bleeding hole in the middle of it. She looked up at the rest of the gaping crew.

"The zombie died!"

Tiff bit her lip. "C-Can I go to the hospital before any more history lessons?"

TO BE CONTINUED