Author: Joseph Phelps; Damien Hanson
Date: 2023-08-14 23:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Dystopia; Fantasy; Fiction; Post-Apocalyptic; Science Fiction; Urban
Description: "The Sleem extinct and the Church in full crusade,--BuyMort teeters on the brink of cosmic upheaval. The Showdown has begin...As the cosmos reels, the precarious balance of BuyMort is on the brink of collapse. The Sleem have fallen, leaving a power vacuum that echoes across the multiverse. New threats loom as the Church initiates a desperate crusade, not just for dominance but for survival. Facing them? Tyson Dawes, the Windowpuncher, Warlord of Nu-Earth and CEO of Silken Sands. Meeting the relics of the Church with relics of his own, tricking, baiting, and battling the tremendous power of the

BuyMort: Closing Time

A BuyMort Novel

Joseph Phelps

Damien Hanson

A Sconnie Books Production

Copyright © 2024 Joseph Phelps, Damien Hanson

All rights reserved.

The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

No part of this book may be reproduced or used in any manner without written permission of the copyright owner except for the use of quotations in a book review.

For more information, address: https://damienleehanson.substack.com

FIRST EDITION

All rights reserved

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

A very special thanks to all of you over on Royal Road and Patreon. You’ve all helped us so much in our journey to make these books. And thank you, readers, for following the tales of the Windowpuncher. These last couple of years have been amazing!

And a shout out to ArDee for your tremendous support!

The series couldn’t be what it is without you!

“There was a time when a fool and his money were soon parted, but now it happens to everybody.”

- Adlai Stevenson

Table of Contents

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Important Occurrences of the Late BuyMort Period - Bill’s attack run on Sol; a Summary

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Chapter 51

Chapter 52

Chapter 53

Chapter 54

Chapter 55

Chapter 56

Chapter 57

Chapter 58

Chapter 59

Chapter 60

Chapter 61

Chapter 62

Chapter 63

Chapter 64

Chapter 65

Chapter 66

Chapter 67

Chapter 68

Chapter 69

Chapter 70

Chapter 71

Epilogue

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Prologue

Once upon a time, all of the matter of all of the universes lay packed together into one tiny singularity, its bounds completely misunderstood to have meaning. That singularity exploded outwards, creating everything that would ever exist ever. It was the single most eventful thing to happen in the history of the universe.

The breakdown of the BuyMort ranking was the second. What had begun as a crusade against the Sleem had sent the cosmos of BuyMort into upheaval. Gone were the days of fragile alliances and fickle commerce, bands of survivors working hard shifts for low pay at the local top 20 affiliate. Gone were the days of the upper planets watching their public ranking tickers, bowing to the metal and plastic gods of numbers and currency.

BuyMort rankings had shown everyone who was who. It told the multiverse who was a good shopper . . . and who was a lazy no-brained peon. It was what formed societies and what dictated who was able to purchase what and go where.

To see them blown up, to see the tickers go blank, then chaotically reshuffle them all in a seemingly random pattern; it was like seeing the multiverse go dark.

The end of the Sleem, the third ranked leading affiliate in the multiverse, set everything into chaos. Like a deck of cards caught in a gust, the rankings scattered, rendering existing constructed hierarchies meaningless and ruining many while raising others to new and never imagined heights of prosperity. Planets and affiliates rose and plunged like never before.

And standing in front of it all, shining in the stellar light, was none other than Tyson Dawes, the Windowpuncher, Warlord of Nu-Earth and now, some whispered, the Warlord of BuyMort itself. His trajectory had been nothing short of meteoric, achieving what hadn’t been seen in the annals of BuyMort history for thousands of generations: taking a nascent affiliate to the coveted top ten list in under a year.

His path to power started in the Storage sectors, vast territories that would have descended into chaos after the erasure of the third affiliate, were it not for the quick interventions of BlueCleave. With a strategic combination of astute commerce and military might, they kept the power-hungry gobbs at bay. However, the Warlord's true turning point was just hours before, in the battle at planet Sleem.

Sleem, an enigmatic celestial body, was more than just a planet. Its core pulsed with liquid metal and stone, the electricity it generated a sought-after commodity. But it was the endless expanses of the dead Sleem, creatures that had consumed and replicated throughout the planet's crust, that made it truly invaluable. Rendered down, Sleem could replace many of the vital construction materials in the universe, from the very clay that molded their robotic servants to a primary ingredient in the ubiquitous Mudcrete.

Spotting the potential, the Warlord claimed the planet, not for colonization, but for commerce. In one masterstroke, he sold it to BuyMort directly. The transaction was gargantuan. An entire planet's worth of materials and resources, from the solid grounds to the gaseous atmospheres, was exchanged for a wealth so vast it was incomprehensible. The once alive and thriving planet was soon enveloped in a kaleidoscope of colors as pods descended, marking the beginning of the planet's extraction and the Warlord's ascendance.

Among those who took notice was TransPoCo, previously a giant in BuyMort's rankings. The sudden silence of the Sleem-operated ships meant a sharp drop in their clientele. Their decline only further fueled the Warlord's ascent.

With this great power came immense scrutiny. The media, the ever-watchful eye of the universe, couldn't get enough. Rumors swirled. Some said he was the physical manifestation of the market itself, given how BuyMort seemed to favor him. Churches whispered of his divine right, painting his deeds as both righteous and, undeniably, profitable.

However, behind the scenes, the Warlord’s rise was not without its stratagems. As they embarked on the massive project of stripping the Sleem system, misinformation campaigns were launched. The universe was led to believe that a resurgence of the Sleem might threaten all, a notion based on concocted evidence. By the time the universe caught wind of the Warlord's true intentions, the damage was done.

Silken Sands, once a minor player, rode on the coattails of the Warlord's strategies and became synonymous with affluence. The world watched as industrious cities, symbolic of progress and prosperity, sprouted across its landscapes. BlueCleave, on the other hand, stood as the epitome of military strength.

But as the old saying goes, every rise is preceded by a fall. The Warlord had changed the face of the universe, but at what cost? He had stripped planets, reshaped economies, and defied ancient hierarchies.

As the multiverse gazed upon the new BuyMort order, many pondered on what lay ahead. Would the Warlord's reign be a golden era of prosperity or would it lead to the multiverse’s downfall? Only time would tell.

But one thing was clear – the cosmos of BuyMort would never be the same again.

— Knowle Institute of Multiversal History

Chapter 1

Phyllis was the first ‘victim’ of the war with the Church.

She had been stationed, nearly alone, on Neolithic Earth when the Church attacked. BlueCleave had built a small forward operating base at the lip of the nearby jungle, buttressing a Church military facility. We had established it to back them up against the Sleem, but even before that threat had been gone, the Church had attempted to sabotage our mission against the Sleem homeworld.

With Phyllis’ mech at the center of the base, it was never anything more than an idle threat. The Church classed her mech as a relic, and relics had a reputation for destroying important things like planets, solar systems, or, if rumor and legend could be believed, entire universes on occasion. Her relic was aging Phyllis in reverse, something the greater BuyMort community at large had picked up on, through months of watching her in action. We had pulled back the unnecessary staff, and left Phyllis in place to keep the Church from doing anything stupid on Neolithic Earth. They thought they might screw up time for that universe if they did.

It had worked at first. But it was only ever meant to buy us time, ironically.

The entirety of the base was covered with a Fumble-Bee hive, of course. Those were standard issue in BlueCleave. Footage of the attack was automatically uploaded to a secure server on one of our ships in orbit, seconds after it had occurred and tripped the perimeter alarms. The squad of Tower golems we’d placed as Phyllis’ guard were taken out first. Some through stealth, but with Tower’s gestalt intelligence, that only lasted a few moments.

A small unit of physically enhanced warriors led the attack with high technology weapons. Three of them, to be exact: a delf, a mordren, and a sallow-skinned high elf. The footage we managed to capture and record before the attack laid waste to the area was useful. It would help us hunt the mercenaries down. I had a promise to keep, after all.

I had publicly stated, many times, that anyone who attacked us would deal with me personally. It wasn’t really necessary in most of the cases we were attacked, to be perfectly honest. But, like the bat signal I grew up reading about, that piece of my reputation kept some of the more powerful enemies at bay while they assessed me.

In that time, I grew in strength exponentially. It was time to find out if I was ready to face the best they had to throw at me or not, because I would be hunting down the two mercs that had survived their foolish attack on my bodyguard.

A delf wielding a single, dark blade stalked through the camp and quickly killed each of the golems he encountered, slashing their necks deeply and stabbing them in the heads, even through their heavy armor.

His knife had a reddish black hue. It partially absorbed light around it in a shimmering cloud, so it wasn’t properly visible. Just a red blur roughly the shape of a large dagger. The stealthy delf was accompanied by a hulking mordren with an oversized ax.

Between the two of them, they took our Tower golems down in a matter of seconds, once they had entered the camp. The delf began the battle, creeping into the base and taking out a few golems before Tower caught on to what was happening.

Then the golems came swarming, silently waving melee weapons or shouldering rifles. The mordren waded through them like he was cutting grass, simply cleaving any golem in half that approached him.

The delf changed tactics then, using the distraction the mordren caused to claim his victims unaware. He darted from golem to golem, stabbing them in the head and chest, driving the blurred knife deep and dropping them instantly.

In the distance, an elf woman with a massive rifle wired into their drop-ship’s engines fired on Phyllis.

The elf had been lying down on a rooftop near the mech’s miniature base on the outskirts of Sildred City. The rifle she fired sent a magnetically contained bolt of antimatter into Phyllis’ oversized mech.

Its upper portion erupted, and a massive shockwave blasted the nearby structures. Both the delf and mordren on the ground in the area stood and took the explosion, vibrant shields sparking into existence around them an instant before our cameras were destroyed.

Orbital news cameras told us the rest of the story.

Phyllis’ giant mech had been damaged badly. The building-sized war machine was in partial ruins, its head and upper arms portion burned away by the powerful explosion. There had only been a few particles of antimatter in the shot, but it was enough to blast a hole in the city’s outskirts visible from space. There was even damage to the nearby Church military facility, and injuries as troops were blown off their feet from the shockwave.

The elf on the rooftop leapt on the ship and took off, deftly avoiding the explosion she had caused.

Phyllis rose from the rubble of her own war machine, still encased in her smaller, personal mech. With a few powerful steps, she crossed the distance to the fighters, standing in the ruins of the surrounding area. The mordren she roasted with a blast from her personal fusion cannon, in its plasma caster formation.

Blue-white flames roared across the mordren’s body for an instant before his ax slammed her weapon arm aside.

The mordren rolled and squalled in pain as his outer skin crisped, and flames raced across his armor and body. Kicking into a blaze of motion, the delf suddenly appeared at her side, jamming his red and black dagger into the mech’s arm and twisting it. The weapon sparked and sputtered out, but Phyllis moved too fast to be seen, snatching the delf by his head.

He screamed only briefly, before her metal hand crushed his skull and she dropped the leather-clad body to the ground. The mordren, still wreathed in flames, fled with ax in hand. He raced ahead of Phyllis, legs moving so fast they blurred, and then leapt three stories to land on the open landing-ramp of the sniper’s ship.

The she-elf turned the vessel and sealed the door, even as fire suppressant systems kicked in and doused the mordren. He huffed out a cloud of smoke from his nostrils and hefted his ax, pointing it at the old woman on the ground.

We portaled Phyllis home after that.

She insisted on bringing what was left of her giant mech with her, so the portal cost a bit extra, but I had to admit I felt better having her back on Nu-Earth.

Especially once high level teams hit another three BlueCleave facilities on upper planets. Each of them was physically close to a Church military outpost, exactly as Phyllis’ small base had been. She’d mostly been there to smoke Neolithic Earth weed and watch upper planet’s television.

We hadn’t really been expecting them to move against her so effectively.

It was clearly the Church, but they used mercenaries to keep their name out of it. Insanely expensive mercenaries, using stat shot upgrades and various other powerful BuyMort purchases. Regardless of damage, no major news reports were made on the attacks.

One of our BlueCleave bases was attacked, seemingly randomly, by an oversized cybernetically enhanced crab, being ridden by a mad orc. The orc screamed war cries and fired his particle beam rifle down at anyone who tried to fight back, and I saw him take more than one sniper’s round to the head. It just reformed after being blown apart, almost like nanites were rebuilding it.

He would laugh anytime it happened, and his crab was much worse than he was. Mechanically enhanced, and equipped with insanely fast reflexes, the oversized crab was impossible to engage without air support. That thing killed a dozen BlueCleave soldiers before they could affect a retreat and portal out of the base.

Another forward operating base close to Church territory on Neolithic Earth was strafed and bombed by mercenary fighter craft for half an hour as our troops affected a retreat through their portals. The attack originated from a mothership that stayed in orbit, and the smaller craft docked with it after they had flattened the area. The wide-spread use of Tower golems, and dissemination of base-level starfish suits meant we suffered very low casualties, but the attacks were a clear sign.

There was a certain lack of trust since the attack on Sleem, between me and the Church. They’d sent a stealth ship to blend in with the Sleem attack vessels, in an attempt to destroy Dario’s ship, and the transdimensional cannon we used to erase the Sleem. The wealthy and powerful were willing to sacrifice trillions of people, just to maintain power, to erase the threat I posed.

Worse, I had stopped it, which meant the Church knew that I knew. The war was on, just not quite as public as I wanted it to be.

Nowhere was our lack of trust more palpable than outside our operation on the Storage control station. The Church hadn’t attacked, but their side of the demilitarized zone continued to station troops and stockpile weapons, so BlueCleave did the same.

It was escalating toward a fight for control over that portion of the station. We had, of course, set up sabotage explosives all over the place, just in case they took it. The people of Storage would be better off with no outside interference than the Church in charge.

I stayed in place there at the station, after the attack on Sleem, to discourage the attack that was clearly being built toward.

Anytime we left an area, the Church’s mercenaries stopped their attacks. So we pulled back from their military assets, willingly.

That put the attacks on hold for a while. Long enough to have a small meeting with my relevant staff. I called into a meeting at Axle’s library, using MortMobile’s astral projection service.

In attendance were Axle, Rayna, Tollya, Admiral Omen, and Lee. All of us were on MortMobile aside from Axle, as we were spread out across the multiverse, supervising important affiliate-controlled areas. They represented my core of need-to-know inner circle and were quick to bring me up to breast on everything that had occurred.

“These attacks mean clear war,” Rayna said.

“I don’t agree,” replied Lee. “From what I am gathering, there is not wide-spread support for war with Silken Sands among the Church elite. This is something else.”

He had been spending his days wending his way into the Church's inner circle of wealthy elites, targeting them as a diplomat for Silken Sands, but acting as an intelligence agent. This meant a lot of wine and parties, but a lot of loose lips too. His information was usually solid, I never ignored it when he chose to speak.

“What else could it be?” I asked.

“There seems to be a great deal of fear around this matter,” Lee replied. “I am getting reassurances hourly, usually accompanied by some expensive gift or other. Sending that all up the line, as per usual. But the general vibe is that those ordering these attacks are following orders themselves.”

“Orders?” I frowned. “Who’s ordering these elites, then?”

Lee shrugged. “Their higher ups. People beyond my diplomatic reach, I hear only the telephone game of what they say, and even that is laced with so many different motivations and technicalities, I could not begin to tell you. I suspect the Inquisition.”

Tollya grunted. “You have a friend in the Inquisition,” she said in hobb, raising her chin at me. Lee had picked up some of the language in the months he had been working off-world, and Axle spoke it fluently, so most of our meetings were a mix of English and hobb.

“I do not,” I corrected her. “But I should contact him anyway, you’re right. Elegy might let something slip if I ask directly.”

“Or you could make things worse and pit the Inquisition against us if they are not already,” said Axle.

I nodded. His depression aside, the pessimism was a welcome voice at my counsel table. It was even technically his table, we met in the Knowle library outside Prescott. “I could, but I’ll be careful. Just polite inquiry, making sure we’re still on good terms should not be considered an act of aggression.”

“Unless you make it one, of course,” Axle huffed.

“Don’t worry about that Axle, I’m in control,” I said, coldly. “But your concern is noted. I have other targets to hunt down, what do we have on that front?”

Admiral Omen cleared his throat and stood at attention behind his chair. “We are tracking both ships that attacked our facilities on Neolithic Earth and have already found the orc with the crab. He seems quite deranged and may prove difficult to kill. Be careful engaging him. Location is being forwarded to your position already, via secure BuyMort pod.”

“Thank you, Admiral. I’ll take care of that,” I replied. The pod arrived and deposited a small roll of paper with spatial coordinates for me to portal to. We could afford plenty of portals, since we’d hit the top ten list.

Those BuyMort rewards were at a different level, literally. They exponentiated your rewards once you hit the top ten, so portals, clay clones, even MortMobile, all came with benefits. Cheaper portals were one of them, and I finally understood exactly how the other top tens had become so decadent and lazy.

It would be easy to keep almost all of the income my affiliate produced for myself, if I cared to. My staff lived good lives, but I had the power to take that away from them with the snap of my fingers. Our society was a military dictatorship, with an immortal, super-powered idiot with a talent for violence as its warlord.

Only, I guess I wasn’t as dumb anymore.

Still, Elegy’s words about BuyMort rang in my ears when a beholder arrived in Nu-Earth’s atmosphere and began channeling oxygen into it, at a frightening rate. Axle, who had been half paying attention, half scrolling on his own devices, reported it in a panic and our meeting was cut short.

After all, BuyMort was full of surprises.

Chapter 2

Thankfully, Afflqwst had surprises of its own. Though by that point the quest notification that arrived was no surprise to me. They occurred pretty much anytime my affiliate was threatened with destruction.

Quest – Kill the beholder in Nu-Earth’s atmosphere before it causes your affiliate’s destruction.

REQUIREMENTS:

1. Kill the beholder over-saturating Nu-Earth’s atmosphere before saturation levels rise high enough to disrupt affiliate operations. (incomplete)

The primary planet of operation for your affiliate will be destroyed if this quest is failed.

REWARD – Item coupon, purchase unlock.

The promise of a purchase unlock reward in particular caught my attention. We had more morties than sense, and I knew exactly what to spend them on.

Axle’s science team, now reporting directly to me as needed, informed me that Nu-Earth’s atmosphere would become saturated to the point of combustibility within three days. But life on the planet would start to suffer much faster than that.

As would business, any high temperature forges would need to be shut down if the saturation reached them. It wasn’t directly over Australia, but close enough to it that we were immediately concerned about Boing. TransPoCo’s primary ship-building associate on Nu-Earth had several factories under threat.

An image of the creature dominated all media, local and multiversal, once it arrived. The glimmering beholder sat in its faint, blue cloud, sparkling for everyone to see. Speculation began immediately, of course.

The creature had bright, glowing translucent crystal rings around its fiery core. Its central eye was brilliant. Difficult to look at directly, it radiated so much light and heat that the mock star at its center looked nearly white, with faint pinkish hues streaking across its surface.

Immediately the Church began weaving a narrative into the Upper Planets News Network, which declared that an angel of BuyMort had arrived to judge Nu-Earth for our actions against the Sleem. Some of them even went so far as to declare our actions against the market itself, but for the most part those voices were ignored or discounted as sore losers.

Not everyone had come out ahead, after the reshuffling of power that had occurred once I removed the Sleem from the equation. Still, in the wake of the reports, we had to respond.

I planned on killing the damned thing, after all. With it hanging in our sky, glowing as brightly as a small star itself, that kill was going to be public.

So I called a meeting between myself, Axle, and Yolara Brinks, head of public relations. We looped her into the existence of the beholders, their origination as the ‘bright plague,’ and then explained our plan to kill the one hanging out in our atmosphere.

She immediately demanded we avoid using the word ‘beholder,’ in public. Yolara also wouldn’t allow us to call them angels of BuyMort. The only acceptable term our affiliate could use was ‘bright plague creature,’ Yolara declared. The entire affiliate had to line up behind that narrative and stick to it like glue.

The information was disseminated among all personnel, and BlueCleave rapidly took up the term as well. That further drove it into the culture of the multiverse. Our military was massive and still growing with the influx of hobbs to our affiliate, from every corner of the multiverse.

Later that evening, Yolara made an appearance on the Upper Planets Network’s prime time show. As the for-profit media model demanded, there was a round table of representatives to argue and fight over the issue of the day.

An angel of BuyMort showing itself in open public was yet another nearly unprecedented act. We brought a Knowle scholar to provide an alternative perspective, and the Church brought two of their priests. One from the upper planets, and one from the lower worlds. Both were Nah’gh, so the studio was quite hot and my Knowle representatives were forced to pant to stay cool. Another subtle tactic used by the Church.

Not an accident either, on the express orders of UPN management. That company was essentially Church propaganda, with the veneer of legitimacy when they offered an opposing viewpoint. This left their propaganda vulnerable to our interference, and Yolara was very good at interference. Even while overheating.

We immediately released a flood of archeological data from the Knowle library that identified the thing hanging in our atmosphere as a bright plague creature. We calmly refuted the Church’s claims of divinity and pointed to the poisoning of Nu-Earth with oxygen, as levels continued to rise.

Axle had already put all of the terraforming drones we had at our availability to work removing the excess oxygen, but it only slowed the problem.

“Nonsense,” Yolara insisted in the wake of a Church accusation. “We all adhere to the same set of beliefs, that success within BuyMort means BuyMort’s favor. Even the Sleem were begrudgingly acknowledged to have had BuyMort’s favor, as they were ranked third on the top ten.”

“These creatures attack new worlds, typically ones with giant industrial and technological signature expansions like what Nu-Earth has recently experienced. It draws them like BuyMort bugs to bright lights. They destroy worlds and consume the energy released in the destruction, seeming to revel in causing cruelty. This one appears to want to burn us, like ants with a magnifying glass,” the haughty Knowle said, sighing at the Church representative’s frown.

“Do not be so quick to ascribe divinity,” Yolara said, smiling toothily. “To any old spatial anomaly, or cosmic virus that comes calling. Next, the Church’s most extreme would have us believing that the intangible light-squid are angels of BuyMort too, when the Sleem were summoning them to attack our ships!”

“Absurd!” shouted her opponent, a Nah’gh in priest robes. “The Church is better able and more capable of identifying an angel of BuyMort than any other affiliate, there is no sane rationale for challenging that position.”

“I would not normally challenge your position’s knowledgebase, but this information comes straight out of the largest Knowle repository in the written history of BuyMort. That organization, I am afraid to tell you, can challenge your organization’s credibility,” Yolara bit back. “They have a better track record, especially recently. The Church was wrong about Storage, wrong about the projected casualties, which caused an unnecessary run on the already-stressed labor market. Let’s not get started throwing around who is wrong and who is right, that just turns into a pissing match, so to speak.”

The priests both gasped.

It was planned vulgarity. For the crowd, our ratings spiked anytime Yolara dropped a new swear on live tv. She had been fined for it several times by UPN, but our ad bids far outweighed the fines, so literally nobody involved cared.

Except me. I cared, I wanted that audience as riled up and aggressive as I could get them. Waiting, frothing at the mouth for the next naughty language word to arrive, and disrupt the carefully constructed calm of their daily lives.

Even the rich wanted to rebel.

And I could use that. As Yolara went out in public and made friends by sensationalizing our cause, Lee stalked the inner worlds and planted the seeds of contact. Making friends at expensive parties, drinking after hours with young, affluent aliens. The children of great houses.

“The fact of the matter,” Yolara said, regaining my attention along with the audience’s. “The fact of the matter is that BlueCleave responds to all threats on Nu-Earth, and this creature has been clearly identified as a bright plague creature, which is absolutely a threat. The operation is already underway. By the time most of you even see this, the threat will already be neutralized.”

She sat back and nodded, blinking coquettishly at the camera.

The Upper Planets Network had hired a Nah’gh presenting with the same rare Conda gene as Molls, to host our segments. It drove content through controversy, and Molls seethed anytime she saw her on the news. The anchor had been trying to get me nailed down for an interview, and I kept dodging out on them.

Mostly because I was legitimately too busy, but also because I would never betray Molls in that way. She felt terrible jealousy, and rage at the Church for allowing her condition to be used in so gaudy a manner. Then there was the seething hatred she felt for the woman herself. Molls considered her to be a traitor to the Church, and all of its diversity and inclusion training.

