To Walk the Constellations Pt. 06

The Victrix Imperiata hung in geostationary orbit over the helium shrouded hyperice world known as The Watch. While it was not, in astronomic terms, actually far from the three other Hegemonic ships in orbit, it was far enough away to make the distinction clear. The three other ships -- the Tokyo, the Dresden and the Toyama -- were each painted a matte black. Against the red haze of the nebula that shrouded this cluster, they looked less like ships and more like absences.

On the bridge of the Victrix, Praetor Theodosius stood beside Drak, his hands clasped behind his back. "Superstitious void dogs," he muttered, his voice dark and pitched low. He looked at Drak. "I would give my eye teeth and my first creched to command one of those. Those are true worldkillers." He made a quiet clicking sound with his tongue. "Do you know where the convention came from, my lord?"

Behind the mask, Drak tried to not grind his teeth. Arriving on the Victrix with Adoran and Quah had provoked an immediate and showy response from the Praetor. A state banquet, a full broadside salute -- the effects of which still glowed cherry red on the silicate moon of The Watch -- and several dozen crew pressed into the function of servants in the shared quarters that Drak had once languished in alone. Because, of course, Adoran was human. And a prince. Not merely a useful mutant.

"The convention?" he asked.

"The names," Praetor Theodosius said. "Do they not sound foreign to your ears?"

Drak cocked his head. Now that he thought about it, the names did seem strange. But he didn't so much as shrug -- and Theodosius took his silence as license. "Only a properly blooded ship can be given a name from the Dawn Age. Each of those ships has has the honor -- the privilege of glassing a planet. Their names come from the only war that really mattered on Home. The war that provided the foundational groundwork for the Hegemony -- an ideology so rarefied and so perfectly attuned to the nature of humanity that even being ground under bomb and shell and even nuclear fire, it cannot be truly quashed." His eyes nearly glowed with delight at the concept. "That was the downfall of the liberal democracies, in the end. By the time the Climate Wars came, they had already been conquered by our forebears."

Drak looked at him. "The crew does not agree..." he said, not sure if he should pitch the statement like it was a question. Because he could see the nervous glances that several bridge officers sent those shadowy ships. Even at what was essentially point blank range from the perspective of the Victrix's guns, they were merely the smallest of slivers. But they could still be seen. He saw one woman making a small sign against evil.

"As I said. Superstition," Theodosius said, shaking his head.

"Hrm. When are we traveling up the Chain?" Drak asked.

"The Victrix is re-icing for the jump up," Theodosius said. "But it will take another few days."

"So long?" Drak asked, turning to look directly at Theodosius. "This is important. The Emperor himself gave the order..."

"Do you know why we are icing here?" Theodosius asked, shaking his head. "And why those ships are stationed here? That's a planetary body made of hyper-dense helium ice. Contained in a gravitational shield, it can survive nearly twenty times as long as normal cometary ice." He smirked. "We can be back in Eudaimonia by the end of the standard year, not midway through the next."

Drak inclined his head. "Very well. But Theodosius, if your delay results in 101g escaping our grasp..."

"It will not come to that. Sire." Theodosius frowned at him.

"See that it does not. If it does, you won't live to tell the Emperor of your failure."

Drak turned and swept away.

***

The interior of the rooms on the Victrix looked much as Thale had left them -- save that, after a few hours of settling in -- Adoran and Quah had both added their own personal flair to the chambers. Quah had immediately begun working on her programming routines for her threshold blade. She had some kind of idea about how to improve the weapon, and was delving into the deep architecture, and was using about two thirds of the walls as places to pin up programming diagrams and relationship schematics. In the deeper levels of programming languages, one could not simply alter what one wanted willy nilly. Everything was built on everything else, and the deeper you went, the faster a single change could completely crash your entire miracle.

And when said miracle was your threshold blade...well, Thale was glad to see Quah was being as careful as a woman who regularly carried around an antiproton grenade could be.

Adoran, meanwhile, was more focused on humanizing the area. He had fabricated simulation wood paneling, his favorite art pieces from his homeland of Elthas. He'd simmed a view of the crystal beaches of Elthas' sister world of Grey Hawk in the window, so that rather than looking at the red haze of The Watch's nebula and the somber blue of The Watch itself, they could instead look at the gentle gradients of Grey Hawk's seemingly infinite oceans and the shimmering gemstone of Elthas -- rising over the simulated horizon. Adoran had gone two steps further, by fabricating some scents and adding a few false breezes, so the room felt as if it was on that beach and one needed to only step outside.

