It was an unusual sight but then it was an unusual time.
Heavy combat starships hung in deep space, the nearest star nearly fifteen light years away, a sea of dark matter extending for a light year in every direction. A handful of cargo ships were orienting and jumping to hyperspace, the limited VI aboard them having loaded and executed the astrogration instructions that would drop them into the heart of a white dwarf nearly a hundred light years away. After a few minutes the combat starships joined them, the crewless non-sentient automated warships executing instructions that left them little more than extra mass to a star.
One ship remained behind. A small ship, a crew of a hundred at maximum. The ship was warsteel hulled, lightly armed, more involved in stealth and remaining unremarkable then fighting its way into or out of situations.
None of that, while strange and somewhat odd, was unusual enough to be remarked upon during such an unusual time.
It was what the ship was next to. It's shuttle bay door open, the single missing shuttle as obvious as a missing tooth in a beauty queen's smile.
It looked like a slab of jet black, nearly six kilometers long, a half kilometer thick, and a kilometer wide. There was a single opening, a lit landing bay with a single shuttle inside. Ancient runes of danger and warnings of doom from more than a score of species were engraved in glowing metals that would take tens millions of years for radioactive decay to render dark. It was ominous, foreboding, just as the designers intended.
The sight of it invoked fear at a primal level.
Which was only a reasonable response to what it was.
A Black Box.
Inside was nearly silent, almost completely still. Two living beings moved around, anyone else was as still as the grave. The majority of the corridors were only dimly lit by long-life pin-lights with burn time measured in the tens of thousands of years. Black mist and pale gray vapor swirled in the hallways, sometimes coming up to knee level.
The systems were built massive, multiple redundancies, built to function for eons rather than months. Each system pared down until there was nothing left to remove for each system to do their job. No multi-tasking, no multiple operations per system, just dedicated systems for important jobs.
The two living beings were both alike in many ways but far different in other ways as they watched the robot loaded move the cryopod into position.
One was massive, metal implants embedded in flesh and bone in crude and cruel ways. One eye was cybernetic, cold warsteel around a single lens. Memory-metal muscle enhancements visible on the neck and one side of the jaw. His close cropped hair was salt and pepper, his remaining eye brown as his skin, and he had tattoos on his cheek with his last name -Prascel, his system identification number bar-code, his rank, and his old unit. He looked exactly as he was, someone that was scraped up with a snow-shovel and crudely put back together.
The other was shorter, thinner, and obviously younger. Without tattoos, without the bulky cybernetics, instead a simple advanced datalink with the smoothed look of a late generation design. His cybereyes were almost indistinguishable from a real eye, just the slight iridescence of high end cyberoptics. The only mark on his clothing was 'Ludmon' on one breast and the Imperium Eagle on the other.
Both wore clean suits, both were breathing tanked air as the interior of the massive facility was little more than non-corrosive noble gases that would be pumped out the moment they left to leave everything in near-vacuum.
The robot sat down the cryopod and slid it forward so the top locked into the wall, two feet of machinery slotting into the machinery designed to facilitate its purpose. The cryopod was covered with a thin layer of frost that obscured but didn't not completely hide the occupant.
A teenage Terran girl who was beautiful even in sleep. Her large blue eyes were closed, the long lashes touching her cheeks. Her blonde hair was pulled into a tight braid and wound under a cryosleep cap, but the gap in the middle of her bangs that looked like a heart was still obvious. Her arms and legs were longer than normally, somehow making her aesthetically pleasing instead of freakish. She had a button nose and a cupid's bow mouth, a flawless complexion, and even in sleep she looked as if she was full of joy.
She was inhuman in her perfection.
The larger figure turned and touched the wall, raising a panel. Inside was a clear armaglass panel that showed what was beyond, held in a glass frame. Jewelry, clothing, shoes. He checked the inventory list that scrolled by with cold amber light to the contents and to his archaic clipboard, checking off each item with an actual writing implement instead of a stylus.
