“Why did they start a war with Gizzy?”
“She had a border moon on the edge of their territory, all refugees and homeless integrated and only 40,000 inhabitants, which isn’t enough for Federation protection, especially that close to the disputed border. They thought it was colonized by some rogue species with no friends and an easy target after The Federation sold it off to a private owner. Gizzy. You know she likes to play mid-level and hide a weapon behind her back so see who fucks with her. They thought they could take the colony out with a single hit to the air dome. Kinetic impactor, designed to just shatter an air dome and end all life on any small moon’s surface. Except Gizzy had better shielding than they thought. She put cheap armor on top of very advanced armor, like camouflage. The dome survived, but the weapon cracked the hell out of it, and with about 6,000 Delmarians living there, Delmar took that very personally and they spent a month trying to repair the dome and leaking air while the fancy Federation of Worlds debated on whether or not to send ships to protect or help. See, 40,000 lives wasn’t enough to start a war over to them. They got billions to worry about, so kinda fuck the poor, and they spent a few weeks trying to do peace talks. The Morrigan kept sending ships to attack the repair crews, and both Gizzy and Delmar got real pissed about that, and the Federation just kept delaying things.”
“So they were just gonna let them die?”
“Well, they hoped they could end the dispute diplomatically and without the cost of warships and making an enemy. Delmar has always refused to join the Federation because of the political ass-kissing. We prefer to just stay mean and armed and if anything shoots at us, we shoot back, we don’t ask them politely to stop. So Gizzy did the math and determined that another hit would be a world-ender, and her family lived on that moon, Apparently it takes 14 days for a kinetic Impactor strike to arm and reach a target, so she gave them 12 days for the federation to send a fleet, and if they didn’t, she threatened to go to war. They didn’t take her seriously and they dicked around for 12 days while Morrigan ships kept striking at the repair crews.”
“And she just declared war with no fleet or army or weapons?” Vicki asked.
“No, she secretly made a deal with Delmar Prime. Basically, she sold the moon to Delmar as a strategic outpost in exchange for a seat on the council on Delmar moon 44 where her family could be safe under miles of solid rock deep inside Delmarian territory, and she would provide Osirian weaponry for support. Except that’s illegal as hell because Gizzy is Osirian, and exiled for some… stuff she won’t talk about. War decisions that got her out of the Osirian Empire to begin with. And the Osirian Empire was new friends with the Federation. So Gizzy was an old war dog relic with technology and information they didn’t want her sharing with anyone, and they let her isolate herself rather then kill her. Basically, Gizzy was too old and dangerous to keep, and too hard to kill to just try and do it, and now she made an enemy and the Federation didn’t wanna back her. Then she started saying she had Red Dawn rockets and that got everyone’s attention.”
“The hell are those?”
“Osirian planet killer warheads they claim don’t exist, because why would peaceful overlords have planet killing missiles? Gizzy had a safety in the fact that she supposedly smuggled out parts and built like 35 of them, and nobody believed it, but nobody wanted to fuck around and find out. Except the Morrigan fucked around and found out. She wasn’t bluffing. She sent a Delmarian stealth ship to the Morrigan home world, which we supplied in exchange for some deals the Federation didn’t know about. She gave one last chance on day 12 for the Federation to send a fleet. When they told her they would consider it and set up a meeting with the Morrigan for the third time, she just hung up. Then the Morrigan homeworld mysteriously got wiped out 8 minutes later. The whole thing just turned into a molten ball of rock and metal. 11 million, most of the species, microwaved instantly. War was over. Federation called for her head, and Delmar, respecting her balls and her weaponry, pretty much said, 'welcome to the council you big scary bitch, here’s a fleet, your own city, and evacuation crews.' They relocated everyone, Delmarian military took over her old moon, now armed with god knows what scary shit, right on the Federation border and they kinda said, 'she’s one of us now, if you try and touch her, we start melting federation worlds.' ”
“Jesus. So she defended her home and was left to die for it, and Delmar was the only species to respect her move.”
