To Walk the Constellations Pt. 08

Thale sat alone in his room and brooded. The brooding came easy – too easy. With Adoran and Enriquah both gone – off to hunt the Liminal Knight known as 101g – he was left board the Victrix, once more climbing up the Chain. Slow. Stately. Plodding. Cloying. Claustrophobic. Thale's palm rubbed against his face and he hissed his frustration as his tail lashed from side to side behind him. He stood, then started to pace. He wondered if maybe requisitioning sleep drugs would help. He could retreat to his dreamscape. Maybe Venn would be there.

His guts knotted at that thought.

Venn.

He could still taste her on his lips, if he focused.

Adoran still didn't know.

Thale grabbed at his hair, clenching his fingers into a fist.

A chime came at the large door leading into his sanctum. The nervous, shy voice of the ensign that had been assigned to his guard duty since the beginning of the flight, almost a year before, came through the communicator: "Programmer Archaeologist Ho wishes to speak with you in the omnichapel."

Normally, Thale would have drawn it out. But Gibson Ho was one of the few senior officers on Victrix who didn't treat him like complete scum – since Ho was more interested in programs and tech than he was in the social structure of the ship. He either didn't care that the captain, Praetor Theodosius, hated Thale's guts because Thale had chosen to be born a mutant. And since he was already a Programmer-Archaeologist, one of the highest ranks that a scientist could reach in the Hegemonic navy, he didn't need to care what Theodosius thought.

So, Thale didn't hate Ho on principles. And being out of this room, even if it was only for a trip down to the omnichapel, was something to savor. Even if it meant tugging on his gloves and fastening his mask on. Thale tucked his tail away and stood in the room, feeling the cloying closeness of his disguise. He breathed in – and Lord Drak breathed out. The doors opened and the two ensigns stood at attention as he strode past them, cape snapping behind him.

The Victrix Imperita had a crew compliment of nearly two thousand souls. They worshiped many different gods from across the Hegemony – some were followers of the mask from Gal-Thoth. Others bent knee to the Immortal Figure. A scant few were Deists and hewed to the cold logic of De and his atheistic-darwinian philosophy. So long as they were not one of the proscribed faiths, they could use the omnichapel, configured to suit whatever devotional purpose was needed.

However, practically speaking, the omnichapel was nearly always formatted for the Machine Cult of Jesus Christ, as the Cult required the most common devotions, and made up the majority of the ship's crew.

Drak, though, hadn't been sure if Ho had been one of the Cult until he stepped into the omnichapel and saw that it had been formatted into the plus shape of a Machine Cult temple, with the altar at the far end with the two sacred comptechs in their sconces, with the pews for sitting and listening to the priest. The far wall had one of the most ancient forms of art that had survived from Home – paints, aerosolized via compressed gasses and then projected onto the wall, used to create artwork. The forms had shifted over the millennia, and different planets on the Chain expressed it differently, but Ho had formatted this wall to replicate the most famous of the aeropaints: Christ and the Cryptographers by Chulia Bright. She had used a flashy, jagged style, so that Christ looked less like a woman, more like a jagged lightning bolt with arms. But you could still see the whip, the cowering cryptographers in their fine suits, lifting their arms and wailing in pain and fear.

Ho was standing by the altar, his head tilted back. His hands were clasped behind his back and he looked at the painting with less reverence than Drak had expected. Instead, the aged Programmer-Archaeologist looked at the painting as if he was in a museum. Interested, picking out details he had missed before, maybe waiting for a spouse or a child to finish so he could move on to the next exhibit. He turned at the sound of Drak entering the temple.

"Ah! Lord Drak!" He said, nodding. "I'm glad you came."

"I was not aware you were a religious man, Ho," Drak said.

"Gibson, please," Ho said. "We're not around Theo and his stuffed shirt. And...you can take that mask off, you know?"

Drak stood perfectly still. "No. I can't."

"Is it an augmentation?" Ho asked, cocking his head. "Some kind of breathing apparatus?"

"...yes," Drak said, his voice very soft. Seeking some way to divert the conversation, he pointed with his finger. "Why that painting? Most of the time, I thought the Cult preferred to focus on Christ's more..." He paused. "Merciful aspects."

