In my first year of reign, I besieged and conquered Babylon.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

(This is a crossover concept of Babylon 5, Forever Knight, and Highlander, based on an RPG I did a long time ago. If enough people are interested in seeing more of it, based on this introductory piece, I will write more.)



I trod on the neck of the King of Babylon like a steppu-stool, and received the officers of the temple of Marduk before me in chains, making supplication to me. I took from Babylon ten talents of gold and a thousand talents of silver. I took the gods of Babylon, and placed them in the house of Ashur. I overthrew the King of Babylon, and placed on his throne the lowliest of my slaves.


Emi Nokumura gagged again as she looked around the crew quarters of the sublight freighter they'd recovered on its arrival to Deimos station. There's nothing to explain this kind of.. God...

"Inspector, we've scanned every section of the ship," Joshua Fernandez reported quietly, containing himself at the sight of the grusome ripped throats and sprayed blood, the torn bodies of the crew. He turned away, unable to look any longer.

They both left, then, silently, without any prompting required. "Go ahead, Josh," Emi shivered.

"Okay. Inspector--let's put it this way. There was nobody else on this ship. There's no DNA traces except for those we've confirmed to the crew. Everyone is dead, and we don't have any sign of a murder-suicide here."

"There's nothing out of the ordinary? Except for, of course, this massacre of nineteen people?"

Joshua nodded tightly, as the two walked carefully, but not in the affirmative--the docking bays of Deimos station were only at one-half rotation gravity. And now Emi was intent on him, wondering what the exception could be. "Nothing.. Except for one thing. And that's a pretty damn big thing, too. I'm not even sure I should be talking about it here."

The short Japanese woman's eyes narrowed. "Well, hell, somebody needs to know. Just spit it out."

"There's a nuclear device on board the ship." Joshua whispered, hesitant.

"WHAT?" Emi looked like she was very, very annoyed, clearly thinking it some kind of sick joke initially. And then the colour began to drain from her face as she realized it had to be the truth.

"Shh. Ma'am, this is serious." Joshua stuttered onward, trying to get a grip on himself for that matter: "We're not sure yet. I.. I thought I should tell you right now so you can notify the local authorities. It clearly wasn't something they were carrying intentionally.. I'm almost sure it's inactive. They probably didn't even know what it is... You see, it's in a piece of space junk which they seem to have collected on the run in. An old satellite nose-cone; it looks to be from the 20th century, Russia, from the markings--I have a working knowledge of cryllic script for Russian, and the manufacturing date was 1990. The device seems integrated into the launching satellite, I'm not sure how, though it seems to be an orbital mine, with a reentry shield."

"Shit. They recovered that, then, for salvage.. And then they all died? Sure as hell not from radiation poisoning.." Emi took a deep breath. "This is way over our pay grade. We've got to alert the station commander immediately and take steps to lock down this whole sector." She took off, and Joshua followed, for the entrance to the ship. As she reached it, she saw the guards just standing there--sort of blank faced. Not taking the situation seriously at all. Slack-jawed and distracted as though they were exceptionally tired, and very, very unprofessional for them to be slacking off on a duty of this importance.

"We've got a priority one here!" Emi snapped. The men jerked up, embarassed and confused all at once.

"Take your posts seriously, dammit, or I'll have your heads for it. We've got a very, very serious situation on this ship." She growled at the embarrassed guards, who seem confused at their own behaviour, with a surprising fire from such a short lady, striding past them.

All hell was about to break loose, she could feel it, but Emi didn't have a clue where.

****************

Lieutenant Rochelle Kadish now had to find a place to stay for the night. For some reason, the station was under lockdown--she had no idea why, nor did anyone else--and it was quite possibly going to delay her arrival at Babylon 5 for a day, if not two, which could make her late in reporting to duty.... Legitimately late, but still late, and it wouldn't look good at all on her records. She didn't need that now but she didn't really have a choice about it, either, and it was just another worry on top of everything else..

..All of these thoughts were churning through her head as she reached, at last, the counter of one of the five chinzy hotels on the Deimos Station, which was very small, though at least oriented to travelers. Nothing like the great mass of Babylon 5, to which, after the Late Unpleasantness, she had been dutifully assigned. She was excited, and naturally that meant she was going to have to wait, and do some explaining when she got there, since nothing one was excited about ever worked out right. Isn't that always the damned way that it goes?

"Hey, lady, whatcha doin' here? Do you want a room for the night?"

