To Walk the Constellations Pt. 15

Fighters by the dozen had flown from their secure clampings. Others had dropped from cranes. Their fuel spread across the deck and some sparks had set the entire place into a furious inferno, which hissed and roared as it swept towards fuel tank after fuel tank. Secondary explosions tore through metal and Techne lifted her arm, ducking forward. Three shocktroopers sprinted by, careless of their burning armor, carrying firefighting gear, no matter how doomed or hopeless their cause. Techne shouted. "Hey!" She said.

One turned back to look at her.

"We could he-" Techne started.

The shocktrooper reached for his rifle, stumbling with both the rifle and his firefighting gear. His voice was only faintly muffled by his helmet: "The prisoners are escaping!"

Techne reacted instantly: She sprinted towards him, her hand darting into her pocket. She slammed one of the clavegun bullets she had salvaged from the damaged rifle into his helmet, her finger stabbing down on the firing pin. Her hand and the helmet both exploded apart in the same spectacular boom. The shocktrooper stumbled backwards, his face a mass of bloody cuts – the helmet having come apart just as it had been designed. By shattering, it didn't transmit all the kinetic damage directly to his head. It still wasn't a great thing, to have your helmet explode. As the shocktrooper stumbled, Techne – her pain sensors screaming at her – snatched his rifle from his maglocks and backed away. The shocktrooper stumbled, reaching for his sidearm. He pulled it free and began to fire at her. Techne yelped and backed away – and a moment later, a huge sheet of burning metal dropped directly onto the schocktrooper.

Techne stood there, her knees nearly quivering with the simulated adrenaline. "Fucking asshole."

When she returned, Mal was squeezing onto the pole, trying desperately to find some way to lever it out of Rossck, who was grabbing onto the furred man's shoulders and shaking his head. "Give the cap a second!" he said, then yelped as Techne shouldered her way between them, triggered the chainsaw bayonet, then sawed the pole off with only inches to spare. Sparks sprayed onto Rossck's chest, but then the pole fell away and he staggered forward, his face going all funny – scales paling to gray-green.

"Leave it in, he'll bleed to death otherwise," Techne said. Mal, jerking his hands back, nodded.

"Where too?" He asked.

Techne looked at the hanger – the smoke pouring from it thick and noxious. "Anywhere but there," she said, nodding.

"Agreed," Mal said, his voice grim.

Rossck tried to make a complaint when Mal slung him over his shoulder and the two of them started to sprint down the corridor in the opposite direction they had come from.

But not very hard.

***

Adoran stood behind Vorsoth, while Thale stood before him. Smoldering lines of molten metal and slashed up conduits marred the deck around them – dozens of ax marks and missed slashes. But so far, none of the three had actually landed a telling blow on the other. Vorsoth's shoulder cannons swiveled and fired a short ranged spread of micro-rockets at Thale. Thale snapped up his palm and screamed out his fury and his pain and the missiles exploded in a rippling spread, as if they had slammed into a wall of invisible force. Fragments pelted both warriors, but Vorsoth was already sweeping his ax behind him – nearly bisecting Adoran, who leaped backwards and then staggered and stumbled over a corpse.

"Do you know what I did with your woman, Thale?" Vorsoth growled.

Thale, his face impassive, thrust forward with the tip of his blade at Vorsoth's chest. Vorsoth, trying to keep an eye on him and Adoran, reacted a fraction slower than he should have – the tip drew a thin, glowing red line along his chest armor. Vorsoth snarled, then fired another spread of missiles – straight downward, even as his legs launched himself straight upwards with a sudden, springlike motion. The impact of the missiles on the deck rocked the ground and Thale flung out an arm to try and keep himself balanced.

Vorsoth landed to his left, ax blade sweeping down. Thale leaped forward, losing his grip on his threshold blade. His palms slapped to the deck and he vaulted upwards, landing catlike on the edge of one of the consoles not smashed to bits. Around him, the battle raged, with Quah rushing from knot of Shocktrooper to knot of Shocktrooper, her powers and her threshold blade wreaking a blood havoc in the enemy ranks.

"I raped her," Vorsoth snarled. "And then I killed her."

Thale's ears flicked dismissively.

Vorsoth stepped forward. "Didn't you hear me?"

"I did," Thale said. "I'm just utterly unimpressed."

