To Walk the Constellations Pt. 14

"That's impo-" I grunted as the heavy, metal foot of Supreme Lord Vorsoth planted itself on my chest. He didn't apply even a fraction of his weight, but it still felt like my ribs were creaking. He looked down at me and spoke in that deep, booming voice of his.

"A master Liminal Knight is far harder to kill than that, whelp," he said, glaring down at me.

My eyes widened. "Thale-" I whispered.

"He's already dead," Supreme Lord Vorsoth said, his voice gloating.

I triggered my threshold blade, but one of his shocktroopers -- in deadly red painted armor -- kicked it out of my hand. The rest were cuffing the crew of the Tiamat II and Vorsoth lifted his head. "Take them to the shuttle -- we shall place them in holding cells upon my flagship."

"Yes, Emperor Vorsoth," one said.

"...you should be thanking me for the promo-" I started.

Vorsoth brought his foot up.

Blackness.

LIES AND DISTANCE

I gasped as my head jerked up. I was sprawled, naked, in a large, luxurious bedroom. There was a huge flickering fireplace in the corner. My heart hammered. Oh no. Not another simstim. But then the door opened and Thale walked in, grinning wryly as he stretched his arms behind his back. "You're a sight for-" he started. I sprang out of bed, grabbing onto him and mashed my face against his chest. My eyes closed and I nuzzled against him, trying to feel...feel...feel if it was Thale.

He felt like Thale. He reacted like Thale too. Like he was faintly surprised that anyone might show him physical affection. Which. God. I wanted to smack him out of it kinda bad. He put his hands on my shoulders, his brow furrowing.

"Tell me something only you'd know," I hissed.

Thale frowned. His tail lashed from side to side.

"Um..." He thought. "I mean...I told a lot of people about a lot of..." He coughed, then flicked his ears back. "We met first in...in the green place that I dreamed of ever since I first became a Liminal Knight." He blushed, slightly. I drew back, breathing out a slow sigh of relief. Then horror struck me.

"Lord Vorsoth, he's still alive, he captured me on the system right before We Made It!"

Thale's brow furrowed and his ears pinned back against his head. "Damn it," he growled. "That fleet has failed the return call the admiralty sent out. So did others." He bit his lip, hard. "Wait, how is Vorsoth there?"

"I don't know," I said. "But he said you were already dead. I don't know-"

Thale blinked. Then he vanished, as if someone had jerked him from his sleep.

"Thale?" I whispered. "Thale!?"

I looked around the room.

He was gone. It felt like a great, ragged hole had been torn in my soul. My hand went to my chest and I tried to not breathe too fast. But my gasps came quick. Hard. I shook my head. No. No. No. He had to be fine. He had to be fine. He was fine. He had to be fine. He-

THE BRIDGE

I jerked awake.

I was in a heavy metal straightjacket, chained and cinched so tight that I could barely move my chest to breathe. My arms were clasped shut behind me and I was suspended in a harness that was situated in the center of what was unmistakably the bridge of the a worldkiller. The angled lines, the many, many, many weapon consoles, the nearly a hundred strong collection of officers, many of them murmuring quietly in to com units, typing at comp terminals.

The view showed the primary of the nameless third system, looming huge in the window.

To my right stood Lord Vorsoth. His hissing breathing apparatus sounded slightly smoother and less ragged here.

"So," I said, trying to sound casual. It came out like 'shoo' - my jaw felt aching and numb. Had I been drugged? A faint buzz of nano hazed around my head. I shook my head and Vorsoth glanced my way.

"Wondering how I'm still alive?" he asked. "Did you not investigate my body?"

I shook my head. "Mulched..."

He snorted behind the grille mask of his faceplate. "Ah, so that's how the mutant is masquerading as Regent. He destroyed the bodies, claimed that the attack was held by you and your Alliance marines..." He nodded. "Clever. But not clever enough." He turned to me and cupped my chin with a gleaming, metal claw. "If you had investigated my body, you'd have found the neural-shunt Q-bit reservoir."

I blinked at him. "Whowh..." I slurred.

"You don't live to be five hundred years old without learning a few tricks," Vorsoth growled.

