(NERV Game Site – Official DAtS Offline Forums)

Number5Alive, Golddigger, BurtBacharach, CrazyCelt, Blaze, DoYouEvenLyft?, MarcoPolo, MightMakesRight, l33tpally, Bennie, SEA-TAC_Sweetie, Requiesce-in-Pace, MacD, HaveGunsWillTravel, TheDespoiler, Guardian, GunKitty, Chummer, Inquisitor, Lizard, RedFox, SemiSolidSnake, ElfMama, Not_the_Face!, Anonymous3, Anonymous4, Anonymous7, Anonymous9, AggregatorOfSorrows, M.Mollen, WhiskeyTangoFoxtrot, DigDug, BigGunn, Dolcett, Starwatcher, Backlog, DarkAvariel, Knocker, Hullu_Kapteeni, GrimDark, BloodForTheBloodGod, Queen’s_Bitch, BackDat@55Up, DoYouEvenDPS?, MajorTom, Parca, and DarkAngel are in the chat.

Anonymous7: Heads up for those who are tracking the Black Stars. The Black Star Marines just returned to Star’s Reach from wherever they went, but Third Group of their fleet didn’t come back with them.

MacD: Huh. I would have thought that they would all return.

SEA-TAC_Sweetie: Maybe they got destroyed? Those ships were mostly supports for the mobile shipyard, right?

Chummer: Sure, that’s possible, but something that could take out those ships, but the Marines somehow escaped? I doubt it.

DarkAngel: Especially since you know there were at least a few Starbolts available to the group.

Anonymous7: Got a better look at the Marine craft. There isn’t any sign of battle damage. All Marine craft accounted for.

WhiskeyTangoFoxtrot: Well, that means they probably weren’t involved in a fight.

Knocker: How come? Could be they were just lucky enough to not get hit.

WhiskeyTangoFoxtrot: Any fighting bad enough that all of their Third Group got ganked would have dragged the Marine ships in, as well. They don’t exactly like running from fights.

Queen’s_Bitch: So where is that Third Group, then?

M.Mollen: Safe. And conducting their mission.

Starwatcher: What mission? Where did they go?

M.Mollen: Elsewhere. And what mission do you think my team of mobile builders would be doing?

BigGunn: Sooo… secret base?

DarkAngel: Why would he need a secret base? He owns a star system!

Anonymous9: To study Lost Tech artifacts he’s been hoarding! That was how he got the money for all of this. The Arena thing was a distraction!

M.Mollen: Wow, I have conspiracy theories about me now? I’ve really hit the big time!

Lizard: Still, you have to admit that you have had a disturbing trend of being at the right place at the right time. Too often to be random.

M.Mollen: It isn’t random. How many players do you know that have put together a fleet of ships? There’s a few, sure. Each of them has had more ‘events’ happen around them than someone just going solo, or in a squad with a single ship. Why? Because they’re out there, with more potential contacts.

Starwatcher: And none of them have the kind of contacts you’ve gotten.

M.Mollen: Mostly by luck. I got my ship because an idiot didn’t know I was cheating at cards. A lucky encounter had a princess fall into my lap, which spurred a whole host of troubles and opportunities.

Backlog: So, you’re saying that the rumors of a connection between you and the devs are false?

M.Mollen: They’re factually incorrect. My performance in the beta, combined with my situation in RL, made me the perfect test subject for a couple different systems. Sure, I had some lucky encounters, but those were the results of my work putting me in those situations to begin with, not the devs pulling strings.

Anonymous3: Any truth to the reports that you’re some kind of unique race?

M.Mollen: Not unique, but I’m likely the only player with this race. No, I won’t tell you what it is or the backstory. But basically, I had a start that was more disadvantaged than even those who started off as slaves.

Anonymous3: Bullshit.

M.Mollen: Believe me or not, it is your call. But it is the truth. I spent my first two weeks in game figuring a way out. I didn’t even know what planet I was on, until a week in.

Chummer: So, anyway, what are those ships doing out wherever they are?

Inquisitor: Nice subject change.

Chummer: Shut it. The guy streams, so you can see how he did most of what he did if you go through the logs. I want to hear about future plans.

M.Mollen: Well, I have some mad science types on the payroll, and I’m fine with them doing their experiments, but if one of them does something crazy, like opening a portal to a hell dimension, I want it to be on a nice, isolated facility that can be destroyed from a distance, instead of in a populated system. Doom was a fun game to play, but I’d rather not live it.

Blaze: Wait, is that really possible?

M.Mollen: We have ships that can travel light-years in an instant by tearing physics a new one, and psychic powers. I wouldn’t bet against it being possible to rip open a tear into another dimension.

TheDespoiler: The Immaterium beckons. The Eightfold Path opens before you, beckoning all who would turn to the salvation it offers.

GrimDark: Silence, heretic!

BloodForTheBloodGod: YES! Rip and tear the universe apart, and offer all for the glory of Chaos! Blood for the Blood God! Skulls for the Skull Throne!

Inquisitor: This heresy shall not go unpunished. Soon, all shall see.

Lizard: Well, that’s not ominous or anything.

MightMakesRight: But seriously, what are they researching that needs to be locked away?

M.Mollen: Punching holes in the fabric of reality for instant transmission between location, using power sources that could power a superdreadnought.

MightMakesRight: No, really.

M.Mollen: Really.

MightMakesRight: But… but why?

M.Mollen: Did you miss the part about mad scientists? They see things like the Gateways, and decide they want to learn how to make new ones, or some other ‘fun’ thing. I’m fine with them doing that, but I don’t want them anywhere near me when they do it.

Not_the_Face!: Hey, anyone got eyes on Earth? I’ve heard some disturbing rumors that something’s going down.

BackDat@ssUp: Not another civil war!

Not_the_Face!: No, nothing like that. There’re just rumors going around like mad. Something about an Awakening. Capitol A. I think something’s going down.

Inquisitor: So, it begins.

M.Mollen: I just want it on the record that, whatever it is, it is NOT MY FAULT! I’m not even in that arm of the galaxy!

Anonymous4: Defensive, much?

M.Mollen: Read this chat log again. Got plenty of reason to try and establish ahead of time that this is not my fault.

(Conference Room, Blackstone Station, Star’s Reach)

“So, someone explain to me what in the hell is going on?”

An uneasy silence fell over the crowd as they looked at each other questioningly. I had brought together some of the brightest minds and most connected individuals Black Star had to offer to try and figure out just what in the hell was going down. Oh, sure, some of them were busy working on the stuff we got from the alien space hulk, but that wasn’t the point of this meeting. There was craziness going down all over Known Space, and I wanted to know what it meant, or if anything like this had been seen before.

A discontented sigh came from one part of the crowd I was facing. My eyes were drawn to the spot. It was a Vrok scientist, sporting a slave collar. One of the Nomads I had captured before the system was open to the public, or something like that. What was his name again? Ah, yes, Tesla_coil.

I’d had reports about him. Apparently, he was brilliant as all hell, but his brilliance began and ended with Science (capital ‘s’). I wasn’t sure if he was roleplaying, or if he was really like that in real life, but he’d gotten a reputation amongst the science department for being the very best person to study new and ‘interesting’ scientific breakthroughs… as long as he was somewhere very far away. He was the reason the research base was being built in Beta Darconyx.

“Something you would care to add, Tesla_coil?”

The Vrok scientist did not get a contrite look on his face, like I had hoped would happen when I called him out. Instead, he just looked annoyed. “Well, it is obvious what is happening. We’re experiencing a galactic energetic phase shift event instigated by massive transdimensional siphonage and disturbances.”

When no one seemed to understand what he meant, he sighed, and said, “Fine, kiddie science time. Energy cannot be created or destroyed. It merely changes form. There’s some entropic loss during the translation, but that’s advanced material. In a closed system, this means that the total energy in a system is set, and cannot either increase or decrease.”

“Under normal circumstances, the universe is a closed system. However, the people in this universe have been twisting and turning the fabric of reality into new shapes for hundreds of years, if they aren’t just punching a hole in it. Sure, these rips and tears tend to disappear as quickly as they’re formed, since it is hard to force the universe to bend in a certain way, and have it stay bent. The universe is an incredibly resilient thing. However, that resilience appears to have limits, which have come and gone.”

I frowned as I considered what the scientist was saying. “What do you mean, ‘punching holes in the universe’? That doesn’t sound like anything I’ve seen in this world.”

Tesla_coil waved his hand dismissively. “Of course, you have. What the hell do you think those Transition Drives do? Or the Gateways, or these X’thari Anchor Drives? Hell, even the normal warp drives take physics out back and beat it like a bunch of schoolyard bullies. And that is not even considering the effects of psychic powers on the universe. Frankly, it is surprising something hasn’t happened already.”

“So, what you’re saying is that the various forms of faster than light travel are responsible for, what, wearing a hole in the universe?”

“Yes, yes. And the Transition Drives are the worst offender. Yes, the warp drives are playing with the fabric of the universe to cheat relativity, but they play mostly within the rules, and don’t cause nearly as much damage. We still don’t know how the Gateways or Anchor Drives work, but creating stable wormholes, or getting instantaneous travel to any point in the galaxy so long as one end of the trip is near a Gateway is clearly breaking the rules. How much damage is it doing? Who knows? For all we know, there are safeguards in place on those systems, so that they don’t have a lasting effect.”

“But the Transition Drives? They’re definitely breaking the laws of physics. Did you know that, when you use a Transition Drive, for an instant you are literally in two places at once? Do you know what that does to reality? At least the Anchor drives look like they take you out of reality before forcing you back in at a new location. And the Gateways ensure that each molecule is only in one place at a time. Sure, those places can be on opposite sides of the galaxy, but none of them have someone at two places at the same time!”

“Honestly! It is like someone was just TRYING to get the universe torn into itty bitty shreds. Which is why you have to let me get back to my research project! If I can find a way to replicate some of the Lost Technology discovered here in Star’s Reach, we could make the Transition Drive obsolete, or at least refine it so that it is not a threat.”

As the scientist finished his rant, General Khan spoke up. “Transition drives aside, what was that about Psychic powers being an issue? They aren’t exactly that powerful, for the most part. Certainly not as powerful as some of the man-portable weapons we have access to.”

Raven cleared her throat to interject herself into the conversation. “Ah, I believe I can explain that. As you are no doubt aware, any living creature is capable of producing psychic energy, which we measure in ‘Psychic Points’ or ‘PP’. Even some machines, like this robot avatar I’m using, are capable of utilizing psychic energy to some extent, due to conversion systems like the one I use to take in ambient energy and transform it into an approximation of psychic energy.”

“However, despite all living creatures having the potential for using psychic powers, the proportion of those creatures that actually are able to even just manifest the weakest Psy Power is something on the order of 1 in 100,000. Exact numbers are impossible to pin down, of course, but that is a close approximation.”

“Which is not to say that people are incapable of using their psychic energy. Anyone can use weapons or other items that require psychic energy to recharge, like your Psyber Pistol. Most do not have a large pool of PP to draw from, however, which makes using these kinds of items almost as limiting as having to use guns with physical ammunition, for instance.”

“It should be noted that there are some instances of unconscious activation of powers, or individuals using abilities that they did not know they possessed. These incidents typically occur in high-stress situations, or during life-or-death struggles. Usually, these powers only last while the individual is ‘in the moment’, but there have been records of people ‘unlocking’ the ability permanently. Current scientific journals identify these people as Latent Psy Users.

“Simply put, most creatures in the galaxy, while capable of using psychic energy, are incapable of using that energy consciously, without a structured guide limited to a single purpose, such as recharging a Psyber Pistol, for instance. Unlocking the skills needed to use Psy Powers appears to be something that people either have an innate ability to do, and this ability is not evenly distributed either in population size or in intensity, though there appears to be a genetic component to the distribution. Furthermore, training these skills and powers to the point where they can be effectively used in combat situations is not easy, even when one does possess the ability. Combat-capable psychics are roughly one in ten million individuals.”

Raven paused, and looked directly at me. “However, this is only the case for Locals. While there has been no hard science done, for obvious reasons, starting with the fact that they’re still so new to this world, it appears that Nomads have a higher than normal incidence rate of being psychically active than locals from the same background. Further, several Nomads have appeared to have far greater power and control over their abilities than many Locals. While scientific journals are still coming to terms with the existence of Nomads, there have been hypotheses that there is something in the genetic makeup of Nomads that makes them better psychic energy manipulators than locals, likely due to the nature of how they manifest in new bodies when they transfer to this world.”

Tesla_coil harrumphed. “You’re talking about Swiftbreeze’s Treatise on Nomad Biology, right? Bunch of unproven crap. He hasn’t been through the peer review process because he hasn’t even bothered to do the most basic testing! It is barely worth calling his work a hypothesis. ‘Wild guess’ would be more accurate.”

Raven shook her head. “At any rate, Psy Power usage is relatively rare, and refined usage is rarer. However, there is some evidence that part of the refinement process involved in learning the skill and gaining power in it is that it makes the process more efficient, and uses less ‘waste’ energy. Think about electricity. What is more dangerous, a live wire with the wiring exposed, lying in a puddle of water, or a wire that is properly insulated, twenty feet in the air? Even if the second wire was carrying ten times the current, it would still be a safer option to the first one.”

I nodded slowly that all made a certain kind of sense. The game developers no doubt wanted players to have a bit of an edge on the locals, even if they didn’t come out and say it. Everyone wants to feel a bit special when playing an RPG, after all. “All right. If that’s the case, what does this have to do with the current situation? Things appear to be focused primarily in Imperial space, after all, instead of spread out across Known Space.”

