KR-9 was a nearly habitable planet within the territory of the Nekogian Empire. They had begun seeding it with life a few hundred years ago, and had built two colonies on it. They seeded it with the most robust lifeforms of their homeworld, which were also the most dangerous.
When the attack happened, the invaders released their most robust lifeforms as well. The defense put up by the Nekogian civilians was fierce, but the settlements were captured and all survivors taken as slaves by the Grequenok invaders. The landscape was now full of wreckage, nasty creatures that are hard to kill, and plants that have no place near civilization.
The Namaste translated into real space near KR-9 and fell under attack immediately by the Grequenok battle group stationed there. The Namaste was no normal ship, returning fire from her nine heavy cannons. The cannons were modified to fire a quick skip drive ordinance, which did its job despite the range being off due to newbies at the controls.
Draft Private Costan was up, dressed, and at the drop pod in minutes of the alarm. The vacuum suit managed to be pintchy despite the layered uniform. His whole platoon was to deploy planet side via orbital drop, a new and half baked idea that someone came up with when playing with an experimental propulsion system.
"I'm many things, mostly miserable, but I'm an inventor damn it," he thought to himself. He was eating nothing but field rations and dealing with the bare minimum of everything. They effectively weren't even paying him, his pay card didn't work. It went to his account, that was on lockdown by the Emperor, and nothing would accept pay from him via card anyway.
Costan hated life, hated rations, hated the Emperor; hells, he hated everything. He especially hated the plan of shooting himself at a planet as the ship went by like a sentient guided missile. Standing orders were stupid too, "when the pod opens, you will find them, break their shit, and make them bleed."
They gave him a pack full of rations, a canteen, an entrenching tool, a knife, a sewing kit, an old dress saber, and some good old fashion grenades as his supplies because everything else was too techy and could put him in violation of the stupid mandate. The drop pods were identical except for Costan's, because his was made fully automated so that he wouldn't be able to do techy things with the buttons.
Namaste was taking a beating, but she was a giver. For every indentation or crater upon her armor, she gave devastation in return with certified delivery. A dent unto her benounced a missing bulkhead or detonated magazine of her enemies, for her destructive prowess was absolute.
The modified heavy cannons were old technology, but were fitted to fire ordinance that skipped out of existence, bypassing layers of shields and armor. The Namaste had been heavily modified for a more modern interstellar warfare experience. She had many weapons at her disposal, but the newfangled ordinance was guaranteed to do what it used to but without having to punch through anything. The shiny new railguns, "plasma thingies", and "all that fancy crap" had to break through shields in order to do damage, which they weren't able to do.
The Namaste got her shields up, rendering most of the enemy rounds useless against her. The enemies began evasive maneuvers to avoid the guaranteed death by good old high explosives, running random number generation into their positioning thrusters. The battle began to drag on.
The Grequenok thought it would be a quick victory over the single flying city, but had suffered a whopping fifty percent casualty rate, and now it's shielding was up. They were pushing the positioning systems to their limits, hoping to run the beast dry of its potent munitions. It was two hours before they realized that the Namaste had switched tactics, spraying chaff into the void to mix with the debris, flack, and shrapnel. Something had to change...
Admiral Queknark had never lost a naval engagement, it was his theater. The insulate Nekogians would learn like the savage Dundee had, that honor is all that mattered. "Insen, all ships prepare slip drives for kamikaze." Good thing that they had fully disembarked the ground and air units and got the ground bases set up. "Even if the Nekogians win this battle, they will never take the planet."
The bridge of the super heavy carrier went silent after the order was given, every Grequenok sailor in prayer as they went about their tasks. The bridge of all the Grequenok ships were bathed in the same reverent silence of the death prayers. They knew their honor bound duties.
Captain Cankar was not stupid. They went into slip space, but he wasn't about to believe that they were running from battle. "Engage evasives." The massive death machine pitched in the silent void, yawing to one side and powering away in an ark from the center. She dropped slip space drag charges where she had been.
The slip space explosions were bad, rippling into reality at greater than relativistic speeds. Three more Greq ships met their doom because they were too close to the one that hit the charges. It knocked the others out of slip space, sending a massive jolt throughout the void. The chaff sparkled and zapped with the hyperatomic energy dump, stripping the shields of all the ships in the system and bathing the planets in atomic light.
