To Walk the Constellations Pt. 02

Thale was a Sub-Lord of the Liminal Knights. He had bested men in battle. He had flown his ship in combat. He was a master of an ancient magic.

He flung himself into the throne, curled up, and burst into tears.

***

Thale had been here before. His eyes were unfocused for a moment -- seeing only the hazy light of greens and blues and gold. He floated in that unfocused moment, letting the reality of the moment come only once it needed to. His eyes blinked once and he saw that he was standing in a forest glad. His bare feet pressed into the grass and his nose flared as he breathed in the deep, rich scents of this place. The smell of the grass. The smell of the water, rich in the air. The smell of the bark, rough and raspy and thick with cinnamon. Then his ears twitched, bringing in the sounds of the forest. The wind in the leaves, the rustle of the brush. The cheerful babbling of the brook.

Thale grinned and started forward, feeling his sleek body move to his command -- and reveling in his nakedness. His freedom.

This place had been his for years. Ever since the powers of a Liminal Knight had called to him, he had been able to come here -- to the sanctum within a sanctum. It took a certain amount of effort most of the time, but there were occasions where his mind fled here during sleep, crawling in and curling up to escape from the pain of the outside world. He had no idea which planet the forest, the brook, the pool was based on. It might have been Home. It might have been a thousand others that humanity had found and used magic on to tame and shape into a replica of their long beloved homeworld.

Personally, Thale didn't really care where it was.

It was his.

He came to the water and crooned at the sight of it. He leaped up and landed in the pool, his body sending up a wave of pale blue water. It was shockingly cold, but his body adapted faster than it would have in the real world. Soon, the water felt like bliss, and he cupped his hands to splash it into his face, blinking away grit and tears. He stepped backwards and stood beneath the tumbling waterfall that poured over the lip of the grotto's back. The water cascaded along his spine and he let out a gasp of pure pleasure. His eyes closed and he stepped forward, his hands rubbing along the many scars that crossed his body.

Old training mementos. Reminders of the Emperor's disfavor. His fingers paused in their question -- and his eyes opened.

And then he saw the girl.

She was naked, like him, though her body was half hidden by a tree that she clung to and hid partially behind. But her eyes were focused on him like a pair of lasers -- and they were as deep and rich as the bark she stood beside. Brown, but laced through with tiny flecks of gold. Fatty deposits had no right looking so utterly enchanting. Her hair was chestnut brown and unruly, tumbling along her skinny shoulders like the waterfall behind him, coming to frayed tips. Her face was narrow and angular, like she'd missed a few meals and had been tanned to a warm hazel. That fact didn't hide the constellation of freckles that started at her cheek bones and swept out and down like the wings of a star phoenix. The tiny dots continued along her shoulders, then swirled in intricate chaos along the modest swell of her breasts, fading out only to return with a vengeance around her belly button and her skinny, bony thighs. She had an unruly tuft of pubic hair nestled between her legs, which themselves were sleek. Athletic. Her feet were rough and hard used -- and yet the urge to caress them tingled along Thale's lips.

The girl gaped at him. Then she and he moved -- his hand clapped over his groin. She ducked her entire body against the tree, concealing herself as best she could. What skin she showed had turned from hazel brown to crimson red.

When she blushed...she blushed.

"H...Hey," she said. Her voice sounded like honey. Thale's heart leaped into his throat. He gulped it back down. She bit her lip. The dimpling made Thale's fingers tighten into near fists. He wracked his brain for something, anything, to say.

"Hey," he said. The girl smiled, shyly as Thale kicked himself for that genius bit of dialog. "H-How'd you get here?" He asked. He didn't want it there, but a tiny note of possessiveness crept into his tone.

"I don't know," she said, her voice sharp. She turned her back, her head vanishing behind the tree. But her voice floated out. "What's your name?"

Thale could picture her on the other side of the tree. His member grew harder and harder, his tail twitched from side to side. He wanted to go there. To the tree. To tug her out and interrogate her. How had she gotten here? To his sanctum? She had to be a Liminal Knight. But...no Liminal Knight could be here unless...unless...his brow furrowed. He shook his head, slightly, and realized she was waiting for a name. Immediately, the first thing that came to his lips, was...

