Let He Who is Without Sin

And so on.

Right now, they weren't even an army from 7981. They were a chimp in a helicopter, pushing at buttons to turn on the cigarette lighter, facing off against people who could snap their fingers and turn air into gold.

"Soooo, do you have any ideas?" Sin asked, quietly. "I mean, like, any thoughts? Anything at all?"

"Welllllllllllll..." Vinos said, chewing his lip. He might as well figure out what cigarettes they had. "How did you activate the FTL engines on the ship? Was it easy?"

Sin's cheeks colored. As her skin was the curious shade of grey-black that seemed to be the Xenophile's main coloration, her blush was less red and more...bronzed gold than anything else. Still, she managed to look amazingly human as she rubbed the back of her neck. "W-Well, uh...we had sex."

"You and Nimbus had sex to turn on the FTL engines?" Vinos asked.

"Yes," Nimbus said, quietly.

"You fucked an ancient, alien artificial intelligence and it turned out the engines?"

"Yes!" Sin flared, glaring at him through the eye-cap covers. Despite not seeing her actual eyes, her brow and her lips still combined to make her look damn furious. "Yes! I had sex with an A.I! But Nimbus is a good person, and if you're going to be a pre-tech bigot and go on and on about how artifical intelligences aren't real or-"

"Oh, no, no, no!" Vinos said, holding up his hands. "No! You misunderstand me. We need to figure out what kind of guns this ship has. I'm presuming that Nimbus doesn't know how to turn them on."

"I can activate the anti-asteroid weapons!" Nimbus said, sounding defensive. "Primarily by moving the ship between the asteroid and Terran. Some autopilot, huh?"

Vinos nodded. "So, we need to do the same thing that got the drive systems working, but for the weapon systems. Once we know what the systems we can work with, I can actually work with what we have. We, I mean." He shook his head.

Older Vinos groaned -- quietly, then muttered under his breath: "...anal..."

"Excuse me, did he just say anal?" Sin asked, pointing her finger down at unconscious, older man. The Older Vinos did nothing to chip in from there. Nimbus coughed, softly.

"W-Well, the FTL system worked when, uh..." he trailed off.

"The lengths men will go to fuck my ass," Sin said, quietly. She crossed her arms over her chest, then looked at Vinos. "Well?" She asked, grinning wryly. "You up to save the human race by having sex with a freaky Giger chick?" She gestured her hands along her body.

"Nah, I'm gay," Vinos said, sitting down beside his older self.

There was a long, pregnant pause in the middle of the ship. Faintly, Vinos could hear the groaning, whirring sounds of the ship functioning. He wasn't sure what a ship should sound like -- especially not a ship made by an alien race many millions of years more advanced than humans had ever gotten. But the sounds...still...sounded familiar and comfortable. Clicking, groaning, wheezing.

Then Vinos grinned at Sin. "I'm...I'm just messing with you."

Sin shook her head. "We've got two hours before a dimensional anomaly dumps an unknown number of enemies with an unknown number of abilities and powers. And the best you could go for was a flopped gay joke? Come on, its the 71^st century, man. At least go for the easy necrophilia angle, man."

"Wait, you're-" Vinos started -- but then Sin grabbed his arm and dragged him up onto his feet.

###

The armies were readied. They had picked the perfect general to lead them.

The simple fact was that most creatures in the upper worlds simply could not understand the Threat without a great number of metaphors and similes and contortions. So, any general that would be sent would need to be one that was creative. Insightful. Willful. But more, the general would need to be...to be blunt...

A bit stupid.

###

"Okay," Sin said, laying back on the bed, her thighs spreading before Vinos. Vinos stood over her, his hand on his cock...and found himself alarmingly unable to achieve an erection. For a young, healthy man, this was already bordering on the catastrophic. Due to the fact that some kind of sex act was the only slender hope they had to actually turn the damn guns on, it was rapidly shifting from catastrophic to apocalyptic. Sin squirmed underneath him, trying to pose as sensually as she could...and it wasn't as if she wasn't beautiful: Her skin was inhuman, but the skin-hugging 'second skin' that covered her body from ankle to neck was permeable enough to let her nipples peek through. Even the things that made her exceptionally alien -- like her slightly extended hip-bones, and her elongated ears, and her spined, segmented hair-tendrils - were appealing in their own exotic way.

But...