"Her inventory is clear," the large figure rumbled, touching the panel and letting it slide shut again. If any being but a cleared authorized tech using the large figure's handprint or the occupant of the cryopod tried to open the panel it would slag the contents.
"How long will she sleep?" the smaller one asked, bending forward slightly to look at the occupant of the cryopod.
"If this is indeed a just universe, then forever," the larger one said. He tapped the top of the cryopod, bringing up displays in the armaglass itself. He began going down a checklist, taking notes or filling in checkboxes as he went.
"Why? Why not try to reintegrate them into society?" the smaller one asked.
"That's impossible," the larger one said, his voice gruff.
"You were," the smaller one accused.
"I'm just an Assault Marine," the larger one said. "She's... more. More than she should have been."
They were silent until the larger one finished his check list and wiped away the data, the armaglass going dark again.
"All right, let's go," the larger one said. He reached out and touched the armaglass over the woman's face. "May the Omnimessiah walk with you, sister. Thank you."
He turned and walked away, the smaller one following. As soon as they left the room the door sealed shut, the atmosphere pumped out and then replaced with inert gas, and the lights went off.
Only a single light above the sleeping young girl's head provided any light.
The pair slowly moved through the hallways, the facility shutting down behind them with each closed door. Finally they boarded the shuttle and buckled in.
The younger one was practically trembling with the urge to ask questions as the larger one piloted the shuttle across the gulf and into the landing bay of the sole remaining ship. He followed the larger one to the bridge, where the larger one settled into a comfortable chair with an armored back and a five point harness.
Only a few words were exchanged before the scene changed.
The dark matter around the object coalesced, thickening until it looked like space had become a kind of clear gelatin around the obelisk. The gel darkened and the obelisk appeared to sink into space in a way that made the eyes ache, until it vanished into a small bubble of space that had not properly formed with the rest of the universe. The dark matter spread out again, slowly, eventually becoming unmarred.
"It's done," the Captain said. He sighed, a sound of bone weary exhaustion. "Take us out a few light years then lets jump for home."
The ship went to grav-folding drive, compressing space in front of it, crossing space at nearly sixty times the speed of light, heading for a random point away from where the obelisk had vanished.
The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.
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The man was knows, to most on the ship, as Prascel. A former Terran Imperium Assault Marine, his youth as an engineer had placed him on the ship as sure as his combat record had seen him dropped on a hundred worlds.
But the war was over.
Which is why he was sitting in the cantina of the unnamed ship, eating yogurt, lost in his own thoughts when Doctor Ludmon sat down across from him.
Prascel managed to keep from sighing. He knew the younger man had questions. He had merely been there as he was an expert in the long obsolete cryotech that had been used inside the obelisk. He mentally started counting down.
"Why store them like that?" Ludmon asked before Prascel's internal countdown had reached single digits.
"What would you have us do with them?" Prascel asked, setting his spoon down next to his yogurt.
"Surely there had to be a better choice that putting them in cryosleep for eternity?" Ludmon said, more of a statement than a question.
"What would you suggest?" Prascel repeated.
Ludmon was silent a moment, long enough for Prascel to eat two more spoonfull of his yogurt. He was almost done with the unflavored part, almost down to the thick fruit jelly at the bottom. You were supposed to mix it together, most people did, but Prascel liked to eat the unflavored first then enjoy the fruit filling.
"Reintegration," Ludmon said. "You benefited from it."
Prascel just shrugged, the faint sound of cybernetics loud in the nearly empty cantina. "I'm just a Marine. Easy enough to downgrade me to a normal person and put me in retraining."
"There should be a place for them," Ludmon said. "Just like there's a place for you."
Prascel shook his head. "We're nothing alike. I'm just a man. Enhanced, but at my core, still a man."
"And those are little girls," Ludmon said, leaning back slightly and folding his arms.
