It was that smile, gumline to gumline, perfect porcelain on full display, practically blinding. Not the barmaid uniform that always made her look out of place, or her namesake chains connecting her wrists.
No, it was that damn smile. So blissful and innocent that it called the chills every time.
The first time?
Well, the first time I didn’t get chills, but that was just because I didn’t know any better, not for some other reason like beginner's bravado or any other piece of raider smuck.
I was just a dumb scav tearing apart wrecks in orbit of Tantellon V, you know the one where all losers from the Holy War floated after their final stand whatever million years ago. Being the rookie on the crew, I was the unlucky bastard tasked with floating out of our rustbucket of a ship to tear out the more delicate stuff.
Armed with just a searing rod and an all-purpose spacesuit older than my own bones I was cutting through lock after lock of these destroyer captain's quarters. Unfortunately, I was only opening empty room after empty room.
Our luck hadn’t been good since I’d signed on and I’d already overheard some of the crew talking about spacing me to “rebalance their luck.” I’d convinced myself they were just joking at the time, but as the search had gotten more glum over the last few duodecs my naivety was fading.
So it was with sweaty palms and shaky hands that I finally cut open the last room of the wreck, way in the back right behind the melted metal lump of what was likely once a captain's chair, to find her.
I assumed I was hallucinating at first. Could you blame me? What type of person tears open a wreck older than his own life by a millionfold to find a young woman seeming untouched by time?
She wasn’t wearing a space suit, but that didn’t stop her eyes, I won’t say the color, meeting my own with plain curiosity.
Then that damn smile appeared. So innocent. So relaxed. As if she was meeting me in the cozy bar at Kestrel Station not in some closet at an ancient wreck.
All my fear of coming back empty-handed, of being spaced like some unlucky talisman, evaporated into thin air with that smile.
I even felt my own smile creeping onto my lips in response.
I floated like that for a while. How long exactly? I’m not sure. I just know the next thing I remember was comm chatter from the ship asking why the hell I was taking so long.
Broken from my stupor, I simply responded I’d found something before reaching my hand out to the find in question. As if I was fancying myself some valiant knight from a story rescuing a maiden in distress.
It wasn’t until she’d taken my gloved hand in her own when I’d finally noticed the manacles on both her wrists with a loose chain running between them.
Unable to think anything badly about the owner of such a great smile I wrote it off as an outdated fashion source.
Holding my hand in hers, I led her back onboard the ship where the seven other members of my crew were waiting.
They were as dumbstruck as I was by her mere presence, so much so that when they saw her smile half of them fainted.
These were hard men, lifelong scavs unlike myself, they had been roughing it between wrecks for most of their lives. All their experience had led them to believe they knew what the wide range of possibilities a discovery from a wreck could fall in, but the unassuming woman I’d just brought back had shattered that belief to pieces.
It wasn’t until our Captain muttered his first words that I finally realized the true gravity of the situation.
“Celestial.”
It was just one word, but just like that the already quiet ship became so silent even the air felt still.
A Celestial. It was only then that my muddied brain finally connected the dots. I’d found a woman in space. Alone, chained in some Captain’s personal prison cell, who’d been alive since the Wars, which occurred far more cycles ago than I knew how to count.
Only one being could live for so long without dying: a Celestial.
The Captain, managed to speak, while the rest of the crew remained dumbstruck or slumped on the floor, asking the woman a variety of questions across the three languages he knew as politely as he could.
Her response was always that same smile. Nothing the Captain said or asked seemed to register with our find.
Eventually, the Captain gave up and backed up into the cockpit while bowing like some repenting noble, before spooling the ship's drives up and setting us on a course back to Kestral Station.
That got her attention. Immediately, she moved to the nearest access panel and slammed one of her manacled hands through it.
In response, the ship's yellow lights were replaced with angry red warning ones accompanied by a blaring alarm.
The drives fell silent once more and the Captain came rushing back from the cockpit enraged before immediately remembering who exactly he was enraged at and falling silent.
As for the woman who’d just speared one of our two drives with her bare hand, she was currently giving a bashful look with her eyes cast to the floor. It was the same look I’d expect to see on my niece after she was caught stealing cookies from the jar on top of the fridge.
Unable to muster enough courage to scold a celestial, the Captain turned his suppressed fury on me instead. He said if I wanted any of us to make it back to Kestral alive I’d have to protect the last drive from her gluttonous grip. Through his slightly more detailed explanation, I learned Celestials consumed energy to live.