Both Nah’gh women knew the reasoning behind the host’s recent hiring, but only one of them actually cared about anything beyond personal gain. That, and their connection to me, made them natural enemies.

I sighed at the politics and avoided the host. There was no way that situation ended well for me, so anytime she showed up in the field, which she tended to do, I left. Anywhere she arrived was usually safe for me to jet off from by then anyway, and I was usually legitimately needed somewhere else, if not just back at the space station orbiting Storage, keeping the Church at bay with my presence.

Rayna assigned a BlueCleave medic to watch me, and I was required to check in multiple times a week. The hobb mostly grunted questions about my sleeping habits and was never happy with the answers.

Since I had taken the aimed shot perk patch upgrade, my cognitive function had significantly increased. I was better able to focus, could retain and recall memories nearly perfectly, and needed significantly less rest. Usually the bit of sleep I got in transit between one task and another was all I needed.

Or the nights I got to spend with Molls. Those nights, I really sunk into the task of relaxing and getting my energy reserves back up. I wondered how much of that was true now, with hyper-mobile crystalline colonies making up a good portion of my major organs, musculoskeletal system, and brain. My starfish suit was capable of containing gigantic reserves of energy, since the most recent upgrade.

I’d finally gotten my armor.

Quest – Upgrade your affiliate to withstand the projected system-wide Sleem attack.

REQUIREMENTS:

1. (Complete) Increase Silken Sands power within the BuyMort system.

2. (Complete) Decrease the Sleem population entering the BuyMort system to survivable levels.

OUTCOME – Silken Sands victory over Sleem affiliate. Sleem affiliate erased from BuyMort network.

REWARD – BuyMort affiliate rank increase recommendation, item coupon, item upgrade coupons.

Our rank increase recommendations kept up with our advancing rank purchases, assuring our affiliates credit score rose in accordance with our absurd wealth. The entire system was inanely cyclical. All you needed to enhance your own mortie-streams and make more morties, was morties. After deleting the Sleem, we became an equal to the upper planets, by BuyMort culture.

That credit rating meant more than a lot of other elements, when it came to character analysis. Mine had risen from lowly dirt-farm territory to rubbing elbows with the elite, against their will. It was delicious, a very schadenfreude experience. Nobody at those parties was having fun aside from me and whoever I had brought with me, and I couldn’t get enough of it.

The rules the Church had set, they thought they controlled. Their ability to throw around wealth had meant that any threat like me should never have gotten as far as I had. But now that I had armor, on top of everything else, I was nigh unstoppable.

Chapter 3

The item upgrade coupons included the final tier of the starfish suit. This unlocked all the upgrades for everyone who had one. None of our troopers could access Teslak’s storefront on their own, but at the rate we were spreading, the number of officers with access and knowledge of the affiliate storefront were growing.

BlueCleave kept their starfish troopers hidden, as often as possible. During training or missions they wore heavy, specialized armor for whatever role they were fulfilling, or a bulky space suit that hid the starfish. And during regular daily life, most hobbs went unseen by the upper planets. While the Church knew I had more troops equipped with relics than I was admitting to, they didn’t know the sheer scale of it.

But my armor was public almost immediately. The first time I arrived at a fight with full shining plate coverage of my body, the news went ballistic with speculation. Relics were considered dangerous in BuyMort culture. Relics that changed, and grew upon themselves, were cause for wide-spread apoplexy, especially on the news.

I had expected the armor upgrade to be mostly meaningless to me personally. After all, I had stoneskin, what did I need armor for? I was capable of nude space flight under my own power. But the upgrade was unexpectedly delightful.

The armor wasn’t merely armor, hardened and specifically shaped material designed to withstand most forces within a three-dimensional spatial environment, it was so much more. My suit was designed as an extreme environments suit, so the armor was actually a secondary function.

Environmental controls were the primary function. If you were submerged in liquid, the suit not only became air-tight; it also produced aquadynamic plating. Shaped ridges helped ease movement in liquid. It was variable, responsive to its environment.

The more I experimented with it, the more I realized it produced a different set of armor each time it was summoned. In atmosphere, while flying at high speeds, I had summoned the armor as a test. When it slapped into place from the dimensional gates all over my body, it had definitive grooves cut throughout the plates, for better aerodynamics.

Air was directed in funnels through the armor, adding momentum and removing drag. When I pushed it to high enough speeds, plasma formed and was channeled through the armor’s micro-funnels down to the bottoms of my feet, giving me a rocket, or comet-like appearance.

In space, the plating was ablative, shaped to avoid scanning technologies. It held a seal without drain on the suit’s overall charge and kept me comfortably warm while flying in space. Even the minor inconvenience of space’s cold was negated by my suit’s final upgrade.

Dangerous acids would be neutralized, radiation was prevented from penetration completely, and very few weapons could penetrate the extra-dimensional metal. My new ArDee relic ax was something that could, as were particle beam weapons, and the sand casters the Sand Star used.

The sand casters couldn’t technically damage the armor with a single shot, but they fired so rapidly, with so much kinetic force behind the tiny, shaped projectiles, that sustained fire could fragment and destroy portions of the armor.

I know that for certain, because we tested it on mine. The weapon’s test was performed on the far side of Storage, to avoid prying eyes. Once a strip of my armor was blasted away by chained hyper-kinetic micro-explosions, and I was spinning wildly away from my own small explosive decompression and the sand caster detonations, we called the test a success and immediately classified the information to myself and crew of the Sand Star.

Ordo and Admiral Omen were people I trusted.

The suit could shape the outer level of molecules on the armor with ease, but full repair took time and charge. Aside from that, I was unable to summon the armor back while it was repairing. Ordo had been operating the Sand Star’s weapons at the time of the test, and while he stopped firing as soon as we had a successful test, a few hundred particulates from the sandcasters hit my naked flesh and ripped through it with a series of concussive explosions.

My suit repaired me in space, tendrils carefully extending out of the surrounding armor plates to apply new body parts. The Sand Star slowly maneuvered in position to collect me after the test, and we all agreed to keep the results top secret. Admiral Omen gave me his word he would not share this information with anyone, with an important caveat.

If anyone wearing a starfish suit became a threat to the affiliate, or to Nu-Earth, his position on the matter would be different.

Ordo and Admiral Omen had become quite the crew, and the affiliate’s tiny flagship was more important than ever, since the Church had sent two relic ships of its own.

One was a massive, glimmering triangle of bright energy and hard light surfaces, with a radiating core that glowed even against Storage’s bright backdrop. It had no visible weaponry, but Axle’s deep research librarians got me the important historic references to the ship.

It had been used quite effectively to lay waste to an enemy fleet with a chaining energy weapon. Its sides would crackle as the ship increased in light intensity and channeled its core energy along its edges, until the front tip of the triangle shot the energy out in a vibrant lightning bolt. It was not only a threat to our fleet; it was a threat to Storage itself.

The station tops were its obvious target, meant to keep us in check. The glowing vessel slid into place in low orbit of Storage, near the thickest cluster of our refugee camps. A gun to our civilians’ heads.

Their other relic was far more interested in the Sand Star itself. Once it had arrived, we had a hard time keeping it from hovering directly above and behind us, in predator position. This ship was insectile, with added weaponry grafted onto the hard, chitinous body of the small craft.

It appeared to my eyes like a segmented centipede. Bulbous sections covered its long, snaking body as it wove to and fro in travel. The motion was generated by its own strange locomotive power. The insect generated a massive energy charge between its legs and then latched onto it, riding the blast in a simple charge, before using a similar process in reverse to brake, finishing the braking process with carefully controlled bodily waste excretion.

It received regular shipments of meat, which I immediately regretted learning about. I’d had Lee find out what the small craft docking with it were about. He was thorough in his report, including the insectile craft’s preferences, which included yarsp and hobb.

Our research division had very little to say about the ship, it was not fielded often in BuyMort history. Instead, they said it was allowed to roam free on a planet the Church cordoned off and occasionally sent prisoners to for execution. It was filled with wild beasts and BuyMort bugs for the ship to feed on as well, a singular apex predator on the world.

One thing our Knowles did warn us about, however, was the ship’s ability to detach and become multiple smaller versions of itself. Each was equipped with a rudimentary mouth, titanium-shredding teeth and chisel-tipped legs. They would rip open our ship and eat us, if given the chance.

The creature was also wearing what appeared to be large-caliber auto-turret guns on each of its segments. They were welded and bolted onto the insectile creature’s body, heavily armored cables coursing around each weapon and punching into the chitin below.

We stationed a few of our more powerful ships in orbit of Storage to aid in the eventual battle that was brewing.

But before the Church would fully attack us, I had to give them proper motivation. The little cold war we were playing at was going to go hot the instant that beholder died, so there was no point in avoiding my part to play. I made a public appearance on the Storage station, inspecting our front-line bunkers, and then quietly portaled home to Nu-Earth. I had to lead the special task force assigned to take down the bright plague creature attempting to poison our planet with a surge of oxygen.

Our terraforming drone fleet was only able to do so much. Any of them that wandered too close to the beholder ruptured, bled sparks, and plummeted into the Atlantic Ocean, so we assumed the same would happen to any ships that got too close.

Once again, I was off to be our canary. To see if something could be survived, by surviving it. I didn’t feel like I did much of the busy work that kept our affiliate the shining example of market forces within BuyMort, but that specific part of my job made up for it.

There were plenty of hobbs wearing starfish suits, but none of them were expected to hurl themselves into certain death with quite the regularity that I was. Mostly it just helped them do their soldiering day jobs without suffering the physical consequences that usually accompanied that task.

I was the only one asked to hurl myself into cosmic monster’s gullets all the time.

Chapter 4

The beholder was reflecting and refracting light within its exo-armor, gathering it and using it as an idle weapon. Destroying us without caring to actually pay attention to us. Temperature readings of the area told me that the beholder itself would ignite our atmosphere once its oxygen saturation level was high enough.

It was hot in the little blue cloud the beholder shined from and getting hotter.

Fortunately, BlueCleave had an operation plan within six hours of the creature’s arrival, and wheels were up four hours after that.

Cube and I were loaded into a special BlueCleave high altitude cargo plane, a redesigned CM-5 Super Galaxy from Boing. It was the only terrestrial craft we had that was large enough to hold Cube.

After consuming a beholder, Cube had started eating again. This time, it went on for months, until he finally consumed his own specialized flying craft as his final mid-stage meal. As soon as he had finished grinding the last of the vessel into his own body, he began violently spewing silver liquid all over his hangar. It spattered the walls, flooded out his staff of hobb keepers, causing them to evacuate, and destroyed what was left of the hangar’s infrastructure.

Then he began to draw it all back into himself, coating his body in the liquid metal excretions and reforming it.

He ruptured the building sides and tore through the metal rooftop with a booming laugh, grown to the size of a three-story building.

“CUBE HAPPY TO BE SO BIG!” he had roared, shaking the ground for the entire BlueCleave base.

Once he wedged himself into a long block, he was able to fit inside the Super Galaxy, if only just. I still suspected some kind of atomic condensing. He was able to hold a smaller shape if he desired, but there seemed to be limits, as he filled the craft’s cargo bay as much as he could without crushing me.

The craft lumbered through the sky, engaging its special additional thrusters to increase our speed to super-sonic as we traversed the globe in pursuit of our prey.

Dario was in his tug, with an escort of Captain Thresher’s best ships, to fire on the creature from space when required. He’d had a minor breakdown after I exposed his brother’s murder to Molls and had her assign him a therapist from her team that could be trusted. Several disaffected priests had filtered onto Nu-Earth, and most of them tried to find gainful employment as therapists.

Once he’d been talked through the worst, and helped with some addiction counseling, Dario was coming around to a new identity as a loyal soldier to his warlord, eager to follow my orders. He also seethed with hatred for beholders, so I had no doubt he would pull the trigger as needed.

I sat in the far back of the gigantic cargo plane, with Cube’s massive body filling the rest of it. We soared into the higher levels of the atmosphere and began our approach to the beholder.

“Alright Cube, you ready for this buddy?” I shouted. Cube’s body was amplifying the engine noise, we all had to wear headphones. I prayed that he didn’t decide to unleash any of the massive amounts of energy he could store in his body.

“WHAT DOING, TYSON?” Cube shouted back, from the mouth on his side facing the cargo door, and my seat beside it.

“We’re gonna fall out of this plane, and I’m going to fly you to a beholder treat!” I told him again. Cube wasn’t great with plans, or remembering them, so we kept things simple for him. His role in our plans was typically critical, but largely instinctual once he was in place.

Most of my massive pet’s physiology was mysterious, let alone his mind. Despite obvious intelligence, he was limited in significant ways. Memory, cognition, even communication and emotion seemed instinct-driven at most times.

Cubes resisted scanning almost as well as my suit and were nearly indestructible. They even held up against particle beam weaponry, allowing their bodies to liquify and cause most of the beam to splash through harmlessly.

I was honestly a little jealous of how hard Cubes were to kill, the only recorded method of directly killing one was to remove the creature's tongue, which took a specialized facility to accomplish. Building it had cost hundreds of trillions of morties, and nothing of value was gained from the experiment, so it became rather famous for its results.

“CUBE LIKE BEHOLDER TREAT!” my pet happily roared. “WANT!”

“Alright buddy, we’ll get you one, don’t worry,” I reassured him, patting the giant beast’s metal hide. It felt like rapping against a steel wall, but he purred when I patted him, rolling his grinder teeth together gently. Only happy Cubes purred, so far as I knew. Maybe he was just hungry. I had promised him a treat, after all.

The lights above us flashed red with a heavy click, and I nodded. “Alright buddy, almost time,” I reminded him. “You ready for a bit of a fall?”

“WHAT IS FALL?” Cube shout-asked. It was theorized that they shouted because their own hearing organs were deep inside their bodies and muffled the incoming sounds. But a handful of Cubes had been recorded to only communicate in whispers too, so that theory was shaky at best.

It amused me to have a pet the Knowle scholars all scratched their heads and shrugged over.

Cubes also had clear sapience enough to use BuyMort but were unaffected by it. According to Knowle scholars, and the wealth of information gathered at Axle’s library, Cubes had been in BuyMort since the earliest recorded days.

They were never particularly numerous, and most affiliates considered them more annoying than helpful, which I found a shame. That meant most Cubes ended up ejected into space. Not even throwing them into a star could kill them, the wily creatures would extend their bodies into a flat pancake and ride the solar winds back out, no matter the speed or proximity they were thrown in with.

“Falling is moving really fast toward the ground, buddy,” I yelled, leaning on Cube’s side. He rippled with displeasure, popping and grinding against the tight confines of the Super Galaxy.

“WE FALLING NOW?!” Cube shouted, alarmed.

“Not yet, but it’s okay when we do!” I replied. The lights above us began to blink, indicating our drop was coming up soon. The door clunked and whined open, causing the loud airplane to become even louder. “I can fly us!”

“TYSON FLY!” Cube shouted.

I could no longer tell if he was being scared or ready, but the hobbs had prepared for the possibility Cube would not exit the craft as desired. They installed massive airbags at the front of the cargo bay and would hit the button to fire them if needed. Once the countdown got low enough, Cube and I were going into the sky one way or the other.

We couldn’t miss our window to strike the beholder.

It floated above the Indian Ocean, just off the coast of Australia. “AIR TASTE FUNNY!” shouted Cube.

“Yeah, buddy, that’s why we gotta fly, it’s way up in the sky. Don’t worry, I won’t let you drop, I’m strong enough to hold you up,” I reassured him, rubbing my hand along his metal surface the way he liked. “Okay, this is it buddy, you ready?!”

I floated into the air and held my position relative to Cube’s body, crammed into the Super Galaxy. It was gliding, having had to cut their engines to avoid a violent explosion from them over the richest patches of oxygen being added to the planet.

“CUBE NOT SURE!!” Cube suddenly shouted, his metal shivering as he tried to shuffle back even further into the airplane. “CUBE NOT LIKE FALLING!”

“We’re falling right now, Cube,” I told him. “The plane is just gliding, I will fly you. Trust me buddy.”

“BEHOLDER TREAT?” he nervously asked.

I nodded emphatically. “Extra shiny one too, let’s go get it buddy.”

“OKAY! TYSON CATCH CUBE!” he shouted, wiggling his bulk forward a little.

“I’ve got you buddy, but you gotta hurry up, or the hobbs are going to-” I was cut off as the light above our heads stopped blinking, and the hobbs at the helm activated the ejection system.

His metallic bulk was nestled against the front of the cargo area, resting against the oversized airbags they had installed. Once we reached the point of no return, where they feared I would be unable to direct Cube’s massive bulk into the beholder’s area of effect, they hit the trigger button and fired the airbags.

Each of the oversized bags inflated in just under a tenth of a second, instantly shoving Cube into me and then out of the jet entirely.

“FALLING!” Cube immediately shouted, his metal hardening defensively against my hands as I gripped at his surface.

“I got you buddy!” I grunted, trying to keep his sheer weight balanced as we plummeted. Once I moved my grip down to one corner of Cube’s body, then braced the rest of his weight with my other arm, I was able to start pushing my suit.

The charge depleted at an alarming rate, as the gravity harness upgrade struggled to control not only my gravity, but also the incredibly heavy weight I held.

My helmet had coordinates uploaded from BlueCleave headquarters on Elevator Station, which was constantly tracking the creature since it had arrived. Only hours had passed, but already the ocean beneath it was experiencing mass die offs.

We’d put out an ad with a local small time dolphin advertising affiliate that specialized in aquatic sapient life and were running it in the area in the hopes that the fish, cephalopods, and aquatic mammals in the area could clear out, but there was only so much we could do. The ad sounded like an underwater cacophony of squeals, blubs, and quakes, but it did its best to adapt its foreign mental construction to my land-dwelling mind when it detected me in the area, displaying slight garbled text in the center of my vision as it moaned and gurgled:

Attention all fish, cephalopods, and aquatic mammals:

Due to unforeseen circumstances, it is imperative that you vacate the immediate ocean vicinity. This is for your safety and well-being.

Details:

The affected area is [UNTRANSLATABLE SQUEAL].

The threat is [GURGLE, BLORB, SQUEE].

The duration of the threat is expected to be [UNTRANSLATABLE SPITTING SOUND].

Recommended Actions:

Move to deeper waters or safer regions away from the affected area.

Stay alert and be cautious of any unusual activities or changes in the environment.

Communicate with fellow marine life and ensure the safety of those around you.

Avoid any human-made structures or vessels in the vicinity.

Your safety is of utmost importance. Please act swiftly and cautiously.

Upper Planets News network was on us like we were the hottest story of the century, so I had their feed pulled up in a small window in my helmet, playing the audio at a fraction of normal volume. Since my Aimed Shot upgrade, I was dramatically better at multitasking.

I could easily listen to the host of the show narrate their overly animated play-by-play, while searching my map for the beholder’s location.

The air around me was thick, laden with pale blue cloud cover and steam from the rapid release of oxygen into the nearby atmosphere. My skin began to itch and burn as I flew further into the beholder’s zone of operation.

Then I saw it, right ahead of us and below our position, gleaming like a miniature star in our sky. My sky.

“Get ready Cube!” I shouted. “Beholder treat time!”

The beholder was glowing, its glimmering outer shell radiating and reflecting the light as it slowly spiraled around the creature’s fiery, orb-like body.

“CUBE HUNGRY!” my pet bellowed, and we entered the creature’s radius.

Waves of air movement pushed at me, clouds forming and wetting my body, worsening the oxygen poisoning itch from all over my epidermis. With a sigh, I resolved myself to being skinned again, and told my starfish suit not to effect epidermal repairs until I allowed it, or there was larger damage underneath.

As we got closer I saw that the beholder was spraying the oxygen in heated streams of liquid, which dissipated and spread as they fell. It sprayed pale blue jets from each of its glimmering ridges, as an electric pink eye of flame rotated around the creature, looking for me.

When it caught sight of me and Cube approaching from above, it fixated. A thin rod of crystal reached down from one arm of the dodecahedron-shaped bio-suit. The crystalline edges vibrated, and a bolt of green energy blasted toward us.

I let Cube lower a bit until he was in front of me and felt the impact reverberate through his metallic form. In his building-sized block shape, he was a highly effective shield.

“THAT TICKLES!” Roared my alien pet.

I pushed the suit, increased our speed, reared back as best I could while supporting Cube’s massive weight, then hurled him through the pale blue clouds at the Beholder.

“Hail Marinara, full of spice,” I whispered, as Cube’s massive metallic body sailed away from me. The heated oxygen hissed and fizzled at the surface of my skin, reminding me of the first time I had been enveloped by the Sleem. At least nobody in BuyMort had to worry about that ever again.

Cube hurtled into contact with the aggressive beholder’s shell and sparked. I saw it in slow motion from far above, as the suit’s armor upgrade sensed the impending explosion and pumped my body full of a modified painkiller as it clapped shut across my body.

The pale blue cloud sparked bright pink, then erupted. Bubbles of flame roared in dozens of directions at once, following the trails of liquid oxygen, combining with the other elements in the sky to ignite.

The explosion in the sky blossomed then, as the flames reached the outside limits of the oxygen saturation and really ignited. Directly below me, a fireball the size of Arizona blasted me hurtling away from the planet. My helmet held up, but just. Several cracks appeared in its visage as I rapidly exited the planet’s atmosphere and hurtled past Elevator Station.

For a heart-rending instant, I was drifting. Unattached, watching my world fly away into the distance.

Then I focused, pushed the suit, and flew back toward home. The explosion was visible, but it was limited. The beholder had been flooding our atmosphere with oxygen with the intent of killing all life on the planet. Either through sheer oxygen poisoning, creating another mass extinction, or by saturating the atmosphere until the entire thing would burn.

Just the few hundred miles around it ignited, and I flew through black smoke cloud particles as I focused on where I had last seen Cube. The instant before he made contact, his body had spread out again and formed a giant liquid metal sheet.

They were considerably lower than where I had left them, but by the time I returned to the scene, the beholder was capable of flight again. It was hovering a few hundred feet above the ocean’s surface, its pink light flaring and dimming as it tried to fight off the massive Cube attached to its bottom.

Cube had reformed and was stuck to the side of the crystal-lined beholder’s suit, his mouth open wide and grinding at it. Brilliant colors of sparks showered the ocean below as my pet tried his best to devour his treat.

“You got ‘em buddy?!” I shouted as I approached. Cube was clinging to the creature’s suit, his metal softened and formed around it until the hapless beholder was half-embedded in Cube’s mouth. Still it tried to escape, thrusting upward and attacking my pet with various energy weapons as it dragged Cube along with it skyward.

All the bolts, beams, and blasts merely reflected from Cube’s body, and he ground harder at the creature’s exoskeleton. He couldn’t answer me, but he had the beholder held tight. I flew underneath Cube’s body and started pushing higher, helping the beholder fly upward.

Chapter 5

Dario was up there in orbit, attached to Elevator Station waiting for a clean shot. Thresher was beside him in the tug, just in case the other man needed to be convinced. As soon as we broke the cloud cover, I heard the warning in my BlueCleave coms, and Dario fired.

The transdimensional pulse ion cannon was capable of harming the beholders in a way that no other weapon we had found could. They were extra-dimensional, which meant they existed in our three-dimensional environment only with bodies made of pure energy. Energy cannot be destroyed; it can only be transferred from one form into another, so the transdimensional pulse cannon unspooled it instead.

It altered the ions making up their bodies, causing them to dissipate.

Once we were high enough to break free of the smoke cloud, BlueCleave operations at Elevator Station called in our exact targeted coordinates to Dario, and he fired the cannon without hesitation.

The beholder began to fall in earnest. I felt the weight, because as soon as the shot hit, I was suddenly the only thing flying us up into space. But I pushed on, driving the suit to expend more of its critical energy reserves as gravity around us lessened.

A loud, shattering crunch came from the top of Cube, and I smiled to imagine him eating the beholder as it died. The Church cameras focusing on us would catch the act in all its glory for me and repeat it ad nauseum on their many television networks, but only I could feel its exoskeletal bones breaking as my pet consumed it.

I wanted to make sure everyone saw it, that everyone knew we could kill a beholder. I wanted to make sure the Church knew we could kill an angel of BuyMort.