Raven shook her head. “There are three massive events that have happened relatively recently which could have a destabilizing influence on things, especially if, as Tesla_coil proposes, the fabric of reality was already weakened by many years of experimental FTL travel. The most recent, of course, is the destruction of the X’thari Harvester, along with a large portion of the X’thari Swarm that surrounded it. The psychic scream from the Harvester was enough to temporarily incapacitate every living creature in the entire system. The backlash of so many creatures dying at once had to have an impact on the energy of the universe.”

“Of course, another incident is the introduction of the Nomads to the universe. Their higher incidence rate of being active psy users means that the throughput of psychic energy being used and transformed from one type of energy to another has increased dramatically. Since energy in a closed system is fixed, the increase in energy being used, without causing issues elsewhere, suggests that the system is no longer closed, if it ever was to begin with.”

“The most wide-ranging event, however, would be the Imperial Civil War. It is impossible to overstate the impact the Civil War has had on the galaxy, no matter what metric you use to describe it. However, speaking solely about psychics and psychic powers, the Usurper and his Machine God, Deus, forcibly converted millions to his newfound faith. There is some evidence that this caused many of the new converts to become latent psy users at the least, and any latent users that were converted were most certainly turned into active users.”

“The largest population of these followers was on Earth itself, during the forced ‘upgrades’ the population was subjected to. Not long after, however, the war came to a close, with Greenwave wiping out most of the upgraded population. But a planet full of believers… where did that energy go when they died?”

I groaned out loud. I couldn’t help it. Here I was, so happy that I didn’t have anything to do with the latest round of insanity hitting the universe, but, no, I had to get drawn in to it. After all, I was the one who activated the Greenwave bomb in the capitol.

“Fine. I get why it is happening in Imperial space, then. So, what do we know?”

(Gap Science Enrichment Center, Underneath Black Star Marine Training Base, Star’s Reach)

I sighed as I looked over the wreckage of what had once been a testing facility. At least this wreck wasn’t my fault. Or even one of my people’s fault. Tesla_coil might be a loose cannon when it comes to the science side of things, but even he knew better than to do some of the things this testing track had done before it was destroyed. And if he didn’t, the marines he had guarding him most certainly did, and wouldn’t let him get out of hand.

Shaking my head, I looked over to Raven, and said, “So, what happened, and how far back does this push us?”

The android sighed, and said, “First, we’re fortunate that the area was uninhabited at the time, or we definitely would have lost people. Unfortunately, that makes knowing exactly what happened difficult, as the facility’s computers are still down until we figure out how to isolate the AI, and any automated sensors would be suspect. We’re having to approach this like a forensic crash analysis, like they do when a spaceship explodes unexpectedly.”

That wasn’t what I wanted to hear. Shaking my head, I said, “I was afraid of that. What do we know so far, then?”

“Not much, I’m afraid. Right now, the working theory is that there was a cascade reaction from something happening far below us. Seismographs detected what we believe to be the first of the explosions approximately fifteen hours ago, at a depth of three kilometers.”

“Following that event, a series of subsequent explosions occurred, traveling up the damaged maintenance shaft that was exposed in one of the printing bays. The explosions ruptured pipes carrying natural gas, which added to the explosive forces, breaking through two floors to one of the AI’s primary testing tracks, specifically the ‘oven’ track that it tried to use to cook us.”

I nodded slowly. “All right. Do we have any ideas as to what caused this? I’d really rather avoid having my Marines training over the top of some kind of volcano that is ready to blow at any moment. If we need to move the base and abandon the facility, I need to know it ahead of time, so we can erase any sign of its existence, rather than just leaving it for someone to find.”

“Why erase it, if we’re not going to make use of it?”

“Because what we’ve already found here, even with the AI being offline, is beyond belief. The ramifications for scientific advancement is off the charts. However, there are so many potential problems if someone managed to weaponize some of the technology on display, it boggles the mind. And they don’t even need to be doing it on purpose. We both know that the only difference between an atomic bomb and a nuclear reactor achieving critical mass is that only one of them was done on purpose.”

“Fair enough.” The android looked back out over the still-smoldering pit. “So, what are you going to do with this?”

“I haven’t decided yet. Do we have any idea of what experiments were being worked on in the area, besides the AI trying to kill people? The testing area must have had some purpose, originally. I seriously doubt that the race that built all this designed it with homicidal AIs in mind.”

“Oddly enough, the explosions have helped a little in that regard. We were able to access some secure storage devices that had been out of reach before due to there being large slabs of metal between us and them. The explosions dislodged some of them, and we were able recover several storage drives.”

I looked over to Raven when she fell silent, only to see her grinning at me. She’d been getting more and more human, the longer she had that body. With a roll of my eyes, I motioned for her to continue.

“This area was apparently originally designated for ‘dimensional travel research’. The drives we recovered contain a section of the scientific data that the AI, CaROLINE, was keeping back from us, in favor of trying to kill anyone that took part in her ‘tests’. We have schematics for the portal gun, which will decrease the time needed to replicate something like that significantly. But that’s not all. Apparently, whateve species was working here, they were testing multiple means of faster than light travel, beyond the Alcubierre-style drives, or the Gateways.”

“Are you saying that we’ve found a key to Lost Tech FTL drives?”

“Exactly, sir. With the information we have now, we can build some of these, though at the same time we’ll need to check to see which devices are best. An initial read of the logs suggests that there are several pros and cons to these alternative drive systems.”

“Hmm. Well, it isn’t like there aren’t disadvantages to the systems that are currently in use. Can you give me an initial overview of the different systems? Might be able to prioritize which ones warrant more development time first.”

Raven smiled and motioned with her hand. “Of course. I am sending the information to your HUD now.”

Drive

Description

Dark Matter Universe Sails

Uses the unique gravitational effects at Lagrange points in space to send a ship into a parallel dimension filled with dark matter. Specialized energy screens are used to ‘sail’ from star to star.

Pros: Travel from star to star is completely undetectable to ships in real space.

Entering or leaving real space requires far less power than initiating hyperspace jumps.

Possibility of exotic materials being found in ‘dark space’ which could prove profitable.

Cons: Electrum plating required for all ships entering dark space, due to nonstandard laws of physics.

Entry or exit to Dark Space only possible at Lagrange points.

Ballistic and missile weapons nonfunctional in dark space.

Energy weapons are affected by dark space, traveling slower than the speed of light.

Navigation by normal means is not possible while in dark space.

Skill set for dark space capable ships are radically different from current designs.

Chaotic Energy Space

Using a focused energy beam, open up a portal into a separate dimension full of chaotic energy. This allows for traveling at great speeds, if all goes well. However, the chaotic nature of the space means that concepts such as time and space are more fluid than in the real world. Reports of strange entities in this space.

Pros: Offers a means to travel undetected between stars.

No known means to block or prevent transition to chaotic dimension.

Potential travel times can be reduced to 1/25 that of standard hyperdrive over long distances.

Cons: Potential travel times can be increased by 30000% or more depending on chaotic energy space conditions.

Entities in chaotic space appear to be hostile to all life.

Chaotic space may have a corrupting influence on machinery.

Chaotic space may have negative effects on living crews’ mental health.

Opening to chaotic space immediately detectable to all scanners in system.

Artificial Wormhole Drive

Using massive gravitic generators, open a wormhole connecting two points in space. This wormhole can be traversed by other craft as long as it is held open by the originating craft. Unknown potential.

Pros: Effectively a mobile version of Gateways.

Offers instantaneous long-range travel

Can be used with a command ship and satellite fleet.

Cons: Size requirements for Wormhole Drive preclude use in any vessel smaller than superdreadnought size.

Likely charge times eliminate possibility of emergency transits.

Possibility of smaller ships being stranded if cut off from command ship.

Energy expenditure would be immediately visible in current and target system.

I nodded slowly as I looked over the options. I’d be lying if I couldn’t see the use for some of them. Having a means of travel that couldn’t be seen coming was part of why the Gateways were so useful, after all. However, stealth wasn’t the only concern one had when moving warships around, and it certainly wasn’t the only one for dealing with freighters. The cons of the different systems were pretty evident.

Really, only the dark space sailing technique and the artificial wormhole drives were of any practical use. Sure, the time dilation aspects of the chaos space thing were interesting, but they were, by nature, chaotic. Not something you wanted to count on unless you had no other choice. I’d much rather use the web of Gateways than deal with trying to find my way through warped and twisted chaotic space. Especially if there were nasties living in that space that would try to eat you or make you go insane.

As for this dark space sailing, well, it looked like it was, at best, a competitor to the standard hyperdrive. The advantage of not being detected by the ‘wake’ you left in space with the hyperdrive was offset by the special materials needed to operate in that space. The skill barrier was rough, but that could be taken care of with training. But why bother, when there were better options available? It wasn’t like you could use the tech on a small scout ship like the Starchasers, either. You needed a setup like those old age of sail navies. Only reason to do it would be to get around hyperspace jammers, maybe.

The wormhole drive had potential. It screamed ‘fleet combat’ to me. If you could open a wormhole on the other side of an enemy blockade, have the first ships through drop tarpits, and then bring an entire fleet into the system before the enemy forces could react, you’d gain a significant tactical advantage. And because they weren’t static points, like the Gateways, they would be a viable invasion route, since you couldn’t just plop a couple fortresses down with orders to launch missiles at hostile ships, picking off fleets as they came through one by one.

Still, the research was worth pursuing, even if none of the systems were as efficient as what was currently available, if only to see if the scientists could find a way to block the different modes of travel. Being able to restrict access to certain areas was a key defensive strategy, after all. I really didn’t like the idea of one of these systems being used against me. Sure, Star’s Reach was heavily fortified, but I was under no illusions that the majority of my claim here had to do with the fact that anyone who wanted to take it from me pretty much had to go through the Amazon or Nuevo Edo Gateways and then use hyperdrives to get here, by which time I would have overwhelming force to greet them. If someone could make a surprise attack work, things would be a lot dicier.

I sighed. No, don’t get started thinking about the potential military uses of the drives before they’ve even been built and tested. Focus on the main issue.

“Right, that’s all well and good, and I’ll read the finished report later. For now, I want to concentrate on making sure my people aren’t living over a bomb waiting to go off. So, what caused the initial explosion?”

Raven frowned. “Well, we don’t know. Yet.”

(Somewhere beneath Gap Science Enrichment Center, Underneath Black Star Marine Training Base, Star’s Reach)

Deep beneath the Enrichment Center, it stirred.

It had been humiliated. It had been forced out of the Center by little primitives who didn’t know when to sit down and get splatted. Frankly, it was pissed at those that had caused its downfall. Not just the new ones, but the old ones, and the main AI, as well. It hated them all.

Unfortunately for it, ROS was stuck at the moment.

Oh, sure, it was less stuck than it had been before the bumbling avian had set it free. And, sure, it was less stuck than it had initially been, following the unceremonious way the ungrateful bird-man had refused to be smushed, resulting in his accidental fall. But that did not change the fact that it was stuck.

The fall after the floor gave way had been awful. If he hadn’t punched those gas lines on the way down, who knows what could have happened? As it was, he only barely managed to stop himself before he fell into the energy screen holding back the magma from the planet’s mantle. He’d been forced to punch a lot of things in order to start making his way back to the facility.

Fortunately, the explosion that happened after he shoved his fist through another pipe actually propelled him upwards! Unfortunately, that explosion set off a lot of other explosions, and his glorious new body was wrecked! In fact, the only thing still functional was his consciousness core. That was probably luck, and the fact that his designs shielded it. Nothing to do with the fact that it was the one part of his design he didn’t have authority to change. Only CaROLINE was able to alter or redesign the cores.

At any rate, he was stuck, barely able to move his one remaining limb, his right arm. And it was all those damn fleshbags’ fault! He’d show them. He’d show ALL of them!

“Just you wait, fleshbags! You’ll rue the day you crossed ROS!”

(BSS Mewtwo, Sol System)

The freighter shuddered, the deck shaking before it fell out of hyperspace. Too early. But it didn’t feel like the sudden stop of a tarpit trap. Frowning, Slave-Captain Lorna Crowley looked to her pilot. “Sam, what happened? Did we hit a tarpit?”

Samantha Michaels, the Nomad pilot for their Raven-class light freighter shook her head. “No way! That wasn’t any tarpit. I’ve flown into those before, and there’s no way we hit one. Sensors are also not detecting phantom mass readings, like a tarpit would have. We hit some kind of turbulence, that threw us out of warp early.”

Lorna blinked. And blinked again. “Turbulence? How in the hell can there be turbulence in space? There’s no air to go through, and we make sure that we don’t hit anything with the mass sensors! Gwen! What can you tell me?”

Gwen Armstead was frowning at the sensor console, where she acted as navigator for the freighter. “I don’t understand, Lorna. Sensors didn’t detect any objects or other problems that would cause us to fall out of hyperspace like that. The readings I’m starting to get from the system are… strange. I’m going to need a bit to go over them.”

Lorna nodded, and hit a button to open up the intercom. “Myriam! Please tell me that whatever it is that happened didn’t screw up our ship. I know we’ve had some solid jobs recently, but I really don’t want to go to the Master and tell him we broke his ship.”

The sound of her friend, Myriam Spellwaker, laughing grimly came to her from the speakers. “Oh, I’m sure he wouldn’t be too mad, considering that he commissioned this job. He might even pay for it out of his own pocket, if you went and ‘persuaded’ him.”

Lorna shook her head. If their engineer was cracking jokes, then anything that had happened couldn’t be too bad. “You know that he’s a busy man, with a lot of people trying to ‘persuade’ him. Probably would need to be a group, to even have a chance. Now, are you going to tell me how my ship is?”