My own anger at our unexpected passenger disappeared with that news. She had been stuck in that room since the Wars, it was no wonder she was starving. I’d innocently thought with her anger sated by an entire drive she would be more manageable from here on out.
To my naive self’s credit, the Captain did fix us up enough to make our way back to Kestrel Station on just one drive and our resident Celestial never made a move on our other drive for the rest of the flight.
When we arrived at Kestral Station she immediately left our ship and just wandered into the station. None of us fully able to accept there would be no reward for our find, we followed her, scampering behind her like a pack of vultures hoping for her to throw out a scrap or two in our direction.
The Station residents didn’t have the same reaction to her as we did. Since there was no possible way to know she was a Celestial given her under the radar appearance. She did get a few odd looks for her “outfit,” and her exceptionally friendly demeanor.
A few shippers, assuming she was a call girl, even yelled a few prices at her, but thankfully stopped their advances after she dazzled them with a flash of her innocent smile.
After a few minutes of brisk walking later, our Captain realized where she was headed and immediately punched in an emergency call to the station manager.
In the next second, those red light and blaring alarms that I’d just encountered on our own ship were now appearing everywhere on Kestrel Station.
Accompanying it was a loudspeaker warning that just kept repeating “evacuate” on a loop.
Our Captain spun around and immediately started booking back to our ship with the seven of us tight behind.
We made it to the ship, boarded, and launched, but the massive traffic of other ships launching all around made maneuvering difficult.
Our Captain didn’t hesitate to bend some metal in order to get us out of the hangar.
A decision that saved our lives, as just a minute after launching, our ship was rocked and we were blinded by a flash of white light.
When the ship finally settled. The Captain turned it around, showing all of us the view of Kestrel Station through the cockpit windshield.
Or what little was left of it.
Kestrel Station, along with its millions of residents, and countless crews who didn’t clear out fast enough were no more. Turned into a wreck less salvageable than the scrapyard we’d come from, I struggled to identify any remaining piece bigger than our own ship.
What had she done?
We knew people on that station. I had my brother and his family. My poor niece, had she made it out ok? Why hadn’t I thought of them instead of running like a coward?
The rest of the crew were no different. We were all so stuck in our self-pitying stupor that it took me a second to realize a weird banging sound was coming from outside our ship’s airlock.
Like someone was knocking?
The Captain and the rest of the crew came to the conclusion even faster than I had. The Captain spooled our engines to the maximum and we all let out a collective sigh when the banging stopped, only to realize a moment later we weren’t actually moving.
Something…or someone, was preventing the ship from moving.
Giving up our Captain unspooled and opened the first airlock, where to our horror the unassuming woman in chains was there to meet us with a smile.
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Only this time there wasn’t one member of the crew, including the Captain, who didn’t faint.
I’d like to say when we woke up we banded together and fought off the Celestial. Bonded over the deaths of our loved ones and other innocents she’d caused blowing up Kestral Station, but as I already established I am a coward, and if you didn’t know cowards flock together.
So the rest of our crew proceeded to the next station under the silent proddings of our salvage-turned-admiral. It was a slightly smaller station than Kestrel, so there’s no question that it fell in the same way.
The only big change was that this time our resourceful Captain predicted the station’s fall as a guarantee the second she stepped foot on it.
This allowed his cowardly self to gather enough courage to talk us into storming a neighboring vessel and take it for ourselves during the commotion.
It was only a slightly larger ship than our own, but at least it had two working drives. As we flew away the Captain further explained he was betting the Celestial was only able to find us based on our ship signature, so by switching to this new ship we would be in the clear.
We applauded his brilliance, only giving brief regretful glances towards the station as its cores detonated just like Kestrels. None of us knew anyone well at this station, nor did a crew of cowardly scavs value the lives of an entire station above their own.
I found myself even feeling happy at the opportunity to ditch the Celestial.
Yes, yes I know I’m not a good person, but I never claimed that I was.
My happiness was short-lived when that familiar knocking returned.
She was back. We waited half a duodec in silence, hoping she would get bored and leave, but she never did. Her knocking continued in the same pattern continuously like a machine.
When the Captain finally opened the airlock and let her in I once again fainted at her smile, although I heard the rest of the crew managed to resist this time around.
As you know, it didn’t end there. We continued going from station to station. Our Captain’s ever-increasing confidence allowed him to keep upgrading us to bigger and better ships by taking advantage of the chaos and even allowed us to recruit some more crew members.
Of course, he told them all we were working directly for the Celestial and that if they ever rebelled she would kill them all. A bluff all of us original scavs went along with.