Vorsoth's mechanical bellow was almost a shriek as he charged forward, his grille-face mask glowing with a red light as his vocal simulators worked overtime. The subsonic harmonics crawled along Thale's spine. Thale flashed to a memory of Vorsoth – his foot pressed against a child's ribcage, glaring down at him. Mutant. Weak. Filth. Pathetic.

Vorsoth brought his ax down. Thale sprang upwards and landed nimbly on the ground before the console. He ducked forward, his tail flattening out to avoid being slashed by Vorsoth's two handed swing.

"You made me wear a mask my whole life," Thale said, his voice as cold as ice. He stood and pirouetted backwards, effortless. It was almost like dancing as Vorsoth slammed his ax down where Thale had been standing a moment before. "You locked me up behind gloves..." Vorsoth wrenched his ax blade free and poured a barrage of missiles at Thale – raining down shot after shot, which Thale coldly detonated in the space between them. Fragments scored along his arm and shoulder as he ducked his head and throat behind his lifted arm. He grunted as an exceptionally large chunk skittered along his elbow, jarring him to the bone.

"We made you what you are!" Vorsoth stomped forward. "You owe us everything."

Thale ducked the ax swing. But rather than darting backwards, he cut into Vorosth's thigh muscles, his claws finding the pneumatic cables and snagging them. Through the physical connection, he felt the emergency and maintenance releases. With a thought, Vorsoth could detach his legs – for ease of repair and rest. He was so furious, so unfocused, that Thale undid the catches with a twist of his mind, then wrenched. Pneumatic gasses poured into the air as Thale leaped backwards – out of the way of Lord Vorsoth as he fell to one knee.

Vorsoth screamed in fury and hurled his ax at Thale's head. Thale casually stepped aside, stepped forward, spun aside to evade Vorsoth's rib-crushing punches. He ducked into the man's guard and snagged onto exoskeleton power shunts. He wrenched one free in a spray of sparks, ducked beneath a hook punch, then stood in the same fluid motion, his claws raking upwards. He slashed across Vorsoth's face, catching sensitive optics and what little flesh remained between the grille plate and the insectoid optical array.

Vorsoth screamed his fury and his pain as Thale stepped backwards.

"You'll...never be Emperor after this!" Vorsoth shouted – and Thale felt his powers reaching outwards.

And on the screen of every surviving console, on the vid-coms of every heads up display, on every firing solution computer, on every radio band of the fleet...an image began to play. It was clear and soundless. It showed Thale standing beside the Lady Venn as she stood and tugged on the monofilament wire that had sliced the Emperor completely in half. It showed him taking up his threshold blade and turning on the Hegemonic Knights that every citizen of the Chain had looked upon like near demigods.

It showed everything.

Thale...

Purred.

"You never understood me, Vorsoth," he said. He stepped forward as Vorsoth clutched at his face – his powers entirely focused on putting out the recording to every ship in the fleet. Thale grabbed onto the QE reservore in the man's chest and wrenched it free with a spray of sparks and a hiss of bubbling, frothing fluids. "You only ever saw the mask."

He plunged his claws under the grille, his arms straining as he planted his other palm against his forehead. He strained, then screamed, and ripped the entire grille free in a spray of red gore – a slurry of black bile, teeth and jagged connection ports. Vorsoth made a hideous, gurgling noise. He managed to half stand, his leg dragging, his hand clutching at his face as blood and bubbling fluids poured from what had been his lower jaw.

Lord Vorsoth's eyes dimmed.

Faded.

He fell backwards.

Behind him, Thale saw Adoran – surrounded by what looked like twelve dead black clad Shocktroopers – grinning at him weakly. "Hey," he said, his hand planted against a shallow cut on his side.

Thale smiled back.

And his head exploded with pain.

***

Techne and Mal – with Rossck slung over his shoulders – came back to the brig as the PA announced: "Antimatter breach imminent. All hands to escape pods."

"Where the fuck are those?" Mal snarled, his breath coming in jagged, gasping pants.

"I don't-" Techne stopped as she started towards the right exit of the brig. They had gone left, originally, and now, were retracing their steps, desperate to find a doorway that lead somewhere safe. Unfortunately, the nukes had closed off many of the alternate paths they might have taken earlier, and even the prison complex was looking a tad worse for wear. But her stopping had nothing to do with any of that: It had everything to do with the Hegemonic officer who was standing in one of the prison cells, holding a handheld computer. He snapped his head up as Techne cleared her throat.

"What the fuck are you doing?" She asked, simply.

