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I AWAKEN TO MOCKING laughter.
“There he is, finally,” says another melodic, soft, yet commanding voice. This is a voice I’ve heard before in galaxy-wide broadcasts. However, I cannot place her at this time.
I open my eyes in shock. I immediately remember what just happened. Just? Or was it long ago? How long have I been out?
My questions seem to be speaking out of the pores of my skin because I am immediately met with a pair of inquisitive, caring eyes the color of honey. The center of the iris is greenish—very lovely eyes. Lonely, deep, sad: the eyes of a being who has lived and witnessed many things. Her skin is light brown, and her hair is short and black. She’s a sapien. Or appears to be anyway. Have I seen her before? She’s wearing a golden jumpsuit with the ÆTAS symbol at the center of her chest. The acronym is irregular as her small breasts distort the image slightly.
“He’s an inquisitive man. You’ll get answers to your questions soon enough,” she says to me. “Funny you haven’t recognized me. The truth is soldiers like you never really care enough to look up to who is the puppet master pulling the strings.”
She steps back, and I see a figure that causes me to flinch and squirm.
“Mortimer!” I yell. My voice...what happened to my voice? “You! It was you... you killed Cien-gi! ...how? What happened?”
I notice it was him whose mocking laughter I woke up to.
“It is very satisfying to see you defeated like this, brother. Like the cockroach, migrant filth you’ve always been. I am told you were scum before joining the ÆTAS. Seems once scum, always scum. And now it is said that you’re the joke of the galaxy by becoming the ‘doom commander.’ It’s so like you to have fallen into the hands of the Doomsayers and that traitor Ferfasser, how very likely for it to have been you who fell into his web of lies. From being the fallen hero in Canis Major, to wasting your reputation by joining the Doomsayers. Ha! You have made my day. I’ve always hated you down to the core. And now finally, it was I who took you down,” he laughs.
The giant soldier is in a new Homo iluminatus body. He has no armor on but the white thick reinforced enamel secreted by his skin. His whole body is covered in it, except his face. Why isn’t he in his purple armor?
“So many questions you have,” says the woman in the golden jumpsuit. “Is it ready?” asks a Tekka.
“Yes, my Primordial, the system is operational. The filters are set. You may proceed with the interrogation.”
Interrogation? Primordial. Of course. She’s wearing the golden jumpsuit, typical of high-ranking bureaucrats of the Core. I have a sudden spark and remember her name. This is Olympia Templestone!
“I see you’ve finally recognized me. It was about damn time, you fool. Oh how long we’ve waited for this moment. To finally have our hands free to do as we please with you. You’ve always been that elusive rat under the protection of the wing of other Primordials who wished you alive. Of course it makes sense for Ferfasser to have been your guardian angel all these centuries. And of course, as a natural angel of the darkside, Ferfasser has played you very well, as the fool you really are. Doom Commander? Really? How stupid of you! Ridiculous! And now you are the joke of the galaxy. You defeated yourself by taking that role, you know? And no, this is not an interrogation, not yet,” says Templestone.
I am struck and bludgeoned by her words. Did I make a mistake? I shake my head and do my best to evade the stares of Mortimer and Templestone, both looking at me like I’m a worthless piece of trash.
As I turn to evade their stares, I take in my surroundings. The room I’m in is completely white. The white light of humanity drenching over every corner of the room, so no shadows are visible. I have a suspicion I’m actually in a ship. Not in a world. The truth is I’m in the ÆTAS’s hands. How did this happen? If I’m in Olympias’ presence, I must be in a Morray-class ship. I suddenly shiver as I consider myself safe within the nest of the ÆTAS, deep within enemy lines. And yet, I have no idea how this happened.
One moment I’m in a top-secret Togami lab in the hands of the Doomsayers, the next I’m being mocked by Mortimer. How?
I remember. Flashes of Ferfasser’s head exploding come to me in waves. And then the lights go out...but it was her...no...it can’t be!