“Axle,” I said, allowing the BlueCleave planetary communication services to connect us. It did with a heavy click.

“Yes?” Axle replied, obviously busy. I could hear the light electronic clicks of his hard light keyboard. The keys hardened only at point of contact to provide a fully satisfying machine feel for the users.

“I need you to start buying spaceships,” I said. “Large scale, bulk sales if you can. I’ll take mechanized armor units too. Suits, tanks, APCs, whatever you can find to help out BlueCleave with their recent population boom.”

The typing stopped.

“How many ships?” he cautiously asked.

“As many as you can,” I replied, steadying out my flight when I felt the atmosphere thin enough to ensure premium image quality for the cameras.

I heard Axle lick his nose, and he took a long steadying breath before answering me. “You want me to find as many space-worthy ships as are available for sale, on all of BuyMort,” he carefully asked.

“And buy them,” I answered. It was tempting to lean out around the side of Cube’s body, see if I couldn’t glimpse any of the many ships no doubt focused on the show we were putting on.

After a few seconds of sustaining Cube’s height, he stopped crunching and I let us fall.

“You want me to buy every war machine on BuyMort?” Axle asked again.

“We can afford it,” I grunted. Cube pressed into me, and I flattened out against his bottom surface. “Although Cube didn’t leave us any of the beholder’s armor this time, sorry.”

“No, I expected that outcome. Cube’s mouth is much larger than the first time we tried this. Going well, I can see,” he said.

“Don’t change the subject, I know you want to yell at me for being irresponsible with our morties,” I chided my friend.

“I do, in point of fact,” Axle huffed. “But it wouldn’t do any good, so I’m just going to go buy every spaceship I can find instead. You don’t care what type? Any function will do?”

“Yes, Axle, any function will do. We need every kind of ship we can get our hands on, and we need to keep them out of the Church’s hands at the same time. Two birds,” I quipped.

Cube and I had fallen enough that we made it through the massive smoke cloud covering the lower Atlantic Ocean. I wasn’t worried about that; my terraforming drones were already hard at work cleaning up the beholder’s mess. But I did want to kick in the gravity harness well before we hit the water, which was rapidly approaching.

I steered us toward Australia, using my dwindling charge carefully. Our ride would be waiting there, on a TransPoCo airstrip. We could use the cover of the explosion’s smoke cloud to bustle Cube away before anyone in orbit got any funny ideas.

Once he was back in Prescott, he could easily blend in with BlueCleave’s base. They used a holographic projection to keep his usual place hidden, and a backup reactor to use when he was indisposed. Otherwise, Cube powered all of BlueCleave’s Prescott operation.

“Very well,” Axle said, resigned. “I’ll get to work making some deals.”

“Thank you,” I said. “Get BlueCleave’s purchasers involved too, we don’t really have time to waste on this.”

Again I heard Axle lick his nose. It was a sign of consternation, though which type was never exactly obvious with my Knowle friend. It could be anxiety, stress, sublimated frustration, or even confusion. In this case, I assumed the latter.

Since I had taken the final perk patch upgrade, and enhanced my senses, reflexes, and cognitive function, for the first time in our relationship I was smarter than my operations manager. It was something I regularly saw him struggle with, and it didn’t take much thought to recognize that it was because I had hidden the perk patches from him, and the rest of our affiliate.

Call it paranoia, but I felt as though I personally needed an edge nobody around me had.

“Will do, boss,” Axle quipped in the voice he used to assure and placate me. “Every spaceship in the multiverse.”

I chuckled and shook my head. “If you can spend our morties faster than we’re making them, I’ll be impressed. Call me back when the Church gets involved,” I chuckled, hanging up on my friend. His confusion was something I could tolerate, so long as it came with compliance. Comprehension has never once been a requisite of cooperation, and Axle trusted my instincts enough to cooperate with me. Even when he didn’t understand why.

Within minutes, I received a call back from Axle. The comms service notified me and then simply connected us. I had set it up to do that with my upper echelon, so long as I wasn’t with Molls.

“How did you know?” he asked plainly.

“Know what?” I asked innocently.

“That the Church was going to start buying up every ship they could,” Axle replied.

“Axle, if you see the strings that control the system, you can do anything with no resistance,” I told him. “I knew the Church was going to start buying ships because I’ve known that the Church was eventually going to go to war with us for a long time. This is that moment.”

“You think an attack is imminent?” he asked.

“Extremely, we just killed a beholder in front of the entire multiverse. The creatures they’ve been secretly touting as angels of BuyMort itself, we have proven to be nothing more than an infectious, invasive pest. We gave the Church the out they needed with our press package, but they still cannot be seen to attack us directly, or both affiliates would suffer financially,” I mused. “I assume the first attack fleet will be primarily mercenary ships, or unassociated ships still loyal to the Church. None of their major citadel attack ships, I’m guessing. Has the gate guard made any changes?”

Axle shook his head. “No. Still sitting on the gate, still collecting fees.”

I smiled as I finally saw land below us. The airstrip was dead ahead and should be just off the coastline. BlueCleave strategists even had three more super galaxy cargo planes fueled and ready, all over the continent of Australia.

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In what had once been open bushland, an airstrip with attached hangar and fencing appeared and I started adjusting my trajectory to land near the hangar, sliding back along Cube’s body toward his edge again. If anyone could have seen us from above, we would have looked comical indeed, a giant shining metal box flying through the air with a half-naked man at the back, steering it.

“I expect they’ll charge the incoming fleet as well, for appearances sake if nothing else. Keep your eyes on that gate, I’ll talk to BlueCleave about the counter invasion offensive,” I told him.

“We don’t have the Sand Star,” Axle reminded me. “It’s currently holding position at Storage with the Church relic ships.”

“Ah yes, our standoff,” I chuckled, landing in a tumble as my suit’s charge finally gave out. Cube’s massive body clanged off the runway and dented it, leaving a construction project for the hobbs once we were gone.

BlueCleave hobbs hustled out of the hangar, all in full body coverage armor, and started the process of coaxing Cube on board the super galaxy, which involved him stretching out his body and changing shape. Something he didn’t care much to do immediately after eating, so the coaxing process had been planned for in advance.

“Don’t worry about them, Axle,” I told him. “I’m going to break that siege soon, personally. We just have to let the Church throw the first punch at us here. Spare no expense, get those ships in Sol system asap.” He nodded and hung up, going back to work.

Chapter 6

BlueCleave had roughly fifteen minutes to convince Cube to change shapes and stuff himself aboard the massive cargo plane so we could take off. The hangar opened onto a runway on either side, so all Cube needed to do was cooperate and we would be on-mission.

So of course he didn’t want to cooperate.

“NO SQUISH CUBE!” He roared in the background.

I was glad of the location. We were on a strip of land just west of Lake Macleod, chosen for how remote the facility was. BlueCleave used it primarily as a staging point for cargo heading out of Perth, which Boing had happily taken as their own after Kraken had thoroughly destroyed the place.

Cube’s voice echoed across the empty flats near our location, but nobody was around to hear him.

“Please Cube?” I heard Tollya’s voice emanate from a nearby handheld radio. “For me? I miss my Cubey, you have to get on the airplane to come home to me. I just thought you were going out for a treat, but you must not miss us back here at home.”

“CUBE MISS AUNTIE TOLLYA!” the giant metal box roared.

Cube reminded me of this cat Phyllis used to have, back when I first started working at the Happy Trails Campground. The big Maine Coon mix was old, and surly. He could understand you just fine, knew plenty of words and would happily come when called, so long as he felt like it. Anytime I called his name, he would look at me like he was assessing me, before turning away with a flick of his tail and actively choosing to ignore me.

Cube was much the same.

“CUBE NO GO IN AIRPLANE!” my pet shouted. But I could hear it in his voice, he was starting to crack.

On the other end of the radio, Tollya sniffled. Cube’s body shifted on the concrete, turning his ‘mouth’ more toward the radio at the sound. “Alright Cube,” Tollya said, speaking in hobb to my pet as she often did. “That’s okay, I guess I’ll see you when I can. We have a battle coming up, so I’m not sure when that will be . . .”

I heard Cube grinding his teeth. It was a very different sound from his purr, much harsher, more metal breaking against other metal as opposed to a smooth rumble. “AUNTIE TOLLYA!” he suddenly shouted.

“Yes, Cube?” she asked over the radio, with another sniffle for punctuation.

“NO CRY!” he roared. “CUBE COMING HOME!”

With that, his body shifted, loosening around the edges before it flowed into liquid metal entirely. The blob of flowing metal had sharp, shining crystalline bits poking out of it as it surged into the open cargo hold of the waiting airplane.

Once he had settled into a longer block, taking up the majority of the available space, the remnants of the beholder’s armor were no longer visible, and he purred lightly as he settled in to go dormant. It wasn’t quite asleep, but it was a state that seemed as close as the creature ever got.

On my way out, I used a full crate of BlueCleave PRDs to recharge my fully upgraded suit. It stored and could use vastly more energy at full capacity, but the simple glass orbs with long snaking tails were still perfect for charging the suit. The primary advantage was how cheaply they could be mass produced. Even hobb children now made Prince Rupert’s Drops for fun, and as part of their maturing education and eventual assumed entry into BlueCleave.

The hobbs had discovered the clever solution to charging my suit before it even involved them. They just saw me struggling with something and used their quiet, cultural intelligence to easily solve the problem for me. Silken Sands owed more than just its continued security to the hobbs of BlueCleave, they were the beating heart of our affiliate, and of our growing culture.

I nodded to the remaining crew as the airplane began taxiing away, saluted them, and then took off into the sky. As I pushed the suit to higher speeds, I gave some thought to our ever expanding military and its capabilities.

In the months that we spent battling the Sleem on Storage, we worked quietly to upgrade our fleet back home, and the missile carrier docked to the side of Elevator Station put a smile on my face. It was the best non-Teslak ship we’d managed to acquire to date, and with Captain Thresher at its helm, I was confident in our victory.

After all, we may have been short a relic ship, but I had a suspicion that Teslak was about to change that specific situation for me. My completed Afflqwst quest had provided an item coupon for me to use, and I had an idea what that item was going to be.

I pushed the suit and blasted away across the oceans toward home, toward Prescott. Tollya was going to be organizing our boarding forces, as the fleet’s standing policy was still to take whole where possible. They typically targeted drives and disabled the enemy crafts, using their superior hobb and Tower golem fighting forces to overwhelm the enemy crew.

It was a tried and true method. Even if BlueCleave couldn’t repair the ship for whatever reason, we always got more scrap and recruits with that method. Turned out not that many of the lower rank crew members were all that loyal to the Church or the upper planets. A lot of humans, Nah’gh, Orkreshi, and House of None delves decided to surrender when faced with BlueCleave boarding parties.

And who could blame them? More and more the rumors of wide-spread use of the starfish suit relic among BlueCleave forces spread throughout the upper planets and great houses of the Church. It was becoming apparent that something was amiss with the Inquisition’s initial assessments regarding our military capabilities.

I was happy to spring that trap on them, but dealing with the inquisition was going to be unpleasant if I wasn’t careful about how I handled it. While I flew around the globe at supersonic speed, I put together a quick psychic message to the delf lord Elegy, of the Church’s Inquisition.

“My most sincere apologies for the ugly display in Nu-Earth’s atmosphere. I also deeply regret that the Church and the inquisition have been dragged into the ongoing media spectacle that is my affiliate. I will be staying on Nu-Earth until your nearest convenience, that we may meet and straighten this out as friends and more importantly, as supplicant associate in the greater Church affiliate. Our success is the Church’s success, all appropriate tithes have been paid. Ever your servant, Warlord Dawes.”

The deity that operated the now shriveled MortMobile service happily assisted me for nominal additional charges. He added a layer of psychic resonance to the message that would assure the first person who read it of the writer’s good intentions, and more importantly, his fear. When Elegy opened the message, he would sneer at my groveling and arrange a meeting in person, on my planet.

Wiping out the Sleem had more than one unexpected but welcome benefit, including a major lightening of the load on the MortMobile service. Instantly, a large portion of the psychic small-g god’s headache vanished. The Sleem had constant use of the service, coordinating and scheming. With the sheer number of them, they’d overwhelmed the psychic service and muddled the mighty creature’s brainpower.

Now it was as though he was awakening from a coma. His abilities were becoming easier to perform, caused him far less agony, and were possible to be filed under innocuous, cheap service categories if he liked you.

And he liked us at Silken Sands.

Anything we needed that he was contractually capable of offering, he happily provided, including psychic manipulation of Church personnel.

After what I planned to do to Elegy, I expected my letter to him would be publicized. Part of high society insurance against one another, Lee informed me. People like Elegy all had files on their enemies that would be made public upon their death, via BuyMort will publications.

Once the figure died, an affiliate would receive an automatic upload of information. That information was then condensed and directed at whoever the likely enemy was. Since Elegy was going to be meeting his death on Nu-Earth, I expected I would be the target of those accusations. And my overt bait would be part of those accusations.

My psychic text came with automatic deletion options, a message culler that would get rid of anything I sent after it was read in order to keep my conversations off the record. I intentionally ignored that aspect of the service, however. I wanted his will to include the letter. I wanted the Church to start distrusting the psychic deity we all used to communicate. Once the greater society saw the text of my letter, which was obviously an invitation to a death trap, they would begin their incessant cycle of speculation anew.

The news in particular would no longer be trusted, even by those directing its content.

Silken Sands was big, and still growing. Our mining operation in the Sleem system was raking in hundreds of septillions of morties, with exponentially more projected. Our 1.3 nonillion rapidly became 2.8 nonillion, over the course of a few days.

Each captain navigating the ever-more dangerous system was automatically made wealthy if they succeeded in their missions, but not all of them survived their landings. In the rush to make landings, some of the pilots made hasty approach calculations or failed to consider the system’s ever changing gravitational tides.

Their bodies and ships were sold by those who came behind them and successfully landed, the associates making entire planetoid body MortBlock claims and then immediately selling them in the name of the affiliate. Morties poured in constantly, there was no ability to even keep track of how many we had exactly, just a general sense of scope, of scale.

Like a mountain filled with gold, constantly rising and falling in both value and volume.

Axle and BlueCleave were buying ships and having them transported into berths at the Prescott spaceport, and into stable orbits around Nu-Earth, Mars, and Venus, even Terna’s bio-mechanical world, and the small gas mining operation in orbit of Saturn. There was no shortage of workers pouring through Silken Sands recruitment framework, so we started filling each and every one of the new ships with people as soon as they were in place.

Our primary defense against the Church’s relic ship, keeping a rotating population migrating across Storage’s spire top camps, was a challenge that the new fleets immediately helped with. We spread out the tent cities as much as possible to mitigate the potential damage from the glowing Church relic ship lurking above them.

The threat was implicit, but BlueCleave was good at avoiding the Church. Their Knowle scholars and affiliate leadership structure provided solid intelligence, and BlueCleave was able to respond accordingly.

Rayna had ordered the evacuation to newly uncovered habitation zones. BlueCleave exploratory forces had been working diligently since we erased the Sleem, uncovering never-before seen portions of the super-structure, and preparing them for civil habitation.

A lot of the harsher realities of Storage, like eating once per day if you were unlucky, still existed. But it was better than getting killed by the relic ship above. We took as many as we could into service, operating the new ships as they warped in. But Storage was still a valid hostage. Many of the camps simply could not rotate quickly enough to avoid the ship entirely, and it regularly haunted one or several of them at any given time.

My musings ceased as I approached Prescott at hypersonic speeds. My eyesight had improved to the point of being able to see minute details from the sky at extreme speeds. The ‘aimed shot’ aspect applied far more to me, to my movement surety than it did to my aim with any kind of ranged firearm.

I still had impeccable aim with those, don’t get me wrong. But the more I used the full set of Teslak personal upgrades, the more I understood the specific combination. Even the order the upgrades were taken in was important, as it defined the ability set of the operator. My abilities.

My landing was light-footed as always, descending from a distant thunderclap, which served to alert my troops of my approach.

Rayna was waiting for me at my usual landing pad, umbrella tucked under one arm. She had a stern look on her face and saluted me as I touched down.

“Warships seen entering our system,” Rayna grunted. She pushed a small, red folder at me and nodded her head toward a nearby building. “Admiral Omen is asking for orders.”

“Defensive footing only, please,” I said. “Tell him to hold position.”

Rayna blinked and frowned. “Defensive? Don’t you think we should call for the Sand Star? You’re giving them a hell of a lot of softened targets. Our ships are fast, but I’m not sure about them being fast enough to cover all civilian fleets in Sol system. It will take several hours to get most of the brand new ships space-worthy, and the used ones will take several days. Where do we even send our active ships?”

“Leave them right here for the moment,” I answered. “Hold position. I have a plan.”

“Oh no,” she moaned. Rain began to spatter us, a summer shower caused by our manipulation of the climate. The armada of drones we had scrubbing the atmosphere had side-effects, and the odd occasional tropical shower was one of them. Rayna popped her umbrella and sulked. “I don’t like your plans.”

“Oh you’ll like this one,” I said, smiling at her as I stood in the rain. It washed the remnants of my misadventure away nicely. “Prepare our best Sand Star pilot candidates, at once.”

Rayna stopped dead in her tracks and scowled at me from under her umbrella. “Sand Star pilot candidates? Why? How many? What will they be doing?”

I smiled at her and lifted off again, floating away with a shrug. “Defending our civilian fleets!” I shouted in reply.

“With WHAT!?” Rayna shouted after me, but I didn’t bother responding. She’d figure that part out soon enough.

I floated up to the penthouse for a moment of privacy. Molls had evacuated to our satellite mansion, working with clients via MortMobile. It was useful for mental health conversations, as the psychic creature operating it could aid in calming the often overwhelming emotions therapy can elicit.

Since freeing him from the Sleem, he was displaying all kinds of new abilities.

Only a couple of hours had passed since Cube had eaten the beholder, but already it was the only thing anyone on Church tv could talk about. Speculation, again. Always, eternal speculation. Was our ‘bright plague’ theory correct? Knowle scholars had a good track record, after all, the Church had often publicly touted it in the past. When using the Knowles for something or other, of course.

But suddenly that wing of the Church was no longer singing the same tune as they once had, which hurt their credibility. They were giving credence to our bright plague creature theory, thanks to some free information sharing from Axle’s library.

They put it out on the MortMobile psychic TV network for free, to everyone connected to BuyMort. Just to be sure everybody got the message. Paid for and distributed by the Church itself, on purpose, without even needing to be paid.

The outrage it caused was profitable to the news company, so the story was run wide, and run hard. Everywhere on CTV, Church priests sputtered and struggled to answer the hosts' pressing questions.

There was no denying it, these creatures had been confirmed to be the cause of several systems destructions in the long-distant past of BuyMort and appeared to be at the heart of a small, but powerful group of corrupt individuals in Church leadership.

Such accusations were unheard of, without immediate, and crushing Church response. Indeed, both relic ships in orbit of Storage moved into attack position and powered weapons. The insectile creature began flexing its clawed limbs, and the glowing energy triangle began to glow brighter.

After a few days of dealing with the single trick that ship seemed capable of, it had lost its ability to intimidate anyone but the civilians in Storage that it directly threatened. Hardly anyone else paid attention to it, aside from BlueCleave.

And BlueCleave was getting good at keeping them moving and hidden, as they worked to cover more and more spires in cheap, rapidly printed tarp material. Nobody was happy about having to move around so much, but it was better than whatever kind of energy-based death that relic ship was waiting to hand out.

My entire affiliate was about to be at open war with the Church, and I smiled as I opened my BuyMort panel and entered the Teslak storefront.

Chapter 7

The shop was immaculate. No cracks or floating dust particles in the air any longer, and Spectre’s hologram was waiting for me with a polite, customer service smile on his elven face.

I studied his features for a long moment as I approached. Even in the red light of the black hole out the window, it was obvious he was related to the elves I had seen in the higher echelons of BuyMort society. They seemed sallow though, yellowed and lowered in physical stature somewhat. Spectre’s skeletal structure was somewhat different to theirs too.

I couldn’t be sure without exposing the Teslak relic affiliate to the Church, but I theorized that Spectre was an ancient relative of the elves I knew. Not that it mattered much to my visit.

It was easy to predict the Teslak Cooperative’s next offerings. More ships.

I expected to be able to purchase the basic Sand Stars and was not disappointed. That was the first thing I was informed had unlocked. I purchased a dozen of them on the spot. Each cost a few hundred quintillion morties, which I assumed was still at a significant discount considering the craft’s capabilities.

It actually made a difference in our mortie pool, my purchase had cost the equivalent of a few moons in the Sleem system. Still, our total slush fund started growing again immediately after my purchase, so I was unconcerned.

“Very good sir,” Spectre said as he completed my sale. I had the craft delivered to BlueCleave’s staging grounds. The space was big enough for all twelve ships, and it would make a nice statement to the BlueCleave regulars stationed there. Their excitement at seeing a dozen fresh Sand Star vessels ready to be applied, exactly when they were needed, would spread through the rest of my military.

The Warlord of BuyMort had come through for BlueCleave with a miracle again. This time, I wanted to know more about why.

“Spectre,” I said, causing the hologram to flicker into a waiting position, his expression eager for my next words. “Why are the upgrades and unlocks arranged in the order they are, through the Afflqwst app?”

The image immediately changed. A wounded version of the elf appeared in front of me, bandages all fresh, but soaking through with blood anyway.

“Ah. You must have taken the Aimed Shot upgrade. To answer your question plainly, the items are doled out in the manner they are doled out because I have seen a pattern to this system that I can exploit,” Spectre growled. “You are my weapon, my tool of destruction from beyond the grave. And I am always careful when I construct my tools.”

I frowned and crossed my arms, waiting for the projection to go on. “The starfish extreme environment suit is designed to exploit the physics of three-dimensional space to your personal advantage. You should have near invulnerability from harm, coupled with freedom and accuracy of movement. This ability extends onto planetary surfaces and out into open space. This was meant to give you, whatever kind of creature you are, an extreme advantage within the BuyMort system, as it only interacts with life within the bounds of three-dimensional space.”

Spectre gave me a severe look and nodded. “If you’re smart enough to proceed far enough to unlock our spacecraft, you already have an army with the same capabilities as yourself. My fleet will offer you unparalleled destructive capability, ensuring your affiliate can respond to the eventual violence that will come your way.”

“How can you predict such violence,” I slowly asked, already knowing what the answer would be.

“It is inherent to the system. Because BuyMort is centered on morties, BuyMort is a contest of winners and losers. There is no other way to describe a system dependent upon an imaginary object of perceived value, that will always drive survival instincts within sapient life to promote competition over cooperation. There cannot be a contest of winners and losers without cheating, and within BuyMort, with the singular focus on morties, cheating will always come in the form of violence. To the violent, non-violence means nothing. If you are to be successful in your mission to destroy BuyMort itself, you must have the appropriate tools at hand,” Spectre finished.

He nodded once, and the projection flickered, changing to his uninjured form. “How can I assist you with your purchase, sir?”

I shook my head, sighed, and activated my free item coupon. “I’d like to redeem this coupon please.”

The floor shifted, and I started riding the elevator down, into the hangar. This time, a floor beyond the first opened. The first floor of the hangar bay was now filled with Sand Star frigates ready to be purchased, hundreds of them hanging from staggered docking ports throughout the area.

Spectre, still behind his counter, swept an arm out as we lowered into the second hangar bay and the ride stopped. Beyond the edges of my small section of flooring, and the safety rails that rose around it when we descended, was a new ship.

This craft was deceptively large, and I realized while staring up at it that it was because of its many arms.

“The Brisingida class demolition cruiser is a unique vessel from the Teslak Cooperative’s finest technical minds,” Spectre announced. I stared at the ship, lit from several areas in the empty hangar by hovering spotlight drones.

The craft was vibrant red, with a sturdy-looking central core surrounded by two dozen long, thin metal whip-arms. Each arm was coated in delicate extensions with broad blades attached at regular intervals, and a centipedal look dominated the individual arms. The ship suddenly flexed, and I saw the potential for myself.

“Our signature gravity harness technology allows for extreme mobility at sub light speeds, and, over short ranges, faster than light travel once sufficiently charged,” Spectre droned. “The primary offensive capability of the craft lies in its ability to grapple and rapidly disassemble enemy spacecraft.”

