This is a story line I've been thinking about doing now and again, and since I've hit a bit of a block with Children of Heaven (hopefully not for too much longer), and since this is my 100th post, I figured I'd do something a bit different, which brings us to The Longest Fall. It's an original universe of my own creation; hope you enjoy. I'll update as frequently as possible.
As ever, comments are appreciated and encouraged. Now, on with the show:
Prologue:
“Our master, the Warlord, offers you this most generous mercy: submit to the Ascendance. Bestow unto us no less then one tenth of your able-bodied population, your treasury, your crops and your industry and we shall spare your world. Resists us and the Dread Lord’s wrath shall burn this planet to nothing as an example to any who might defy his will. In life or death, you will serve him.”
-ultimatum delivered to Highest Domain, homeworld of the Kaster Alliance
~
“Convert or die.”
That was what the they had said when they arrived in Midgard four months ago, what they had said as the MSDF fleet had assembled for their forlorn hope against the Ascendant colossi and been tossed aside, what they had said as they landed upon Midgard and laid siege to its cities.
Midgard’s defence forces had been limited to fighting off an occasional pirate, smuggler or tariff-dodger. They’d relied on the protection that their proximity to the Domain of Qatarii had always afforded them. That, and their isolation from the galaxy at large.
The Domain had fallen four months ago, the newscasts showing a capital in flames, the head of the Dominate skewered upon an Ascendant standard, carried through the streets by jubilant soldiers, each of a hundred thousand men and women bowing, cheering and screaming their supplication as their dark lord passed.
The surviving Qatarii worlds had trembled behind their defences, many surrendering to the Black Host without a fight, afraid that the force that had crushed their throneworld might be turned against them. Others had fought to the last, crying out for their god to save them, but if He had been listening, He showed no sign of it. Even now, the campaign to claim those last few holdouts raged across what had once been Qatarii space, the loyalists pushed back on every front as their own comrades donned the faceless obsidian armour of the Ascendancy, raising more blood-red standards atop the rubble of their countrymens’ capital cities.
Heady with their victories, they had turned their attention to the single, lowly world cowering on the edges of what had once been a star nation two thousand systems strong.
Those who would not convert were cast aside, the ash of their bodies soiling the once-pristine blue skies of Midgard. The towns and capitals were now defiled versions of themselves, originally cratered and smouldering from the combat between MPDF units and the invaders, now torn up by the flailing of disorganized guerilla cells, each fighting their own private war against the invaders. The denizens of the cities went about their daily lives, much as they always had, though the fear of being killed by their own as collaborators or swept up in a counter-insurgency action was a new facet to their lives.
Further out from the large metropolis, the smaller towns and villages of Midgard went about their normal routines, rarely bothered by the invaders save for occasional flybys. That was enough to make anyone’s life fearful – that one day the gull-winged assault boats might deign to take notice of the ants below them. There were whispers, rumours on the wind – they had never stayed in one place for very long. They came, they conquered and they moved on, leaving a garrison to see to the administration of their new prize. No one knew why they were still here.
They were relentless, always searching for their next victims. World upon world, system upon nation, fell to them – the strong and the weak alike.
Many whispered that they could not be stopped, that they were no longer men, but daemons from the Great Dark, or from the superstitions and heresies of old. Others whispered that they were aliens, beings of horrific visage and unspeakable plans. The rumours swelled ahead of the Ascendancy’s fleet like a bow wave of terror. They embraced all of these rumours, fueling them with masques and deceptions, encouraging each different lie as the truth. Let them be considered as demons and monsters. They knew what they were – they brought order to an insane universe.
As the Warlord decreed.
~
“Tell me how this could have happened.”
“The guards were certain that the nanospores had worked. They allowed themselves to become complacent – a dereliction for which they’ve already paid. They were bringing him to you when he woke up. Three of them were killed, the fourth, though crippled, managed to shoot him with a disruptor. I have no explanation for how he managed to survive, much less take control of a shuttle and pilot it.”
“Once the survivor wakes up, interrogate him and then execute him. We don’t need loose ends. Not now. Virago – ah, General Helfer – is furious. She’s already ordered the execution of five men for incompetence, including Citadel’s chief of security. I don’t intend for my head to join them on the chopping block.”
“It will be done, Excellency.”
“Have you found the craft yet?”
“Ah… no. Midgard’s own satellite net is worse then useless. Too little of it survived our attack and Tracking lost the craft over the southern continent. We’re trying to locate its crash site now, but recent storm activity makes it hard to find anything concrete. Mudslides could have wiped away the impact trail or crater. The canopy is damaged in enough places that the shuttle could have gone down anywhere. We’re checking all the leads out, but it will take time.”
“Heat sources?”
“The rain would have blotted out most of the heat, which leaves us with ambient temperatures or local hotspots – multiple lightning strikes have given our surveyors over three dozen false positives so far. Making it worse, it’s the middle of their dry season and given the terrain – the entire area is one large heat sink and the mountains are reflecting and distorting the few concrete signals we do get. If he landed in them. There’s plant that grows locally that absorbs heat-”
“I don’t care. Find that site. Find him and kill him.”
“My best men are already on it, Excellency.”
“They’d better be. I want him found. I don’t care what it takes, what it costs. I want him found.”
“It will be done.”
“It had better be. You’ve failed once already. If Virago wants my head for this, I’m going to see that yours is right beside mine.”
“Of-of course. But, it will take some time, especially if you want things kept quiet.”
“Yes, of course. We can’t allow for anyone to find out about this. Maybe we’ll have gotten lucky and he’ll have died in the crash. But until I see his body, we are going to proceed as if he is alive. The utmost security, the utmost secrecy. Use only your most trusted personnel. Not a word of this can be allowed to get back to our enemies. We… have never been this vulnerable before and I will not see everything that we have accomplished, everything we have fought for brought down by one man.”
The Longest Fall
Moderator: LadyTevar
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Bladed_Crescent
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The Longest Fall
Sugar, snips, spice and screams: What are little girls made of, made of? What are little boys made of, made of?
"...even posthuman tattooed pigmentless sexy killing machines can be vulnerable and need cuddling." - Shroom Man 777
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Bladed_Crescent
- Jedi Knight
- Posts: 639
- Joined: 2006-08-26 10:57am
ACT I: Lost
Chapter 1:
“Midgard: originally settled by the Rubicon Colonization Effort (3201 AED), it is a Class III planet located in the Sagittarius Arm, fourteen light-years from the Domain of Qatarii world Lesser Palestine. Traditionally protected by the Qatarii military from most attackers, Midgard nonetheless had been slow to develop. The RCE’s substandard preparations – including a minimal industrial base – and the Domain’s trade inequities prevented Midgard from flourishing beyond an agricultural hub for nearly five centuries. Currently, Midgard has begun a process of industrialization and innovation, balanced with environmental concerns. Their main exports remain agricultural in nature.
Unnoticed by major corporations or nations, Midgard is considered a garden world and one of the best-kept vacation secrets in the galaxy.”
- Eric von Haus’ Guide to Worlds You’ve Never Seen
~
Rebecca Hayes pushed the door to the shop open, the bell jangling as she stepped inside, the hinges of the door squeaking. Villmer was notorious for his anachronistic outlook on technology, refusing to implement it unless it was a necessity. He did not consider an automatic door to be one, nor catering to his customers’ technophilia. The rumour about town was that the gruff shop owner simply didn’t want to squeeze out the extra few credits that an automatic door would add to his power bill.
Not that here in Taski there was a surplus of technology to begin with; the small town sat on the border of the great salt lake Norway. It had always been a rather traditional, quiet village. Her family had owned a fairly successful farm and fishing enterprise; Rebecca’s father had been born with salt water in his blood, always sailing out on Norway’s waters with his crews. Her twin brother Eric had been eager to follow in his footsteps, but he’d died at sea four years ago. Ever since then, she’d wanted nothing to do with the ocean. She’d always longed for the excitement of city life, had wanted to attend university and find her way off Midgard, but her father had taken ill several months ago, and with nobody else, she’d postponed her attendance to care for him as he weakened. He could have been saved. But what remained of Midgard’s medical industry was confined to the cities. The roads were bombed and the airports and spaceports were little more than craters, or had been converted for the Ascendants’ use.
She had begged him to let her call them – they could have saved him, right up until the end. He had refused with more anger then Rebecca had seen in him before, making her promise not to. He said he would rather die then accept their help, or to remind them that Taski still existed. And so, a giant of a man had wasted away bit by bit into a skeletal figure who no longer remembered his daughter’s name, who called out for his long-dead wife over and over again, never realizing that it was his own flesh and blood who answered, clutching his reedy fingers, trying to bring him some measure of peace.
After he’d passed away, there had been nothing left for her in Taski, but neither had there been anything for her anywhere else. The university to which she’d applied had been blasted off the face of the planet by the Ascendancy’s artillery the day of their landfall, the cities which she dreamed of visiting were war zones.