Masaaki. She was shooting my brothers. She killed Ferfasser with a headshot using the novel RR-19. But why? How?
“Bring her in. He just thought of her,” says Templestone.
I am baffled by how she knows what I’m thinking. I’ve yet to find out how. Masaaki steps through the hissing door, still wearing her light black armor with the Tree of Retribution at the center of her chest and the RR-19 still attached to her right arm. She walks up to Templestone and stands beside Mortimer. She has that hard-ass, stone-cold stare of hers. She stares at me coolly and then stands at the ready staring off into infinity.
My heart races as I study her. I plead with my eyes, trying to understand what happened. Is she angry at me? Did I piss her off? Did the ÆTAS contact her and somehow manage to radicalize her? It makes no sense. I cannot explain this. There is something utterly wrong here.
Mortimer takes a look at Masaaki and chuckles. “Doomsayer she is indeed. A fine soldier,” and looks at me. He smiles and says, “It was a pleasure killing our brother, Cien-gi. An eye for an eye. You took Nakata. An epic kill indeed. A master kill. And now I also have a master kill under my belt and the accompanying medal. I killed Cien-gi and captured you in the process. Now we are even, aren’t we? Three Legions against three. A good match. Except that we have the advantage in many ways,” he says showing off his new body.
“But...Ferfasser said the bodies wouldn’t be upgraded until several weeks from...then? When is now?” I say with my unusual voice.
“You believed that fool,” says Olympia Templestone. “He was being fed false information, which is very easy when your opponent thinks you are unaware of their treachery. Granted, Ferfasser was a cunning man, a dangerous man if you ask any of us. The Doomsayers have been our most feared enemy, undermining our operations for so long. It only makes sense a Primordial who created Iris would have had the smarts to play the ÆTAS as he did. But in the end, we won. Ferfasser is dead. Truly dead. You know he founded the Doomsayers with your dead dearly beloved Carmen Johnson, right? That bitch,” says Templestone. “She died long ago, Carmen did. She never really got to see what the Doomsayers became. But her genes lived on,” she says with a smile.
“You and your Ronin little brothers did the ÆTAS the giant favor of destroying Ferfasser’s cloning and android factory,” she says. “You were smart enough not to trust him.”
“He still has his servers, he still has a master version,” I say with the ashes of hope. I turn to look at Masaaki, to be met by Mortimer’s smile. Masaaki will not look at me!
“True. And his servers are very well hidden. But without a clone in which to download himself, and without a MindTransfer, he is useless. Even if he has a body with a new state of the art bio-DAT, he still needs the necessary hardware to make the personality download to the bio-DAT.
“Therefore, his personality is stuck in the server until he can be downloaded into the proper mind, and to do so, he would have needed the hardware you and your brothers destroyed through your mistrust. Oh, don’t get me wrong, I think it’s great that you destroyed his equipment. He would have played you—as he did in quickly convincing you to become the Doomsayer Commander—, that is for sure. But now he is dead. The leader of the Doomsayers, decapitated by the Barbarus Scythe team. Check mate.” She says with a smile.
“My Scythe team has earned the medals, and warpoints, for what that is worth nowadays. But that’s nothing compared to the prize of vengeance,” says Mortimer. “A major hack rendered Hai incapable of perceiving the attack. It was a covert mission. We docked in Hydrogen in the world of Helm on a stolen merchant ship. We infiltrated the base without any knowledge of the AI. And since your forces trust so much on your AI to detect enemies, we were virtually invisible,” says Mortimer with a smile.
“Covert operation? Cowardice!” I yell and raise a fist in defiance. I have a stab of pain on my shoulder and realize how difficult it was to raise my fist. Raise a fist? Am I not bound? And that is when I notice what I am. I open my fist and look at my hand. My small, puny, sapien hand.
I am in shock. I look down and notice I am sitting on a small stool, without anything holding me prisoner. I can move around freely. I try to stand up and find it extremely difficult.