This provoked some mild conflict.

"Can you shut the frigging breeze off!?" Quah shouted, running after a piece of paper that skittered along the ground, while Adoran knelt in the center of the room, his eyes closed, his expression twisted in that amusing 'I am trying to meditate here, can't you see that?' air that he normally had while trying to do anything around Quah.

"You could use technology that hasn't been obsolete for a few million years..." he muttered.

"Human history isn't that long!" Quah said, letting the paper go as she stood up, blinking. "I...think. How old is human history, Thale?"

Thale, who had been tugging off his gloves, shrugged. "Don't know. Don't...care. Really."

Quah nodded. "Ergo, I am right."

Adoran opened his eyes. "How does that-" he shook his head as Quah snapped out with one of her pony tails, catching the scrap of paper as it was blown upwards in a draft of breeze that smelled of salt and sand. She tugged it back to herself, then ran to the wall, placing it back into position with all the reverence and gentleness that Thale would have used on a precious gemstone. Thale walked over to Adoran and sat down beside him.

"There are three black ships out there," he said, his voice quiet. Adoran shook his head, his jaw tightening a bit.

"I hate those things," he said.

"Why?" Quah asked, frowning. "It's a messy job, but someone has to do it."

"Glassing a planet has to happen?" Thale asked, frowning. Quah turned to face him, shrugging one shoulder.

"Yeah. A danger to the Hegemony is a danger to the future of the human species -- all genelines, all potentials. If you wipe out a single planet with a hundred thousand people to save literally every single other person in the Chain, then you're not a monster. You're a..." She paused. "Well, okay, you're a justified monster. Besides, no planet has been glassed for centuries." She waved her hand in a little flip. "All the crews on those ships are new recruits -- not the actual people. It's not like they get infected by some kind of..." She wiggled her fingers dramatically. "Dark, uh, evilness or anything by serving on a spaceship. Even if it is painted spooky colors and they wear creepy facemasks when they go out in public."

Adoran looked skeptical.

"Creepy facemasks, huh?" Thale asked.

"W...Well, they're different from your creepy facemask!" Quah said, her voice apologetic. "Right?"

Thale stood up, shrugging. "I don't care." He started to pace. "We have to figure out how we're going to catch up to 101g...each day we spend here reicing is another day she can jackhammer a few more steps up the chain. For all we know, she's already at Atom."

"Atom?" Adoran asked.

"It's the biggest roadblock down here," Thale said. "Their Baron-Administrator lucked into an atom smasher larger than some continents -- they're able to make antiprotons by the ton." He crossed his arms over his chest. "The Victrix had to offer tribute to be allowed to jump through the place. It was humiliating, Theodosius sent me to talk to the Baron herself." He remembered being forced to kneel and press his face-mask to her jewel encrusted fingers, while her courtiers laughed. He shook his head. "If 101g gets there, we'll never get our hands on her."

Quah leaned slowly back against the wall. "Hmm..."

"How many places are between Masque Macabre and Atom?" Adoran asked.

"Thirteen," Thale said. He frowned and leaned forward, hunching as he thought through the problem.

"I have an idea!" Quah said, springing to her feet and bouncing from foot to foot with a smile.

"What?" Thale asked, trying to keep a snap from his voice. He did like Quah. He liked her a lot, all things considered. But sometimes, her attitude felt like a gear going the wrong direction and wrong orientation compared to his.

"We split up. There are jackdrive corvettes on the base on The Watch, right?" Quah spread her hands. "This part of the Chain is sparsely populated. If our sensoria trace is correct, I will find her quickly. Master." She added the last bit with a sardonic grin.

"Splitting up does make some sense," Adoran said, sounding uncomfortable admitting it. "You can stay with the Victrix and sweep up after us going jump to jump -- we can jackdrive ahead past Em and Em without drawing attention, then slip into planetary populations and...well...that's one thing about Liminal Knights. If they're not trying to be subtle, they get dragged into situations. We just need to follow the fireworks."