All that she had now was to sit at home, administer the business that she’d always hated, and hope that life was passing her by. Her father had encouraged her to work the fields when she was younger, but she wouldn’t be caught dead out there, nor would she set foot on a trawler over the waters that killed Eric.
It wasn’t the life that she’d always dreamed of, but it was a life.
“Ahh, Rebecca. Welcome,” Villmer Graus came out from behind the counter, his arms spread wide in a hug. Despite his penny-pinching ways, the old man treated his customers like each of them was his favorite. He kissed her on each cheek in greeting. “What can I do for you today?” he asked over the pounding thunder, so loud and so near that it shook the entire building.
“I need a new engine for a floater combine.”
“Ah, did that old XP-38 finally break down on you?”
“No, the new one, the Skarling-47, blew a power converter yesterday and crashed in the north field. Mickey thought he could fix it, but it turns out we’ll need a replacement. Do you still have those Carlsons? He says he can make one fit a Skarling’s systems.”
Graus scrunched his face. “I’m sorry, Ackerson bought every replacement part I have for floaters two days ago. I’ve put an order in for more, but who knows how long it’ll be before we get some.”
Rebecca felt the beginnings of a headache. She rubbed her forehead. “Right, thanks.” We’re still waiting on orders placed before those fucking Faceless showed up. “We might have to pull some of those antique combustion engines my dad had sitting in storage then. Tell me you’ve got parts and petrol for them.”
“Ah, yes. The refinery up at Hook Coast is still running and the machine shops there have switched to the antiques as well, so that shouldn’t be a problem. I’ve only got a handful of parts in the warehouse, but I can have more here in four days.”
“Would you go ahead and order some? Complete sets. I won’t buy them all at once, but-”
“-you probably will as the season wears on. The other farmers will too, once their floaters burn out and they realize that they won’t be getting any replacement parts from Horsley.” Graus tapped a finger to his lip, seating himself in front of his computer. “If memory serves me, you’ve got a couple Skarling-3s and two Carlson Heavydrivers.”
“That sounds about right.”
“Okay, I’ll check the inventory this evening and send out a wish list to Hook Coast right after. Skimmer transports are still running, so the shipping fee won’t be any different from normal.”
“Thanks, Villmer. You’re the best.”
“I know, now get out of my store and make room for my paying customers.” Villmer paused, looking out a window, flashes of lightning casting bright spalls over his face. “You be careful, though. We’ve not had a heat storm this bad for years.”
“It’ll pass.”
~
Taski wasn’t that large of a town; perhaps seven thousand people, most of them tradesmen and women. Compared to the megatropoli on Centauri, Kranos, or even Earth, it was less than a rounding error. But for Midgard, it was a respectable size for such an isolated community. Rebecca nodded and waved to faces in the crowd, some familiar, some not. Since the Ascendacy’s arrival on Midgard, refugees had fled from the cities, as far from those war zones as they could get.
Many of them were waylaid by bandits, others were hunted down by the invaders. Still others simply got lost. With the roads destroyed and air travel a form of suicide, one could no longer cross continents in hours. Taski had taken in a handful of survivors, but as winter approached Rebecca expected that number to drop sharply. Death from exposure… it was nearly unthinkable. Even on Midgard, no one froze to death anymore! But it was going to happen.
Rebecca looked up to the storming grey skies overhead, the wind blowing her titian hair out of her hazel eyes. Though she could not see them, she knew they were up there in their ships, looking down on her world, her people. You’ve taken so much from us, she accused. Who gave you the right to judge us? She thought of her father, or what he’d become in his final weeks, choosing to die rather than be saved by their hands. They had killed him, as surely as putting a bullet in his head. She felt tears well up in her eyes and willed them away. She didn’t have anything or anyone left to cry for and she wouldn’t pity herself.
Hot rain spattered down from the clouds in another sporadic torrent and Rebecca ducked towards her car as thumb-sized droplets pounded the streets and buildings, pedestrians running for shelter from the sudden downpour.
Rebecca pulled her door open; she still had stops to make in town; she should get on them. She was halfway inside the vehicle when another flash caught her eye, this one different from the lightning. She peered up, squinting against the droplets spattering into her eyes. There! Something burst through the cloud layer, trailing smoke and fire. Even if it had been closer, it was impossible to tell what it had once been; the heat of an uncontrolled descent had stripped any definitive features from the craft. It wallowed in the sky, misfiring thrusters bobbing it back and forth like a drunken bird.
It’s headed to the mountains, Rebecca thought as the craft vanished out of sight. Moments later, an artificial flare of lightning and accompanying thunderclap assaulted the heavens. She wasn’t the only one who’d seen it; she recognized one of Taski’s police sergeants staring towards the crash site. The rain was in full force now, matting the Rebecca’s reddish hair down onto her scalp and soaking her clothes. She darted towards the sergeant, a steady torrent of water flowing down the sides of his wide-brimmed hat.
“You saw it?” she shouted over another burst of thunder.
“Yeah. Guess those fuckers aren’t hot-shit pilots after all!” The young man, Drewdur by his badge, spat on the ground.
“You’re not going to send anyone up to check for survivors?” She practically had to shout to be heard over the storm.
“Like fuck! I’d barely send out a team in this weather for anyone, let alone some Ascendant scrag!”
“It might not be them, though!”
“Well, who else would it be?”
“I don’t know, but we hear rumours about other nations fighting them. What if it’s a survivor from them, or one of our pilots?” Rebecca pointed to the rapidly dissipating contrail. “That’s an orbital crash, not someone who lost it in the storm.”
Drewdur scrunched his face up, obviously not relishing the prospect of heading into the forest in this kind of weather. But the girl had a point… “All right!” he snapped. “All right, I’ll talk to the captain!”
~
Captain Albrecht Cunningham of the Taski Regional Police Force lived up to the age old depiction of a love affair between police officers, pastries and coffee. He had an expanding waistline that seemed to grow in direct proportion to his sense of self-importance and was notorious for holding grudges. Like the one he’d carried for the entire Hayes family after his stepson Daniel had put his hand too far up a younger Rebecca’s skirt and Eric had… discussed the proper attitude a gentleman should have towards a lady with him.
Cunningham flicked the shell of a Midgard sunflower seed in the general vicinity of the trashcan, his feet up on his desk. Despite the hayseed appearance he fostered, his family was old money. Considering their youngest son an embarrassment and shuffling him off to Taski at the first oppurtunity, the Cunningham clan had made sure that none of the complaints against Albrecht had even come close to getting him ousted from his position.
His older brother, Admiral Johan Cunningham, had died during the doomed hope of the MSDF and his city councilor sister Renee was executed the next day by the invaders. The rest of his family had been killed over a month ago when one of the rebel cells had assassinated them as ‘collaborators’. Which sounded nice, but that particular movement had been a communist ‘action group’ long before the Ascendants came to Midgard. Obviously, they’d seen the spastic guerilla war as a way to settle old scores.
Which suited Albrecht just fine; those – what was the ancient word? Pink-something. Ah, yes. Pinkies. Those pinkies had done him a favour; with the remainder of his oh-so-embarrassed family scattered over several square blocks, he was the sole inheritor of its estate. Which meant that he’d gotten himself a tidy little nest egg without having to lift a finger.
Now, he considered the next bit of good news that fortune had dropped into his lap. Drenched from the storm, Rebecca Hayes was standing in front of him, trying to pretend that she didn’t hate him. Albrecht cracked open a sunflower seed, spitting the pieces towards the trash can. All he was missing was a toothpick and a ‘Southern’ drawl (whatever that was).
He let his eyes run up and done the girl’s form, hiding an appreciative smirk. She’d been wearing a white shirt and though she didn’t have the most ample chest he’d ever seen, she had a decent rack. Not too bad on the other fronts, either. She wasn’t in the league of the debutantes from high society, but slide her into the right dress and she’d give more than a few a run for their money. Not as muscled as most of the women around here, but he put that down to her permanent nose in the air. Not that he minded her attitude at this moment; he liked a woman that looked like a woman. It was why he’d married Karen.
Realizing where he was staring, the Hayes girl blushed angrily, folding her arms over her breasts. Pretending not to notice that she’d noticed him noticing her, Cunningham leaned back in his chair, its contours adjusting to his new position. “So, you want me to send out a rescue party in a storm like this for on some wild goose chase for an Ascendant pilot?”
“It might not be an-”
“Yes, yes. I’ve heard your speculation,” Albrecht replied dismissively.
Hadrian cocked his head towards his superior. “She’s got a point, boss. It could be something from one of our ships, even. I heard the fleet had gotten a shipment of stasis pods before the balloon went up; one of them could have survived this long. Could be your brother.”
God, I hope not. Albrecht considered for a moment. His dislike of the Hayes girl made him want to suggest that – to start with – she sit and spin, but both her and the rather dim Sergeant Drewdur had hit on a point, even if they didn’t know they had. They were both clutching at straws if they thought that this was anything more debris from the battle finally coming home, but the only other option was an Ascendant ship. He’d seen it crash; that impact had been a bad one, but he’d heard that they built their ships tough. Something from it might have survived and every power in the galaxy was trying to get their hands on Ascendant technology. If he had some, once their fleet inevitably went on its way, he’d be poised to be even richer and, like the little bint before him, shake the dust from this worthless planet once and for all.
