To Walk the Constellations Pt. 10

He laughed. He had to.

Venn wouldn't let him kill.

But she wasn't going to let him die.

I've got them spoofed, Adoran said. Shut the engine down.

The acceleration faded and the cutters began to saturate an area of space several thousand kilometers away with proximity fused antimatter warheads. The flash and the flare struck the curved, stealth hulls – and whatever bounced back to the cutters, Adoran spoofed. Venn didn't interfere.

They fell towards Atom City's primary in microgravity, with the acceleration gel receeding back into the tank where it normally waited. The first few days were spent in spot checking and examining the direct interfaces. They weren't normally designed to be exposed to acceleration gel – and doing so let the two men worry away hours between sleeping and eating without talking about anything more than technicalities. But the problem with not using constant acceleration, with drifting through space until one reached one's destination, was...simple.

Space was big.

And so, after every system had been checked, after the calculations had been done on the consumables aboard ship and it was confirmed that, even if Thale and Adoran would be cramped together in this cockpit for a few weeks...they'd live.

Which meant that they were left floating in the cockpit, looking square at one another.

"Were you going to fight me for her?" Adoran asked.

Thale opened his mouth and closed it. Days of working with his hands, of focusing on the technical bits and pieces, left the memory of his time on the misty, hissing, clanking and clunking industrial antiproton factory feeling...incoherent. Unfocused. He could remember the crackling of electromagnetically repelled blades. The taste of her sweat. Of her sex. The feel of her. But he couldn't remember the logical A to B to C.

But that was because it wasn't logical.

The lives of Liminal Knights rarely were. They slipped off the cold equation and cast the delicate balancing of ecology and economy into the heavens. They worked miracles and walked dead worlds, and carried blades of magic and potent wonder. And their stories were fraught with coincidence and portent. Thale drew his legs up under him, even if he was floating in microgravity, and crossed his arms over his chest.

"I love her," he said.

Adoran nodded, mutely.

"I love you," Thale said. He was less...harsh about saying that. Gentler.

Adoran smiled. "Concubinage?"

"What!?" Thale squawked.

"Venn of...where is she from?"

"Nowhere," Thale said.

"No one is from nowhere," Adoran said.

"Stumble, "Thale said.

Adoran made a face. "Yeah, I can't see the court appreciating Lady Venn of Stumble as our concubine..." He rubbed his chin.

"W-We're not making Venn a concubine!" Thale exclaimed.

"Why not?" Adoran asked, arching an eyebrow. "It's not a shameful position. Why, my godmother was my uncle's concubine." He smiled, brightly. "And it'd give me a chance to get to know her."

Thale felt a fierce, protective, possessive snarling urge explode inside of him. His claws sprang from his fingertips and he hid them under his armpits. "No," he said.

"Champion of the Realm then," Adoran suggested. "We can give her one of the orbital fastnesses to ennoble her. Trebond-9081 is still unoccupied since the last heir of that line flew his hovertank into that UV laser artillery position."

"She's a rebel," Thale said.

Adoran chewed his lower lip. "Hm."

Thale wanted to say more. That they should be rebels. But Adoran shook his head. "We have to fix that. If she stays a rebel, she's going to die." He looked at Thale. "You know that, right? The Hegemony isn't just winning – it's won. This isn't even the biggest or worst rebellion that it has crushed. The Republique had Wotan Hohmann fighting for it and it was glassed. The Alliance of Free Stars has a few holdfasts, Atom City, and what? A single half trained Liminal Knight?"

Thale wanted to respond with this was different. But it wasn't. Was it. History didn't change, just because the names were rubbed out and rewritten. He ducked his head forward and his tail twitched, imparting just a bit of spin to him. He tumbled, in slow motion, within the womb of his ship, and thought deep and he thought hard. Once he had completed one slow rotation, he reached up with one hand, hooking a claw on a protruding handhold to stop his spin.

"We don't hurt her," he said.

"We may have to," Adoran said. "This is a war. And she did kill Quah."

"I know, I..." Thale looked aside.

"Listen," Adoran said. "I left my corvette behind on Atom. If we're lucky, it fell into the core and was crushed. If we're unlucky, the rebels just got access to a spindrive. If they put that on the Tiamat, it can race through the Chain. If Venn gets to Home, becomes a true Liminal Knight, if she completes this prophecy, whatever it is, then the Hegemony will glass entire planets to kill her. So, we have to run her to ground before it happens. We have to run her to ground, capture her, and...convince her. As much as it hurts. We have to tell her that there's no other choice."

