All the King's Horses Pt. 02

Sector 98-A, Neutral Space

The Milky Way Galaxy

2398

"Ow ow ow ow ow," Tiffany Winters hissed as the sleek probe in the hands of the space elf whizzed and whired over her foot. "Can someone please tell me why I can't pop a friggin tylenolio or whatever fancy shoot boots you guys have in the future?"

"You were momentarily infected by femtotechnology from the We," Captain Tobias said. He was leaning against the wall of the small hospital room that they had rushed Tiff too after her little foot meets black spike incident on the bridge. Sebastian was standing beside him, looking thoughtful. "Do you know how many people have survived that?"

"Between zero and a hundred billion?" Tiff hissed.

"Zero is the more accurate choice," Sebastian said, his voice dry. "Though, one wonders, if you were going to make multiple guesses, why choose such a wide variation?" His lips quirked in what might have been a smile. Tiff glared at him.

"Because I figured Captain Toby wouldn't have asked-"

"Oh, uh," Tobias broke in. "Firstly, don't call me Toby, please. Secondly, the combat situation is over. I'm no longer the captain -- I'm back to my nominal position on the ship as psuedocaptain."

"And about that!" Tiff hissed as the space elf stood up and nodded, pocketing his probe.

"She doesn't have a single piece of We technology anywhere in her nuclei that I bombarded," the star elf said. "But that was simply a probabilistic crosscheck, we're going to need a Wyrdling in here to ensure that we actually got them all."

"I got the 'she' 'doesn't' and then ya lost me," Tiff said as the doctor continued to not close up the hole in her foot. Fortunately, her Hunter's regeneration had kicked on. Good old Hunter spirit. Her old mentor, Christian, had explained to her that the Hunter spirit chose the most valorous person in the whole world to be a Hunter. They were granted by the spirit strength, regeneration, superhuman perception and reflexes, and the ability to sniff out evil in all its forms. Good old Christian had never fucking mentioned: Oh, hey, Tiffany, you might get cryogenically frozen for three hundred years and shot into space and now vampires are your friends.

"In the historical records, it was stated that the Hunter was immune to possession and unwilling transformation," Sebastian said. "It was a primary part of their use as an anti-vampric weapon before First Contact."

Tobias nodded, slightly. "And it works against femtotechnology?"

Sebastian pursed his lips, then cocked his head to the side. "Honestly, captain, is that shocking? It does not matter how advanced a piece of technology is -- a sufficiently energetic rock can destroy it. As you recently proved with your thermonuclear solution to the Aggregate swarm."

Tobias nodded.

"Wait, they don't have force fields?" Tiff asked, wincing as the hole finally closed. Seeing that her foot was now able to wiggle and wriggle to her hearts content, she glared at the space elf -- lacking a better name for an alien race that looked like a human but had long, tapered ears. "Some help you were."

"If your foot contains even a sliver of We technology that hasn't been incinerated," the space elf said. "Then I don't want any of my medical technology to get close to it. In fact...Kfap, can you replicate me a hermetically sealed containment unit for Miss Winter's foot?"

"Done!" Kfap said as a whirring sound came from the wall. "Though, I warn you, no known form of isolation technology has yet managed to prevent We Aggregate femtotechnology from spreading once it decides to spread. Even our specially designed materials are still, by comparison, essentially volleyball nets trying to contain viruses."

The space elf took the glass boot he had ordered and grunted. "It'll make me feel better," he said as he walked over. Bringing the sole of the boot over towards Tiff's still aching foot, he pressed it up, then released his hold on the heel and the top. The glass stuck to her skin and then flowed like water, moving until it had completely inverted itself, encasing her foot and her leg in a shimmering, glassy outer layer. It worked between her toes and Tiff oohed as she wriggled her toes, watching the glass move and shimmer.

"Freaking coolzola," she whispered. "Thanks, uh, space elf. What are you and who are you, again?"

"I'm Dr. Galadrial," the space elf said, frowning. "My species are known as the space elves."

"Fuckin aces!" Tiff whispered. "Wait, you named yourself space elves?"

"Well, no," Galadrial said, shrugging one shoulder. "But to pronounce my species' name properly, I'd have to...rip out your tongue."

"Doctor Galadrial is just kidding," Tobias said.