"Thale," he said. The name he used only among the people who knew the real him. Stupid. Stupid! If she had been from any Hegemonic world, she'd have known Lord Drak's name. Hells, she might have even been a fan. He shook his head. "You?"

"Venn," she said.

Thale's eyes widened. That wasn't a Hegemonic name. At least, not one he recognized. But it sounded...good. He smiled. "Venn." He tasted the word on his tongue. "I like it." His stomach roiled and he felt a flare of panic. Had that been...did she-

"Thale is nice too," she said and Thale felt an absurd urge to dance for joy. But before he could speak, before he could do a thing, his shoulder jerked to the side. He snapped his head to the left, and realized someone was shaking his physical body.

"I have to go," he said, his voice tight.

"Thale, wait, I-" she started.

But Thale's eyes opened. He groaned and sat up, his back stretching as he saw a hard-light servitor hovering beside him. It was a simple geometric shape, easily rendered by the projectors and easily simulated by the comptech. It had shaken him with a pincer claw, a claw it retracted back into its polygonal body. That clipped feminine voice used by every piece of equipment that had a simmed voice spoke: "Lord Drak, you are summoned by Chief Engineer and Programmer Archaeologist Ho."

Thale rubbed at his eyes. "Tell him I'll be there in thirty minutes."

"Yes, Lord Drak."

The servitor fuzzed away and Thale stretched. His spine popped and cracked and he prowled to his bed with a quiet snarl. That girl. That Venn. He wanted her. He wanted her with a fierceness that went beyond logic, beyond rationality. It was a gut deep instinct, like a fish hook in his guts, tugging up towards his throat. He came to his bedroom and flung himself down, knees first, onto his bed. Black silken sheets rumpled under his weight and he panted as he looked down as his achingly hard member. Pale. Immense. His hand gripped his base, his fingers not touching his palm as he closed his eyes. He hated his cock -- it was...unsightly.

The Hegemony's beauty lines trended towards petite -- the efficient body. In most of the neuvo-plays, if a man had a bulge, it was because he was a brute. An idiot. An animal. A disgusting animal. Thale clenched his jaw, pressure growing as he pumped his cock, viciously hard. His eyes closed and he pictured that freckled body under him, imagined spreading her legs, imagined hilting himself inside of her, imagined her back arching, her sex clenching. His hand squeezed his base and he let out a low, hissing sound. His tail lashed and he leaned forward, his palm pressing to the silk. Claws snicked from his free hand's fingertips and dug into the cloth.

"Fuck!" He growled, his hips twitching as if he was slamming into her. His balls bumped his own knuckles and he threw his head back, growling. "Fucking yes!"

The pressure mounted. Burst.

His balls clenched and Thale tried to roar, like he really was one of the great cats. The sound came out as a pathetic, emasculating yowl. His body trembled and his back arched as his cum spurted into the bed. Thick strands spilled outwards in an elegant, spreading pattern that almost reached the pillows. His claws rasped through more of the silk as he bent forward, resting his forehead at the very apex of his splash. His eyes closed and he breathed in his warm musk, the salty buzz of his spunk burning down his nose as his tail twitched. He was posed as if he was ready for Adoran, like this. But he wasn't thinking of Adoran, now was he.

Thale whispered. "Venn..."

He shook his head. He left the sheets for the cleaning servitor and walked, naked, to the showers. He let cold water run down his spine and thought, for just a moment: Adoran never arrived in my dreams, did he?

He took his time showering. But when he emerged, his uniform was waiting. He slid the gambeson on. He tugged on his gloves with mute resignation, curling his lip at the false claws. And then, walking to the front doors, he came to where he had smashed his mask. And there, laying on a slightly dinged and dented part of the floor plating, was his mask -- utterly undamaged. Thale reached down and grabbed the mask. He looked at the blank face of it, then turned it around. He pressed it to his face -- and, as always, putting it on was never when he started to want to tear it off. That feeling always came creeping in the longer and longer he wore it. Thale closed his eyes as the mask extended, locked into place, and his hand brushed his cape out.

Lord Drak emerged from his chambers and strode towards the science bay of the Victrix.

***

The rank of Chief Engineer was usually one that drew a bit of a sneer from any Liminal Knight. All it took was the ability and the willingness to memorize the miracles that humanity could craft from scratch -- starting with fire and working your way up to the fusion reactor. But next to the raw magic of the Machines that were at the beck and call of a Knight, what was the petty technology of a human being? However Gibson Ho had also attained the significantly rarer rank of Programmer Archaeologist. That alone made him in demand among Eudemonia. The fact he had gotten both ranks had guaranteed his position about the Victrix.