A few cycles of this pattern passed by and we found ourselves on a destroyer along with an accompanying fleet. Enough to make any Pirate Admiral jealous, well technically everyone thought our Captain was a Pirate Admiral at this point. Rumor was that the Captain controlled the Celestial to do his bidding through those manacles somehow. A rumor I barely worked to spread before the entire galaxy took it as fact.
Only us original eight knew the truth. I still fainted whenever she returned to our ship with her dreaded knocking and the others didn’t fare much better. I was very glad we installed a secret entrance for her by the bridge so the rest of the crew didn’t get a full view of our terrified selves.
As word was spread about us, stations no longer let us dock unopposed. Pictures of our Celestial and fleet began to be widely circulated throughout the galaxy. Her new fame came with the name Chain Hands and to accompany it our fleet officially became known as the Chained Fleet.
Soon after, ships began finding us and enlisting of their own volition. Pledging themselves to our cause whatever the hell that meant.
Larger, less friendly forces came after us as well. Kingdoms that spanned solar systems, rival Pirate Admirals, even a celestial came to hunt us down.
Chain Hands dealt with most enemy fleets basically by herself. Flying directly into their fire without taking a single hit she’d tear through their ship before finding their largest energy source, “eat” it, and then move on to the next ship.
It felt like I was watching an unassuming glutton eating at an all-you-can-eat buffet.
Our own ships fought as well, but any fight is easy when the majority of the enemy force is focused on either attacking or running from a Celestial tearing all their ships apart.
As for the first other Celestial Chain Hands encountered, that battle was rather anticlimactic.
Upon seeing Chain Hands the other Celestial, some man dressed in a golden robe, immediately tried to flee. Chain Hands chased him down immediately and tore a glowing ball out of his chest with her chained hands before draining it like it was just another random ship drive.
The Celestial turned to dust the second the ball was torn from his chest and just like that we discovered Chain Hands wasn’t just a Celestial, but something called a True Celestial.
The fleet grew at a rapid pace and so did our flagship. From Destroyer to Cruiser to Battleship and finally our very own Dreadnought.
The Dreadnought came from another Celestial who’d gifted it to our own Celestial. Something I thought didn’t register with her until she gave her first direct order ever by motioning us to leave the current Solar System.
It seemed like our Celestial was rather susceptible to bribes.
A few dozen cycles later and we’d already looted most of the galaxy. Our massive fleet of over two hundred million ships included a few Celestial underlings and there was even a rumor our Captain had ascended to becoming a Celestial himself, although I didn’t believe it at the time as he didn’t seem much more different to me.
By now we had plucked the galaxy so dry that we had whole solar systems connected to the main fleet by courier fleets whose sole purpose was to deliver enough food and other resources to keep the fleet intact and fed.
Us original eight all stayed on the flagship as whenever any of us tried to leave or take command of different vessels we found Chain Hands waiting to usher us back like a mother to disobedient children trying to run away from home.
At this point, from the perspective of the rest of the galaxy, us original eight scavs were the true masterminds who had domesticated an entire galaxy in a quarter of a mortal lifespan. I think there was some fancy name for us like Chain Counselours or the Council of Chain or something stupid like that.
It was a relatively peaceful few cycles. There were even a few times I managed to forget how I’d abandoned all my loved ones at Kestrel Station and their murderer was my boss who I’d been obediently working for since they died.
Unfortunately, for us, one galaxy wasn’t enough for Chain Hands. After just enough peace to make us know what we were going to lose, she brought us to the map, and for the second time ever she directly told us to do something by gesturing to the Jump Gate in the middle of the galaxy.
A Jump Gate wasn’t like the rest of the galaxy. They were maintained by large factions spanning multiple Galaxies. Jump Gates were the only way to move most ships between different galaxies. Losing a Jump Gate meant losing access to an entire galaxy. As a result, they were heavily protected by the controlling faction’s best troops.
Taking one would be a bloodbath.
And it was.
Another True Celestial was guarding the Jump Gate along with two dozen Lower Celestials. No time was wasted as our fleet instantly engaged their own and their Lower Celestials wasted no time turning our ships to pieces.
It was here that I realized my Captain was a Celestial after watching him defeat three of the enemy Lower Celestials that attacked our Flagship with the aid of one of our subordinate Celestials.
The entire battlefield was a tale of violence and death. Massive ships were exploding to pieces every time I blinked, either by enemy ship fire spearing through them or by the various attacks the Celestials employed.
I knew some magic at this point; although, the fireball I could conjure paled when compared to the planets of fire the Celestials were throwing across the battlefield.