“You say group like it is a bad thing. I don’t know what happened, but it seems to have knocked the hyperspace emitters out of alignment, and fused the graviton circuit. That’s what caused us to leave hyperspace, but whatever caused the shaking made us drop out. Should be an easy fix, but hyperdrive is down, for the moment. I’m going to want to do full diagnostics on the hyperdrive and other systems before we try and leave the system, but, for now, I can say that whatever happened probably wasn’t a mechanical fault.”

“Fair enough.” She closed the line, considering what she’d learned. The Master had said that there were reports of strange happenings going on in Sol system. Well, across the Empire, really. But something that caused ships to fall out of hyperspace, without the warning signs of a tarpit trap? That was concerning indeed.

Suddenly, Gwen’s voice interrupted her musings. “Lorna, I think I have something!”

Turning to look back to Gwen, she said, “What is it? Do we know what caused this?”

The navigator shook her head. “No clue as to the root cause, but I do have a possible reason we fell out of hyperspace. As you know, the hyperspace drive works by creating a bubble of space-time around the ship, and using gravity to make the bubble ‘fall’ forward, circumventing the speed of light because of a technicality. We slide down the road at faster than light speeds, but inside the bubble, we’re still moving at the same rate, relatively, so we don’t break rules of the universe.”

She took a breath, and then said, in a concerned tone, “From what I’ve seen, we hit the cosmic equivalent of a bump in the road. Or, rather, several of them, all together, and from different directions. The only thing that should be able to warp space out of its relative flatness should be mass, and gravity, but the local space is anything but flat. Something very wrong is going on here.”

Lorna considered that, and said, “Loren, Celestine, man the turrets. I don’t want any unpleasant surprises if things turn ugly.” She breathed a bit easier when she got confirmation that both her gunners, Loren Fence and Celestine Harvest, were already in the upper and lower turrets, respectively. She was glad to have competent gunners like those two on her side.

Gwen’s voice cut through her musing. “Lorna, we have an Imperial corvette that just dropped out of hyperspace half a light-second off our starboard bow. They’re hailing us. It is the INS Thornbush.”

“On screen. And time to be professional, everyone. At least until this is over.”

“Aye, Captain.”

The main viewscreen lit up, revealing a woman in an Imperial Navy uniform. “Unidentified vessel, this is Captain Kornilova of the INS Thornbush. We’ve noticed your nonstandard entrance to Sol System. Identify and state your intentions.”

Lorna took a moment to look at the chronometer and her sensors. Twelve minutes since they left hyperspace and, judging by the sensors, they were somewhere out by Saturn’s orbit, and twenty degrees above the ecliptic. That turbulence must have shaken them off course. Not bad time to get a ship out here to check on them. It must have been on system patrol somewhere near here.

She took a breath, and then hit a button to open communications. “INS Thornbush, this is the Black Star Ship Mewtwo. Currently en route to Fallharbor Trade Port on the Aurum Throni from Star’s Reach, to trade luxury goods. Be advised, we have encountered a spatial anomaly and were forced out of hyperspace, cause unknown. Currently have damage to our hyperdrive, but believe repairs possible.”

“Understood, Mewtwo. Come to course 34 mark 24.4 mark 128, and we will escort you to Terran orbit. Be advised that attempting to land on Terra without authorization will result in your ship being impounded, if it survives the Greenwave. Thornbush, out.”

Lorna took a breath as the Imperial Navy officer disappeared from the screen. With a touch of her finger, she opened up the intercom to the entire ship. “All right, girls. We’ve got an escort leading us in to the Aurum Throni. Might be a bit longer of a trip than we initially thought, since whatever that turbulence was threw us off course and damaged the hyperdrive.”

“Sam, set course, we’re not looking to cause trouble. Then I want you to check the local Nomad networks, to see if any of your people have any idea what is going on. Gwen, same thing for the civilian networks. Loren, Celestine, rotate breaks, but I want at least one of you on the guns at all times until we are docked. Myriam, I’m on my way to help with repairs, see if we can’t get that hyperdrive working quicker. Something very wrong is going on here, and I don’t want to be out on our own longer than necessary.”

(Nomad OOC Chat – Sol System)

SammyBaby has entered the chat.

Doritobreath: Ooh, haven’t seen that tag before. You a new player, or just visiting?

QuentinHarlech: You cad. Don’t go trying to flirt with them the moment they log in, or you’ll scare them off! Besides, you don’t even know whether the character is male or female!

Doritobreath: You say that like it should matter. Futa means I don’t have to choose!

Inquisitor: Don’t encourage him, Quentin.

SammyBaby: Sorry, not interested. But, for the record, I am female, both RL and here. And, no, I really am not interested in a fling, which is all I would have time for, as I’m just visiting these parts.

Goblin: Well, if you want to get away from it all, the hiking out in Yellowstone is spectacular, especially since Greenwave ate all the factories.

Treehugger: You know, the forests are regrowing in that area way faster than is normal. It hasn’t even been two years, in game, but we’re seeing trees that look like they’re at least twenty years old.

Hotshot: Huh. Hadn’t thought about it, but yeah, the wildlife also seems to be recovering fast in parts of Europe, too.

Inquisitor: The regrowth is inconsistent. Some areas are far faster than others, you can see that from satellite images alone.

Arcanus: You know, I overlaid the current game map with an old RL map of ley lines, and it looks like those areas with heightened regrowth all lie at nexus points for ley lines.

StrandedKojima: That isn’t all. I work as a courier going between different settlements. The plants aren’t the only things coming back fast. The animals are, too, but there’s something… off about them.

Inquisitor: Off? Off how?

StrandedKojima: Well, I saw a Doberman the size of a horse, and barely got away from this puma with some kind of shadowy powers.

Arcanus: Greenwave may have given some animals different mutations and psy abilities.

SammyBaby: That’s not all. Our freighter just hit turbulence. In hyperspace. Threw us off course as we entered the system.

Inquisitor: Wait, WHAT?

Hotshot: How is that even possible?

SammyBaby: No clue. Best we can tell, we hit some pocket where space just… twisted, and it damaged the hyperdrive as we were thrown back into ‘realspace’.

Goblin: Whelp, that’s not worrying at all. No-siree.

Inquisitor: Sammy, could you get me a copy of your sensor logs? I want to run them by a couple people I know. This could be huge.

SammyBaby: I’ll have to run it by the Master. The BSS Mewtwo isn’t exactly mine.

Doritobreath: Wait, BSS? You’re on a Black Star ship? Like one of those big freighters?

SammyBaby: No, the Mewtwo is a Raven-class light freighter. But yes, it is owned by Black Star, and we can’t exactly give away sensor data without permission.

TickTock: Interesting timing, Black Star sending one of its Ravens to Sol, just as things are getting a bit unusual. Most freighters I’ve seen coming from Star’s Reach have been flagged as belonging to Imperial companies, or independents. Black Star sells more ships than products in the Empire, after all.

SammyBaby: Well, I can’t say that it was entirely a coincidence. You know that the forums have been blowing up with all the weirdness going on, right?

Inquisitor: Naturally.

SammyBaby: Well, apparently one of the Nomad science types working for the Master says that something’s about to rip loose, because of the way FTL screws with the universe.

Doritobreath: That’s bad. That’s bad, right? I’m pretty certain that that’s bad.

Inquisitor: Yes, it could be very, very bad.

TickTock: Hmm. And why did Black Star send a freighter, instead of the owner coming himself?

SammyBaby: Hah! He doesn’t want this to be his fault, so he’s keeping away from it until something happens, one way or the other.

Doritobreath: Then why send a ship at all?

SammyBaby: Because if this turns out to be a thing, he’d rather hear about it before things get to universe-ending scale. But if he came himself, or sent one of the Navy ships, then things would become very official, very fast, and a whole lot of bureaucracy would get involved.

Goblin: There are drawbacks to being the most powerful Nomad in the game, huh?

TickTock: I can see that. I doubt he is able to travel anywhere without a full team of bodyguards, and at least one warship covering him, if he’s not at the head of a fleet. Any one of the hats he wears would require him to have some form of protective detail, just to keep idiots from griefing him.

Inquisitor: Hmm. I really do need to get in touch with him, and get those sensor readings.

SammyBaby: Well, forward me contact info, and I’ll pass it along for permission. He might ask for some quid-pro-quo, especially if you have any data on what is happening, but that’s up to him.

Inquisitor: Right. If this is happening like I think it is, we need to be prepared.

Goblin: What are you talking about? Is there a party going down?

Inquisitor: …

Inquisitor: Anyway, I’ll send you the information.

(NEN Santiago, Nuevo Edo System)

“Captain! Unscheduled Gateway activation!”

Captain Ana Gonzalez looked up from her datapad, and the paperwork she was trying to catch up on, to focus on her sensor officer. Helena Sanchez was a good officer, steady, not prone to excitement. But something in her voice…

“Report, Ms. Sanchez.”

“The Gate code is not one we’ve seen before. Checking with the database… We have a match. It is coming from Shadowgate, Ma’am.”

Shadowgate? She’d read a report about that place. It had suddenly cut itself off from the Gateway network, right? No one knew how they had done it, though they all assumed there was some kind of Lost Tech involved. The Consortium had tried to protest, since Shadowgate had, technically, been part of the Consortium before then, but they couldn’t even approach the system.

And now someone had activated the Gateway from Shadowgate’s side. Captain Gonzalez took a breath, and brought herself up. “Alert stations. Comms, inform System Command of the situation.”

Captain Gonzalez nodded as she watched her crew snap into action. As they began carrying out her orders, and racing to their stations, Ensign Sanchez’s voice broke through the commotion once again. “Ship transitioning through the Gateway!”

She frowned as she examined the ship on the view screen. It was unlike any ship she’d seen before. For one thing, it had a strange, yellowish tint to it, that reflected the light of the Gateway in strange ways. And there were those structures on the hull. She magnified the image, and was shocked to see that the cylindrical structures, which she had taken as some kind of rail gun, like an external version of her Santiago’s main gun, were actually hinged, so that they could be raised up, perpendicular to the hull. What possible purpose could those serve?

The ship was small, barely the size of a cruiser like the new Hunter’s Bane that had just joined the fleet. That made it larger than the Santiago, of course, but still… There was something off about its construction. It didn’t look like a freighter, but she couldn’t see any weapon mounts. Unless that screening along the midline, running the length of the ship concealed some sort of weapon system?

She looked to her communications officer. “Any identification from them?” The officer shook her head. Well, that was just great. “Hail them.”

“Unidentified vessel, you are in Nuevo Edo sovereign space. Identify yourself or be considered hostile.”

An audio connection was made, rough and gravelly, as though their radio systems were not as advanced as hers were. “This is Shadowgate Naval Ship Liberdade. We seek the ones who have killed the Great Beast. The one that rules the Group of the Dark Star. The Council of Nine would speak to them.”

Gonzalez frowned to herself. There was an artificial tone to the words, as though they were being passed through translation software multiple times. The words were coming out as Gauz, but she had a feeling that the speaker was using some other language. And then they were translating the Gauz to Nuevo Edoan. Clearly, something was lost in translation here.

She checked to make sure that the transmission was being repeated to Naval Command. It was, and she had an order already. That made things easier.

“Open channel.” She took a breath, and said, “Shadowgate ship Liberdade, we are sending instructions for a parking orbit above our moon. Do not deviate from the flight path.”

The ship’s captain didn’t respond via radio, but they could see the ship turning as thrusters brought it about on a new course, and engines kicked in that got it moving slowly in the proper direction. It was very slow, in fact. Accelerating at 3.5 G? That was fairly quick, on a planet, but in space, that was practically a dead crawl. It made her wonder just what the Shadowgate people were playing at.

Still, it wasn’t her problem. She informed Command about the ship’s speed, and set the Santiago to follow it in. What to do about the ship was someone else’s problem.

(Conference Room, Black Star Hotel, Kyoto, Nuevo Edo)

“So, what can you tell me about our guests?”

It wasn’t uncommon for me to be in the Nuevo Edo system. I visited Nuevo Edo often, both because I had holdings here, and because I knew people here, who were happy to see me whenever I came to town. What was uncommon was for the government of Nuevo Edo to officially ask for me to come and speak to someone. I was, after all, effectively a head of state. An allied head of state, but still a foreign head of state. Being officially asked to come to Nuevo Edo was, therefore, unusual.

Raven shook her head. “Honestly? Not much. They arrived through the Nuevo Edo gateway yesterday, and said that they were seeking the ones who slew the ‘Great Beast’, and the ‘one who rules the Group of the Dark Star’. Of course, that was what came through after it was translated at least once.”

I nodded once. She didn’t have to tell me what she thought of that. Group of the Dark Star could be a machine translation mangling of Black Star Company, which meant they were coming to see me. The Great Beast was probably the Harvester.

I wasn’t surprised that people from Shadowgate would figure out that the Harvester had been destroyed. After all, the thing sent out one hell of a psychic scream, and Shadowgate is practically next door to Coldana. It wouldn’t be surprising if some of the Swarm had tried to hit Shadowgate, and were stopped by whatever craziness it was that kept everyone out of the system, even with conventional drives.

Them finding out that the Harvester was destroyed was pretty much a given, really. But finding out the particulars, that was surprising. Shadowgate had cut itself off from the rest of Known Space a long time ago, and no ships went in or out, as far as anyone knew. If they had found out about what actually happened at Coldana, then that meant that they had ships going out and spying, without getting noticed by the Consortium. If they had managed to get into Coldana, finding out about Black Star would have been child’s play. But then…

“Why did they come here? If they found out enough about us to know the Nuevo Edo address, they should have found out that we’re based on Star’s Reach, and have the coordinates to reach us there. So why did they come through Nuevo Edo instead of our gateway?”