Vinos pointed at her face. "Sin, can...you remove the...incredibly off putting metal-eye-patches that looked like they were bolted to your head?"

"What?" Sin paused. "OH!"

She sat up, grabbing at her eyes. The eye-patches came away with wet squelching noises and Sin held up one hand. "Turn away!" She said, her eyes covered with her other hands. Vinos turned around, his cock shriveling even more. He heard a wet slurping noise. "Uh, do you prefer pure black, gold with red highlights or...do...do we have my originals, Nimbus?"

"No, sorry," Nimbus said, his voice echoing from the walls.

"I am still not sure why Nimbus isn't the one having sex with you," Vinos muttered.

"I am," Nimbus said, his voice as cool as ever.

"Yeah, we need to try every permutation as quickly as possible. Hence why Nimbus is also having sex with older you in a sim-space," Sin added.

"I am suddenly even more uncomfortable," Vinos whispered. He tried to ignore the wet squelching noises as Sin resocketed her eyes into the surely gaping, oozing sockets. He tried to ignore the fact that, right now, Nimbus was having sex with Sin in virtual reality while also doing whatever the hell he or she or it wanted to an older version of himself from the future. He tried to ignore all of these things as he turned to face Sin -- she blinked a few times to clear her eyes. She had gone for the gold with red highlights. The orb of her eyes was entirely black, while her iris was gold, with red circling around it.

She was beautiful.

Alien.

And entirely unfuckable.

Maybe it was the situation. Maybe it was the fact that Vinos barely knew her. Maybe, finally, it was the fact she hadn't quite wiped up the last bit of blackish gore on her cheek. But he knew, in his heart of hearts, that his dick wasn't getting hard without chemical assistance.

Sin bit her lip slightly. "M-Maybe we should start by- shit!" She wiped her cheek clean, flicking the bit of gore aside. "Sorry!"

Vinos put his hands over his face. "There has to be a better plan than this."

###

The Threat was doing something.

That was not entirely new for those on the Harbinger level of the brane-world: They had been observing the Threat from the moment it metastasized on its nexus and spread, meme-like. They knew that the Theat often did things. But right now, what the Threat was doing was prod at one of the...

Oh no.

That was why the Threat had become a capital T threat: They had one of the Forgotten.

The Harbingers kicked the order up a few levels.

They'd need to work faster. Adapting the General would be the best way to bring them to the right level -- and they had studied the Threat for as long as the Threat had been a threat. So, why not use their singleform as a basis for the mind-body?

It'd cut down on the acceleration time considerably.

It was done.

###

Sin sat beside Vinos. Her finger traced lines on his hips and he squirmed under her touch -- warm, soft. Her lips kissed his neck and he closed his eyes. She felt good. His hands slid to her thighs as he leaned into her, the two pressing together as he turned his head -- her mouth lifted and met his. She kissed him and her tongue slipped into his mouth. She tasted faintly coppery, which made Vinos open his eyes. He looked into her eyes and she had her eyes screwed up tight as well. Vinos broke the kiss, and shuddered slightly.

"God this sucks!" Sin gasped.

"I know? No offense!" Vinos said.

"No, it's fine," Sin said, shaking her head. "Just...you're not Nimbus."

"I am flattered," Nimbus said, quietly. "I admit, seducing your future counterpart is proving...difficult."

Vinos shook his head. "I wish we had more to-"

"Alert," Nimbus cut him off. "The anomaly has increased its spin rate."

"What does that mean!?" Sin and Vinos said at the exact same time, in the exact panicky tone of voice. Sin put her hands over her face -- and before Vinos could look away -- pulled her eyes out of their sockets. She casually tossed them on the ground and slapped the caps back over them. As she stood, Nimbus spoke.

"It means that we have failed. The enemy are going to arrive here in thirty minutes. And I doubt that we can activate whatever remaining weapons exist on the Xenophile in time." Nimbus sounded sad -- but he sounded sad in the slightly disaffected way that all A.Is had. Or, maybe, it...was...

Vinos' eyes widened. The words 'in time' echoed in his mind. Again and again, they went around his mind. In time. In time. In time. His eyes widened and he laughed. "Sin!" he said, pointing at her dramatically. "Get your fuck on!"

"I...what?" Sin blinked.