But no part of the battlefield was more violent or more impressive than where Chain Hands fought the other True Celestial.
I’d never seen Chain Hands fight with any technique other than running her opponents down and ripping out their cores.
She wasn’t about to change up her strategy here. Faster than I could really see she flashed across the battlefield chasing after the True Celestial who was dodging like a butterfly. Fluttering away at the last second to dodge an incoming Chain Hands before unleashing small water needles that pierced Chain Hands’ unassuming Barmaid dress.
To my dismay, the same story played out again and again. Chain Hands would be dodged by her opponent and immediately punished afterward by some kind of ranged attack.
After enough small attacks, the True Celestial dodged a particularly fast attack by Chain Hands that left her out of position. Given more space to maneuver, the True Celestial used the opportunity to unleash a massive unending stream of water that Chain Hands disappeared into.
The battlefield fell to silence. Had the Chained Fleet finally lost?
Yeah, yeah. I’m getting there give me at least the courtesy of a dramatic retelling.
As I was saying, the endless stream of water not only fully obscured Chain Hands, but also reduced any ship in its path to pieces no bigger than a dust particle.
As soon as the stream started the attack stopped. Nothing was left in its wake.
Hoping for leniency from our new galactic overlord my eyes returned to where the True Celestial had launched their attack.
But something was different. The True Celestial was missing their head?
A moment later their body turned to dust. Standing in their place was a chained woman holding an incredibly bright core and smiling in the same unassuming way she had when I’d first found her in that wreck eighteen cycles ago.
We took the Jump Gate that day.
Out of our fleet of two hundred million less than fifteen million ships were still spaceworthy by the end of the conflict.
On the bright side, our Celestial number grew to thirty as a result of the conflict. Many of our crew members ascended during the fighting and a few of the enemy Celestials switched to our side after their own True Celestial died.
I guess I got to ascend as well, but that was just because of Chain Hands doing some weird mumbo jumbo with a celestial core I was able to remake my body and become a fancy higher being.
I will say though I didn’t have many vessel design skills so Chain Hands made one for me to mimic the same body I had before which kind of sucks. Do you think I wanted to keep this beer belly forever? Or this crooked nose?
Yeah, yeah. I know guided ascendance is an honor and everything, but come on she couldn’t have given me a six-pack or something?
Oh fine, getting back on track. Where was I?
Oh yeah, after we captured the Jump Gate and I ascended someone appeared out of nowhere just floating in front of Chain Hands.
He spoke in some weird language I never heard before and Chain Hands' smile that I thought couldn’t grow greater did so. It’s an image that will forever be burned into the memories of anyone else who saw it that day. So relaxed and happy. It made you feel like she was the happiest person to ever exist.
Then Chain Hands, the individual who subjected an entire galaxy, knelt. Well, she was still floating, but you know she knelt in space. It’s possible, I mean I saw it so I know it is.
The man then placed his hand on her head.
With a crack heard across the galaxy, the chains that had been restricting her for countless eons shattered to pieces.
Then as if all of it was just a sick and twisted dream, the two vanished.
In the wake of their disappearance, our Captain immediately ordered the Jump Gate destroyed. I’d bet it was to avoid Chain Hands from ever returning.
He might have benefited greatly from her existence, but living under the thumb of a silent being who’d snuffed out trillions of lives with no sign of remorse didn’t really cultivate a sense of safety and security.
Of course, the Chained Fleet’s greater minds surmised the Captain’s decision was a strategic one, as without a True Celestial we had little chance of fending off whatever faction sat on the other side of the gate. It was an interpretation that our Captain accepted as cooly as if it were the truth.
Since that day the galaxy has been in relative peace. The Captain retired to a party planet along with the remainder of our crew and forced me, still the rookie, to run the damn galaxy.
You’re asking why I decided to base the fleet where the old Jump Gate was? Well obviously, because it’s centrally located making it easy to coordinate our Chained Police to maintain some basic level of peace in the galaxy.
What? You think I did it because I’m waiting for Chain Hands’ return like some lost puppy just hoping for one last smile from their master who kicked them to the streets in the first place.
You didn’t say that last part? Well, I think it was plenty inferred thank you very much.
I hope that was enough of a break for you. It’s time to get back to studying up on the actually important stuff. If I’m going to get my chance to retire to one of those party planets before the eyes rot out of my head I’ll need you to at least be able to run the logistical network, judicial system, and police force in tandem and right now you can barely keep a grain barge away from plague a plague planet.
No, you’re not going to trick me into going on a tangent again.
Back to work, rookie. Your galaxy awaits.