She half expected the man to reach for his pistol, so...she wasn't shocked when he did so. He aimed it right at her head, his blue eyes wide, his blond hair matted with sweat. "S-Stand back!" he said, trembling. "I'm going to live! And you? You are all going to die!"

"How?" Techne asked.

The man grinned, his eyes manic. "The brig systems are designed to vent into space. Launches the whole compartment out there, enclosed, with just the air they brought with them." He giggled. "Intimidation! It's a great intimidation tactic. Drop them into space, and point to the ticking clock to get their friends to surrender."

Techne, her ruined hand still dripping with lubricant, gaped at him.

"Now! I'm going to get out of here!" The blond man said, his breath coming short and shallow. He drew back the hammer on his pistol.

"We can all get out of-" Techne started.

The bullet slammed into her chest. It shattered through chrome and ceramics with the same ferocious efficency it would have against a biological target. Techne flopped backwards, gritting her teeth as dozens of alerts and alarms wailed to life across her body – the bullet had come dangerously close to hitting her power core. She clutched at her chest, reflexively.

The roar that reached her ears a second later wasn't another gunshot.

Mal charged forward over her, Rossck having slid to the ground beside Techne. The Hegemonic officer yelped and fired once, twice, the bullets thudding into Mal with all the impact of peas against an elephant. Mal grabbed onto the man's arms, then slammed his forehead into the Hegemonic officer's forehead, then tossed him out, head first, into the cell across from them. The Hegemonic officer landed in a pile, groaning, but still alive.

Mal held the man's handheld computer, his nose flaring in furious, deep pants.

Techne opened her mouth to speak – but then Mal grabbed her ankle and Rossck's ankle and dragged.

The cells door shut. Then the secondary door shut – this one completely sealing the cell off. The next few seconds were an agony of gravitational forces – tumbling, spinning, spinning, tumbling. Techne closed her eyes and tried to not picture the fires burning towards the San Diego's antimatter tank. She, instead, tried to focus on the comforting memory of the inverse square law. Each meter they put between them and the Diego was square factor on how much energy less would hit their ship.

Heh.

Ship.

Like a floating coffin made by a sadistic engineer counted as a ship.

The cell continued to tumble and tumble and tumble. Space would never slow or catch it up. And as time passed, even Techne started to grow sick. She closed her eyes and tried to not think about anything but the inverse square law. Eventually, though, the silence and the chill that bled through the walls started to creep against her – and at last, Rossck broke the silence.

"Cap?"

"Yeah?" Techne asked.

"I like it better when Venn rescues us."

Techne laughed, raggedly.

Eternity after eternity passed. Techne's oxygen sensors started to blip from green to yellow to red. But there was so little to do to extend things, beyond hope and pray that the cold would help keep Rossck from bleeding to death. Techne knew that she could check her internal clock to determine what the time was – but she decided she'd rather not know. Each minute counted closer to the second she knew the oxygen would run out. She'd survive. But...

She had pressed on without a ship.

Ships were just things.

But Techne knew she'd never set foot in space again without a crew.

"Cap..." Mal mumbled, his voice muzzy with fatigue – and only fatigue. He definitely wasn't turning choking desperate oxygen starved.

"Hmm?" Techne mumbled.

"I think I...hear something."

The entire room rocked – hard – and stopped spinning. A gravity field still pressed them to the deck. Techne managed to lift her head just before the brilliant spark of light stabbed into the ceiling. It cut quick circle. A plating dropped in and a moment later, a lithe figure dropped in too. An aghast cry came from a woman's lips – and then Techne's face was filled...

By Enriquah.

"They blew up your amazing boobs!" She wailed.

Techne began to wish for death again.

***

REUNION

Hohmann and I tumbled from the star of Kataclyzm – the Tiamat II none the worse for wear.

The first few hours after the nova had bitchslapped the Machine into whatever counted as its afterlife had been surreal. I had, at first, panicked. But after a few minutes of quizzing myself, I saw that...all the things I'd learned, all the things I had known instinctively were still there. I could still chart a course, still drive a motorcycle, still strip a gun. I didn't think I'd be able to learn new things, but that wasn't so much of an issue at the moment.

Hohmann spent that time slowly touching her cheeks, rubbing at her hair, and whispering to herself. "Wow..." Then. "Wow..." Then, a few seconds later. "Wow."

Finally, I had turned to her and snapped: "Wow what!?"

