“’ I am the enemy you killed, my friend.
I knew you in this dark, for so you frowned
Yesterday through me as you jabbed and killed.
I parried; but my hands were loath and cold.
Let us sleep now....’”
—Wilfred Owen, “Strange Meeting”
6 NOVEMBER, 2275 11:30:31“I’m reading a mass of dysprosium and cryogenic lithium sandwiched between two layers of tungsten-carbide/depleted uranium composite at zero degrees solar latitude by eighty-three degrees solar longitude, and 28,522 klicks inside the star ,” Sienna Kyle reported from Earth Federal Research Vessel Wanderer’s sensors and probes station,“ total thickness three meters...there’s another meter or so of lead underlying the inner Whipple armour shell, which is interfering with our scans; object is oblong in shape,, two meters long by one meter wide, massing fifteen tons.”
“Whatever the anomaly is,” remarked Wanderer’s captain, Doctor Kyla Starr, “it is definitely not natural. Pilot, take us in closer to the Sun, as close as you can to that object, withou—”
6 NOVEMBER, 2275 11:32:00
“Echo Charlie has been eliminated,” Union Star Ship Defiant’s sensor tech reported, and that made her skipper, Captain William A. Koenig, smile.
“Done, then,” the 35,500-ton Akira-class destroyer’s skipper calmly replied.
“Pilot, vector for Chalcedon, and make it quick,” he then ordered.
“Vector plotted and echoed to ship; warpfield generator spinning up, warpsail array energizing, warpsail field forming, and extending,” Lieutenant Commander John Grey reported from the piloting station at the front of Defiant’s red-lit Combat Information Center.”Warping now!”
And, the saucer, and mast hullform of the Star Fleet destroyer created the necessary mathematical conditions in local spacetime to turn itself into an imaginary mass now able to transcend the speed of light.
Until it was abruptly, violently knocked back down into normspace to the tune of a million shrieking alarms inside Koenig’s helmet, as the CIC’s red lighting and multi-function holodisplays briefly went dark, and slowly returned to normal.
“Multiple relativistic-kill vehicles inbound!” shrieked the sensor tech.”Zero by twelve point five, one-five-three kiloklicks downrange, and closing fast at—”
“Pilot, fuckin’ jink and burn, now!” Koenig ordered.”Defensive, get your thumb out of your ass, and burn those fuckin’ rocks out of my sky! Tactical, find that Earther battlewagon, and fire quantum torpedos, as soon as the tubes are loaded!”
“If the little monkey bitch wants to die that badly,” he added,”then, let’s give her what she wants.”
“...Mama?!” the thirteen-year old girl screamed, kneeling over her mama, holding her hand...she was bleeding from the ears and the mouth, her chest was all crushed, legs bent out of shape...she wasn’t moving.
“Mama,” Jami pleaded, hearing the engine roaring, tires squealing as he turned around again, “ you gotta get up, now, please, he’s comin’ back, Mama, please, please, you gotta get up!”
The roar of the gasburner’s engine grew louder, he had gotten up speed, Jami felt the headlights burning into her as he charged back down Long Street, horn blasting the first few notes of “Onward, Christian Soldiers,” into the night, he’d be on top of them any second now, out to finish what he’d started doing.
“Mama, please,” Jami sobbed,“please, get up, please get up, please—”
Hot, burning white lights bore down on them again....
...and the third deck was dark again, more alarms screaming in her head, goddamn Mid and Christnazi warbirds everywhere she looked in the flickering master holoprojector, and not one hope in hell’s chance of making it out of here alive.
“Primary and secondary electrics are burned out,” Jil shouted from the weapons station, as the 03’s red lighting and MFDs came back up, “ teritary electrics 78% disrupted, radiators one, two, five, eight through ten destroyed, internal heat now sixty degrees and still rising; auto-repair system off line, penetration in weaps deck, railgun turrets one and four knocked out...Number One...baby, I-i know you want to save as many of them as you can, we all do...but—”
“SHUT THE FUCK UP, AND RETURN FIRE!” the frightened senseless nineteen-year old woman now commanding this busted-up warbird screamed at Ariel’s weapons engineer.
“—you’re in command now,” that bitch just fucking had to remind her,“you have to think of your ship and crew as well...you’ve done all you can, you have to....”