"Yeah, just a room for the night," she affirmed to the question, looking a bit annoyed that the man would refer to her as 'hey lady', but then he was probably a Martian and more than a bit anti-government.

"One eighty," the man, who was the manager, replied immediately with a faint smirk.

"One eighty? For a single night night?"

"Demand's high," he smirked back even more blatantly, mostly because she had to know there was no way to get out of it.

Rochelle sighed, and handed over a credit chit. There goes booze for the next month, and any fancy eating on the ride to the station for that matter. G-d hates me.. She made a point of always imagining "God" as G-d, just as a self-amusement to her Jewish background, despite being quite atheistic.

The chit was confirmed, the electronic keys were handed over, she signed her name and had her thumb scanned for the anti-fraud records, the usual measures in all which she'd done a hundred times before.

"Have a good evening, Lieutenant," the last word was sneered out with unmasked contempt.

"Thanks, buddy," she muttered--very ungraciously in kind, of course--and started for her room down the dark corridors of the hotel sector.

The person who followed her into the hotel lobby, quite unobtrusively and unnoticed, was very short, with dark skin that seemed to have become unnaturally pallid. Her eyes were dark brown, and she had long wavy hair, unkempt down to her knees, yet none of this seemed strange. Smiling vaguely, she paused by the counter, at which point it was clear she was dressed weirdly in men's clothing to large for her and a very long greatcoat, but yet it wasn't bothering, or strange. Indeed, nobody around her seemed to notice that she was unusual in any way, not even the manager right in front of her.

She spoke with a very strange accent, though distinctly semitic. "That woman in uniform was a military officer, yes? Of the navy?"

"Yeah, Earthforce, the bitch," the manager replied automatically to the woman, not realizing that she was there.. Or what he was being asked by her, really. He didn't realize anything at all, except that it was Very Important to answer her questions as she looked directly into his eyes with a stare that he could not avoid.

"What room did she go to?" The woman asked next, the question coming calmly and easily and bringing forth a response, as it always had.

"Room Sixteen fifty-two," he answered promptly. Maybe even obediently.

"You never saw me. I don't exist." She turned and started in to follow her target. The manager went back to his business as though, indeed, she had never been there.

*****************

Poor Rochelle Kadish never knew what hit her when the woman arrived.

The door had chimed, indicating someone was there, and she went to it with some real frustration, having just wanted to take a hot bath and get some sleep. Probably the manager trying to sell me something I don't need, or just insult me for being Earth Force again..

The door opened at her behest, and she was ready to argue with the manager from the start. But she stopped short. He wasn't there. A strange woman was standing there instead, scarcely five feet in height--a foot shorter than Rochelle--yet with an incredible, ornate beauty about her, and an indeterminate age, even in the ratty melange of clothes that she wore and with her long and tangled hair.

Rochelle squinted, and frowned. "Who the hell are you?"

"You'll find out soon enough." The woman simply stepped inside after that, uninvited.

Impulsively, in the grip of a sudden fear, Rochelle stepped back.. The doors closed automatically, and the two were alone.

Then the woman simply lunged. It was an impossible move, defying the station's gravity, and caught her completely off balance, and then they were on the floor together and she struggled, but there was enormous strength in that little body, and she struggled more and it was useless....

FANGS!?

They snapped like metal into her neck, and as her arterial blood pumped out into the mouth of the creature, the creature that hungrily fed from her as it held her down and agonizingly reduced her to nothing, Rochelle's last thoughts as she struggled till she fell limp was that she had least managed not to scream when she died... A silly and crazy sentiment, but enough for her. Her last concrete memory as she died was of a bloody wrist held to her mouth, strange, insensible, and crazy. She sucked in a desperate breath when that bloody wrist covered her mouth, oh yes, and felt the tang of strange blood... Then nothing. Nothing at all.

...A while later she woke up with a hungry rush of need coursing through her. She didn't know how long it had been. She couldn't. She should be dead. There was a third person in the room, bound, some interplanetary drifter, probably, looking every bit the transient. Looking every bit like a very good meal.

Rochelle lunged at him out of pure instinct, as she herself had been lunged at herself the day before. He tried to scream, but the was gagged as well as bound. Soon enough, pinning him to the ground and sprawled over the knocked-over chair, her new-budded fangs slide out and she attacked in desperate hunger, biting in hard to his bare neck and tearing and drinking--he was going to die, he was fated to, and she drank greedily and hungrily to survive, and to kill.

