The Disgraced Commander wrinkled her nose, unable to ignore the putrid odor of too many unwashed Torth in a damaged, poorly ventilated spaceship. She stepped over legs and arms and torsos.

Help Us? a gray-haired man prayed.

Help? an adolescent baby echoed.

The individual thoughts of her ship-mates did not form a harmonious choir. They were not a magnificent, thunderous melody. Instead, they were disgustingly reedy. They were as basic as individual voices.

She had to remind herself, repeatedly, that these refugees were actually gods who used to own slaves and govern worlds.

Also, they had been savvy enough to avoid the Conqueror’s minions. They remained free and ostensibly proud.

Where will We go? A white-haired old Blue Rank female choked back a sob.

A sob.

How was such slavish behavior acceptable to these grungy survivors?

No one wanted to hear crying. They weren’t slaves. That was the whole point! The Disgraced Commander wanted to kick the old woman.

The old Blue Rank glared at her, and imagined throwing her out of an airlock.

Several other Torth refugees agreed with that sentiment. They might have done it, except they knew that the Disgraced Commander could teleport. She would be able to return and she was hard to kill. Also, they were reliant on her. Someone needed to import supplies.

What about reject planets? another refugee tentatively suggested. He was a smooth-cheeked young Brown Rank, barely old enough to have graduated off a baby farm. My data marble (which I savvily confiscated before penitents or slaves could steal it) includes a galactic star chart. If We can navigate the temporal streams, I’ll bet I can guide Us to a decent wilderness planet.

The Disgraced Commander congratulated the young Brown Rank for his foresight and his civilized willingness to help. However, she regretfully informed him, the temporal streams are wrecked.

That nearly wrecked their remaining sense of self-determination.

But, thought an adolescent baby, I’ll bet the Conqueror will fix that problem?

If he does, a Green Rank thought glumly, We still cannot use them. I used to be an aspiring starship pilot. The navigation of temporal streams requires calculations from very mathematical minds. We don’t have access to such minds here. He looked around, questioning.

But he was correct. The refugees had not managed to rescue any mathematicians.

Nor do We own one of those calculation machines that the Conqueror’s minions (freed slaves) are installing in all of their vehicles, the Green Rank went on. What are they called? Computational devices?

Computers, another refugee corrected him.

The hundreds of refugees slumped in defeat. Without the Megacosm, their ship was doomed to slow travel. They could not get far enough to even have a hope of restarting their lives again.

They hadn’t been able to coax any slaves onto this overcrowded military cargo streamship. They’d had to abandon everything they owned. Although their ship’s hull was intact, the plumbing system was broken. There were no showers, no running water.

And they were poorly provisioned. All they had to eat were nonperishable staples, and those would last for a few weeks only with austere rationing.

We’re doomed, they thought.

The Disgraced Commander wasn’t so sure about that. She could think of a slim possibility for survival. It was just the seed of an idea. But she suspected that she was the only hope for these ragtag survivors of civilizational collapse.

They needed her.

They would worship her, once they understood her plan. They would acknowledge her as the Commander of All Surviving Torth.

 ???

All of the filthy, sad remaining Torth turned toward her. Many of them still blamed her for the end of galactic civilization. Some were in a mood to kill her. Nevertheless, they were curious—and desperate.

She survived even after the Conqueror bested the Death Architect.

  She has faced the Giant in a rage and lived.

   She beheaded the Imposter in a duel.

If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

    She may have let Us get destroyed, but she is exceptional in some ways.

They all knew that the Disgraced Commander had tumbled, alone and isolated, in space, using her spacesuit jets to evade rock fragments. And she had ghosted. She had used her clairvoyant power again and again, until she’d located this group of Torth survivors. Then she had used the last of her raw strength to teleport aboard this ship.

They had let her rest and recover. A few of them did respect her.

 How does she propose We survive? They listened with their minds. They tuned into her.

The Disgraced Commander revealed her hard-won knowledge with triumphant satisfaction. Humans, she thought, contain huge amounts of untapped raw potential. When I link with a human and give them access to My mind (via telepathy gas), I gain tremendous power.

The Torth refugees exchanged looks. This was, indeed, news.

This means I can gain enough raw power to teleport with passengers, the Disgraced Commander clarified. All I need to do is go to Earth and pick up a human.