6 NOVEMBER, 2275 11:33:06
“...battle ready, battle ready, flight crew to stations, commander to 03, at the double, commander to 03, at the double!”
Jami Lee Selkirk, pilot in command of the Earth Federal Starship Ariel, was out of her quarters, fumbling on her slate-grey No.14 flight dress, screwing on her lid, running through the strobing, red-lit crew deck, and sliding down the ladder leading to the 30,000-ton Nemesis-class main-battle starship’s red-lit third deck, before her first lieutenant had finished confirming what the fading whopwhopwhopwhopwhopwhopwhop! of the hooter had already roused her skipper out of bed over.
Besides, it wasn’t as if she’d slept soundly in the first place..
She barely acknowledged Flight Sergeant Phylicia Gaines’ “commander on deck!”, barely even heard First Lieutenant Jillian Kalsi reporting “skipper has the ship,” as she executed a jink and burn, trace nanoseconds of eight-kilograv thrust from the ship’s antimatter fusion torch almost knocking Jami’s feet out from under her, before the diamagnetics underneath the deck—set perpendicular to the ship’s thrust axis—compensated.
She reached her seat at the center of the of the five stations arranged in a semi circle at the front/top of the cramped third deck, strapped in, and glanced at the sitrep windowed in the command station’s MFD.
Ariel’s hellspace systems radar had detected a Christnazi destroyer hyping in at 9.4 teraklicks from the Sun, at the same time the Solar System’s early-warning platforms had, neither of them able to stop the bastard from firing a stable octet of saboted meson warheads into the 5,000-ton Attenborough-class survey ship, which had been the subject of a long-running BBC documentary series.
She’d been unarmed, without even point-defence railguns, and the meson warheads had gotten close enough to her hull to bypass her armor and gut her from the inside out.
The murdering sons of bitches.
“I have the ship, Number One,” Jami tersely said, the joystick controlling the RCS thrusters slapping itself into her left gauntlet, Ariel’s pilot in command programming another few nanoseconds of war emergency burn into the ship-wide AI network, as the same time she wrenched the joystick down and a bit to the left, as SMWs jumped in, shed their white-hot sabots—housing their torches and hellspace systems—and screamed toward an intercept with Ariel, Phylicia intercepting them instead with a fusillade of 20mm saboted tungsten penetrators from several of the ship’s forty rapid-firing point-defense railguns, while the eight 240mm anti-starship railguns under Lieutenant Simone Montigny’s control salvoed 24 STPs, whose one-shot antimatter torches instantly, immediately boosted them to one-half light speed, before their hellspace systems spun up and shot them toward the enemy machine at one light year per s—
The 03 went dark, more alarms howling inside her helmet, her chief flight engineer, Lieutenant Chelsey Ford, shouting from her station in the drive pit at the center of the deck,“primary electrics 72% disrupted, secondary electrics 50% disrupted, internal heat 44.5 degrees and rising!”
“Return fire!” Jami snapped, as she executed still another jink and burn.
“Hit the Christnazi bastard again!” she added, unnecessarily.
6 NOVEMBER, 2275 11:35:17
Koenig laughed, even as the holo of his chief engineering officer, Lieutenant Commander Callum Myles, stood in front of him, and reported:
“Primary electrical system’s burned out, secondary el system’s 88% disrupted, teritary el system 82% disrupted, torp launchers one to five knocked out, penetration on weps deck, radiators one to seven, eight, twelve and fifteen all destroyed, internal heat now sixty-five degrees and rising sharply!”
“Tac, another salvo of q-torps, if you please,” Koenig ordered.
“Sir,” asked his exec, Commander Thomas J. Selkirk,”is that—”
“Are you afraid to die, Commander?!” Koenig demanded, while Lieutenant Jebidiah Turner returned the Earther warship’s fire with a double spread of quantum torpedos.
“Well?!” Koenig demanded of his XO.”Answer me! Are you afraid to die, when His Received Canon, and all the years of empirical data, and scientific research have confirmed we are Homo magister, and, for us, death is only one step closer to the pinnacle of Evolution, that is Deo sapiens?!”
“I fear only a death which does not serve His Work of Evolution, Captain,” Selkirk calmly replied, as the bridge went dark again.
“Secondary electrical system burned out,” Myles was only too eager to report. “Penetration in engineering spaces and drive housing; warp engine offline, impulse restricted to nine hundred grav max burn, impulse thermopile shorting out; radiators nine to eleven destroyed, armor belt undergoing boil off, internal temp now seventy-four degrees, continuing to rise!”