Costan, as instructed, had properly stored his gear for drop. The ready light came on, but the rest of his squad was late. He strapped in and waited to be shot planet side, ignorant of what was going on. The Namaste pitched again, burning her thrusters hard as she shuddered and shook. Something made serious contact, but the pod slammed shut and he was away, the green launch light fading away into the void. The gravitational forces were exhilarating, it was the first thing to get his heart to race in years.
The rest of the squad got the false alarm call a few minutes after Costan ran off to the drop pods. They stayed hunkered down in their vacuum suits, knowing that they were not near the drop zone yet and content to let the depressed and disgruntled draft marine stew in his pod. It was automated, so it wasn't going to get accidentally launched. About five hours of intense space warfare passed before they got news that a pod got automatically launched during evasive maneuvers, specifically the one where they grazed a carrier.
The squad had a collective what the fuck moment before they checked the pod bay. The ready light and launch light were both on, meaning that Costan got launched. They reported him missing in action and went about their business.
Costan found that his pod crash landed in a hangar bay. The door was open and the giant numerals on the wall were undeniably Greq. "Standing Orders, find them, break their stuff, make them bleed. Location doesn't matter, I guess, because they sent me here", his thoughts were fast and choppy. "Probably adrenaline."
He grabbed his kit from the pod and thanked the uncomfortable vacuum suit for having magnetic boots as the ship rotated hard enough to move the crashed orbital drop pod. Costan doubled his efforts, for this was war, and there's no time for lingering in war. Well, for other people, there may be time to linger a bit, but that wasn't how his life worked. His life was a joke, like the stupid wig that someone hid in his bag of rations.
Captain Cankar was not happy to hear about accidentally launching a marine into the fray of space warfare between battle ships, but there was nothing to be done about that at the moment. The Namaste was in a pitched slugging match with three enemy vessels. The two frigates were constantly making ramming passes and the carrier was launching the occasional missile volley at them.
Everyone's slip drives and shields were battered and deep fried. The crew were working to get the backup shields installed and online from the Namaste's ample store of "spare parts". The spare parts were also known as the newest variants that they didn't have time to install before leaving the shipyard, so they got tucked into whatever space was big enough to fit said parts.
Costan was thankful that the vacuum suit was matte black, it helped him stay unseen in the dimly lit areas of the hostile carrier ship. He chose to wear the stupid wig, just because he decided that he was going to die as he lived. He was going to die as an overly serious joke that nobody took seriously or found funny.
The dance of death continued on between the metal behemoths, dragging on through the hours. Costan was sneaking around the seemingly deaf Grequenok, sabotaging things and occasionally slitting throats. He stopped and observed some of the crewmen watching a video of the invasion. They were laughing at the unnecessary violence, Nekogian children begging for mercy were beaten, burned alive, and worse.
The crewmen were dead before Costan realized what he had done. The rage at what they did. They found rape and murder humorous, until one was suffocated from his genticles being torn off and shoved down his throat through his newly broken face. Another was dying in agony, her arms torn off and shoved in improbable places. Four Greq lay brutally murdered around the datapad that still played those scenes of brutality on innocents.
The security drone recorded it all, if the frames per second didn't lose part of the insanely fast and brutal murders. The armsmen had sent the drone to find those skirting their duties, but found them being brutally killed by someone who drank in the light with a very strange and prominent hairstyle. They kicked it up the ranks, and sent people to take care of the interloper, who had spotted and dispatched the drone with a sword.
The armsmen sent after the interloper were killed, every one of them. The scatter style plasma weapons they wielded were potent and ship safe, and they had personal shield emitters. None of it helped against the mad Nekogian swordsman who got the drop on them in melee range. The live body cameras revealed how ineffective they were.
News got to the Admiral, who didn't believe that somehow a random sword wielding maniac got aboard his ship mid battle. He hailed the Namaste out of the sheer incredulity of them sending a boarding party of one. While swordsmen were seen as a very honorable foe, he only had one question when Captain Cankar answered.
"Why would you send a crazed swordsman aboard my ship mid battle? I know that boarding torpedoes were entertained during our last major war, but it left many to die in space. How crazy are you bunch of mutant tree cats?"