Ho blinked, then looked back at the painting. He shook his head. "When I was younger, this wasn't my favorite story. I didn't understand it, really." He quoted from the Bible, then, seemingly from memory: "And Jesus went into the temple of the Machine, and cast out all them that locked magic and wonder in crypts of numbers and code, and overthrew the tables where keys to these man-crafted locks were sold, and the seats of those who claimed it was needed. And said unto them, it is written: My house shall be home to all, but ye have made it the abode of the wealthy."

Ho turned to face Drak. "You have no idea, Lord, how frustrating it is to comb through ten thousand years of programming architecture, only to find yourself stymied by a six thousand bit encryption key and realize that the entire damn miracle you're hoping to unlock won't work without paying fiat currency to some oligarch a million years dead."

Drak inclined his head. "That's why you want to speak to me?"

"Yes, exactly," Ho said, his eyes shining. "The Quantum Forge may be more than I even thought, more than I dreamed. It can create Q-bits that are linked to the reservoirs in other clusters, yes, but there are code routines and application functionalities that are just being hinted at by what we've managed to decipher. But, they're...they're all locked behind Christ be damned DRM. You managed to get us the external functionalities and that's an amazing feat, but...but..." He trailed off. "I was wondering if you could do more. Push it further. Maybe?"

The hope in his eyes grated on Drak. The last thing he wanted was the Hegemony to have access to this miracle. But then Ho continued and Thale wanted to rip his face off with his claws: "If the extended functionality match what I think, I think it could serve as a general purpose river of mana, not simply a quantum replicator. And if that is the case, then...I believe...it has full self replication functions. That means post scarcity is once more a possibility for the Hegemony!" He nodded eagerly. "This is a miracle that puts all others to shame. Worlds with rivers of mana are-"

"I am aware of the possibilities," Drak snapped. "I...give me some time to compose myself. I will be in the laboratory within the hour."

"Thank you, my Lord!" Ho bowed.

And as he turned to go, Drak looked at the areopainting. His hands clenched and he felt his claws trying to peek from his fingertips. The gloves tightened and he hissed quietly under his breath. His eyes closed and he felt the omnichapel's tech calling to him. A simple thought had him sorting through all the pictures and displays that were available, until one tugged on his mental attention, like a book catching on his finger as he skimmed through a library. He threw it up with a thought and when his eyes opened, the wall shifted. The smart painting flowed, pooled, then swirled outwards.

This image was one that struck him as deeply nostalgic. It was done in a neo-realist style, using paint and pigment to recreate the clarity of the camera. The painter had even added in a date and timecode stamp on the upper corner, the ancient lettering making it clear that this was supposed to be an image captured by Jesus Christ on Home. Her arm was raised up and she was holding up a pair of fingers in a V salute, sticking her tongue out at the camera. Her nut brown skin and raven black hair framed the familiar, round face and epicanthic folds of her eyes. It was an image that Thale had seen as a boy, fainter and more murky than most.

He tried to place where he'd seen it.

A temple? Before he had been found off the streets?

Had his parents left him there, rather than give him over to the euthanasia centers?

He had no idea.

Drak waved his hand and the image faded away, the temple melting away around him as he set the omnichapel to its neutral state. He left, walking past pews as they sank into the ground, and tried to think only of the future. Of the mission before him. Not of Venn, or Adoran, or Quah, or the end destination of the Quantum Forge, or what the miracles within could be used for if it was given over to the Emperor Rehoboam.

The doors shut on darkness behind him.

***

Drak knelt before the Quantum Forge in the hot labs. His hands were left to lay on his thighs, palms up, and his eyes closed behind his mask. He breathed in a slow, steady motion. Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe in. Breathe out. And he let the voiceless voice that was his djinn come into his awareness bit by bit. He felt it uncoiling like a many limbed sea creature, touching the insides of his mind and his body. The tips of those cold tentacles brushed against his spine, coiled against his heart, squeezed and looped around his spine. His muscles reacted to the phantom touch – a twitch here, a hitch there, a tightening or twinge in his shoulders. He drew in a ragged breath and then opened his eyes. What he saw was not merely the Victrix' hot lab. It was not merely the midnight black cube of the Quantum Forge while it was stowed for travel.