“Defensive, what the actual fuck?!” demanded Koenig, as Ensign Aaron Eisenberg struggled to intercept the inbound eight and a half inch kinetic penetrators with the 45 five-petajoule phased-particle arrays under his control.
“I need you actually shooting down those rocks,” the Defiant’s skipper added,”not making pretty lights in—”
A roar of hot light put a stop to Koenig’s rebuke, even as it triggered the cerebrally-implanted hundred-terabyte solid-state drive which ensured the continuation of his immortal soul, and, by extension, His Great Work of Evolution.
6 NOVEMBER, 2275 11:37:50
“We’re not done,”Ariel’s commander whispered, as helldar confirmed the kill.
“Not done,” she repeated, her fingers flying across her MFD, inputting entry vector data and SATAN field generator parameters into the shipnet, Ariel’s own Burroughs Space And Time Anomaly Nexus field generator whining as it kicked in, the field winding through the ship’s dysprosium hellsail array to displace her more through space than through time, and propel her at nine point four teraklicks per second on a vector to Alphekka Bravo(or Kolob)’s fifth planet, what the Christnazis had decided to call Chalcedon, after the American Exiles had settled there almost 290 years ago.
A little over a century after that, the Christofascist wankers had poured through Inferno's Gate—orbiting what had been Pluto— to invade Earth and her Solar System, setting off thirty years of interstellar war.
And, thirty years ago, the sons of bitches had invaded Big Sky, following a vote they hadn’t authorized, and a decision that had been decidedly non-Canon.
Two relentless decades of war, almost a trillion dead on the deck.
The unlucky ones having ended up worse than dead....
....oh, dear Jesus God, she was a skeleton with skin, sores and bruises and welts all over her naked body, her eyes vibrating with fear and fever as she got up to the limit of the fucking chain around her neck, kneeling on a floor full of piss and shit and hoarded food amongst the crap....
...they grabbed her arms and legs, slammed her down onto the freezing, cold ferrocrete, as she stupidly tried to climb the walls of the fuck tank, opening her mouth to scream, as they held her down and shoved themselves into her, only to have a mistress ram a fucking strapon down her throat, and tell her ”bitch, that whut yo’ fuckin’ mout’ good fo’....“
...no, not now, God damn it, not now.
Always plenty of time to cry later.
Right now, she had to be the commander of the Ariel, directing the efforts of 97 other women and men toward making the Christnazis pay .
It was the only thing she and hers could do for the Wanderer’s crew of 24 scientists, explorers, and students.
It wouldn’t even come close to being enough.
6 NOVEMBER, 2275 11:38:00
“It was communicated to me,” the Roadie bastard calling himself an expert on children and relationships said, as he stood before the Apostolic Minister of Baldwin Church,“ by one of Alexandra’s teachers, that her mother’s non-Canon relationship with the non-Canon sex criminal Victoria Jean Ford was causing her to act out and rebel, possibly even leading to another Girasol incident in the near future.”
“Mama,” Lexie Watson whispered to her mama,“ that’s a goddamn—”
“There will be no profanity in the house of Our Vindicator, and your Lord!” Minister Wilbur Owens III barked, as he looked down from his throne at them, Susan Watson gently squeezing her oldest daughter’s hand.
“Pray continue, Apostle,” he said to Flynt Church Minister Franklin McKinley Spiers, standing to the right of Owens’ throne.
“I’ve nothing further to ask of this witness, Apostle,” Spiers replied.
“The defense may cross-examine,” the minister said, Susan getting up, Spiers saying,“ Apostle, I simply must renew my objection at this time. The defendant is not permitted, and has no business—”
“Sister Watson,” the minister said, looking down his nose at her,“ if memory serves, this court instructed you to secure the services of a patriarch to speak—”
“I’m more than capable of speaking for myself,” Susan replied.
“Hundreds of years of empirical data and scientific research say differently,” the minister coldly replied,“and your obstinate refusal to submit to an anointed magister, and permit him to speak for you, says more than I need to know concerning your ability to be a fit mother for these children.”
“Forgive me, Apostle,” sixteen-year old Syuzenka spoke up,“ but I believe you are editorializing, and that’s not allowed under the—”
“As does,” the apostle snapped,“ your daughters’ lack of discipline and self-control.”