About fifteen minutes later, she toppled away from the exsanguinated corpse, utterly full, utterly satied, and rather exhausted from the act. Confused, stunned, and a bit crazed. In response, the short and almost dapper woman--now finally dressed in black trousers, plunging blouse, and ankle-length woman's black coat--stepped over to her, face harbouring no amusement, at least, and instead perhaps even some real sympathy.

"I'm sorry, my daughter. But it had to be this way--and now, at any rate, you are part of a select club of power and age. Possibly it is just the two of us who survive. And possibly not."

A wry smile was allowed, and a hand was offered to help Rochelle up, which was accepted rather automatically. "For the moment, however, it is going to be I who is asking the questions of you. After that, you can ask what you want, and I will explain what you need to know; we have plenty of time."

Rochelle looked in confused shock from the man she'd just killed and then back to the creature, so obviously a woman and yet not, and back to the corpse, realizing she had been irrevocably changed, and horrified because of what it meant. Then, more realizing dawned.. my heart isn't beating! came a wail of despair from inside. It was like a mad dream, something impossible, but now all to real.

The next question brought with it forcible clarity, as though it was impressed upon her, even though it was so simple, and as mad as everything else. Indeed, it had been impressed upon her, and she was as helpless as a kitten before the woman's demands.

"Let's start with you telling me what year it is, my daughter, and we'll go from there. It's as good a place to start as any." She pulled the two of them down onto the bed, and waited for Rochelle to speak in reply.

[The Grim Squeaker]

Hmm, looks interesting (Though I'd never heard of FN before googling it 5 minutes ago). I do wonder when we'll see a "living" Immortal pop up, as a foil? (Unless its one of the Kurgan's ilk, in which case he'd probably consider blood a condiment to his old customs ).

[Enigma]

Hmm, looks interesting (Though I'd never heard of FN before googling it 5 minutes ago). I do wonder when we'll see a "living" Immortal pop up, as a foil? (Unless its one of the Kurgan's ilk, in which case he'd probably consider blood a condiment to his old customs ).

A thought just went through my head. Could a vampire "turn" an immortal?

[Alan Bolte]

Well, I'm too unclear on where you're going with this to not want to see at least another chapter or two.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

A thought just went through my head. Could a vampire "turn" an immortal?

No, I can say that for the record it's not possible.

[Eris]

Space Vampires!

I wish I could say something more enlightened or witty than that, but I'm afraid I don't have much familiarity with the source materials, having had very minimal contact with Bab 5 and Highlander, and never even having heard of Forever Knight to begin with.

Still, I'm having fun with it thusfar. I would certainly read any further material that was written. If nothing else, there's a serious dearth of good female protagonists in SF that I always like seeing fixed.

[Kuja]

*leans back in a nice, comfortable chair, a glass of something that might be wine in his hand and grins slowly*

Excellent.

[Phantasee]

I've never watched more than a handful of episodes of Babylon 5 either, and Highlander I only saw a couple dozen episodes of the series.

However, you've done such a good job writing this that I could read it and follow it. Excellent, indeed.

[Adrian Laguna]

A thought just went through my head. Could a vampire "turn" an immortal?

No, I can say that for the record it's not possible.

Probably because the "turning" involves killing the person, and the only way to kill and immortal leaves a corpse unsuitable for vampirization.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

"Two thousand, two hundred, and sixty-two of the Common Era," the short woman sighed, baring her fangs again in a reflexive, unrestrained gesture, as she continued to pace as she had over the whole period of her viciously intense questioning of Rochelle Kadish. "So I have spent two hundred and sixty-three years drifting in the void."

"Nineteen ninety-nine?" Rochelle asked, forcing the air into her lungs as she had the whole time to stutter out the question. "That long? You must not know, well, anything. Not about telepaths or..." Even Rochelle froze at that moment. "Oh fuck we're screwed. The moment a telepath finds out we're going to be brought in and probably experimented upon."

"Soothsayers and mind-readers have never been a concern for my race before," the woman answered reassuringly. "There is only one other immortal race, and only they have posed a challenge to me before. A final question, then--do you know what The Game is?"

"No."

"Then it's probably still going on," she shrugged and walked over to the bed, frowning. "So why are you still scared of these psychics."

"Ma'am, whomever the hell you are, they're real. They're not soothsayers, they can really read every part of your mind. They'll see your entire existence and mine too, they'll know exactly what I did to that bum and what you've probably done to others like him before and..."