It wasn't a trick. Thale had explained to me how a human mind could be digitized -- it had been the same way that my friends had skipped so much of the Chain to try and rescue me. Vorsoth hadn't been clever. He'd just been rich enough to afford a massive chunk of Q-bits, then richer still to transport them across the Chain, and even richer than that to clone or steal a replacement body and modify it to suit himself. I shook my head slowly and let out a flubbery whistle. "Hoow many?"

"As if I was going to tell you..." Vorsoth growled.

A Hegemonic Officer came into my line of sight. She was classic Hegemonic: Blond, blue eyes, armband, cruel. "Sire," she said. "We have completed the preliminary archaeological delving into the weapon. It is true. It is Wotan Hohmann's blade. The subhuman who previously accessed it-"

"Dr. Subhuman, thank you very much," I said, my lips feeling less numb. The ache was fading.

The two ignored me, the officer only taking a beat to pause before continuing: "-has determined the location of Wotan Hohmann to be in We Made It. Cross referencing its data, we agree."

Vorsoth laughed. He laughed and laughed and laughed. "For centuries, that coward has been hiding right under our nose? And now, his home is revealed to us by one of his most ardent followers?" He asked, shaking his head slowly. "That's positively hilarious."

I glared at him.

Vorsoth looked at me and I could tell he was gloating. "You found his sword...I think it'd be hilarious if you got to bring it back to him."

I scowled.

"Bring the nerve induction collar," Vorsoth said, his voice gloating.

I gulped as the medtechs came onto the bridge, carrying the filament thin wire collar.

MARIONETTE

I needed to breathe. But I didn't. Instead, my breath came in with a steady, whirr-click, my lungs inflating and deflating in a timer that had nothing to do with my whim, my desire, my want. My body screamed at me, desperate for air, even though I was getting more than enough. I wanted to close my eyes, I wanted to blink, I wanted to cry. But instead, my eyes remained open and locked on the control console before me, my fingers touching buttons I couldn't feel. My arms moved of their own accord and the only thing I could control was my own thoughts.

Okay, I thought to myself. I'm going to kill Vorsoth slower this time.

I was in the Tiamat II, alone. My neck burned with the pressure of my collar. And my thought was weighty and heavy with the knowledge that Vorsoth was locked up in the cargo hold, his legs retracted, his body running on backup power. But his mind was pressed over mine.

It was humiliating.

It was disgusting.

He moved my arms. He moved my fingers. He drew in my breath. He pushed out my words as he spoke into the console: "I will signal the fleet once I have tracked down the traitor," he said with my lips.

"Understood, Emperor Vorsoth," one of the clipped, Hegemonic voices that all blurred together to me, said back.

The ship filled with acceleration gel. Even in the darkness of the gel, I was trapped inside of my mind. I beat against the walls of my mind -- but Vorsoth's power surrounded me. Locked me in. I bashed and bashed and bashed again, snarling as my mental shoulder bruised itself against his iron hard control. I wanted to close my eyes and sigh. Instead, I was chained to his breathing with my lungs. He grinned with my lips and purred -- a voice I normally used when...

Um...

When I was with Thale.

Ugh.

Ugh ugh ugh.

"Keep trying, wench," I said to myself. "It's amusing when they struggle."

Oh god, he did this before, I thought. I smashed against his wall. And I smashed gentler. And gentler. And gentler. And I felt my lips, numb and distant, twisting into a grin.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You grin. You motherfucker.

TRACKING

We Made It unfolded before me as the acceleration gel slipped away from my body. Vorsoth used my hands to bring up the console and command system -- and I wondered. How much of controlling me meant he couldn't simply will the stealth ship into working. Hmm. But the system itself made me want to blink. It was a cool red sun, smallish on the broad scale of things. The planets pinged into the sensor scan -- and then a bright spark of energy and heat, detected by the array.

"Ahh, there it is..." Vorsoth whispered with my mouth. He magnified the view and I could see that a ship -- a very small, very fast ship -- was decelerating towards the second planet in the system. It was a planet that was clearly habitable, even from what little I knew about fucking planets. We approached it as Vorsoth grinned with my mouth.

