I walked through fire and brimstone and there were no pearly gates. - Unknown, Age of Paranoia, TerraSol
"Business skirt!
"Business skirt!
"She's Doctor Doom in a business skirt!
"She'll kiss your wounds just to make you hurt.
"She turned her tender burning eyes on me
"The fires of Hell in them set me free!
"The Detainee the Lady Lord of Hell
"A reminder of how and why humanity fell
"who kicks your face to get you out of the dirt
"She's Doctor Doom in a business skirt!" - "Detainee", Krawark Rawk, Rigellian Speed Metal Band, 38,874 TXE
He was a High Lord Knight Aesir of the Sancti Ordo Spiritus Tyr, a High Lord Captain in charge of the ship the Final Sight of Black Night, in command of Task Force Niamhchloch, called "Task Force Warhammer" by the people he had come to help. Valorus O’Byrne was a warrior born and bred, with a long lineage of warriors, statesmen, craftsmen, and artists. A Novastar pilot, he was bonded to his armor in ways that others would never understand.
His personal quarters were not the dimly lit candle and skull strewn affair that holovid would have shown them as. Nor were they stark and impersonal or huge vaulted ceilings with luxury. They were comfortable, cozy to use a word, even for the men and women aboard the Final Sight of Black Night. When he entered classical music of the 9th Artistic Renaissance spooled up and began playing softly. The light were soft and warm, the 2.5D picture frames on the walls were often loaded up with scenes of landscape, or city skylines at night, or sunsets over a desert.
He was usually found, during relaxation period, sitting on his couch in his entryway room, wearing a comfortable set of flannel pajamas and reading literature with a set of nezpierce glasses perched on his nose.
While the Knights Aesir were part of a spiritual martial order, that did not mean they were all prayers and grim duty.
The people of Tabula embraced emotion and expression.
Life was too short to go through it in misery, and the malevolent universe offered enough misery, there was no need to add to it unnecessarily.
Many members of the Sancti Ordo Spiritus Tyr found it amusing that most who knew of them would be shocked that one of the core tenets of the order was to try to lift others up, to make the universe a better place, and to provide joy and comfort when they could.
Too many only saw the implacable Novastar suited Knights Aesir wiping out entire planets and had no idea that the order was far more.
But Valorus O'Byrne didn't worry how others outside of Tabula saw the Knights or the Order.
His worry, at that time, was the Mar-gite streaming into the Cygnus Orion Galactic Arm Spur.
He had coordinates, he had a back trail.
It was up to the rest of the Order to stop the Mar-gite. To hunt down and destroy the clusters, just as the Order had for the last 22,000 years.
It was up to him to take the war to where the Mar-gite were coming from. He had detached his flagship and its attendant vessels and started back-tracing the Mar-gite. He knew they came from the nearby spur.
The problem was: Where was their staging area and could it be destroyed?
But those were worries for later.
Right now he was slowly paging through a children's book, smiling at the hand painted pictures. It was one he had been raised on, that his mother, father, older siblings had read to him. That he had read to other children.
Peeper Tales.
The lives of innocent, naive, playful little lizards who often got into the same kind of trouble that small children did, who navigated a world full of wonder just like the Order believed children should.
He was smiling at the hand-painted image of a fat little peeper stuck inside a honey pot when his coffee table beeped and a holo-icon appeared that he had an incoming message.
He pointed at the icon with his index finger and tapped his thumb against his curled middle finger, opening the icon.
It was a notification that he had a priority VIP visitor waiting to speak with him in his chambers.
Odd.
He kept close tabs on his schedule and could not remember any VIP.
Curious, he closed the book, set it beside him, and tapped the 'OK' icon.
The message vanished.
There were three spaced knocks.
Not from the door to his chamber, but from one of the paintings. A night-time painting of a modest little house in the middle of a snowy clearing, the warm yellow light filling the windows.
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He looked up at it, frowning.
"Enter," he said slowly.
The door of the house opened and a woman with a hooded cloak stepped out into the night, turning to close the door behind her. She then turned and walked slowly toward the foreground of the painting, slowly getting larger. Finally she reached the edge, stepping from the painting to the ground.
O'Byrne could smell hot iron, sulfur, scorched blood, burnt flesh, charred molycircs, vaporized armor.
He held his emotions as the woman moved over to the doorway, lifting her hands and pushing the cloak back.
The raven-black hair seemed to have blue highlights deep within it and was bound up in a tight bun, keeping it off of her pale neck.
She took the cloak off, revealing a severe cut dark navy blue dress, the top possessing thick shoulderpads. The dress was pleated, ankle length, with a thin stripe at the bottom of white. She wore white gloves, cufflinks that glittered green in the light.
He recognized the stone on the cufflinks.
Polished atomsite.
Knight O'Byrne was polite and knew the ettiquette of the situation.
He stood up, clasping his hands in front of him.
The woman turned around and O'Byrne was struck with just how close the painting of her on the wall was to the woman's actual features.
"You know who I am," she said.
It was not a question.
"I do," O'Byrne said. "Our Second Founding Founder spoke of you often in his writings."
"Cathal," the woman nodded.
"Yes," O'Byrne made a motion. "Refreshments? Ashtray? A place to sit?"
"Yes, thank you," the woman, no, The Detainee said.