"Can they read the minds of the dead, like necromancers divining the secrets of those beyond the grave?" The question was a demand in the bond between the two of them.

"N-no, not that."

"Then we have nothing to fear from them, though they may well see through the hypnotic devices by which we may conceal ourselves. That means that we must feed off the drugged, for the short term at least, or else kill every single person that we encounter along the way. You are weak and young, so especially the very finest of drugs, like hashish and refined opiates and so on will have a pronounced effect on you in their blood, but I will be able to control it with measured effort--and if they are investigated by these psychics, their knowledge will then be dismissed as the ramblings of a destroyed mind. This will give us all the cover that we could ever need."

"We're really dead, then?"

"Yes, Rochelle, we're really dead," the woman laughed softly, laced with some deeper, more hideous emotions that strangely no longer scared her. "It's a fair bit better than rotting in the grave, however, I would like to say to you. There is no hope in that sort of death. But I have, as you may observe, spent more than a quarter of a millennia sleeping in the cold bosom of a Proton rocket. I will, as always, survive in the fashion in which we live. Do you complain? Or would you rather see your young life ended when this entire universe is open to us? When these Vorlons and Shadows you speak of have been flung beyond, leaving us the powers of the universe? We shall, in the shadows, outlast humanity itself, with fortune. And perhaps we shall dominate it, as I almost succeeded in doing on several prior occasions."

"Almost ruled humanity..." Rochelle squirmed uncomfortably, trying to imagine when such a thing could have happened. This creature was certainly in no history books, but she thought of the Proton rocket, the chaotic times at the end of the 20th century, and shuddered. What do those books leave out? What did she do in that period? What did she do before it?

"Yes. The last time around, I was in the processing of putting up my nuclear arsenal into orbit with the help of some unscrupulous and easily controlled corrupt Russian officers. Then I would have taken control of the Russian Federation, and proceeded apace to take advantage of things," she concluded with a soft and satisfied look on her face. She had that odd skin of someone who hadn't seen the sun in eternity but was from a generally darker-skinned ethnicity, and a nose... Well, not unlike that of Rochelle herself.

She was semitic, but that could mean many things indeed. The eyes, though, were dark pools of incredible strength and charisma that boiled through her, and those, Rochelle remained entranced to, even as she was terrified and vaguely aware that she was being controlled into her responses in some respects. Even at those thoughts, the woman smiled gently, turned about, and with a flourish stepped to the far side of the room, and spun herself back, a slight grin touching her lips.

"Here stands Shammuramat, Queen of Queens of Assyria, a daughter of Babylon sold to slavery by her, and raised from a concubine to the favoured wife of Shamshi-Adad the Fifth, Conqueror of all the lands of Syria and Mesopotamia. On his death, regent for an infant boy, and when this impetuous son of mine presumed challenge me.." She bared her fangs once more. "Ruling in her own right after that for three years against all custom, against the desires of the gods and the court, by pure skill, the founder of Shamiramagerd that you may know as the city of Van in Turkey, conqueror of low Babylon who sold her those years before, and thrown down not by conspiracy--but by the vampire who gave me immortality. I have spent my life, as it is, pitting my willing against all opposition and overcoming it. In the meanwhile, I gathered something of a reputation in your history, or a least myth.

"I believe you might know me, as a matter of fact, as Semiramis, Queen of Assyria. And you, dear Rochelle Kadish, are my daughter, for me to guide and love and teach in this strange unlife of our's. But also for you to serve me, and remember that well, that I can compel your obedience on my whim, and will if you try to stand in my way, for I will not be denied when I have survived a longer count than three thousand years, and see my life as only just beginning. No, no, you will learn you place--and in exchange, I will love you as a mother does a daughter, and see to it that you sit at my right hand when I trod on the necks of my enemies."

"I don't precisely have much of a choice, do I?" Rochelle sucked in her breath as she assessed that Shammuramat was largely telling the truth. There seemed to be precious little reason for her not to at this point, with her own position.. Somewhat irritatingly seeming to be like a slave.

"Not very much, no. But I will take care of you." She walked closer and settled onto the bed with her victim, of a sort, grabbing the taller woman into a hug that nonetheless was not kind but rather demanding as she leaned in close, and whispered, very softly: "Don't you realize that you have my blood in you now? And that blood is the sacred cause of all my power. I would no more betray or harm you than I would one of my own limbs."

"Then where are the rest of your children..?" Rochelle dared, and for the first time, seemed to strike regret.

