After boarding my ship--and by 'boarding,' I mean they cut into it with welding tools--the cops presented themselves as regular humans. Nothing unique or special like animal ears or deformed otherworldly bodies. Just regular humans. Human cops. And I could tell that they were cops because they were dressed like cops. Space cops, to be exact.

After a tense standoff with laser rifles aiming this way and that, the cops called for backup, and soon a high-ranking-looking man appeared through breach--which at this point was now an airlock for people to dock with--and with a single look at my domineering frame and menacing stature, he said nothing and left, knowing that this was surely above his paygrade. And sure enough, another person eventually came, this one looking an even higher-rank, and he said, "You're not space pirates, are you?"

"Nope," I said.

And then he turned around and left. And after some waiting, and after the tension died down, and the space cops grew tired of aiming guns at us, and the guards grew bored of aiming guns back, and I brought out my folding chair and waited as the rebels lounged around beside me and the cops leaned against the wall returning only awkward, tight-lipped smiles anytime someone would glance their way.

And finally. Finally. A new person showed up whose presence snapped the cops to attention. Salutes given. Nervous faces. The high-ranking guy wasn't a cop, not this one, but he looked more like a civilian than any soldier. His hair was slicked back so perfectly it was as though he painted his hair on. He wore loose-fitting robes that were flowing like silk but carried a patterned sheen that resembled cyberleather. These were robes like the merchants or aristocrats wore, and I figured that maybe it was a universal truth, that upper-class people always had terrible taste in gaudy outfits. Accompanying him on either side were the two less-than-high-ranking officers from before.

He spoke with a hurried and dismissive tone. "So you're not space pirates, and you're not of the space gangs or the space mafia or the space smugglers--so please just say it--who are you?"

"Passing through," I said.

"Why--are you wearing a suit of armor?"

"Because fuck you."

"How did you slip past our sensors?"

"We just showed up."

"You just showed up."

"Yes," I said, my impatience cutting into my voice. "Look, we're in a hurry. We're crossing through worlds to fight a genocidal tyrant. We just happen to drive up on you."

"Drive up," he said back. "As in sail through 500,000 kilometers of hyper-sensitive sensor network nodes."

"Sure."

"Bullshit. An admiral of your caliber could never do such a thing. Officers, seize everyone on this ship."

The cops aimed their rifles. The rebels aimed back. The tension returned with the stalemate.

I stared daggers into the space aristocrat, and he stared patiently back.

"Wait, hold on," said Jessie, behind me. She stepped between us. "Look, just let me explain the best I can."

And she did. Or at least she tried to explain the situation. She hurriedly went through a synopsis of our misadventure in the flying battleship in our struggles against the evil empire, the chase of Marianna, the crossing over into dimensional worlds, and us showing up here.

Honestly, hearing the story out loud made me realize just how utterly stupid and unbelievable it all was, and even our own guys were looking away awkwardly at the obvious lie. Even though it wasn't.

"And we're stuck," she said, "until we can get the Gate Drive fixed."

The aristocrat pursed his lips, his head nodded along in thought, and when he made his decision, he said, "Sure. Okay."

"Wait, what?" I said. "Why did you believe her and not me? It's the same story."

"Because fuck you," he said. He gestured at the cops, and they lowered their rifles. "You may rest your ships here for now, but if you wish to dock or otherwise approach the stations, you'll need to register your fleet."

"Thanks but no thanks," I said. "We'll stay here until we can fix our shit."

The gate technician stepped up and whispered to me. "Admiral, we're in dire need of cosmic shards."

I groaned inwardly. "I also need supplies. Are you open to trade?"

A spark of irritation flashed across his eyes, and he breathed a deep breath. One of his accompanying generals whispered into his ear, and he nodded them away. "Very well. Let us negotiate." He looked around. "While I doubt you would have the proper facilities to host a nobleman of my station, I will make an exception. Only for the sake of business."

I sighed. Technically, he was right. Our best room was the war room where the rebel officers made war plans, but we had military secrets there that no stranger should witness. The second best would be my room.

So I had them follow me there. On the way, I had Cassandra order my little trash can mobs to hurry up and make it spotless and pretty and clean just to please our hoity-toity aristocrat dickhead guest. And when we arrived, it was as spotless and pristine as I had hoped. Hell, even I was impressed to see it glimmer and smell so sweetly like this.

The stern windows presented us with a dazzling view of the planet atop a backdrop of stars, and the far edge, one of the space stations dominated the frame. The dull light of the planet and the stars flooded in and small marks of neon light from the billboard advertisements reflected on the silverware and cups.

"Fucking garbage," said the Count. He grumbled and walked in, dropping into one of the chairs. His general stood on his flanks, and I took the seat across from him.

I took a deep breath. "I apologize it is not to your liking, but given the circumstances, it's the best we have."

The Count waved the apology away. "Just speak. Tell me what you need."

"Cosmic shards." I reached into my storage and pulled one out. It glimmered like a palm-sized diamond, but it glowed a ghastly blue. "My technicians tell me these things exist everywhere."