Prascel sighed. "No, they look like little girls. Their features are supposed to make you feel protective of them, are designed to make you care about them and like them. They aren't little girls any more than I'm a pre-uplift chimp."
"Then remove their powers from them and let them reintegrate," Ludmon tried.
That made Prascel laugh, a loud booming sound that echoed off the blank walls. "Remove their powers? Like you can just remove the magac from my forearm and hocuscadbra I'm harmless?"
Ludmon nodded. "Yes."
"You're making a mistake there, Ludmon," Prascel said.
"Doctor Ludmon," the smaller man said.
"Lieutenant Colonel Jachike Prascel, Doctor of Engineering, then, Doctor Ludmon," Prascel said, letting the smaller man know he wouldn't be intimidated by a degree.
Ludmon pursed his lips in distaste then shook his head. "Fine, what mistake am I making."
"You're equating removing a weapons from my forearm with trying to remove a weapon from the weapon itself," Prascel said. "I told you when you first saw them, and I've kept telling you, they aren't little girls."
"They look like them," Ludmon said.
"They're weapons, Doctor. They're cute, they're adorable, but they're weapons. Built in a lab, mixed in a test tube and grown in a can. Weapons, plain and simple," Prascel said. He set the spoon to the side again. "They were designed to look cute and harmless, even to the enemy, unless they were in combat mode."
"The Combine's willingness to use child soldiers is morally reprehensible," Ludmon said, pursing his lips again.
Prascel's fingers had electricity snarl around them for a moment before he got it under control.
"Creating genetically manipulated weapons is a violation of countless laws, not to mention immoral and unethical," Ludmon said, his voice suddenly becoming stuffy. "Laws that the Imperium, the Combine, and even the Federation before them all voted upon and became signatories to."
"How old are you, doctor?" Prascel asked quietly.
"Forty-two, what difference does that make?" Ludmon asked haughtily. "How old are you?"
"One-hundred eighty-seven," Prascel said.
"So you were born before the Glassing," Ludmon said. "Well, ethics has evolved quite a bit since..."
His worlds trailed off as Prascel put one heavily callused, scarred hand on the table, the skin over the knuckles split to reveal heavy spiked on top of caps for the warsteel laced bone below.
"You don't get to talk about ethics to me. Not now, not ever, doctor," Prascel snarled.
Purple lightning danced across the exposed warsteel.
"The excuse of 'it was war' isn't going to fly, Prascel," Ludmon said. "What was done to those girls, putting them in endless cryosleep, is going to come back to you just as Dhruv, Daxin, and Kulman's crimes are coming back to them."
Prascel stood up slowly, picking up his spoon and the yogurt container. He looked down at the smaller, younger man. "You were born after Anthill, the war was all but won when you were born."
"So?" Ludmon asked.
"That means you don't ever get to judge me or anyone else who fought that war, who pushed back against the Mantid when we were pushed to the brink, had one foot in the grave," Pascel said softly. "You don't get to judge us, judge our actions, or judge the lengths we went to merely to survive."
Prascel motioned with his spoon the space outside the starship that was moving through hyperspace.
"People like you, they think you can judge us by the standards and by what is acceptable today, without a care for what it was like then," Prascel said. "Would you judge those weapons for what they did defending their homeland on their homeworld?"
Ludmon closed his mouth, folding his arms, refusing to answer.
Pascel motioned again with the spoon. "Those girls, those are our sins, but you don't get to judge the Devil and the War in Hell from the comfort of Heaven."
Ludmon looked away.
Prascel moved out of the room, taking his yogurt with him. He wasn't about to miss out on the best part of the his yogurt.
Doctor Ludmon sat in the now empty chow hall, fuming.
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Prascel looked at the Imperium Judge, heavy warsteel manacles on his wrists keeping him bound in the courtroom. He was standing up, the orange jumpsuit with the yellow stripe down the back, waiting for the words to the judge.