O'Byrne walked her over to a seat, holding out one hand to stabilize her as she sat. He was not surprised that her hand was soft and warm, nor that she accepted the offer. She preferred whiskey, a triple, with ice. She had her own cigarettes but preferred the ashtray made from a 66mm cannon shell casing. She accepted his offer of a light despite having her own lighter. She accepted the knitted shawl for her lap to protect her skirt.
She waited until he sat down, her gun-metal gray eyes neutral.
When he sat down, they did introductions. He knew her. She knew him. He was impressed by her cufflinks. She was satisfied with The Founder's Legacy.
Finally, it got down to business.
"You have my property," the Detainee said.
O'Byrne raised one eyebrow. "The Dra.Falten representatives."
She nodded. "Yes."
"The heavily modified female and male," O'Byrne said.
"Yes."
"You have come for them," O'Byrne waved a hand to encompass the ship. "Tradition states that I must have representatives, hostages in the old meaning."
"I offer a trade, out of respect for Cathal and his deeds," the Detainee stated.
"Really?" O'Byrne said.
The Detainee smiled, exhaling cigarette smoke through her sharp little white teeth. "I respected him. When confronted with four clones of his genome, four younger version of him, he did not react with knee-jerk violence. Instead, he reasoned with them, offered them a chance for salvation."
O'Byrne nodded. "I have read the recollections."
"It pleased me to witness."
"He had written that at that time, you were considered deceased," O'Byrne said. "But... he did not believe you were dead. He believed that you used the confusion to escape the other Immortals."
The Detainee nodded.
"And the Digital Omnimessiah."
Again, she nodded. "While literature and entertainment media show power armor pilots as mouth breathing idiots barely capable of tying their shoes, I make no such mistakes. The intellect needed to instinctively track all of the variables, as well as effectively use strategy and tactics, of such a high technology war machine is easily overlooked by people wanting to validate their own internal biases."
O'Byrne nodded. "One of his sons, born later on Tabula, left to look for you."
She gave a secretive smile and tapped the ring on her left hand ring finger against the cold glass of whiskey. "I know."
"Did he find you?" O'Byrne asked.
She nodded slowly. "Yes."
"What do you offer for trade?" O'Byrne asked.
"Coordinates," the Detainee said. She flicked her fingers and the holo-emitter came on, showing X, Y, Z, Q coordinates where the coordinates steadily shifted and changed. "Coordinates so that you can follow the path and catch up to those who are leading the way."
O'Byrne considered it.
"You will not find the correct path. You will become sidetracked and ultimately fail," the Detainee said.
O'Byrne didn't bother to argue. All of the writings agreed that The Detainee had knowledge beyond mortal comprehension. That she may have started mortal but had become something both more and less.
The Detainee merely sipped her drink as O'Byrne thought through it.
Finally, he nodded. "Agreed."
The Detainee smiled.
0-0-0-0-0
Legion stood up, moving forward, as one of the rat-creatures stood up as straight as they could, threw their head back, and started screaming. They were scrabbling at their waist, trying to draw a pistol.
The other three rat-like creatures grabbed the screaming one. The large female pulled his weapon from the holster, throwing it onto the couch, before grabbing the screaming one in a headlock and pulling them down onto the floor. One of them, the one who had shouted "SCIENCE!" was holding the screamer's muzzle shut.
"Easy, soldier, easy. Breathe, soldier, breathe," the scruffy greasy looking rat was saying gently, holding the muzzle shut with both hands.
The other rat-like creature was petting the back of the screamer's neck with their claws.
The other two were strange. One had a beard and four eyes, the other looked like a squat, whitish-blue wrinkly skinned Tukna'rn that had gone on a crash diet.
The emergency channel pinged open.
"I'm reading high levels of emotional stress. Is everything all right?" a voice asked from mid-air, the icon showing that the speaker was from Psych-Medical.
"It's OK, it's OK," Legion said. "Log my room out."
"Roger," the line went dead.
Legion moved forward, getting into the screamer's vision.
"Easy, friend," Legion said.
"A Terran, soldier, see, a Terran," the greasy looking one said.
The screamer tried screaming louder, muffled by the fact the speaker was holding his muzzle shut. His eyes were wide, wild, and Legion could feel the sheer unadulterated hysterical panic rolling off of the being.
One of Legion appeared, running a scanner over the screamer and taking a blood sample. Another appeared, holding a syringe that he jabbed into the screamer's shoulder, through the cloth. Both vanished.
The screamer slowly quit struggling, quit trying to scream. His eyes grew heavy and shut.
"Put him on the couch," Legion said.
The big female nodded, lifting up the unconscious male and carrying him over to the couch easily.
Legion could hear the micro-acutators, the flatware motors, and the other telltale whispers of augmentations when the female moved. Could see the whiskey thin lines of data in their eyes from cyberoptics connected to a datalink.
"Sit, sit," Legion said, motioning at the furniture.
The aliens looked unsure but slowly moved over and sat down.
"To start the introductions, I'm Doctor Dhruv Deshmuhk," Legion said. He figured it was better not to cause even more panic with his other names. "I know who brought you here, so why don't we just start with some names," he smiled, getting beers out of the cooler. He walked up, handing one to each of them.
"We'll start with names, then figure out why devil dommy-mommy brought you here," he smiled.
"Where... where is here?" asked the big rodent female, who was sitting on the couch with a smaller one held in her arms.
"The Gray Lady, a siege engine class Super-Colossus starship, currently between the galactic arms," Legion said, sipping at his beer.
He pointed at one of the odd ones out, the one without the beard.
"How about you start."