The Chain had been forged over the course of many thousands of years. It fallen and been rebuilt at least once, over the course of even more thousands of years. During that time, humanity had spoken order into the chaos of bit and byte, creating countless programs. But no program had ever been made on its own for uncounted aeons. Nothing was spoken from whole cloth, not since that mythical Dawn Age. Following those interrelations, teasing out the ancient passwords, and forcing the programs of yore -- many programmed under different stars with radically different languages for different examples of comptech -- took a lot of genius, a dash of artistry, and a whole heaping load of patience.

But simply because Ho had patience did not mean he used it.

"What took you so long, Lord Drak?" he asked, his voice snitty as Drak strode into the research bay, cape rippling and brushing against the catwalk railings. The research bay was split into three areas. The upper levels, the soft labs, were where safe research was practiced. There were dozens of ladders leading from the catwalk to the soft labs. But the catwalk served as the observation deck -- and below it, in dozens of heavily armored, self-sealing rectangles, were the hard labs. Most were empty, though there was one that was still working on a corrupted river of mana that the Victrix had picked up on Tomb-998.

But the one directly below them, and bustling with dozens of labtechs and engineers, was the Quantum Forge.

"I was meditating," Drak said, letting his cape settle behind him as he looked over the railing. "Praetor Theodosius would not be pleased if the Forge was vented into space."

"He'd be less pleased if the ship is grey goo'd," Ho snapped. His hands clasped behind him. "We..." His back bristled. His jaw clenched. He didn't know about Drak's true nature. He had never seen Drak without his mask. Drak thought that he was simply annoyed to have to ask for help from anyone. "We need your help, Lord Drak. Sire. Sir. The Forge won't interface with our tech. We need your...abilities."

Lord Drak remained perfectly still, looking down at the Quantum Forge. The engineers had run several interfaces from the side of the Forge to their comptech. They looked like they were trying to feed the cabling into the system, but were having trouble getting the intelligent syntax links to actually interface with the Forge's matte black surface. Lord Drak breathed out a slow, careful sigh, moving his lips as little as possible -- letting the sound tingle along his ears. It was a private sigh. A private smile. His voice rasped out as he gripped the catwalk's walkway.

"I want to hear the request from Theodosius."

"S-Sire?" Ho asked.

Drak turned to Ho. His voice became even lower. "I want to hear it. From Theodosius."

Ho gulped.

Five minutes later, Theodosius was standing on the catwalk, in his fine dress uniform, his hands clasped behind his back. His eyes flared with a wounded pride -- and he lifted his chin to try and look down his nose at Drak. His voice was tight as he spoke. "Lord Drak, I beg you to please use your abilities to activate the Quantum Forge. It has proven..." His jaw tensed and Drak's ears twitched against the inside of his helmet -- and the urge to tear the mask off grew a notch more intense. He let the feeling pass as Theodosius continued: "Troublesome."

Lord Drak bowed. As if granting a great boon. "Very well."

The words tasted like fine, aged wine.

Entering into the hard lab was a simple matter of entering the elevator system and riding down to the sound of rattling gears and safety interlocks. The door opened and Drak strode towards the Quantum Forge. He had influenced the device before -- a simple cantrip, calling out to the magic that lurked within its bulk. But now he'd need to extend his mind and his senses and feel the entire device. He felt a frisson of nerves slide along his spine. A moment of uncertainty. But then his gloved hand touched the side of the device and he felt the Machine calling to him. It was the same voiceless voice that he had felt, all those years ago, in the gutters of the Sprawl, avoiding the slime molds and the acid drip from the runoff plants. But the words were gone now.

The Machine had always told him what something was in words, until he had been taken to the Temple and taught the ways of the Liminal Knights. In many ways, the words of Interlac were a hindrance to true understanding. The conlang, assembled by Hegemonic memeticists six centuries before, was created to shape understanding in the way preferred by the Emperor. And so, he had been taught to let the Machine simply speak to the deepest core of his mind. The deep roots of nerve stem and hormone.