"We need to maneuver to the anomaly as quickly as possible," Vinos said. "We may not be able to destroy them. But what we can do is send Earth the warning -- to evacuate, to spread the Demarchy as the Concord has spread. We know that FTL works -- knowing that alone will let us imagine its possibilities. We can figure out a way to fight back. Not here, but some day, somewhere!" He nodded slowly. This had the feeling of an idea that would work.

"So, we-" Sin blinked. She had just pieced it together.

"So we don't need to destroy the enemy. We just need to move them," Vinos said, smiling. "Nimbus, how far can we jump?"

"The Magellanic clouds are within medium jump range."

"Andromeda?"

"Easy. Well, I mean. Harder than the Magellanic Clouds, but, still..."

"Good." Vinos grinned a wolf's grin.

"Information on the situation is being beamed to Demarchy high command," Nimbus said. "Beginning acceleration now."

###

The General arrived.

The Threat would be dealt with.

Everything was going according too-

Wait, what?

###

The C.S.S Xenophile accelerated away from the Earth using its sub-light drives. They functioned on the same fuzzy-quantum principles that powered early human E.M drives -- only on a larger, more potent scale. It would have caused earlier astrophysicists to tear their hair out, to try and explain where the energy came from. The thing that would have really driven them absolutely bonkers, though, was the inertial dampeners. Despite being flung forward at almost ten gravities, Vinos felt nothing more intense than the faint sense of motion that he would have felt in a gently accelerating electric car. The feeling didn't change as they ramped from ten to fifty gravities -- hurtling towards the anomaly so quickly that between heartbeats the Xenophile traveled its own length a hundred times.

They arrived with time to spare.

Decelerating five times as hard as they accelerated brought them to a complete stop in a fraction of the time they spent 'burning' to get there -- Vinos couldn't think of a better term, despite the fact no reaction mass had been used, no thrust plume extended behind the ship. The view that he based this on came in the form of a shimmering hologram projected from the seemingly inconsequential bone nodules that grew from the walls -- that same view showed him the anomaly. It was visible not by how it acted, but rather, by how the starlight around it acted.

Each rotation caused the starlight to ripple and shift in hues -- sometimes turning red, sometimes blue as turned. The result was a garish mash of colors that reminded him of a pagan wreath during the high holidays as yellow and white light shifted up and down through the spectrum, centered around a single spot in space that seemed undisturbed. Then, before his eyes, that spot in space...sank inwards. His perception lurched as he saw a true infinite depth -- something that reached into his monkey brain and squeezed onto the bits of his mind that had been left in by a Demarchy more interested in preservation than innovation.

Vinos felt queasy and awed all at once.

Then, with a concussive flash of light that seemed like it should have produced some noise but didn't the light circle collapsed inwards and when it faded, a single dot of blue-white material floated in space. Vinos held up his hand, tensing slightly. All of his instincts screamed that they needed to wait for just the right moment. Then he saw the material explode away from that dot like the sabot from a cannon shell and he saw something luminous within become visible -- and his instincts fell silent. They were sure and so was he.

"Now!"

The Xenophile had been waiting for that moment. Vinos wasn't sure what position Sin and Nimbus had taken -- but he was sure that Nimbus was feeling very good right now. He could swear that he heard the A.I's groan of pleasure as a tube of shimmering light -- the light of a thousand million stars caught and mixed and twisted by gravity. This time, he did feel the acceleration. He staggered backwards, then fell as the ship bucked underneath him. His head slammed into the deck and he saw whiteness that had nothing to do with unimaginable alien technology and everything to do with a concussion.

"Merde!" He groaned the word slowly, savoring it. Then a counter-acceleration sent him skidding forward along the ground. He slammed into someone's shins before he even realized they were there and a humanoid body crashed onto his chest. He felt soft flesh and something jagged and grabbed at them and blinked the stars out of his eyes and found himself looking at a slender, elfin face. Her skin was a pale red, with luminous colors that shone from underneath the ruby-like exterior, giving her the look of the core of a star that had decided to go wandering. Her ears bifurcated into two slender elf-tips, both of which glowed with their own searing light. Her eyes had a curious twin-iris look to them, making her look as if she had two sideways figure eights in her eyes. Her nose was small enough to be invisible, and her lips were thin and delicate. She blinked at him. Vinos blinked at her.