"I am not invincible. Enforcers who opposed my aims; several treacherous whores of lower blood who acted against me on their own initiative instead of staying clear as their elders had commanded... And of course the Immortals. There were two of them, unkillable except by decapitation, on whom no hypnotic tricks will avail you, and the finest swordsmen in all of history, because the fighting with swords is their game, to kill each other, until only one is left. And so there are maybe many, or maybe just one. But our first goal will be to neutralize the Immortals. Then we neutralize the Enforcers, if they, and the rest of my kind still exist. And then...

"Really, we do whatever we want."

[Master_Baerne]

Brilliant as usual, Your Grace.

[Junghalli]

Poor sods made a mistake to leave that rocket orbiting inside the solar system. Let that be a lesson: when you really, really, really want to get rid of something really nasty forever, it pays to invest a little extra and chuck it into the sun. It's the only way to be sure.

[Coalition]

Looks like a nice story so far. I am looking forward to more.

(ad at the bottom is for Canadian Legal Wills. How did that get picked up)

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Poor sods made a mistake to leave that rocket orbiting inside the solar system. Let that be a lesson: when you really, really, really want to get rid of something really nasty forever, it pays to invest a little extra and chuck it into the sun. It's the only way to be sure.

Actually, she wasn't shot into space intentionally--she escaped on it. Basically having been defeated and unable to leave the launching pad in time to avoid being incinerated if she were anywhere else, she locked herself into the nose cone at the last minute and took her chances with it.

[Adrian Laguna]

Actually, she wasn't shot into space intentionally--she escaped on it. Basically having been defeated and unable to leave the launching pad in time to avoid being incinerated if she were anywhere else, she locked herself into the nose cone at the last minute and took her chances with it.

That's pretty badass. She's lucky she's a vampire though, they can hibernate, if nobody rescues the pod before the heat death of the universe it's only unfortunate. An immortal in the same situation... I think I would have taken incineration.

[Stuart Mackey]

Mmm, goodness, postum more

[The Duchess of Zeon]

"Lieutenant Kadish, welcome aboard Babylon 5," Captain Lochley offered to the surprisingly pallid young Jewish woman before her (apparently she'd stayed indoors mostly since her last personnel photo update). Israeli background, and with a very fine service record, she was part of Earthforce's personnel transfers toward the goal of making Babylon 5's crew somewhat of a semblence of a professional force again, and not the collection of mutineers it was still largely seen as.

The salute, offered, Rochelle Kadish graciously returned after she'd reported for duty, following the long voyage in close quarters with Semiramis, as she'd come to think of Shammuramat. Or just Semira; at least her mistress was remarkably open-minded about what people called her, and for the moment she'd settled on Sophia von Reinstedt, apparently a faux personality of her's which she'd kept numerous secreted bank accounts in which were still active despite her centuries of absence, and which had allowed her to secure ID documents before leaving the Mars Orbitals.

"That you Captain. It's a pleasure to be part of the team at this storied place, and to bring it back under full Alliance administration."

There were a few backs stiffened at that, but the attitude was to be expected from the new arrivals, so not that much.

"Well, we're all trying to work equitably within the new arrangements, Lieutenant. You'll start on regular assignments the day after tomorrow in the bay operations control duty roster. We operate on three eight-hour watches and you're scheduled for the night watch."

"I sort of expected it, Sir." And now, while I have the chance. "I do have a special request, however."

Lochley's expression shifted fractionally. "Go ahead, Lieutenant."

"Ah, I need a quarters reassignment for a couple, Sir. At the last moment my new girlfriend," she really, really wanted to blush when she said that, being straight, "decided to accompany me."

"Oh. Well, if that's the only thing that we needed to deal with around here, the days would be a lot less interesting. I'll go ahead and arrange it. Do you have her data with you?"

"Yes, Sir." Rochelle handed the chip over. That was really the moment of truth for how seamlessly this deception would operate for them all. They could be in a lot of trouble, very rapidly, if it didn't work, and Rochelle wasn't really that interested in having herself torn apart by psi-corps in her twenties, even if being a vampire wasn't what she'd been looking forward to, either. Nor is taking over the world, but with luck I can shake Semira and settle down to some obscurely happy life somewhere within a few decades. Or I'll be dragged along to her success... The bond influenced her to much; she knew that she couldn't escape it, and self-preservation demanded some effort at living anyway.

"Hmm. Von Reinstedt? Interesting name."

"She comes from a family of Jewish converts to Catholicism from Bavaria, a very old lineage, Sir. Speaking of which, she's a professor of history.."