"I don't feel the urge to strap on a laser sword and save the galaxy," Hohmann said, her voice filled with awe.

My brow furrowed. "You...you don't?"

Hohmann laughed. "No!"

I cocked my head. "I do..."

"Well, you're sixteen," Hohmann said, shrugging slightly. "That's normal for someone your age."

"Bar that!" I squeaked, my arms crossing over my chest. "I'm almost twenty cycles, Wotan!"

"Oh," Hohmann said, blinking at me. "Well, I...you look younger."

"What, cause I don't got great big old..." I waved my hands. "Chest. Things!?"

"I thought you said you were twenty," Hohmann said, her voice dry as she started to tap at the physical controls of the Tiamat II. I scowled at her. But then it started to sink into my brains that...I didn't have my powers anymore. I couldn't hear machines whisper. I couldn't focus on a computer and make it sit up and bark. I was just...Venn. Venn of Stumble. That was all I was. I looked down at my hands. Then my brow furrowed as I looked at my cybernetic arm. I lifted it up, spreading my fingers, and focused.

Nothing happened.

My brow furrowed and I breathed slowly. Rather than reaching out with my mind...I focused instead on the join of my arm. I focused on the tips of my fingers. I tried to caress it – and I felt faint twitches and quivers on the ends of my hand. My fingers narrowed in their focus, cupping forward, almost touching tip to tip. I saw a tiny ripple of energy in the center of my cybernetic palm. I spread my hand wide.

And the handheld computer that Hohmann held leaped from her palms to mine with a surge of gravitic energies.

"Hey!" Hohmann exclaimed.

I grinned, cocky and eager. "We just gonna make our own miracles now."

That was how I didn't go crazy in the days it took us to slipdrive from We Made It to Kataclyzm. Since we didn't have the simstim to keep us from being right in one another's faces. Hohmann aggressively meditated and I practiced with my cybernetic arm. Hohmann's story of the Collapse made it clear that while the Machines made miracles easier, humans could wrap their heads around them. I had a Domain era cyberlimb attached to me. I could damn well use it.

I wondered if the same would be true with a threshold blade.

And, finally, we emerged from Kataclyzm's primary – and into the targeting lasers of dozens of worldkillers and hundreds of shuttles. Debris floated so thick and so heavy that it nearly slammed into the Tiamat II – and I scrambled to the communicator. "Whoa! Whoa! Whoa!" I said, shouting into the microphone. "Whoa! Hey! We're fine! We're all fine, we're all friends here, uh..." I paused. "How are you?"

There was a long pause. Wotan shook her head and smiled, as if she was remembering some other time, some other place.

"Venn?" Enriquah said.

"Hey Quah!" I said, breathing a slow sigh of relief.

"Do you know what the fucking fuck happened to our fucking rad superpowers!?"

I winced. This...might get awkward.

A BIT

"You did what!?"

Thale, who was currently wrapped around me and nuzzling my neck, proved to be nearly as distracting as Adoran, who was kissing my cheek and squeezing me around the hips. So. I wasn't going to lie and say that being sandwiched between two gorgeous, gorgeous boys, wasn't the best fucking thing in the universe. Cause it was. But it did make it hard to focus on Enriquah, who was sitting at the far end of the meeting table, and looking utterly apalled.

"I, uh," I coughed, then gasped as Thale nibbled on my ear and caressed my belly, his purring buzzing through my bones. "I triggered a ship's FTL in reverse. So, rather than increasing a star's gravity, it increased it."

"You caused Home's primary to go nova!?" Enriquah put her hands to her face. Her hair was hanging limp around her – lifeless. "I...I...I can't decide if I want to strangle you for destroying the source of our godlike powers or for doing that without letting me waaaaaaaaaatch!" She slumped forward onto the table, her hair puddling around her.

Thale drew back. He somehow spoke around his purr. "How could you watch? It was a sun going nova."

"I'd have found a way..." Enriquah mumbled.

The door to the meeting room opened and Admiral Meetra stepped in. "Regent," they paused. "Sir...Dra..." They made an even more intense face, her brow furrowing. "I don't...know...what to call you..."

"Thale is good," Thale said, his voice dry as he slipped away from me.

"Meetra?" I asked. "What are you doing here?"

"Oh, Meetra and I have been quietly killing the worst leaders in the Hegemony and replacing them with Alliance members who have been taking control of important segments of the Hegemonic military," Thale said. Casually. Like. Whoa. What!?