"No I'm not," Galadrial muttered, while Sebastian said, louder and at the same time: "No he isn't"

"Now, to answer your questions," Tobias said, clapping his hands together. "There's only one species that has cracked force field technology and that's us. Everyone else has their own way around protecting their ships. Armor, massed numbers of autonomous drone fighters, massed numbers of manned fighters..." He shook his head. "And our force fields depend entirely upon our access to cloned vampire brain tissue. We lucked out." He sighed. "To answer your first question second, though: We in the Panhuman Federation of Planets learned during the 21^st century that capitalism and hierarchies are hugely dangerous forms of social organization."

Tiff gulped. "So...you're all communists?" she asked.

"Yes," Tobias said, smiling. "Though, you could also call us anarchists, of a sort. It's actually kind of a complex, intermediary process, because Earth isn't in a galaxy that's empty of life. Far from it. We're surround by potential threats, from the unintentional danger of aliens we can't understand like the We Aggregate to the actively aggressive. The K'Za'Ngork Empire, the Centurion Empire, the Narine Union, the Omni-Imperium. Hell, we're even threatened by the Capellan Trade Alliance." He made a face at that.

Tiff frowned. "I'm noticating a pattern there. Empire. Empire. Union, aka, Empire. Imperium. Which is also an Empire."

"Most other species are currently enslaved by centrally organized extraction based economic-empires, focused on expansion, conquest, and slavery," Sebastian said in that cool voice of his -- as if this was just the kind of thing anyone would talk about at any time. "It's what puts the Federation in such a bind when it comes to military force. Authorizing and controlling it without succumbing to the same centralized authority as those other polities requires certain improvisation."

Tiff stuck her finger in her ear, wriggling it. "Got that in American?"

"We try and limit heirarchies," Tobias said. "I'm the quasicaptain because I've been found to be the most effective leader over time, as rated by the crew and external observation. When the situation goes from suggestion to orders, there's an emergency election that puts me in direct, legal control."

Tiff frowned. "Well...at least you vote..." She paused. "So, you guys don't use money?"

"Of course we use money," Tobias said, chuckling. "Why wouldn't we use money?"

"Cause, uh, I've seen Star Trek-" Tiff started.

Tobias snorted. "This isn't Star Trek, Winters," he said, his grin rueful. "Capitalism isn't just 'having money' it's allowing capital -- the capitalist class -- to own the means of production and to exploit labor. We still need methods to allow for interpersonal barter, to track needs, to assign value to objects that cannot be replicated -- like art and cultural artifacts and replication patterns. No, we still use money. We just don't need money to live." He stepped over, then sat down on the bed, quite near her glass covered foot -- which caused Dr. Galadrial to glare at him. "We're no longer enslaved. It took a lot of fucking work and it took a whole lot of fighting and it took a whole lot of changing how we organized society, but we did it."

Tiff bit her lip. "So...I can still go to malls?"

"I mean, they're gonna mostly be local shops owned by people making stuff the community wants or needs, but, yes," Tobias said, grinning down at her. His smile made his whole, golden-brown face light up. "There are shopping malls."

"Sweeeeet!" Tiff said, pumping her fist.

***

Once the doctor had decided that the We creeping out of her foot and consuming the entire ship was just as likely in a set of her own quarters as anywhere else, Tobias, Sebastian and Dr. Galadrial headed off, a merry trio, and Tiff was palmed off on none other than Lance Corporal Bryce. Bryce beamed at her as she walked out of the medical bay, his arms spreading. "I hear you saved Orlock from a True Death!" he said. "Or at least a torpor serious enough to last us until we get back to Babel-9."

Tiff nodded. "Yeah. Yeah I did. It's...weird to think of saving a vampire's life." She shook her head. "Anywho, uh, you're here to give me the tour of the ship?"

"Yeah," Bryce said, his hand going to his collar. "I hear the whole bridge crew is working out what drew the We to this sector. This isn't exactly their normal stomping grounds."

"Yeah," Tiff said. But her voice was distracted. Soft. She looked away. "So...it's...2398."

"Yup," Bryce said, his ears perking up. Then they drooped. He looked at her, his side-slitted eyes narrowing. Tiff avoided looking into them as she tried to focus on the questions she had. The wonder. The amazement. Instead, her throat tightened.

"So, um...are there...records?" She asked, her voice coming out as a choked squeak. "Of my fam. Of my. Friends. Of..." She wanted to say Victor. Her tongue felt fat and stuffed up in her mouth. She clenched her hands behind her back. "Y-You know."