"Yes, I see, adjunct faculty at the University of Trier. Well, there's plenty of civilian education needed on the station so I don't see why she'd be a burden on military service command, so of course we can assign you to shared quarters."

Rochelle avoided a sigh of relief primarily by not normally breathing except when forced, in the first place. "Thank you, Sir."

"Oh, I've got the duty station packet for you, so don't thank me yet, Lieutenant." Lochley smiled and handed over the booklet before summoning up an enlisted officer to show her to her quarters. Rochelle's relief on leaving was virtually palatable, though a vague sense inside of herself coming from Semira kept it from being more apparent. Once she'd received the combinations to the room and had a chance to get inside, though, she immediately contacted Semira.

"Sophia?"

"Yes, dear?" The soft voice seemed unconcerned. "Everything has gone well, yes?"

"It has. Ah.. Uhm, are you alright?"

"Oh yes. This station is... Just an interesting place, that's all. I'll be down momentarily. Take care, my dear."

Rochelle thought she was flushing, until she remembered that she couldn't anymore; oh well. It made pretending to be a lesbian easier, after all, and at the moment, the less friction the better. There were still so many things that she did not understand, and Semiramis was at times unduly reticent.

She did however arrive soon enough, carrying a new leather handbag and looking as content as she'd promised, a cart pushed by a local service staffer coming behind her with their luggage--well, Rochelle's and a bag of clothes that the Assyrian had cobbled together in Mars orbit. Semira tipped the man extravagantly and indulgently ignored his "Thanks, lady!" as he left on unloading it. Then, the doors were closed.

The next part made Rochelle wonder just precisely how consideration Semiramis' mind powers were, seeing as she pulled a very sophisticated Centauri surveillance scanner out of that new handbag and silently went over the room. How did she even know to do that? Let alone operate it?

"'The room has been swept for bugs' was a staple statement of spy fiction even in the nineteen-fifties, let alone the later decades of the twentieth century, my dear," Semira observed with a hint of frown. "I had the best advisors, and frankly, teachers, that the former KGB could produce in my own time, and adapting to your technology is not as hard as it seems, especially when receiving more than a few pointers from the person I obtained the device from."

"Stealing from the local black market here isn't wise.."

"Oh, he was a Centauri first of all, and second of all, I paid for it. I have full access to my accounts now, which are numbered in some hundreds of millions of whatever currency you happen to use at present--I could not really care to remember--the crucial thing being that the money is there. Compounding interest is, you know, a rather beautiful thing." She smiled and headed over to the computer terminal, murmuring, "well, we'll redecorate at some point, but for now.. We're clear of bugs. And I'll sweep daily, being for the moment the housewife of the two of us."

"Housewife of the two of us.." Rochelle laughed a bit. "Oh wow, that seems so odd, presently. I mean, aren't we both straight?"

"The obsession of younglings with sex is amusing," Semira's face quirked into a dangerous smile. "I have had numerous male lovers; mortal, vampire, and, in one case, immortal...."

"I thought you wanted them exterminated!?"

"I do. He's dead. The others I could care less about." She shrugged and turned back to the screen, having been acclimated to the primitive computers of her own age, apparently. "The ironic thing is that of those lovers, he was one of the very few I felt genuine affection for. Ah, well. The Game winnows, but we are made to be survivors instead, true immortals in spirit rather than merely body. And one of the first things you should learn in that life is that the sex of your victims and your vampiric lovers is irrelevant. Men, certainly, if you wish to take mortal lovers my dear, are certainly preferable; but pleasure... Is pleasure." Without further explanation, she gestured, and forced Rochelle to draw closer to her by the ineluctable bond that brought them together.

"Are you going to rape me?!" Rochelle shrieked as she quivered, and found herself stepping closer anyway.

Semiramis looked for a long moment and blinked hard. "...I. A fair enough objection." The hand tossed lazily to the side and the eyes relented. Rochelle turned away in shuddering relief. She had not believed it was possible to defy Semiramis, and yet she had. It was a vital lesson which she could only hope to carry forward in the future. At the same time, she couldn't risk alienating Semiramis when she was like this.

"Well..."

"Don't just stand there with your mouth open," the old Assyrian answered without turning her head behind her. "Explain yourself."

"Can you tell me what you mean, instead of forcing me to have sex with you as a means of demonstrating it?"

"Yes, though it is not quite the same thing."

"Nobody learns about sex by havin..."