But, he’d need to act quickly – the storm and terrain would befoul their attempts to locate the downed craft, but once it was over, this area would be swarming with those bastards. He’d also need to keep it quiet. He had a few men that he could trust and Ackerson had the right equipment on-hand. But first he’d need to see if there even was anything valuable up there.
And he was looking at his volunteers.
~
‘Deputy’ Hayes yelped as the ground crumbled underneath her fingers and she fell, sliding down the hill. Before she could roll off the embankment, Hadrian grabbed her wrist, pulling her back up to solid ground one-handed.
“Thank you,” she gasped, clutching white-knuckled to the trunk of an everblue tree.
Drewdur grumbled something under his breath, patting her on the shoulder before continuing his ascent up the slope. Cunningham had decided that the two concerned citizens that had brought the crash to his attention were the ones who had to check it out, while he stayed behind and ‘coordinated’. That he was out here was something that young sergeant blamed his companion for.
Rebecca wiped dirt from her cheek, catching her breath before following Drewdur; the Belgian woods were largely unexplored, with no roads leading up to the crash site. They were too thick to drive a vehicle through and flying over the trees in a floater was… not the best idea in a storm like this. Excessive electrical activity also fouled Midgard’s first-generation hover engines, which put bikes out. That left slogging through the trackless carpet of bristlemoss, snakevines and towering everblues.
When she’d got up this morning, this hadn’t been on her list of choice activities.
The young woman slipped on the ground again, but this time she managed to not slide down the hill, pulling herself back up to her feet. Hadrian was waiting for her at the top of the hill, waving her onwards impatiently. Rebecca glared at him, wiping several strands of hair out of her eyes. Asshole. It’s not my fault that your boss is a prick and sent us up here by ourselves. When I get back, I’m going to check the police charter and see if he can deputize somebody. At the station, she hadn’t had that option – it had been either the hills or a jail cell for contempt.
Panting, Rebecca finally made it up to the top of the incline, pausing to catch her breath. They were above of the tree line, looking down into a small valley amongst the Winnow foothills. “Look over there,” Hadrian directed, handing her a pair of magnoculars.
The young girl followed the direction he was pointing; through the pouring rain she could barely make anything out, but she raised the sensor goggles up to her eyes; Dredur had already sent them for an IR scan. The warmth in the air and the heat-absorbing sunflowers made it hard to see anything, but less then a kilometer away, Rebecca could make out a slightly brighter heat source. She switched back to visual spectrum, zooming in. There; the craft had plowed through the forest canopy, leaving a thick burn trail behind it. Lightning flashed over the next hill, followed by a deafening crash of thunder and a brief geyser of flame and puff of thick smoke from where the bolt had cut through plant life and superheated the water in its tissues.
“We’ve got to get off this hill,” Hadrian snapped, pulling the mags out of Rebecca’s hands and sliding back down under the canopy, heading towards the crash site. Hayes futilely wiped the steaming rain from her face and followed the police officer.
~
The heat intensified as they neared the smouldering craft, trees hewn down by shrapnel or the shock wave of the vessel’s crash. There were small fires here and there, wherever the canopy had protected them from the rain. The downpour had stopped for the moment, but the clouds weren’t breaking up; there was more on the way.
Rebecca approached the crumpled shuttle; it was larger than any other vehicle she’d ever seen in person before, nearly 60 meters long. Its forward compartments were smashed inwards and its wings had been torn off during its descent. Any sleek lines that it might have had been erased during its descent, its hull melted and crumpled. “She was a deep-space shuttle,” Hayes murmured, reaching out to stroke the cooling hull. “Not an atmospheric.”
“How the hell do you know shit like this?” Hadrian questioned as he drew his revolver, looking about warily.
“It’s… what I wanted to do,” Rebecca replied softly. “Serve on an explorer. The STA opened a Portal to the Halo zone and there was a call for surveyors, scientists, crew. Personnel of any stripe.” She circled the ruined ship, looking for an airlock. “But they only take the top 3% of university graduates. I studied as much as I could. I wanted to-” She paused. “Over here – this airlock buckled when the ship hit the ground.”
The pair entered the shuttle; sputtering lights filling the cabin with shadows, the air hot and dry from its impact. They were in a troop compartment, but each row of enormous chairs were empty; either the vessel had been designed for giants, or those were for soldiers in power armour.
Hayes lit a flashlight, pointing the beam fore and aft. “Back or front?”
“Front; that’s where the pilot would be.”
“I don’t think there’s going to be much left of him.”
“I know, but if this was an assault boat,” Rebecca pointed to the empty seats. “The cockpit would be deeper inside. At least… that’s how Domain ships are built. I don’t recognize this design.”
“Yeah, I wonder why that is?” Hadrian said under his breath. He checked to make sure his pistol’s safety was off before heading towards the front of the craft. At the end of the hallway, there was a split-level entranceway; two ladders, the one on the left going up and the other leading down. There were signs written in an unfamiliar language, one pointing to each ladder. Drewdur chewed his lip. He didn’t need the girl to tell him that the lower level was a wash; this bird had gutted itself on its landing and if there had been anything or anyone down there, they were spread in a thin film over the landscape. He took a hold of the left ladder’s rungs and started to climb.
As Hadrian checked the compartments leading up to the cockpit, Rebecca headed straight for the forward section, ignoring the churning in her stomach. This is crazy, she told herself. Insane. You shouldn’t be here. This is – it has to be – an Ascendant ship. They invaded Midgard, that killed hundreds of thousands of people, kept Dad from getting help. What you doing here, thinking about helping one of them? They’re monsters, girl. Don’t you get that?
But despite all the very good reasons to turn around that her subconscious was throwing at her, Rebecca found her feet taking her inexorably closer to the cockpit. Curiousity killed more than cats, but she couldn’t help herself. Though she’d always dreamed of it, she’d never been aboard a real spaceship before. And despite having to come out here in the storm, this was hers. She’d seen it come down from the skies, she’d convinced Hadrian not to ignore it. It was something that she’d done for herself, not for her father or the family. And she wanted to see it through.
The cockpit door was open; either the pilot hadn’t bothered to secure it, or it had come loose in the crash. Rebecca froze as a soft moan came from inside the chamber. Peering through the door, Rebecca saw someone’s arm hanging limply from a chair. Before Hadrian could notice or stop her, she slipped through the door.
Ignoring the hammering in her chest, Rebecca edged towards the figure. “Are you all right?” she asked, on the verge of running. Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea after all. There was no answer save for another wordless groan. “We’ve got a survivor!” the young woman called to her partner. As she drew closer, she could see that the pilot was male, but half his face and a good deal of his left side was badly blistered. “He’s…” her words caught in her throat as she looked down at the unconscious man.
He was wearing an Ascendant uniform.
Chapter 1:
“Midgard: originally settled by the Rubicon Colonization Effort (3201 AED), it is a Class III planet located in the Sagittarius Arm, fourteen light-years from the Domain of Qatarii world Lesser Palestine. Traditionally protected by the Qatarii military from most attackers, Midgard nonetheless had been slow to develop. The RCE’s substandard preparations – including a minimal industrial base – and the Domain’s trade inequities prevented Midgard from flourishing beyond an agricultural hub for nearly five centuries. Currently, Midgard has begun a process of industrialization and innovation, balanced with environmental concerns. Their main exports remain agricultural in nature.
Unnoticed by major corporations or nations, Midgard is considered a garden world and one of the best-kept vacation secrets in the galaxy.”
- Eric von Haus’ Guide to Worlds You’ve Never Seen
~
Rebecca Hayes pushed the door to the shop open, the bell jangling as she stepped inside, the hinges of the door squeaking. Villmer was notorious for his anachronistic outlook on technology, refusing to implement it unless it was a necessity. He did not consider an automatic door to be one, nor catering to his customers’ technophilia. The rumour about town was that the gruff shop owner simply didn’t want to squeeze out the extra few credits that an automatic door would add to his power bill.
Not that here in Taski there was a surplus of technology to begin with; the small town sat on the border of the great salt lake Norway. It had always been a rather traditional, quiet village. Her family had owned a fairly successful farm and fishing enterprise; Rebecca’s father had been born with salt water in his blood, always sailing out on Norway’s waters with his crews. Her twin brother Eric had been eager to follow in his footsteps, but he’d died at sea four years ago. Ever since then, she’d wanted nothing to do with the ocean. She’d always longed for the excitement of city life, had wanted to attend university and find her way off Midgard, but her father had taken ill several months ago, and with nobody else, she’d postponed her attendance to care for him as he weakened. He could have been saved. But what remained of Midgard’s medical industry was confined to the cities. The roads were bombed and the airports and spaceports were little more than craters, or had been converted for the Ascendants’ use.