Thale looked out the window of the corvette. Out the projection of a hull camera, at least. He looked into the distant stars and he felt his heart tearing. He wanted to tell Adoran he was wrong. But in Adoran's voice, he could hear the death screams of dozens of worlds. The Hegemony had worldkillers to spare and their names were legendary. Coventry. Tokyo. Dresden. San Diego.

His nod was curt.

"Okay," he said. "And I know exactly how we get her."

And Drak Thale closed his heart then.

Feelings would just make it harder.

***

SPIN DRIVE

"Jesus Christ in heaven, that is one fine ass fucking ship."

I looked up from where I was moping at Techne, who was watching as the huge cranes for the Atom City spaceport swung the black, angular, deadly looking Hegemony corvette over to a dismantling bay for the eager techs with plasma torches and bolt cutters. I'd caught the sound of it as it fell through the atmosphere of Atom, tumbling head over heels, plunging towards metallic hydrogen and crushing deaths. I had caught it and brought it back to us with a thought.

Scary, when you think about it.

Techne turned back to face me, her smile fading a bit.

"So..." she said. "Am I gonna need to chip you, Venn?"

I grunted.

"Wandering off seems to be your modus operandi," she said, sitting down beside me. I was sitting on a set of stairs leading up into one of the many side passages that warrened around the spaceport proper. It wasn't where sundivers docked. It was where smaller ships were taken, after they had had their antiprotons siphoned out and weren't at risk of exploding like...well, like all those missiles I had strangled. The memory of it flickered through my dreams sometimes. They were the only thing that did.

I had reached out for Thale a few times since he had been chased out of the system by Atom City's cutters. There was nothing there but a mirror black surface, reflecting my voice and my face back at me. I'd cried. I'd sobbed.

And now, I was moping. Since I was all out of tears.

Techne slid her arm around my shoulder. "You still don't want to talk about what happened?"

She spoke with the fragility of someone tip toing through a mine field.

Not for the first time, I wondered, what exactly Techne thought had happened between me and Thale down there.

RAPE

Yeah, duh.

"He didn't...hurt me," I said.

Techne looked aside. "Venn," she said.

"What?" I asked, then stood up. "That's what you're thinking! That's why everyone's treating me so fucking fragile! No! Oh no!" I stepped away from her and began to stalk in angry circles. "Oh no, no, no, it just turns out that Thale is short for Drak Thale, the fucking lord of darkness! That's what's got me so fucked, Techne. Our first meeting was him digging through someone's brains. He nearly killed me, I had nightmares about him – and at the same time, I was drooling over him, but I didn't know he was the same guy, and yeah! All right! Fine! We fucked, Techne! That's what we did! We locked blades, then we locked lips, and then he fucked me and I fucking liked it! I want him to do me again! If he was here right now, I'd chew his fucking clothes off! That's what happened, Techne! There! Now you can stop walking on fucking claymores around me!"

I panted heavily.

A few of the techs working at the corvette, almost a dozen meters away, were looking in our direction.

Techne held her hands up in a placating mode. "Whoa. Venn." She coughed. "I, uh...I didn't think he'd...I mean..." She shook her head. "Damn." She blinked. "Is it bad that I kind of want more details?"

"Yes!" I shouted.

"What if I gave you ice cream?" Techne asked.

"What. The. Fuck is that!?" I asked. "And no!"

DETAILS

"So...he's hung?" Techne asked as we sat together in the palatial estates that Baron-Administrator Arete had given us. She had fabbed me up the so called ice cream and it was entirely a bribe. A grotesque, obvious, delicious, melty, soft, perfect bribe. I had once been shocked food had names. I'd been blown away that food had colors. But the idea that food could be so decadently sweetly perfect. It was like puffs of ice flavored by Jesus Christ herself, melting in my mouth as smooth as you can imagine, and I felt like I could eat it for a million years and never get tired of it.

I scooped some of the ice cream into my mouth and swallowed. Mmmmmmhrrr. I popped the spoon out of my mouth. "Yeah."