“The population and majority saw her as a warrior hero, but the Delmarian military spent a lot of money on a war she just ended with one button, and now they had the technology that made ground soldiers kinda pointless. So we were out of jobs, a lot of outposts got evacuated and abandoned, and some of the Delmarian high council is pissed off that some alien chick has the power to end worlds and only lets us have access to it under her supervision and command. So she has the Delmarian military both groveling and by the balls, the popular vote of the people thrilled we made a powerful ally and saved our soldiers from a bloody war, and the people making money off that impending war just got boned and want her dead. But nobody will step up and do anything because she supposedly has 34 more missiles pointed at 34 undisclosed worlds, locked and loaded for a single order. Now she’s putting mixed species on Delmarian moons, humans and Eridani into Delmarian cities, changing the old ways, dissolving our obsolete religion slowly but also giving us better technology, medicine, defenses, infrastructure, and culture. She pretty much walked into Delmar with godlike power, strapped the floor with explosives and said, 'I’m gonna fix your worlds whether you like it or not.' Most of the general population love her. The elders and religious leaders call her the devil herself, and the military big shots are hit or miss, either got her poster on their wall to bow to or throw axes at. And if that wasn’t bad enough, she broke Earth protocol.”
“We’re not supposed to talk about that.” Vicki reminded.
“Yeah, well, we’re cloned on a suicide mission never going back, and we’re on a cursed crew, with a strange habit of ending up in bed together despite being married to different people. Like I give a shit anymore. Gizzy isn’t supposed to touch Earth. It’s off limits. The Osirian leaders decided Earth can't know about alien life at all, and Earth is both too stupid to find out and dangerous to know, while being an important protected world of primitives. Earth is a wildlife habitat and only about 100 humans on Earth know aliens even exist. And Gizzy keeps snagging humans from there and populating Delmarian moons as a backup plan for, if, and when something decides to just wreck Earth… which may be humans, intentionally or not. She’s illegally smuggling a protected species from their home land. Of course, consensually to the humans, and under Federation noses, breaking multiple laws in the process. Hell, just getting you, Nicole, and the original Dee off there was a black ops mission in itself that probably cost billions.”
“Why us? We’re nobody. A pornstar, a video game programmer, and I designed shoes.”
“Yeah, but you got cancer and Jack fell in love with you. And When Gizzy dug deeper, she found out Nicole was 1 percent Menacodian and got your asses off there ASAP. You know how rare Menacodians are? She bent the rules for Jack, and then broke them entirely for Nicole. Honestly, Dee was just brought along so she wouldn’t blab and tell everyone you got taken by aliens. Either end up institutionalized and sedated or causing a security problem. She just got bribed to shut up and tag along. That’s why Gizzy hates her. She’s a very expensive security risk that just keeps on costing her money for dumb shit, and then she started banging her son. The fact that she can date someone with the original Dee’s face and body just shows how lonely she is, separated from her family.”
“So are they serious or just… mutually fucking enemies?” Vicki asked.
“Who knows? Who cares? Without someone in her life, Gizzy is a mentally spiraling loose cannon. Without someone taking care of her, this Dee is an overpowered AI bottled up like a genie in a pornstar shaped bottle, capable of taking over a ship, or a military base, or a robot army. They’re both dangerous as hell and lonely.”
“So are we.” She said peering up at him as they stopped.
“No, we’re not. You’re a micro-villain with a vampire sex drive and a taste for Delmarian blood, and I’m a married man who can’t say no to a friend in need. You have to stop needing me.”
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
“I can’t control myself.”
“No, you can’t control yourself when you’re feeding, and I can’t think clearly with your venom in my veins. With fucking Demitri on the ship, the feeding just keeps leading to something else. Something we both felt and never talked about, because we’re married and not horrible people. Or we weren’t horrible people… maybe we are now.”
“Vinn, I’m sorry. Nicole’s my best friend and you’re my friend too. I never even dreamed of cheating on Jack, even when I had to feed on you to live. Of course I had weird emotions, they grew each time, but I never… wanted to take it further. Demitri is the problem, not us. We had everything under control until he showed up. We knew where to draw the line, where to stop. What was necessary and what was too far. Now the line is blurry and every time he works his charms on Gizzy, he makes us into the assholes you think we are. Now he’s fucking Gizzy, the unstable weapon you mentioned, and straining her relationship with Dee, the other unstable weapon. He’s taunting Jack, he’s messing with our heads, and if Jack and Nicole get their heart broken because of us, it’s because of him. He said it when we found him, he is chaos and trouble wherever he goes and he’s right. But he’s gotten into Gizzy’s head, and now, somehow, he got into Jack’s head and he’s just welcome on the crew.”