“No,” he concluded,“ I am going to have to agree with the plaintiff’s expert witness—”
“He hasn’t offered one solid shred of eviden—” Susan objected.
“—these children are all clearly suffering the effects of Stockholm syndrome; it is obvious they—the two girls in particular—have all been brainwashed by their mother and her non-Canon sexual partner, and thus are incapable of making an informed decision concerning who they wish to live with.”
“Pastor Cheney—” Lexie started to say.
“Goddamn, fucking little bitch, one more word out of you, and that’s a legal, fucking jury trial right here, right now!” the minister roared.
“You don’t call my sissy a bitch, you goddamn motherfucker!” fourteen-year old Joshua said, on his feet, his face red.
“These outbursts,”the apostle replied, as Susan felt her heart sinking,“ just prove the poisonous influence the lack of a patriarchal role model in the home has on the development of young ladies...and young men.”
“As none of the children are capable of making any informed decisions for themselves,” he concluded,“ the Apostolic Authority of His Church of Baldwin has no choice, but to make its ruling based on the indisputable, Canonical, scientific facts in the case.
And, those facts are that the relationship between the lesbian sex criminals Susan Renee Watson and Victoria Jean Ford is non-Canon, and harmful to the—”
The Throne Room of the Baldwin Church Hall shuddered to its foundations, the lights went out, and sirens started to wail, as Susan gathered her children close to her, and held on for dear life.
6 NOVEMBER, 2275 11:39:05
This was why starships did not jump into, or out of, atmosphere.
The inside of Jami’s helmet was alive with alarms, as she fought her ship, following her return to norm eight and a half goddamn klicks over Atlantis, the sky livid with roiling, forking scarlet-violet lightning ripping through.the dome of the Capitol, leaving a gaping wound bleeding molten dysprosium foil down its sides.
“Weps, Defense,” she snapped at Phylicia and Simone , as she focussed on what they’d come here to do, “target all military, commercial, and government starships and facilities, and shoot!”
The point-defense railguns spat out a buzzing blue death ray of 2cm STP boosting to one-half c, shedding their torch-only sabots, and stippling the 71 square kilometer area of the capital city of the Chalcedonian Union of Churches with flowers of fire, while the 240s drove their STP into Star Fleet fighters, scout-escorts, destroyers, scout cruisers, heavy explorers, dreadnaughts, and star carriers salvoing SMWs seeking Ariel’s destruction.
Jami nudged the RCS thrusters with the joystick in her left hand, working her station’s MFD with her right, programming nanoseconds of war emergency burn into the shipnet, twisting and turning Ariel along every vector at once to dodge the incoming meson warheads for as long as she could.
The master holoprojector along the bulkhead in front of the five control stations flashed blue-white, and the 03 went dark a second, the ship shaking, more alarms going off, Chelsey shouting from the Pit, “primary electrics completely burned out, secondary electrics 70% disrupted, radiators two, five, and eight destroyed, internal temperature now 63.3 degrees, continuing to rise!”
6 NOVEMBER, 2275 11:40:20
“Someone mind telling Me what the actual fuck is going on?!” His Imperial Majesty Guy Thomas Zellner, anointed President Of His Chalcedonian Union Of Churches, Father and rightful King Of Man, demanded of His Consuls, as the chambers of the Union’s First Presidency shuddered and trembled.
“We’re under attack,” Consul Pacis Archangel Michael Zephiniah Lang replied, after consulting his head-mounted comm unit.
“Well, no shit, Dick Grissom!” the President Of the Church sarcastically rejoined, as He held onto to the semi-circular polished steelwood table in front of Him. “I could have figured that out for Myself!”
“Then,” Michael dared talk back to Him, as the only begotten Son and Heir of Iosue Mahadmedus Caesar Christus calmly spoke his name, ”why didn’t yahahahahahahaahahahhAAAHAHAHAHAAA AAHHHHAHA! “
And, His so-called Consul Of Peace was rolling around on the floor, shivering, twitching, pissing, shitting, jizzing himself like the insolent little non-Canon, lesbian bitch he’d let himself become.
“P-pleeeassse, G-guy,” Michael sobbed and shrieked in lesbian sexual ecstasy,”I-i-iiiiiii a-am Y-your F—”
“You are nothing to Me,” the rightful King Of Man coldly whispered. “You get Me, bitch?! You! Are….”