She had begged him to let her call them – they could have saved him, right up until the end. He had refused with more anger then Rebecca had seen in him before, making her promise not to. He said he would rather die then accept their help, or to remind them that Taski still existed. And so, a giant of a man had wasted away bit by bit into a skeletal figure who no longer remembered his daughter’s name, who called out for his long-dead wife over and over again, never realizing that it was his own flesh and blood who answered, clutching his reedy fingers, trying to bring him some measure of peace.
After he’d passed away, there had been nothing left for her in Taski, but neither had there been anything for her anywhere else. The university to which she’d applied had been blasted off the face of the planet by the Ascendancy’s artillery the day of their landfall, the cities which she dreamed of visiting were war zones.
All that she had now was to sit at home, administer the business that she’d always hated, and hope that life was passing her by. Her father had encouraged her to work the fields when she was younger, but she wouldn’t be caught dead out there, nor would she set foot on a trawler over the waters that killed Eric.
It wasn’t the life that she’d always dreamed of, but it was a life.
“Ahh, Rebecca. Welcome,” Villmer Graus came out from behind the counter, his arms spread wide in a hug. Despite his penny-pinching ways, the old man treated his customers like each of them was his favorite. He kissed her on each cheek in greeting. “What can I do for you today?” he asked over the pounding thunder, so loud and so near that it shook the entire building.
“I need a new engine for a floater combine.”
“Ah, did that old XP-38 finally break down on you?”
“No, the new one, the Skarling-47, blew a power converter yesterday and crashed in the north field. Mickey thought he could fix it, but it turns out we’ll need a replacement. Do you still have those Carlsons? He says he can make one fit a Skarling’s systems.”
Graus scrunched his face. “I’m sorry, Ackerson bought every replacement part I have for floaters two days ago. I’ve put an order in for more, but who knows how long it’ll be before we get some.”
Rebecca felt the beginnings of a headache. She rubbed her forehead. “Right, thanks.” We’re still waiting on orders placed before those fucking Faceless showed up. “We might have to pull some of those antique combustion engines my dad had sitting in storage then. Tell me you’ve got parts and petrol for them.”
“Ah, yes. The refinery up at Hook Coast is still running and the machine shops there have switched to the antiques as well, so that shouldn’t be a problem. I’ve only got a handful of parts in the warehouse, but I can have more here in four days.”
“Would you go ahead and order some? Complete sets. I won’t buy them all at once, but-”
“-you probably will as the season wears on. The other farmers will too, once their floaters burn out and they realize that they won’t be getting any replacement parts from Horsley.” Graus tapped a finger to his lip, seating himself in front of his computer. “If memory serves me, you’ve got a couple Skarling-3s and two Carlson Heavydrivers.”
“That sounds about right.”
“Okay, I’ll check the inventory this evening and send out a wish list to Hook Coast right after. Skimmer transports are still running, so the shipping fee won’t be any different from normal.”
“Thanks, Villmer. You’re the best.”
“I know, now get out of my store and make room for my paying customers.” Villmer paused, looking out a window, flashes of lightning casting bright spalls over his face. “You be careful, though. We’ve not had a heat storm this bad for years.”
“It’ll pass.”
~
Taski wasn’t that large of a town; perhaps seven thousand people, most of them tradesmen and women. Compared to the megatropoli on Centauri, Kranos, or even Earth, it was less than a rounding error. But for Midgard, it was a respectable size for such an isolated community. Rebecca nodded and waved to faces in the crowd, some familiar, some not. Since the Ascendacy’s arrival on Midgard, refugees had fled from the cities, as far from those war zones as they could get.
Many of them were waylaid by bandits, others were hunted down by the invaders. Still others simply got lost. With the roads destroyed and air travel a form of suicide, one could no longer cross continents in hours. Taski had taken in a handful of survivors, but as winter approached Rebecca expected that number to drop sharply. Death from exposure… it was nearly unthinkable. Even on Midgard, no one froze to death anymore! But it was going to happen.
Rebecca looked up to the storming grey skies overhead, the wind blowing her titian hair out of her hazel eyes. Though she could not see them, she knew they were up there in their ships, looking down on her world, her people. You’ve taken so much from us, she accused. Who gave you the right to judge us? She thought of her father, or what he’d become in his final weeks, choosing to die rather than be saved by their hands. They had killed him, as surely as putting a bullet in his head. She felt tears well up in her eyes and willed them away. She didn’t have anything or anyone left to cry for and she wouldn’t pity herself.
Hot rain spattered down from the clouds in another sporadic torrent and Rebecca ducked towards her car as thumb-sized droplets pounded the streets and buildings, pedestrians running for shelter from the sudden downpour.
Rebecca pulled her door open; she still had stops to make in town; she should get on them. She was halfway inside the vehicle when another flash caught her eye, this one different from the lightning. She peered up, squinting against the droplets spattering into her eyes. There! Something burst through the cloud layer, trailing smoke and fire. Even if it had been closer, it was impossible to tell what it had once been; the heat of an uncontrolled descent had stripped any definitive features from the craft. It wallowed in the sky, misfiring thrusters bobbing it back and forth like a drunken bird.
It’s headed to the mountains, Rebecca thought as the craft vanished out of sight. Moments later, an artificial flare of lightning and accompanying thunderclap assaulted the heavens. She wasn’t the only one who’d seen it; she recognized one of Taski’s police sergeants staring towards the crash site. The rain was in full force now, matting the Rebecca’s reddish hair down onto her scalp and soaking her clothes. She darted towards the sergeant, a steady torrent of water flowing down the sides of his wide-brimmed hat.
“You saw it?” she shouted over another burst of thunder.
“Yeah. Guess those fuckers aren’t hot-shit pilots after all!” The young man, Drewdur by his badge, spat on the ground.
“You’re not going to send anyone up to check for survivors?” She practically had to shout to be heard over the storm.
“Like fuck! I’d barely send out a team in this weather for anyone, let alone some Ascendant scrag!”
“It might not be them, though!”
“Well, who else would it be?”
“I don’t know, but we hear rumours about other nations fighting them. What if it’s a survivor from them, or one of our pilots?” Rebecca pointed to the rapidly dissipating contrail. “That’s an orbital crash, not someone who lost it in the storm.”
Drewdur scrunched his face up, obviously not relishing the prospect of heading into the forest in this kind of weather. But the girl had a point… “All right!” he snapped. “All right, I’ll talk to the captain!”
~
Captain Albrecht Cunningham of the Taski Regional Police Force lived up to the age old depiction of a love affair between police officers, pastries and coffee. He had an expanding waistline that seemed to grow in direct proportion to his sense of self-importance and was notorious for holding grudges. Like the one he’d carried for the entire Hayes family after his stepson Daniel had put his hand too far up a younger Rebecca’s skirt and Eric had… discussed the proper attitude a gentleman should have towards a lady with him.
Cunningham flicked the shell of a Midgard sunflower seed in the general vicinity of the trashcan, his feet up on his desk. Despite the hayseed appearance he fostered, his family was old money. Considering their youngest son an embarrassment and shuffling him off to Taski at the first oppurtunity, the Cunningham clan had made sure that none of the complaints against Albrecht had even come close to getting him ousted from his position.
His older brother, Admiral Johan Cunningham, had died during the doomed hope of the MSDF and his city councilor sister Renee was executed the next day by the invaders. The rest of his family had been killed over a month ago when one of the rebel cells had assassinated them as ‘collaborators’. Which sounded nice, but that particular movement had been a communist ‘action group’ long before the Ascendants came to Midgard. Obviously, they’d seen the spastic guerilla war as a way to settle old scores.
Which suited Albrecht just fine; those – what was the ancient word? Pink-something. Ah, yes. Pinkies. Those pinkies had done him a favour; with the remainder of his oh-so-embarrassed family scattered over several square blocks, he was the sole inheritor of its estate. Which meant that he’d gotten himself a tidy little nest egg without having to lift a finger.
Now, he considered the next bit of good news that fortune had dropped into his lap. Drenched from the storm, Rebecca Hayes was standing in front of him, trying to pretend that she didn’t hate him. Albrecht cracked open a sunflower seed, spitting the pieces towards the trash can. All he was missing was a toothpick and a ‘Southern’ drawl (whatever that was).
He let his eyes run up and done the girl’s form, hiding an appreciative smirk. She’d been wearing a white shirt and though she didn’t have the most ample chest he’d ever seen, she had a decent rack. Not too bad on the other fronts, either. She wasn’t in the league of the debutantes from high society, but slide her into the right dress and she’d give more than a few a run for their money. Not as muscled as most of the women around here, but he put that down to her permanent nose in the air. Not that he minded her attitude at this moment; he liked a woman that looked like a woman. It was why he’d married Karen.
Realizing where he was staring, the Hayes girl blushed angrily, folding her arms over her breasts. Pretending not to notice that she’d noticed him noticing her, Cunningham leaned back in his chair, its contours adjusting to his new position. “So, you want me to send out a rescue party in a storm like this for on some wild goose chase for an Ascendant pilot?”
“It might not be an-”
“Yes, yes. I’ve heard your speculation,” Albrecht replied dismissively.