“Is this the part where you suggest we kill him, and then try and explain how that makes us less evil than just cheating on our spouses?”
“You wanna hurt Nicole and throw sparks into the Gizzy/Dee powder keg, or eliminate one enemy who’s gonna get us all killed? Right now he’s on the ship with your wife and my husband, probably hinting about everything, planting ideas, making it seem like our fault, or somehow blaming Gizzy for it. We’re on a mission to collect artifacts and save the universe, yanking the artifact from his chest solves both problems. It might not even kill him. It’s supposed to just make him human again. God forbid we just take away his toy and risk his life to save all ours and do the damn mission.”
“Yeah sure, sounds great. You wanna magically hold him down while I master heart surgery and fight a brainwashed Gizzy trying to defend him, or would you like me to just hogtie Jack, steal part of his grandpa’s soul and cold-handed dead the fucker so we can just yank it out of the corpse? Because I’m all for getting that thing out of his chest ASAP, but he’s not going to play along, and he’s controlling Gizzy. We got three super weapons on the ship, two that should be on our side but under the spell of the other, so we got three super-weapons in our way and no backup team, except the spouses we’re cheating on… who seem to like Demitri now, too. You really wanna go two versus the team and act like that’s better then just unconscious infidelity, or do you wanna just tell Jack and Nicole, hope they take our side on it and we’re still outgunned by three super weapons?”
“I don’t know. I’m already the villain to everyone for some reason, some reasons that make sense, some that don’t. Why don’t I just forget I talked to you, steal Jack's gun and kill him myself? Jack won’t vent me, maybe if Demitri’s spell wears off fast enough, they’ll all listen to reason before someone else does it.”
“Yeah, I hate that plan. Just throw you to the wolves and pretend I didn’t know. Cool. That’s great. You didn’t wanna maybe just not involve me and do that if you were going to anyway?”
“I hoped you would have a better plan.”
“Yeah, well, I’m a soldier and video game playing husband, I don’t make the plans, I just help and follow orders. Just like Jack… The fuck is that thing?” he asked, shouldering his rifle. “We got tree stumps in a lava tunnel? Who’s cutting down the trees?”
“The tree is moving, Vinn.”
“Of course it is, why would this get any easier on anyone ever? Move back, I’m taking this thing out.”
...
Dee sprinted, turning to fire more rounds past Gizzy for support as they reached a very bright opening. Dee assumed the surface, and felt relief until she found herself sliding across dusty rock and ash towards an open parking garage with a 200 foot tall pasty white chaos god staring back at her. She fumbled and slid on her ass, frantically shouldering the gun and waiting to be swatted into pulp by a banckhand the size of a shuttle pod. She froze, unable to move or react as time stood still. Gizzy almost reached her, looking forward and doing a double take as well. Automatically switching to grenades and firing at both eyes. She paused as she looked down at Dee.
“Dee, it’s a statue, it’s not real.”
“Yeah, I got that… way later than I’d like to admit I did.”
“The tree spiders should be rushing in here by the dozens. Where did they go?”
“Maybe they don’t like the big scary white marble statue of Satan jutting out of the wall like a damn boss fight. Or the bright light.”
“My money is on the light. They don’t go outside the tunnels; we didn’t see them till the white lights started getting replaced by lava lamps. Or maybe it was always lava lamps and they figured out the white lighting keeps the spiders away. Never got it all transferred over. Boy, they went to work on this place, it’s brighter in here than on the planet surface. Is this a temple or a parking garage?”
“Lack of cars or worshippers makes that hard to say, but what do you bet behind that statue is the actual real deal?”
“Look for a door with a symbol on it.” Gizzy said.
...
Vinn and Vicki rushed their way through a dim blue-lit maintenance tube, water pipes blowing steam into the few overhead lights that flickered and left only the orange glow behind them like a wall of fiery smoke rolling their way.
“Didn’t hear a timer go off.” Vinn yelled, firing behind him.