“What is this!?” I ask in disgust. I look at my chest and body, touch my groin and feel nothing between my legs. I’ve no genitals.
Mortimer laughs out loud and says, “This is very satisfying, I thank you, your eminence, for allowing me this moment of true defeat, to see the melancholic warrior fall was my wish. With your permission, I will report back to my ship,” says Mortimer, raising his right fist.
“Such a busy mind that one of yours,” says Olympia pointing a finger at my head. “I can see your thoughts in this holodisplay in my palm. I can detect everything you are thinking, rendered in three dimensional images,” she says. “You are dismissed, Alastar Magna Mortimer.”
“Your eminence,” says Mortimer. He exits the room. I find it very strange to see Mortimer respond and respect this Celestial Core member. As far as I knew, soldiers and Core Members did not get along at all. This is why Omnistar Magna was the perfect interface between the Core and the Stærfleet.
“What is happening? Where am I? Why am I in this body?” I say, turning to look at Olympia and Masaaki. There is no solace.
“Pad?” she asks. The Tekka hands her a holopad. She holds the holopad in front of my face. I look at my reflection and sob openly.
“It is me? It’s me! I’m back in my old sapien body. I am Argo Herrero again!”
“No, you’re not. The Argo Herrero body you left behind back in old Terra was far stronger than that puny body you live in now,” she laughs. “You are in the God’s Scepter, a Morray class ship. Yes...the ship that carries the Omega Cohort. We are in high orbit, anchored around Ahmurai’s strange helicoidal vessel/weapon. We hacked the file you created debriefing your experience in Canis Major. We know everything you told the Doomsayers, Argo. Eight days have gone by since your capture.”
“No...”
“Indeed.”
“This body? Why?” I babble, unable to fathom my current existential dilemma.
“How did we create a new body so fast? Our latest biotechnology is supreme—EHES: enhanced hormonal endo-stimulation. We can create bodies very quickly, built by 3D printers and DNA polymerases and the corresponding nano tech. This body was engineered just for you.”
I turn to look at Masaaki. She’s like a statue. She has not moved a muscle. I have the urge to whisper to her, shout at her, but restrain myself. She has the RR-19 wrapped around her right arm, the advanced weapon created by Schrödinger that she used to kill Ferfasser.
“Masaaki...” I whisper looking at her.
“Look at me!” I yell.
“Look at me goddamn it!” I scream.
Olympia Templestone smiles and says, “She has orders to stay put, for now. It is definitely pleasing to see you squirm. Oh the trifles of mankind. The things we do for love. It’s not that I don’t feel it—love—, I do feel love in fact. But we, the Primordials, have altered our genes in such a way that the old pleasures like sex and food and taking a shit are gone. It is such a bore to depend on those things for so-called happiness. However, seeing you torn by your love right there is exquisite. You were always weak in that way. Your cock was always your weakness. Ten thousand years mourning that love you could never have from Carmen Johnson, and now this one comes in and conquers you. And then she becomes your undoing. How eloquent.”
My mind goes into a stale state, and then waves of melancholy surge form the depths and drown my soul in a steep wall of emotions. I suffer in this state of terrible self-lament.
“And there it is...look at this beauty,” she says, showing me the pad in her hand. “We are also able to map those emotions of yours. Ten thousand years in the making—to make such an old soul like yours with such deep emotions, and this terrible sea of sadness is just one of a kind. I think this is why Ahmurai did not kill you. He must have seen this,” she says showing me the rendered image of my emotions. I see a swirl of blue dancing flames quenched by a purple vortex. “It is for this reason that we intend to replicate you. This old and fermented soul of yours. Perhaps it will come in handy if it comes to negotiating with Ahmurai. We will clone your body, implant this deep seed within the new clone, and use it to get close to Ahmurai. Or maybe it won’t work and we’ll need to beat him to a pulp to get his tech.”