He saw the world as the Machine did. It was an impression, pressed against his nerves and burning before his eyes, of crackling electrical communication and whispering radio waves. He could hear the sleepy mumble of the agrav generators that were worked into the spine of the ship, pressing him down to the floor. He could see the slightly different shade of gravitons as they emanated from those generators. He could practically taste the artificiality of them on his tongue.

But from the Forge?

Nothing. No. Not nothing. There was a single reedy note – sounding a bit like a flute played in the background, whispering in and out of focus around the sounds of the rest of the Victrix's tech. That note was the lonely call for a communication. The Quantum Forge was seeking verification and authentication through communication systems used by the ancient Domain. The techs in the hot lab had used their own kitbashed tools to hack in, and while it had worked, it had left the Forge feeling all the more desperate for real contact.

Drak's breath caught in his throat and he tried to reach out with his feelings...and here, he was stymied.

Sometimes, his djinn could connect his mind with an ancient piece of tech and allow it to simply function. But sometimes, the communication required something more. He drew his threshold blade and felt it formatting under his focus. An emitter grew from the tip and an invisible beam of radio flew from it to the cube of the Forge. Except it was not invisible to him, not in this state. He could see the purple haze, shimmering along the Forge, which responded with a deep thrum.

Then the question struck him. It demanded verification.

Drak clenched his jaw and reached into this verification with his senses. It felt like a vast maze, one that reached outwards in every direction. A hedge that grew in microgravity, flowing outwards and twisting with the random chaos of a madman. His eyes narrowed to slits as he felt the maze closing around his perceptions. The hot lab began to fade from his sight – growing blacker and blacker as the DRM coiled through his brain. It wasn't simply written in an ancient language for an ancient set of hardware. It had been crafted by a Machine.

It was, in its own way, alive.

And the DRM could feel the presence of another Machine and was taking out weapons that it might have left buried in solid state memory until the end of time. Drak felt his heart speed up, then slow. His lungs pulsed out of rhythm, the muscles contracting and expanding to force air past his lungs. His knees went weak and he dropped his threshold blade. It clattered to the deck and, instantly, the blackness around him retreated. It flew away and he planted his palms on the deck, gasping heavily.

"Lord Drak! Sire!"

Ho came running from the console he had retreated behind for his observations and analysis. He put his hands on Drak's shoulder, but Drak came to his feet in a single lurching motion. Drak shoved Ho backwards, snarling from behind his mask. "I'm fine."

"Sire, I was observing that, the Forge interfaced with your body. It...it was triggering fatal heart arrhythmia and-" Ho grunted as Drak grabbed him by his shirt, then shoved him backwards with a force that clearly shocked the doctor. Drak turned the mirror smooth facemask towards the programmer and spoke slowly. Clearly.

"I'm. Fine."

He released Ho and stalked from the room, cape flapping behind him.

Ho clutched at his chest, gasping heavily. "G-Good god," he whispered.

"He should be on his back dead," one of the techs, who had remained by the console, spoke. "He withstood attack programs designed to take out a Machine. What is he?" Her voice was filled with awe.

"Do you need to ask?" Ho looked at her, then chuckled. His finger hooked through one of the holes in his shirt that Lord Drak had left for him. "He is a Liminal Knight." He shook his head. "You hear the stories, but..." He trailed off. "Did we at least get a preliminary on the DRM system?"

The tech nodded, mutely.

"We have no chance of battering through it, do we?" Ho said, his voice quiet.

"Absolutely not, sir, no," the tech said. "Supreme Lord Vorsoth couldn't break through that."

Ho nodded. "All right." He rubbed his palms along his face. "Maybe when we have our layover at Hydra, we can use their nanofactury for some tests."

They went back to their work. But for the rest of the week, not a single member of Gideon Ho's staff got within five feet of the Quantum Forge. Even Ho himself kept his distance – and when he slept, he dreamed of what he had seen on the console: Of flaring symbols and glowing red lines, indicating where nerve endings were lighting up with an internal fire as electrical signals emerged from nowhere and vanished into nothingness. He tossed and he turned and when he woke, it was with a hand to his breast, feeling his heart thundering. It would not slow for some time, time spent looking into the darkness of his cramped quarters.