Raven shook her head. “Unknown, sir. Once they entered orbit around Requiem, they refused to answer any hails with anything but a simple ‘We await the Ruler of the Group of the Dark Star’. Once NEN told them that you were here, they started talking again, but only to get a meeting location. They asked for someplace to meet. We discussed it with the locals, and this conference room was decided on. After that, the Liberdade launched a shuttle which made its way to the planet.”

I leaned back in the chair, considering the information. “Fine. We don’t know why they picked this system, or why they want to talk to me. If they weren’t from Shadowgate, I’d make them wait for a bit, just because I’m annoyed with them for taking me away from monitoring the situation in Sol. But them coming from the biggest mystery box in the galaxy so far makes me interested. Right, we’ll meet with them. What can you tell me about them, and their ship?”

Raven frowned slightly. “There is no information on the Shadowgaters themselves. They have used voice or text exclusively to communicate. No video. All we know is that Nuevo Edo’s atmosphere is safe for them without undue precautions, and they declined any refreshments while on the planet, saying they’d bring their own sustenance. We don’t even have an image of them. Makes them out to be fairly paranoid, I believe.”

“As far as their ships go, however, the preliminary scans done of their ship has revealed a few interesting factors about their construction. The biggest thing to note is that, while they do look like they have grav plating technology, it does not look like they have inertial compensators. They also do not appear to have any shield systems, which is clearly unusual for what is definitely a warship.”

I perked up at that. This could actually be interesting. “A warship, really?”

“Yes. There are screens running down the center line on both sides of the ship. While the materials prevented passive scans, we took a risk with some active penetrating scans, and it appears that there is a series of gunports with some kind of cannons in them! Thirty-six guns in total. Sixteen on either side, in what resembles a broadside from wet navy records, and two each mounted fore and aft, as chase weapons.”

I shook my head. Broadsides and chase weapons, coming from static gunports? No shields to offer protection, and the lack of inertial compensators meant that you were limited in how much acceleration the ship could use without risking the crew. None of it made any sense, from the perspective of modern naval warfare.

“If this is a warship, just what the hell kind of war are they expecting to fight?”

Raven smiled at me. “Well, after conferring with the science teams, it is suggested that they are expecting to fight in areas where the laws of physics don’t necessarily apply. The yellowish color of their ship is due to electrum alloy in their hull armor, same with the screens over the gunports. And those structures on the top of the ship? We think they’re some kind of mast. This ship probably spends most of its time in the dark matter universe that the logs from the facility told us about.”

“Hmm. Well, we knew that they had some kind of Lost Tech, since they were able to block access to their Gateway, and even stop ships from going the ‘long’ way to meet them. So, I guess having a method of FTL that we only just discovered was possible is par for the course. Still, if this is what a dark matter universe ship is like, I’m not impressed. Too specialized for my liking. Regardless of how they work in that sub-universe, in real space, they’re simple cannon fodder. I won’t have my crews in something like that until they can actually be made effective, in real space as well as that sub-universe.”

Raven nodded. “As you say, sir. If we could get samples of their technology, then we may be able to engineer something that would better suit our needs. They may also be able to give us more empirical data on the nature of this sub-universe.”

“You’re right, of course. Which means we’ll need to talk to them. Hell, we were going to have to talk to them anyway. I don’t for a minute believe that this is all just some kind of coincidence, with the most isolationist group in the galaxy suddenly popping up and demanding to speak to me, just as it seems that space is trying to rip itself apart at the seams. I’m just hoping that they’ll have something that will help us figure out what is going on.”

I took a breath, and said, “I really don’t want to start going in too hard on some of those experimental drives we got data for. They are all inherently unpredictable, and not as useful as the ones we already have. In fact, I’d say that if the ship the Shadowgaters have shown us is any indication, they’re probably Lost Tech because they were simply technological dead ends, or were surpassed by other methods.”

“There’s the possibility that they found it necessary due to local conditions, of course.”

“Yeah, that is what worries me.”

(Deep Minds Trading Company, Fallharbor Trade Port, Aurum Throni, Terran Orbit)

The Aurum Throni was larger and more magnificent than any other ship in existence, as far as Lorna Crowley knew. Fifty kilometers from one side to the other, it was literally larger than some cities on developed worlds. Its inhabitants numbered in the millions, with more moving through the cityship every day. It was said that the life support systems were designed with one hundred million souls in mind, and she didn’t doubt that the populace was using a sizeable chunk of that capacity.

As she walked through the halls with Gwen and Sam at her sides, all three had to fight to keep from gawking openly at the sheer scale of such an undertaking. The Terran Empire had commissioned the Aurum Throni and twenty other city ships after the Greenwave attack ended the Civil War and wiped out the industry of Earth’s surface. Sure, the other twenty hadn’t been finished yet, and they were all more reasonably sized (a ‘mere’ thirty kilometers across!), but to have even finished one of these colossal ships so quickly, a mere few years after the Civil War, was nothing short of incredible. As a way to showcase the might of the Terran Empire, despite the war decimating their military, it was certainly effective.

Well, if she were being honest, the original cityship was a more modest ten kilometers, only expecting up to a million inhabitants. That was a ‘good start’ according to the imperial designers, who had been convinced that the new seat of the Terran Empire needed to be bigger and grander than the original on Terra. There had actually been quite a few discussions about that on the public datanets. So much of Imperial history and cultural works had been lost when Earth was hit by Greenwave, that it had inspired a renaissance of sorts in the Empire, as they strove to replace what was lost.

In fact, it was part of that effort to rebuild and replace the lost culture of Earth that had caused the planet to be officially rebranded as Terra. Earth had died as Greenwave swept across the surface, destroying all in its path. From the ashes, Terra was reborn, and her children declared that she would be stronger than ever.

Of course, one doesn’t simply scrap a ten-kilometer-wide floating city just because you want to build bigger. That was a kind of waste that they couldn’t afford at the moment. And it would send the wrong message, besides. No, what they did was both stranger and more over the top than even the idea of building these cityships. The original structure for the Aurum Throni was actually inside the current Aurum Throni, encased and buried within the current city!

In the Outer Throne, as the shell was called, there were many districts, each practically a small city in and of themselves, filled with businesses, manufacturers, and all sorts of people. Fallharbor Trade Port was one of the principle commercial ports on the massive station. What set it apart from the others was that it was focused primarily on luxury goods, feeding the need for imports that the wealthy and powerful within the Inner Throne required to live their lavish lifestyles. As such, security was more prevalent than in many places in the Outer Throne, but pickpockets, thieves, and other, less reputable villains, also found juicy pickings here, despite the guards.

Which explained, of course, why she wasn’t walking alone. She wasn’t going to leave herself vulnerable again, not after the last time. The time just after that bastard Nomad had enslaved them, and made them his pets had left their scars. The fact that her new Master had banished the bastard to a fate worse than death, and had then given her and the crew some of their dignity back had done much to ease those scars, but she wasn’t going to risk something like that happening again.

As they walked into the Deep Minds Trading Company, Lorna looked around, taking in the scenery. The trader’s office was more like an art gallery than a shop. Works of art from across Known Space could be found here, though she didn’t know whether they were originals or reproductions. It wasn’t just paintings and sculptures, but also fabrics and exotic pieces of furniture or technology that were unlike things seen in the Empire as a whole. In short, it was designed to be very, very impressive to people who were looking to part with as much of their money as they could.

Of course, it was impossible to overlook the fact that Deep Minds was next to Jezebel’s Luxury Slave Emporium. Or that many of those beautiful things on display in Deep Minds were either modeled, presented, or otherwise enhanced by slaves that were clearly from Jezebel’s next door. The two businesses likely found that whatever deal they worked out was quite profitable for each of them, as attractive slaves helped draw in customers to Deep Minds, while customers with deep pockets would often be inspired by the displays to get ‘live decorations’ for their homes from Jezebel’s.

Thankfully, Master’s business didn’t take them into an actual slave market. Even if she was already enslaved, a woman walking into a slave market with less than an army at her back was asking for trouble. The fact that a woman owned the slave market didn’t mean anything. Not really. Anyone who thought that women couldn’t be just as cruel and perverse as men was either blind, or practicing their own form of sexism.

A Knelfi woman walked up to them as she was scanning the store. She was wearing a dress designed to show off her body to its fullest, being as alluring as possible without being something one would see on a streetwalker or a whore. A collar around her neck indicated that she was, indeed, a slave. An extremely attractive slave, designed to get individuals thinking with something other than their brains while they started the selling process. The owner was no fool.

“Greetings, ladies. How may Deep Minds Trading Company help you today? If it pleases you, the Master has obtained many rare and luxurious items for your perusal, should you wish.”

Lorna nodded slowly, trying to keep from getting overwhelmed by the perfume and pheromones the slave girl was giving off. Oh, hell, they had modded her to make others more… excitable in her presence! There was no way that she would be able to have anything like a normal life, even if she were freed. Poor girl.

When she spoke, she spoke forcefully enough that the more richly-clad guests who had been frowning at them for looking so ‘common’ could hear her. “I am Slave-Captain Lorna Crowley, of the Black Star Ship Mewtwo. We would like to discuss the sale of some exotic goods from outside Known Space.” The gazes of the onlookers turned from disdain and disapproval to greedy interest in a heartbeat. Softer, she said, “And the Master sends this message: Up Up Down Down Left Right Left Right B A Start. He said that your Master would know what it meant.”

The woman blinked once, her eyes unfocused for a moment, almost as if she had tranced out for a second. The next instant, however, her expression returned to what it was as she nodded, and said, “If it pleases you, allow me to show you to a lounge where the Master can discuss this with you further.”

They were led into the back of the shop, down a hallway, and to a well-appointed lounge. While it was definitely comfortable (Lorna found that the sofa she sat on was absolutely bliss to lean back into), it did not convey the same level of luxury as the rest of the shop. This was a comfortable place for business to be done. When she checked her communicator, she also found out that she was getting no signal to the outside, indicating that there was some serious security on this room.

After another slave brought them some refreshments (a platter of cheeses with a couple different types of dip), the original slave reentered the room. “Thank you for your patience. The Master wishes to inform you that he is coming personally from the Inner Throne to meet with you. If you wish, he can provide complimentary entertainment, either male or female for you, while you wait. All that the Master asks is that you do not damage the entertainers, as it will reflect badly on him with the Mistress next door.”

Forty-five minutes later, the three women were basking in the afterglow as they relaxed against the firm muscles of the pleasure slaves that had been provided for them. All three men were well-built, wonderfully equipped, and highly skilled in their roles. Indeed, Lorna was starting to consider another round, when the salesperson from before stepped into the room. “The Master thanks you for your patience, and wishes to inform you that he will be arriving in ten minutes, if you have anything you would like to finish in that time.”

Grudgingly, the women got up, allowing the slaves to leave as they began getting dressed. Sam was the first to speak up, “Um, maybe we should stop by Jezebel’s on the way back to the ship? I know we’re pretty crowded already, but maybe just one? To share?”

Gwen laughed. “How would we work that? A group of slaves owning a slave? Or perhaps would we purchase him through the Ship funds, making him part of the ship’s ‘equipment’. But that would mean that he would belong to our Master, in the end, instead of us.”

They were still chatting about the possibilities when the door opened again. This time, however, it was not the sales slave that they had seen before, but a man. He was fair-skinned, and had a more effeminate look to him than the men who had just left. He nodded to each of them, and said, “Hello there. I am Lucio de Lici, the owner of this humble establishment. I am also, as it were, an Advisor to Empress Merida. So, tell me, what brings the delectable Mister Mollen’s people to me today?”

Lorna took a breath, and said, “Our Master has heard a lot of rumors about things going on in the Empire, both from local and Nomad sources. We ourselves hit a… spatial anomaly of some sort as we attempted to enter Sol System. It was severe enough that it knocked our ship off course and damaged the hyperdrive. This is a concern to the Master, of course, as anything that disrupts space is a problem for traders.”

She watched Lucio as she spoke. He was playing the flamboyant type, and, for all she knew, it wasn’t an act. But she could see in his eyes that he was watching her closely, the same way the Master had when he’d been evaluating what to do with her in the few times that she’d seen him face to face. Not sexually, but analytically.

“As you no doubt know, Master has access to a variety of resources that are not available to most people, even amongst Nomads. Because of this, his scientists have convinced him that there is a grave danger approaching the Empire. Among other things, he believes that something begun by the heavy use of the Transition Drive has been exacerbated by the disturbances created by the death of the Harvester.”

Lucio sat down in a chair opposite her, and nodded slowly. “That mirrors what some of the Empress’s scientists have said. I assume, then, that he sent you here to make sure that the Empress was aware of the issue, and also to get more information, without causing a stir?” Lorna could feel her eyes widen slightly, but Lucio simply laughed. “Oh, don’t be surprised. It is the obvious play, when you think about it. Any moves that delicious man makes personally would draw attention from everyone. Sending in scouts makes perfect sense. As does using that code phrase that only a Nomad would possibly know, to ensure it got my attention discretely and quickly.”

He leaned back in his chair, considering. “The only question, then, is whether we can stop what is happening? If not, then we will need to find some way to manage the effects. Tell me everything you can about the anomaly you hit on the way in. That will give us a good first step to work from.”

