To Walk the Constellations Pt. 14

GOODBYES AND GOODLUCKS

We didn't go to the spaceport.

Instead, we circled around the pyramid that was the former Emperor's home and settled down next to the sleek, angular corvette that had been my prison for subjective days. As the bulky, beetle looking transport settled to the ground, Mal glanced my way from the piloting rig. "Think we can steal that? It's closer."

I mentally kicked myself for ten kinds of idiot -- then heard a snarl from Techne.

"That thing, if it has a spindrive, seats, what? Half a person?"

"Three," I said, quietly.

Rossck sounded like a pot bubbling over. Then the idea hit me.

"Four," I said, nodding. Then my eyes flicked back to the Alliance troops. Even in the shocktroop gear they'd stolen, they held themselves different than Hegemony goons. Or maybe it was my biased eyes. My gut knotted, but their leader -- an earnest looking man with sea-brown eyes looked right at me and nodded curtly.

"Leave us here," he said, softly.

I chewed my lip. I took the brave, earnest looking Alliance trooper's hand, squeezing him. The hardened armor of his gauntlet whirred, actuators responding to the touch of a Liminal Knight. I closed my eyes and found the IFF codes in their suit. It was a flimsy disguise -- patchy and quick. I slapped some extra patches over it and nodded. "Okay," I whispered. "Stay by Thale. Be the first responders to find him. Protect him." My fingers slipped from his hand to his chest and I tapped where his heart would be if there wasn't several layers of laser proof, shrapnel stopping, bullet bouncing armor between my finger and him. I swear I felt his beat anyway. "Please."

The Alliance marine nodded. "I swear it, Lady Venn."

My cheeks heated so much that I knew my dots would be showing. "N-Not a lady."

Several more IFF pings hit my senses at the same time Mal said: "We're getting some reinforcements."

I closed my eyes, focusing on stitching together a sensor mirage of the oncoming Hegemonic troops, to make sure they saw what we wanted to be: The first responders to a smoking holocaust of a disaster. Next to me, I could faintly hear Techne waving the fake shocktroopers off. They thumped and rumbled away, heading for the front of the palace. The reinforcing ships didn't even bother landing. They hovered overhead, opening their gull wing doors and real troops rained down like heavy seeds. I opened my eyes and knelt beside Techne as we watched the troops heading for the base.

"They'll be okay," Techne whispered.

I nodded and took her hand and prayed to every God there was that she was right.

THE TIAMAT II

We hustled onto the stealth corvette once the chaos of the throne room hit fever pitches. If I let my brain skitter away from the moment, I knew it'd settle into a loop of worry and guilt and nerves. So, instead, I focused entirely on the ship.

It was slick.

Adoran and Thale hadn't spent their time in it idle. Two Liminal Knights, with their threshold blades, could do more than screw silly in a tight cockpit. They'd removed most of the hand held controls and systems, replacing them with floorspace for a sleeping nook that could unfold into a bathing area that could, itself, be formatted into a kitchen space. They'd scooped out what was normally the torpedo tubes and connected them to the main chamber to add additional space, and it looked like Adoran had been halfway through converting one of the tubes into being a sleeping chamber.

I wouldn't want to sleep in a torpedo tube.

But, hey.

Different strokes.

"How the fuck am I supposed to fly this?" Mal asked, looking around the heavily modded bridge.

I grinned, sheepishly, then held out my threshold blade. "Here," I said. I furrowed my brow and felt the slumbering miracles that filled the corvette. I touched them to my blade and let the systems grow outwards from there. The two ends of my blade shimmered and made a soft crinkling noise as the nano inside unfolded and became the sturdy handles of a ship's yoke, with several inlined buttons. When Mal took it, he fingered the buttons and the blade projected up a holographic display. He nodded, slowly. "Primitive, but it'll work," he said, quietly, as Rossck knelt beside where a computer console had been.

He didn't waste time bitching. He just started threading multipurpose cable from his belt pouch into the seam of the floor, hooking it up to his handheld computer. He muttered, very softly: "Guess it's back to a voice interface."

Techne nodded. "What kind of guns does this ship have?"

I closed my eyes. "Coaxial claveguns, a dorsal ridge of X-ray emitters, uh, in the three gigajoule range, and a fabricator that's designed to make up conventional, antimatter, and probe torpedoes." I grinned. "Normally, she's got four tubes, but, uh..." I nodded to the two makeshift passages to the front tubes.