Bryce nodded. "Come on," he said, holding out one of his dark orange-black hands to her. Tiff took it and the strength of his grip actually made her smile a bit. She liked boys who gripped her tightly -- didn't treat her like blown glass. Thinking that phrase, with her foot locked up in glossy not-glass made her snort and giggle all at once, sniffling as she tried to keep the tears away. Bryce lead her to a set of doors, which hissed open to reveal a room that Tiff would have guessed would be normal on a spaceship. There was a comfortable but small bed, a small window that showed the starry vastness of space, and a little chair before a desk with what looked like a binder in it. No, no, it looked like a laptop.

Bryce spoke. "Uh, second chair, please?"

The floor warped, twisted, and a second chair flowed up out of it. "How does the ship do that?" Tiff whispered, kneeling down to poke at the chair, her tears banished for the moment.

"There's an industrial replicator in the engineering decks," Bryce said, grinning. "Right next to the engines. Hence the whole...engineering deck thing." He said as she sat down in the chair that he hadn't replicated. It was soft and squishy and formed to fit her body perfectly. "When I ask for a chair, it replicates one and then it's pushed through the smart material of the deck. Now!" He said, swinging up the laptop to reveal the screen. "Lets see about the Winters clan." He grinned at her. "All right..." He tapped away at the computer as Tiff leaned forward.

She studied Bryce out of the corner of her eye. His sleek, beautiful, alien face was lit by the screen and the focus in his eyes made them even more beautiful. And they had started as beautiful, blue-gold pools that she could drown in. The pheromone masker he wore around his throat looked more like a bit of fancy, space aged jewelry than a piece of medical technology. She could imagine slowly peeling it off him with her-

Bad, Tiff, she thought. You have a boyfriend.

This thought was followed by another, darker one, that quenched her excitement just as effectively as the first hadn't: Oh. Wait. No. You don't.

"Where did you live?" Bryce asked. Once she had supplied the city, he frowned. "Okay, we've got your class, year. Your father, Hank Winters, and your mother, Balinda Winters, moved out of town in 2000, after you went missing. They had another child, Dawn Winters in 2002 and passed away in 2032, peacefully in their sleep." His eyes flicked, reading. "Dawn Winters married Tasha Bowers in 2023-"

Tiff jerked her head up. "Tasha? Like...is Tasha a guy's name in 2023? Like, it's the weird future year and-"

"No," Bryce said, looking at her. "Tasha's a girl. Tasha Kimberly Bowers, born in 1998. They were married for ten years and divorced in 2043. They had a son, though."

Tiff was still trying to process that she had had a little sister she had never known. And that she had liked...girls. She remembered all the snide conversations that she had heard -- and even taken part in -- wondering which girls liked to munch carpet. Which were..you know. She felt sick, at herself. Confused. Scared. She drew her legs up on the seat under her, tucking her chin against her knees. "Wait, how can two girls have a son?"

"They spliced him together at a genetics clinic," Bryce said, biting his lip. "Are...you okay?"

"Yeah. Great. Just great. I have a nephew who has two mommies is, like, a million years old and I'm still only eighteen!" Tiff hissed. "I'm, like, freakin peachin!"

Bryce squeezed her shoulder. "We can stop, if you want-"

"Look up Gibson Mackintosh Flower LaBonte," Tiff snapped. "Born in 1981, went to Sunnyvale High School, same year as mine. His dad was-" She paused as Bryce tapped away, bringing up the familiar face of her goofy, lovable sidekick, Gibby. She blinked as she saw the date of death: 2002. "H-He died in 2002?" She whispered, her voice tight.

"Yeah," Bryce said, quietly. "Uh, it looks like he signed up for the US Army after a..." He leaned in close. "A minor terrorist attack against the United States. Huh. I never knew there was a terror...attack..." He trailed off, blushing. "Sorry. It looks like he, uh, died in Afghanistan."

"Stupid asshole!" Tiff hissed past the tears that started to pour down her cheeks. "Stupid fucking asshole." Strong arms wrapped around her shoulders, drawing her up against something warm and sleek and strong. She buried her face against the soft neck of the Gal'Sem marine, her nose snuffling as snot poured out of her nostrils. She tried to stem the tide, but wracking sobs tore their way out of her throat, raw and ragged. She slammed her fist down in the desk, which cracked and almost bent in half. Her body shook with tears -- and she tensed, already preparing for Bryce to draw back. Instead, he held her tighter, petting her back gently.

"It's okay," she whispered. "It's okay, it's okay, it's okay."