As I watched, the whip arms extended and flexed, a colorful display of movement from two dozen separate three-hundred meter long arms as they extended first one direction and then the next.

The display was rather frightening, as the arms were more than long enough to reach me, each being as long as the Eiffel Tower back home was tall. (Before one of the jackasses in charge of the French government had sold it to the Church on day one of BuyMort, anyway.)

Introducing the Brisingida Class Demolition Cruiser

From the visionary engineers of the Teslak Cooperative comes a marvel of space engineering: The Brisingida Class Demolition Cruiser. A sight to behold, this specialized vessel boasts a central manufactory core and piloting suite surrounded by two dozen whip-like bladed arms, each extendable up to 300 meters while retaining metallurgic cohesion and tensile strength. These aren't just for show; they're the heart of the Brisingida's unmatched capabilities.

Key Features:

Unparalleled Mobility: With our signature gravity harness technology, experience extreme mobility at sub-light speeds and faster-than-light travel over short ranges once sufficiently charged. When combined with the Teslak Starfish Extreme Environment Suits, pilots can withstand gravitic forces dramatically in excess of body structure norms, leading to advanced space-faring capabilities.

Demolitions Powerhouse: The Brisingida's primary utility lies in its ability to grapple and rapidly disassemble vagrant or populated spacecraft and small planetoid bodies alike, even at extreme velocities. Watch as its whip arms extend and flex, showcasing a mesmerizing display of power and precision demolition.

Solo Operation: The cockpit is designed for a single occupant. Whether you're on fleet salvage operations, support and rescue, or deep-space mining, the Brisingida ensures its pilot is capable of any movement required, with integrated mental flight controls.”

Atomic Breaker Technology: Each whip-arm is equipped with Atomic Breaker technology, ensuring rapid disassembly of any object, simultaneously delivering a continued charge for the manufactory and reactor core.

Defensive Capabilities: The Brisingida's arms form a protective matrix in flight, shielding the central core from kinetic damage sustained during FTL travel, or unstable craft disassembly. While its reactive power core reduces any harmful energy encountered into charge for the reactor, it allows it to play out between its many conductive limbs as needed. Even reactive nebula mining is now a breeze in the Brisingida class demolitions cruiser.

Self-Repair Mechanism: In the unlikely event of damage, the Brisingida can fully rebuild its own limbs within a matter of moments, using most raw materials of mineral origin.

The Brisingida Class Demolition Cruiser is not just a ship; it's a statement. A testament to the pinnacle of space engineering. Whether you're looking to explore the vastness of space, or mine and salvage the riches of the cosmos, the Brisingida is your ultimate companion.

Disclaimer: Please operate responsibly. All energy redirection systems and kinetic damage shielding systems have limitations. Do not attempt to pilot the Brisingida class into extreme conditions like stars or black holes.

Experience the future of space-based demolitions. Experience the Brisingida.

The hangar was massive, but my sharp eyes picked out yet another large door in the floor beneath us before I turned back to my current prize with a cold smile.

At the craft’s center was a dull, glossy pearl, raised in a lump from the circular portion of the craft. My new bridge, I saw, as the pearl cleared, and my enhanced vision zoomed in.

The cockpit looked very similar to the Sand Star’s, but with only a single seat and panel in its center.

“Easily crewed by no more than a single occupant, and with all the comforts of home, the Brisingida class is perfect for fleet operations, support and rescue, or even deep-space mining,” Spectre added, miming the advertisement.

The arms each rippled with small blue sparks, the same kind my atomic breaker gauntlets made when destroying something, only tiny and covering each metal tentacle’s blade edges.

“Atomic Breaker technology has been applied to the arms, so the rapid disassembly of any object will be of no difficulty for the craft, as well as helping charge its reactor,” Spectre continued. “With the added benefit of an energy redirection system embedded in the entire hull, to ensure any energy-based weapons fired at the craft will add to the ship’s charge, in addition to any solar radiation encountered during spaceflight.”

There the elf’s projection flickered. “Within reason. Don’t fly any of my warships into a star and expect to survive the experience. Black holes too, in case I have to explain that. It takes a considerable amount of effort to move about freely within one, and none of the craft my storefront has for you will survive the attempt to do anything stupid with them. But, a typical weapons system, say anything short of a linear particle beam should be readily absorbed.”

I frowned at the projection, and he changed back as the ship suddenly moved again. The pearl at the center dulled, seeming to harden before my eyes as the arms all folded inward, forming a protective matrix over the craft’s central core by extending their blades. The ship slowly rotated, and I watched half of the arms fold over to protect the other side of its central body as well.

Spectre’s clean and customer-ready version returned with a smile, picking up where he had left off. “While its arms will protect your ship from any potential kinetic damage, both in combat and during FTL travel.”

The ship relaxed and allowed its many tentacle arms to extend outward again, before one violently twisted at another and ripped it free, shattering the metal in a series of tiny blue explosions.

“With enough charge and available raw material,” Spectre said. “The Brisingida class cruiser can fully rebuild its own limbs within a matter of moments.”

Indeed, as I watched, the ship opened a hatch above the bridge and used its own arms to delicately remove and then install a new bladed whip-arm. The entire process took less than sixty seconds.

“Would you like to complete your purchase now?” Spectre asked me, friendly smile in place.

“Oh yes,” I breathed. “I would like that very much.”

Chapter 8

I smiled as I sat up from my penthouse’s lounge. The new ship from Teslak was more than I had dared to dream. It wasn’t the badass missile boat I had been secretly hoping for, but the upgrades from that relic affiliate were never quite what I expected.

Grabbing a quick drink of Molls’ delicious blue juice from the refrigerator, I almost dropped it as a dancing juice carton jumped into my vision, obscuring the drink in my hand entirely. From its open lip came a large puff of blue smoke, from which sprouted a fat-bellied Aladdinesque genie. He floated in front of me, looking a mix of both exasperated and, even worse, disappointed. He was holding a shiny, ornate lamp in one hand and a tall glass of a mysterious rainbow-swirling juice in the other.

“Did I just see you drink something that wasn't the Super-Fantastic Go-Go Juicer?” the genie asked, dropping his lamp and slapping his face with one large palm in disbelief. “What is it with you neanderthals?”

“Whoa! A genie!” I muttered. I couldn't help myself. This ad was strange in ways that were new to me even after all this time in the system. “So what are you selling?”

The genie smiled. “Oh, this? Why it's Super-Fantastic Go-Go Juicer! It contains juice from every fruit that exists in all of the universes!”

I nodded and chuckled. This was a good ad. Highly enjoyable, regardless of the product.

“Just 11990 morties a bottle, 50000 morties to a pack!”

I smiled and purchased the pack, letting it zip in and drop on the floor. I’d put it away later. I ripped open the pack, grabbed a single bottle, and flew off the roof back to BlueCleave’s base just in time to see my thirteen BuyMort pods arriving from our local fruition center.

I slowed my arrival, so that I was hovering above the staging grounds as ships started warping in. Not only because I wanted to impress my troops, but because I wanted a birds-eye view of the new vessels.

Around the perimeter of the staging grounds, Sand Stars began to appear in dazzling blasts of rainbow light. Each ship was in landing formation, on its back with the landing ramp extended. At the center of the large, open area, my new Brisingida class demolitions cruiser warped in and gleamed scarlet in the Arizona sunlight.

That name would never work for the hobbs, they struggled with English pronunciations sometimes. I smiled gently as I thought of a new name for the vessel that I was sure would work nicely for the entire multiverse.

The Buzzsaw.

Rayna awaited me at the large, red ship’s open entry ramp. Its limbs were all pressed into the ground around it, acting as stabilizer limbs and allowing the central disk portion of the ship to dangle just above ground.

I landed quietly at her side as she stared up at the ship, umbrella forgotten.

“What’s this one do?” Rayna whispered to me.

“Nothing good for the Church,” I replied with a smile. “It’s a demolition cruiser. It demolishes things.”

She nodded and turned to look at me, her gray eyes wider than usual. “We’re really going to do this, aren’t we?”

I smiled and nodded, then clapped a hand on her shoulder and met her eyes. “You will fulfill the promise of your namesake, and free BuyMort from the Church. You will deliver all hobbs from destructive, lethal greed, and make a home for all your people.”

Rayna’s eyes welled, but she smiled and nodded at me. “Our people,” she said.

“How many Sand Star pilot candidates did you bring?” I asked, still smiling.

“Well, we have seven fleets in Sol system currently. I thought you might be coming back with ships, so I brought seven pilot candidates plus crew. Twenty-one hobbs, suited up, ready to go.”

My mind immediately filled in the details. Our primary defense fleet orbiting Nu-Earth was closest, the logistics and support fleets in orbit of Mars and Venus were both on opposite sides of Sol from Nu-Earth, given the orbital window. That would be an issue, but at least they were relatively nearby.

The rest of our fleets were distant, and most vulnerable to the new Church mercenary fleet.

Terna’s world had a fleet of its own, and weaponry to defend themselves, but I included them in my mental list for a Sand Star anyway. This was about putting on a show, after all. Defending our associates was good for business.

Saturn’s gas mining operation was fledgling, but there were already five expensive ships in orbit aiding in the initial set up. The loss of anyone would be devastating to the small fleet, and they paid us for security. It was contractual.

Our primary mining fleet in Sol system was scattered throughout the asteroid belt, but they stayed relatively close to one another out of affiliate policy, so we could corral and protect them easier if needed. I wouldn’t accept the loss of that fleet under any circumstances, we needed them for our own raw material production.

And finally, our secondary military fleet in orbit of Jupiter itself, keeping an eye on the gate. They would be at the most risk, as the enemy fleet had been warped in within a few hundred million kilometers.

“Any word on the enemy fleet?” I asked.

Rayna sighed and nodded. “Plenty of words. They are still coming, appear to be simply staging for the moment. No deployment, no aggressive moves yet. Almost three hundred ships already. More are coming every hour. We are badly outnumbered.”

“I wonder what they’re waiting for; our gate fleet is right there. If they’ve come to attack our military assets, why aren’t they attacking?” I muttered, thinking out loud.

“Maybe they haven’t come to attack our military assets,” Rayna answered.

I nearly rolled my eyes but stopped myself. Of course Rayna was right, but I didn’t like being uncertain of my enemy's motivations. It didn’t usually occur, they were straight forward and only ever cared about the morties. This war, though, was unprecedented.

In the history of BuyMort, there had always been Sleem. Always there, in the dark corners, waiting to take everything from you. A threat, over the heads of everyone in the greater BuyMort system.

And overnight they were gone. I’d made an enemy of every other Sleem farm owner in BuyMort, and fundamentally changed the rules of engagement forever. The Church’s ruling bodies all knew part of what we were capable of, knew that we threatened their power, and were responding accordingly.

This was no longer a simple matter that payment would conclude.

Fortunately for me, and for our civilian fleets, the Church still wanted their violence against us to be hidden behind something. What, I hadn’t quite figured out yet. It didn’t seem as though the mercenary fleet assembling in our system was quite removed enough from Church control to be a valid public-facing mask for them.

“Visuals coming in from the gate,” Rayna said, showing me her tablet. I swiped through the pictures of the enemy fleet, and its hundreds of ships. There was the expected assortment of ships, the mishmash of a mercenary fleet.

But a large number of dark green and black painted ships stood out as a disparate faction. Their craft were uniform too, each ship holding the basic shape of an ornate spear. With engines far at the back of a long, tubular shaft, and a bladed head loaded with weaponry, the faction stood out to me. The smaller fighter craft buzzing around the vessels in particular looked familiar.

“Who is that?” I asked, pointing at the cluster of ships.

Rayna looked over my shoulder and grunted. “Former Nahgah Prime special forces. Disbanded officially, but clearly just enveloped by Church ops.”

“What does that mean for the Nahgah Prime system?” I asked.

Rayna smiled from the corner of her mouth. “Reduced security.”

I grinned back at her. “Plan an exploratory operation when you get some time, please. I’d like to see what happens if I start taking MortBlocks in the system.”

Rayna chuckled and nodded. “Thought you might. Can I assign a Sand Star to the fleet?”

I frowned and shrugged. “It’s your army, Rayna. Once we fend off this current attack, the Sand Stars are all yours. And you let me know if you need more, we can afford them.”

“Save it for more of these, what are they called?” she asked, pointing up at the Brisingida class demolition cruiser.

“I call it the Buzzsaw,” I said quietly, following her gaze up to my new ship, and its many, sharp arms.

“Buzz-Star?” Rayna asked, frowning at me.

“Saw, Rayna. Buzzsaw,” I corrected her.

She shook her head. “No good. Troops need theme to rally around, we’ll call it the Buzz-Star.”

“I honestly don’t care,” I told her, smiling. “Get those pilots in their crafts and en route to the fleets they need to defend.”

“Where are you taking the Buzz-Star?” she asked, stepping back out from underneath its central disk and opening her umbrella again.

“Me?” I smiled up at my new craft again, resting a hand on the boarding ramp’s nearest support limb. “I’m going to go pick a fight with some relic ships.”

Chapter 9

As soon as I boarded the Buzzsaw, a text came through from Rayna and lit up my BuyMort HUD. It was expensive, but we’d managed to get our communications service to link up with BuyMort too. The system offered such services but cost as much as we could charge for them.

The real advantage of MortMobile that we simply could not emulate or compete with was the instantaneous communication across galaxies, or even universes. No matter where you were, you could reach out and talk to someone, assuming there was no MortMobile blocker being paid for of course. BlueCleave Communications technology simply could not do that. Our communications were limited to more mundane methods.

So we piggybacked onto BuyMort for the stuff we couldn’t handle instantaneously ourselves. The nanites infused into every sapient living being in the BuyMort system were capable of instantaneous communication with one another, over any distance.

Almost as though spacetime as we all understood it simply did not exist for BuyMort.

The text from Rayna drew my attention back. “Phyllis wants to deploy, where should we send her?”

I blew out my cheeks and sighed, the sound nearly matching the ramp behind me closing. I could still hear Rayna’s boots leaving the area but realized she had asked me that question via text for a reason. She really didn’t want to talk about it.

Rayna didn’t like Phyllis, I was forced to realize. A series of minor, background interactions sprang to mind as I thought about that detail. Memories swirled, of the few times I had seen them together. The other hobbs loved Phyllis, treated her like a living legend, but Rayna seemed distant toward her. Colder than I would have expected.

It was likely to do with the fact that Phyllis had no respect for combat. She was a feral berserker, especially when consuming her preferred intoxicants, and wielded a potentially fleet-shattering weapon. I understood why Rayna didn’t like the other woman, but it raised a disturbing specter in my mind.

Did Rayna secretly hate me too?

My enhanced mind threw several preserved memories at me in sequence, showing the buildup of our relationship and how many times Rayna and I had done the impossible together. She liked me because she was part of my world. She disliked Phyllis for the same reason; she wasn’t part of the woman’s world at all.

Phyllis stood outside of our military structure. She was often seen with BlueCleave, but she was not BlueCleave herself. She was rarely part of their community or culture aside from a figure to be feared and respected, who occasionally put their lives at risk. That set of differences was enough, in Rayna’s mind, to make Phyllis a potential threat. At the least, a potential liability.

I thought about the question for a few moments, in the loading dock of the Buzzsaw. If Phyllis was asking to be involved in the incoming fleet action, it meant she was using her lancer suit, her only suit capable of spaceflight.

“Send her to the gate,” I texted back to Rayna. Phyllis would put on a good show; she was tiny compared to the ships, but still capable of taking them down with her linear plasma cannon. Her lancer suit concentrated and funneled it so intensely that it burned through shields and armor alike.

A couple of light fighters swung down for repairs behind us, the roar of their thrusters cutting off all other sound before emitting a rolling whine that signaled the end of their flights. Ground crew ran forward to check out the struts, hulls, and engine works.

I watched them, rolling everything over in my head. We had a good team. Good flight crews, good pilots, good gunners, good boarding parties.

Even if we didn’t win, the Church wouldn’t ever walk the same afterwards. Metaphorically, of course.

The gate fleet was going to be the first hit, Rayna already had them turtling up in formation, to better defend one another with our heavily armored battlecruisers once the onslaught began. A solid half of the military ships we owned were in orbit of Jupiter, that fleet could take care of itself long enough for the new frigates to make themselves felt.

Phyllis would ensure whatever contingent remained to fight my seemingly massively outnumbered gate fleet would be in for a nasty surprise even before the new Sand Star showed up.

They had a Sand Star frigate on the way to them, all they were required to do was hold out until it could arrive. Of course, we were sending all of our new ships to their fleets via BuyMort portal, in spite of the ludicrous, irrelevant expense of the act. Even with our significant portal discounts the cost was staggering.

But it was worth it to cover up our ship’s true capability: independent faster than light travel using BuyMort’s gates.

There was a function of BuyMort gates most living within the system were not aware of. In order to transport their own pods all over the various solar systems, galaxies, and even universes, BuyMort gates were capable of acting as a teleportation link to anywhere BuyMort nanites existed.

Primarily, people used them to ferry from one gate to another, but the capability existed within the BuyMort system to warp pods wherever they were requested, instantly. This capability came from the massive gates, hovering in each populated solar system. Once enough people moved into an area, with enough consumer traffic, BuyMort mercilessly mined the nearby unclaimed mineral deposits and constructed a gate.

My ships could travel the same way BuyMort pods could, everywhere the BuyMort network was connected, in the blink of an eye. Once I knew the right coordinates, I could warp into the Church’s back yard unobstructed.

But, before I could let them know about that capability, there was a battle for my own solar system to be won.

Too bad I was planning on skipping it.

Captain Thresher, his new Sand Star frigate pilots, and the BlueCleave regular Navy would be handling the Sol system battle. I was needed at Storage. There were two unaffiliated relic ships lurking nearby threatening my craft and my people. I wanted to go kill them, with Ordo and Admiral Omen’s help.

Honestly, I was mostly looking forward to wrecking that glowing triangle threatening my civilians over Storage. I was hoping Ordo and Admiral Omen would handle the insectile craft for me. With his ship’s weaponry, that fight should be one-sided, and I didn’t want to get up close and personal with that ship, it gave me the creeps the same way Spider City used to back home.

Too many legs.

I climbed aboard the Buzzsaw, using a small set of stairs built into the ship to access the cramped bridge. It really was a single-occupant craft. For its sheer size, the Buzzsaw had very little in the way of creature comforts, or room for personnel. The on-board space for the crew was more akin to a cramped hexagonal tunnel, with grab-rails along each of the edges. I clambered inside on my hands and knees.

Most of its ring section was taken up by the powerful actuator engines that ran the two dozen limbs.

Inside that ring of heavy machinery was the reactor, and factory where new limbs were created. A massive amount of cargo space surrounded the reactor and factory, but only one kind of cargo could be loaded into it. Liquified inorganic slurry, produced by the ship’s onboard factory from any material it could load into its ‘mouth,’ a cargo hatch equipped with titanium-shredding grinder teeth and a plasma furnace.

The grinders reminded me of Cube’s teeth, but covered the round outside of the aperture, in a ring of destructive capability.

A small door behind me swung closed as I entered the ship’s bridge, crawling down into the small room. The captain’s chair was different this time. Where the Sand Star attack frigates all had light, comfortable seats, the Brisingida class cruisers had oversized metal thrones.

I clambered into the chair, which had me leaning backwards, sitting with my back against the floor like an astronaut. Then the seat activated. Tendrils, not at all unlike my starfish suit’s, snaked from hatches in the thick metal of my chair. At the same time, my own suit opened, extending portals for the chair’s cables to attach to.

It was surface level, just plugging into my suit beneath the skin, but I felt it. Like worms under the surface, as the ship synched up to my suit and powered on. I felt a deep thrumming, connected to the ship physically as well as mentally.

My viewport stayed opaque. A pearlescent sheen that could lower if I wanted it to but gave me better protection in its current state. Instead, a screen projected onto it inside my mind. I could tell what I was seeing was false at first, but the longer I saw through my ship’s eyes, the easier it became to accept.

I had some basic controls, a pair of foot pedals to increase or decrease intensity. Intensity of what, I had to look up. The manual projected itself onto the main screen and I started reading. Within a few minutes, I had the text committed to memory.

Mostly it boiled down to a simple in-practice, but astonishingly complex concept. The ship, and starfish suit, would sync with the nanites in my brain to anticipate my desired actions. The addition of the pedals told the ship how much I wanted any particular action from it.

If I sat in space and thought about ripping apart an enemy ship while I spoke to them over coms, for example, the ship would refrain from acting on my impulses so long as I had the ‘lower’ pedal firmly held down. If I thought that same thing while pressing on the ‘raise’ pedal, chaos and destruction would ensue.

I directed the ship via thought, which was messy. The ship interpreted that thought and my intention through the pedals. It again struck me as simple, but then, the Teslak Cooperative always had focused on user-friendly interfaces.

The seat swiveled around, and I hung face-down toward the ground. Strangely, I felt the ship’s coiled position, its fully charged capacitor, and humming power core, ready to take off with a thought.

I smiled and stomped the raise-intentions pedal, increasing my focus on taking off. The ship’s gravity drive kicked in exactly like my own and lifted it off the surface of Nu-Earth. The many arms on the vessel could extend or retract as needed, and while it took up very little space on the staging ground, as soon as I pushed the ship into flight, its arms all retracted and formed into a long wedge over its front.

Earth’s gravity was nothing to my ship, and I watched its charge tick slowly down in a corner of my HUD. The long bar had started off totally full, but dropped a tiny fraction as I pushed the ship to leave the planet.

A light buildup of red plasma formed along the conical wedge of my ship’s bladed arms, channeling and rushing down toward what felt like my face. The ship’s arms formed gutters and valleys, feeding the plasma directly into the open reactor mouth beneath my seat.

The charge ticked back up to full, and the plasma winked out as the twinkling dark of space replaced it. I felt a strong, protective urge come from the ship’s computer. A simple expression of instinctual emotion that I could recognize. It made me want to cross my arms and cover my delicate underbelly.

While I watched, the Buzzsaw’s many arms retracted, clunking into new positions as they shifted their bladed surfaces and formed a layered, protective barricade over the ship. My view shifted with the same sensation as a blink, and I could see what was on the other side of the ship’s protective screen.

I smiled and looked around. The gravity drive engaged and swung the perception displayed on the screen to match my intention. I found it unbearably fast, or unbearably slow when I had either intention pedal engaged, but I could immediately understand the applications of both.

When combined with the drug my suit used to slow my perception of time, and massively increased speed from both sensors and ship, I could use the vessel as a literal buzzsaw, hurling it through enemy craft’s delicate parts with extreme precision, even at combat maneuver velocities.

“Spectre has built his weapon well indeed,” I thought bitterly, remembering the elf’s words.

My perk patches, the starfish suit, all of it had been in preparation for these ships, this fleet. My aimed shot patch hadn’t made much sense to me before, but I easily recognized it in the ship’s design.

Other spacecraft in the BuyMort system operated on normative gravitic laws. They were bound by physics in ways that I simply no longer was.

Control of gravity was control of three-dimensional space. Something I needed, and Spectre had known I would need.

With a sigh, I pressed the raise-intentions pedal and turned the ship toward Elevator Station. BuyMort charged by the millimeter; there was no reason to make a pod travel any further than it had to, especially in orbit. I knew for a fact that it was easier for BuyMort to operate its pods in space than in an atmosphere, or under an ocean.

But BuyMort knew it was difficult for us sapients to operate in space, so it charged more for the service.

I nearly ground my teeth at the inane system but stopped myself. I didn’t want the suit doing impromptu dentistry on me. Instead, I called out the BuyMort pod I needed, and let the ad crunch fill my mind.

Thank you for contacting BuyMort Transportation Services, the end all and be all of all of your multidimensional needs! Why settle for ordinary when you can transcend dimensions? At BuyMort, we pride ourselves on offering unparalleled transportation solutions that not only meets but exceeds the boundaries of time and space. Whether you're looking to journey across galaxies or simply hop between parallel universes, we've got you covered.

Why Choose BuyMort?

Safety First: Our state-of-the-art vehicles are equipped with the latest in multidimensional navigation and security systems, ensuring a smooth and safe journey every time.