Memories of the Togami lab in Helm remind me of the weapon created by the xeno. Seeing Masaaki with the RR-19 wrapped on her arm is very concerning. She is in ÆTAS territory, behaving as if she has been ÆTAS all along. This means the ÆTAS will inherit Schrödinger’s technology. The RR-19 is in some ways superior to the Gorecannon, and if the ÆTAS upgrade to have this weapon, we are doomed.
“You are correct: we will reverse engineer the RR-19 and use it to our advantage,” she says reading my thoughts with her pad. “Your capture and the Doomsayer’s defeat was an amazing feat. You will agree, you shall see,” she smiles.
“Your return to this galaxy was certainly a big surprise. But then you had the audacity to kill Nakata. A grand kill, but you tempted the beast. We knew we had to get you. You survived the Calamity of Canis Major, and we had to find out why. We defeated this great foe, but to our chagrin, we also lost him in the process and our solar system. We cannot inherit his technology, or so we thought. But it turns out he has been communicating with you, has he not?”
“No.”
“Oh, I love you telling lies.” She reaches out and pinches my arm.
I double over and scream in pain. I tremble from the extreme suffering. I cry for a long minute as the pain surges and echoes through my body. My guts spasm, and I feel the gut-wrenching pain twist my insides. This is horrendous.
“As I said, you are in a unique body, Argo, genetically engineered to be fifty times weaker than a normal sapien. You can’t run, you can barely walk. Any physical activity is demanding for you. You cannot fight. You are a prisoner of your own weakness. Added to that, your body has one hundred times more pain receptiveness than a normal human. Any amount of pain will throw you into the fetal position that you just experienced, making torture very easy for me and very terrible for you. I need only pinch your skin to cause you great suffering. You do not build up tolerance. Pain is always extreme. There is more. Your brain has a modified bio-DAT that does not connect to any server, only to my own Master Server. I monitor your thoughts as I told you earlier. I see what you think, your questions, your concerns. Your thoughts are rendered in 3D images in this palm-sized holo display that I have with me. Why do I need to see your thoughts and emotions? For my own pleasure.”
I gasp and am finally able to talk, “Why? Why? Why not kill me! I am a soldier worthy of a good death! I plead harakairi! I plead death!” I yell in agony.
“Oh how I like to see you plead. Which makes it even better to deny you death,” she grins with pleasure. “You’re getting our most savage punishment. And when we’re satisfied, we will open up your mind with psychosurgery with a digital scalpel and get all your memories on your interaction with Ahmurai. We will see you suffer to the extreme before you die by the digital scalpel.”
“Why! Why this torture! I am defeated!” I cry.
“Oh, dear Argo. Defeated you are indeed. But defeat is not enough. You have been a hated and loved warrior for so long. Ferfasser and his supporting Celestials have always pushed to keep you alive. While us, the other Primordials who opposed that thought always wanted you dead. The truth is you were alive because you fed the war machine better than anybody else. The public loved you dearly, which motivated further conquests. When the Galactic Crusade was over, Tauro and you were the bait that would probe the Calamity of Canis Major. It was the best way to dispose of you. But you! You’re a damn cockroach...you survive many things in spite of our efforts to destroy you. Not this time.”
“Why? Why! The Sapien Inquisition? Nothing makes sense!”
“It does, Argo. It’s all thanks to Ferfasser. We had no better way to flush out the Doomsayers, so we decided to kill them all and let God sort them out, you know how the good old Terran saying goes.
“Sapiens are a weak species, a complacent, judging, demanding, and bitchy little creatures who did nothing more than suck the ÆTAS’s teats dry with their ever-incessant pursuit of pleasure. Sapiens are useless to us. They consume and consume and demand and demand. The more you give them, the more they want, and they never appreciate your efforts. The ÆTAS has changed direction since the Galactic Crusade became the Great Intergalactic Crusade. The eradication of the Homo sapiens would achieve two goals, flushing out the Doomsayers and their leader, and riding ourselves of the useless oxygen-consuming rat sapiens.”