Hadrian cocked his head towards his superior. “She’s got a point, boss. It could be something from one of our ships, even. I heard the fleet had gotten a shipment of stasis pods before the balloon went up; one of them could have survived this long. Could be your brother.”
God, I hope not. Albrecht considered for a moment. His dislike of the Hayes girl made him want to suggest that – to start with – she sit and spin, but both her and the rather dim Sergeant Drewdur had hit on a point, even if they didn’t know they had. They were both clutching at straws if they thought that this was anything more debris from the battle finally coming home, but the only other option was an Ascendant ship. He’d seen it crash; that impact had been a bad one, but he’d heard that they built their ships tough. Something from it might have survived and every power in the galaxy was trying to get their hands on Ascendant technology. If he had some, once their fleet inevitably went on its way, he’d be poised to be even richer and, like the little bint before him, shake the dust from this worthless planet once and for all.
But, he’d need to act quickly – the storm and terrain would befoul their attempts to locate the downed craft, but once it was over, this area would be swarming with those bastards. He’d also need to keep it quiet. He had a few men that he could trust and Ackerson had the right equipment on-hand. But first he’d need to see if there even was anything valuable up there.
And he was looking at his volunteers.
~
‘Deputy’ Hayes yelped as the ground crumbled underneath her fingers and she fell, sliding down the hill. Before she could roll off the embankment, Hadrian grabbed her wrist, pulling her back up to solid ground one-handed.
“Thank you,” she gasped, clutching white-knuckled to the trunk of an everblue tree.
Drewdur grumbled something under his breath, patting her on the shoulder before continuing his ascent up the slope. Cunningham had decided that the two concerned citizens that had brought the crash to his attention were the ones who had to check it out, while he stayed behind and ‘coordinated’. That he was out here was something that young sergeant blamed his companion for.
Rebecca wiped dirt from her cheek, catching her breath before following Drewdur; the Belgian woods were largely unexplored, with no roads leading up to the crash site. They were too thick to drive a vehicle through and flying over the trees in a floater was… not the best idea in a storm like this. Excessive electrical activity also fouled Midgard’s first-generation hover engines, which put bikes out. That left slogging through the trackless carpet of bristlemoss, snakevines and towering everblues.
When she’d got up this morning, this hadn’t been on her list of choice activities.
The young woman slipped on the ground again, but this time she managed to not slide down the hill, pulling herself back up to her feet. Hadrian was waiting for her at the top of the hill, waving her onwards impatiently. Rebecca glared at him, wiping several strands of hair out of her eyes. Asshole. It’s not my fault that your boss is a prick and sent us up here by ourselves. When I get back, I’m going to check the police charter and see if he can deputize somebody. At the station, she hadn’t had that option – it had been either the hills or a jail cell for contempt.
Panting, Rebecca finally made it up to the top of the incline, pausing to catch her breath. They were above of the tree line, looking down into a small valley amongst the Winnow foothills. “Look over there,” Hadrian directed, handing her a pair of magnoculars.
The young girl followed the direction he was pointing; through the pouring rain she could barely make anything out, but she raised the sensor goggles up to her eyes; Dredur had already sent them for an IR scan. The warmth in the air and the heat-absorbing sunflowers made it hard to see anything, but less then a kilometer away, Rebecca could make out a slightly brighter heat source. She switched back to visual spectrum, zooming in. There; the craft had plowed through the forest canopy, leaving a thick burn trail behind it. Lightning flashed over the next hill, followed by a deafening crash of thunder and a brief geyser of flame and puff of thick smoke from where the bolt had cut through plant life and superheated the water in its tissues.
“We’ve got to get off this hill,” Hadrian snapped, pulling the mags out of Rebecca’s hands and sliding back down under the canopy, heading towards the crash site. Hayes futilely wiped the steaming rain from her face and followed the police officer.
~
The heat intensified as they neared the smouldering craft, trees hewn down by shrapnel or the shock wave of the vessel’s crash. There were small fires here and there, wherever the canopy had protected them from the rain. The downpour had stopped for the moment, but the clouds weren’t breaking up; there was more on the way.
Rebecca approached the crumpled shuttle; it was larger than any other vehicle she’d ever seen in person before, nearly 60 meters long. Its forward compartments were smashed inwards and its wings had been torn off during its descent. Any sleek lines that it might have had been erased during its descent, its hull melted and crumpled. “She was a deep-space shuttle,” Hayes murmured, reaching out to stroke the cooling hull. “Not an atmospheric.”
“How the hell do you know shit like this?” Hadrian questioned as he drew his revolver, looking about warily.
“It’s… what I wanted to do,” Rebecca replied softly. “Serve on an explorer. The STA opened a Portal to the Halo zone and there was a call for surveyors, scientists, crew. Personnel of any stripe.” She circled the ruined ship, looking for an airlock. “But they only take the top 3% of university graduates. I studied as much as I could. I wanted to-” She paused. “Over here – this airlock buckled when the ship hit the ground.”
The pair entered the shuttle; sputtering lights filling the cabin with shadows, the air hot and dry from its impact. They were in a troop compartment, but each row of enormous chairs were empty; either the vessel had been designed for giants, or those were for soldiers in power armour.
Hayes lit a flashlight, pointing the beam fore and aft. “Back or front?”
“Front; that’s where the pilot would be.”
“I don’t think there’s going to be much left of him.”
“I know, but if this was an assault boat,” Rebecca pointed to the empty seats. “The cockpit would be deeper inside. At least… that’s how Domain ships are built. I don’t recognize this design.”
“Yeah, I wonder why that is?” Hadrian said under his breath. He checked to make sure his pistol’s safety was off before heading towards the front of the craft. At the end of the hallway, there was a split-level entranceway; two ladders, the one on the left going up and the other leading down. There were signs written in an unfamiliar language, one pointing to each ladder. Drewdur chewed his lip. He didn’t need the girl to tell him that the lower level was a wash; this bird had gutted itself on its landing and if there had been anything or anyone down there, they were spread in a thin film over the landscape. He took a hold of the left ladder’s rungs and started to climb.
As Hadrian checked the compartments leading up to the cockpit, Rebecca headed straight for the forward section, ignoring the churning in her stomach. This is crazy, she told herself. Insane. You shouldn’t be here. This is – it has to be – an Ascendant ship. They invaded Midgard, that killed hundreds of thousands of people, kept Dad from getting help. What you doing here, thinking about helping one of them? They’re monsters, girl. Don’t you get that?
But despite all the very good reasons to turn around that her subconscious was throwing at her, Rebecca found her feet taking her inexorably closer to the cockpit. Curiousity killed more than cats, but she couldn’t help herself. Though she’d always dreamed of it, she’d never been aboard a real spaceship before. And despite having to come out here in the storm, this was hers. She’d seen it come down from the skies, she’d convinced Hadrian not to ignore it. It was something that she’d done for herself, not for her father or the family. And she wanted to see it through.
The cockpit door was open; either the pilot hadn’t bothered to secure it, or it had come loose in the crash. Rebecca froze as a soft moan came from inside the chamber. Peering through the door, Rebecca saw someone’s arm hanging limply from a chair. Before Hadrian could notice or stop her, she slipped through the door.
Ignoring the hammering in her chest, Rebecca edged towards the figure. “Are you all right?” she asked, on the verge of running. Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea after all. There was no answer save for another wordless groan. “We’ve got a survivor!” the young woman called to her partner. As she drew closer, she could see that the pilot was male, but half his face and a good deal of his left side was badly blistered. “He’s…” her words caught in her throat as she looked down at the unconscious man.
He was wearing an Ascendant uniform.
Sugar, snips, spice and screams: What are little girls made of, made of? What are little boys made of, made of?
"...even posthuman tattooed pigmentless sexy killing machines can be vulnerable and need cuddling." - Shroom Man 777
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Bladed_Crescent
- Jedi Knight
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Geek alert: If you can't pick out the Chronicles of Riddick reference, then you fail. So much.
Chapter 2:
“They have no true society; they are thugs, brutes. They wrap their barbarism in hollow words to appeal to the unthinking masses, but these are words that they simply repeat without understanding their meaning. Little better then pack animals who follow the ‘alpha’. Without him, their society would collapse.”
-Primatorium-Scholar Madrin Hernandez, On the Ascendancy
~
General Killian Helfer was beautiful when she was angry. This was not too surprising; she was beautiful all the time. Though not quite as much as when she was holding a subordinate’s head under the liquid metal surface of a Plotting table, her lips drawn back over her teeth in a feral rictus. The drowning major’s hands scrabbled at the rim of the tank, bubbles and splashes coming from her submerged face, her futile efforts to defend herself from the general a waste of what oxygen she had left.
Around the plotting tank, Ascendancy nobles and military officers watched Killian, with various degrees of alarm, boredom and vicarious pleasure on their faces. The major’s struggles grew weaker as she ran out of air, her arms going limp, her thrashing ceasing. Hissing like an angry cat, Helfer pulled the other woman from the tank and hurled her away. Silver droplets ran down her face to the deck, merging together into larger pools, snaking back towards the tank. The major gasped noisily for air, trying to pull herself up to her feet.
