When Johann awoke, his dream only returned to him in fragments. He and Svetlana were sitting together in a verdant park, atop a soft blanket. They had talked, though it was the nonsensical sort of dialogue that dreams possessed, talking about what they had for dinner tomorrow, the ducks swimming through the tree foliage, and the like. As they spoke, they drew closer, ever closer, until they were close enough to touch. Then, they were roughhousing, tackling one another like children, until their passion pushed them further. Johann didn’t remember much of what happened next, other than the tangle of arms and legs and how Svetlana was oh so warm.

It was a somewhat embarrassing dream, now that he thought of it. It was made all the worse by how he regretted waking up from it. Maybe he’d keep it to himself.

Maybe, thought his more desirous side, we’ll dream about it again some time.

Johann could only tell that part of him to save it until they met the real deal.

With a yawn, Johann sat up in his bed, checking his watch. It was around the time he’d normally get up anyways, so he pushed the covers off of himself and left his bunk, exiting into the cramped passageways of the Baden-Wurttemburg. As he moved along, he realized that he wasn’t quite sure where he was going, but he knew that he couldn’t stay behind. If he stayed, then he would have to talk with Hiedrich and Hersch, and he wasn’t sure where that would lead. Johann cringed slightly at the memory of what Hiedrich had said. They were supposed to be good Germans; they were supposed to have learned their lesson long ago about blaming whole groups for the acts of a few.

Hiedrich was a nice person; if Johann was to compile a list of people who would hurt a Poslushi who wasn’t able to hurt them, he’d put him towards the bottom. What happened to him; was this what humanity was doomed to become?

Johann shook his head; it was best not to dwell on such things. Instead, he focused his eyes straight ahead, towards his destination, wherever that was.

It wasn’t often that Johann could just wander about an area without something to do; that just wasn’t how the military worked. Last night, as Johann was about to go to bed, Commander Weiss had assembled the entire 447th and announced that they wouldn’t need to worry about work for the next few days; he had managed to convince the higher-ups in Unified Combat Command that they had earned it. A brief cheer was raised, but quickly stifled as half of the personnel were suddenly reminded of their migraines. Johann, if he wanted, could visit the rec room or watch a movie, but he wasn’t really sure what he actually wanted to do. With the normal regulations of Heer life absent, he felt robbed of all initiative.

Eventually, he resolved himself to make the most of the situation and set off towards the rec room. When he arrived, the door was closed, which was understandable; it was early, after all. Johann, without a second thought, threw open the door and looked inside.

The lights were out. It was black inside. Black like carbon. Black like…

Black like them.

Johann took a single step forward, a piercing, wheezing gasp escaping his lips. Lying below the pool table was a half-incinerated, stinking body, putrid smoke still curling up from its shriveled, coal-black skin. It was so horrifically burned that Johann had difficulty even recognizing it as human. It had no eyes, but its empty sockets bored into Johann nonetheless, its hardened facial muscles curling its lips into something between a smile and a sneer, through which Johann could see its stained, heat-cracked teeth. Hyperventilating, Johann shut his eyes; it wasn’t real; it couldn’t be real.

When he opened his eyes again, the sight was gone, but the memory wasn’t. He had stacked bodies for so long that perhaps he didn’t notice, but were the bodies he handled grabbing at him? More than once, he had to struggle to get their cold hands off of him, and it was like they were trying to drag him down into whatever fresh hell had surely defined their last moments in the mortal universe.

He could still feel their hands on his; he needed to get them off. With a grunt, he stumbled into a nearby bathroom, turning the tap on the sink and scrubbing almost without pause, but no matter how much soap he put on, he couldn’t get their greasy, slimy, dead hands off. Eventually the soap began to sting, but even then it wasn’t enough. Johann only stopped when the horrible, burning pain of the water touching his skin outweighed the coldness that remained. Only then did he return to his senses.

Looking at himself in the mirror, he was wide-eyed and gasping like a fish. His hair was disheveled, and he could see enormous purplish bags under his bloodshot eyes. Looking down, his hands were lobster-red and horribly tender. He could see rivulets of blood tracing out the lines of his palms from places where the scrubbing had been the most vigorous. He barely looked human, and he barely felt like it either. He felt like a monster.

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Slowly, but surely, tears came, and then he was clutching onto the sink for support as he quietly sobbed. His hands on the porcelain sizzled like he was touching a skillet, but it only made him cry harder. He wanted to forget this ever happened. He wanted to just go back to sleep. He wanted Svetlana.

He wanted to go home.

—

“Ma’am, the Battlematron is here,” an aide said, his head bowed down in reverence. Dao regarded him silently, her antennae straightening. “Let her in,” Dao said, waving her hand towards the bridge’s door.

With a loud hiss, the bulkhead slid open and Macuahuitl strode in, attended by several males in traditional dress, their faces hidden behind white veils. Attendants and lower officers ducked away from her, quickly clearing a path to the smaller throne that had been hastily erected before Dao’s after the Overbattlematron declared her intent to house Macuahuitl with herself for easier communication and command. Of course, Dao didn’t mention how Macuahuitl’s little saluting stunt had prompted the decision, but she was the Overbattlematron; Macuahuitl wasn’t entitled to any information Dao felt she wasn’t entitled to.