"Jesus," Teche slid her hand along the upper edge of the cockpit. "I like that the Tiamat II has fucking teeth."

I grinned at her.

Then.

"Wait, what happened to the Tiamat!?"

GOALS

The Tiamat II lifted into the skies above Eudaimonia unnoticed and unremarked on -- though it was a close shave thing. Mal flew us with a careful, knife sharp beam of engine thrust to reduce our signature. Even angling our ship to make sure we caught as little radar bounce back as possible, the orbital spacelines of Eudaimonia was thick with worldkillers and space superiority fighters, skimming around every orbital lane, bombarding ships with furious demands. The news was filtering out that something had happened.

For the first time in a thousand years, the Hegemony had gotten its slats kicked.

Still.

The Tiamat II was a frigging stealthship with a Liminal Knight aboard.

We got past the initial sweeps and started our cruise towards the primary. Mal plotted our course, burned up a tiny sliver of our antiproton fuel, and then settled us into a comfortable fall. With agrav gluing us to the deck, he tossed my threshold blade and grinned slightly. "I can see why you Knights like those things so much," he said.

"Yeah," I said, chuckling. I looked down at the blade as it retracted the control surfaces it had extruded. "So. Here's how four of us are gonna stay in here. There's an acceleration tank in the belly -- and enough acceleration gel to fill the bridge if we need it. There's also some simstim gear in here. I figure we...well, if we can get the simstim working, we can relax any old place we want and this place can only be used if you're tired of sim and want to get some reality in." I gestured around myself with my hand.

"Sounds like a plan," Techne said. "It'll be easy for me -- my brain is basically a simstim as it is."

I grinned, shyly. "Yeah..." I looked at the blade.

Rossck shook his head, his frills fanning out. "I missed you, Venn," he said, quietly. "Only you could just drop the idea that we're going to live in a sim-stim paradise in a stolen top of the line Hegemonic stealth ship and sound so fucking apologetic about it."

I shifted out one leg to kick his shin. "I missed you too, Rossck. Though, it may have been less time for me. I was in a sim that was running fast -- it's been about two days."

Mal breathed out a long, slow sigh of relief. "Of that I'm glad to hear. The idea of being caught up in the Hegemony's grip for months..." He shook his head. My cheeks went hot again and Mal pursed his lips. "Then again, considering what we saw in the throne room."

"Spill, Venn," Techne said. "Don't leave out any details."

I flushed. I could do this. Just...lay it out.

"Uh..." I said. "Okay." I gulped, then hugged my threshold blade tighter to my chest. "I-I guess it all started when Thale n' me got connected. I don't know why we did, but we did. We share dreams. And from that..." I started to lay out everything I'd kept even a tiny bit secret. I told them about the dreams. About how Thale and Adoran had both turned against the Emperor at the pivotal moment. And then, about the prophecy. About how an orphan child was said to be the end of the Hegemony -- and how Thale and I were both candidates.

And, I told them that my sword was not merely any old threshold blade.

RED BLOOD, RED BLADE

"Wotan Hohmann," Mal breathed.

"No fuckin' way," Rossck whispered.

Techne didn't say anything. She just locked her eyes on my sword, considering. "And it's the red one too," she murmured, softly. "Red for liberty, for equality, for the blood of everyone who ever died for freedom." She shook her head. "I thought it was just one of the thousands of imitation red blades."

I nodded. "It had a lot of programmed in tricks." I held it out in my cybernetic hand. "I've tried to get it to open up about more of its history, but I haven't had much chances..."

Mal grinned and cracked his knuckles. "Lady Venn-"

"Please!" I closed my fingers tight. "God. No. No Lady...shit..." I blushed, hard. It reminded me too much of castles and fancy dresses and being laid by silver tongued beasts. "I'm still just Venn of Stumble. No one special."

"Just a prophesied orphan, destined to bring down great empires, caught in a tragic romance with the beautiful and troubled Hegemonic nobleman," Techne said, her voice half sark, half tease. I flushed even more and glared at her.

"Fuck that!" I exclaimed. "It's not tragic till it's tragic. Anyway! Mal!" I tossed my sword -- Hohmann's sword -- to him. He caught it with one of his nimble feet hands. "What were you gonna say?"

"Remember my full job title?" Mal asked, grinning. "I didn't slave through my PHD program to get a doctorate in piloting."