“Me neither.” Vicki replied, too scared to look back. Suddenly the timer went off and they stopped, looking back at the tunnel of death, iron glowing from the heat and the scuttering of little wooden hands by the hundreds moving their way.
“So… we’re supposed to go that way. You wanna try not doing that?” Vinn suggested. They kept running further down the hall, and reached an open room, which was pitch dark and ominous. Vinn rushed in, guns blazing and flashlights waving as Vicki squatted down and leaned back on the wall, unable to think which way to go.
“Well, good news and bad news.” Vinn yelled back.
“Good news, for the love of god!” she yelled.
“Room is clear, no bugs, and we found the door, so I’m marking it with the Geo-tracker. The bad news is that it’s a dead end and we have a lot of hate back that way, and we’re at the halfway mark where we need to not be here.”
“We can’t go back. They’re everywhere. We don’t have the ammo.” She said taking her pistol out. “Vinn, if we run out of ammo and can't make it back…please.” She asked.
“Don’t even talk about that. We’re making it back.”
“Gizzy and Jack do it all the time. We marked the door. We succeeded, we just can’t get back out.”
“You got that tattoo they need to open it. I’m not carrying a dead Vicki back with me. We’re fighting out way through that shit.”
“Vinn, I’m not Jack, I’m not a trained supersoldier, or a Delmarian warrior raised from birth to fight. I’m a fucking clothing designer who couldn’t run a business, who got cancer and bitten by a vampire bug. I’m not strong enough to keep faking it every time. I’m exhausted, I’m starving, I’m burning up down here, that tunnel is flooded with spiders and probably lava or boiling steam, and I got ten shells and a pistol left. We’re fucked.” She said starting to tear up.
“Nope. We’re just not doing great. Put on the damn dead guy skin coat.” He ordered. “I’ll carry you if I have to, you just hang on and shoot.”
...
Gizzy and Dee turned to the sound of gunfire, making their way back and seeing the locator active.
“They gotta be right here, we can still get out in time but they better get here quick, because we’re going the wrong way to backtrack.” Gizzy said, stopping and thinking. “If we keep going any further we won’t make it out either. Come on you two shitheads… where are you?” Gizzy asked. She shouldered her rifle, spotting movement in the dark, something weaving erratically and shiny like wet paper Mache… or a wet leather jacket. She locked on and waited for it to hit the light and find out if it was Vicki or a spider, uncomfortably close to identify. It hit the light and she sighed, lowering the barrel. “Vicki, holy shit I almost shot you. Where’s Vinn?” she asked. Vicki looked up, covered in a streak of orange-red and tears running down her face, her pistol in hand and shakily placed to her own head. She silently sniffed, slowly lowering it and breaking down into years.
“Cry later, or die now. We’ll clone him back.”
“He was right there.” She sobbed.
“Vicki, move your ass, or I will drag it. Don’t make me knock you out to do that. Move your feet, point the gun that direction… and keep up.” She barked.
...
Nicole sat in the shuttle bay, waiting for the doors to open and greet the team. She dropped her phone on the tile floor the moment she saw three women exit and an empty shuttle behind them.
“Where’s Vinn?” she asked.
“Nicole, you knew eventually this was a possible outcome, just take a deep breath.” Gizzy said as Vicki stomped off in tears and Dee just sad blankly in a chair.
“No, we gotta go back for him. We can’t leave him there!”
“Nicole, we can clone him back, just like the first time, and he will be exactly like-”
“No, don’t you dare!” she yelled. “He could be alive and hurt, or scared.”
“Vicki saw him die. He died saving her life. Vinn is a hero as usual, and he’ll be right back here in an hour.”
“Oh my god.” Nicole whispered, sitting on the ground. “He’s just… not here.”
“He will be, Nicole. He won't remember anything after mission briefing scans, no suffering, no nightmares, just Vinn as you know him, you just have to wait a bit and he’ll be fine.” She assured.
“Nothing about this is fine.” She said before darting off as Dee looked up in shock. Gizzy sighed in frustration sat down next to her.
“It’s only an hour to print. He’ll be exactly the same person, we’re all copies already.” She sighed as Dee looked at her with a cold disbelief.
“So that’s what going an hour without you looks like. And you wonder why I worry when you leave on these missions.” Dee said softly, leaning on Gizzy's shoulder.