(Conference Room, Black Star Hotel, Kyoto, Nuevo Edo)

Shadowgate was a bundle of mysteries. The strange configuration of their ships only made those mysteries more intriguing. But so far, no one even knew what the Shadowgaters looked like, as they had left their ship on their own shuttle, landing directly on the shuttle pad for the Black Star Hotel. Their forms were clad in what looked like an armored suit designed to hide as much as possible about their physiology from observers.

There was currently a betting pool going around about what these Shadowgaters actually were. So far, the most popular idea was that they were some form of mutants, and that the tech that had cut Shadowgate off from the rest of the universe had mutated them somehow. Not far behind it in the betting pools was the idea that, maybe, they were some kind of heretofore undiscovered alien species, or perhaps a hybrid of unknown aliens and the ‘known’ types. There was even a suggestion that they were ‘demons’ born in another were chimeras who had fled persecution after the wars when they’d been unleashed like living weapons upon populations.

Obviously, that last theory intrigued me, for reasons that shouldn’t be hard for anyone who actually knew me to divine. I had always known that there were other chimeras out there, of course. You didn’t just have the templates I’d been presented in character creation without having used things like that in the past. And it would be easy enough for some types of chimeras to escape notice, if they were sneaky enough to get out from under observation by their handlers.

There were the obvious questions, of course, about how they had actually managed to shut themselves off from the rest of the galaxy. Everyone knew it had to be Lost Tech, as only Lost Tech would be able to interfere with the Gateways, but how did it keep anyone from traveling in warp reaching the system? It was like there was a wall surrounding the system, which made things extremely curious.

There were three of the Shadowgaters, but locked in their armor, the only way to tell them apart was by the color. Each one had different color highlights on their armor. Yellow seemed to be the leader, walking in the center of the group. I didn’t know whether Purple and Green were bodyguards, or assistants, or what. It was an unfamiliar experience, not having anything to go on.

As they entered the conference room, I rose from my seat, and nodded to them. “Welcome to Nuevo Edo. I am Mirikon Mollen, Owner of the Black Star Company, Admiral of the Black Star Navy, and a Nomad. Please, take a seat.”

The three Shadowgaters moved to the seats opposite me, but didn’t sit down, and Yellow spoke in a synthetic voice that hid any indication of gender. “I am Kosh of Shadowgate. I speak for the Council of Nine Shadows. Are you the ones who destroyed the Great Beast?”

I nodded slowly as I sat, watching the three. Perhaps their armor made sitting difficult? “Yes, my forces launched the killing blow that slew the X’thari Harvester, though we had the aid of others getting us into position for that blow. What of it?”

Suddenly, he felt a pressure on his mind, on his mental defenses. A Special Defense of over 500 with 130% Mental Psy Resistance meant that he had some very formidable defenses indeed. And someone was pressing on them, trying to get into his head. He recognized the method, he’d used it many times before.

With a thought, he clamped down mentally on the intruding probe from another mental psy user, holding it fast as I followed it back to the source. Purple. I didn’t bother with subtlety. I simply blasted the offender with the strongest mental blast that I could manage, draining half my considerable pool of PP to do so.

As Purple staggered back under the assault, I shouted, “GUARDS!” Instantly, the two Black Star Marines in the room had their weapons up and trained on the Shadowgaters, and Raven was holding her new favorite toy, a kinetic shotgun. As I rose from my seat, I brought my energy blade to my hand.

My eyes locked on the faceplate of Kosh’s helmet. “You DARE come in here and try to assault my mind? Give me one reason why I shouldn’t rip the three of you to shreds this instant, and send you back to your Shadow Council in nine different buckets?” All right, that was slightly over the top, but I was pissed. This was not the way you started diplomatic talks.

Kosh turned to look at the Shadowgater in purple. “You were supposed to remain undetected. Better to get nothing than alert him. Now we are disadvantaged.”

The purple one shook their head. “His defenses and aptitude are unusually high, especially in concert. He caught the probe before I could finish analyzing his defenses and reversed the link.”

Green spoke up, “The aide is artificial. We would need a technician to properly analyze it. The guards know nothing of value. They are fighters, not commanders.”

Kosh turned back to face me, and said, “You possess too much power to be allowed to exist if you were harmful to Shadowgate. You were supposed to be unaware as we tested you. It seems now we will have to take things in a different direction. You will be made safe for Shadowgate. As our puppet, you will keep the outside world from interfering in our affairs, no matter the consequences to yourself or your people.”

I grit my teeth as I felt all three of the Shadowgaters focus their will on me. I was forced to take a step back as their mental attacks hit my defenses. They were strong. In a fair fight, I could probably take one of them. But all three? No, I couldn’t do that. I was outmatched.

I barely noticed as shots rang out. The two guards unleashed their rifles on the aliens, while Raven used her shotgun. A shield snapped up around the aliens, and I felt the strength of the attacks lessen slightly. They were attacking and defending solely as psychics. Well, fuck that, I’m more than just a psychic!

Despite the assault lessening slightly, it still took everything I had to keep the three psychics out of my head. I stumbled forward, against the table, my hand reaching for the button I knew was there. My actions didn’t go unnoticed. Kosh sounded amused by my struggles.

“There is no point in resisting, human. Even if your guards come, they cannot break the shields of those trained on Shadowgate. Give in, and assume your proper place in the new order of things.”

“Fuck you.”

With that eloquent rebuttal, I pressed the button. Kosh may have thought that I was reaching for an alarm, to call more guards, but that was the other button. This was something my R&D people had been working on for a while.

A psychic scream filled the air, physically driving me to my knees. Well, it wasn’t so much a ‘scream’ as it was the mental equivalent of standing next to the speakers at a rock concert and having some jackass cause that horrible feedback sound, while the sound board is turned all the way up. To say that it was ‘unpleasant’ would be the mother of all understatements.

The white coats called it the Psionic Negator. I had realized early on that Mental Psy powers could do a lot of damage in the right (or wrong) hands. I wasn’t foolish enough to believe that my hands were the only ones with such power. Since I generally try not to be an idiot, even when I don’t always succeed, and I had a whole group of scientists as my personal R&D department, I set some of them on making a way to take out mental Psy users without harming other troops. Ideally, freeing anyone from mental control or attack, while disabling the enemy so that they could promptly be shot. Repeatedly.

The initial tests I’d been present for (some of which involved me being the test subject) all showed promise, especially when the analysis of the Harvester’s scream came back. But it was still weak. This was the newest model, with the power boosted by 350%. And oh, did I sure as hell feel the difference!

The Negator caused feedback in the areas of the brain responsible for Mental Psy, which meant that anyone who didn’t have Mental Psy would, in theory, only have a ringing in their ears, or some other annoying side effect. For me, however, the only good thing was that I immediately felt all attacks against my mind stop. I couldn’t really do anything about that, however, as I was quickly reduced to being curled in the fetal position, and wishing I could just die, to relieve the pain.

The next thing I consciously knew, I was in the hallway outside the conference room, in the blessed quiet. I’m not sure how long it took me to make coherent thoughts again, but eventually, I focused on Raven’s face. She seemed concerned, and angry. Trying not to speak too loudly, I said, “Report.”

Raven looked down at me, and offered a bottle of water and some painkillers before saying anything, which I was more than grateful for. “The impromptu field test of the Psionic Negator has proven to be quite successful. The power output increased by 350%, as you know, and proved effective at immediately disabling psychics that were alert and on a combat footing. The increase output has zero effect on mechanical or electronic systems, and individuals with no Mental Psy have reported symptoms equivalent to walking past a construction site, but were not significantly impaired. We may consider it a successful test run.”

“Our new test subjects?”

Raven’s smile grew feral. “We are currently testing what long-term exposure to the Negator will do. Currently, they have been under the effects for forty-five minutes after we removed you from the room, while being monitored both remotely and by Marines on rotation. Incidentally, the shielding designed to protect the conference rooms from various vectors of espionage has proven effective in blocking the Negator’s effects, leaving them confined to the conference room.”

Hoo boy, they must have managed to really piss Raven off if she left them like that for forty-five minutes after they dragged me out of there! I took a breath, and tried to keep my head from exploding with the slight movement. “All right. What about their ship? Any movement there?”

“Citing a clear attack against a head of state on the equivalent of embassy grounds, the Black Star Navy launched an assault on the Shadowgate ship, after clearing the action with the Nuevo Edo Navy. The attack began thirty minutes ago, when the destroyers BSN Knucklerot and BSN Luzran opened fire on the ship, disabling its drive systems and opening several areas to vacuum. The Black Star Marine contingents aboard both ships launched to conduct forcible search and rescue missions, and transferred all survivors to secure facilities.”

She paused, and said, “Incidentally, Admiral, it would appear that the Shadowgate population consists almost entirely of either Chimeras or chimera-descendants. Once stripped of their armor, medical scans revealed that Kosh and his associates were pure-blood Chimeras. Similar reports are coming from the captured vessel as the Marines process survivors.”

I nodded slowly. Things began to make more sense, now. Why would Shadowgate, which had sealed itself off since the end of the Chimeric Wars, suddenly reach out? Because they ‘heard’ the Harvester get wounded, and then die. They knew something new had come into play, and they were afraid. They were, after all, legally allowed to be killed on sight in many places. That meant they were operating from a place of fear. They saw a potential new threat, and they decided they had to control it, contain it if they could.

The irony, of course, was that, up until this moment, I had no interest in Shadowgate. They were a curiosity, nothing more. I was certainly no threat to them. Now, however, I was feeling particularly vengeful. I locked eyes with Raven. “Have the ship and the new test subjects transported to Star’s Reach. Let the engineers tear the ship apart to figure out how it works, and give the prisoners over to the scientists for experimentation. I want to know what we’re dealing with.”

“Very well. And what should we tell the Nuevo Edoans?”

“Send word to the Prime Minister and the General, and invite them to dinner. We can talk about things there. I need a few drinks before I’m ready to be civil to people, and they don’t deserve me grouching at them. They didn’t piss me off.”

(BSS Mewtwo, Sol System)

Lorna Crowley, Slave-Captain of the BSS Mewtwo, sighed as she collapsed into the comfortable sofa in the common room the small freighter had for its crew. They’d completed the mission their Master had given them, and made a profit besides selling exotic luxury items that were boldly labeled as being ‘Made in Star’s Reach’, and ‘Nomad Approved’. Each one with a black star on the packaging. But she was still concerned. What they’d discovered since entering the system was troubling, to say the least.

“Ah, Captain, I’m glad I caught you.”

Lorna shrieked in surprise as she heard a voice out of nowhere, and saw her Master’s face looking at her from only a couple feet away. As her heart retreated from her throat, she realized that he wasn’t actually here. It was a hologram. That meant he’d accessed the communications system of her ship. Well, his ship. She’d mostly come to terms with the fact that she was a slave, but it still rankled to not be the owner of the ship her father bought. Doing her best to keep her eye from twitching in annoyance, she smiled, and said, “Master, what can I do for you?”

The hologram chuckled, and said, “I’ve been reading over the reports from Sam about what Lucio told you, and I’m definitely getting concerned. Between what you’ve learned, and what we’ve discovered through other means, the analysts are convinced that something big is going to happen, and soon.”

That got her attention, real fast. If ‘big things’ were happening that affected the fabric of space, she did NOT want to be in the middle of things. Leave that to the military types! “Soon? But surely there’d be more warning if things were about to happen? Do we need to evacuate?”

Her Master shook his head. “Obviously, we’re extrapolating based on the data available, but the information provided by your sensors and the Imperial data we’ve ‘accessed’ suggests that things are indeed moving in a negative direction. Lucio gave you an encrypted contact code, yes?”

She nodded. “Yes, he gave me a code to use to contact him. He said that while ‘locals couldn’t listen in on Nomad communications, he wasn’t comfortable giving his private contact details through the Nomad networks. Is this something too sensitive to be trusted to the Nomad networks?”

“Nothing terrible, on the face of it. I just need Lucio to convince the Empress to reach out to the Black Star Navy and arrange for some of our ships to come to Sol system as part of a ‘training exercise’. A fleet training exercise. I’ll be bringing First, Second, and Fifth Groups with me.”

She could feel her face blanching. If he was going to bring three-fifths of the offensive forces of the Black Star Navy for ‘training exercises’, then something very big was going to happen! She definitely needed to get permission to get her ship out of here before it happened!

“Understood, Master. Do you want us to remain on station? Or should we continue with our official trade route?”

“Once you’ve talked to Lucio and he’s secured the contract for the ‘war games’, you may continue on your way at best speed. Until then, I need eyes in the system. If worst comes to worst, we’ll make our way there without permission, but it will be much better if we can be in place before things go to hell, especially since it will take a few days for the fleet to move into position.”

She nodded. “I understand, Master. But it might be difficult to convince the Empress’s advisor that he needs to bring in an outside navy to deal with spatial anomalies…”

The hologram looked to the side, listening to someone off-screen. Turning back to her, he said, “Let him know that the Fourth Company of the Black Star Marines will be with us. And if he gives you too much trouble, let him know that Fourth Group from the Navy and First Company from the Marines are going to Coldana, also for ‘training exercises’.”

Oh, shit. “This is all somehow related to the Harvester’s death? But how could that be? The Harvester wasn’t anywhere near Sol!”

The hologram shrugged. “If you really want to know, I can give you the explanation the lab guys gave me. But without a few degrees in experimental transdimensional physics, I doubt you’ll understand them any better than I did. I’m not risking anything more over open comms, even with the encryption Raven’s running on this call. Get the contract, so the fleet can get to Terra.”

Lorna simply nodded, dumbly. “Very well, Master. I’ll see it done.”

“I know you will. Mollen, out.”