"And I get to fly a jackdrive corvette!" Quah squealed, excitedly, her hair wiggling like overexcited snakes.

Thale nodded, slowly. Then he frowned. "So, basically...you two are leaving me on the Victrix. Again."

Adoran bit his lip. Quah's smile fell.

Thale sighed. "You better both come back here fast. I won't be able to stand Theodosius by myself for long." He pursed his lips. "Maybe two, three months. Tops."

The two of them nodded.

***

The Hegemony military base on The Watch served several functions. It mined and stored the exotic, hyperdense ice of the planet in a warehouse that could be easily tapped by visiting Hegemony ships. It served as an extreme training ground for special forces who might need to take planets that were far from any star. And, finally, it was a safe place for extremely dangerous technological research to be undertaken. If anything went wrong, nothing that would be missed would be lost, and the three worldkillers in orbit could easily glass the planet and ready for resettlement.

One of those pieces of technology was the Hegemony's attempt to recreate a long lost art.

Modern jackdrives and spindrives were huge. Humanity simply lacked the exactitude of Machines and lacked the tools the Machines made possible -- they could not build the fabled singleton ships of the Domain. So, instead, most humans simply built big. But the Hegemony had enough raw material and technical talent to try and recreate the lost miracles of slim starcraft. They had not quite matched the singleton stage. But they had gotten something a bit smaller than the kilometers long worldkillers.

Thale shook his head as he tugged his mask off his face and looked around the interior of the jackdrive capable corvette. The bridge was shockingly cramped, considering the size of the ship. But most of the five hundred meter length was the fusion bottle, the antiproton storage bay, the gravitic shields, and the FTL drive itself. The only really livable part of the ship was this bridge -- a single low-slung chair that was designed to sink into an acceleration tank at any moment, a curved window, and several consoles. Thale looked it over and whistled slowly -- and then yelped as a lithe, feminine body crawled past him. Hair-tendrils shoved him almost to the floor and when he stood, he got a facefull of Quah's ass. She had gotten to the command chair and was bent over the armrest, so she could smoosh her face up against the articulated connection between the floor and the acceleration tank.

"By Christ's titties, blood and scars, that's incredible!" she said, wiggling her rump from side to side. Thale looked aside, then back over his shoulder. The door to the space-port's docking bay had shut, and he was pretty sure Adoran was too busy admiring his own corvette to notice. When he looked back, Quah was still cooing softly. "It just sinks in and there are auto-deployments here, you could spend weeks in this cockpit and...oh! Magnetic induction VR stim-sims!" She squirmed around, rolling so that she was on her belly, her feet planted against Thale's chest.

"Ahhh! I love this shiiiiip!" She squealed, her hair reaching out to start flicking switches and slapping against gauges.

Thale sighed, grabbing his helmet. "Well, I should leave you too-" he spluttered into silence as something warm and leathery slapped against his face. He grabbed at it -- then blinked as he realized it was Quah's shirt. By the time he had tossed the garment aside, Quah's hair had looped around her own ankles and shimmied her pants off. She lay there, as completely naked as the moment she had been stepping out of the quantum teleport, though she -- like Thale and Adoran -- had accepted an injection of medical nanites to regorw lost body hair. Unlike Adoran, she had skipped on the pubic and leg injections, and her sex -- her midnight black sex -- was as hairless as an aquatic human's.

She grinned at him, her eyes sparkling as her hair looped around several handholds on the ceiling, dragging herself up and backwards, so that her rump settled in the softness of the seat, her legs cocked over the armrest. "There we go."

Thale felt his claws wanting to emerge -- his gloves sent throbbing pain through his fingertips. He tried to relax, his voice deadpan: "What the hell are you doing, Quah?"

"...seducing you?" Her brow furrowed as she leaned back. She had painted her nipples a bright silver, to contrast against her midnight black skin. "Oh! Is this coloration not working for you?" She focused and her nipples turned pink as her skin shimmered, then shifted to the more Hegemonic standard coloration. Her hair remained silver, though. She grinned at him and spread her thighs just a bit more.

Thale put his hand over his face. "Quah."

"Am I not spreading my legs wide enough?" Thale slid his hand off his face and saw that Quah had almost put her legs behind her head. The training of a Hegemonic Knight had its advantages. His tongue darted along his lips almost before he could stop himself and Quah's eyes glittered with excitement. Her lips skinned backwards and she crooned. "It's working..."