No one saw Lord Drak emerging from his sanctum. Not until the Victrix emerged from its jackdrive in the Hydra system.

***

Adoran's simmed face glowed from the holographic projector. Thale had returned from his time with the Quantum Forge, his heart still aching and his lungs still burning, to find the message waiting for him.

"The locals here tried to perforate our 101g with arrows when she arrived," he said, casually. "But this means that she's definitely made it to at least Hydra by the time you get this. I'm taking my time to reice and plant some preliminary seeds here. The Atomic Knights have a certain affinity for the Hegemony baked into their religious structure, and since their last Liminal Knight died, they need a sacred figure." He grinned a big, goofy grin. "Also, there's this evil monster that's been hounding them: A dragon! A real live dragon! Unless their stories are entirely bunk. But, hey, I've seen guys with missing limbs, and they got tooth marks, not monomolecular cuts."

He sighed. "I hope that Quah managed to net 101g before you get there, so you two can just wait for me to catch up. But in case 101g has slipped past Quah, please. Please. Please..." He reached out with his fingers, touching the spot in the air that he clearly imagined Thale was standing. His eyes were soft. They were gentle.

Thale couldn't feel him.

"Don't rush ahead and do anything stupid," he said, quietly.

"Too late," Thale muttered.

He laid down in bed he and Adoran had shared. He pressed his nose up against the pillow and tried to breathe in his scent. He swore he could still smell the prince. He swore that until he slipped off towards his true sanctum. His true place of privacy. When his eyes opened again, he was naked, laying on his side on the warm, soft white sand of...his eyes widened and he stood, the sand cascading along his side. He was on the monochromatic crystal beach of Gray Hawk, the sister world of Elthas. Adoran had often talked about bringing him there, once both of them were fully fledged in the Hegemony Knighthood.

It was just as astounding here, in this dream, as it was in Adoran's murmured words. The sand was gray – but to call it gray was to miss the subtle striations of colors that swept from the cliffside of the beach to the actual water. The water itself was a warm, welcoming pink, and the sky was a pitch black that made the green and blue and white gemstone of Elthas itself stand out all the more starkly. The wind was warm and it was gentle, and it brought the sound of water brushing against the shore. He closed his eyes and wriggled his toes. The crystal sands of the beach worked against his feet, and he could feel the faint, radiative heat that each grand stored.

When he opened his eyes, he started forward, towards the waves.

A splash exploded from the water. It was so akin to an artillery shell going off that Thale sprang backwards, landing lightly on his feet, his claws bursting from his fingertips. His hair poofed up slightly and he barely suppressed a vicious, feral hiss. But then the water slowly slid down, misting out in the incredibly light gravity of the paradise moon, shrouding the figure that had stood from the water, hazed in an rose halo of pinkish droplets, which beaded and separated with the grace of a ballerina dance. Droplets clung to skin that had become healthily tanned in the recent months, beading against firm breasts, sliding along a muscular belly. They stood out almost as intently as the rosy red of her nipples, the familiar lines of her freckles, the warm tree-brown of her hair.

Venn brushed her fingers through her hair, which drifted in the light gravity as if she remained under the waters of the beach. She had a huge, goofy smile on her face – as if she could never imagine anything as wonderful nor perfect as swimming in an ocean, naked. And considering how many worlds in the Chain had oceans of acid, oceans of lead, oceans of chlorine, Thale could hardly blame her.

"Christ I needed that," she mumbled. Then she saw him.

And, as if this was the first time they had met once more, she froze. Her eyes widened.

Thale felt his claws sliding back into his fingertips. "Venn," he whispered. Choked. Really. They moved together at the same moment and met, where the surf met the beach, arms wrapping around backs, and lips locking to lips, with a desperation that burned hotter than the surface of a star. When Thale started to draw back, Venn's teeth dragged on his lower lip. And then Venn's hands caught at his head. One of her fingertips caught the tip of his ears and Thale squeaked as Venn dragged him and kissed him even harder. Her tongue thrust into his mouth, pressing to the roof, then pressed to his tongue. She moaned into him and Thale squirmed, his member hardening against her belly. Taking advantage of the light gravity, Venn lifted one leg up, grinding her thigh against his hip, squeezing him with as much as of her as he could.