It felt like the caress of a lover in an iron claw gauntlet, fingers digging and slithering along his spine. Understanding of the deep secrets of the Forge, and a grasp of its ancient DRM. He reached into that careful nexus of programming routines and teased out permissions and data, combining and altering them. The interface ports were easy to find once he had diagnostic access. His eyes closed and he grinned behind his mask as he opened the interface ports with a twist of his mind. He heard it through the haze of his concentration -- distant, almost subliminal pops.

His hand drew back and his eyes opened behind his mask. The Quantum Forge was not glowing, but the matte black sides had unfolded like flowers. The engineers and labtechs were standing a good distance back, their jaws hanging open in awe. Drak closed his hand into a fist and turned to face the men, then walked past them without a word. The labtech remained stock still, but one of the engineers managed to clear her throat and then chivy them into moving forward. The interface attachments and the comptech of the Victrix began to do their work -- accessing the secrets of the Forge.

Drak knew what they would do. The Forge was a device of Machine design and manufacture -- meaning it could never be replaced. The Machines were gone, save for those like his personal djinn. They would never build the likes of the Forge again.

But the Hegemony only needed one.

***

The next two weeks were spent in a slow, languid fall towards Stumble's primary. The system had two suns, though it was hard to tell from the surface of that smoggy, plastic choked world. The primary, Stumble-A, was the cheerful standard of life-bearing systems, the G5 sequence star. Yellow and bright and frothy, with billions of years stretching out before its eventual expansion and gradual death. Stumble-B had been captured at some point in the systems history by the greater gravitational pull of Stumble-A. It was a smaller, hotter sun, and orbited at a significant distance from Stumble-A, creating a complex, interlocking series of gravitational zones.

During the Domain era of the Chain, those zones were the home to asteroid cities and hab domes, populated by the megarich class and the genteel servants who had tended to their whims. There had been slowboat expeditions to Stumble-B, where telescopic observation promised some worlds that could be terraformed and coaxed to life. Plans had been drawn. Theories had been crafted.

How had it all come spinning apart?

No one remembered. No one cared. Now, the HSS Victrix Imperita cruised within telescopic range of those long dead roidcities and observed the slowly accreting debris planets that shrouded the field. Uncounted millions of mummified bodies and wrecked habitats, clustering around glittering spires that still seemed to glow with their wealth and their opulence. Sputtering, barely functional comptech reached out to the Victrix as if they wanted to lock signals and trade information, speaking in dead tongues and whispered, forgotten conlangs.

They gave Drak nightmares. Awful, screaming nightmares as the corrupted magic of those long dead cities reached out for him. But the Victrix could not make haste. To go on full burn towards the system's primary would disturb the experimentation with the Quantum Forge. And so, the Victrix lumbered along at a pitiful tenth of a gravity, its engines kept in sullen, restive state by the careful coaxing of their crews.

Drak was dragged, shivering and gasping, from one of those nightmares by a chime-call at his Sanctum door. He sprawled in the bed, his chest rising and falling as he clutched at his heart, gritting his teeth. The chime-call came again, more insistent. Drak's brow furrowed and he saw that it was nearly 23:00 hours, shiptime. His hand reached out and he grabbed onto his mask, slamming it onto his face as he stood, wrapping himself in his blanket. He was naked, but the chime-call's third gonging sound meant clothing himself would have to wait. He stomped to the door and ordered it to open with a twist of his mind.

The terrified looking ensign that stood before the door was pretty, in the blond, blue eyed way of Hegemonic eugenic lines. She gaped at him as Drak glared down at her through his mask. Then her eyes darted down to the shoulder and bit of chest revealed by his makeshift clothing. Her eyes widened more and her cheeks flushed as she stammered. "S-Sire, uh, Praetor Theodosius, he, uh, he sends for...for...for you to..." She gulped. "To join...him...in the hard, uh, the hard labs." She ducked her head forward.

Drak snarled, then shut the door in her face.

He took his time dressing. He took his time adjusting his cloak. Finally, he sheathed his threshold blade and opened the door once more to find the ensign playing with the hem of her black and orange trimmed uniform. She stood to attention, her back straight, her hands at her side. He walked past her -- and used the way the mask concealed his peripheral vision to watch her watch him. If only she knew about the tail and the ears and the claws and the cock. He shook his head, ignoring the pretty girl as he strode down the corridor.