My brow furrowed.

Then it sparked. "Oh."

Malestrom Corgain-Erwitts, Doctor of Applied Program-Archaeology, grinned right back at me.

FIDDLING

Actually setting up the Tiamat II took two days. Over those two days, we all got more than a tiny bit crabby. Mal tucked himself into one of the tubes, where he could curl up with my sword, and fiddle with it and tinker with it and poke at it and whisper sweet, loving things to it. I wasn't jealous -- but I did get a bit sarky when Mal started reacting to every itty bitty little interruption with a grumble and an affronted air. But we needed my sword for spot-fixes and fabrication almost as much as we needed him to poke at it.

See, Rossck had done a check on all the acceleration systems and while the tank had a multipurpose fit that would let it socket up to anyone with any acceleration implant, the generalized acceleration system required Hegemonic implants. So, if we used the same system that Thale and Adoran used, my friends would get their organs smashed to jelly. Thus, we spent hours tinkering with the acceleration tank, adding extra tubing and wires to extend outwards into the bridge, so when the bridge flooded with acceleration gel, the tank would be able to pump the required additives to our guts to keep them safe.

Then we actually had to find the simstim gear and modify it. Adoran and Thale had both taken advantage of their Liminal status to just toss on induction crowns and let the Machine handle the rest. We didn't have that advantage for Mal and Rossck. Which meant I had to drag Mal away from my sword to fiddle with his settings in a painstaking, annoying as fuck way. I ended up simming a green field and then asking Mal questions. Did he feel this? That? The other thing? Then I'd adjust the inputs, alter how the induction crown was sucking up data from his brain, then ask him the questions.

The two hardest parts were Mal's feet -- which were so alien from my perspective that it took a lot of forehead sweating and headaches to get them to get simmed properly -- and Rossck's tail. Not the simming, that was dirt simple. No, it was adjusting the induction helmet so that when his nerve impulses would trigger a tail wriggle, the helmet would shut it down before it got to the actual tail. If he thrashed the tail while we were tanked and tubed, he could swim through the acceleration gell in his sleep and...who the fuck knows!

I didn't want to risk him yanking out the tubes and wires and shit and slowly starving in a sim without being any the fucking wiser.

Finally, Mal and Rossck were set up. The ship was prepped.

And Mal had a report.

REPORT

"So," Mal said, as we all perched around him. His fingers rested on my sword. "This sword has been in a lot of places. The computer log has a locational tracking system that pings any comptech it gets nearby." He smiled at me. "From what I've pieced together, it's been up and down the Chain in its entirety at least once, though it has mostly circulated in the inner chain -- the space between Eudaimonia and Gem. It spent a great deal of time in what we now call the Dead Zone, the former home of the Republique." He sighed. "But the last registered location it was on before it's discover in Stumble...is We Made It."

"What kind of a name is-" I gasped like I'd gotten punched in the stomach.

"It only makes sense," Techne said, nodding. "Where else would a wisened old Liminal Master go but the antechamber to the Home system?"

I nodded. We Made It. The name, the sentence, had been uttered by the first human to set foot under an alien sky. Their name, their face, their everything had been lost. But that name stuck around, echoing to the modern day. It was System 2 on the Chain.

"How did it get from two to nine hundred and ninety nine?" Rossck asked.

"We jumped from Gem to Eudaimonia," Mal said, shrugging.

Rossck snorted. He sounded less than convinced.

"Do we know anything about where in We Made It it was found?" Techne asked.

"Yes!" Mal rubbed his palms together. "Each bit of metadata I collected could be unpacked. Now, most of it is gibberish. It's all data designed to communicate with other bits of tech that are thousands of years out of date, or built hundreds of jumps away. But there are certain code structures that we're taught to recognize, because they're Domain era. That architecture is the cleanest, as it is usually designed by Machines or their emissaries."

"So, it came from a Domain ship?" I asked.

"A singleship, if I don't miss my guess," Mal said.

"What's a singleship?" I asked.

"The Domain built big, and that was impressive," Mal said. "The Sunsphere in Niven, for example. But it also built small, and that was usually more impressive." He grinned. "Singleships are the size of a shuttle, but have a spindrive more powerful than even the most advanced worldkiller these days. They're like this corvette, but several steps up the technological ladder." He patted the hull beneath him with a loving smile.