Macuahuitl saluted as she saw Dao, and Dao returned the gesture. She made sure that Macuahuitl didn’t drop her hand before Dao dropped hers, as well. “You have called upon my services, Ma’am, and I shall provide,” Macuahuitl recited.

“Good,” Dao dropped her hand, then watched as Macuahuitl did the same, “I needed to speak with you regarding our… placement, one could say.”

“I’m listening, Ma’am,” Macuahuitl bowed.

“You’ve seen the destruction that human torpedoes can wreak.” Dao said.

Macuahuitl’s antennae dropped slightly. “Indeed I have.”

“Then you know that, should a human fleet appear right here and now, then we would suffer enormous casualties before we could get into firing range.”

“Yes, Ma’am.”

Dao sighed. The air was thick with apprehension. “I hear that Her Dominance has ordered the construction of similar weapons. She wants fusion bombs small enough for one of your Knights to deliver, and deliver them you shall.”

Macuahuitl cringed at the thought. “Ma’am, with all due respect, I understand the disparity in firepower, but must we stoop to their level? Surely there is a more savory method at our disposal.”

“I’m afraid not,” Dao said, “and if we can’t make up for the gap, then all the fleets in the galaxy won’t save us. Our craft are too expensive and difficult to replace to just throw at the enemy until they run out of munitions.”

“I know that,” Macuahuitl said, exasperated, “but we’ll be violating galactic law if we go through with this. We can’t give the Council of Arbitrators more cause to turn on us.”

“Would you rather kiss the feet of a human today, or an Upsilon tomorrow?” Dao said, throwing her hands in the air.

“I’m sorry?”

“If we don’t do this, the humans will break our backs and enslave us. We can ward off the Council later; this is a matter of our nation’s immediate survival. Now, will you or will you not help the Combine back from the brink when you gain the ability and the munitions?”

Macuahuitl looked like she wanted to say something, but only bowed her head. “I will, Ma’am.”

“Good. That’s all I needed to hear,” Dao slumped back on her throne.

Not in some four generations had the Combine faced a war like that with the humans. Where the Upsilon, seventy years before, had brought their enormous foundry-ships to churn out whole fleets on the fly, the humans brought the power of stars contained and ready to destroy whatever they wished. If they wanted, they could reduce the Dreamwalker nomad fleets to slag, a task that previously confounded almost the entirety of galactic civilization. There was something almost eldritch about the readiness with which they wielded such weaponry when all but the Psychocracy would balk at the thought of simply deploying it to a front.

Dread was not an emotion the Oxilini knew well, but in these moments, Dao was afraid.

—

As Macuahuitl marched back to her quarters, her mind ran like a motor. There had to be an explanation for how such an enemy had simply dropped out of the blue. Her troubles obviously emanated from her, as one of her aides moved to the front of the small pack following her.

“Ma’am, is there anything I can do for you?” he asked.

“Prepare as many documents as you can on the Venerable Ancestor,” Macuahuitl ordered, “I need to study.”

The aide saluted, then hurried off. Macuahuitl wouldn’t normally consider herself to be one of the queer, ultra-orthodox sects within the Squireworlds that venerated Sunsword as a sort of god, but now a dark possibility was gnawing at the edges of her mind. When she arrived at her room, she found the aide standing with a data tablet in hand. Wordlessly, Macuahuitl took it, then retired, alone, to her quarters to read.

The universe shall find in itself all manner of ways to punish she who leaves her path, Sunsword had said upon the defeat of the Ninth Warlord. The evildoer had swayed one of the Venerable Ancestor’s most trusted generals to her own side, but with the fall of the second-to-last in the struggle for hegemony over Poslush, she was returned in chains to meet her old master. Thus, it was said, she spent the rest of her life kissing the feet of Sunsword, her back marked with scores of stings. This particular passage stood out to Macuahuitl for a moment, but she couldn’t quite figure out why.

And then she saw it. It was so obvious; why hadn’t she seen it before? The Combine had strayed from its path; it had strayed from Sunsword’s side. It had given itself up to rot and iniquity, and if it couldn’t pull itself back out of this corruption, it would be as the general to Sunsword, a mindless beast of burden with no purpose other than to worship its vanquisher. These defeats were naught more than benevolent paddlings from the Ancestor, as given to a child to discourage bad behavior. If the Combine was to return to its old values, its best values, as the Squireworlds had so dutifully preserved them, it could avert its destruction.

In a hum of ceaseless activity, Macuahuitl began to write a speech. She would convert Dao to her cause, and Dao would be her disciple, her mouthpiece to the highest courts of the nation. There, she could turn back the clock and save the souls of all the children of Pos.

For the Poslushi. For their subjects. For everything that ever was, and anything that ever would be.