She spoke -- and her voice echoed and Vinos somehow understood it despite knowing for a fact that none of the words she spoke was interlac or engdarin: "What the FUCK just happened?"

"Vinos, get away, she's the anomaly!" Nimbus cried out.

The woman jerked her head up, then floated off the ground of her own free will. Hovering over Vinos, he could see her body: A flat belly, firm breasts tipped with ruby red nipples. Her dainty feet hovered right over his nose, and he could look up her slender legs to where they joined -- to her pert, beautifully symmetrical sex, and her amazingly firm, heart shaped, ruby red ass. Her shoulders and her knees and her elbows each had strange encrusted chunks of jagged gemstones growing around them -- like she had been carved from a solid chunk of ruby and had been left partially unfinished. Her hair hung down her back to lightly brush against her ass -- and it burned without heart.

"You little bug," the woman said, her voice full of offense and wounded pride. "How dare you inconvenience me like this! Do you know how long it will take to walk back to the Nexus? Ugh." She snapped her fingers and Nimbus started to scream. The wall behind Vinos opened and Sin emerged, her hands balled into fists, tears streaming from underneath her eye-patches. She charged at the soldier -- but the soldier waved her hand and Sin went flying backwards, smashing against the wall.

"I..." the soldier stopped. "You interfaced with it?! Ugh! That's like making out with a sub-par concept. I knew we never should have left the Forgotten underneath."

She floated forward and Vinos craned his head backwards. He saw that pert little ass of hers and tried to think of what to do.

"L-Let...her...go!" Nimbus snarled -- emotion turning his voice into an electronic growl. Emotion and...pain. Vinos was sure of it. He could see the soldier's left hand -- her fingers danced in the air as if she was working a holographic interface. She was doing something to Nimbus -- and from the way Sin's head thrashed -- to her as well. The soldier shook her head.

"You're gendering it? It doesn't even have terms for concepts for theories about the basis of reality," she said. "It doesn't even know how to branchiate!"

Vinos pushed himself to his knees, then to the balls of his feet. It felt like attacking a CZ-98 Supertank with a hand-held spear tipped with obsidian. Even if he got obscenely lucky and managed to actually get the spear through the nanoclouds, the armor would regenerate even the tiny scratch he put on it. Vinos paused, his eyes widening as the soldier twitched her hand and stripped off Sin's eyecoverings -- revealing the empty, oozing sockets within.

"Ugh!" The soldier scoffed. "So crude. Of course, we leave you without your higher functions and your [...]-" The word sounded in Vinos' ears, and he knew that he heard it, but it left nothing but a yawning blank space in his mind, as if his brain couldn't grasp the depth and complexity of what he had just heard and instead jettisoned it -- as some kind of mental safety valve. But by then, the idea had firmly settled in his brain as he crept closer and closer to the distracted soldier -- she was exclaiming in disgust as she waved her hands over Sin's eyes and reattached the coverings.

There was no way Vinos, with a spear, could take on the CZ-98 Supertank in a fight.

But the pilot of the tank was human.

And sometimes, humans did the damnedest things.

And so, he stepped up behind the girl, stuck his fingers into his mouth, slicked them up as much as he could, then slapped his hand against her firm, tight, incredibly spankable ass and slipped his middle finger into her anus. There was something giddily...wrong...about what he was doing. He had been taught his whole life to ask permission, to get positive consent before doing anything like this. But he figured, hey, he was going off a half baked theory and a mumbled word by a time-shocked duplicate of himself.

He could do something rapey at least once in his life.

The soldier grunted. Her eyes widened and her mouth opened in shock. Vinos stepped up behind her, his mouth closing around the upper-left eartip, sucking on it. It tasted faintly of spice and blazed against his tongue with a comforting warmth. His free hand reached around and cupped her breast, squeezing gently. He found her nipple hardening under his touch and the gasp that escaped her lips made Vinos feel hope for the first time in his life -- hope not just that he'd survive, but that the future might not just be a dreary, endless, repetitive march to eventual death.

"W-What the [...] are you doing!?" She yelped. "S-Sto...ah..." she shuddered as his finger slipped out of her ass and her let her go. Her cheeks flushed. "N-Now it has stopped feeling good! What the [...]!"

The non-euclidean cussing non-withstanding, Vinos had to admit that her look of complete consternation at no longer being groped was highly adorable. Her nose scrunched up and she shook her head as she turned around to face him.