“…nothin’,”Daddy said, looking down at him, shaking His head,”but a fuckin’ disappointment to Me.”
“Been better,” He added, turning to Daddy Michael now,”if We had aborted this waste of Our precious Seed while it was still in the fuckin’ tube.”
“I know, Benjamin,” Daddy Michael said, looking down at Guy as he lay twitching on the floor, foaming at the mouth, lips working manically to try and tell Them he could be every bit the man his Fathers wanted him to be, just, please, give him one more chance.
He could only manage incoherent gibbering, Daddy, with a snort of contempt, turning and walking out of the living room, Daddy Michael spitting in His only begotten Son’s spasming face, telling him,”you fuckin’ make Me sick,” before following His anointed King out of the room, leaving the six-year old boy alone to flail about and babble helplessly on, not even able to keep himself from crapping and peeing….
…all over herself, the little bitch flopping around on the bed, messing the sheets up underneath her, the monocarbon wire binding her by her wrists and ankles to the footboard and the headboard, the cut extension cord taped to her dykehole and her other dykehole spitting electrcity up in that shit, little Gilda screaming like the little bitch she was, begging her bubba for more of the same, just like all ‘em other sluts in ‘em pornos begged their bubbas—and their sissies too—to do all sorts of nasty things to ‘em.
“What the actual fuck is this shit?!” Daddy roared, storming into Gilda’s room, ripping both cords out of her stinking assholes, giving the horny little girlie the back of His hand across her screaming cooter head.
“Goddamn horny fuckin’ lil’ ape!”He spat out. “What the fuck’s the idea of rapin’ your own brother, huh?! What the fuck is that?!”
“G-guy,” that deceitful little Gilda dared talk back to her Daddy,”w-was the o-one—“
“Oh, hell no, hell no!” Daddy screamed, slapping the shit out of that nasty little cooter again and again and again.”Hell no, you just didn’t try putting this off on your bubba, you goddamn fuckin’ little whore! Fuckin’ look at him, he’s a goddamn cripple, for fuck’s….”
...sake.
The First Presidency chamber shook again, His Consul Unitas, Doctor Samuel Brannen III, telling Him.”It’s a single Earth battleship, positively identified as the Ariel.”
“The fuckin’ Angel of Darkness,” whispered Iosue Caesar’s begotten Son, nodding His head at the same time, His good Sam adding:
“Power’s out all over Atlantis, and all across the North Chalcedonian continent; several of our Star Fleet bases, including Starbase Freeman Lang, have been heavily damaged, along with at least six of our orbital facilities, and fifteen Starfleet vessels.”
“Fuck’s sake,” interjected the Inheritor Of the New Jerusalem.”She’s just one ship, with technology that’s two hundred years out of date. Can’t Our Star Fleet deal with one ship?!”
“One ship, two hundred years behind us technologically, biologically, socially, and morally, my Sire,” His handsome, intelligent, insightful Consul Of Unity reminded His Father.
“Commanded by a non-Canon sex killer,” remarked the Progenitor Of Mankind, and Dominus Christus over all apes.
“Yes,” His wise Samwise agreed.” By someone decidedly non-Canon.”
“Speaking of which,” whispered the He who was over all Others, as He walked over to where Michael continued spasming and soiling himself.
“On your knees, bitch!” Caesar Christus commanded.
6 NOVEMBER, 2275 11:43:14
Particle beams and saboted meson warheads streaked past them from both ground and orbital defenses, Jami just barely managing to evade them all, as a trio of 24cm STP slammed into a Christnazi Sovereign-class dreadnaught, smashing through his Whipple armor to open him up like a flower from nose to l, the gutted, spinning corpse bouncing off the forward armor of another dreadnaught now hosing the sky down with his 35 SMW launchers, Simone driving 24cm STP through his hull in reply, as Ariel shuddered, and her 03 deck went dark again; more alarms howling in Jami’s com, as her chief flight engineer rattled off the further damage to and status of her ship, and Simone again returned the 350,000-ton dreadnaught’s fire.
“Flight crew, 03, stand by for atmospheric SATAN field event!” Jami shouted, after a glimpse at her comm’s holofield to make sure Ariel still had the necessary three kilokips of entry velocity, before stabbing the virtual key on her MFD, which had the SATAN field jenny howling as it kicked Ariel into hell.