Killian turned her back on the other woman. “Get out of my sight. The next time that you foul up, I won’t be as forgiving.”
Nodding, the security officer pulled herself shakily to her feet, fighting to keep on her feet. “Y-yes, general.”
Denis Cur-alin, the Baron of Shard Water, watched the major retreat, regarding the general. “Was that really necessary?”
“Absolutely,” Killian replied, sweeping her dark blonde hair back over her head. She bent down, allowing the coalesced metal to slide up onto her hand, flicking it back into the tank. “She was in charge of the first responder unit aboard Citadel – the unit that failed to reacquire… the package.” She said those words with distaste, her fingers tightening on the rim of the plotting table.
“What progress have you made?” her eyes locked onto Major General Berkeley Haversham, the new security chief of Citadel. His predecessor had been ‘retired’ last night for her failure in the debacle. Haversham’s tunic was still stained with the former major general’s blood.
“Not much,” the man replied. He knew that wasn’t what Virago wanted to hear, but any actions of his attempting to cover his own ass would only come back to bite him there. No matter what her mood might be right now, she didn’t kill subordinates for telling her the truth. At least, he hoped she still didn’t. “We’ve dispatched two full squadrons of fighters to sweep the estimated crash area.” As he spoke, the flowing metal of the tank rose into the peaks and valleys of the area under investigation, shining silver metal turning green and brown as forests and rock blossomed over the barren mountains. Brooding red contact markers blossomed upwards, separating from the tank and hovering over each possible crash site. Another, larger collation of living metal rose from the table, congealing into a night-black warship, its forward-swept wings like clutching fingers. “Red Hand has moved into a geosynchronous orbit over the area to provide support and three landers will make planetfall within the hour. I’ve made contact with Spiral and they promise their best trackers. We’ll find him.”
The general did not appear mollified by the conviction in Haversham’s voice. Her ices flashed with cold fire. “Yes, you will. I don’t care what it takes, I don’t care how many men it costs, but you will find him. Quickly.”
“Yes… yes, of course, general.”
Killian smiled sweetly, a shy, mischievous gesture she’d honed to perfection from her earlier life, taking the shorter man’s hand in her own, kissing his fingers. “Thank you. I know that the Warlord and I can count on your service.” She smelt like wildflowers.
And there was murder in her eyes.
~
Killian sat lazily in her office, leaning her head against one hand, her eyes alert and scanning the holographic display in front of her, Citadel’s AI responding to her mental commands, switching views, zooming in or out, displaying tactical data. Requiem forces were on the move; two Portals in the Agassi Sector had been lost from thrall hands. Without the Fleet to keep an eye on them, the spineless whelps were caving to the Requiem’s navy.
Her lips thinned as she shifted the map’s view. Admiral Askeri and the Righteous Wrath was in the area, but his squadron was only a stopgap; the Requiem Navy was emboldened by the absence of the Ascendancy Fleet’s main body and they were moving to secure as much of the destabilized territories as possible. Part of her wanted to take the Fleet, take her beautiful Siege Perilous out amongst the stars and lay waste to everything in her path.
The display shifted to show her flagship, paired in its orbit with Balance of Judgement, each of the identical killers dwarfing the rest of the Ascendant Fleet, though they were in turn barely a third the size of the three great world-ships in attendance: Citadel, Cairn and Basilica. Siege Perilous had been a gift to her from the Warlord for her successful closure of the Kaster Campaign, the dreadnaught made in the image of his own flagship.
She would not fail him. Not now, not ever. If she had to tear Midgard apart with her bare hands, then so be it.
Killian’s brooding thoughts were interrupted by the chime of the door. “Enter,” the general called, shutting off the tactical screen. Tashita Laayindaughter, her personal stewardess stepped into the room. The girl’s dusky skin was striped with the bright henna tattoos of her tribe; once, she had lived on Primagen, a world whose human settlers had devolved into barbarism and whose greatest technological feat was the spear.
“Confessor Adrieu is outside; he wishes an audience with you,” the girl said in perfect, if accented, Common. Had the Ascendancy not come to her world, she would probably have been dead by now. Killed by a predator, frozen in a freak blizzard, starved or fallen ill. Now Tashita would live for over three hundred years, she had access to the finest medical care in the galaxy, an education – a life beyond simple subsistence. Her people had been delivered from the Stone Age to enlightenment. That was what the Ascendancy brought to its worlds. Literacy, spirituality, technology. Order.
Like Tashita, Killian knew the truth of what the Ascendancy offered.
Born in the crèches of Curis Kino, the young woman had started life as a pleasure slave, denied the simplest dignity of all: a name. She’d only been a number to the Kinoan breeders. Her lineage, 14B/177oT, was meant for the aristocracy – she wasn’t simply an armful of fluff to be chained to the bed. 14Bs were bred to be graceful, poised and elegant. Something to be taken to the functions of high society on their owner’s arm, to be able to converse with the elite and blend in as the perfect accessory to an aristocrat’s lifestyle. That was what 14B/177oT-19-83-a4 had been created for.
Killian, tall and refined, with her high, delicate cheekbones, arctic blue eyes and cultured dialect, could have passed for a noblewoman on any of ten thousand planets. That was, of course, why all of Curis Kinos’s slaves were branded. No scars or tattoos to mar her alabaster skin and bring her price down; her breeders had infected her with a nanomesh implant at birth. Upon detecting any sort of scan, the tiny machines would coalesce into a branding mark, spreading over her flesh as their interlinked systems fed her registration to the sensor apparatus, marking her as property. Expensive property, but property nonetheless.
That had changed when the day she’d met the young Taratolan with eyes like hers.
Not a slave, he had been welcomed to her master’s house as an equal, but Killian had seen the fear in her owner’s eyes throughout that meeting and his jealousy every time the young man had looked at or even spoken to her. Nobody spoke to a slave unless it was to give orders, but the visitor had had none of those.
When he had left, she had found herself curious, wanting to see him again.
She had.
Killian sighed, her disaffection not directed at her stewardess. “Please, send him in.”
Tashita bowed graciously and slipped back out the door, giving Helfer a moment to compose herself, smoothing the black pseudoleather of her uniform out.
Confessor Abdul Adrieu entered her office, bowing respectfully to Killian. Unlike many within the Ascendancy’s aristocracy, Adrieu was not given to garish ostentations. He believed that it was his words and actions, not his appearance, that mattered. It was why the Warlord and Killian liked him. “General.”
“Confessor. Please, be seated.”
There was no official faith of the Ascendancy; all peoples and religions were welcomed. But there was more then a hint of religion to the message that they brought and Confessors were its chaplains, its preachers and ayatollahs. Killian didn’t know how she felt about this deification of the cause; she knew how the Warlord felt about it, passing it off as nothing but a vein of ‘hero worship’. For all he had done, he could be obtuse about certain things. Heroes get other people killed, my lord. Saviours reshape the universe.
It was not a hero that had come to her that night and given her the one thing she’d never had.
“Thank you, general. I understand you have elected not to make an appearance this afternoon.”
“No.”
“I think you should re-consider that decision,” Adrieu offered. From anyone else, that could have been a threat, but from the plain-spoken nobleman it was simply a statement of fact.
Killian called up files on her computer, leaning back in her chair. “This situation requires my complete attention, confessor. I can’t put on a show for the masses, not while-”
“With respect general – that is exactly what you should do.”
The young woman blinked in surprise. “How can you say that?”
“As Swift Heron pointed out earlier, it its imperative that we let no sign of this… incident become public knowledge. Secrecy, as well as normalcy, are our watchwords during this crisis. Our enemies cannot know what has happened, or they will take advantage of our weakness. Until he is found, we are not safe. It is thus imperative that we continue to act as though things are normal.” He pointed a finger at Killian. “You are the promulgator of the faith, my lady. It was your voice that was heard across space before any of us were here, your words that have touched the lives of billions, your conviction that had converted worlds. If you were to shun your appearance, many would wonder why.”
Killian let out a long dissatisfied hiss. “And that is something that we cannot have.” She looked longingly back at her computer. The Agassi Sector still required her attention, as did several of the sieges against the remaining Qatarii worlds. But Abdul was right. “Very well,” she said. “I will be there.”
“Thank you, my lady.”
~
The governmental palace upon Midgard was a paltry thing, barely three stories tall. Its main balcony overlooked a square that could hold no more than ten thousand people at once. Killian had given sermons to crowds numbering in the millions. It hardly seemed worth her time, but Adrieu was right – nothing could appear amiss. Midgard was a planet with a people rooted in practicality, though they had a yearning to take their place amongst the galactic stage and resentment towards the richer planets and star nations. To that end, she had chosen what Alexander had called her ‘street fighting’ clothes; a simple dark brown leather top and pants. Paramilitary in appearance, but not her uniform, nor bedecked with her rank bars. Utilitarian and stylish but not grandiose.