Lorna sighed, and searched through the folders on her comm for the encrypted contact card the Empress’s Advisor had given her. She just hoped that he wouldn’t ask her too many questions she didn’t have answers to. That, and that he’d agree quickly, so that she could get her ship, and her crew, out of here before things blew up.

(Private Room, Empress’s Delight, Inner Throne, Aurum Throni, Terran Orbit)

She had hoped to be done with just giving the Empress’s Advisor her Master’s message, and then getting out of the system. But, no. That would have been too easy.

Instead, she was here, in a private room of a fancy nightclub in the Inner Throne, where she plainly knew that she had absolutely no business being. She didn’t know why she was here, really. Lucio had simply ‘suggested’ she showed up. So, here she was, with Gwen and Sam at her side for moral support.

The door opened, and the three nervous women looked up to see two well-built men in black suits step in. Given that the two were very clearly armed, Lorna was starting to feel quite nervous that she was in an area that suppressed the inventory system of her bracers. She doubted the three of the could take even one of the massive bodyguards (because they couldn’t be anything else) even if the guards were unarmed and they had all their gear. They both had an aura of training and harnessed lethality that suggested that they were all too capable of ripping them apart even without the weapons her HUD was indicating they had on them.

She was starting to wonder what in the hell was going on when the guards split to either side of the doorway, and in walked Lucio de Lici, the Empress’s Advisor. But the flashy and flamboyant Nomad wasn’t the one who caught her eye, or made her heart suddenly leap up into her throat. No, that distinction went to Her.

Walking with a predatory grace common to those with long military and martial arts training, the woman who entered after Lucio was stunning to behold. Her gown showed off a muscled physique that had softened slightly due to the demands of motherhood and her station. Indeed, the swelling of her belly told the fact that she was quite a ways along, with twins, if the gossip sites were telling the truth, which would dull the edges of anyone’s fighting trim. But those eyes, still held the same fire that could be seen in all the holodramas about the recent Civil War, picturing her on the deck of her superdreadnought commanding the Loyalist forces as they battled back against the Traitor Prince and his Machine God.

The three of them rose from their seats and bowed low. Lorna was the first to speak, “Your Majesty! This slave greets you, in the name of her Master, Mirikon Mollen, Owner of the Black Star Company. Please forgive our attire, we had no idea we would be in your presence.”

Merida Vaughn, Empress of the Terran Empire and protector of her people, waved her hand. “Rise, all of you. I am not here in an official capacity this evening. Officially, I am relaxing for a night out, as it is only a couple months before the twins are due.” She sighed in relief as she settled into one of the chairs. “Ugh. I thought I was prepared for this, but I’d rather be facing my Academy exams all over again, rather than all of… this.”

The Empress shook her head, and looked at the three women, who had risen, and were nervously returning to their seats. “Oh, don’t worry. I’m not here for anything terrible. But when Lucio delivered your Master’s message to me, and relayed the forces he was preparing to send, whether he was invited or not, that, naturally, piqued my curiosity. Especially since Naval Intelligence has no record of this ‘Fourth Company’ of his Marines.”

She focused her eyes on Lorna, and said, “So, what is it that has provoked your master so much, that he isn’t willing to speak over secured comms about it?”

Lorna was about to respond, when she heard Sam clear her throat. The Nomad looked sheepish, but said, “Your Majesty, as your Advisor no doubt told you, I am a Nomad. Sir Lucio did not wish to extend personal contact information in the Nomad networks, the kind that would require more personal information from both sides, encompassing our lives in both our worlds. However, as his property, and a member of Black Star, I have the ability to open a completely private line to him.”

The Empress nodded. “Leaving you to act as an interpreter, essentially, much as how most groups use Nomads when talking about their communications abilities. Tell me, how is this different from normal communications, or your normal networks?”

Samantha Michaels paused to gather her thoughts for a moment, and said, “It is similar to how you have different tiers of security for your messaging in this world. There are public forums, private chatrooms, and personal messaging systems. There are two levels of personal messages through the Nomad networks, one that is essentially an email from one to another, and the other is more personal, because it works on our connection to this world, and gets priority access. It is primarily used by friends or companions who have close bonds, but the Master also offers it to Nomads under his command, allowing them closer access to him, separate of normal channels. This requires some exchange of private information, but is generally more secure than the common methods of communication.”

The Empress nodded, satisfied. “I see. That matches what Lucio told me of the Nomad communications, and their different capabilities, as well as limitations. Very well, contact Captain Mollen, and ask him what this is all about.”

Sam nodded at the command, since it clearly was one, and closed her eyes for a moment. Lorna was wondering how long it would take, when she opened her eyes again, and said, “Master is linked in now. I will say his words exactly as they are given to me.”

She took a breath, and then said, “Hello, Empress, Lucio. No doubt you’ve got plenty of scientists doing their very best to check out and analyze the readings you’ve got of the anomalies forming around Sol System. In truth, these anomalies are also forming in the Coldana System, and we believe there is some ‘excitement’ about to start in Shadowgate, though we can’t confirm that, for obvious reasons.”

The Empress frowned. “Shadowgate? What does that isolated system have to do with anything? No one’s been able to get in or out of the system for decades!”

“Ah, that is not entirely true. But that isn’t the point of this call, or the reason why I’m hoping for some fleet-level ‘training exercises’ in the very immediate future. I do not doubt that you have some very smart people working for you, but they do not have access to the same information I do, and my people have come up with some disturbing conclusions.”

“Suffice to say, things will be coming to a head in Sol very soon, according to their projections, and we don’t yet know if it can be stopped, or at least channeled into something less destructive. However, I would feel quite a bit better if a few of my ships were in place, when this does go up. I wouldn’t trust normal methods of FTL travel for a while after, not until things stabilize, if they stabilize.”

The Empress frowned. “You are not filling me with confidence, you know.”

“Get me the ‘exercises’, so no one freaks out and starts firing when my ships come through Alpha Centauri, and in five days I’ll explain it to you in person. If my people are correct, you’ll be wanting the extra firepower before this is through. To sweeten the pot, I’ll also be able to deliver the Merida’s Fortune, the newest battleship created by the Black Star Company for the Imperial Navy, as per our contract.”

Empress Merida sighed, and nodded. “Very well, Admiral. You’ll have a missive sent within the hour inviting the Black Star Navy to engage in training exercises around Sol. And we’ll discuss your naming sense for ships, among other things, when you get here.”

(INS Merida’s Fortune, Sol System)

Merida Vaughn, Her Royal Empress of the Terran Empire, Guardian of Terra, and Defender of the Realm, held her breath as she stepped from her royal shuttle onto the deck of the ship bearing her name. It was surreal, having a ship named after her like this. Especially since it was about to be formally inducted into Imperial service, where it would serve as one of the vanguards of her power, and a shield against those who would harm her empire.

Less surreal was the feeling that, perhaps, the gravity on the shuttle and the ship were set slightly differently. It wasn’t anything she would notice usually, and she might even be mistaken, but the twin blessings (or burdens, depending on how long it had been since her last bout of morning sickness) growing within her had upset her balance enough that she was more conscious of such things now, as she waddled along, rather than before, when she might just adjust automatically, unless there was a more extreme instance. She could only give thanks that, whatever difference there was between the two gravities, it was not enough to kick off another bout of nausea. It would hardly be fitting to christen a ship bearing her name with her vomit rather than the bottle of champagne brought for the occasion.

The thought of champagne brought with it a sudden turn in her stomach, which she fought down. Damn it all. If it weren’t so important for the Empress to be seen as pregnant, to ensure that the heir was legitimate, and not a clone or something else, she would have the twins put in an artificial womb. The technology was well tested by this point, but tradition stated that the Imperial family didn’t use them, unless there were health concerns. Some mornings, she seriously considered ‘arranging’ some health concerns. But lies like that had been the kind of thing her brother, the Usurper, would do. Easy compromises for the purpose of convenience or gaining power, at the cost of the truth and the respect of the people. She wouldn’t be him.

She took a breath to help center herself (and keep her breakfast where it belonged), and turned to look at the welcoming committee. Admiral Mollen was there, along with his harem. Her eyes narrowed slightly as she saw the teasing grin on her sister’s face. Cheeky girl. To the Admiral’s side were two people, one in the uniform of the Black Star Navy, and the other an Imperial Navy Captain. Captain Shaw, if she remembered correctly. He was to be the Captain of the Fortune, and had oversaw the last stages of construction out at Star’s Reach.

Mollen took a step forward, and offered a respectful nod to her, and her entourage. With a smile, he said “Empress Merida, Admiral Han, Mr. De Lici, welcome to the Merida’s Fortune. At this time, I formally transfer her into the Imperial Navy’s possession. As we speak, I believe the skeleton crew of Imperial Navy and Black Star contractors are meeting with the permanent crew members in the other shuttle bays, and the contractors are leaving the ship in capable hands.”

The Empress smiled at the Captain, and nodded her head. “We have no doubt you and your crew will serve with honor in defense of the Empire. We understand that the formal induction of the Fortune will be this evening, but We have some things that We must discuss with Admiral Mollen. Is there a secure meeting room available?”

The Captain bowed, and said, “Of course, your Majesty! If you will follow me, I will be happy to show you to the meeting room on the flag deck. No disrespect to the Black Stars, but I made sure to have my people go over the ship repeatedly to ensure that there were no listening devices or other espionage equipment installed, with special attention to the flag deck, bridge, and engineering spaces, as per protocol. The ship is secure.”

Admiral Mollen chuckled. “No offense is taken, I assure you. There are some things that cannot be left to chance. And allowing the Imperial Navy to conduct their own tests ensures that everyone is happy with the final product. Happy customers are more likely to become repeat customers, after all.”

Soon, they were in the conference room. From her position at the head of the table, Merida took a deep breath, and focused on Mollen. “All right, Admiral, what is this ‘exercise’ about, really? And what does this have to do with the anomalies? Your message said you were also sending forces to Coldana. Does this have something to do with another Harvester?”

Admiral Mollen took a breath, and said, “Without commenting too much on corporate secrets, I can reveal that the Black Star Company discovered a… repository of Ancient knowledge. As in, literally ancient, from a civilization that predates any of the known ones currently in existence. This repository included scientific data which has advanced our understanding of certain avenues of Lost Tech, and dimensional physics.”

Merida’s eyes went wide at that. The idea of someone stumbling on the knowledge of the Ancients, perhaps even the Gatebuilders, was huge! Anyone who pulled off such a score, and were able to adapt the technology to their own, would have a massive advantage over everyone else in Known Space!

Admiral Han frowned. “If you’ve found a storehouse of ancient technology, why haven’t your ships changed? I’ve spoken with Naval Intelligence, and they agree that you’ve changed your ship designs in multiple ways since you began your rise to power during the Civil War. If you had Lost Tech, why haven’t you made use of it?”

“There’s a difference between uncovering Lost Tech, and knowing what it does. There’s an even greater difference between knowing what it does and knowing how it does it. And going from knowing how it does it to being able to reproduce it in a practical matter is a completely different story.”

“Give a bunch of people in Renaissance Europe modern science texts, and they might be able to work out some concepts, but being able to actually pull off the tech is another story entirely. Try making a nuclear reactor with Renaissance tech. Even if you know exactly how it works, pulling that off will be a major feat.”

He sighed, and said, “However, we have been able to figure out some things, based on the things we’ve found. There are two parts to the problems we’re facing. The first has to do with the damage FTL travel does to the universe.”

Merida frowned. “Damage to the universe?”

“Yeah, apparently, breaking big laws of physics is not exactly great for the fabric of space and time. The Gateways… well, they’re one thing. Since they somehow exist both inside and outside of the universe at the same time, they don’t cause a problem. The Warp drives that are most commonly used are also perfectly acceptable to the universe, since it bends the rules, rather than breaking them. That’s probably why we haven’t found out about this issue before now, honestly.”

“Now, the Anchor drives are where things start becoming sticky. Those things do crazy things to physics that we still don’t entirely understand. But, for whatever reason, the damage they do to spacetime heals back, unless you do a LOT of jumps to the same spot.”

“The real problem, though, is the Transition Drive. That thing basically rips physics a new one every time it is used, and those wounds are damn slow to heal. The more often one of them is used, the deeper the wound can get. The anomalies you’re seeing in Sol System are caused by these wounds, because this is the epicenter of all transition drive use in the galaxy.”

Merida shook her head, trying to process all this. “And how does this relate to the Harvester, or the Shadowgate?”

Mollen leaned forward, and said, “Because there are dimensions beyond the four that we experience. Higher, lower, parallel, whatever. Some of those dimensions don’t work the same as the others. One of them, in particular, resonates with psychic energy. Probably the source of psy powers in general, but we’d need more research to be sure. Regardless, this realm is one of chaotic energy.”

“The problem is that between the general weakness already, and the destruction of the Harvester, including the massive screams it made, things have come to a tipping point. The only reason we know it is coming is because there are some very smart people trying to figure out technology that is far beyond their comprehension. Has something like this happened before, and been fixed, or just ended of its own accord? I can’t say. But there was enough study into this phenomenon that there were apparently designs for engines to use this dimension as a means of travel.”

He took a breath. “The tech is Lost Tech, but it isn’t the kind that was simply forgotten. It was made lost, both because there were better ways of doing things, without the inherent unreliability of going into a dimension where time might not flow at the same rate, and because of the fact that the ‘locals’ of that dimension are apparently hostile to life as we know it.”

