I’d seen it all before of course. The wane of mankind’s obsession with knowledge. Happened every couple of cycles, like a relationship. Early on it’s fresh, its new, its exciting. Then it turns into something you didn’t bargain for and you don’t pursue it as relentlessly as you did in it’s infancy. It goes from this idea of a dream, blooms into reality before flickering into a nightmare. Everything in this whole fucking universe is trapped in the same cycle. The last time mankind turned on the idea of ideas, ironically, I’d been a teacher. An enlightened.

When Human High Command went bankrupt and the task of fighting off the Bestial fell to private armies, the planet of Anchor stood as a flickering candle in the growing shadow of mankind. And for a time, mankind even thought that it would recover.

Then they burned down the Library of Originals. They. That primordial wind of opposition that imbued men with the penchant for destroying that which had come before. Ancient text and knowledge in the physical, books, tablets, tapestries, all gone. I watched from the windows of my temple floating over the city of Anchor in a mix of many emotions.

“Theres digital copies of all that stuff anyways,” said Pupil Henning, a brash upstart who’d bombarded his way into my tutelage. Initially I hadn’t liked him and only brought him into my tutelage due to his families deep pockets, but then he started to grow on me, if for nothing else because he filled the void of loneliness with something very much like that of my own child. “It all seems like too much trouble, what do they stand to gain?”

“It’s a signal flare” I said reclining apathetically into my sofa. We watched the plume of smoke from the library for a time. What spectacular kindling all that history made. “It’s a broadcast of a very specific sentiment, one that’ll have like minded individuals crawling out from their holes to raise their hands in celebration. Though our value of knowledge and education are popular, not all see our way.”

“We’ve only just been accepted to join the upper tier races of the universe- and now this? They’ll repeal our motion to join- we’ll go overpopulated down here and starve!” His words were practically crashing into each other, he was a frightened little squealer this one. I’m sure he wasn’t the only one at that very moment.

Pupil Henning fixed his eyes on the little brick of black in his hands, a communicator. “They say the enlightened are being called to a summit!“

“Then we will go!” I said rising from my chair and gathering my robes in front of me. “We will join Egr and Penelope with their academies and make it known that we are still here, that education and knowledge still stands even here deep amongst the stars!” I clapped my pupil on the shoulders and his eyes shone steely back at mine. Events like these were catalysts for change. Armed with knowledge and the specter of the burned library over us, we could use this act of solidarity to catapult our society into another renaissance. It was high time the other alien races stopped looking down on us like some sniveling child. From the raised voices of the past science was born, space flight, warp engineering, and even a brief grasp on immortality. Perhaps we’d find that golden era again and join the higher races amongst the treetops of this infinite void.

But then, as I looked at that darkened plume and the tendrils of smoke that branched down a few streets, I was reminded of the other times. When ignorance and fear won out. When we had over exerted ourselves in our haste for tomorrow, expanding far only to recede back like the tides. I should have heeded dark thoughts as these, but I didn’t.

Later that night, after my classes were done for the day, a single hover vehicle landed at my private pad carrying my only solace. Her hair billowing like spun gold behind her, Penelope the Benevolent entered my humble temple wearing a sheer set of silk garments. We kissed and for a brief moment the troubles below my hallowed temple dulled. When I ran my hand through her hair it smelled of flowers, not overly sweet, but of dirt and stem. Together we strolled on through the quiet stone hallways of my temple.

“What do you think?” She asked upon seeing the far off look that’d taken up residence in my eyes since our initial kiss. She was an empath and if my mind was elsewhere she was quick to know.

“I think this could be the time of change we’d been hoping for. I think more people are ready to learn from the mistakes of-.”

“Six,” Penelope protested in that quiet way that she did. She pursed her lips, her large yellow eyes boring into mine. She was sage like and beautiful. A teacher of fifty plus years, and a wanderer for longer than that. It was Penelope who convinced me to open my temple of Immortal Thought. She who had breathed life into me when I’d just returned from the war front a battered and broken man. She who I loved perhaps even more than you.

But she was married.