It was a tortuously long time to be trapped in my own mind. I tried to learn everything that Vorsoth learned -- and he learned a great deal. He pinned down where the singleship had landed. He mapped the planet of We Made It and he compared it to ancient records, buried in the recesses of the Tiamat II's comptech. But every time I tried to sleep, every time I tried to reach out to Thale, I was left pressing against the edges of Vorsoth's control. Each time I bumped...I did so weakly. Struggling. Like...a kitten.

Vorsoth's grin never left my face.

WE MADE IT

The planet of We Made It was lit by ruby red light -- giving everything a sickly cast. The Tiamat II shuddered as it cut through the upper atmosphere, the wings catching the air that had been breathed by humans who had once been born under Home's primary. They had known the names of the ancient kingdoms. They had, maybe, listened to the preaching of Jesus Christ herself. Maybe. We flew over vast, bone white cities. The skyscrapers stood, silent and eerily perfect. Nothing had caused them to crash or crumble. Instead, they had simply been left...and then stayed perfect and still.

There wasn't even growth upon them.

Tiamat II slowed as it cleared one of the cities and came to a narrow peninsula. Here, forests with great, black-blue leaves fanned below us. Beaches of pale white sand that glowed like blood under the sun glittered. And there was the landing site we sought: A large, rectangular white construction, with a set of four walls. As the Tiamat II circled around it, wing angled down, Vorsoth looked through my eyes and we both saw the dozens of automatons scuttling around the sleek, silvery needle of the singleship.

Standing among the herd was a single, robed figure. Their hood was tilted backwards, and they watched us.

"Still have to resupply, huh?" Vorsoth growled with my throat.

The Tiamat II landed and the robed figure made no move, even as the backdraft from the RCS thrusters filled the air and rippled their clothing. The hood remained high, shadowing their face. Wotan Hohmann regarded the Tiamat II with a serene, reserved quiet. Like he had seen the whole universe and nothing could shock him anymore. Vorsoth made my body stand -- and I could feel his connection to his original. He was warming up his synthetic muscles. Preparing his armored hide. He'd use me to distract Wotan Hohmann, then kill him.

I mentally clenched my fists.

My body walked down the gangplank of the Tiamat II and I wished that Vorsoth had been awkward. Clusmy, even. Instead, he moved me with grace and nimbleness, like he'd...

He'd done this before. How many people had he clamped the nerve induction collar around? How many human beings had he puppeted. My mental stomach roiled, while my physical one remained perfectly unruffled. I wanted to scream. Instead, I lifted my arm and Vorsoth said: "Hello?" He even sounded nervous and shy. But he didn't use what word I'd have used, I was pretty sure. Of course, Hohmann had never...met me before.

Hohmann remained perfectly still. His automatons started to skitter away, heading for their niches in the wall of this sterile white landing site. As they vanished, I saw that each one had been built to resemble a different animal. Tiny mice-droids with nose sniffers for detecting seams or flaws on the ship, beetles with repair gel spitters in their guts, large bucks that still had cargo crates held between their carefully sculpted antlers. But then they were gone and Hohmann was standing alone -- brown robes and gloved hands on a white field.

"I...my name is Venn! Of Stumble!" Vorsoth said through me as he walked my body forward, puppet smooth. "I'm from the Alliance of Free Worlds. We need your help." I felt my own body gulp and wished I could throw up. Vorsoth lifted my arm. Holding out my threshold blade. Except it wasn't mine. Was it. It was Hohmann's.

The moment stretched.

WOTAN

Wotan Hohmann's face remained shadowed. He took a step forward...and then sighed. He reached up, flicking the hood backwards.

This...was not Wotan Hohmann.

This was a woman.

She had round, bulldog jowly cheeks. Flint gray eyes. Hair that had gone gray and ragged, cut short with a furious disregard for common sense. Her cheek had a trifecta of scars that marred down to her jaw, and her neck was thick with wrinkles and fat both. Her shoulders were stocky under the robes -- the shoulders of a body builder, even if she was old. She sighed, loudly.

"Really, Vorsoth?" She asked.

