Rising from the Depths (Mage: The Ascension)

[Imperial Overlord]

There are fools out there who believe in something other than money. God, sex, heroin, love, king, and country. As I said, they're fools. There is nothing, I mean nothing, that doesn't come with money. Religion wants your fucking money and king and country will get you an early grave. Love doesn't put dinner on the table or a Ferrari in the garage. And smack, well smack costs money.

Money let the US win the Cold War and Persian money won the Second Peloponnesian War for Sparta. Money made the Dutch Republic and the British Empire. It buys governments wholesale and pays for the laws it chooses. You want to run for office? You need money. You want healthcare? Money. You want to stand a chance in a court of law? Money. Forgiveness from the Pope? Money. Your country needs to win a war? Money. Money money money.

Me? I've got money and just as important I know money. I drive whatever the fuck I feel like and live in a palace. No law can touch me. I could shoot a man in broad daylight on Wall Street and get off. I have a beautiful wife who is a hell of a cook and smoking in the sack and she spends and spends and spends and I don't give a fuck. I have a gay for pay executive assistant with sky high college loans and six pack abs who can suck a golf ball through a garden hose. If I choose I can fuck a different man, woman, boy or girl every night. I eat in the best restaurants, drink the finest wine, and snort the purest cocaine. The contents of my wardrobe costs more than most people will make in their lifetimes. And that's the tip of the iceberg.

The structure of the universe responds to the Enlightened Will. There are things about the Observer Effect and the interaction of the underlying strata of existence with the human mind on a quasi quantum level that we simply don't let the Masses know because it isn't in our interest or theirs to let them know they have any hand in shaping the way the world runs. Letting them believe they can select their own government is bad enough.

Money isn't just a thing, it's an idea. A universal idea that's at the core of the way everyone on the planet lives their lives. In the war of paradigms and ideas money has already won and as a disciple of the winning ideology the universe moves to my will as it does no one else's. I am a saint and high priest of the Great God Mammon and Master of All I Survey. I am one of the Elect, my place in heaven secure, and on Earth I reign as a king. I am a member of the Syndicate, the Convention that funds and thus owns every other Convention in the Technocracy, and a senior member of Special Projects. Everything I touch turns to gold.

I'm sitting with my feet on my desk and a stunning view at my back, deciding on which bit of horrific environmental rape would be most profitable when my assistant buzzed me. "Yes?" I said a little testily.

"Sir, there are two gentlemen here to see you."

"Fuck them," I said. "I don't do unscheduled appointments." I was a big earner for Special Projects. I could tell the President of the United States to fuck himself with a spiked dildo and he would do it.

The door to my office opened. The guys who walked in were big, big and beefy in an old school mafia kind of way. They wore old fashioned pin striped suits, charcoal on black, and had faces that had been in more than a few fights. "Thomas Freeman," said the one on the right. "We're with Executive Accounting."

Oh shit. All thoughts of which tasty Pentex proposal to greenlight went right out of my head. I was a top earner, untouchable, but these guys were the Senior Partners' Gestapo. My stomach did back flips. I composed myself, or tried, and took my feet off my desk. "Yes?"

"You done fucked up boy," say the one on the left. "You've exposed us."

"I've done nothing to expose us to the Masses!" I protested.

"No," said the one of the right, "you've done worse. I mean fuck, Special Projects is a rotten canker sore of corruption and cooperation with Reality Deviants, but we can't let the other Conventions know that. They might think it's treason or some shit. And by 'might' I mean 'will'."

The one on the left continued. "And we've paid for those armies of Enlightened Scientists, space marines, Men in Black, and killer cyborgs that will come for us. Armies that should be doing our will. You. Fucked. Up."

"I mean," said Right, "it's one thing to make money off those Reality Deviants that run Pentex, it's another to sell their contaminated weapons to our fellow Conventions."

"And the Void Engineers?" said Left. "The one Convention with enough mastery of Dimensional Science to have a chance of recognize that fucked up shit that contaminates Pentex's gear? Worse that stupid. The Senior Partners think you might have been compromised. Maybe you're loyaler to your vices than us. Vices is something the things behind Pentex are good at."

"I'm loyal!"

"Stupid is still an option," said Right.

"Or sloppy and unlucky," said Left. "A Void Engineer submersible went down in the dark depths. Something went really wrong. Fucking Void Engineers, always sticking their noses into trouble."

"They found it this time," said Right, "but they have a retrieval team on the spot. It's mostly intact and they're going to be able to recover it. And go through the fucker with a fine toothed comb to figure out how it got FUBARed."