“I also worry that this could be the end,” I confessed, avoiding her eyes as if I’d turn to stone. “I’ve sort of finally got a feel for this whole teaching thing, and I’m afraid it’s come to an end.”

Penelope came in close and I held her, the warmth that radiated off of her was comforting. “The people will rally. You still hold the weight of the universe on your shoulders-“ she laughed. “Have a little faith.” She was right, my time at war had hardened me.

“Come.” She commanded, leading me in the direction my quarters.

She pulled me as I feigned not wanting to follow, feigned that the problem unfolding was perhaps heavier. But I gave in just the same. Together we went, pausing beneath a stone arch way to kiss, her lips pushing against mine, soft and wet. We went on stopping short of my quarters, at my library where I ripped off her sheer silk robe and kissed her breast. She nibbled greedily at my neck, forcing my hands to wander her smooth, near-ageless body.

She was an empath and knew my every need through sheer intuition, matching her body’s rhythm with mine. She could drive me wild then slap a harness onto me and reign me in, we were both sort of into that.

The two of us made love, then again, and perhaps once or twice more until our bodies gave out and the only thing to do was to hold one another as we lay in bed reflecting on the day that had passed. I thought of the war, as I often did. The sounds of explosions ringing in my ears at the same volume that they did in my nightmares. Penelope’s eyes were nearer but distant all the same, no doubt wondering about her failing union with Egr the Teacher of the Quiet, a school of thought hell bent on appeasing everything and one. A superficial school of thought that held tremendous sway on Anchor, where one’s class was determined by Egr’s pupils.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

“I should be going,” she said after a time had passed with no exchange of words. She could sense it, my mind repelling hers as it began to wallow in dark places she dared not dwell. “I love you Six, will you try and get some sleep?”

“I love you too,” I said without an ounce of hesitation. It wasn’t hard for me to say that, loving her was easy. She made it so, but her leaving every evening was always the hardest part. In the days of war, such a small inconvenience as Penelope having a husband would have been remedied simply by murdering him. But this was Anchor, far from the warfront, civilized in a way that I’d never been. As she dressed I kissed her back, smelling her hair where sweat and lust had replaced the smell of flowers, just as comforting. To be desired.

Once she’d left, the empty space in the bed next to me practically smoldered like a crater. “You should still be here Penn,” I whispered quietly.

I set to wandering the sterile halls of the temple with my robes gathered closely around me. Downtime, a concept that was so foreign to me during the war. On the Bauhmaut, when we weren’t on assignment, we were asleep. Here on Anchor I found sleep in the strangest places, in the library, on the patio, or at my desk in the classroom. Rarely in my own bed if it was just me. When finally I found sleep the night the fire took the library, it was slumped against a wall with an empty glass of whiskey in my hands. I had hoped the glass of liquor could have warded off the darker places of my mind, but lets be real, five point three percent alcohol only made babies sleep soundly.

*

Waking to the hum of the warp drive kicking into gear as a mission flashed across the screen of my sleep pod used to invoke a sense of comfort. Sounds weird I know, but it’d been familiar, consistent. 

“Headed to the front. Prepare for an air drop over enemy territory. Any questions?” Read the painfully bright screen inches from my waking face.

“No,” I replied rubbing the sleep from my eyes. The stims took a moment to filter into my suit. My suit that was just as familiar as my skin. My suit that kept me alive, immortal.

The sleep pod opened with a hiss and I stumbled out of it on legs that hadn’t been used in- a quick look at my communicator told me, ten years. Ten years since last I was awake. Funny, seemed just like yesterday I was helping overthrow the native government of North Cross. It’d been run by a regime of- well I couldn’t really remember the name of the race, but they looked like spiders and had spaceships made of dense webs. So, spider people I guess. Today, after ten years I was back on the war front. Back in the thick of it.

The Bestial Cove were labeled as primitive on every moving poster on any colony one could stop at for drinks. The posters were effective and bestial hate was at an all time high across the wide spread of humanity. I had been right there with them once, flaming torchs, shouting out vigorous patriotism until someone very close to me posed the question: “if we’ve been at war with them for at least two hundred years, how can they be so primitive?”