And the singleton ship extruded a needle thin tendril which sliced the Tiamat II neatly in half -- narrowly avoiding the antiproton tank as it arced to the left. A scream split my head and pain exploded through my nerves. I stumbled and fell to my knees, gasping heavily. "Holyfuckingballshit!" I gasped out. I then spent a few seconds blinking, wriggling my toes, and pissing myself for fucking joy, holy shit.

The woman looked down at me, her lips pursed. "The bots will fix the ship in a week. Don't talk to me."

She turned and headed for the edge of the white space -- a door smoothly opening before me.

I gaped.

"Wait! Do you know where Wotan Hohmann is?" I called out after her. I expected my voice to sound raspy and disused. It felt almost like a betrayal for it to be normal.

"Wotan Hohmann's dead," she called over her shoulder.

"No..." I breathed as the door shut.

A beat later, the door opened and she stuck her head back out. "No, you idiot, I'm Wotan Hohmann. I was speaking metaphorically. Christ." She ducked her head back and the door slammed shut again.

PICKING MYSELF UP

I think I spent nearly a minute just kneeling there, goggling after Wotan Hohmann. I shook my head and sprang to my feet, my knees quivering under me. Uh. Uh. Uhhhhhh! I started forward, then stopped, then turned around, my cheeks so red that I was pretty sure my whole head was going to bust into flames.

When I had said I had pissed myself, I...uh...

Anyway, I sprinted back towards the ship and scrambled inside. Half my poor ship was on the ground -- but the beam had sliced it so fine, so narrow that I wasn't sure if it was a beam or something more exotic. It had cut through the whole cargo hold and...I blinked. It had angled and twisted itself to avoid cutting anything smaller than the hull into pieces. I could see perfectly intact machinery, sitting in either empty, gaping hole.

Like...just...push the parts of the ship together, replace a few attachments, weld it and repair gel it up, and...it'd...be fine...

Holy shit.

But the beam had gotten Vorsoth right in the middle of his stupid fucking head. I ignited my threshold blade and sliced his chest open, hissing as a vile stink hit by nose. Whatever the beam had done, it had fused his bits so it didn't stink until I cut him up. He had a Q-bit reservoir -- and it was empty. I placed my palm against it and hissed. My talent could feel the stink of his presence in it.

"Fuckery," I muttered.

Then I found some replacement pants.

THE DOOR KNOCKER

"Mr...Miss Hohmann?" I called through the door. Or at least, what I thought was the door. It was kind of hard to tell what was door and what wasn't door on the flat white surface. I slammed my fist into it, knocking. "Miss Hohmann?"

No response.

Behind me, the bots had emerged and were beginning to fix up the Tiamat II. Huge rhino shaped robots were shoving against the wing, holding it up, while a giraffe extended its neck with a click click click so that he could look down from on high. Then its tongue unfurled, and seemed to act like a magnet, picking up components and swinging them around so that chimp-bots could attach the material. I gaped at that whole scene, and...

How the fuck did I know what any of those critters were?

Had the information just popped into my head?

I shook my head, then went back to hammering on the door. "Miss Hohmann?"

No response.

I frowned.

I walked past the bots, found one of the claveguns attached to the nose of my ship. The Hegemonic techs had replaced em when they had captured us. Most military ships made it easy to take stuff off -- and that meant it was easy enough to unscrew the clavegun and slung it into my arms with a grunt. It was heavy. It was made to shoot down spaceships. But it was also made for spaceships, meaning it was made as small and as light as possible.

I held it in two arms, my muscles straining as I waddled over to the doorway. I slammed my threshold blade into the ground, formatting it with a thought. It extended pitons and settled into the ground as I hefted up the clavegun, then settled it onto my makeshift firing post. I reinforced the firing struts, gripped onto the clavegun, aimed it, then fired it with a focused thought.

A few seconds later, my ears still ringing, I grinned at the smoldering holes in the wall -- and the view to a small wooden cottage with a chimney. The front door flung open and Wotan Hohmann stood on the porch.

I couldn't hear anything, but I was pretty sure she was asking me what the fuck was wrong with me.

I grinned at her and waved.

Cheerfully.

TO BE CONTINUED