"And that means the one Convention that has a decent chance of spotting the fucked up, toxic, Reality Deviant shit that Pentex does to its gear will be looking very hard at the toys you arranged for them to have," continued Left. "And if they spot anything they'll sure as hell backtrack."

"And," said Right, "that leads to Special Projects which has more than a few highly profitable deals that our fellows might consider fucking treason!"

I tried to say something, but the words wouldn't come. I was having trouble breathing and it had become as hot as hell in here.

"And you," said Left. "Better to lose the limb and save the patient. The patient being the rest of Special Projects and the whole damn Convention."

"If you're loyal, you'll understand," said Right. "And if you've been compromised, that's just another reason to snuff you. How's the heart attack coming along?"

I could barely hear them now. Pain was burning in my chest and I had no strength.

"Pretty good," said Left. "You can try and fight it, but it'll just make it harder. Finance. High stress world. Kills them so young. Tragic."

[Imperial Overlord]

I finally found Tyler at the bow of the ship, smoking. The wind was biting, but my jacket was warm so I was close enough to comfortable to stay out for a bit. I put my hands in my pockets and walked up to him.

"Bad habit you've got there," I said.

Tyler half turned to face me. He's half a head taller than me and skinny as a rail. And that's coming from a woman who did track in high school. "Fuck cancer," he replied. "Medical will take care of that. Or the Progenitors."

"It's still disgusting Ty."

"Nice to know that you care D," he said with a grin. "It was your warmth and empathy that made me select you for the team. No wait. Fuck that. It was your big, grey, wrinkly brain and your skill with Procedures that made me select you for the team."

"Love you too Ty."

"It's beautiful, isn't it?" He pointed over the bow. "The ocean at night, reflecting the stars above. The dark and not really empty void of space above and the lightless depths below. Vast, mysterious, unknowable. Except it's not unknowable. We map these places, learn their secrets, and kill their dragons. We change these places from monster filled wilderness to explorable frontiers."

"Fucking A," I replied.

"So why aren't you catching the movie with the rest of the youngsters?" Ty may look just on the other side of thirty, but he's over fifty.

I squished my face up into an expression of disgust. "Prequel trilogy."

"Kids," he said. "No fucking taste."

"Too true," I said. "At least whoever named this ship had some."

"Eh? What are you talking about?"

"Jennifer. Charles Stross? The Laundry Files?" The look on his face was blank. "Forget about it."

"Still reading the Buck Rogers stuff huh?"

"If it weren't for Buck Rogers, would you be here?"

"Hmm."

"Although, being half tomboy, it was more Wilma Deering."

"Heh. Half tomboy?"

"I would have liked Barbie a lot better if there was a Space Suit Barbie with Moonlander set or Barbie with a leather jacket, fedora, and bullwhip."

"I'll bet. Thing we all have in common. To go out there. Or down there, in this case."

"Any ideas what went wrong?"

"What makes you think I know?"

"You're senior and we're a support crew. You've been out there."

He said nothing for a minute. "There are things down there that haven't been driven across the Gauntlet by collective disbelief. Untapped Nodes that thaumovores can feed on and sustain themselves. Kraken that make giant squid look like retarded infants. Horrors that make angler fish look like minnows. And worse. That's why we're using a converted freighter for retrieval. We aren't sending down more men until we know more."

"Well our retrieval gear beats the shit out Hughes's."

"Well, we are the Void Engineers. It had better." He smiled. "A bit more Star Trek than Buck Rogers."

"As long as it isn't Voyager or Enterprise."

"There is only one captain and he is the Kirk."

"That's heresy against the Sisko. Shaved head beats toupee every time."

[tortieconspiracy]

So, is this going to be an entirely Union based story or will we see a Traditional viewpoint somewhere along the line? I'm half expecting this lot to have a run in with some Rokea. Rokea aren't very good at telling land factions based apart even when they're other shapechangers. I bet things get really messy when the surface dwellers are Enlightened humans.

[Imperial Overlord]

So, is this going to be an entirely Union based story or will we see a Traditional viewpoint somewhere along the line?

At some point.

I'm half expecting this lot to have a run in with some Rokea. Rokea aren't very good at telling land factions based apart even when they're other shapechangers. I bet things get really messy when the surface dwellers are Enlightened humans.

I would never, ever put Rokea in a Mage story.

[LadyTevar]

I'm half expecting this lot to have a run in with some Rokea. Rokea aren't very good at telling land factions based apart even when they're other shapechangers. I bet things get really messy when the surface dwellers are Enlightened humans.