Captain Cankar was stunned by the revelation that the drop pod wasn't lost in space. The sword wielding maniac could only describe one person from his ship, Private Costan, Marine Infantry Drop Devision, conscripted. He quickly remembered that Private Costan was that Costan, he had to play his cards right or they could capture one of the brightest Nekogian minds. The picture of a black vacuum suit with the stupid wig from that one play gave him an idea.
"Yes, it seems that the escape pod wasn't launched by accident or panic then."
"What do you mean?"
"When the battle was just getting good, after all the shields went down, an escape pod was launched. We didn't know by whom, but that picture. That can only be a Night King."
"Seriously, is this a joke?"
"No, they are an open secret. When we have physically capable boys that are shunned or unwanted by society, they are given to the black court."
This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
"Like fucking musical?"
"Open secret, they train them, and they turn out like... that."
"So you launched special forces at me?"
"No, they aren't even part of the Nekogian Empire. They have a noncitizen status, it seems that one snuck on board and saw a chance for glory or something. I don't know how they do things."
"So I'm fighting you while under attack by some kind of murder hobo? Do you expect me to believe that?"
"I didn't think that they were real either, until you showed me that image. My shields are back up, good luck, you're going to need it."
Captain Cankar ended the call, but requested Sergeant Grinbo report to the bridge. While Captain Cankar of the Space Force couldn't command or order around a Marine Private, the Private's direct commanding officer could. Captain Cankar's day just got more interesting, because "how the hell, any of this?"
It was about half an hour before Sergeant Grinbo showed up on the bridge, in a vacuum suit sans helmet that was held at his side. Sergeant Grinbo saluted and greeted Captain Cankar.
"So, Sergeant Grinbo, Private Costan was listed MIA after an accidental launch?"
"Yes Captain Cankar."
"The enemy has found him", Captain Cankar pointed at the picture of a vacuum suited individual in a stupid wig, surrounded by brutally murdered Grequenok sailors. "Or, rather, Draft Private Costan found them. What were his standing orders?"
Back aboard the Grequenok Heavy Carrier, the Graceful Mother, Costan had snagged a bunch of tech and hidden himself away in the vents. That tech ban for him was blatantly retarded, and he was technically not in Nekogian territory. By Naval Law, he was in Greq territory as long as they were in control of the ship. The electronic system securities were garbage, similar to a dumpster on wheels that could simply be pushed out of the way.
Costan had their systems cracked wide open, with plenty of new back doors set up in them all within minutes. He found it relaxing to be able to do something he enjoyed, if only for a time. Turns out that they had tried a poison on some captured Nekogians, but while it caused brain hemorrhage in all other lifeforms, it caused them to hallucinate. It was peyote, they tried to poison people with peyote, and had hundreds of pounds of it.
Costan decided that it was worth a look see, since it was in the low security storage. The ship was in combat and locked down, so going to the bridge would be suicide. But the shift in personnel left that storage area nearly deserted.
It only took two minutes and one dead Greq before he was there, standing amongst piles of valuable metals, precious stones, and works of Nekogian art. The crate of peyote was easy to find, it was labeled hemorrhagic poison. He quickly set to finding an extra bag or something.
The life sized marble statue of what the plaque called the average Nekogian male made him uncomfortable. The pile of luxury silk robes were utilized to cover it. Costan sighed and thought "I hope that statue is an exaggeration."
Costan knew it wasn't, he had taken anatomy and physiology and they had gone into excruciating detail in the sexual health and reproduction part of Home Economics. The giant erotic paintings on the wall didn't help his feelings. "I think the Captain and crew need killing," he said aloud, one leg rubbing tightly against the other out of an odd urge to cross his legs at one painting depicting a castration with the surgeon and recipient being naked and erect.
He tripped over a small pile of things that didn't fit in. Two large, black, leather duffel bags and a wooden travel trunk, it was what Costan was looking for. He opened the trunk and found a large leather duster, a hat, a pipe, a canteen, and a disassembled big game rifle with cartridges. He opened the duffel bags and wished it would have been anything else.
They were full of, thankfully new and still packaged, sex toys. "Of all the shit." He grabbed the pipe and lit up some peyote. "Got to kill em all for this," he said between puffs with his helmet off. The universe started to wobble, then went back to normal with an added energy and vibrance. "Now they will know death." He dumped the bags and loaded them up with things more useful to him like peyote, spices, some gold, and comfortable silk clothes.