"I love me some thin dude, thick dick," Techne murmured, softly, licking her own chocolate smeared lips. Don't ask me how a mechanical girl ate ice cream. I could have learned the answer by peeking, but I didn't want to put myself off my food.

"Yeah. But, uh, the thing that stuck in my head? Those assholes have him in these gloves that hurt his fingers if his claws come out," I said, provoking an 'uh-huh' from Techne. "So, I...I...um. I burned out the servos and dragged it off his hand with my teeth." I ducked my head behind the canister. "...andsuckedonhisfinger."

"Holy shit," Techne whispered.

I nodded. "So. Yeah. My first time. In real life, I mean. And it was romantic and fierce and deliriously good." I sighed. "But he's a bad guy. And he ran away. And he's blocking me. I can't...touch his mind anymore." I put my hand over my face. "Guh."

Techne nodded. "Maybe the other Hegemonic Knights are blocking him?"

A chime came at the door.

"Just a second!" Techne said. She stood and grabbed the carton of ice cream. "Once we get the spindrive loaded in the Tiamat, we're going to be heading straight for the biggest rebel holdfast on the Chain. We have to tell everyone about this – if we have an in with the Hegemony Knights. They protect the Emperor. They're the basis of the Hegemony's power, they access the miracles that make Worldkillers and everything else. Through Thale, we might have an actual fucking shot at winning this war."

She tossed the cartons into the recycling chute in the edge of the room, where the uneaten ice cream went down. I wiped at my face with my thumbs and licked them clean as Techne opened the door and there stood Meetra.

Techne froze.

QUANTUM FORGE

"You," Techne said.

"Captain VonDynne," Meetra said, their voice soft and melodious. "I came to discuss our future operations."

Techne looked like she wanted, very badly, to slam the door in Meetra's face. But instead, she stepped back, stiff as a board. She glared at the androgynous Butcher of Malachite as they stepped into the room. Meetra was in an even nicer outfit than they had been in the last time I had seen them: Sleek and purple and frilly. They looked so beautiful and delicate – elfin, even. It was hard to imagine they'd killed an entire fucking planet.

I wonder if that was, um, kind of the point.

"There were some decades where months happened," Meetra said. "And some months where decades happened. A statesman during the Dawn Age said it, and it remains true."

"What the fuck are you talking about?" Techne asked. Meetra sighed.

"We've received a quantum entangled communique from our spy network on Hydra," Meetra said. "The locals have been leveling several small forests in what look like war games. They checked closer, and they're not just generic war games. They're specific. They are using the terrain and planning that would be used to attack our hold fast on Gem."

"That's where we were gonna head next, right?" I asked.

Techne nodded, her lips pursing.

"And the spies sliced into the Hydra network. They've found out what's in the hold of the Victrix. Why it has been traveling up and down the Chain this past year," Meetra said. "It's the Quantum Forge."

"Bullshit," Techne said, immediately. I opened my mouth to ask what the Forge was – but then the knowledge unfolded in my head. My djinn whispered the facts and I learned it without knowing that I was learning: The Quantum Forge was a Domain era tool that could refill quantum bit reservoirs without needing to physically move the Q-bits from place to place. Put it on the Hegemony capital of Eudaimonia and you'd be able to top off every Q-bit on every Hegemonic base and every Hegemonic ship. My eyes widened as I looked down at my threshold blade. With instant information, transmitted from place to place, they could do way more than just coordinate their troops. A river of mana could print people as easily as it could print food or weapons.

"There wouldn't be a Chain anymore. There'd just be a Hegemony," Meetra said, their voice grim.

"Bullshit, they don't have it," Techne said. "The Quantum Forge is a myth, something that gets sundivers running around the lower end of the Chain until their ships melt."

"It was unlocked by Lord Drak himself," Meetra said.

I sunk back onto the bed.

"It was," I whispered.

A BUTCHER'S SNARE

Techne and Meetra regarded me. Techne was gentle about it. Meetra was more solemn. They spoke first: "If a Liminal Knight says it..."

"Fucking balls," Techne hissed. "What's the plan, then?"

"The Victrix is going to be on the move. We've already detected it skipping through this system," Meetra said. "Since it can do a quad jump, catching up to it is going to take a spindrive."

"Which we have," Techne said, nodding. "Once we're reiced, we can jet after the Victrix."

"And what?" I asked. "Sneak onboard? T-Thale's there, yeah. But so is..." I frowned. "So are who knows how many other knights."