I would never, ever put Rokea in a Mage story.

Bullshit! Bullshit I cry!
I remind you of your Euthanatos origin story you posted years ago.
Not that the Rokea survived long, but he did a LOT of damage.

[Imperial Overlord]

I stepped out of the airlock and into the salvage bay. The rest of the ship gave only a few hints as to its true nature, but here there was no disguising it. Enlightened Technology was present in all of its magnificent glory.

Huge banks of emitters covered a large portion of the ceiling and lined over half the length of the hold. They glowed softly like something on the set of a sci-fi movie. My babies. I headed down the catwalk to the control center where a half dozen of my fellow eggheads, a 'cabal' in Tradition lingo, were working. "Starting the party without me Tyler?" I asked.

He chuckled. Like me, he was wearing jeans and heavy down lined jacket. It was almost a uniform. It was a little cold in here, but nasty out there. Compared to the Marines we were under dressed. They were standing at the edge of the yellow and black hazard line that marked the area covered by the emitters.

All four were former members of the US Marines and current members of the Void Engineers Marine Corps. Their full environmental suits were equipped with power assist, composite armour plates and woven carbon nanotube undersuits as well as state of our art vision enhancements and coms systems. Two of them were carrying heavy X-ray laser rifles, the third was carrying a heavy rail gun and the fourth was a XR-94, which passes for a big fucking gun of the kind that Hollywood has been convincing the masses is man portable and which a minority of informed people know to be ludicrous. The whole Convention owes Jesse Ventura and Arnie a debt for that.

"How's the little guy doing?" I ask.

"Little guy?" Tyler replied. "Tsk tsk. Anthropomorphizing the machinery. Such an anachronistic habit."

"So report me to the Men In Black." I peered at the screen which showed the probe's view. "That's pretty fucking black," I replied.

"And the young ones think space is the big dark," he replied. "IR shows more."

"Oh terrific. Shades of dark blue."

"It's fucking cold down there. What did you expect?" One of the Marines chuckled.

"And that's why we use mags and sonar down here." A projection on another screen showed our probe descending into the depths just above a mass marked as 'target'.

"Doesn't look like a sub to me."

"And think of what it took to do that to one of our subs," Tyler replied.

"Ugh," I said. "Forensics will have a fun time with that."

"Indeed," said Tyler. "We'll be generating papers by the dozen. From the look of things there's a lot of pieces to sort through."

"I think that's it!" said Jimmy excitedly. I turned my head towards the screen so fast I almost gave myself whiplash. Jimmy's a stocky guy, barely shorter than I am but a hell of a lot wider and most of it is muscle. He jokes that being short, ginger, and a nerd that he had to pump iron in self defence.

The screen seemed to show nothing but dark murk, even with the aid of a light that could be focused into a anti-vehicle laser. "I don't-wait. That shadow, I think that's a piece. And the tumble around it."

"I knew it wasn't in one piece," said Jimmy, "but damn D, something ripped the shit out of it. The sub's scattered all over the place."

"Easy people," said Tyler. "We knew it was going to be a mess. We need to keep with the plan. A thorough scan a mapping of the area."

"Also known as the boring part," said Jimmy under his breath. I smiled. We got to work. It was the boring part, but Enlightened Technology made it fast and easy compared to the more primitive stuff the Masses were stuck with. We were done in less than an hour.

"Area mapped, data is entered into the computers, and we have eyes on the target," said Tyler. "Doctor Andersson, the show is yours."

"Thank you Doctor Monroe," I replied. "Monitoring and support stations everyone," I ordered as I headed to main controls.

"System is coming off standby," I said as I raised the lever. "System is active. No go area is painted." The emitters were now glowing cobalt blue and the light was covering the empty area of the hold.

"Pushing to full power," I said. I could almost here the universe sing. Screens gave coordinates and projected targets on the CGI topographical maps. "Status?"

"Green light."

"Green light!"

"Green light."

"Green light boss lady!"

"Green light doctor."

"We are a go." I grasped the universe with my mind and touched points A1 through C17 and willed them to be here instead of there. The fabric of space was wobbled, resisted and shifted. Lightning flashed between the emitters and wind pushed at us. Shadows formed and then the light died. Nearly three hundred pieces of soggy wreckage ranging in size from several kilograms to several tons were now on the floor of the hold.

"Beautiful!" shouted Tyler. "Beautiful as always Diana."

"You're welcome Ty. Now turn this boat around so we can go someplace that has decent coffee. If they're going to shell out for a teleport matrix this big, you would think the Conventions would also throw in an espresso maker."