Affordable Rates: Quality doesn't always have to come at a high price. We offer competitive pricing to ensure that multidimensional travel is accessible to all.

24/7 Customer Support: Our dedicated support team is always on standby, ready to assist you with any queries or concerns.

I chuckled at the ad, especially about the question on choosing BuyMort, and wondered when this little ditty had been made. Why choose BuyMort? Who else could I choose? I went ahead and accepted the charges.

It was meant for two things. The first; getting me to Storage, where the fight I wanted to pick was. The second; making sure the CTV camera crew I flew by got a good shot of the pod warping away my ship. I needed to be sure there was no questioning my relic craft’s FTL capabilities just yet.

Especially since this one had two different kinds of FTL capability for them to worry about.

Chapter 10

One of the wonderful things about commodified life and monopolist-market competition was that it was so easy to make counter media groups, like the pundits on Church TV, do the rest of my work for me.

I fought the urge to lash out at the Church TV portion of the station by stomping on the lower-intention pedal, and merely stared at their oversized viewports while I waited for my pod. The ship's arms had twitched when the impulse hit me, and I was happy about the intention pedal system.

It worked, it told the heavy demolitions machine what I actually wanted to wreck and what I was just having a bad thought or two about. Very important system to have, with a machine that attempts to read your intentions.

A small hatch on the nearby station wall cracked free a bit of icing as it opened, and a standard BuyMort pod came out to dazzle me with rainbow light as I was warped away. I reflexively closed my eyes, but the ship’s sensors fed me a screaming field of pure, blinding white.

For a fraction of a second, I beheld the extra-dimensional nature of the multiversal flow all around me. Shock-white strands of hardened material stretched out below and above me, on all sides. Flowing past me and through me as I hurtled through it at breakneck speed, approaching a black blister that sparkled with tiny stars.

Then my momentum stopped, and I was floating in the warm glow of Storage, looking down on another space station, and the tiny ships that floated around it.

“Warlord Dawes to BlueCleave operating in the Storage arena,” I growled, opening a BlueCleave com channel. It was only local but would do for my purposes. “Be advised, I am engaging the enemy relic craft threatening Storage.”

I got a smattering of quiet acknowledgements back. The troopers all knew what this moment meant. Open war had long been whispered about in BlueCleave. For nearly ten months, they watched as legend after legend from their culture had risen to fulfill a long-forsaken promise.

The Church was going to fall. And BlueCleave was going to be what felled it.

“Admiral Omen,” I said, raising my voice in expectation at the end.

“Yes, Warlord,” came back his immediate response.

“Engage the insectile craft, I’ll take the glowing triangle.”

“Immediately!” Admiral Omen snapped, and the line cut off. He and Ordo could handle it, they’d become quite the crew since they started flying together.

I pushed the ship, my target easy to see. My fingers flexed into fists as I bore down on the raise-intentions pedal and pushed the suit to faster speeds. The brightly glowing triangle sensed me coming and turned, its hard light surfaces rippling and sparking as it powered its primary weapon.

My ship’s bladed arms reflexively raised and formed a funnel. The brightly glowing ship fired, a jagged bolt of bright, white energy blasting from its front tip into my ship. The energy raced from arm to arm, bouncing until it had spent itself. The Buzzsaw’s blades were glowing red by the time it finished, but by then I was on the other ship.

With a grunt of exertion, I reached out and slammed my own ship’s limbs through its flat-surfaced hull. A dozen arms shattered small portions of the hard light hull, which immediately repaired itself, sparks of light erupting to fade out in Storage’s upper atmosphere.

I pulled on the ship’s drive and stomped the raise-intentions pedal, hauling both my ship and the enemy’s down into the swirling clouds of Storage. Powerful winds tore at the ships, and my opponent’s relic vessel acted as a sail in the soupy atmosphere of the gas giant. Its great, flat edges caught the wind and hauled us through the clouds in a jerking plummet.

Alarms blared and my attention was dragged to an incoming pillar, part of the Storage station we were about to hit. My aimed shot perk kicked into action again, and I dodged us both out of the way mere meters from impact. I dragged the other ship lower again, diving hard to take the enemy craft beyond the bottom of Storage’s buoyancy platforms, where it couldn’t hurt any of my people.

With its control over gravity, my ship was able to spend reactor charge to reinforce the hull and withstand tremendous pressures. I doubted my opponent’s ship, its hull made primarily of projected hard light, could boast the same.

So I dragged them down into the thick, green clouds with me. As we plummeted, I kept an eye on my charge to get a gauge of how much pressure I was dealing with. The charge kept steadily crawling down, advancing as we went, but the relic ship I was attached to kept firing its main weapon and recharging my capacitor to full, so I had a hard time guessing.

Then the ship shut down its hard light surfaces, and I saw it for what it really was. A tiny craft, piloted by a single, fearful orc encased in a house-sized translucent metal ball attached to a hard light projection system. The two projectors filling the bulk of the pyramidal hull were shaped like oversized tanker trucks without the cabins.

The instant after my ship’s arms let go, the enemy vessel reignited their hard light hull and took off into the swirling clouds. I pressed my raise-intentions pedal and pursued, my ship riding on a nearly full charge.

Battle and extended spaceflight were going to tax my charge significantly, but the vessel itself was designed with that limitation in mind. The ship’s bladed arms spiraled around each other to form a conical nose for the craft, pushing aside the thick atmosphere and increasing my capability for speed and maneuvering.

The enemy craft had disappeared into the thick clouds, but my craft presented a faint, spectral trail on screen for me to follow. I also had the advantage of not glowing like a lightbulb the way they did, so when I reacquired the hostile craft, I merely followed above them in the thick clouds, waiting for my chance.

Energy crackled and sparked along the craft’s edges while the pilot climbed. I matched their trajectory and waited, spreading several of my ship’s arms into a ready position. The Buzzsaw extended its bladed limbs hesitantly, until I pressed my raise-intentions pedal. Then the bladed edges reached for the glowing triangle eagerly, and the ship dipped lower to attack again.

It surprised me by changing course and blasting toward me with a bolt of electricity. My ship’s limbs caught it again, glowing with heat as they bounced the lightning blasts between themselves. But the ship itself slammed through my ship’s arms, scattering them while I was distracted by the lightning show.

The majority of them were unharmed, but one had taken enough of a hit to bend, which was limiting its ability to retract or move. My ship moved automatically, ripping the limb out at the root and feeding it into its furnace mouth, even as a new limb was hauled from the factory hatch above me and slipped into place.

Buzzsaw’s repair was completed in less than thirty seconds, and the new limb waved menacingly, broad blades glinting in the glow of Storage’s clouds.

I frowned and turned, shifting the ship with me as I followed the glowing dot of the enemy craft. They climbed still, so I focused, stomped the raise-intentions pedal, and chased after that ship. Within seconds, I had them again, and slapped the Buzzsaw’s whip-arms into the hard light hull over and over, blasting parts of it away in bright bursts of sparks.

The enemy craft re-built its hard light hull as fast as I could smash it away, pushing out more and more of the orange structure from the narrow railings at the edges of the pyramid, where the long projectors were hung. I focused my many lashing limbs at the thin structures but was repulsed by more yet more hard light extrusions.

My fight was a real fight, this relic ship could defend itself. I laughed the thought away and focused on a specific movement I wanted from my own craft, before stomping on the raise-intentions pedal. The Buzzsaw’s arms folded into concentric patterns around the edge of the ship’s central disk, blades extended.

Then it spun up to high speed, and I gritted my teeth as I chased after the enemy ship again. Fortunately, I was able to fixate on my perception through the craft’s sensors, which held a solid lock on the Church relic ship, and not the washing machine cycle my own body was going through as I turned the cruiser into a literal buzzsaw and flung it through the Church’s glowing relic ship.

Hard light sparks erupted as the scream of tearing metal rolled through my craft. I felt it in my bones when I went through the other ship’s core, sparking a massive explosion in my wake.

The Buzzsaw protected me, ceasing the spin and folding its arms into a defensive matrix across its own backside while it hurtled up and away from the growing explosion. A pocket of Storage’s atmosphere went up in a great gout of flame. We were so deep that a dull glow from the surface was the only evidence.

I smiled as I flew the ship up through the clouds, increasing my speed to join Admiral Omen. “BuyMort,” I said, focusing on the explosion behind me in the atmosphere. “I’d like to sell any debris from that ship. Direct sale to Silken Sands.”

Purchase: Oversized hard light projection system fragments, scorched. Rarity: rare, Quality: fair, 5,132,000 morties dispensed.

Purchase: Biological material, DNA Intact Rarity: uncommon, Quality: good, 30,000 morties dispensed.

Storage’s glittering strands blew past as I shot up out of the clouds to see the battlefield before me.

The Sand Star was in a scramble of a fight. I watched as the insectile craft parts swarmed around it, each of its separated body segments firing bolts of energy to clutch at while they chased the ship. They appeared to be snapping at the ship’s heels, literally speaking. Admiral Omen was a better pilot than what I saw from the Sand Star’s clunky movements, and I became immediately concerned. He was barely keeping ahead of them.

My foot eased onto the raise-intentions pedal and increased my ship’s momentum toward the conflict.

“Wave off, Windowpuncher!” grunted Ordo over coms. “We’ve got this!”

“Warlord, we are tiring out the bugs. The closer we let them come to us the more energy they expend in their attempts to grapple our craft. Please do not engage,” Admiral Omen said, through grit teeth as he steered the little frigate.

The man was dodging six angry, hungry predatory centipede ship segments, while intentionally letting them get as close as they could without actually grabbing the ship. I didn’t respond, just stomped on the lower-intentions pedal and came to a relative stop.

A swarm of insectoid ship segments chased the Sand Star in erratic patterns, each diving at the vessel in an attempt to latch on, but each being thwarted by Admiral Omen’s quick piloting and the Sand Star’s aggressive fusion engines.

I veered off course, pushing my ship toward the BuyMort gate instead. I wanted to get in position over the Church’s temple class battle cathedral. Axle’s military science team had sent me briefing information about the commonly deployed gigantic vessels. Most of their weaponry was based on energy platforms.

Made sense, they were each the size of a large city, and had to boast massive reactors to even move.

Banks of heavy, building sized pulse laser turrets formed the backbone of the gigantic ship’s close-range defenses, and those would be primarily meaningless against the Buzzsaw, unless I let too many of them hit me at once and overheated the vessel. Its arms were good radiators, blowing off excess heat energy directly into space once the reactor was fully charged.

I could take a lot of fire, but there were limits. My cruiser could easily slide inside the line of primary weaponry, including their massive plasma bolters, long range linear cannons, and complement of atomic and antimatter headed torpedoes.

The Buzzsaw was capable of short range FTL travel, and more than anything else I wanted to try it out.

But there was also the benefit of directly threatening the Church in front of all the worlds, upper and lower. Everyone paid attention to Storage. The display of power would be unmistakable and drive the irrational leadership within Church power structures to further aggression against me personally.

With a chuckle, I thought of activating the ship’s faster than light capability and pressed the intention pedal. A warning sprang onto my screen. “Gravity haul engaged.”

With a surge of dizzying movement and streaked light, the Buzzsaw blinked into position above the battle citadel.

Chapter 11

Alarms sounded, and a communication attempt came through MortMobile to my craft. I ignored it, merely opening the ship’s limbs wide and holding it in position. I kept the lower-intentions pedal clamped to the floor as I imagined tearing into the massive ship underneath me. Directly to its power core, a gigantic antimatter reactor at the heart of the oversized vessel.

Then gravity haul out of the ship and to a safe distance while it detonated.

Of course, I had to think of the hundreds of smaller craft floating near the gate, trying to leave the system after having picked up their shipment of innocent travelers seeking work and lives to live.

It was fine. If they made me, I could tear every weapon off the ship while leaving its primary systems intact. I would be merciful while tearing them apart, and make sure nobody else got hurt. The blades on screen in front of me snipped and clipped at empty space as I eased off the lower-intentions pedal a bit.

Just enough to scare them a little.

With a sigh, I finally accepted the com request. Captain Ransom Broadleaf glared at me from the screen, and I smiled beneath my silvery helmet.

“How dare you threaten a Church vessel!” he seethed.

“My affiliate is dealing with a dangerous rogue relic craft in nearby space, Captain,” I sighed. “My ship is here for your protection. Be assured that once my navy has dealt with the nearby threat, I will happily depart your . . . understated, shall we say, ship’s presence. The gold is a little ostentatious, and the gargoyles positively give me nightmares. I keep buying clay versions of them in my sleep Captain, I do not want to be here.”

The sallow elf scowled deeply at me and removed his captain’s hat. “You play a dangerous game, warlord.”

I shook my head and shrugged. “Yep. We all do, Captain. That’s the whole point.” When his scowl betrayed the barest hint of confusion, I nearly grinned. “Again Captain, once my navy has handled the threat, I’ll be out of your ears. Until then, sit tight. I’ve got your back,” I said, coldly. Then I closed the communications channel.

MortMobile’s psychic deity chuckled in my head.

All of the battle citadel’s laser turrets aimed directly at my ship, but I spread out the arms in a formation that would intercept any incoming fire and redirect it to my somewhat depleted reactor.

Even the gravity haul had been a light drain on the capacitor, over such a short distance. I ignored the craft below, if it fired on me, all it would do was help me out anyway. Instead, I started looking up battle reports from the Sol System.

The gate fleet had begun to engage, and it came with a new Afflqwst notification.

Quest – Kill the beholder in Sol system before it causes catastrophic damage to your affiliate’s primary star.

REQUIREMENTS:

1. Kill the beholder building speed for an attack run at Sol. (incomplete)

The primary solar system of operation for your affiliate will be destroyed if this quest is failed.

REWARD – Item coupon, purchase unlock.

My concern rose at the Afflqwst notification. Another beholder so fast was not a good sign. It almost seemed like they took being killed in public personally.

“I saw it,” he answered. “Sending you gate footage now. I know we’ve already killed two, but this one is . . . different. I’m concerned; it's barely been a day since the last one. Are we sure Cube is up for this?”

In my helmet, the footage from the gate played, as something monstrous warped in. The rainbow pool of light was immense, nearly blinding in intensity before it winked out and a dark shadow remained. What first appeared to be an oversized asteroid, its surface scorched and covered in impact craters, moved in a slow spin that revealed the beholder inside.

From a large, singed opening in the great rocky shell, a massive flaming eye peered, cautiously, at its new surroundings. It took particular interest in the nearby ships, staring at each of them while it slowly rotated. Small belches of flame and atmosphere began to erupt from the various craters across its shell, adjusting the beholder's position before two massive, protruding formations at its rear produced twin large, sustained plumes of intense blue flame.

The fire and force destroyed one of the smaller ships in the beholder’s own fleet before the rest near its exhaust ports were able to flee. While this occurred, a simple message was broadcast to every ship in the region over MortMobile.

A smaller eye of flame on the greater body rolled and slowly blinked, focusing on the camera in its armor. A deep voice rumbled across the psychic waves. “BE. NOT. AFRAID,” the beholder lied, as its drive plumes destroyed another ship filled with its own people.

The gathered civilian fleet also scattered or was knocked aside, being directly in the path of its larger thrust flames. They, at least, all survived the incident.

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I laughed as I pulled up my MortMobile app and called Axle. The ad bots understood that ships were being broken, but they didn't understand the why or the gravitas of the situation.

The planetoid beholder began moving away from the gate, and the gathered fleets. At first slowly, but it gained speed exponentially and quickly vanished from view.

“BlueCleave has a Sand Star in pursuit. It was warped in at the gate to follow the bright plague creature, we’ve spent a lot of portals today,” Axle said.

“Terribly expensive ones, and on top of several expensive ship purchases at that. How are our numbers looking right now though?” I asked.

“A crew just sold the planet closest to the sun in the Sleem system. Thin crust, molten during the day and frozen solid at night. Mostly iron, nickel, some not insignificant gold deposits deeper in the mantle. Our general affiliate mortie pool is up a number I don’t properly comprehend,” my Knowle friend admitted.

“But our fleet is about to be engaged. Keep watching,” he added.

I obeyed him and un-paused the video in my helmet. As I watched, the massive, gathered mercenary and disavowed military fleet broke into several formations and pushed their drives, jetting away after their targets with various colors of drive plumes.

Spaceships in dozens of varieties, shapes, and armament spread out, and entire groups of them speared out into the distant darkness of the solar system.

It was easy to tell which fleet was meant for which target, just based on their sizes. The largest of the fleets went toward Nu-Earth, a contingent of jagged, triangular craft with aggressive weaponry built into their front wedges, shielded above and below by armored ridges. Each sported a sizable bridge portion with attached docking ports for smaller versions of themselves surrounding the top portion of the vessel.

The carriers, each laden with smaller, corvette attack ships, burned toward my home, my family, and the meager enough fleet that guarded it all. Captain Thresher and the BlueCleave pilots would be up to the task. They had to be, I had other battles to win. While we could afford the portals to shuttle me back and forth as needed, I was needed on other worlds more than Nu-Earth.

Defending the affiliate’s home planet against whatever threat the unaffiliated fleets presented without me was going to send a message too, but not just to the Church. I was looking forward to their next move, it would tell me a great deal about what I was facing.

If our enemies were wise, they would recognize our space superiority and refrain from further fleet aggression. If they were foolish, they would spend more troops and equipment against us. If they were truly dangerous, something I hadn’t considered was likely, and I feared the cost of that lesson’s learning.

While I trusted my fleets, I felt the ever-present tug of fear on my heart and pushed it aside.

Several other, smaller portions of the main fleet broke away and headed in different directions. I swore silently as I saw a small but nasty fleet of fighters equipped with railguns jet off toward Saturn. It was fine, I just needed to trust my pilots, my military. They were ready for this fight. Everyone was, except for the Church mercenaries, of course.

Chapter 12

The menace of the massive Church citadel ship loomed large of the navies present, its bristling weapons moving silently in the vacuum of space, keeping wary watch over its interstellar flock. The Nahgah Prime fleet swarmed forward under its gaze, a hundred sleek, predatory vessels bearing down on my outnumbered defenders. They reached out like a claw, multiple lead ships bringing their squadrons in from every possible forward angle.

Cameras zoomed in on the tiny, distant vessels, their drive plumes the primary identifier. All of the Nahgah Prime fleet broke into a flanking orb formation, moving to surround my smaller fleet when a bright beam cut through the lead vessel’s shields with a sparking burst and decapitated the ship in a quick sweep.

All of the cameras focused on the battleship as its rear and front portions detonated separately. First the engines blew, sending the front capsule hurtling forward, erupting as it went, a miniature fragmentation comet to scatter and ripple among my own gathered fleet’s shields.

CTV had a hell of a time tracking Phyllis’ secondary mech formation, the lancer model equipped with those massive rocket boots. The cameras’ zoom just couldn’t keep up as she darted about at blistering speeds. Though her mech was dwarfed by the ships, it single-handedly wreaked havoc on the vanguard of the enemy fleet.

Phyllis had reverted to her late forties, and her clarity of mind had begun returning more than ever. She was even starting to display some advanced reflexive capabilities, comparative to Nu-Earth human norms.

With another sparking burst of shields, and a quick, sweeping blow, Phyllis sawed another ship’s head from its long tail-drive section and jetted away as it erupted into fireballs. That was enough to break their charge, and the rest of the special forces fleet veered off to form their own defensive formation.

But then, my Sand Star pilot pushed away from our gate fleet and directly charged the enemy fleet alone. Their blue drive-fire streaked in a line as the ship hurtled at the enemies.

Her ship was so much faster than theirs that even close range personal defense cannons, and their monstrous fire rates, were unable to strike the Sand Star frigate. When the hobb pilot fired their weapons, the enemy ship's shield tried to sustain the bombardment of shaped micro-particulates fired from hundreds of tiny sandcaster barrels. The shield quickly failed, a doubled series of tiny explosions ripping apart the enemy craft before the Sand Star frigate zipped on to their next target.

Most ship’s shields could not refresh anywhere near quickly enough to prevent the flood of the sandcasters projectiles, as millions of particulates per second fired at close to a third the speed of light. A ring of them would form around the primary firing line, keeping the shield at bay while all the micro-particles within were given free access to blast away the ship’s armor, hull, and then sensitive equipment.

Combined with the frigate's advantageous speed over the comparatively clunky ships, it was more of a massacre than a fight.

While Phyllis dodged overlapping fields of close-range defensive fire, my hobb pilot began systematically destroying the Nahgah Prime fleet, one battleship at a time. That had been their orders, to destroy the ships until unconditional surrender, if it came. As always, we were not going to miss a chance to make a point, when revealing a new capability.

The Church had thought us limited to just the one ship, just a handful of starfish suits. I wasn’t eager to prove them wrong unless I could do so at significant cost to their ability to wage war on me. Their fleet of pawns frustrated me, as I knew I had to show my hand in order to survive the attack. But the Church would lose no public facing, or substantive military capability in the attack by using proxies against me, and withholding their direct forces.

Each of the larger mercenary ships was surrounded by a complement of attached fighters, and dozens of smaller versions of the long ships deployed aggressive drive plumes as they tried to engage the Sand Star.

A personnel file was attached to the combat video, and I hurriedly opened it to find one of my pilots from the Storage wars. The young hobb woman who had been so determined to rise among the ranks of our navy appeared to have made her dreams come true. Her name was Rooska, of the IronSide tribe out of Storage.

Looking at her brought up a mercenary ad, and I let it play out, eager to see how the tribe was portraying itself.

Tribe IronSide: Strong Battle, Many Fight

A video played in my head, a platoon of six hobbs bounding forward through withering laser fire, an artillery shell blasting a crater in the background.

Tribe IronSide! Storage fight many, Sleem always come. Kill others, but no kill Ironsiders. IronSiders strong, have many skill. BlueCleave give honors, IronSiders ready for fight.

Honor: IronSider skilled. Fight with honor. Loyal BlueCleave Associate. Fight hard and fast.

IronSiders contract available. Sign now. Want details? See Affiliate page.

One of BlueCleave’s larger tribal acquisitions, the IronSiders had come from a heavily populated portion of Storage. They had required BlueCleave reinforcement in order to withstand the influx of Sleem that had precipitated the most recent attempted planetary addition to BuyMort. Part of that arrangement meant being folded into BlueCleave, and more than one former IronSide hobb had risen among the ranks to wear a starfish suit with record speed.

They were honorable, like most hobb tribes, and could be trusted to act in the affiliate’s best interests. While the absorbed tribes kept their names through affiliate associate relationship, none of the people referred to themselves as Tribe IronSide any longer, and each seemed eager and proud to be part of their new tribe.

Seemed like kicking ass was its own virtue, among hobbs. Those who did it well were considered worthy of leadership. Pilot Rooska was clearly intent on carving out her own legend, as part of Rayna’s mighty army destined to sweep aside the Church in glorious battle.

I wondered briefly when I would get the young hobb woman killed. Then I shook off the thought and watched the battle unfold.

My gate defense fleet, primarily Boing missile-and-armor cruisers bought in bulk, aided with a long range bombardment of the enemy craft. But it was Rooska and Phyllis who did the bulk of the work, something that was not lost on the greater community of BuyMort.

More whining from Church publicity agents about the dangers of relics began to flood the propaganda networks, but something had changed. Nobody believed it anymore. The Church had been spinning lies for as long as anyone could remember, including the lie about protecting them from the Sleem.

Something that I had actually done.

The Church commentary was easy to ignore, but one line in particular stood out to me and nearly made me smile. Molls’ enemy, the female Conda CTV host, said “it’s a very good thing that beam weapon the Warlord’s bodyguard is using has a relatively short range. She’d have killed every ship in the gate’s vicinity by this point otherwise. I believe we are seeing the personification of Nu-Earth warrior spirit in living form here folks.”

I had to hand it to their graphics department, they got a mostly clear still frame shot of Phyllis’ mech, booster boots engaged, and pinned a small version of it to the screen anytime her weapon fired.

Another grim smile touched my lips as I watched Phyllis swing her weapon’s beam through a small swarm of fighters chasing the Sand Star frigate. It darted from one long-bodied craft to the next, detonating reactor cores and rocking the area with explosions.