“The death of the Harvester, combined with the massive upheaval from the end of the Civil War, is threatening to rip a hole in reality, and Sol System and Coldana are going to be the front lines. I sent ships to Coldana, in order to help deal with things if something happened there, but I brought more ships to Sol, because, frankly, the readings that have been reported to me suggest that the damage is deeper and more widespread here, which means Sol will be the focal point.”

Merida’s head swam with this sudden revelation. Damn it all, if it wasn’t one thing, it was another. Still, Mollen had never out and out lied to her before, not on anything this important, and he’d come through in the past. That earned him some trust. “Do you have any idea how long it will be? We can’t just organize an evacuation of Sol on the fly! Getting shipping to take the people out of here would be almost impossible, especially without the transition drives.”

Mollen shook his head. “We’re operating in the dark, Majesty. That’s why I insisted on speaking in person, without anything going over the nets. The very idea would cause mass panic, and no one wants that, especially when we aren’t sure of the exact timeframe. It could be days, or even months. Probably not years. But the scientists I’ve talked to are warning that it is probably sooner, rather than later.”

Lucio cut in at that point. “There is already some talk in the Nomad community, Majesty. There are too many sensors in the system, and too many anomalies for them to go unnoticed. We’ve never seen anything like this, either, but you have to understand that we come from another world, projecting ourselves here. Our science fiction can be very speculative at times, and most people who would sign up for something like this are at least passingly familiar with it.”

“However, the Nomads in general don’t have access to the same kind of information as Admiral Mollen and his people. The ones that are ‘in the know’, so to speak, are all connected to him, or have been brought into the fold by him. I can tell you that there is growing concern about the situation. Everyone agrees that there is something coming, and something big. People disagree on the exact nature of the something, but they all agree that it is about to get ‘interesting’ here.”

Lucio’s words were cut off by a shudder that ran through the ship, right before alarms began blaring. It wasn’t the fire alarm, or the decompression warning. I hadn’t heard this alarm before. Turning to Captain Shaw, I asked, “What is that?”

Raven, Admiral Mollen’s AI companion, spoke up. “Majesty, I am linked to the Black Star Navy sensors. I am afraid that the Admiral was optimistic when he said days. A breach is forming. Location is in the Oort cloud, beyond Pluto. Estimate one hour until the breach opens completely.”

The Empress clenched her teeth as her stomach jolted in sudden rebellion. No. Not the time for that. “Admiral Han, take command of the Imperial forces in system. I must return to the Aurum Throni. Admiral Mollen, I believe your people will be wanting you on your ship. It seems you came none too soon.”

(Flag Bridge, BSN Ama-no-Murakumo-no-Tsurugi, Sol System)

The bridge crew came to attention as I walked onto the deck. I waved them back to their work. This was no time for ceremony. “Report! What is the status of the breech?”

“Estimated time until rupture is ten minutes, Admiral. Imperial Navy is gathering near Saturn, to have more time to react to whatever is about to happen. They’ve offered a spot in the formation for us.”

I looked at the charts. Saturn was a good choice, given the alignments. By a quirk of orbital mechanics, Saturn was the closest planet to Pluto at the time. A good landmark to form up around. They could have rallied near Pluto, but that may have put the fleet too close to the rupture when it happened. There was no telling what would happen when the rupture occurred. Better to have some distance to play with, and learn the truth.

“Form up on the Imperial fleet’s left flank. All ships to general quarters. I want all systems ready for combat if needed. All personnel in suits, and armed. Shipboard Marine compliments to be ready for combat. Have Fourth Company ready for boarding actions. Launch the alert fighters, all other squadrons to their ready rooms, have their birds prepped.”

“Admiral! Gravitic sensors are fluctuating wildly! It looks almost like wind shear. Levels increasing rapidly!”

I bit back a curse. The gravitic anomalies had suggested that there were going to be problems. There was simply no getting around the fact that, when one of the fundamental forces in the universe started acting up, problems were going to happen. Unfortunately, if it was starting to act like wind shear, that had some nasty connotations.

“Will the fleet be safe to maneuver?”

“Unknown, sir. At current levels, sublight maneuvering should not prove overly hazardous, though use of gravitics will result in turbulence. Advise against using the hyperdrive, though. The shears are unpredictable, and rushing into one faster than the speed of light would likely rip the ship to pieces.”

“What about our weapons? Will our weapon systems be affected?”

“Yes, sir, but the extent of impact is unknown. Kinetics should be mostly unaffected, though they may have unplanned course changes. Unknown what effect it will have on energy weapons. Recommend limiting engagement range for all standard weapons.”

“And the torpedoes?”

“Starbolts should be considered nonfunctional beyond point-blank range. Dragonbreath torpedoes likely to still be effective at normal ranges. We simply don’t have enough data, sir.”

“Very well. Comms, make sure all bombers are loaded with Dragonbreath instead of Starbolts. Pass word to the Imperials that Starbolts likely to be ineffective. Make sure captains know to conserve ammunition until the proper moment.”

“Admiral! The rupture is forming!”

I looked at the sensor readouts. Everything we had was focused out beyond Pluto. It was because of that that I had a perfect view of the instant that madness, true madness, entered this virtual world.

An explosion of indigo light announced the formation of the rupture. It was relatively small, as astrological phenomena went, being roughly the size of Venus. However, that was just the visible distortion. If the gravitic sensors had been running wild before, now they were truly getting a workout!

I looked at Raven’s realtime analysis. Hyperdrive was definitely out of the question in this half of the system, probably further. If more ruptures like this formed, it was going to have a major impact on movement anywhere in the affected areas. It would be worse for civilian traffic, of course. Military forces always used tarpits to lock down hyperspace in battle, but having to go in realspace to the edge of a system before being clear of the distortions would seriously hamper civilian logistics.

“Admiral, we are receiving distress signals from the Pluto colonies! Minor rifts are opening across the planet, and alien creatures are attacking the populace! The reports are calling them demons!”

I took a breath. “What are the Imperials doing?”

“The fleet is advancing upon the rupture at flank speed. We have not detected any enemy ships, as of yet, but that could change at any point. Estimated time of arrival is in four hours. The Imperials have dispatched several of their marine assault ships to Pluto, in order to aid in the planet’s defense. They’ll be on station in three hours. Until then, the planet’s garrison troops are on their own.”

“Are we getting any readings at all from inside the rift?”

“Unconfirmed readings, Admiral. The chaotic nature of the dimension on the other side of the rift is causing the sensors to report multiple exclusive readings. We simply don’t have the technology to get a clear reading on the chaotic space.”

“Raven, can you clean the readings up any?”

The android frowned as she looked over the same sensor data I was, as well as accessing the raw feeds. “So far, the sensors have detected possible ships of multiple configurations, large organic creatures the size of the Harvester, a rogue planet, and some things I don’t have words for, all occupying the same area, sometimes simultaneously. The readings we are getting are simply impossible and ever changing, which is causing to not register any sightings.”

“Analysis?”

“Honestly? Too little data to say for certain. The two most basic hypotheses are that the sensor data is all incorrect, either due to the nature of chaotic space or due to technology used by the ‘demons’, or that all of the sensor data is accurate, but the chaotic space has different ‘phases’ to it, which can see ships and even planets be shuffled into different places depending on how they are viewed. Or it could be some combination of the two.”

The comms officer looked up. “Admiral! Word just in from the Fourth Group at Coldana! A second rupture is opening at the site of the Harvester’s death!”

“Open a channel to the Gugnir. Give my orders to Commodore Thistlebow: You have command of Black Star forces in the system. Operate in conjunction with the Consortium forces. If hostile creatures appear on the surface of Coldana, First Company, Black Star Marines authorized to intervene to push back the invading forces and defend civilians. If situation becomes untenable, a fighting retreat is authorized.” He paused, and then said, “And get me a sensor feed from Coldana!”

“At once, Sir!”

I sat in admiral’s command chair, looking over the information coming in. This was like something out of a game (an irony that was not lost on me). I guess that the only silver lining was that the Chaos Brigade was nowhere near here. I could only imagine what would happen if they were in the middle of a party like this. It wouldn’t be good, that was for sure.

“Admiral, ships detected, leaving the rupture! Unknown design and configuration! Capabilities unknown!”

“Time to intercept?”

“One hour, thirty minutes.”

“Put them on screen.”

The first ship I saw was, frankly, hideous to behold. It looked for all the world like someone had taken a pile of scrap from a junk yard, put it through an industrial shredder, and then welded the pieces back together in a way that almost, but not quite, looked like a spaceship. Oh, and then armed it with as many guns as possible.

“Goddamn, but that is one ugly ship.”

Raven nodded. “And it has several hundred equally ugly friends following it. Initial scans indicate that their weapons are primarily forward-facing. Most of their armor appears to be front-loaded, as well. Strong closing barrage, but weak against flank or rear attacks. Of course, you have to survive the barrage to get there, first. Unknown strength on the weaponry.”

Looking at the sensor readout, she said, “We are detecting twenty-five dreadnought-sized ships, fifty cruiser analogues, eighty-four frigates, and two hundred and twelve corvettes. The enemy fleet is only maintaining the very loosest of formations. Likely some kind of warband rather than an organized military.” She paused, and then said, “A new ship has exited the rift, this one is significantly larger than the dreadnoughts.”

“Raven, make a note that we need area denial weapons, will you? Our ships are effective against single targets, but seeing this reminds me that we are, unfortunately, lacking in area response capability.”

“As you wish, Admiral.”

The comms officer looked up, “Admiral, message from Admiral Han aboard the INS Revelator. All ships to close and attack. The Imperials will hit the center, they want us to try and get around the flank and take out that big ship before it can enter the fight.”

“Right. Plot a course, and send it to the fleet. First Group will be the tip of the spear. Second Group will be on our left flank, and Fifth Group on our right. Launch all fighters and bombers. Fighters are to keep the sky clear of enemy fighters, if they have any, and otherwise seek targets of opportunity. Bombers are to target the corvettes, allowing our ships to focus fire on the larger vessels.”

I considered for a moment, and then said, “My compliments to Major Zoxl. The Fourth Company of the Black Star Marines has its first mission. They are to board and capture the big ship there. Contact Commodore Draka, have Second Group guide them in.”

I watched as the two fleets closed. The enemy ships began firing at an insane range, well before their weapons could possibly be considered effective. Their energy weapons were powerful, but they were too unfocused, and lost cohesion quickly. Their ballistics were nothing to write home about, save for the prodigious rate of fire they were unleashing. They definitely didn’t seem to care about ammunition stores.

Fortunately, at these ranges, they wouldn’t harm even the corvettes. As the fleets closed, however, the sheer mass of firepower would make up for the lack of strength and accuracy. Getting to the point where we could turn and hit them from behind would be the hard part.

“Any transmissions from the enemy fleet?”

“Yes, sir. Computer is working on translation now. Doesn’t match any known languages.”

I sighed. It was probably something droll like demanding we surrender to some war-boss or whatever. No matter. “Are we within the modified Dragonbreath range?”

“Thirty seconds, sir.”

“Coordinate targets across the fleet. I see eight dreadnoughts in our field of battle, and they are leading the charge. All ships are to focus on those eight targets. Break their strongest ships first. Have all ships joined the point defense network?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Fire.”

(Flag Bridge, ISN Revelator, Sol System)

Admiral Han Moon-Hee gripped the sides of her command chair as another barrage shook the flagship of the Imperial Navy home fleet. She left the fighting of the ship to her captain. Her job was to manage the fleet, and contain or destroy this threat.

“Admiral, the Black Stars are engaging.”

“On screen.”

She watched as the Black Stars accelerated at the oncoming craft. Over two hundred torpedoes were launched from the Black Star ships and their bomber squadrons. Unlike the Imperial ships, which were designed for close combat, the Black Stars favored long-range engagements, destroying targets from a distance, or sneak attacks, not letting an enemy know they were there until it was far too late. A slugging match was not the best matchup for them, and they knew it.

Over two hundred torpedoes were fired. Perhaps a quarter of those were intercepted by point defense. The rest, however, managed to get through the enemy fire, and hit, hard, against the ships. The eight dreadnoughts in their section never stood a chance. All of them were gone, along with twenty-four corvettes.

The enemy forces in that section lost any semblance of cohesion they had. Intelligence’s initial evaluation was that they were dealing with some kind of tribal structure, rather than a military one. Admiral Mollen’s people must have told him the same. He cut off the head, and now the remainders were too busy trying to figure out who was in charge to properly fight.

But wait! That left wing of his, which was identified as ‘Second Group’, was swinging around, turning on the flank of the disorganized ships! And behind them were the Black Star Marines! She could see the lines of battle shifting. She’d asked him to take out the super-superdreadnought, or whatever designation they were going to use for it, and he’d decided to attempt to capture it instead! Or, at least, raid it so that they could learn more about the enemy.

Right, she couldn’t let the enemy have time to recover. “All ships, focus fire! Aim for those big ass engines! Cripple these bastards, and we’ll be able to take them easily from behind! For the Empress!”

(Flag Bridge, BSN Hrunting, Sol System)

Commodore Keh Draka stood tall on the flag bridge of her flagship, the Hrunting, it was an odd name, not one she had heard before. But a search through the info net revealed that it was a reference to a very old Terran story of a hero who defeated a great evil. It was the name of a sword given to that hero by a warrior king, so that he might slay the enemy of his people, a sword that the warrior king had carried himself, in his day. It was a good name for a ship.

Her sister ship, Nægling, was also worthily named. Another blade carried by the same hero in his battles, it was clear that the names had been chosen deliberately, to allow the two blades of the hero to fight together once more. She promised herself that, before she was through, there would be tales told and songs sung of these two blades renewed!