"And there, my little insolent daughter, you are wrong. In my age, all women learned about sex by having it, frequently against their will. Myself included. If you are going to be so impertinent, I will teach you the same way I was taught. Do you want that?"

Oh god. I should have thought about it or realized or... It's so impossible to think that she really was raised like that, I mean, that she's three thousand years old and... "I'm sorry." Her voice rasped, dry. "You're right, Shammuramat," she offered formally, breaking their cover for a moment, "I know nothing of the past in which you were raised, and I apologize for making assumptions to cover my ignorance. I'd ask that you enlighten me, just like I'd hope you enlighten me about this.. Other sort of sex."

The Assyrian turned, smiling and yawning lazily and letting her fangs slip down in all their powerful and dangerous glory, eyes red. "Interestingly, I've already had sex with you, after a fashion. It was just not satiated; the drinking of blood, you see, is an erotic act, our fangs sensitive, erogenous in the extreme. The sharing of blood through the fangs, however, provides the very height of pleasure between two vampires. And it's really not a sex specific act; I assure you that you'd enjoy it just as much with me as with anyone else; and it doesn't denote anything more than pleasure, and closeness..."

"You said you'd treat me like a daughter..." Rochelle took a needless breath, her thoughts extending out to an uncertain future. "That means having sex with me?"

"Among our people? Yes. Hmmm, so moral, my dear, so mundane and middle-class, ah, bourgeoisie of you, I believe it is, yes. You could use a few years in the Court of Nineveh to broaden your perspectives; alas, it is long dead." Her eyes returned to normal as the fangs retracted, and she stood up in the height of her confidence. For such a short and somewhat dumpy semitic woman, she could be terrifyingly seductive in the way of a great ruler; her body exuded confidence. "I am, of course, not..."

"..And the taste of memories can be shared through blood." She slipped without another word into the embrace of the frozen Rochelle.

"Later, please? God, Your--Your Majesty.. Please, you've changed my entire existence already. I'm immortal. Give me time?!" The words trailed off into the weeping of bloody tears.

"Shammuramat. No need for anything more, my dear." The elder vampire held her child in the embrace, and did not press further. "I will give you the time you need--I promise. We both have enough of it, true enough, and there are more important things to be done anyway. You are mine... And I will take good care of you on this account."

************************************************

"Rebecca. It's been a damned long time." A pale figure smiled happily across at the short, young woman and the tall, charmingly rugged man next to her. The pale figure, though, was dressed seriously in the uniform of an Earth Alliance military intelligence officer with the rank of Lieutenant Commander, though the very long black leather duster was distinctly non-regulation, yet ignored.

"Michelle," she answered, adjusting her long trenchcoat, which was not dissimilar from the one that her husband Eric wore. "I see you're doing pretty well, and I want the name of that coat's brand--I always need more and that's really well made--but this is clearly a business meeting."

"The most important business meeting we've had since I had too many beers in Toronto and someone shot you in a convenience store robbery," Michelle agreed with a dry laugh. The section of the restaurant they were in was walled off, and swept for bugs, anyway.

"Oh God." Eric's face sunk into a dark frown. "When you were a youngling and Becca had just had her first death..."

"Yes. No worse timing for it, either, with the government still recovering. And we all know that she plays for keeps at the level of governments, too." Michelle sat gingerly, and brushed her duster back--showing off the heavy infantry officer's sabre she kept under it, supposedly a family heirloom--as she took a manila folder out of where she'd tucked it under her left arm and tossed it onto the table. She'd started carrying one several hundred years ago when she'd fought alongside Becca and Eric, but had only used it twice since to kill, and only one of those times had been against an Immortal. It was useful, though; the bastard had not expected someone he thought was another mortal to be carrying, and had certainly not expected her speed.

Since the events of that age, though, knowledge of the two communities had increased until both were largely aware of the other, and with it, came definite hostility and occasional cooperation. Michelle and her childhood friend were the largest conduit of cooperation, and it had all been based in the war they'd fought in 1999 to stop the vampire Semiramis and her husband or lover, the immortal Mesoamerican warlord Nace el Fuego. Eric had taken his head in combat; Semiramis had afterwards made one last gamble for genuine political power over the world, and on its failing, had rode her rocket to the stars, gambling again for survival over incineration.

Becca and Eric looked grimly at the pictures taken inside the sublight freighter at the systematically mutilated and drained corpses of the entire crew, and then at the pictures of the Soviet rocket's nose-cone that made Becca outright gasp. "Damnit. I hoped never to see that thing again in my life. But you're right. There's no real doubt; it's not a shadow infestation. How old is this?"