Too many of the Nahgah Prime vessels were clustered together in the early stages of breaking to combat formations, and with only a few well-placed attacks, the enemy fleet had dwindled from nearly a hundred ships down to only a handful of uninjured craft.

At that point the fight was over. The ships on-screen all stopped firing at one another, and even Phyllis’ slashing beam went dark.

“All right folks, that looks like it may be the end of this particular fight, the first battle of what certainly appears to be many, in the Sol system,” said the CTV host hesitantly. Her scales were an appropriate orange tinge as she turned back to face the cameras. “Hostilities seem to have ceased, which leads me to believe negotiations have begun. Another clear military victory for Silken Sands, but with several other aggressive, unidentified fleets, and yet another of the so-called bright plague creatures in the Sol system, supported by several armed fleets this time, one has to question how short-lived that victory will be.”

“Hey, yeah,” I said, swiping the battle footage off my screen. “Where’d that giant beholder go?”

“Bright plague creature,” Axle corrected. “We’re attempting to track it now, but its speed is continuing to increase. The only ship capable of keeping pace now is the Sand Star we have in pursuit.”

“Tell them not to engage,” I said.

Axle nodded. “Orders were to follow and report, they’re just keeping it in sight. The creature appears to be moving up-sun. It’s leaving the solar system, so far as we can tell. If it continues building speed, we may lose it.”

“Up-sun?” I questioned, scowling. “Doesn’t it need to go down-sun to reach . . . the sun?”

“Not necessarily,” Axle replied. “It appears to move with rather conventional directed fusion ‘drives,’ whatever means of fuel it’s using, so it is likely attempting a slingshot from one of the larger, outer planets. Very likely Neptune, based on current trajectory. I have a team on it. We’ll be better able to predict its route soon.”

“Good, keep me posted. I don’t like having those things in my universe,” I said.

“It’s your universe now too?” Axle said.

I sighed and nodded. “You got me. I just meant the same universe I’m in.”

“Ah,” Axle said, licking his nose. “I agree, in that case. Their presence is terribly unnerving. Will Cube even be up for another meal, let alone one this size?”

“I do not know,” I admitted. “But all I need is for him to distract it, so Dario can take his shot. I’m sure I can convince him to do that for us.”

Axle nodded. “Would you like footage of the other battles, as they occur?” he asked. “Most of the primary assault fleet is still en route to their targets.”

“Some of the fleets that reach their targets last will retreat once they hear about the Sand Stars, but I’m betting the Nu-Earth fleet will have something to counter our new frigates. I’m ready to come home when needed, just use another portal,” I told him.

“Yes, I must get used to doing that. Our affiliate perks as a top ten are . . . extensive,” Axle said. “We also still have four Sand Star frigates available to field, Rayna tells me. There may be no need for you to come home at all, just yet. The station in orbit of Storage still needs you, that battle has begun as well.”

“BlueCleave is holding?” I asked.

“Of course,” Axle replied immediately. “With starfish troopers and Tower golems on the front lines, we’ve suffered no casualties at all yet, but the Church forces do appear to be attempting to sabotage the station in an attempt to prevent us from taking it. The troops on the station are asking for you. Rayna and Tollya have decided you’re not required just yet, but . . .” he dwindled off, distracted by the soft click of his keyboard.

“But I will be,” I sighed. “Too many fights to win.”

“Well,” Axle said, looking back at me. “I’m ready to order portals as needed.”

“Thank you, Axle, but I’ll handle it. I want you focused on the beholder,” I told the Knowle, raising a hand before he could correct me. “Sorry, bright plague creature. I do not like having that thing loose in my system, and we don’t even know what it’s doing.”

“It’s here to destroy our sun, somehow by building speed, if Afflqwst is to be believed,” Axle quipped.

“Has it ever been wrong before?” I asked with a sigh.

“Sadly no. We have to operate under the assumption that the bright plague creature is here to destroy our sun, and that its up-sun movement is somehow involved in the goal of increasing its speed,” Axle replied. “Hence the slingshot theory.”

“Logical,” I said. “But I need more, keep at it.”

Axle nodded, licked his nose, and reached for his device. “I’ll keep you posted.”

Then he disconnected.

Chapter 13

I turned my attention back to our flagship, Admiral Omen’s Sand Star, and the running battle he was engaged in. The insectile craft had begun to flag already, its blasts weakening, and ability to move through space slowing. As it became weaker, its segments reconnected to form the full creature once more.

With a few more quick maneuvers, Admiral Omen had spent the creature’s biofuel, and it curled up into a protective ball, head lodged firmly in its center. The ball of insect looked almost perfectly round, if not for the weaponry strapped and bolted to its surface.

“Warlord,” Ordo’s voice grumbled through my comms, and I sat up.

“Yes, Ordo,” I immediately replied.

“We got it tired out, but not sure it safe to approach for sure,” he said. “Bug never used guns.”

“I’m on it,” I said, immediately pressing my raise-intentions pedal and sending the ship flying over toward their area, closer to Storage.

The oversized insect was paling as I approached, its deep forest green fading to a light greenish gray. Its outer husk shrank inward where it could, and stretched awkwardly where weaponry was attached to it.

As my ship approached at close range, the bug-ship’s weapons opened fire and my own craft’s arms reflexively whipped in front of me to protect the Buzzsaw’s body. Rounds silently sparked from the metal plating and chips of it broke away, glittering as they blasted free.

The bug spun and spiraled wildly, the weapons causing unintentional thrust that dragged it closer to Storage’s gravity well.

The weaponry was to avoid exactly this scenario; the Church would rather the bug-ship be destroyed than captured. Some of the guns had been crushed by the insectile craft’s body, others torn free when it curled up on itself. But those that remained were intent on keeping my ship at bay.

I snarled and pushed on the raise-intentions pedal harder, focusing on the weapons. While one set of metal-covered arms protected us from the incoming fire, the other whipped out from the far side of the disk and began snapping the guns off the insect’s body.

My intentions were clear, very direct, and heavily focused on. The pedal was on the floor, and the ship’s arms moved so fast they were a blur. Some of them shifted into different positions to cover different areas of incoming fire, swapping bladed portions as they were damaged. One arm used up all of its armored blades, and was torn free, then fed into the ship’s furnace-mouth, while the other arms continued protecting me with rapid movements to counter the enemy PDC fire.

The rear arms reached out and snapped off guns with quick, carefully aimed flicks of the bladed whip ends. Teslak had promised me precision demolition capabilities, and all I had to do was focus on a gun for an arm to reach out and cut it free to float away in space, and eventually fall into Storage’s vast atmosphere, if none of us sold it to BuyMort, of course.

Anything that fell deep enough into the planet would be crushed to a liquid by the sheer pressure of its immense gravity well. Anything not powered by a gravity harness, anyway.

No Church vessels moved toward us, as deniability was still their order of the day, but I used an arm to swat the insectile craft closer to the planet anyway, so I could work in peace while removing its weaponry. The bug itself did not react to the strike in any way, and only a few guns remained, firing sporadically when the bug-ship would turn them toward me in its rapid tumble.

We vanished into the upper atmosphere’s thin clouds, to finish our demolition among the silvery spires and dangling connections of Storage.

Almost lazily, my ship’s long arms reached out and cradled the creature, sliding the flats of the blades across its body carefully to grip it without harming it. All the while, more arms extended further and carefully plucked away the Church metal bolted to its body.

The Buzzsaw had rebuilt the ship’s single damaged arm, and I hadn’t even noticed it happening. Operation of the craft was wonderfully intuitive, I merely thought about what I wanted to happen, and pressed on my intention pedals to guide the computer into making it happen. Within hours of first piloting the craft, I was barely noticing my use of the pedals any longer.

It was all rapidly becoming muscle memory, as this ship and its many arms became an extension of myself more than it was a tool I wielded. Once the bug ship was free of its many addons, I cradled it carefully in the vessel's arms and climbed back out of the upper atmosphere of Storage.

While I had worked, Admiral Omen had escorted one of our BlueCleave vessels in the area toward us, and I quickly offloaded the creature in one of its hangar bays. The craft were the same oversized triangular ships heading toward Nu-Earth to attack it. We all bought from the same vendors.

But it had large cargo hangars, and neatly served our purposes. The creature would eventually be offloaded onto the largest space station in orbit of Storage, once my affiliate controlled it. Until then, the original Sand Star would be there to defend our most recent relic claim.

It would be studied. Knowle scholars, engineers, and biologists would obsess over every detail of the creature for years. If it could be useful to my affiliate in any way, it would be.

I gave a small thought to whichever Church noble had previously owned the craft. It must have been quite the feather in their cap, as relic ownership in the Church seemed reserved to the upper crusts. Blowing up one relic ship, and outright stealing another, in full view of the public, was going to make me some potent enemies.

The bug ship itself stayed inert, rolled up in a ball with grayed outer flesh. While I set it down on the hangar bay floor, I couldn’t help but wonder if it was dead. But that was another department’s job to determine, I had a space station to help take over.

It was time to kick the Church off the primary control station for Storage.

Storage itself, the rudimentary Dyson Sphere surrounding the gas giant bearing the same name, had three orbital stations that controlled its functions, with BuyMort blessings, and supposedly BuyMort’s parts.

That meant the Church was lying. They were definitely lying about the blessings portion, but I had to wonder and worry about the parts. If there was any BuyMort hardware on any of the three space stations, I needed to be very careful how I proceeded.

The last time I had hit BuyMort directly, it had summoned a series of kaiju-sized worms with massive wings to attempt to kill me. I had grown in personal power since then a tremendous amount, and my advanced cognition warned me that while I may not know exactly what BuyMort would summon to defend itself from me this time, it was going to be difficult for anyone around me to survive whatever showed up.

My rampage on the space station would have to be restrained. Small scale.

But a rampage it would have to be.

Almost a year prior, a different version of myself had set me on a path that I could no longer turn aside from. A persona that I carefully developed and had to live up to now dictated my actions.

The soldiers on that station were Church regulars, from all over the multiverse. My plan was simple. Kill my way through them until I shut down their sabotage squads, then move on to secure the necessary environmental controls. My people were already using personal and space heaters and breathing from tanks in certain parts of the station.

The Church couldn’t shut it all off, so we got some of their air and heat for free, but with the sheer size of the place, and our control of the doors, it was a bit of a stalemate. BlueCleave fought strictly defensively and held their ground while they awaited my return.

I sighed and piloted the Buzzsaw high across the surface of Storage to park it hunched over one of the airlocks my people controlled. The demolition cruiser gently placed its many legs in a defensive formation around its core while I rose from the chair.

Armor plates interlocked and presented a sharp wall to protect the craft. Construction vehicle it may have once been, but I saw Spectre’s alterations in its behavior.

A message on screen appeared. “Defensive posture will remain until pilot returns. Please be aware that no other pilot may interface with this craft. Any attempts to do so could result in potentially lethal realignment of synaptic structure.”

“Huh,” I replied, standing as the many tendrils of the chair and my suit both retracted from one another. The message remained on screen, and I used my gravity harness to float through the narrow path to my craft’s exit ramp.

The tiny room surrounding it had space for a few personal items, and a hammock capable of hanging across the area. It was sparse, but enough to live in if needed. There was even a small compartment in the wall with a fresh label scarred into its metal in English that read, “cold food storage.”

I tucked all the information away for the future. In my mind, swarms of Sand Star frigates floated alongside dozens of the ‘Buzzstar’ cruisers, wiping Church worlds clean of resistance. My pilots would be only too eager to match with a demolition cruiser of their own.

Then I thought of Molls. Her family’s former home on Nahgah, in the Nahgah Prime system. Her people would be crushed under my fleet, and under the invasion of hundreds of thousands of starfish troopers, with millions more Tower golems.

Burning cities filled with screaming people rose in my mind, and an ad slid in front of it, distracting me.

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I shook my head at the juxtaposition of the ad with my own hard thoughts.

Oppression. Leadership through force, and force alone. It wasn’t an appealing thought. Already there were whispers of my ‘genocidal’ tendencies, on the upper planets. Lee warned me that my reputation walked a knife edge, in the social circles he frequented.

That went into the ‘unsolved problems’ portion of my mind to be worked on in the background, as a hobb in a space suit wearing magnetic boots approached my airlock from the other side and peered in the window. I floated, armor down, chest exposed, and shining chrome helmet on full display.

Chapter 14

When I first started running the affiliate, I could be myself. Over time, as we grew more and more, Rayna coached me to use the nanite ‘anti-magic’ helmet in public more often instead. It encouraged the war-footing she wanted from all of BlueCleave.

I couldn’t turn off my information flow anyway. I wanted the helmet up so I could watch the data streams of the encroaching fleet actions in Sol system, and the tiny CTV screen I had up at most times. On mute, with the subtitles running.

It was always good to watch the enemy’s propaganda. It gave you hints and clues as to their actual motives, their actual movements. And my attention span had continued to expand. I was capable of so much more than I ever used to be, just by being able to pay attention, with full clarity and recall, on several things at the same time.

It felt like a superpower, but it was just normative brain function. I hadn’t realized how much the lead, radiation, and traumatic brain injuries had slowed me down throughout the years, but living without them was something I never got sick of.

When I wanted to narrow my focus, I could. In battle, in bed, at the bar with Morbin, it didn’t matter. I could zoom my mind in on whatever task I wanted to, if I wanted to. But for example, if traveling as a mere passenger, I found myself reading while listening to something from Axle’s library in the background and being able to retain the information from both sources without effort.

I could also read much faster than I ever had been able to before. Reports and tomes from the library both were easily consumed. Not all of the knowledge I gained in the months since my cognitive upgrade was directly accessible, but it arose to the surface of my mind when required far easier.

The guilt I felt at keeping the Aimed Shot perk patch from my affiliate members, my friends, my family, also grew sharper. I was better able to understand the betrayal, the intentional dishonesty that I was responsible for. I saw the moments of confusion and frustration on Axle’s face when he was forced to realize that I had found the solution to a complex problem faster than he had, and it hurt us both.

But I kept my secret. The strength, invulnerability, and increased cognition were all too dangerous to allow into anyone else’s hands. A single defection with the wrong equipment could spell doom for our entire affiliate.

The suits were dead once dead, so the few deceased starfish troopers we suspected had fallen into enemy hands were nearly meaningless. Those primarily came from battles in space, which meant the corpse retrieval was sketchy at best. They were only theorized lost to the Church, they could have just as easily been lost to the frigid depths of open space, or a locking BuyMort compartment on Storage.

It wouldn’t matter either way, the Church would get what they would get from the suits, if they even had them.

Eventually the few inert suits we had, mostly from the initial reaper hound incident, simply went into secure storage deep beneath the Knowle library on Nu-Earth. An important distinction had to be made between Axle’s libraries, as he had more than one. A new structure had broken ground on Tertiary, and he was drawing up plans for a third, built into the walls and tunnels of Storage itself.

His work with the libraries distracted him from the painful breakup with Jada he had experienced. She wanted more direct action within the affiliate and his constant worrying about her military actions and Teslak augmentations had eventually driven her away.

In the months since their split, she had risen in the navy to captain one of our defensive carriers, and was one of very few officers to wear a completely upgraded starfish suit. She buried her grief at the split in her work too, her carrier was one of the tightest run in the fleet, with the best drill times and wargame results.

My own work distracted me from my guilt and ruminations as the hobb in front of me tapped on my shoulder to get my attention and motioned for me to follow him. I shook my head clear and followed, thankful for the proximity of the warming planet Storage. It could only get so cold on board the station, which was a lifesaver for my crew once the Church shut off their heat.

I followed the hobb through darkened tunnels, where power had been cut after the oxygen levels fell too low, and personnel had to be evacuated. In silence, we passed the massive, dark pyramid that had once grown much of the space station’s food. Icicles covered the visible vegetation, withered and browned as it was.

The destruction reminded me that food costs were on the rise. Famine always followed war. Another concern my mind wandered to as I floated behind my hobb guide. Silken Sands was a top ten; we could afford to feed our people. But I found us relying more and more on the yarsp hives for meat, as imports grew thin.

Having the rogue hobb tribe Terna led, and their machine-moon, operating in the Sol system had been of tremendous benefit. The planetoid ship was roughly the size of Nu-Earth’s moon, and its surface was primarily composed of food production zones. Entire cities dedicated to the growth of singular staple crops like corn, or potahtoes, the starchy purple potato look-alike that my people loved.

I didn’t have to worry about my people getting fed, while my war with the Church ramped up. But I found myself worrying about the Church’s people getting fed. Most of them were innocent, just people trying to live lives under the conditions they found themselves in. They weren’t responsible for the nobles who were giving the orders that drove this war, or the famine conditions emerging because of it. I gave the matter some thought as I drifted along in the wake of my guide.

After a few minutes, he led me back to the main control hub, where I could hear weapons fire in the hallway outside. Everyone was using traditional slow-slugs, and light energy weapons like lasers, to try and kill one another. It was all terribly civilized warfare, as though we all agreed that the space station itself was far more important than any other singular concern, including the lives of the fighters themselves.

Yet reports of potential sabotage remained, which meant the Church knew it was going to lose this fight.

My people, Knowles, humans, and hobbs mostly, were all huddled around large, glowing heaters wearing thick clothing, if not fully encased in space suits. I felt the cold but ignored it. Stoneskin was good for more than just near invulnerability, the cold itself could only penetrate so deep into my altered tissue.

The group of people were not my fighters, just workers in Axle’s massive logistics department. People with families and homes to return to who were not part of my war, except to become victims of it.

“I will restore the heat,” I said, booming voice active. “This injury will not stand. Before next rotation, we will own this station from stem to stern,” I promised.

A handful of hobbs raised fists and hearty cheers, but most of the others just huddled beneath whatever heavy clothing or heating element they could, most breathing through emergency respirators. My own helmet was showing a dangerously low oxygen environment around me by rationing mine.

I carried small oxygen grenades to use on it regularly; the nanites would happily envelope a portion of it if the grenades burst against my own head.

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Stay safe, stay oxygenated! 56,900 morties, 4.3 stars

The detonations were small, and effervescent, but they made an impression on friend and foe alike.

When my warriors saw me detonate a grenade against my own helmet, they typically cheered. When my enemies saw it, they typically gasped. Either way it made the point.

As I marched, I summoned an instant BuyMort pod and paid an exorbitant fee to have my stolen Ardee relic ax transported to me from my secret storage vault in orbit of Nu-Earth. It materialized in midair with a rainbow flash, and I grasped its hilt as I marched through the station’s BlueCleave controlled hallways.

From secured rooms with heavy doors, and hastily built bunkers in the larger hallways, troopers filed in behind me. My hobbs grunted and shuffled, most of them wearing heavy, black, armored space suits. They carried a variety of weapons.

Sidearms were almost uniform, the most recent heavy laser pistol from BlueCleave Arms. It fired a battery of twenty shots with a nice wide second-long beam per shot. It was custom designed for space-faring combat, in vulnerable environments. The beam would burn a hole through most spacesuit’s weak points and would heat most armor to a level that was difficult for the enemy combatant to ignore.

It would not, however, breach a hull. Or even most viewports.

Otherwise they carried Highwater Blasters, to a hobb. The gun was beloved for its association with me, and its ease of customization. For space station combat they had them all loaded with heavy slow-slugs. Fat, copper-jacketed lead projectiles in the style of Nu-Earth that penetrated the enemy easily enough but flattened against any metal hard enough to be used in spacecraft construction.

That meant the enemy’s armor too, but my troops just took that as a challenge to their shooting skill. Every BlueCleave hobb learned to exploit the weak points in their potential enemy’s armor as children, fighting with grass swords and grass armor in the bowels of Storage.

Most of the station’s starfish troopers joined us on my march to the front, happily dropping their heavy coats and baring their gray, weaponized chests in spite of the cold to march with their Warlord. They, like their Warlord, carried only melee weapons if they had a gravity harness upgrade.

We didn’t so much charge the enemy line as descend upon it.

The space station was divided into three primary sections. The sustainability and housing portion of the station had been cut off and deprived of oxygen and heat as soon as I erased the Sleem. The Church had sent a stealth ship to secretly sabotage my mission, which failed, alerting them to my knowledge of their intentions.

They started shooting a couple hours after that. The brave hobbs and nearly mindless Tower golems happily threw themselves onto hardship and combat for nearly a week before I arrived to finish the battle and take the station decisively. Too many other fights and emergencies, too many stolen moments with Molls to ease the writhing agony within my mind.

The responsibilities, the consequences of my every act, weighing on each step. I tried to be in combat as much as possible not just to further the goals of my affiliate, or protect its interests, but to ease my guilt at the hundreds of thousands of hobbs standing in my place when I was not.

In battle, I had clear objectives. Like the delf officer screaming orders behind the armored bunkers and lines of armed mordren and orcs. They saw us massing, my shining helmet at the lead, and were shouting orders to get their people ready for a slowing retreat. No doubt while the officers ran away in escape pods or portals.

Church security forces were weak. Bolstered by mercenaries, but weak. Their lines in the hallways ahead of our gathered horde would break, easily.

“These,” I said, booming voice active as I pointed across the open dome of the station toward our enemy’s positions. “These are those who remain! Those who know what they stand against, and what they stand for. Take no prisoners, allow no escape! These sapients are dedicated to giving their lives for the Church. Accommodate them!”

My horde descended.

Chapter 15

In the open air of the central zone, artillery fire began. Acrid smoke and flashbangs were all they could manage, but my troopers all wore helmets to protect them from both, and the Tower golems cared about neither.

Wasted morties.

I shook my head and slammed into their front line, pushing my gravity harness to increase my momentum as I swung the ax. It cleaved a heavily armored mordren warrior in two with a lazy strike and their line immediately broke.

One of the things that tended to upset my better trained and armed enemies was the way in which I completely ignored their conventions of warfare. I wasn’t any good with any of my weaponry I had started off with, clumsily rolling my way through combat and brute-forcing situations to my favor with the starfish suit.

Regardless of their better swordsmanship, for example, I could always beat them in a sword fight with my clumsy, hacking technique. It occurred to me that I didn’t tire in combat anymore, as I slapped aside an attack and slammed my ax through the offending orcish trooper.

They were firing on me too, but the ammunition just flattened against my skin and clothing. Beam weapons scalded when they struck, but not deep enough to even hurt anymore. I whirled and bashed apart one of the bunker fortifications with the relic ax, carving it to pieces with each easy stroke.

Once I punched a hole in the bunker, my troopers swarmed in.

I heard Tower golems giggling and asking to be friends, or bragging about the adventure they were having, as they crushed and pulped the Church security troopers and mercenaries alike. Even unaltered mordren couldn’t stand to the golem’s frightening strength. In spite of their innocence and seeming lack of intelligence, the golems were indomitable in combat.

When one took enough fire, or melee weapon strikes, it would eventually go down and stay down, but that took a lot more effort than it did on a regular sapient. We had a lot of vulnerable areas to strike and take us out with.

Tower golems were just muscle tissue, with what our scans showed was a complex system of nerves that acted as a sort of lower-function brain disseminated around the creature’s entire body. It was all brains, and all brawn at the same time.

When two or more ganged up on a single target, the end result was quite predictable. They would excitedly greet the enemy, while rushing toward them heedless of incoming fire, then repeatedly ask them to be friends while beating them to death.

It worked to spread terror among my enemies, as well as destroy them. The more the Church security forces fought us, the less they wanted to.

Starfish troopers, Tower golems, and I at the front end of the charge mowed through the armored Nah’gh, Orkreshi, and human forces. I aimed for the delf commanders, it was important to me that none of them escape to report directly on the massacre.

The only answer to the space station had been to control it, since the moment I set foot on board. The Church had just given me all the reason I needed to execute that answer, and I wiped them out without remorse.

The guilt and shame I felt at driving my friends to misery in my climb to power I projected onto my enemy, and snarled in satisfaction as I ripped them apart. The Church was bad, we were righteous in our war, and worst of all; there was an example to be set.

My own troops quietly and efficiently executed my orders as I left the main assault once the officers were all dead. There was nothing, and no one in the battle that could even begin to stand to me. I brushed off their weapons and ignored the fight itself once it was moving.

BlueCleave didn’t need me to kill their regular enemies.

I veered into the center of the space station, traveling down into its depths by following a map to the most likely sabotage points. While the battle for the station raged above us, I tracked down our vulnerable points and undid the Church’s worst efforts to destroy the station rather than let it fall into our hands.