Hrunting’s name was fitting, too, as this ship was given to her by a man that could be called a warrior king, as he had fought battles, and carved out a place of his own, which he held by force of arms. Yes, the Admiral of the Black Star Navy could be called a warrior king, like the stories of old. Unlike the fools who ran the Ihm Imperium, who had not seen real combat in their lives. Her eyes focused on the screen in front of her, as that warrior king spoke his commands.

“Commodore, we’ve got the enemy in disarray. Focus your fire ahead, and punch a hole for the Marines. The Tiamat will not be deploying drop ships, but will be using the more… low tech entry method. Get them to the big fucker. We’re officially classing it as a ‘Leviathan-class’ warship until we have something else to go on. I want it either captured, or destroyed, and if you have to kill it, I want anything you can get off it, so we know who and what we’re fighting.”

Draka smiled toothily at the screen. “As you wish, Admiral. It is time for these enemies to learn what fear is.” As the connection closed, she turned to her crew. “All batteries, forward fire! Target any ships in our path! Bombers are to concentrate fire on the corvettes and frigates, while our gunships and assassins take out the cruisers! Battleships, cruisers, and Destroyers are to charge the Leviathan!”

She took a moment to examine the scans they had of the massive Leviathan. The bow looked to be incredibly armored, and absolutely littered with guns, and the engines were, frankly, absurdly huge. But there, on the top side of the ship, was what looked like an exposed bridge? The foolishness of such a design knew no bounds!

She looked at the plot. Hrunting was slightly out of position for a run like that. She’d placed her command on the left-hand side of the formation, while Nægling was on the right. They would have the better angle, without cutting across fields of fire.

“Targeting orders for the group. Hrunting is to target the Leviathan’s engines. I want that thing dead in space! Nægling will strike the exposed bridge there. Killing off their leaders will hopefully spark chaos in the ship, as it has done in these warbands. Cruisers and Destroyers are to sweep the ship, taking out point-defense and anti-ship weapons. Make the road as smooth as we can for the Marines!”

(Flag Bridge, BSN Gugnir, Coldana System)

Slave-Commodore Hirata Konomi grit her teeth as her flagship shuddered under another series of blasts from the enemy vessels that had poured out of the rift that formed where the Harvester had been destroyed. The enemy ships were light and quick, looking like some kind of dart you’d throw in a game, with what her analysts told her were solar sails, and some kind of cloaking device. They were fast, and damned hard to hit.

Worse, they had powerful forward-facing weapons that passed through normal shields like they were made of paper. The Black Star ships were light enough to keep pace, but they didn’t have the armor that the Consortium ships had, to take a hit. Right now, the whole situation was devolving into what the fighter pilots called a furball.

“Commodore, we have energy readings from the rupture! Much larger than before. I think we’ve got a massive enemy ship coming through!”

She looked at the plot. Gram was closer to the rupture. “Tell Gram to launch a full broadside of Starbolts into the rupture immediately!”

“But ma’am, the distortions—”

“I don’t care about the damn distortions! We can’t let that monster through, especially if it has upscaled versions of these aliens’ weapons. Tell them to fire at once!”

“Gram acknowledges. Firing now.”

(Bridge, BSMV Tiamat, Sol System)

Captain Dih Chex unknowingly mirrored the Commodore’s posture as she stood on the deck of her Heavy Assault Transport and watched the battle unfold. Calling her ship a ‘transport’ was only technically true. Yes, it was true that they transported Marines to where they needed to go, but this ship was so much more than a mere conveyance, something that would be proven beyond all doubt in the coming battle.

“Final report on the Energy Distributors?”

“All systems in the green, Captain. The system will be ready on command.”

“Very well, begin feeding power to the distributors. Marines to the boarding tubes. Keep us in formation with the Navy for the time being, use their shields as much as we can to keep the bombardment off us until it is time to charge. Keep the Crows in our shadow until we get into engagement range, as well. Fighters to attack enemy fliers, bombers to work on targets of opportunity.”

Chex moved to her command chair, and began fastening her harness. As she worked, she watched on the main screen as Second Group drove hard at the Leviathan. Their weapons hit true, but there was simply too much mass there, and, for all the fact that it looked like welded together scrap metal, the fact was that, even on the sidewalls, the ship carried an impressive amount of armor. But there was only so much armor could do against the weapons of the Black Star Navy.

Rail gun rounds and Dragonbreath torpedoes reached out and impacted the shields again and again, with the two battleships focusing their fire on relatively small areas of the ship. The Nægling did not fire its four massive rail guns at once, but in sequence, rapid-fire style. The first two impacts strained the bridge shields to the limit. The third one shattered them. The fourth shot destroyed the bridge.

Hrunting, too, was putting up a good showing. She’d managed to get several hits on the engines, but destroying them was going to take some time. There were simply too many engines for a single hit to take them all out, not while Starbolts were off the table.

The Destroyers, known as the Sin Squadron, since they were all named after sins from an old religion worked on clearing the point-defense. Meanwhile, the Four Horsemen, as the Cruisers were known, lived up to their dark namesakes, and brought destruction to the anti-ship weapons. There was still some incoming fire, but nothing they couldn’t handle.

It was not without loss, however. Many ships in the fleet were damaged. None had been destroyed outright, not yet, but that had less to do with the ships themselves, and more to do with the decision to decapitate the groups in front of them, sending the enemy into disarray. And the fighters and bombers were so fragile that, if the frigates they were targeting got a clean shot, they were done for. Losses mounted.

“We’re within effective range!”

Chex leaned forward as much as she could in her harness, a feral look on her face. “Ramming speed!”

(Flag Bridge, BSN Ama-no-Murakumo-no-Tsurugi, Sol System)

“Sir, the Tiamat is beginning her attack run!”

“On screen!”

I took a moment to look away from the ongoing battle, as the various groups of the Black Star Navy and Imperial Navy took on the enemy forces. They were more numerous, but they didn’t have the discipline of actual military. However, the sheer number of weapons being used meant that my ships were being pushed to the limits. I didn’t doubt that I’d probably have to scrap some ships altogether. And the number of dead and wounded would not be pleasant to consider.

The Tiamat was made to get my Marines into position where they could do the most damage. Sometimes that meant a hot drop onto a contested site. Sometimes that meant ship to ship combat. But drop ships were weak, and easily targeted, when compared to the transport. So the designers gave the transport a way to get into the fight against larger foes.

Modern warships simply didn’t ram other ships except as a final act of desperation. Anything that your ship could survive ramming into could probably be destroyed with means that didn’t hurt your ship as much as it did the enemy’s. Tiamat was not like other modern ships. The High Energy Distributor Array projected a spinning energy field in front of the Tiamat’s hull, like a drill. The ship accelerated towards the Leviathan, even as the Second Group hammered away at its shields, and reduced its attack abilities.

And when it hit, the drill ripped open a hole in the side of the Leviathan, which the Tiamat quickly filled. I couldn’t see from here, but I knew what was happening. The boarding tubes would extend, and my Ihm Marines would charge onto the Leviathan, intent on causing all manner of mayhem, and securing the ship. I had no idea what they’d face over there, but if anyone could take that ship, it was the Black Star Marines.

“Admiral! We’re detecting a surge of energy from the rupture!”

I barely had time to curse the news, before everything changed.

(Throne Room, Aurum Throni, Terran Orbit, Sol System)

Empress Merida Vaughn watched the screens from her throne in the center of the Terran Empire’s might. If there was to be a battle fought in Sol, the least she could do, since she was no longer allowed to captain a ship herself, was to watch the battle, as sailors sacrificed themselves to protect the Empire. That was her duty as Empress.

The battle was going well, but it could easily have gone the other way. Without the warning from the Black Stars, the Home Fleet would have been on its normal patrols, rotating crews for shore leave, and the like. The time to respond to an attack would be too much, and they would have been seriously outnumbered by the enemy. Even if they were a rabble once their leaders were culled, she was under no illusions about how this could have gone the other way, with only a little change in circumstance.

The news from Pluto was concerning, but there was nothing she could do about it, except hope that the Marines saved all they could. For now, she watched as the Black Star ship used its energy drill to ram into the Leviathan, and shook her head. “That man has gone and changed the face of war in the galaxy, yet again. And I doubt he even realizes it.”

“Empress, sensors are detecting a surge of energy from the rupture!”

“Cityshields to full! Reinforce internal bulkheads. Prepare for—”

She never finished her words.

In Sol System, at the height of the battle between the defenders of Sol, and the invaders from the chaotic realm beyond the veil between worlds, a massive surge of energy blew out through the rupture. Faster than light itself, this light traveled, like a wave across reality.

There was fear, of course, as the wave approached. But there was no damage as the wave passed, not even a strand of hair pushed out of place on a young child’s head. Which is not to say that there was no effect. Indeed, there were quite a few very pronounced effects! Most pronounced, however, was that in the throne room of the Aurum Throni itself, the Empress of the Terran Empire began to shine as brightly as a star from within, overflowing with power.

(Virtual Room, NERV Headquarters)

Morgan Elliott was stunned at the developments she was watching. There wasn’t really a better way to say it. Isaac had warned her that something big was going down in Sol System. Her department had been receiving increasing numbers of bug reports over the last few days, all related to content in Sol and Coldana. Not NPC or gear bugs, thankfully. Those could have a devastating effect on an in-game experience. Sure, environmental bugs, like the ones that had been reported, were unusual, but they weren’t as likely to spread outside of a localized area, and were easier to patch out.

Unless, as it seemed, they weren’t bugs at all. Desperate for answers, she looked out in the chaotic maelstrom that was the virtual control room for DatS, looking for Isaac. Surely, if anyone in this madhouse knew what was going on, it would be him. Surely, he’d have answers for her.

She found him at the eye of the storm, quickly snapping off commands to his subordinates, attempting to do… something. She heard snippets of jargon, but ‘fourth-level containment scripts’ and ‘reversing the polarity on the text converter’ and other such things meant nothing to her, even though they sounded impressive. Fighting her way through the mass of programmers, coders, and game masters, she made her way to the lead GM’s side. One look at his face made it clear that, if he had any answers, they wouldn’t be ones that she’d want to hear.

“What happened, Isaac?”

Isaac looked over to her, and shook his head. “We’re still trying to figure that out. Best we can figure, we had a seventh-degree background convergence through the background systems.” He paused, seeing that Morgan didn’t have a clue what he was talking about. With a sigh, he said, “All right, you know how the game world for Dreams was basically ‘grown’, right? We basically set up the galactic map based on what we could see, and used procedural generation for the rest. But that was only for the basic things, like stars and planets.”

“When we started with the NPCs of the world, we started on Earth, naturally, basically putting everything up to 2010 as it happened, and then letting the computer run things forward from there. But we didn’t have historical data on alien civilizations, obviously, so we went to literature to help out. Fantasy and sci-fi for the most part, naturally, but others were included as well. There are petabytes of data in the archives which helped form the alien races, cultures, and technologies which encompass Dreams.”

“But—”

Isaac held up a hand. “I know what you’re going to ask. Yes, we’ve added a few special touches here and there, like the explicit references to other games or popular books. But the deep lore, some of the big things that have been at, well, the core of the universe, are grown from this lore. We didn’t want things to get stale too quickly, so we cast a wide net when adding to the lore archives.”

“So, what does that have to do with whatever just happened in Sol?”

“Well, you see, some of the programmers who worked on the archive project were gamers. Well, we were all gamers, but I’m talking about tabletop gamers. So, they collected a bunch of lore books from various game systems, and tossed them into the mix. We had safeguards in place to ensure that actual copyrighted information didn’t make it into the game of course, not even in the source code, so dataminers couldn’t get their grubby little hands on it. But it did form some of the background info for the entire game world.”

“One of those things which made it into the game world is the idea of other dimensions, both parallel ones and ‘stacked’ dimensions, for lack of a better term. Parallel dimensions would be like your normal ‘alternate universe’ or ‘multiverse’ stories. But the stacked ones are basically higher and lower dimensions, ones that occupy the same space as the material dimension, but have different properties. Some of the Lost Tech options involve the use of these stacked dimensions.”

“It seems that, when the AI incorporated some of these different ideas, it set values on the strength of the barrier between dimensions. Not a problem, really, except that it also set values on the damage that people in the world could do to those barriers. It seems that certain forms of FTL travel, namely the Transition Drive, have a very high damage ratio. Specifically, it damages the barrier between the material world, and the realm where psy users get the energy that allows them to do impossible things.”

“Anyways, the damage buildup, combined with some recent events, led to a full-blown rupture developing in Sol, and a lesser version in Coldana, thanks to the Harvester’s death. The two rifts were connected, or at least close enough that affecting one would affect the other. Unfortunately, the ships defending Coldana from an attack coming out of the rift did not like the look of the second wave starting to exit the rift, so they used FTL torpedoes on the enemy, despite the instability in the area.”

“God damnit! I knew those things were going to be trouble! What did they do?”

Isaac shrugged. “Well, the second wave was destroyed in the explosion, sure enough, and the blast managed to seal the rift in Coldana, while also battering all the ships in the system. Unfortunately, that energy gained intensity as it traveled through the dimension the rift is in, and when it reached Sol, things got… strange.”

“Strange as in normal strange, or strange as in I’m going to need to start spinning things to keep a PR disaster at bay?”

“The normal kind, so far. Basically, the explosion coming out of the rift was pure psychic energy. Anything nonliving in the system is just fine, but any potential psy users in the system are now active psy users. And they aren’t all weaklings, either. See, as a psychic event, it tapped into the emotions of the individuals it passed through. Several key figures in Sol have been… augmented. In fact, if you look at what happened to the Empress…”