She had memorized the galactic route to Earth. She could teleport there, corner a human alone, saturate the area with telepathy gas, then link with that human and bring it onboard their ship. That way, they would gain power!

The Torth refugees looked at each other.

Unanimously, they chose to forgive her.

The entire Torth Majority had made mistakes. Some of them hated to acknowledge that, but these ragged survivors were beginning to accept that they might have to take more responsibility than they ever had in their lives.

They desperately wanted to survive.

Commander, they chorused, acknowledging their sole hope.

 Commander of All Torth.

  We are so glad to have You.

The Commander of All preened in their attention. A few hundred followers wasn’t much compared to what she used to command, but here and now, it felt nice. She was glad to no longer be a total disgrace.

One of the refugees plucked at her filthy robes. I need a bath. We all need more personal grooming space than this overcrowded streamship provides. Where will You (Commander of All) bring Us, once You have gained the excess power which a human can provide You with?

The others chorused that question. They all wanted to know the same thing. Where would they ultimately go?

Not Earth. The Conqueror would monitor the homeworld of his birth.

Not any known planet, unless they could find an underground hiding spot that the Conqueror’s so-called scientists would never survey.

Maybe the Commander of All could scan for an ancient space station that had been long-forgotten by civilization? She could raid the conquered planets for food and supplies. It would be a meager existence, though.

And she was quite old. If anything happened to her, the rest of the Torth refugees might well be stranded.

I have an idea, the Green Rank who was a former pilot volunteered.

Everyone turned to him.

Hasn’t the Torth Empire sent colony starships to other galaxies? he thought.

Those departed convoys were almost mythical. Hundreds of generations ago, the early Torth Empire had sent exploratory starships to seek out new civilizations beyond the borders of their own galaxy. The populations onboard those enormous colony ships had eventually devolved into emotional cesspools. They’d been too isolated, too far away, to be reined in by the Majority.

So they had severed themselves from the Megacosm.

To this day, no one knew their fates. The Majority, in its collective wisdom, had voted to quit sending Torth to foreign galaxies, so no more were sent. Still, those colony starships might be out there. Self-sufficient. Able to support life. Fragments of a magnificent past, akin to miniature worlds unto themselves.

I like that idea, the Commander of All acknowledged. The Conqueror was unlikely to hunt down the ancient departed starships of the early Torth Empire. He had a galaxy to administer.

 We have a future! The refugees cheered without sound, without facial expressions.

  We have a future!

   We have a future!

The Commander of All Torth strutted before her small empire. Her approval rating shot higher. She had to step over limbs, since there wasn’t enough room for a clear aisle, but she decided to overlook that inconvenience.

She would restore them to greatness. This collective would grow. They would swap their current battered streamship for a colony starship somewhere beyond the outer halo of the galaxy.

How can We grow? the elderly Blue Rank thought. We have no baby farms.

The Torth refugees exchanged uneasy looks. They didn’t have artificial womb banks. They had no easy way to collect gametes from healthy donors. Who would mix the donated sperm with the donated eggs?

Realization dawned upon several female Torth who were of a fertile age.

 !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

They recalled a public announcement by a penitent known as the Pink Screwdriver. That act was disgustingly intimate. It was filthy and savage.

The entire process of gestating a fetus through pregnancy was horrific.

And once the noisy, emotional infants were born—who would tend them? Torth offspring were needy, greedy bundles of emotion. Very few Torth knew how to feed and handle infants. That was work for slaves and specialists.

The Commander of All Torth tightened her thin lips. Yes, the challenges were daunting. She admitted that. Enormous amounts of knowledge had been lost when the Megacosm collapsed. This meager population of civilized Torth would need to reinvent a lot of things. Space travel. Hover technology. Transports. Data storage. Medicine. Agricultural engineering. And yes, baby farms.

Life would be rough for a while. But after a few generations—

Generations?

The ragtag population eyed each other.

The Commander of All Torth tried to reassure them. Primitive sex was going to be a necessity, she supposed. But how difficult could it be? Even animals made it work. Maybe these refugees could learn about coitus from the humans she planned to abduct.

She would be with her constituents every step of the way. She would administer their sexual congress. It might be filthy and animalistic, but she would guide them and make sure that they remained as aloof and uncaring as possible.

She was ready to mount and conquer the problem. What about the rest of them?

 …

  …..

   ………………..

The Torth refugees had no room to move apart in the confined room of the spaceship, but they tried.