“But you...that body...”
“I’m in a Homo celestialis body, Argo. Superior in every way. Eternal like our soldiers. We’ve done away with the old ban on eternal life on noncombatant galactic citizens. The new bio-DAT depends even less on AI to function. We are telepathic with quantum speed and range communications. Soon AI will be a thing of the past. Depending on AI for all of our communications and machine management is very inefficient. AIs these days are too opinionated and take offense. They can be hacked and manipulated. That’s how Ferfasser got away with being a Doomsayer and a Primordial at the same time. He had Hai hacking Iris the whole time, blinding her from his illegal activities. We returned the favor. We blinded Hai from the covert mission that killed Ferfasser and captured you, my dear.”
“A coward’s mission!”
“A smart woman’s mission,” she says. “You were expecting a full-fledged war, weren’t you? A covert mission was an impossibility in your mind because, in your eyes, none of your brothers would ever act in such a ‘dishonorable’ way. Weakness exploited,” she says with a grin.
“The Doomsayers have collapsed since Ferfasser’s and Cien-gi’s death. Our attack stunned your forces deeply, echoing a deep sorrow in the marrow of every Doomsayer and rebel soldier. Diminishing your Doom Legion and demoralizing both Captain Aquila and Cetai. Oh, we know everything,” she grins. “There is no greater defeat than killing your opponent and then destroying his comrades’ and followers’ morale. It makes the mop up so much easier—you would know, this is how you conquered planetary systems, by decapitating the leadership and then mopping up the rest. You were really going to be called the Doom Commander? That was a ridiculous fiasco. To become the Doomsayer Commander, preposterous,” she laughs. “See your loved one there?”
I turn to see Masaaki. She is unmoving. A soldier made of steel.
“You have no idea what she is, do you?” says Olympia. “You drank the poison, as the old saying goes. You believed she was a normal out-of-the-womb sapien that became a Special Forces Doomsayer soldier. Ferfasser was always very smart like that. He had you believe it, and you bought it. That was the weakness, Argo, the chink in the armor that led to your capture and Ferfasser’s death.”
“Is she ÆTAS? Has she always been a spy? What is she! Not an android...it can’t be.”
“A spy? No. Not an android either. A human, a sapien indeed. Very carefully and artistically crafted by Ferfasser himself in his lab. Remember what I said about Carmen Johnson’s genes living on. It wasn’t through a long-lived genetic line like Masaaki had you believe. It was through genetic engineering.”
“What?”
“Oh, yes. Masaaki is a state-of-the-art clone.”
“No...”
“Yes. Ferfasser has been playing around with Carmen Johnson’s genetic line for thousands of years. Creating women like Masaaki, Special Forces agents as he calls them. She is a perfect soldier in a way, stronger than an average sapien, fast, obedient, but also tailored to perfection to complete one thing: seducing Argo Herrero.”
“No!!!!”
“Oh, yes! How delightful to see you know this truth. I relish in your suffering. Yum, yum, yum!” she savors, her tongue smacking her lips. “Ferfasser created her to seduce you. He had her infiltrate your ship, believing the story that she was actually born and had a career in Warp Engine engineering. She was not the first prototype, you know. Apparently, he had your planetary ship infiltrated many times by his so-called Special Forces soldiers—all women genetically crafted to be like Carmen Johnson, all with the objective to seduce you.”
“Why?...this can’t be...”
“To bring you to the other side of course! Ferfasser has long fought to have you as a Doomsayer. He has wet himself dreaming of the day you would become the Doom Commander. And you did! That old fox did it! You did become the ludicrous Doom Commander. But then his own creation was his own undoing.” She points a finger to Masaaki.
“Masaaki, gentle, cute, sexy, built to love you, built to be obsessed with you, created to convince you and hunt you down. She has the body to receive you sexually. You must know by experience normal sapiens can’t really have sex with you, not without rupturing tissue. However, Masaaki was perfect. Tailored to get you. The perfect anti-Argo weapon.”