"A month. The classification review board only released it after an initial summary had been provided and it was only then that I had gotten my hands on it. Thanks to its being handled by civilian security, and they've been locked the hell down after the purging of Nightwatch. The new Civil Liberties regs have basically killed all information transfer between intelligence services, damnit. She could be anywhere now."

"But will she know how to function...?" Eric asked softly. "This world is a big change from the one she last remembered, and no offense, but your people sometimes have trouble adapting over time, let alone to a massive shift."

"Power is power, Eric," Michelle answered, and smiled vaguely. They fell silent as the door was knocked on, and the waitress stepped in with appetizers and, for Michelle, the only thing she'd drink, a sweet port, and then left.

The vampire casually glanced down at the scanner she had in her lap. "We're still clean. Anyway, you're right, she should be having trouble. Not much, of course; Semiramis was a genius to get as far as she did the first time. But she can bring someone across easily enough and pump them for information. That's our avenue of investigation. We need to start stripping apart precisely what happened on that station during the lockdown period you can see took place, we need to find who was there, where they went, and even the most remotely suspicious things before the trail goes completely cold. Or else we'll find her twenty years from now taking over the Centauri or worse."

"Worse?" Becca raised an eyebrow.

"The Drakh are still out there, and we both know that the Shadow agents had far to much of an interest in my people than I'd really like to admit, though perhaps we deserve it."

"Hardly. You're the most loyal person I know..." Eric protested, but only halfheartedly. "Still, she's right, Becca, this isn't just about settling old scores.."

"I get the idea, love. This is about the most dangerous game one can play, come alive again. We need to muster every contact we have and bring the Watchers and Enforcers in on this."

"I can alert the Enforcer authorities, though they've always been enormously reluctant to act against Semiramis--I suspect she is older than even our eldest. And they terrify me, of course, even now; they're so damned unpredictable..." Michelle sighed. "I'd rather not bring them in quite yet. On the other hand, the Watchers are an intelligence network par excellence. Do you have the necessary contacts with them?"

"No..."

"...But Duncan does," Eric finished. "We'll be in touch with him shortly."

"Alright. I'll stay in regular contact with you via the usual secured channels and start working to get military intelligence involved in this because of the nuclear angle. Good luck, and stay safe. Semiramis damn near made mincemeat out of the three of us and Tabby last time around, and we just stalemated her. And let me know if you can convince the Highlander to meet with me himself; by the time you're in touch with him, there is probably some information I'll have which he'll need to know."

"Mind telling your best friend?" Becca raised her eyebrows and she frowned at the apparent reluctance of Michelle to share.

"I don't know what it is yet," Michelle offered as the only answer she would give.

[Stuart Mackey]

Very good. Nice to see the Highlander in this, I imagine he has some interesting insights after so long.

[LadyTevar]

And you have Duncan in on this. YAY!

[Steve]

Hrm, trying to remember the name of the character I was going to use in the RPG you had planned for this.

He was going to be the scion of a conservative Prussian junker family who was shot in 1945 alongside Wilhelm Canaris, having been a supporter of the Stauffenburg Bomb Plot. Save, of course, he survived.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Hrm, trying to remember the name of the character I was going to use in the RPG you had planned for this.

He was going to be the scion of a conservative Prussian junker family who was shot in 1945 alongside Wilhelm Canaris, having been a supporter of the Stauffenburg Bomb Plot. Save, of course, he survived.

Well, I always like recycling RPing ideas into stories, and this is the second iteration, considering the original events it's based off of were an RPG.

[Junghalli]

Question: could a vampire feed on and/or turn an alien, or does it just work for humans?

[Steve]

Hrm, trying to remember the name of the character I was going to use in the RPG you had planned for this.

He was going to be the scion of a conservative Prussian junker family who was shot in 1945 alongside Wilhelm Canaris, having been a supporter of the Stauffenburg Bomb Plot. Save, of course, he survived.

Well, I always like recycling RPing ideas into stories, and this is the second iteration, considering the original events it's based off of were an RPG.

Well, if you want to use my Prussian aristocrat Immortal, feel free. At one point I was going to write his intro as living on an estate in former Prussia, still part of Poland in the 23rd Century, though his Polish tenants and staff don't know his origins (he'd remark, in wry amusement, that they'd quit en masse from disgust if they knew his nationality).