Meetra nodded. "That's exactly it. Fortunately, we have a plan."

Techne scowled. "If it's anything like-"

"Techne!" I said. "Enough! Yeah! Meetra blew up an ecosystem. That sucks. But it was decades ago. We've gotta move on."

Techne bristled, but then inclined her head. As she did so, Meetra shook their head and sighed. "I almost don't want you to stop sniping, Techne. I deserve to remember my...shame." They sighed again. "But the plan. Gem is a holdfast world. Normally, the Hegemony passes by, without troubling it, simply because they don't know if it is a rebel world or not and it pays its tithes. But their intelligence has to know."

Techne and I nodded. Meetra held out their hand, their bracelet flaring as they projected a holographic map of the Gem solar system. It was a lonely one: One smoldering white star, a smattering of asteroids, one gas giant, and a brace of moons surrounding it. Gem was one of those moons – a white marble in space.

"We provoke the Victrix here," Meetra said. "Several of our attack ships engage it with a high velocity flyby – that should keep most of the attacking ships alive. The Victrix will then go to Gem to retaliate."

The ships moved in dotted lines across the hologram.

"And then it glasses the planet," Techne said. "Great plan."

"The Victrix isn't one of their black ships," Meetra said. "And while the Praetorian's psyche profile says that he'd love to be one, Lord Drak isn't known for glassing planets. The risk is...acceptable." They sounded leery, even so.

"He wouldn't," I said. And I knew it. In the deepest part of my guts. "Never. Not in a million years."

Meetra regarded me. "Our psyche profiles on him are less complete-" they started.

"Never," I said, looking square at them.

Meetra nodded, slowly, then looked back at Techne. "When the Victrix moves into suborbit..." She smiled. And she explained what happened next. And slowly, Techne started to smile.

"Okay," she said. "This? This I like."

THE TIAMAT, MARK II

Stepping aboard the Tiamat, about a day and a half later, gave me about two seconds to admire the shiny new consoles before huge, furry arms wrapped around and Mal dragged me into a spine cracking, rib crunching hug. When he dropped me, I had a few moments to catch a single half of a break before scaled arms swept me up into my own hug. If my bones had been snapped and cracked, they were now a fine powder, and I slumped to the floor, dead, as Rossc set me down and pounded my back.

"This is a coup, a real coup-"

"Great fucking work, kid-"

"The new systems are-"

"-I can't believe you-"

"Whoa, lads!" Techne laughed, stepping forward. "At least get her pants off before you double team her." She shook her head as I stood up a bit taller and got a chance to actually look at the bridge of the Tiamat. The first thing I noticed was that the new consoles were in the place of the old piloting and astrogation consoles. They had better systems, more fancy controls, and new buttons that started to unfold details into my head. My brow furrowed.

"Gravitic engines?" I asked.

"This is a...not a first, but it definitely hasn't been seen for centuries," Mal said, clapping his hands together. "We have two spindrives in this ship and a jackdrive. No one in their right mind would put that much technological sophistication into one ship. But we have it. And thanks to the programmer archaeologists at Atom City, the drives have been integrated into an engine system that-"

"It's got five gravities of constant acceleration without reaction mass budgets," Rossc said, grinning.

"And with enough juice to run contra-gravity fields in the ship!" Mal said, beaming. "So we won't even feel it."

I cocked my head. The math unfolded in my brain.

"So the ship is fast now?" I asked.

"Venn!" Techne said, putting her hand on her chest, clucking her tongue. "The Tiamat was fast before this. Now it's ludicrous." She grinned, fiercely. "We'll be able to beat the Victrix to Gem with time to spare, even if we gave them a week's head start."

I nodded, slowly. "Did we get guns?"

"No," Mal said.

"Oh come on!"

NOTHING

The Tiamat shot towards Atom City's primary at what felt like a million kilometers an hour. It was actually getting close to that, wasn't it? I didn't want to do the math to figure out how long it would take. I didn't want to brood on the fact that the reactor was strained to the upper limits to power the engines, and that adding weaponry would just make the Tiamat a target and a source of suspicion on any planet we stopped at. I didn't even want to grumble, mentally, that we'd be skipping so many worlds on the Chain to get, rush fast, to Gem.

Instead...I centered myself.

As Thale had taught me.