Tiffany wasn't sure how long she floated in Bryce's hands. But once she was done, she took a shockingly clinical stock of her situation. Her eyes felt as if they had been wrung out like sponges. Her cheeks were caked with the salty after wash and her nose felt like a ragged pair of hoops, brittle with dried snot. She felt utterly and completely disgusting -- and profoundly better. Like all the sadness of a century, compacted and squeezed out of her with a twist and a wring and a shake. She drew back, smiling up at Bryce, who looked down at her sympathetically.

"So, uh, don't take this the wrong way, Tiff," he said, grinning slightly. "But you look like hell."

"Thanks," Tiff mumbled. "Yo! Ship-butt, give me a, like, wet wash cloth or something."

The wall whirred and a small rectangle opened in it. Tiff pulled out a wet wash-rag and started to wipe at her face, breathing in once she was done. "Okay. We need to check on Gloria and Birch and...Victor. On everyone. And you will hug me, each time." She pointed at Bryce.

"Of course I will. I saw what you did to the desk," Bryce said, winking at her.

The logs were a mixture of the painful and the joyful. Learning that Birch had also married a girl -- though she hadn't divorced and died with her...wife? Tiff supposed wife was the right term. Their child, adopted, had been one of the minor diplomatic figures of note in the founding of the Federation. Gloria had vanished off the records in 2005, but the last time she had been spotted had been going down an alleyway in Los Angeles which meant anything between being kidnapped by criminals to falling down a dimensional portal into a hell-factory or something.

Then there was the completely shocking.

"You want me to look up Victor Enache?" Bryce asked.

"Yeah?" Tiff asked.

"...the Victor Enache?" Bryce asked.

"No, a Victor Enahce," Tiff said, blushing. "It might be hard, though. He was a vampire during the Masquerade -- a Tzamarkias and he was part of the Cam and-"

Bryce swung around to look at her. "So, you mean, the Victor Enache? The hero of New York? General Enache, who liberated Palles during the Solar Resurgence? Victor Enahce, the guy who single-handedly blew the Martian beanstalk and stopped the entire Martian Corps of Vampire Hunters in their tracks? That Victor?" He gaped, then tapped a few times, bringing up an image of Vicky, looking happier than Tiff had ever seen him before in his life, standing in a suit of sleek armor, a rifle on his shoulder.

Tiff gaped at the screen.

She gaped some more.

She gaped even more.

She gaped the most she could possibly gape. Then she grabbed onto the screen. "Kfap! Can I talk at Enache right fucking now?" She asked.

"We do have a sustainable quantum link back to DSI headquarters," Kfap said. "S-"

"Do it!" Tiff shouted.

"Are you telling me," Bryce whispered, leaning in close. "That you used to know General Enache before-"

"Shhh!" Tiff hissed as the screen blinked and she found herself looking at a smiling, blue skinned man's face.

"Greetings," he said. "I'm the attache to Pseudogeneral Victor Enache, Melv'katin, and I have volunteered my time to help with his allotted civic service. How may I-"

"Get that angst fangbastard on the line right fucking now!" Tiff shouted at the screen, leaning in close, mashing her face up against the screen. "Right now, you blue skinned alien tosspot! Don't make me crawl through this fucking screen! I don't know what a quantum is, but I bet it's better than AT&T!"

The blue skinned alien jerked away from the screen, clearly aware that there were definitely things that could crawl through screens. He stammered something about the General being busy when the door behind him opened and Vicky stepped out. But it was a different Vicky from the one that Tiff had known. He was smiling. Like, actually smiling. With fangs showing and everything. He had a cup in his hand, which steamed slightly, and had the words GALAXY'S #! DAD! on it. He was dressed in a uniform that was reminiscent of the one that Byrce wore in terms of color -- silver -- but rather than being a jumpsuit, it was more like an actual military uniform. He even had a fucking black sash with a bunch of freaking meddles on it!

"You okay, M- Gaia's Tits!" Vicky jerked back, dropping his mug. It thunked out of frame into carpet, but Tiff had seen blood flying from it. Hot, steaming blood. He charged forward, then leaned down in the screen. He looked right into it. "...this...I..." His face hardened, suddenly, into a mask of race. "DeLancy!"

He turned and bellowed the name into thin air. There was a brilliant white flash and a middle aged, brown haired human man appeared, wearing what looked exactly like a bathrobe, with his hair done up in a shower cap, locked tight around his forehead. He was holding a large, floofy, soaped up loofa, which he had been using to scrub at the back of his neck. He spun around, gasped, and swung his robes shut. "Victor!" he said, his eyes wide. "I was in the-"