The battered Federal Starship Force main-battle starship jumped back into norm 112 and one-half kiloklicks from Chalcedon, Simone goring the asterisk formed by an orbital facility’s ten 20-megaton O’Neill cylinders, while Jami jinked and burned her ship away from a volley of SMW, before pivoting on Ariel’s short axis to bring her guns to bear on a 190,000-ton Received Canon-class heavy exploration cruiser.
6 NOVEMBER, 2275 11:45:12
“Launch fighters!” Rear Admiral Henri-Phillipe Benoni Omer Joseph Picard barked into his comm’s mic, the holo of USS Enterprise’s launch officer, Lieutenant Dwight Barclay, quick to reply: “Combat, Shooter, all birds are away!”
In the red-lit CIC’s master holoprojector, the commander of the Enterprise Elite Star Carrier Expeditionary Group watched his four and a half-megaton Galactica-class flagship launching its 62, twelve-ship squadrons of 300-ton Predator warp fighters at the primitive Earth so-called battleship vainly hurling its rocks into the shielding and hulls of modern peacekeeping, scientific, and exploration platforms.
That was why His Star Fleet would always prevail; they were peacekeepers, scientists, explorers, and diplomats, fighting radfemperv apes with no genetic heritage of Patriarchy and Biological Authority, so they could only ever be militarists, corporatists, and statists.
Their defeat, thus, was a near-cer—
The CIC briefly went dark, Enterprise’s captain, Captain David Ryker screaming “Pilot, evasive maneuvers! Defensive, increase PHASAR rate fire, burn down those rocks! Tac, quantum torpedos, full spread, max rate fire!”
Now, Enterprise’s 150 turreted quantum-torpedo launchers came to bear on the so-called Angel Of Darkness, as she jinked, burned and salvoed more of her rocks into the star carrier’s forward saucer, the ship’s chief engineering officer, Lieutenant Commander Levar Scott, screeching hysterically in Picard’s com:
“Primary electrical system completely burned out! Secondary el system 84% disrupted, teritary el system 62% disrupted, radiators four through nine destroyed, internal heat now 54 degrees, and continuing to rise; warp engine offline, impulse engine severely damaged, impulse engine restricted to 1.5 kilograv max burn, impulse engine thermopile shorting out! PHASARs 16 through 50 have sustained heat casaulties and are offline! PHASARs 62 through 80 not answering firing commands!”
“Tell the warp fighters to form a defensive globe around the ship!” Ryker ordered out of sheer panic.
“NO!” Picard roared.” Air boss, fighters are to englobe and engage Earther warship! Ops, order all scout, explorer, and destroyer tactical wings to form a defensive globe around Enterprise; all pilots and tactical officers to link their controls to Enterprise piloting and tactical!”
“Really, Captain,” Picard then chided Ryker,”have you bought into the politically-honest claptrap about warp fighters being useless in space com—”
“Starships warping in!” one of the sensor watchstanders shouted over Picard’s com.”Am reading fifteen, one-five thousand, Nemesis-class main-battles at zero by twelve point eight-three, one-one-two point five kiloklicks downrange, closing fast at three kiloips!”
6 NOVEMBER, 2275 11:48:36
“Oh, hell yeah!” Jami exulted, as Simone put the pipper on that star carrier, and sent a volley of 24cm STP screaming into the son of a bitch to send him down to where Christnazi SOBs burned best..
“Additional starships jumping in,” Master Corporal Caitlin McDonough reported from the sensor and comm station.“ Another 25 Federal Starship Force main-battle groups at zero by zero, 112.5 kiloklicks downrange, closing at three kilokips. Incoming communication from Secretary-General Suzannah Gorbachova aboard Earth Federal Starship Dauntless.”
“Let’s hear it,” Jami replied, as Ariel gutted a 70,000-ton Christnazi Intrepid-class scout cruiser.
6 NOVEMBER, 2275 11:49:00
“People of the Chalcedonian Union of Churches, I am High Admiral Suzannah Mikhaila Gorbachova,” the holo of some goddamn little Russkie dyke bitch said, as she stood before the First Presidency of His Perfect Union,“Secretary-General of the Federal Republic Of Earth.
Your leaders, your leaders, ordered a warship of your Star Fleet to violate the territory of a sovereign polity and carry out an act of piracy against an unarmed survey vessel, for reasons we cannot determine.”