The general stepped out onto the polished marble of the balcony, raising her hands to the crowd. Though she appeared exposed, the balcony was protected by a shield; nothing short of artillery would be able to breach it. As they caught sight of her, the new converts roared, a shuddering wave of sound and emotion that surged through the city’s streets. Killian was the Warlord’s right hand, the mistress of his Second Fleet, commander of his ground forces, his inquisitor and the public voice of the Ascendancy. “People of Midgard,” she began as the crowd quieted, her voice amplified and rolling over the crowd as flatscreens mounted on nearby buildings broadcast her image to those too far away to see her. “Thank you for your welcome. Thank you for being here, for having the strength of mind, the conviction, to see the truth. The Ascendancy has come to your world, not as conquerors, but as missionaries. It is our faith, our truth, that we wish to share with you.”
The crowd cheered louder.
“The truth of the universe is this: there is order and there is chaos. This is a galaxy beset by chaos. You know this,” she pointed to the throngs filling the park. “You have seen it, witnessed it firsthand. Wars rage out of control across our homelands. The great empires stand untouchable and uncaring of the suffering of those beneath them as plundering hordes move from one world to the next, taking everything and leaving nothing but blood and rubble behind. Unchecked megacorporations rape weaker civilizations of everything of value, their navies crushing away freedom, grinding away hope in the search for their own enrichment. Pirates and raiders cross the stars, leaving death and destruction in their wake. The Reqiuem, the Imperium, the Federation – where are they? Where are they when orphaned children cry? When women and men beg for mercy? Where are they? This is chaos, a galaxy aflame. Madness.
“You have seen it. The Qatarii stole from you. They stole from you for years, trading their ‘protection’ for your crops. Your blood and sweat and that of your children. And what did they give to you in return? A handful of obsolete factories and trinkets for which they had no other use. They thought of you as a vassal world in fact, if not in name. But where were they? Where were the Qatarii when Dresil Fever broke out amongst your people? When Blackstar Raiders were nearing your world and the Dominate’s military was ‘occupied’. They weren’t here.
“We,” Killian pointed to herself, spreading her arms to encompass the crowd, the Faceless on the ground and their ships high above. “Are here now. Many call us invaders. Conquerors. Monsters. But we are here and we bring order. The worlds in our wake are under our protection, their citizens fighting in our armies, their industries turned to our cause. With every that world joins us, we grow stronger and you grow safer. This is our covenant. To bring order, harmony – peace – to an insane galaxy. To a universe that knows only blood, only horror.
“Our crusade blankets the stars, drawing them together in unity. The old powers, the corrupt and the fearful quake at our approach because they know what it means for them and their ways. They call us insane, say we are little better then wild dogs. Every revolution has been challenged, disregarded and dismissed. But we know that we are right, that we are just and that our actions will blaze a trail across the stars for all time! Future generations will look upon us, look upon you and this day and they will remember that it was a day of days, when another world chose to follow the Warlord’s will and change history.
“It is not an easy task; we are feared and hated by those opposed to change, by those that would rather clutch onto their own decaying power then turn to their fellows and say ‘I can make a better world.’ Our sword and shield, our Fleets and Army swell every day, with every convert. Every Ascendant soldier began as someone else, their pasts wiped clean the moment they stood up, choosing to believe in order. In a better world. Convert to Ascendancy and you will know what it means to be part of something great and grand, to fight and ensure a future for you and your people. This is what we offer, this is our truth. We ask much, but we deliver much.
“Follow Ascendancy. Let us show you what it means to pit your will against that of the universe, to remold it into something sane. Not only for ourselves but for our descendants. People of Midgard, are you Ascendant? Are you soldiers of the Warlord? Will you fight, to take yourselves to the threshold and beyond, or will you lie down in the dust?”
“Threshold!” The crowd screamed. “Take us to the threshold!”
“To the Threshold!” Killian shouted in response, raising her fist into the air. She could almost feel the Warlord smile upon her. “In the Warlord’s name!”
“In the Warlord’s name!”
Chapter 2:
“They have no true society; they are thugs, brutes. They wrap their barbarism in hollow words to appeal to the unthinking masses, but these are words that they simply repeat without understanding their meaning. Little better then pack animals who follow the ‘alpha’. Without him, their society would collapse.”
-Primatorium-Scholar Madrin Hernandez, On the Ascendancy
~
General Killian Helfer was beautiful when she was angry. This was not too surprising; she was beautiful all the time. Though not quite as much as when she was holding a subordinate’s head under the liquid metal surface of a Plotting table, her lips drawn back over her teeth in a feral rictus. The drowning major’s hands scrabbled at the rim of the tank, bubbles and splashes coming from her submerged face, her futile efforts to defend herself from the general a waste of what oxygen she had left.
Around the plotting tank, Ascendancy nobles and military officers watched Killian, with various degrees of alarm, boredom and vicarious pleasure on their faces. The major’s struggles grew weaker as she ran out of air, her arms going limp, her thrashing ceasing. Hissing like an angry cat, Helfer pulled the other woman from the tank and hurled her away. Silver droplets ran down her face to the deck, merging together into larger pools, snaking back towards the tank. The major gasped noisily for air, trying to pull herself up to her feet.
Killian turned her back on the other woman. “Get out of my sight. The next time that you foul up, I won’t be as forgiving.”
Nodding, the security officer pulled herself shakily to her feet, fighting to keep on her feet. “Y-yes, general.”
Denis Cur-alin, the Baron of Shard Water, watched the major retreat, regarding the general. “Was that really necessary?”
“Absolutely,” Killian replied, sweeping her dark blonde hair back over her head. She bent down, allowing the coalesced metal to slide up onto her hand, flicking it back into the tank. “She was in charge of the first responder unit aboard Citadel – the unit that failed to reacquire… the package.” She said those words with distaste, her fingers tightening on the rim of the plotting table.
“What progress have you made?” her eyes locked onto Major General Berkeley Haversham, the new security chief of Citadel. His predecessor had been ‘retired’ last night for her failure in the debacle. Haversham’s tunic was still stained with the former major general’s blood.
“Not much,” the man replied. He knew that wasn’t what Virago wanted to hear, but any actions of his attempting to cover his own ass would only come back to bite him there. No matter what her mood might be right now, she didn’t kill subordinates for telling her the truth. At least, he hoped she still didn’t. “We’ve dispatched two full squadrons of fighters to sweep the estimated crash area.” As he spoke, the flowing metal of the tank rose into the peaks and valleys of the area under investigation, shining silver metal turning green and brown as forests and rock blossomed over the barren mountains. Brooding red contact markers blossomed upwards, separating from the tank and hovering over each possible crash site. Another, larger collation of living metal rose from the table, congealing into a night-black warship, its forward-swept wings like clutching fingers. “Red Hand has moved into a geosynchronous orbit over the area to provide support and three landers will make planetfall within the hour. I’ve made contact with Spiral and they promise their best trackers. We’ll find him.”
The general did not appear mollified by the conviction in Haversham’s voice. Her ices flashed with cold fire. “Yes, you will. I don’t care what it takes, I don’t care how many men it costs, but you will find him. Quickly.”
“Yes… yes, of course, general.”
Killian smiled sweetly, a shy, mischievous gesture she’d honed to perfection from her earlier life, taking the shorter man’s hand in her own, kissing his fingers. “Thank you. I know that the Warlord and I can count on your service.” She smelt like wildflowers.
And there was murder in her eyes.
~
Killian sat lazily in her office, leaning her head against one hand, her eyes alert and scanning the holographic display in front of her, Citadel’s AI responding to her mental commands, switching views, zooming in or out, displaying tactical data. Requiem forces were on the move; two Portals in the Agassi Sector had been lost from thrall hands. Without the Fleet to keep an eye on them, the spineless whelps were caving to the Requiem’s navy.
Her lips thinned as she shifted the map’s view. Admiral Askeri and the Righteous Wrath was in the area, but his squadron was only a stopgap; the Requiem Navy was emboldened by the absence of the Ascendancy Fleet’s main body and they were moving to secure as much of the destabilized territories as possible. Part of her wanted to take the Fleet, take her beautiful Siege Perilous out amongst the stars and lay waste to everything in her path.
The display shifted to show her flagship, paired in its orbit with Balance of Judgement, each of the identical killers dwarfing the rest of the Ascendant Fleet, though they were in turn barely a third the size of the three great world-ships in attendance: Citadel, Cairn and Basilica. Siege Perilous had been a gift to her from the Warlord for her successful closure of the Kaster Campaign, the dreadnaught made in the image of his own flagship.
She would not fail him. Not now, not ever. If she had to tear Midgard apart with her bare hands, then so be it.
Killian’s brooding thoughts were interrupted by the chime of the door. “Enter,” the general called, shutting off the tactical screen. Tashita Laayindaughter, her personal stewardess stepped into the room. The girl’s dusky skin was striped with the bright henna tattoos of her tribe; once, she had lived on Primagen, a world whose human settlers had devolved into barbarism and whose greatest technological feat was the spear.