"Adoran is right in the next corvette..." Thale muttered.

"Like you're monolove!" Quah grumbled. She crossed her arms over her chest and looked aside, looking more grumpy than seductive at that point. "And if you can hump some girl in your dreams, I should get a shot at your railgun, you know?"

Thale breathed in short, sharp gasp. The back of his neck prickled. His ears flattened back against his head and his tail froze in place. His eyes met hers and he spoke, very softly, very calmly. "What do you know about that?"

Quah blushed, her new pinkish pigmentation making it very easy to see. She put her fingertips together. "Well, um...I noticed that you were sleeping weird in the barracks. So, I fabbed a stimsim sensor and put it on your head while you were sleeping." She grinned, shyly. "I jilled myself so frigging hard."

"Quah!" Thale shouted. "What the fuck!?"

Quah quailed and she ducked her head forward, her hair flipping around to cover her face. "Sorry! Sorry!" She slipped her hair down. "But who is she? Are you creating her entirely from whole cloth? Is it a lucid dreaming thing? Or are you getting spooky information at a distance or-"

Thale leaned forward. He grabbed her arms and shoved them above her head, pinning her in place. Her back bumped against the armrest and the console. One of her elbows flicked a switch that started up the coffee machine. Thale snarled. "What. The. Fuck?"

Quah flinched. "I...I was just...curious..." She looked down, at where their bodies pressed together. Thale felt his own body reacting to her closeness, to her nakedness. His member was getting harder and harder, despite himself. Or maybe it was because of the way his heart thundered and anger burned in his veins. He looked into Quah's eyes and saw a mixture of excitement and doleful misery. She looked aside, whispering. "I shoulda known before you got mad, right?"

"Yes, Quah!" Thale said, his voice growing softer.

"Sorry, I just...kinda...I didn't think..."

"Jesus Christ, Quah..." Thale shook his head. He drew his hands back and settled his weight on the chair. He had slid into it, pinning her into the tight confines of the cockpit. In the background, the faint gurgle of humanity's oldest, most acceptable drug filled the air. Quah licked her lips, slightly.

"Wanna punish me?" she whispered.

Thale looked at the ceiling. Quah arched her back, so her belly pressed against his bulge. "Part of you dooooes!"

Thale put his hand over his face. "I can't..." He muttered. "I cannot believe I am considering this." The last two words came out muffled, his teeth sinking into the leather of his glove. He tugged and then tossed his head, sending the glove slapping onto the console. His bare hand cupped Quah's cheeks as he let his claws prick against her skin. Quah shivered, her eyes almost glowing as her hair reached up, looping through handholds. As if she was bracing herself. Her voice crooned in his ear.

"I'll never learn without a good hard, and fast punishment..." She licked her lips.

"You're just saying whatever you can to get my cock," Thale growled.

Quah paused. She pursed her lips. She cocked her head. Then she nodded. "Yes."

Thale shook his head again. He felt the anger sliding off him like a cloak -- he wasn't sure if it was the lithe tautness of Quah's body, the wanton way she threw herself into anything that caught her interest, or the simple fact that...Venn...Venn was so very far away. And she was an ephemeral phantasm. A possibility, beamed into his head by a djinn. For all he knew, she wasn't even real. Machines worked in strange ways -- what if they were showing him a prophecy that was more allegory and probable effects than reality? An...allegory with titties...

No. That was all rationalization.

The fact was he was horny as fuck and about to lose Quah again. For all her faults...she was one of his friends. One of his only friends.

Thale slid his thumb against her lips. Quah, obediently, opened her mouth and pressed the broad flat of her tongue against his thumb. Thale let his claw slide slowly free, the tip of it pressing to her. Threatening her. Quah whimpered -- her eyes rolling back into her head. Thale grinned, showing his sharp canines. "You like living dangerously, antiproton girl..." he purred. He let the purr come. Quah, unlike Adoran, wasn't some high born noble. She would never talk about bringing him home to meet her family.

She didn't have one.

Quah sucked on his thumb and when he drew his hand back to begin undoing the buttons on his tunic, she moaned. "Can you purr more?" she murmured.