She paused, as the Dominus Christus of His Government of Churches struggled to gather His wits..
“Nor,” the little blonde monkey bitch spoke again,“does it matter..
We cannot allow this to go unpunished. Therefore, as of this date, all space within 450,000 kilometers of Chalcedon has been declared a zone of exclusion by act of Parliament; all League military starships entering or leaving the exclusion zone will be shot down without challenge.
All starliners and commercial transports entering or leaving the exclusion zone, save those carrying food, clothing, medical supplies or similar such materiel, will be challenged, crippled, boarded, evacuated, and destroyed.
All medical starships will be allowed to enter and leave the exclusion zone at will.
The blockade will remain in effect until such time your leaders choose to apologize. That is all, Gorbachova out..”
“That’s all?!” commented His handsome Consul Unitas. “Goddamn, that’s enough.”
“We aren’t just going to take this lying down, are we?!” Michael, even after choking down His Magisterial Essence by the bucketload, still had the stupidity to fucking challenge his True Father.
The President Of His Government Of Churches was already on the com with Admiral-Apostle Benjamin William Tell Ross, his holo standing directly in front of His Lord and Master, instantly insisting,“Sire, we can take ‘em, just give the word, and—”
“Stand down,” Caesar Christus reluctantly ordered.
“Sir?!” His Minster Of Peace asked dubiously..
“Fucking stand down!” the Dominus Christus Of His Perfect Union bitterly spat the words out, his voice echoing in the pitch-black of the First Presidency chamber.
“For now,” He added quietly.
6 NOVEMBER, 2275 11:51:05
“Enemy machines standing down,” Jil reported,“ returning to their bases.”
“Stand down from battle ready,” Jami said, her whole body starting to shake in spite of her.
She could just barely control her trembling hands, her fingers fumbling with the buckles of the command station’s restraining straps, managing to undo them, her knees almost going out from under her as she stood up, eyes on the master holoprojector and its cloud of faintly-glowing hulks tumbling through the dark, on her own shambles of a third deck, on the final casualty report floating in front of her com’s eyepiece..
Nineteen people.
A little over a fifth of Ariel’s crew.
And, they weren’t coming home alive, because of their...commander’s insane, futile, pathetic fucking need for closure.
“All crew, assist in repairs,” she said quietly into her com,, as she turned and rapidly climbed the ladder leading upship. “Number One....”
“...has the ship,” Ariel’s shipnet told her , as....
... a burning white light blinded her, his voice, stinking of alcohol, screaming at her, calling her a bitch, grabbing her, turning her around just so he could knock hell out of her, Jami making the mistake of trying to get back up, Daddy stomping her into the pavement, kicking her, hauling her back up onto her feet, slamming her up against the hood of the car, ripping off her jeans and panties, laying into her ass with his belt and his boots, his breath coming in ragged gasps as he called her a murdering goddamn bitch, telling her she did it, she fucking did it, she was the one who’d run over her own mama, because she was a chicken-headed goddamn fucking, dykeholing, non-Canon bitch who hated other bulldyking non-Canon bitches, even the one that gave birth to her, and how dare she fucking try and put this all off on him.
Blue lights were strobing in the darkness, another man telling Daddy,” we got this, Brother Selkirk, “ before he grabbed hold of her hair, and shoved something hard and metallic up her ass, to make Jami scream her head off, pissing and shitting herself, every last nerve in her body on fire, a hand reaching up into her t-shirt, snatching off her bra, grabbing her tits, another hand slapping her ass, wrenching her arms behind her back and slamming her onto the deck, stomping her face down into the ferrocrete.
“You,” the man spat at her,” are under arrest for unforgivable crimes against His Received Canon! You have no rights whatsoever, only the privilege of loving judgement and final punishment by one of His Patriarchs and anointed Magisters! I, your legally-constituted jury under the Second Amendment of His Received Canon, will now conduct your trial! Trial begins! Guilty as charged! Sentence: Sexual correction and repenitive education! Appeal denied! May He have mercy on your soul…”
...Jami fell down onto her hands and knees on the now-repressurized crew deck, gakking up all over the floor and herself, her body heaving and trembling, her stomach tearing itself apart, her breath coming in ragged sobs, Ariel’s pilot in command unable to do anything else except puke, shake.
And cry.