The Count nodded. "They do. And I'm sure you're aware that they are as rare as they are expensive."

"We don't carry currency," I said, "But we can repay in resources. Iron, fuel, nukes, you name it."

The Count leaned back and scratched his chin. "You appeared through an inter-dimensional portal, was it? I would very much like the data pertaining to it."

I gave it a moment of thought. There was no guarantee that some off-brand-Marianna from their world wouldn't rise up and do the same shit, and if they had a portal, they would be free to romp around as well. I didn't have the time or patience to be worried about yet another interdimensional threat, so I said, "No. Not right now. Once we finish this battle, perhaps we can talk about it again, but for now, it's a vital military secret."

The Count huffed. "What could you lesser creatures hope to offer in return?"

My eye twitched. "Potions. We have a diverse selection of magic spells distilled in liquid form. Do you have magic in this world?"

He waved it away. "We don't need magic here. Our technology is advanced enough to mimic every form of magic imaginable."

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"Then imagine harder. How about we trade our products on your market, and we use the money to buy the shards from you?"

He looked around the room in thought, nodding to himself as he mentally ran over the numbers. "Perhaps you do have something we could use, but I would like exclusive trade rights." He turned to me. "We'll send a research team aboard, and they will determine what technology or magic we could use in our economy, and from there, we'll decide what to buy."

"By stealing trade secrets?" I asked.

He scoffed. "Such an insult, but I suppose I can't blame you. You are foreigners, and I can tell from the craftsmanship of this vessel that you had come from a... less developed place, so it would be unsurprising that you would not trust the word of a noble."

"Fine," I said. "Send your best and brightest to look over our stock, and in exchange for exclusive trading rights, I want my fleet registered, and I want to be allowed to hire from your people."

He frowned. "A tall order." He looked at the space station from his seat. I could almost feel the pull of its gravity from here. After a moment, he chuckled. "Sure. Why not? If you can convince the fools of the lower classes to join in your quest, then so be it. You'd be doing us a favor."

----------------------------------------

The asshole Count and his entourage fucked off back to their little Spacer jerk-off home, and I went back to the bridge to deal with my own systems.

Marianna's trail surely had gone cold already, and now we were dead in the water in the backyard of some high-and-mighty noble, and nothing was going right. Jessie and her crew continued to work on the Gate core--I checked in through the screens to see them welding on the cosmic shard cannons. Everyone else was just fucking around in a superstate of being busy with prepping for the final battle and just lounging around like cats all over the place. I even had to step over Vil, who had fallen asleep in the hallway. The Card King napped in one of the sex swings like a hammock, and the hero party were out golfing on the hull of the ship--using air and gravity magic to make it all work.

"Imsi," said Cassandra. "The Ancient Ai-Core rebuild is complete. A catalog of data has been recovered. Since I know you can't read, I can read you the information if you would like."

"Yes, Cassandra, I can read, but, yeah, just speak it to me."

And for the next hour, she told me. She told me the story of the ancients, about how they, too, were a space-faring civilization, crossing through dimensions during a great war, a war that found its climax above our particular planet, and while the victors of that war were unknown to us--the data didn't reach that far--the debris of the battle did indeed rain down onto our continents and oceans.

While much of the data was not really all that interesting--nobody cares about flora and fauna of strange planets--it did contain a wealth of knowledge about the various worlds they had explored. A database of worlds and their physical laws.

For example, this world, in particular, was called Spacer World. The one with the furries was called--you guessed it--Furry World. There were also worlds for different magic systems, like the High Mana Cost World, where spells could only be cast once a day, and Elemental Magic Only World, which was self-explanatory.

The ancients had listed the physical law differing worlds to be the most dangerous. For example, Reverse Gravity World actually didn't even have planets in it, let alone any life. It was just a sludge of matter across the universe. The more absurd ones like the Elbows-Bend-The-Other-Way-World, and Water-is-Sticky-World, were also notable dangers during travel.

I wondered what worlds Jessie and the Gimp King had come from, and after a quick call, I was informed that Jessie had come from a place called The-World-In-Which-the-Roman-Empire-Actually-Fell-World, which was strange because not only had I never heard of such an empire, but why was it important that it fell or not? Was it that big of a deal that the Grand Magi who created all existence had to make an entire world to play out a what-if scenario about it, or did it just happen naturally, and the ancients were the ones to give it a name?

So fascinating.

And when I asked the Gimp King, he told me that he hailed from Cyber World, and not Gimp World, as I had imagined.

This, of course, led to the one great existential question: What world was my world? Turns out, it was known--poetically, of course--as Rejected-Magic-System-Ideas-World. Apparently, it was a trash world for the Grand Magi's bad ideas. It explained a great many things, once I thought about it.

"Admiral," said the comms officer. "The Spacer scientists have arrived."

I saw it on screen, the small Spacer boat docked against my hull, and the airlock opened to present a small team of wide-eyed old men. They looked as though they were witnessing a fairytale. One felt at the metal interior of the airlock, said something to his colleagues, and they, in turn, began to stroke and molest the various surfaces.