More and more Greq failed to check in across the ship, they were being slaughtered. Costan showed no mercy and gave no quarter, even disarming the charges around the reactors. He wouldn't allow them the cowards way out, they were his and bound to embrace Nihil. The Admiral tried to hail the two other remaining ships or the enemy, but he got nothing. Systems were going off line across the board.
"Trigger the self destruct!"
The destruction never came, but the black figure with the hair did.
"Night King, what is the meaning of this?"
The answer was a grating whisper that cut through everything. The black vacuum suit with the opaque visor and that accursed hair stared at him, the intensity hard enough that it was felt despite being unseen. The black leather bags and sword were kind of out of place, and the duster was just ridiculous with the hair.
"Death, Nihil calls for you."
Nobody had noticed that the communications had come back online, because the projectors and speakers were still offline.
"You are sick, twisted, an insult to the gifts of sentience and life. You dishonor yourself with the actions against the innocent and disgrace your kind with what you call valuable."
The Admiral was incredulous, the stupidity and insult of coming onto his bridge and calling him that. This was why he had called all the remaining armsmen to the bridge. Everything he had done was well within the Grequenok Treaties of Military Conduct.
"You come to me and call me dishonorabr? You wretched thing! Men, kill it!"
The armsmen moved to fire, but found themselves beside themselves as their bodies hit the floor. The battle had ended before it began. The Admiral was stunned, looking at his men as their naked, incoporeal forms faded with horror upon their faces.
"You! You..."
"Shhhh, Admiral Queknark, don't act so surprised. Nihil only sends his best to enact his will, he could have sent a Greq Night King, every sentient species has us. Now sit down, I'll get to you after I file my past due taxes."
"T t taxes?"
"Unwritten rules of us, we aren't allowed technology usage in nonhostile territory. Thus your death will wait, leaving this ship controlled by an enemy force, and me able to file my taxes and other electronic paperwork."
"Ha ha ha, wait until you file paper works. Ha haha."
The Night King paid the laughter no mind as he rapidly processed the many forms including taxes, military grievances, and full fledged injunctions against his father. It only took thirty minutes, but it was an eternity to the Admiral. The stage was set, and Costan the War Shaman was ready for the next scene.
The Night King took a few puffs off a long stem pipe of ivory and drenkwood. The visor of the vacuum suit rippled like water as the pipe's stem passed through it, and it's bowl glowed and unnatural rainbow. The acrid smoke danced as two coloured dragons battled each other within as the Night King inhaled. The communications systems were fully functional, but the Admiral didn't notice as he was focused on the two beasts fought locked in combat.
The forms were filled out and properly submitted, and Costan rose from the seat that nobody had realized he had taken. It was a fine masterpiece of wood and fabric that disappeared as he stood. It belonged in the office of some noble, not in the ether of wherever the Night King was keeping it; another showing of power from the entity.
"So, you're finished with the paperwork?" The Admiral's voice was uneasy and shaky, knowing that his death awaited him.
The hissing, grating whisper replied with "yes."
"What did you do to them, my crew?"
"I sent them to Nihil."
The Admiral's eyes locked onto a certain corpse, a female just the right age to serve in the Navy. "Could you bring one back?"
"Yes, but why would I?"
"I'll surrender, and so will all those under my command, both the enlisted and the enslaved."
"I have not the capacity to properly handle those who surrender."
"Then take me as a slave, but that one was obeying orders under protest!" The Admiral gestured at the corpse of the girl.
Captain Cankar had been watching the whole time, the shields of the Namaste rendered what weapons the enemy had left ineffective. It was like watching his soap operas back home, but closer, real, and with lethal consequences. "Somebody get the popcorn."
"This one meansssso much to you?"
"Yes."
"Ah, that'ssss why. Lieutenant Sekquark, daughter of Nequark, one of your broodlings." The Night King hissed in that accursed whisper as he made the girls corpse wiggle and writhe before beginning to float. The girl jerked and coughed as life came back to her, but something had her suspended by her throat.
"Please, Night King, spare her."
Unknown to the Admiral, all the other Grequenok ships and crews had been resurrected. They were all watching this, knowing that they had died. They made no attempts at hostilities, and the two surviving ships did likewise. Captain Cankar watched as more view panels joined the call, all watching and listening but unable to say anything to the Admiral or Night King.