He knew that Doctor Ludmon was behind him. The little weasel had come every day both before and after he had testified to Prascel's part in locking away something better left to sleep away eternity. The court had offered him leniency if he simply divulged the location of the Obelisk, divulged the information of the Black Box Project he had worked on.
He had refused.
The judge cleared his throat, continuing his speech.
"For Crimes Against Sentience, this Court, and the Terran Imperium, sentence you to life imprisonment with hard labor. Is there anything you have to say that might change the decision of this court," The judge said.
"Wrath and fury shall fall upon the heads of the murderers of the Digital Omnimessiah," Prascel snarled.
"Strike the prisoner's words from the records," the Judge snapped. He glared. "Anything else?"
Prascel just stood there.
The Judge banged his gavel.
Prascel could feel Ludmon's smug vindication and saw it when the heavily armed bailiffs led him from the courtroom. Prascel smiled at Ludmon and spoke, just loud enough for Ludmon to hear.
"I'll never tell you where they are or how to get to them, you'll never feel their skin beneath your hands," Prascel grinned.
Ludmon's look of pure hatred buoyed Prascel's spirits all the way to Titan.
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The prison complex was smoking, damaged, as Prascel stood beneath Saturn's ever present mass.
A living legend, one of the Immortals, strode through the wreckage. Here and there he called out for medics to attend to the wounded guards. The Immortal stopped in front of Pascel, looking him up and down.
"If I ask, in the name of my brother the Digital Omnimessiah, long may his code illuminate the dark spaces of our souls, the location of that which you delivered unto sleep, would you give me what I ask of you?" the Immortal asked.
"Nay, I would not, not even to the Digital Omnimessiah himself," Prascel said.
The Immortal nodded, the light of Saturn reflecting off of his rimless spectacles, hiding his gray eyes.
"Then come, brother. Daxin has set aside the mantle of Phillip and calls those who will support him to war once again," the Immortal said. "The Imperium shall burn for their treachery."
Prascel went down on one knee. "My life for our Omnimessiah."
The Immortal's hand rested on Prascel's head. "Rise."
There was silence for a moment, even the crackle of flames becoming hushed.
"And serve."
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TERRAN CONFEDERACY
That's nine votes for Total War, one Abstain.
Motion is carried.
God help us all.
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The Obelisk slowly rose up out of the bubble of not-quite formed space, the runes burning coldly on the surface.
A warship rose with it. Massive, twisted superstructure and strange lines.
Prascel stared at the display as it cleared, his hand held up to hold off the thunder of his ship's massive guns. He had slumbered long in the depths of the not-space but his guns were live as he waited to see who dared wake him from his sleep.
The image cleared to reveal a daughter of the Immortal who stood on the bridge of a ship crewed entirely by her siblings. She was short, her black hair cut short, her face plain, her eyes dark.
She recited ancient codes, chanted ancient permissions, cast spells forbidden to mortals that had long since forgotten such things existed.
Prascel closed his fist.
The guns went dead.
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The small human female did not bother with a suit, did not bother with fiction. She would not insult The Grave Watcher with such untruths. He was an Ancient, from the Time of the Immortals, from the time of her father.
And he deserved respect.
She followed The Watcher as the massive figure moved through the dark and silent halls of the Obelisk AKA Black Box 536169-6c6f72-204d6f6f6e. A clunky looking robot replaced an ancient fuse who's impedance had grown too much as the two walked through the hallways.
Finally they reached the unremarkable room on the center of the Obelisk. There were no chairs, no comfort offered, just a single waist high rectangular pillar with a faintly glowing square on the top.
The small woman put her hand against the datapad.
Data scrolled by in midair, stopping at the very end.
ACTIVATE PROJECT?
She touched the yes icon.
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The girl's eyes fluttered open.
She was a Lolita Sorceress of the Sailor Moon Sisterhood...
...and she was Born Whole.