"Good," I said. "Have them escorted around. Keep an eye on them, and don't let them linger in one spot for too long."

The rebel guards met them outside the airlock, and as amicably as they could, walked the scientist team around in a little tour. I had no interest in following them around. I had other shit to do.

So for the hour they took to go through our potion stock and various magic-technological-hybrid systems, I continued to dive into the ancient data on my own, reading through pages and pages of information, completely losing myself in it all until I felt a tap on my shoulder.

It was a rebel bureaumancer. A young guy with his hair parted neatly, a typical lawyer-look. He said, "Admiral, the topic of Furry-World came up, and one of the scientists would like to look at the data."

I furrowed my brow at the room. The entire scientist team was here, including the rebel guards, several rebel officers, and my entire bridge crew of technicians and decision-makers, so "Why is the lawyer of all people asking me this?--No offense."

He smirked. "I need you to sign here, here, and... here."

I stared at the legalese. "Cassandra," I said inwardly. "I realized I don't know how to read. I need you to decide for me."

"It would be advisable to sign. The Spacer scientists may have valuable insights into Marianna's technology, possibly giving us the knowledge to create countermeasures."

I smiled tightly and signed there, there, and there, and I handed the paper back to the lawyer, who handed it to the rebel officer, who read it over, then to the next guy, and so on.

It looked like it was gonna take a while, so I said, "Just fuckin' show 'em. Bring it on screen."

And the front windows flipped over to a visual feed of the burning planet. A slow-motion zoom and pan across the surface of Furry-World, the glowing burn of the magma and the blackness of the ash, all just a churning ball of fire and heat.

"Incredible," said the lead scientist. "It's as though..." He whispered to his comrades, and whatever it was he proposed, they vehemently disagreed with it.

"Impossible," said another. "There's no way such a thing could happen."

"No," said a third. "This data proves it." He pointed at one of the computer consoles, and the others peered in. "This planet underwent a rapid entropy change. The organization of its innards was mulched into disorder as if every cell on the planet burst and spilled out. This isn't just a planet," he pointed at the screen. "This is planet-soup."

"Admiral," said the lead scientist. "Do you have any data on what caused this?"

"Show him," I ordered.

The screen flipped over to Marianna's ship. It was a stitch of recordings during our combat with her--the fight over the ocean and the chase in orbit. Both events offered shakey and blurry views of that ancient ship, and with each blink of a scene change, the scientists lost more and more color. Some looked at one another for affirmation, and others only shook their head in disbelief.

"It can't be," one said.

"It's just a legend," said another.

And finally, when the recording got to our stable orbit above the planet, the image of Marianna's ship stabilized. The camera zoomed in. The red blur came into focus.

And the scientists gasped.

"The Sword of Gods' Twilight," the lead scientist said.

"What is that?" I asked.

"It is the name of that ship."

"A bit verbose for a ship name, isn't it?" I said.

"It's a ship that only existed in legend and myth." He chuckled in astonishment as Marianna's ship opened the portal and vanished just before the nukes reached her.

Another scientist continued. "Certainly, you also have religious figures in your world. I assume it's the same."

"Sure," I said. "Now, tell me about this legend."

The lead scientist peeled his eyes off the screen just long enough to glance me up and down before returning to the repeating video. "The ship is known as the harbinger of the end. The end of all life, of all things that exist, the apocalypse, so to speak. To us Spacers, the apocalypse is the heat death of the universe."

"Heat death?"

"Entropy is the state of disorder," he explained. "It is the natural state of all things, the state of decay, the state of nonbeing, the state of death. All life and all systems slowly approach this state as entropy runs its course, and no matter how efficient a system may be, entropy must always ever increase."

"What does this have to do with that ship?"

"It has a weapon that artificially increases entropy. Some stories call it a Drain Gun, in that it drains the state of order from its target. Others called it an Entropy Blaster, or a Decay Laser, or even more simply, a Delta-S Cannon."

"Well, this so-called Demon of yours is now running rampant across worlds. If you have any decency, you'll help us come up with a countermeasure, or a plan, or a weapon, anything."

Their response was flakey. Some looked away in shame; others shook their head with their eyes on the floor. Only the leader could look me in the eye. "If the Count permits, we may help you devise a plan, but please understand this may be difficult to push through at such a short notice." He lowered his voice, "Especially considering the amount of work it would take to create an order-freezing-weapon that could somehow prevent the state of disorder increasing in a system. It would need, perhaps, magic or something to accomplish--" he coughed. "Excuse us. We have what we need, and while I agree there are things we are interested in, we must return our report to the Count before any sharing may begin.”

The rebel bureaumancer helped file the last bit of the paperwork.

The video reached the end of the loop again, and her ship vanished through a flashing portal--

And a portal just beyond the spinning-top space station ripped open.

Strange alien ships crossed through and filed into formation--ugly brown and jagged things--, and distant alarms began to wail. An automatic message from the station broadcasted an alert--dull and muffled as we watched in horror--as a vast fleet of countless alien battleships pulled through, and filing in right behind--

A red ship as large as the spinning-top stations themselves.

"The Sword of Gods' Twilight."