The Night King chuckled, "I think I might enslave you all."
Every Greq on the ship began to jerk and cough as their lives came back to cold bodies. The bridge crew and armsmen arose on shaking legs, fear painted upon their faces.
"Kill it!"
For the second time that day, they moved to act on the Admiral's orders and fell dead for their trouble. The Lieutenant didn't move, disobeying the order, and was not subjected to having her soul ripped out a second time.
"Naughty, Naughty."
"Okay, I'm surrendering for real this time, please bring them back."
"No."
The Admiral began to scream out in pain as his soul was slowly, agonizingly separated from his body. His corpse hit the floor, as the others began to to jerk and stir once again. The bridge crew and armsmen arose once more, and saw that the Admiral lay dead. They looked to the Lieutenant Insen for orders.
"We surrender." Her voice was solid amidst the fear of what happened and the dishonor and punishment that would befall her should the Grequenok win the war.
"Unfortunately I need to use the restroom, I might have an answer when I return." Truth was that he remembered a few things and wanted to act on them before he forgot or lost his chance to sort them out. He remembered that he saw a set of beads labeled with correlating milliliters of volume in the cargo bay, similar to the ones the doctor had back at theater.
The doctor hadn't really went into detail, but he had to know. The doctor only mentioned stuff about how his life will differ from a normal male's until he was given a treatment to make his body remember to be male or got hormone therapy if it was too late. He remembered that the body slowly atrophied things it didn't use and whimpered. While he hadn't given it much thought, he would rather be able to have children of his own.
The beads were right where he remembered, sitting on a metal crate with some medical texts. One book was bookmarked, he didn't want to know. He opened the crate to find it full of packages of prosthetic testicles. He looked in the book, marked about reconstructive urological surgery. The bookmarked page was how to remove the testicles and replace them with bigger or smaller prostheses. He closed the book.
He looked at the other titles. There was one on reproductive hormones and disorders. Costan flipped through it and stopped on a page depicting the beads and listing the measurements according to expected ages heights and builds with notes about if they are too large or small. He took a big drag off the pipe, marked the page, and sealed the cargo bay. He made sure that the bay still had atmosphere and got undressed.
He didn't want anyone walking in on this, they may get the wrong idea and get him surgically castrated instead of the possibly reversible chemical that he was subjected to. He was quick to size himself and panic. Then he remembered that he was shaman and restored the healthy tissues until they were back to about an average eighteen year old size.
A very odd thought crossed his mind, "What if they fully intended me to end up that way?" He twisted reality, peering into the future and what all the different choices would lead to. He hated what he had seen. It was likely to happen with only a one in twenty chance of him not suffering that fate.
He grabbed some things from what was likely going to happen and got back dressed and vacuum suited. He stored the stasis cylinders that contained his future in shadow pocket of the nothing. "Only way I'm getting removed from the gene pool is by death." The fact that he took them from the feed belt of the palace trash grinder really disturbed him.
He got the helmet and wig back on just in time to hear the door being tried. He slapped the book shut and unsealed the bay. He opened the door just in time for his CO to ask why the door was not open.
"Sergeant Grinbo, I forget why it was sealed, but you should see part of why the Greqs really need to die." Costan was back to playing the part of Night King with the creepy whisper thing.
"Cut the crap Private, ship is fully under control of the Nekogian Empire. You better start explaining, start with whatever is in that pipe."
"Peyote, Sergeant. Read your squad updates and you would know that I'm a shaman, so you can't get me brigged for that. The tech ban only applies to Nekogian territory, I did techy things on a hostile Greq vessel, so no brig for that either."
"Stop, right there. You will resurrect the Admiral and then report for debriefing, that is an order. Command wants to know exactly what the fuck happened here, so you will tell them everything, understood?"
Costan took a puff off the pipe and replied, "understood, and you are going to need form R-12.17/B for unexplainable phenomenon, godly intervention, and/or shaman activity. You will find hard copies of all military forms in the filing room aboard the Namaste, it's next to the photocopy and fax room just past the officers lounge."
"If you're soo shamany, which cabinet?"
"Cabinet bank five, colum three, drawer two, it will be right after recreational substances requisition form and before the Immortal confirmation form."
"Shut up and bring the Admiral back to life."
"Already done, Sergeant."
"Then the shuttle's waiting, bay five deck g, get going Private."