"Is Wotan even alive, though?" Rossck asked as Techne stood and stretched.

"All the legends say he went into relativistic exile," Techne said, her voice confident. "Stepped onto his ship and accelerated so far and so fast that time slowed to a crawl for him. He's alive."

I nodded. "And we're going to find him. Once we get into We Made It, Mal, can you use the...code greeblies in my sword to, I dunno, ping him?"

Mal chuckled. "A singleship, according to the legendary technical specifications, harnesses the same energies that created the universe for its drive," he said. "If he's still within a hundred lightyears of We Made It, we'll spot him." He sighed. "The problem is...if he accelerated away from We Made It, he really could be lightyears away. In which case..."

"In which case," I said, firmly. "We head to Home and...I become a Liminal Knight." I closed my eyes. "And then I find Thale and..." I trailed off, my throat tightening.

The silence that stretched was long.

"What do you want to ask Hohmann anyway?" Rossck rumbled.

I breathed out a slow sigh. My eyes opened. "The Emperor talked about what it was that the Hegemony was made to fight. Wotan Hohmann was the first Emperor's friend for years. If anyone knows what that is, what darkness the Hegemony was supposedly made to stop, he'd know." I gulped. "W-What if...what if the Emperor wasn't lying? What if he was right? What if...all that horrible stuff was made to...was..." I trailed off.

Techne reached out and squeezed my shoulder. "It's never right, Venn. Never."

I smiled at her.

But still, that core of worry gnawed at my gut. Chewing. Nibbling. Grumbling.

PARADISE

For a fleeting moment, I fucking panicked.

I knew that when I opened my eyes, I'd be in some horrible freak show nightmare dimension, dredged from my every worst thought. It'd be all flesh and moaning and me getting screwed silly by brooding bad boys and everyone in the Tiamat's crew would be there and it'd be literally the worst fucking thing in the universe.

But then I popped my eyes open and breathed a sigh of relief. The simulation I'd cobbled together, that I'd willed into being using my Liminal Knight powers, looked perfectly normal. There was a large forest, with a cottage on a hill in the distance. The sky was a warm blue, dusted here and there with white streaks of clouds, and a warm Goldilocks sun shone overhead. Two moons hung in the air, faintly visible as a green and blue disk, shaded and nearly invisible in the sunlight. The air smelled grassy and clean.

I turned around.

And there was Techne, Rossck, and Mal all looking at me with wide eyes.

"What?" I asked.

Breeze tingled between my legs.

And I noticed that they were all buckass naked too.

"Ahhhhhhhg!" I flung myself to the side like there was a grenade skittering infront of me. I pressed my back to a tree and looked down at myself. Yup. Completely frigging naked. I wanted to scream. I put my hands over my face and spoke, muffled: "I'msosorry!"

"Eh," Rossck said, his voice carrying around the tree. "It's not like I've never seen a naked chick before." He let out a quiet, happy hiss and I could picture him stretching and flexing and uhhhh. Uhhhhhhhh! Argh. I wasn't a virgin anymore! Why did this still freak me the fuck out? Maybe it was because Mal and Rossck were fucking...they were...they...I...argh!

Techne stuck her head around the tree and grinned at me. "Wanna check and see if the cabin's got clothes while the boys explore the forest?" she murmured.

"Godyes," I whispered.

SETTLING IN

We did find clothes in the cabin. And after a few tentative tries, I found that if I meditated and called upon my machine, I could make a cabin for each of us. Honestly, the hard part wasn't accepting that we were in a paradise forest, with warm lakes, fresh water, and banquet meals that came from nowhere. The hard part was remembering that we were actually on a stealth ship -- that it was soaring towards Eudaimonia's sun at an ever increasing clip. Since we were in the tanks, all I needed to do was meditate to create a physical interaface for Mal in his cabin, and Mal could sling himself in and give the commands, and the interface would ping it to the ship's tech, and the ship would do as it would.

Mal, being Mal, was...fucking...stoked.

"This is amazing," he said, shaking his head. "If we could replicate this tech for every Sundiver on the Chain, then space travel would...it'd be revolutionized. Hell, just from a combat perspective, we have an advantage that you cannot beat! We're able to hit full acceleration without taking the agrav generators off shield duty! Do you know what that means?" He beamed at me.

"Uh, we win?" I hazarded, leaning up against the hard metal and curved wood of the interface that he had specified.