“Confessor Adrieu is outside; he wishes an audience with you,” the girl said in perfect, if accented, Common. Had the Ascendancy not come to her world, she would probably have been dead by now. Killed by a predator, frozen in a freak blizzard, starved or fallen ill. Now Tashita would live for over three hundred years, she had access to the finest medical care in the galaxy, an education – a life beyond simple subsistence. Her people had been delivered from the Stone Age to enlightenment. That was what the Ascendancy brought to its worlds. Literacy, spirituality, technology. Order.
Like Tashita, Killian knew the truth of what the Ascendancy offered.
Born in the crèches of Curis Kino, the young woman had started life as a pleasure slave, denied the simplest dignity of all: a name. She’d only been a number to the Kinoan breeders. Her lineage, 14B/177oT, was meant for the aristocracy – she wasn’t simply an armful of fluff to be chained to the bed. 14Bs were bred to be graceful, poised and elegant. Something to be taken to the functions of high society on their owner’s arm, to be able to converse with the elite and blend in as the perfect accessory to an aristocrat’s lifestyle. That was what 14B/177oT-19-83-a4 had been created for.
Killian, tall and refined, with her high, delicate cheekbones, arctic blue eyes and cultured dialect, could have passed for a noblewoman on any of ten thousand planets. That was, of course, why all of Curis Kinos’s slaves were branded. No scars or tattoos to mar her alabaster skin and bring her price down; her breeders had infected her with a nanomesh implant at birth. Upon detecting any sort of scan, the tiny machines would coalesce into a branding mark, spreading over her flesh as their interlinked systems fed her registration to the sensor apparatus, marking her as property. Expensive property, but property nonetheless.
That had changed when the day she’d met the young Taratolan with eyes like hers.
Not a slave, he had been welcomed to her master’s house as an equal, but Killian had seen the fear in her owner’s eyes throughout that meeting and his jealousy every time the young man had looked at or even spoken to her. Nobody spoke to a slave unless it was to give orders, but the visitor had had none of those.
When he had left, she had found herself curious, wanting to see him again.
She had.
Killian sighed, her disaffection not directed at her stewardess. “Please, send him in.”
Tashita bowed graciously and slipped back out the door, giving Helfer a moment to compose herself, smoothing the black pseudoleather of her uniform out.
Confessor Abdul Adrieu entered her office, bowing respectfully to Killian. Unlike many within the Ascendancy’s aristocracy, Adrieu was not given to garish ostentations. He believed that it was his words and actions, not his appearance, that mattered. It was why the Warlord and Killian liked him. “General.”
“Confessor. Please, be seated.”
There was no official faith of the Ascendancy; all peoples and religions were welcomed. But there was more then a hint of religion to the message that they brought and Confessors were its chaplains, its preachers and ayatollahs. Killian didn’t know how she felt about this deification of the cause; she knew how the Warlord felt about it, passing it off as nothing but a vein of ‘hero worship’. For all he had done, he could be obtuse about certain things. Heroes get other people killed, my lord. Saviours reshape the universe.
It was not a hero that had come to her that night and given her the one thing she’d never had.
“Thank you, general. I understand you have elected not to make an appearance this afternoon.”
“No.”
“I think you should re-consider that decision,” Adrieu offered. From anyone else, that could have been a threat, but from the plain-spoken nobleman it was simply a statement of fact.
Killian called up files on her computer, leaning back in her chair. “This situation requires my complete attention, confessor. I can’t put on a show for the masses, not while-”
“With respect general – that is exactly what you should do.”
The young woman blinked in surprise. “How can you say that?”
“As Swift Heron pointed out earlier, it its imperative that we let no sign of this… incident become public knowledge. Secrecy, as well as normalcy, are our watchwords during this crisis. Our enemies cannot know what has happened, or they will take advantage of our weakness. Until he is found, we are not safe. It is thus imperative that we continue to act as though things are normal.” He pointed a finger at Killian. “You are the promulgator of the faith, my lady. It was your voice that was heard across space before any of us were here, your words that have touched the lives of billions, your conviction that had converted worlds. If you were to shun your appearance, many would wonder why.”
Killian let out a long dissatisfied hiss. “And that is something that we cannot have.” She looked longingly back at her computer. The Agassi Sector still required her attention, as did several of the sieges against the remaining Qatarii worlds. But Abdul was right. “Very well,” she said. “I will be there.”
“Thank you, my lady.”
~
The governmental palace upon Midgard was a paltry thing, barely three stories tall. Its main balcony overlooked a square that could hold no more than ten thousand people at once. Killian had given sermons to crowds numbering in the millions. It hardly seemed worth her time, but Adrieu was right – nothing could appear amiss. Midgard was a planet with a people rooted in practicality, though they had a yearning to take their place amongst the galactic stage and resentment towards the richer planets and star nations. To that end, she had chosen what Alexander had called her ‘street fighting’ clothes; a simple dark brown leather top and pants. Paramilitary in appearance, but not her uniform, nor bedecked with her rank bars. Utilitarian and stylish but not grandiose.
The general stepped out onto the polished marble of the balcony, raising her hands to the crowd. Though she appeared exposed, the balcony was protected by a shield; nothing short of artillery would be able to breach it. As they caught sight of her, the new converts roared, a shuddering wave of sound and emotion that surged through the city’s streets. Killian was the Warlord’s right hand, the mistress of his Second Fleet, commander of his ground forces, his inquisitor and the public voice of the Ascendancy. “People of Midgard,” she began as the crowd quieted, her voice amplified and rolling over the crowd as flatscreens mounted on nearby buildings broadcast her image to those too far away to see her. “Thank you for your welcome. Thank you for being here, for having the strength of mind, the conviction, to see the truth. The Ascendancy has come to your world, not as conquerors, but as missionaries. It is our faith, our truth, that we wish to share with you.”
The crowd cheered louder.
“The truth of the universe is this: there is order and there is chaos. This is a galaxy beset by chaos. You know this,” she pointed to the throngs filling the park. “You have seen it, witnessed it firsthand. Wars rage out of control across our homelands. The great empires stand untouchable and uncaring of the suffering of those beneath them as plundering hordes move from one world to the next, taking everything and leaving nothing but blood and rubble behind. Unchecked megacorporations rape weaker civilizations of everything of value, their navies crushing away freedom, grinding away hope in the search for their own enrichment. Pirates and raiders cross the stars, leaving death and destruction in their wake. The Reqiuem, the Imperium, the Federation – where are they? Where are they when orphaned children cry? When women and men beg for mercy? Where are they? This is chaos, a galaxy aflame. Madness.
“You have seen it. The Qatarii stole from you. They stole from you for years, trading their ‘protection’ for your crops. Your blood and sweat and that of your children. And what did they give to you in return? A handful of obsolete factories and trinkets for which they had no other use. They thought of you as a vassal world in fact, if not in name. But where were they? Where were the Qatarii when Dresil Fever broke out amongst your people? When Blackstar Raiders were nearing your world and the Dominate’s military was ‘occupied’. They weren’t here.
“We,” Killian pointed to herself, spreading her arms to encompass the crowd, the Faceless on the ground and their ships high above. “Are here now. Many call us invaders. Conquerors. Monsters. But we are here and we bring order. The worlds in our wake are under our protection, their citizens fighting in our armies, their industries turned to our cause. With every that world joins us, we grow stronger and you grow safer. This is our covenant. To bring order, harmony – peace – to an insane galaxy. To a universe that knows only blood, only horror.
“Our crusade blankets the stars, drawing them together in unity. The old powers, the corrupt and the fearful quake at our approach because they know what it means for them and their ways. They call us insane, say we are little better then wild dogs. Every revolution has been challenged, disregarded and dismissed. But we know that we are right, that we are just and that our actions will blaze a trail across the stars for all time! Future generations will look upon us, look upon you and this day and they will remember that it was a day of days, when another world chose to follow the Warlord’s will and change history.
“It is not an easy task; we are feared and hated by those opposed to change, by those that would rather clutch onto their own decaying power then turn to their fellows and say ‘I can make a better world.’ Our sword and shield, our Fleets and Army swell every day, with every convert. Every Ascendant soldier began as someone else, their pasts wiped clean the moment they stood up, choosing to believe in order. In a better world. Convert to Ascendancy and you will know what it means to be part of something great and grand, to fight and ensure a future for you and your people. This is what we offer, this is our truth. We ask much, but we deliver much.
“Follow Ascendancy. Let us show you what it means to pit your will against that of the universe, to remold it into something sane. Not only for ourselves but for our descendants. People of Midgard, are you Ascendant? Are you soldiers of the Warlord? Will you fight, to take yourselves to the threshold and beyond, or will you lie down in the dust?”
“Threshold!” The crowd screamed. “Take us to the threshold!”
“To the Threshold!” Killian shouted in response, raising her fist into the air. She could almost feel the Warlord smile upon her. “In the Warlord’s name!”
“In the Warlord’s name!”
Sugar, snips, spice and screams: What are little girls made of, made of? What are little boys made of, made of?
"...even posthuman tattooed pigmentless sexy killing machines can be vulnerable and need cuddling." - Shroom Man 777