At the first point, environmental controls, a simple bomb sat on the primary machinery cluster. I crushed a tiny portion of the casing on one corner, and then sold the bomb to BuyMort in its entirety.

Purchase: Remote activation chemical explosive, defused. Rarity: common, Quality: fair, 5,000 morties dispensed.

When I entered the orbital stability sector, I had to fight through a line of expensive Church mercenaries to enter the area. They were dug in with their own mobile fortifications in the darkened hallways and used heavy laser and short range plasma weapons to defend against attack.

None of it helped them against me, of course. I was singed when I came through into the orbital control booth, but the room was intact. Merely guarded.

I called in a squad of my own troops, who happily took the positions, intact weaponry, and intact fortifications of their enemies. I left a lot of it standing with exactly that desire, and my teams knew well enough what I expected from them by that point.

Rayna had them trained well.

Moving on to the structural integrity field generator, I found an actual challenge. A complex remote system has been installed, and my helmet’s scans warned me any damage would set it off. I had to call in a team of Axle’s engineers to work on the problem and defuse the system before it could be activated.

While I did these things, my troops above stormed the enemy’s remnants and wiped them out. At the end of the fight my troopers wandered the battlefield, selling armor, weapons, and corpses as part of their reward for fighting.

Hobb tradition, one I happily honored. The amounts were minor, most of it was bought by me anyway. I was just paying them through different methods. Weapons and armor went to General Tollya’s domain, and her massive armory hidden somewhere underneath the heart of Prescott.

That city had grown down into the mountains almost as much as it had grown up toward the skies.

Once my people were on-site in the space station’s critical areas, and the Church saboteurs were either on the run or hiding from my security teams, I took a moment to return to the control room and ponder the giant orb representation of Storage.

My responsibilities to the construct below, and its quintillions of sapient people swam through my mind.

I didn’t even know if Therrize was okay. The Nah’gh prostitute I used to occasionally summon via dream purchase who had become friendly with Molls and I hadn’t been seen or heard from in months.

Storage was chaos, I didn’t even know if she was alive at all.

I’d had Morbin’s family quietly moved from their home-world in the Church’s upper planets to Nu-Earth, and given them a spacious residence underground, in the former army base. They filled it, entirely, just his family.

Morbin’s people had large families.

My friend was grateful but didn’t understand the urgency until the situation with the Sleem had gotten bad enough that even upper planets were no longer safe from large incursions.

I felt the need to do that with every person down on Storage, but the reality was that I simply didn’t have the space, or the work. Yet. I was working on that, expanding my affiliate and its many associates as quickly as possible and improving the quality of life across the multiverse for those who came to work for me.

What my competitors on the top ten list didn’t realize was a simple reality. Happy people work harder, because they actually want to work. If you don’t keep them on the verge of starvation, or desperate just to acquire and maintain shelter, they are capable of so much more than the bare minimum.

My worker retention, loyalty, satisfaction, and productivity were all off the charts compared to my supposed peers in the various industries we competed in.

The plantation vessels in middle atmosphere sections on Venus, all draped in long, thick, dangling magma kelp, produced nearly twice as much as my competitors' ships. My kelp was always healthier and tasted better.

Providing the people on board a separate, luxury living station in high orbit and safe transit to and from their plantation vessels had been a massive direct mortie expense. But it paid off exponentially, as all my crew worked and lived in shifts aboard the plantation ships, which meant round-the-clock production without any harm to crew morale.

We had dramatically more growing space as well, which led to a much higher yield, a premium quality product, and a happy population of workers.

People lived, died, found love, had children together, all under my vast benevolent military dictatorship. While our enemies suffered and died at our hands.

The space station I had just taken by force would cost several hundred trillion morties to get back in proper working order, and many shipments of food for the staff that lived aboard it while that repair process happened. But it controlled the doors down on Storage.

That meant control of the entire Storage platform, apart from where its energy production was sent.

Inefficient power transfer arrays transmitted the structure’s power generation to the stations, which were nearly completely reliant upon it. Their designs were built around having no substantial power source of their own. Without Storage, the stations would simply fall into the planet below.

With the Sleem threat eliminated, we were clearing out more and more of their bodies each and every day. What remained of the alien threat was a liquid puddle that, once processed, could be used in the production of concrete-like substances necessary in our own rapid expansion.

Nu-Earth’s former civilization and infrastructure had been sold off, or repurposed by various powerful affiliates after BuyMort arrived, and then what was left had been destroyed by Kraken’s powerful earthquakes.

The belt that the creature left on our planet’s equator was back to functioning, and we regularly used it for all manner of mortie-saving acts, like hurling cargo and ships into space.

It was a magnetic accelerator, as far as we could tell, and powered itself using the ocean’s natural movements. It was gravitically locked in place, using the planet’s core as a location stabilizer to remain on the equator, but its own projection capabilities were magnetic in nature. The thing was a relic, like Kraken itself had been. Once we repaired the section of it that had been damaged by Tollya’s nuclear blast, it happily accelerated anything we wanted.

All we had to do was place something atop its wide surface that was mineral in structure, and then give it a little push. Cargo pods were equipped with small boosters that used tiny amounts of fuel to begin acceleration of the pod, before the belt increased that acceleration.

Then we told it when to interrupt that magnetic attachment, once the pod had picked up enough speed to exit Nu-Earth’s gravity, with electrical impulses. Hence the name; Gravity Sling.

Figuring that part out had actually been the hardest work, and we had Axle’s extensive library, and the many Knowle experts it attracted, to thank for solving the puzzle. It was determined that each object was assigned an electrical frequency as it was placed into the belt’s magnetic field. All we had to do to get it to let go was repeat that electrical frequency burst.

The person that had figured it out was a quiet, morose Knowle who had studied Kraken all of his life and suffered terrible depression at the creature’s violent death. Still, he worked for the man who killed the beast, because he wanted to continue learning about Kraken.

Our policy of consuming the creature had horrified the Knowle upon his arrival, but before we had run out of the moon-sized creature to eat, he had decided to have a meal of it himself. For the unique experience. His memoirs expressed terrible sadness at the realization that it tasted like regular, mundane squid, though the meal itself had been quite excellent.

He tearfully devoured every scrap and said his final personal goodbyes to the creature that had fascinated him all of his life.

I doubted the scientist knew I read his work, but he was very careful in the language he used to describe any interactions between myself and Kraken regardless. There was never any direct malice or blame laid on me for the killing. He even expressed a steadfast interest in interviewing me on the subject, but had been bogged down by Silken Sands red tape.

He had been brought on board to aid the investigation into Kraken’s remaining equipment. The massive suit, but primarily the ring. Once he theorized that Kraken interacted with it via touch, through the suit, our teams were able to infer the rest and begin scanning for specific activity when it was interacted with.

Past that point it took two weeks to get it working to our benefit. The morties we saved on fuel for spacecraft was worth the library’s expense alone. Axle’s people were right, knowledge wasn’t just power, it was everything.

The gravity sling didn’t harm our ocean’s tides, and allowed for mostly normative sea travel, so long as it was beneath the surface a healthy depth.

I’d rewarded the Knowle by giving him his interview, which had primarily focused on the brief experience of linking up with its mind, seeing the world through its eyes, and touching its memories. My honesty hurt the Knowle when I reported to him that Kraken had been little more than a beast, driven by hunger and instinct, yearning to have lives it couldn’t properly live.

He dutifully wrote down every word I said, while simultaneously recording the interview on video and audio, for posterity. Copies went into every branch of the Knowle Libraries within BuyMort.

I thought, and my mind wandered between my affiliates' various efforts across the Sol system, while awaiting reports of the battles about to take place all across it.

Chapter 16

The asteroid belt mining defense fleet had the bad luck of getting hit first, and actually suffered some damage before the Sand Star frigate arrived in a flash of rainbow light. Two of BlueCleave’s defensive battlecruisers showed torn hull and sparks from missile strikes as the new Sand Star pilot followed their orders and started systematically destroying the enemy fleet’s engines.

Most of the ships assembled against us were older Dearth Conglomerate vessels that had been sold off as the affiliate aged and upgraded over its lifetime. They were a patchwork fleet, individually jury rigged by those who flew them.

Some of the ships had different capabilities than others, and I saw a worrying possibility when a high-speed missile swarm was unleashed from four different vessels at my Sand Star frigate.

I tensed as I slowed the footage, zoomed in, and watched the little star-shaped vessel defend itself.

Clouds of dust poured from the various sandcaster barrels across the vessel, erupting each missile in sequence. However, the fragments from the hundreds of tiny missiles soon became too much for even the Sand Star frigate’s impressive tracking computers, and a hail of shrapnel tore into the small craft with an eruption of sparks.

The video sped back up, and I watched as my ship defeated the remaining missiles, took more damage from shrapnel, and then continued its mission. There was no apparent ill effect from the shrapnel, and I watched as each of the enemy ships was disabled and then disarmed.

BlueCleave’s defense fleet began moving in then, following after vessels that had lost control and spun off into the distance, and closing on those that had managed to control their trajectories to a relative stop.

Boarding crews, wearing starfish suits and walking alongside Tower golems, began their work next, and more ships were added to our ever-growing fleet.

I made a mental note to check on the repair report from that Sand Star. The frigates were tough, but even at a distance I could see the external damage on the craft as it aided the rest of the fleet in clean up.

The initial battle report from that encounter was heavily in our favor. We’d suffered damage to twelve vessels, including the new Sand Star frigate, but lost no ships outright. The enemy fleet had lost fourteen craft and had another thirty-five in the process of being boarded and taken.

Spectre’s voice whispered against the back of my head again, reminding me how well he had built his tools.

The enemy fleet lumbered by comparison. Huge submarine-cigar shapes hulked and pushed slowly forward or made glacial turns. Our Sand Star pilot was a hummingbird, flitting among a pod of whales in the stars.

Our own navy all wore starfish suits with gravity harness upgrades, regardless of the craft they served on. Any of our ships were capable of faster speed than our opponents, but most of those were slight differences. The ships themselves could only maneuver so quickly, without shearing or other structural damage.

But the Sand Star frigates were so fast they could be difficult to track, even with high end equipment. Blue bursts of directed fusion marked any turns or bursts in speed, and the star shaped vessels darted among the explosions their weaponry caused in their wakes.

Within a few minutes the battle had ended the same way as the battle at the Sol gate. Unconditional surrender.

Our prison colony on Nu-Earth’s moon was growing daily. New wings would have to be constructed after the fleet action in the Sol system concluded. The prisoners worked if they could, earning morties for themselves and trust among their BlueCleave wardens. There was limited loyalty among Church soldiers, and I expected that a few years at most would convince them to join what society there was in order to live some kind of life.

It was more than the Church could offer them, and after seeing the damage to the Sand Star frigate up close, I was less inclined to take prisoners.

It was still functional, the little ship’s armor was up to the task of protecting it. But sections had been torn away by the high velocity shrapnel. The missile attack recording was immediately uploaded to our Nu-Earth pilots, to give them a chance to prepare new maneuvers, or equip additional armor plating before deployment.

That would be up to Tollya and her armory crews. They had all kinds of jury-rigging to do on the new ships we were purchasing, but there was no shortage of hobbs on that crew either. All of them eager to tinker, upgrade, and reinforce our ships.

To make them unique, different from any the Church or their associates might field.

For BlueCleave, anything that helped the military might of the affiliate was held in the same esteem as direct combat.

Our prisoners of war would go through a process not unlike what the hobbs fighting against us once did. We would control their lives until they proved they were no threat to us, then they would be welcome to join our various societies and contribute to the overall affiliate while making a life for themselves.

We already had a population of Church expats living on Nu-Earth. They made Axle nervous, but I pointed to the Arms Keepers militia, and what had happened once they were forcefully dissolved.

Cole, their strong-man leader, had folded hard when he realized he couldn’t just shoot me to make me go away. I broke his will to fight and established a mostly peaceful, if one-sided, trading relationship with the group. They provided us with crappy fuel that we managed to find uses for, and trace amounts of copper we actually wanted, and in exchange we fed them.

We continued to have issues with the group while keeping them contained. It wasn’t until we forcefully broke down the walls of their compound and told them they were welcome to come live in Prescott if they behaved that things started to substantively change.

First, the women and children all fled within the first two days, with some of the men joining the exodus. The militia hadn’t been feeding them properly, so that was easy enough to predict, but the part that happened next was what mattered.

Once the compound was nothing but Cole’s hardest fighting men, they turned on him. Within a week, Cole himself was dead, shot in the back of the head and sold to Silken Sands to feed our Sleem farm. We bought significantly fewer corpses since removing the Sleem from BuyMort.

His men filtered into Prescott, and aside from a couple of notable exceptions, they quietly found work and built lives for themselves. Only two had held a grudge that got them arrested by BlueCleave civilian peacekeeping forces.

Both men went to our prison on the moon, where only one remained. His friend had quickly earned his way back to Nu-Earth and joined his former friends in Prescott, where the man worked at a yarsp butchery plant and lived a quiet life. He’d recently met someone and was learning how to date an Orkreshi woman.

I knew because I kept tabs on each and every one of the Arms Keepers.

While I was happy to see them behaving, accepting the new world around them, and focusing on their families, trust was beyond me. Still, they made an excellent case study for the myriad Church prisoners we were about to be receiving.

Sapient nature was like most things, it would follow the path of least resistance.

I watched from Storage as the second fleet action in Sol system wrapped up with my navy claiming another decisive victory. The mining fleet started to spread out again, getting straight back to work.

None of them wanted to miss out on anymore morties, after all. Defensive formations just meant the ships weren’t capable of working a shift.

“Which fleet is next, Axle?” I muttered.

MortMobile connected us and he sighed and adjusted his gaze at his computer screen.

“According to our most recent telemetry, that would be Mars,” he said, pointing at something I couldn’t see off screen.

“If the mining fleet did this well, I expect Mars is in no danger at all,” I said.

Something flashed red in Axle’s office, and the Knowle jumped as an alarm sounded.

“Lockdown initiated,” a robotic voice said behind him.

I scowled. “Axle?”

He blinked rapidly and licked his nose, looking around the room. “We ah . . . I think we may be under attack.”

“Take a portal out,” I ordered him. “Get to your safehouse, there’s no chance they have that location.”

“I can’t track the beholder from my safehouse, Tyson,” Axle said gravely, forgetting the company line for a change.

I scowled and thought, eyebrows furrowed. “No. No you can’t. Is holding out an option?” I asked.

Axle taped furiously at his keyboard while the red light clicked on and off in his background. His office was pretty secure, but it was on the ground floor. A rumbling detonation in the library shook his image on my screen and I held my breath for an instant as the Knowle looked around.

“Axle, it's not worth your life,” I said.

“It is, as a matter of fact,” he replied. “But I think I’ll be okay, there’s a squadron of starfish troopers en route from Prescott, and . . . most of my security staff’s bio-readings are still active.” The Knowle reached out to his side and grabbed another monitor, dragging it closer as its wall-mounted arm stretched to accommodate.

On the screen, he showed me a small assault team in the lobby of the library. Three elves, all wearing black full body coverage armor with gruesome facial plates. As I watched, one leapt in the air unnaturally high to slice an auto-turret from the ceiling with a curved sword blade. He landed lightly and laughed as he bounded back, avoiding the rapid fire of another turret.

Another delf, this one holding a rifle to their shoulder, slagged the next turret with a high intensity energy blast. The third was muscular by comparison and hefted a disturbingly familiar ax over one shoulder.

“No, Axle, you need to get out. They have an Ardee relic, it will go through whatever defenses you’ve built,” I said.

My friend licked his nose and looked at me again. “If we cannot effectively track the beholder, all life in this system could end. If you’re so worried, get here and protect me yourself.”

I blinked and nodded. “Admiral Omen,” I barked, jogging toward the station’s BuyMort arrivals and departures area.

“Yes Warlord,” he said over BlueCleave coms.

“I’m returning to Nu-Earth momentarily. Watch my ship, please,” I asked.

“Understood,” the admiral said, before the com channel clicked closed again.

I arrived at the pods and told the nearest my destination, before closing my eyes in anticipation of the dazzling rainbow light.

My own Ardee ax was in my hand already, and I stalked into the ruined main entrance of the Knowle library, back home in the former campground. Apartment buildings rose behind me, and a sprawling greenhouse tinted the horizon green with its clustered foliage.

Our enemies had cut the copper Knowle statue in the entryway in half, its arm still holding a book out to me, offering me knowledge. Only now it laid on the floor, cracking the marble tiling and defacing an important Silken Sands institution.

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As I stalked forward through the doors, a flying dog veered into sight and slid to a graceless landing in the doorway behind me.

“Doofus!” I yelled. “Good boy, you want to go hunting with me?”

A series of buttons made of light projected from his collar, and the oversized dog woofed happily as he pressed a several of them. “I love hunting with my pack!”

I gripped my ax handle and turned back to the building, to save my operations manager and friend, before the Church’s hit squad could take him from me.

Chapter 17

Weapons fire sounded from further into the library, behind the doors to the main wing, a large open room filled with rows of books. Since the action in Sleem, we’d been limiting entrance to the library so that it was empty of non-essential personnel, as it became more and more of our primary planet’s logistics center.

Something the church clearly understood, as pointy-eared assassins stalked its halls looking for my partner.

Doofus and I jogged through the lobby, cautiously listening to the engagement we approached. It was in the first large section of the library itself, just through the large lobby area. Rows of reprinted tomes lined the shelves, and engagement terminals were scattered throughout the room, in convenient areas for use.

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I shook my head at the ad. It must have been inspired by the library, and it didn’t sound bad at all, but that was a hefty price tag with a lower rating limit and I really didn’t have time for shopping just then.

The sounds of battle moved further away, down toward the far end of the long, open hall, where Axle’s office was ensconced in the guts of the library.

Doofus’ hard light wings sprouted from his harness, fat orange sparks scattering across the floor before they dissipated. With a quick boost from a small jet at the rear of his battle harness, the dog took off flying toward the back of the massive room.

I took to the air and followed.

No matter how good my enhanced senses were, his nose would lead us to the intruders faster than any method I could employ. Dead hobbs scattered the shelves below us, each carved up or blasted into a cinder, and left where they fell.

Almost subconsciously, I sent a message to BlueCleave’s emergency medical department. Sometimes those we thought beyond repair could be saved by a starfish suit. It was worth trying, if any of my hobbs below were still breathing.

A trio of hobbs with starfish suits, Axle’s personal guard, stood together in the doorway to the back offices, as the elves encroached from their different aisles.

Doofus barked, and activated his sonic cannon, blasting the biggest off his feet and sending him hurtling into a nearby wall of marble. I pushed the suit and broke the sound barrier, before braking hard to land in front of the other two with a low growl.

The elf with a rifle leapt back nimbly as the one with the sword darted in and nicked me on the shoulder with his blade. He laughed and stepped back, pulling off his armored mask to watch me bleed. A sneering delf face was exposed, complete with glowing red eyes and sharpened teeth. The delf barked a harsh laugh and spoke to his partner over his shoulder in their language.

“He bleeds, you see? Just another wretched ape from another wretched earth,” he laughed.

My suit activated, sprouting a single tendril to laser close the wound.

In the delf's own language, I spat, “You and yours will bleed far easier, and far more.”

The delf whirled on me, glowing eyes wide in surprise. I launched forward, pushing the suit as I extended both fists to punch through the delf’s chest.

He moved faster than I could properly see without the suit’s drug. Even with it, his movement blurred and he snapped one of my hands off at the wrist with his blade, even as he flipped into a kick that connected with my groin and altered my momentum enough to bash me into one of the nearby library shelves. Books and paper rained down as I groaned and stood from the rubble, my stump of a left arm oozing artificial blood.

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Dismissing the ad quickly before it could get really annoying, I raised the stump and nodded, before I turned and charged the delf's partner. She also moved too fast and fired her weapon at me before rolling out of my way.

I was engulfed by a pulse of raging energy, and my suit’s cartoon appeared to dance and writhe in mock electric agony while stuttering, “O-o-one moment-t-t us-s-ser! C-c-ccharge d-d-dissipating!”

When my body unclenched, I was smoldering from the neck down and buried by library shelving again. My anti-magic helmet had protected my head and neck, but the rest of me was going to need to be skinned again. One of Axle’s nearby shelves was also on fire, I discovered as I hauled my way out of the rubble.

My hobbs, brave souls that they were, saw the damage inflicted to their immortal warlord and charged his enemies without a second thought.

I roared “No!” at them, but it was too late by far. The sword-wielding delf danced among their slow, clumsy blows and sliced them to bits. His blade sparked where it contacted their suits, but it cut those too. I stared at it while my suit began the process of skinning me, carving lines in my epidermis with intense lasers.

My suit ground and whirred as tendrils spouted from every silvery line on my body, but the delf returned to slice those free as they emerged. My suit was unable to heal my charred body and amputated hand so long as he kept lopping off the tendrils as they emerged.

No matter where I pushed the suit’s gravity harness to throw me, he was there before I could land. Bouncing from shelves with ease, running across the walls and ceiling with blurred movements, and always cutting at me with that damned blade of his.

Its edge glowed bright yellow, and I managed to notice the switch he had depressed in the handle, before he slashed a breach in my nanite helmet and blasted apart my HUD.

I dropped to the floor then, back near the lobby and foyer, and glared at the delf through the hole in my protective gear. The nanites slowly worked to close the gap, but his blade had shattered their defensive matrix easily. The delf nimbly landed on the marble at my side and chuckled again as he stared at me.

Half skinned, charred and still missing most of one hand, I curled a lip at him and raised my intact hand to point. “You’re a dead delf,” I told him in his own tongue.

“I’m afraid you’ve failed to convince me of your ability, warlord,” he retorted, sheathing his sword in a single, smooth motion. “From what I can see, the legends are just that. Stories . . . and dust. You’re just another upstart ape with a relic he doesn’t deserve.”

I nodded, breathing heavily as I listened to Doofus’ sonic bark in the distance. “You’re right about that last part,” I told him with a small smile.

He scowled, cocked his head, then snorted. The delf rolled his eyes and approached me, drawing his sword again. As he did, I watched its cutting edge fire into vibrant yellowed light. He raised the blade above his head and held the position, watching me for some kind of reaction.

When I did nothing but glare at him and breathe heavily, the delf shook his head and struck. His blow was aimed at my shoulder, to cut me cleanly in half, through the suit and my enhanced body with his potent weapon.

I slammed the armor on my suit shut, in full body coverage, the instant his blade made contact with my skin. It clamped down on the flat of his blade, and I raised my metal-covered head, blue eye slits glowing as he stared up at me.

“Now you’re in trouble, delf,” I growled, my voice amplified by the starfish suit.

He blinked in shock, futilely trying to haul his sword out of my armor. Whatever the edge on it was, it could cut through my suit, my enhanced body, probably even my armor. But the armor didn’t have it clamped by the edge, and the blade didn’t budge.

I casually reached out and tore off the shocked delf’s head before he could react much further and then started crushing his armor to recharge my starfish suit. Each section of the intricately carved plating that I cracked and crushed helped recharge my suit, but I wasted no time in returning to the fight with Doofus.

His chances against the other two delves didn’t thrill me, and I could hear that weapon firing, blasting apart bookshelves and terminals.

Doofus’ form swooped by near the high ceiling, his personal shield rippling. Tendrils extended from my suit to replace the bones of my new hand, even as others lasered the sword jutting from my shoulder until it sparked and died.

The suit was trying to cut through it, so I dropped the armor momentarily and re-raised it, allowing the blade to fall free. It had deactivated the instant the delf let go of it, and the edge was quite blunt without the energy it emitted.

My dog’s nostrils flared at my charred, bleeding skin beneath the armor. I snapped my fingers to get his attention back to my face, which I exposed to talk to him.

“Good boy Doof, I got one. Let’s take down the other two!”

He took off running with a quick bark, leaping off the side of a nearby collapsed shelf, and I followed him.

Back at the entrance to the offices, the larger delf hacked at an oversized metal security door with his Ardee relic ax in one hand, and mine in the other. I’d dropped it when my hand was cut off, but I flexed my new, metal-covered fingers and snarled as I watched him use it.