“No....no...”
“Have you seen any other Special Forces agent?”
“No...”
“Exactly. Did you know she died?”
“What? That’s not possible. She’s right there,” I say.
“When she was inside the Torragami when you escaped Melam, she actually died from incoming fire. Ferfasser didn’t tell you that, of course. Ferfasser had her carcass replaced with a new clone so you would never know. You could not know. The problem was when the new clone was created. We managed to hack the master server, so that the personality downloaded to her bio-DAT was actually our version.”
“Wait...you’re saying she had a bio-DAT and that she was synchronizing it with a master server every ten seconds? But Ferfasser was far away? How could he?”
“Ferfasser has a very advanced lab installed in that stolen Morray class ship. That is where he had his back-up clones in case he needed to keep you unaware of his planning. Where was the Morray ship docked?”
“On the Falcon...”
“Precisely. Because of Masaaki’s bio-DAT and because the new bio-DAT syncs with a master server every ten seconds, Ferfasser was able to “see” what Masaaki saw. He was well aware of everything that happened between you and Masaaki. This is how he controlled both of you. He always knew you were back in the galaxy, in Melam! But he played the fool. He couldn’t act upon it. He had to pretend so you wouldn’t detect that he had spied on you through Masaaki. He has always been a brilliant actor. He fooled the ÆTAS for so long, until we got him with his own creation.
“We hacked Masaaki’s master personality and tweaked her ever so lightly. Just enough to activate her upon command to follow the new mission prompts. Upon activation, she killed Ferfasser and shot your brothers. Her activation was the key that prompted Mortimer’s Scythe team to move in for the kill.
“Unfortunately, they could only kill Cien-gi. Furogata, Thesna, and Abyss still live, as does the abomination he calls Schrödinger. Their legions also live on, as does Cien-gi’s. But the Doomsayers are headless. With you captured and Cien-gi dead, your Ronin brothers are lost, and the Doomsayers are without a leader. We have won the war, Argo. You have been defeated.
“Ferfasser sought to defeat us by creating his pet xeno to give him the tools to destroy us by building his new weapon, the RR-19 and a Hellbringer. Very, very smart.”
I sigh.
“Masaaki...” I turn to see her. “This is why you were obsessed with me...you were designed,” I say out loud for her to hear me. I think she flinches, but I’m not sure of it. She stares straight into infinity.
“She will make a fine guardian. She will keep watch over you at all times, and she can seek and hone into you like an intuitive missile. She will pinch you if you get out of line.”
“End this...please kill me! You need my mind...my memories...take it, open my mind up and take it all.”
“NO. It’s not good enough for us. Seeing you suffer dearly fills us with a glee so deep it is worth keeping you alive until we feel we have had enough pleasure in seeing you squirm.”
She smiles courtly. “Masaaki, escort the prisoner. There is an audience waiting to see him suffer. Tug at his leash if needed. Be gentle!”
“Yes, your essence,” says Masaaki. Masaaki walks up to me and ties a simple leather leash around my neck. Her touching my skin hurts, but also feels strangely liberating. Her touch...I shiver as I remember her naked body on top of mine.
“Walk,” orders Masaaki.
“You must remember our making love,” I whisper. “Remember Melam.”
Masaaki yanks the leash around my neck. I fall to the floor in utter and severe pain. “Get up, cockroach!” she yells. She kicks me in the stomach. I spit out blood.
“Gentle! Be gentle, Masaaki. He has very weak organs and will bleed to death if you abuse him. A simple pinch will do.”
It takes me a good five minutes to recover. I stand up with utter difficulty. I am so weak. I am tugged like a hound and dare not challenge my new captor.
The ÆTAS have done it. I am defeated in the worst possible manner with the worst possible punishment. I only wish to die, to be released from this suffering. It cannot come fast enough.