I climbed the ladder up to the bridge of the ship and turned on the locator that sent a hologram of the current solar system into the air around me. To no surprise humans hadn’t made any headway in our war in ten years. The beasts still held our home world, Earth. The galactic map also revealed, much to my disdain, that I was the only Astro in the system. Second on my list of growing disdain was the fact that my ship had been under fire for the last eight hours by a bestial cruiser, a ship that was little more than scrap metal with an ugly animal strapped into the controls. Despite this they had still managed to cripple my ships ability to drop me on the planet below so that I could begin my mission.

So it was a space fight, clear and simple.

I fell into the chair at the controls and brought up an interactive hologram before me. First order was a full reverse, because what fun was it to just be getting chased when you could in fact, do the chasing? The reverse thrusters shot me backwards without a moment of falter once I’d clicked my seatbelt in. The planet below disappeared as I shot passed it and it’s moon bringing me in full view of my pursuer.

It was a piece of shit. I tapped a button to load my ion cannons, locked onto their ship, hit a button and watched as they scrambled to move out of the way of my oncoming attack. They weren’t fast enough. If anything, in their surprise that there was finally someone manning my ship, they made themselves an easier target for my ion canons. The bestial ship went up like an intricate fireworks display. I watched, but only for a moment as my ships sensors alerted me to an oncoming war engine.

War engines were the things of nightmares. Ships of scrap metal decorated in dead human bodies by the thousands. These things were no cruisers, they were massive, and when they fired their canons it hurt. Like the cannons they put on me the moment I shot their friends down. So I kept the wheel of unpredictable and frankly stupid space maneuvers turning. I shot forward, right at the oncoming war engine with no falter in my acceleration. The closer I was the less likely they were to shoot at me as the war engines had a nasty habit of doing more harm to their own ships than to others at close quarters.

Unfortunately, the captain of this war engine must have been out for revenge, or they were just dumb. Cause they fired at me point blank and did more damage to themselves than my ship whose shield was now critically low.

It was time to play opossum. I cut off my engines, turned out the lights and waited for the inevitable boarding party. It took a while, but they came, those scaly bastards. The bestial were a race of scales and claws and poor eyes. All of them looked completely different, from the one sent to patrol my bridge whose fangs went to his knees, to my first kill of the night, a bestial with puss filled sores covering his arms who made the mistake of stomping past my hiding place in a locker in the lower decks.

He went down faster than a crooked politician. Bare handed I sprung from my locker, grappled onto his sores oozing under my grip and tossed him over my shoulder where I pulled a knife from the scabbard on his hip and sent it streaking across his neck. No matter the race, always go for the neck and if they don’t have a neck, whatever they fuck with.

I made quick work of most of the boarding crew, all dying in equally violent and horrific ways. The final beasty on my list of those who shouldn’t have boarded my goddamned ship was the one in the bridge. When I entered the bridge he was ready with a whole handful of explosives.

This is where diplomacy comes in handy. In my Diplomacy Now! Handbook the first step negotiating a cease fire was to use empathy. So I began with “now wait a minute-“ which must have been bestial for blow this bitch up. Because that’s exactly what he did, he blew up my bridge. My suit protected me from  the explosion in a way it couldn’t the window between us and space. The vacuum sucked out everything that wasn’t tied down or strapped in. Which meant me.

Now even the most experienced space faring individuals would have seen getting sucked violently out into the vacuum of space as a “bad thing.” I saw it as a glowing opportunity. After all my ship had been rendered unable to assist me in completing my mission since before I’d even woken up. It was time for a trade up.

I shot across the small gap between my modest ship as it went up in flames and latched onto the war engine via a mutilated corpse bolted into the hull. Fun fact: the dead body of your fellow human bolted onto the side of a ghastly war engine was just as good as any seatbelt.

So with a pair of legs wrapped around my waist, decaying arms around my neck, and an inhuman sense of comfort given my macabre surroundings, I rode the war engine down to the planet below to begin my mission in earnest.