Doofus led with a massive bark, banking around the far end of the building’s ceiling and momentarily distracting the delf with the rifle, as she dodged the sonic blast. I punched toward her, pushing my suit to extreme speeds and sending a shockwave echoing through the structure.

An instant before my fist could punch through her chest, the delf dodged. I roared in fury and lashed out, slamming my fists and arms through the nearby concrete as I chased her. She rolled along the wall, ducking and dodging out of the way, each time a hair’s breadth from my fists.

As she moved, the delf slung her rifle, letting it drop and bounce into place against a magnetic holder across her stomach. With a quick, twisting motion, the delf tore a long line of yellowed light from a ring on one finger and reached for me with it.

I stepped back and ducked, throwing myself down and to the floor as she tried to loop the glowing line around my head. Pushing the suit, I hurtled back and raised a hand to the top of my head, where a strip of my armor had been shaved clear. It sparked on the floor at her feet as she let go of the glowing wire and I watched it whip back into storage in her ring.

Then the rifle was up again and I was dodging her fire. Doofus landed among the shelves and lunged forward to bite her directly, unseen from her rear. The woman screamed in pain as my dog’s oversized canines dug into her arm and her aim went wide, blasting another hole in the concrete wall. With my teeth gritted, I clenched to fly at her.

“Stop!” roared another delf voice. I froze and turned to see the large delf, his armor and mask still in place, holding Axle with an Ardee relic ax to his throat. The delf pointed at me with his other ax, my ax. “Call off your beast!”

“Doofus!” I yelled. “Let her go!”

The giant malamute did, immediately. He growled and jumped back from her as she grabbed her rifle and shouldered it while bleeding, turning to point it at the dog.

“Stop!” I yelled in English. “You’ve won, stop!”

“Where is Farvre?” the female delf asked in their language.

The larger delf raised his ax and pointed at me again. “This one killed him, without doubt.”

“He was too slow to stop me,” I growled. “Just like you are. If you hurt that animal, I will tear you apart.”

“Ah, now comes the part where he talks us to death. Tell me Warlord, did you talk Farvre to death too?” she asked, her gruesome mask matching the sneer in her voice. “Perhaps he took his own life, to escape your lecturing.”

“Keep pointing your scum-weapon at my family, and you will find out how I take life for yourself,” I growled in near-perfect delf.

She laughed, but her aim lowered. “Scum-weapon, eh? Coming from you, Windowpuncher, that means next to nothing.”

The small cultural details tended to matter, even in a fight. Learning that some weapons were considered unworthy of a warrior within delf culture gave me a small upper hand in the standoff. Enough to stall them from killing Doofus and Axle outright, at least.

“Enough!” The big male roared. “We have a choice to offer you, warlord.” Axle flinched as the delf pushed on his neck and drove him to his knees.

Chapter 18

A pod rippled into the air at my side. It hovered around behind me and projected a sustained rainbow beam onto the ground, just large enough for a single person to walk through.

Doofus stood still, his tail stiff and teeth showing as he growled at the female delf. I kept one hand raised, watching the Ardee relic axes resting on my operations manager’s shoulders, as he knelt on the marble of his library. He sighed and shook his head slightly when his eyes met mine.

I turned and looked through the portal, as the rainbow lights cleared, and the other side was made visible to me.

Molls.

My mate was seated in an opera house, next to her mother and surrounded by hundreds of other Nah’gh. The crowd all wore formal attire, and Molls was in a beautiful dress her mother had bought her after moving to Nu-Earth.

A quick glance at the architecture was enough to tell me the scene was on Nahgah, in the Nahgah Prime system. The opera was halted, a small army of mercenaries in armor and masks held the entire audience at gunpoint.

Molls herself had a familiar glowing-edged sword pressed almost to her throat. She was bright yellow, with tears streaming from her big eyes. Beside her, Maer was a mix of terrified and furious, another glowing sword tip pointed at her chin.

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My face burned crimson, the damn algorithm’s constant sense of priority and humanity pushing me dangerously close to the edge. I shook my head and shrugged. “You lie. My mate is secure, somewhere no one in this room but me knows about.”

“Then you understand the nature of your choice, in the least,” the male delf snorted. “Believe what you will, but one of your affiliate leads dies in mere moments. We know you can stop us, but can you stop us all?”

My suit kicked in and flooded me with its painkiller drug, slowing time for me.

I took in the scene and thought, my mind racing. Molls was supposed to be safe. Hidden away in our satellite mansion. But Maer was involved, which meant her old friends in the church were involved. Even if the older Nah’gh woman wasn’t directly offering her daughter up as bait, taking a last minute invite to an opera on Nahgah was exactly the kind of thing she would do.

Even during a war with the church.

Axle was staring at me, and I watched in slow motion as he slumped. He saw the realization in my eyes and knew which choice I had made.

“Go!” a cheerful word from Doofus’ talkboard suddenly said. “Save mate!” The big dog panted happily at me, waving his tail lightly as the board disappeared.

“Doofus,” I growled. The dog’s ears perked, and I nearly choked when I spoke next. “Go get ‘em!”

And then I hurled myself backwards, through the portal and into the opera house on Nahgah. Behind me, I heard a vicious, amplified sonic bark, followed shortly by the electric belch of the delf woman’s rifle and then the portal snapped closed.

Without hesitating, I blasted through the two delves threatening Molls and Maer with swords. Maer was splattered by blood as I hurtled past in a blur and rose into the air, to throw the shattered corpses of the delves who threatened my mate against the far wall.

On the stage of the opera itself was an emplaced weapon, bolted into the expensive looking wood stage and pointing up at me. Beside it, a squad of delves in matching armor complete with gruesome masks all pointed weapons up at me.

I could hear the hum from my position, each of them was carrying something that could blast right through me, advanced as I had become. One of the delves unsheathed another curving sword that lit up with vibrant yellow light along the blade and pointed it at me.

The emplaced weapon on stage opened fire. Bolts of scorching blue filled the air and punched sparking holes through my starfish suit, and even the armor that clapped shut around me. The energy from the weapon also seemed to lock the suit’s functions temporarily, as I couldn’t fly away, or even move my limbs. I hung suspended in the air by rapid fire, high intensity energy bolts blasting into and through me.

Each time an armor piece was broken, the suit collected charge from the atomic breakage, but aside from that benefit the armor didn’t help against their weaponry.

From below, in the opera house's orchestra pit, a Nah’gh woman rose from the rest of the huddled musicians and stared up at me. In her face I saw anger and fear combine to become determination. She lifted a circular horn with a wide, flared opening, and clapped a black metal ring on the horn’s lip. Then the Nah’gh woman tucked it beneath her armpit, gripped the instrument tightly, and blew into it.

A foghorn sounded in the opera hall, and the delves on stage all flew backwards, blasting through the flimsy set and tearing down oversized curtains as they went. The emplaced weapon rocked back, tearing up the floorboards before jolting back forward and collapsing through the stage entirely.

Shocking silence filled the massive room in the wake of the musician’s sonic weapon. They’d disarmed the entire regiment of aggressive delves with a single blow and given me the chance I needed.

“Break something, user!” my cartoon starfish warned me, as metal parts were fed from the starfish suit’s reactor. My tendrils whipped around, replacing entire sections of armor as it welded my wounds closed beneath it. The charge it collected from each damaged piece was nowhere near enough to replace them. I shut off the armor repair with a whisper, as I looked around the room for a target.

Another blast from a handheld linear particle beam rifle punched through my stomach and I doubled up while hanging in the air, looking for my attacker.

A lone delf in the center aisle raised the oversized rifle again and I dove at them, both fists extended. I slammed into the delf and drove their body down into, and then through the wood and mud-crete flooring. When I hovered up from the rubble, armor sparking and ruptured, a nearby delf roared and closed with me, wielding another weapon with a glowing yellow blade edge.

I dropped to a knee and slammed my fist into the floor, knocking the delf from his feet and into the air. Before his body could land, I snatched him by the wrist and flung him through the high, domed ceiling above us.

His hand, and the sword it clutched, remained in my grip, so I removed the sword to inspect it. It ignited and stalled with the same button press system that my plasma falchions used, but there was no heat from the yellow glow. When I brought it close to my armor, the shaped metal plates seemed to warp, and then split cleanly.

“Suit,” I growled, addressing the cartoon directly. “Identify the cause of the most recent damage.”

“Yes, user.” He appeared on the back of a nearby huddled opera guest, and pretended to operate a control panel, crossing his eyes and sticking out his tongue in concentration. “Self-inflicted, shallow monowire-edged sword cut, user.”

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Not even the Windowpuncher would want to fight this bad boy. The line stuck in my head, the fact that I was now a part of such deadly advertising. I wasn’t sure if I should be proud, angry, or worried.

“Why can it hurt my armor?” I demanded, standing as a group of armor covered delf assassins approached from the stage. One of them dropped into the orchestra pit and raised a heavy-looking linear particle beam rifle at the musician who had helped me.

I pushed the suit and slammed into him, sending him crashing into and through the stage bottom, to crunch against the opera house’s basement wall. The Nah’gh woman at my feet clutched her circular horn, with its weaponizing adaptor, and stared up at me.

“Thank you,” I said, before I turned and blasted through the next delf assassin. My suit had more than enough charge to keep me flying, so long as I turned off its repair capabilities. So I blasted through each of the delves. They hit me with linear particle beam weapons, which my crystalline colonies struggled to adapt to.

The damage was limited to scalding pin prick holes that punched through me but caused very little damage unless they hit critical organs or bones. I had developed a combat setting for the suit that ensured it would keep me moving but wouldn’t drain charge with unnecessary repairs.

They could wait until my enemies were all dead.

I bled and sparked, streaking across the opera house from one armored delf opponent to the next. Only one of them had enhanced speed like Farvre, and he was too dazed to properly use it, so I caught him and tore him apart early in our fight.

My system was so pumped up on the suit’s painkiller that the entire combat was slowed for me. I moved using the suit’s gravity harness, just falling into each of my foes and tearing them apart before searching for another.

All around me, rich, opulently dressed civilians screamed, hid, and died as they were struck by fire aimed at me. I covered the orchestra pit, and Molls’ nearby section, where I’d left her, and her mother huddled together. While she wore a starfish suit, she rarely had to deal with its repair features, and primarily used it to fly. I kept that part of my life off from her, until that night at the opera on Nahgah.

The mounted weapon had been the crux of their ambush, and without it to tear me apart, they fell one at a time beneath my emotionless grip. I just punched through them or tore them apart, even enhanced with stat shots as they surely were, they couldn’t stand to me in individual combat.

Very few could, I suspected.

“User,” my cartoon starfish interrupted, peeking over the back of a nearby oversized luxury seat. “I have the damage analysis you requested. You seem busy, though.”

“Tell me,” I said, looking around for more enemies. The remaining delves were hiding behind set pieces or blending in with the gathered crowd.

“Monowire weaponry, once powered, can split apart almost any atomic cohesion pattern available in three-dimensional space. The edge is a single atom sharp, there is nothing in this universe, or any universe currently connected with BuyMort, that could resist such a weapon. Be careful, user!” The cartoon recited.

Any delves with yellow-edged weapons I engaged carefully, and disarmed without harming the weapon if I could. I wanted my teams to get to know the monowire technology and see if we couldn’t come up with a way to defend our troops against it.

But I didn’t stop until the last delf in grotesque, carved armor masks were dead. Their visages, even in gruesome death, were both mocking and intimidating. When I rose to the domed, painted roof of the opera house and stared down, I could be sure they were all dead. Only then did I rush to Molls.

Chapter 19

“What are you doing here?” I asked in a small voice, gore and damage still covering my body.

Her mother stared up at me, large eyes blinking rapidly as she tried to control her breathing.

“I . . .” Molls started. Her scales were bright yellow, and I reached out to touch her, in the hopes of preventing a permanent ring from forming. My armor dropped away if damaged and slid back into its dimensional gating if intact. When I touched my mate's hand, she grabbed me with a sob.

Molls clutched my hands and gasped while tears rolled freely down her cheeks, and waves of orange, red, yellow, and blue poured through her scales. The much-feared yellow ring washed away, albeit resistantly, and slowly, purple began to spread from her hand to the rest of her body.

“Are either of you hurt?” I asked gently, looking her over for wounds.

Molls shook her head and laughed, more tears rushing from her eyes. “No, we’re okay.”

“What on Nu-Earth are you doing here Molls?” I asked again, despair in my voice. “You were supposed to be safe. Away from all of this, and safe in our home.”

“I . . . I was, I just didn’t realize . . .” she trailed off, peering around the devastated opera hall. Fire spread slowly from the various particle beam holes in the walls, and the primarily Nah’gh upper crust guests had begun an earnest attempt at fleeing.

I sighed and reached for my phone to call Axle, and then froze.

“BlueCleave!” I shouted for the psychic deity in my helmet’s phone app. He hurriedly connected me with the local military wing, a small fleet of carriers that remained in-system at great expense for any opportunity we may have found to strike new territory on the planet.

A captain answered, face obscured by their reflective helmet’s faceplate.

“I need an immediate military presence to my location,” I said. “One brigade to start, but we need to own the air here too.”

The hobb grunted and saluted, then cut the comms link. A few seconds later, a pod ripped into place beside me and started highlighting the floor for transport.

“Molls,” I said, turning back to my mate and gripping her hand lightly again. “I need you to go home and stay safe for a while. Things are bad right now, I should have warned you against all of this better. I just didn’t want to scare you.”

I leaned to her side a bit and met Maer’s eyes, as I hardened my voice. “Any invitations to the upper planets cannot be trusted right now, especially if they are from the church.” The Nah’gh woman blinked and looked away.

My troopers, all wearing starfish suits and heavy armored spacesuits over them, began to arrive then. They stepped out of the portal and moved to secure the room. Several floated up to the walls and ceiling, and used their spacesuits built in extinguishers to put out the fires.

“Hold this position,” I told their commander, a broad shouldered hobb with a bronze patch on one shoulder of his armored space suit. “Claim the MortBlock and push it as far as you can without resistance. When you are met with resistance, stop, do not engage. Then call for backup and tell your system commander I gave you mission-priority access to contact Rayna for further orders.”

Before their pod could leave, I ordered immediate portal transport to my orbital mansion, and gestured for Molls to come to me. She slithered over, her scales still a light yellow. Maer’s eyes remained fixated on the severed delf leg that lay in their aisle, at her feet.

When Molls arrived, I embraced her, squeezed her close to me and breathed deep of her clean, floral scent. Once I was physically reassured of her safety, I gestured to the portal, and Molls nodded before slithering to it. She paused at the lip and turned back to look at me. “I’m sorry, Tyson. I didn’t know.”

I shook my head and smiled at her, though I couldn’t force it to reach my eyes. “It’s not your fault, my love. I should have told you more, and I will when I come home.”

“When will you come home?” she asked, hands clutched together.

“Soon, I promise. I have to deal with some things first, but soon,” I told her. Then I kissed her on the forehead, and she slithered through the portal. The pod stayed after it snapped that portal closed, then opened another.

This one went back to where I had just left, to Axle’s library.

I needed to face that scene, deal with the consequences of my choice, and start the process of hunting down the delves that attacked my home world.

When I emerged from the portal, I forced myself to check the spot where Axle, my operations manager and friend, had been forced to his knees earlier. The marble and concrete walls of his library were now marred with cracks and scars, splattered with dark blood near the remnants of the metal door that led to the secure wing.

BlueCleave forces clad in distinctive starfish suits and armed with hefty guns and war picks, acknowledged my arrival with a brief glance and salute before returning to their urgent tasks. They methodically extinguished fires among the towering bookshelves and remained vigilant against further attack. It seemed whatever had happened in my absence, it was over.

But Axle was nowhere to be seen. Not his body, not the Knowle himself. I pulled up my phone on my helmet and called him.

When he answered, I nearly collapsed in relief. “Oh thank pasta, you’re okay!”

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“Yes,” Axle answered tersely. “I am. Your security team may be composed of creatures with only remedial intelligence, but they were able to secure my library and remove the threats, while keeping me from significant harm.”

“My team?” I asked.

Doofus loped from the sliced up secure wing, jumping over the cutout door and lolling his tongue up at me. He was limping and held one leg up as he sat in front of me.

I knelt down and gently took the limb. It was horribly burned, but coated with some kind of translucent bandage material, from the shoulder to the bottom of his foot. Behind him, slumped against the wall beside the destroyed security door, was the female delf. Her rifle rested far away, against a different wall. Something had cut part of her ribs away, and her throat was missing, a pool of dark blood surrounding the corpse.

On the other side of the carved out doorway lay the body of the larger delf, and both Ardee relic axes. From the far side of the corpse, a tall Irish wolfhound stepped over the threshold into the main library hall. He looked up at me and slowly wagged his tail.

“Murphy!” I exclaimed. The body against the wall made more sense. The wolfhound used automated blades, they were tucked into their sheaths on his harness.

From the darkened hallway behind Murphy, a canine speech-board said, “Chicken-monkey.”

I sighed and looked up to see Soju staring at me from the doorway. His harness was still active, and the triple gun-barrels rotated lightly as its targeting system watched for threats. The barrels were all larger this time, the firing mechanisms sturdier, and the ammunition belts leading into them were all broader.

“Hi Soju,” I said, raising one hand in a half-hearted wave.

His talkboard lit up, and Soju eagerly pressed three buttons that it projected onto the ground at his feet. “Hi, chicken-monkey.”

Axle spoke next, still in my ear. “They arrived on scene immediately after you left. I’ll send you the footage.”

It was brief, and brutal. I cringed inwardly as I watched myself give Doofus what I thought was the last command he would ever receive, and then hurtle backwards through the portal. Doofus immediately obeyed, opening up with a vicious bark that his sonic weapon amplified into a wave of force that blasted both delves and Axle back.

Axle’s kneeling body hurtled back into the big delf’s body. They both flew back into the wall, as the delf’s arms were flung wide, and the ax blades removed from Axle’s throat. Their combined impact cracked the concrete wall.

Even as the bark sounded though, the other delf had fired her weapon. The portal had snapped shut before I could hear Doofus scream in pain, as his shield flared out and he took part of the energy weapon blast to his leg.

If you’ve never heard a dog you love scream, count yourself lucky. It does things to your heart that cannot be repaired.

Doofus went down as his opponents blasted backwards. The lighter, female delf landed in a graceful slide and raised her weapon to finish off Doofus as Axle and the bigger delf collided.

As she tucked the bulky weapon into her shoulder, a gunshot rang through the building, and something sparked off the end of her gun. She glanced up and to the side as two flying streaks of orange entered the frame.

The first, Murphy, closed with her and deployed his blades as he landed with a snarl on top of the delf woman. She went down with a grunt of surprise, then cried out in pain as one of Murphy’s wildly flailing blades disarmed her with a slash across her inner wrist.

Murphy’s harness was clearly deploying a mind of its own, the two blades moved and targeted areas on the delf seemingly at random while probing her armor. Then, as she scrambled across the floor, pushing with her feet as she tried to keep Murphy away from her throat, the suit found a weakness.

She cried out in sudden agony as both the automated arms hacked into her side, near the ribs. The cleaver-blades on the end of each arm repeatedly slammed into the woman’s body as Murphy lunged in and took her throat. Once her advanced strength had left her arms, she was no match for the big dog.

Meanwhile, behind the pair, a different combat played out while Axle collected himself from the floor and fled through the sliced up blast doors.

Soju perked his ears and shot the big male delf in the forehead, snapping him back into the wall as he tried to recover. The rounds sparked off his armored helmet, and the delf grunted in anger as he stepped forward and raised an ax.

Soju shot him in the wrist, with all three barrels, and the big delf dropped the ax. He also screamed in agony as his hand dangled limply from his shattered wrist. With a colossal effort, the wounded delf swung the other ax at Soju, who deftly stepped aside and fired all three of his weapons into the delf’s groin at point blank range.

His armor plating shattered. The sound he made next was too high pitched to call a scream, it was more of a keening wail. Still, the delf dragged himself through the hole in the wall, trying to get away from the lethal dogs.

Soju stopped and sat down, vigorously scratching at the backside of his ear while the male delf crawled away. Murphy dropped the other delf onto the floor, then took a few steps away and dropped her throat before running to Doofus’ side.

Doofus tried to get up but slumped back to the marble with a pained whine, his leg smoldering. He panted rapidly, eyes wide and seeking. Murphey’s suit deployed the blade arms from their sheaths, but this time they were equipped with different ends.

One carried a thin hose that ended in a small nozzle which it used to spray down the wounded area on Doofus’ leg with a fine mist. The big Malamute immediately sighed in relief and started breathing normally again. The other arm deployed another hose and nozzle. This one sprayed a thicker gunk over the wound in strips, which formed the clear, makeshift bandages I had questioned earlier.

The mechanical arms completed their first aid and returned to their sheaths, while Murphy licked Doofus on the top of the head a few times. The big Malamute just sighed.

Soju got up and trotted to follow the remaining delf through the room’s exit, where the camera couldn’t see. The dark entrance lit up as another trio of gunshots rang out, and the delf stopped his groans of pain.

I shook my head and swiped away the footage.

“Thank you, Murphy. Thank you, Soju. You saved my pack, when I left them to die,” I said. “I can never repay you.”

“Chicken-monkey,” replied Soju again. The little orange dog huffed and sauntered away.

“You’re all very good boys,” I said in reply, lowering my head.

I leaned down and kissed Doofus on top of the head. “Thank you, buddy. Good boy. Such a good boy.”

With a sigh of relief, I turned away. “Axle, we need to talk,” I said.

Chapter 20

“We honestly do not have time. Thankfully that brute did very little to harm my workstation here, so I am still tracking the bright plague creature. It requires your immediate attention,” he said. The fear in his voice stopped me from questioning him and I simply nodded for him to continue.

“Get back to Storage, get your new ship. I think we need it. The creature has made its slingshot around Neptune and is now moving down-sun at incredibly rapid speeds, which are still growing. Its exterior also seems to be altering its structure,” the Knowle explained.

“What does that mean?” I asked.

“Here,” he snapped, turning back to his computer screen. “The media is calling this one ‘Bill,’ by the way.”

The beholder in the blurred image in front of me was no longer round. Its moon-sized body had elongated and shaped a conical tip. Its structure had begun a process of solidification that appeared to be happening from the tip down. The front end was jet black, glittering with reflected starlight. Further down, it seemed to be slowly crawling across the beholder’s body, changing it as it went.

By the time it was done, the beholder would be a perfectly smooth sided, glittering bullet. Named Bill.

“Okay that’s weird. Again though, what does it mean?” I asked. While I spoke, I silently summoned a pod to take me to Storage. I would take the free ride there, asking for a specific entry spire. Then I would turn right back around and take a portal to the space station in orbit, where my Buzzsaw was docked waiting for me.

“The bright plague creature has formed a shell of exotic matter around its body,” Axle replied. “And is increasing in speed after having made the slingshot around Neptune.”

“I guess I don’t understand what those two things mean, when put together in that framing. How can that kill our star?” I asked.

Axle raised a claw on one finger, reading over his computer screen. “I’m learning this as we go, and my team is reporting multiple possibilities. Right now, what seems like the most likely threat, based on the assumed goal of destruction of the system’s star, they are telling me Bill is going to increase in speed until they either approach, or achieve, the speed of light.”

I blinked and shook my head. “Traveling that fast into our star as a mass of exotic matter would do what?”

“Theoretically?” Axle asked, peering at me with his mechanical eyes. “If it reaches the speed of light, it could open a wormhole in Sol’s radiative zone. Its outer core, basically.”

My heart fluttered in my chest, and I sat down on the nearby steps to drape my arm over Doofus. He was clearly in a drugged stupor and rolled over to receive better affection with a comfortable groan.

“And I have to stop this,” I said quietly.

“You do,” Axle replied. “Quickly. Current projections based on rate of acceleration is forty-eight hours before we can no longer interact with the bright plague creature beyond observation. Once it reaches the area of Venus’ orbit, projections of its velocity rapidly increase to light speed. You have to stop it before then.”

I sighed and stroked my injured dog’s belly, careful to avoid his dingus. “I guess I better talk to Dario.”

Axle nodded and reached for his device.

“Wait,” I said. “It’s important to talk about what happened. About the choice I made.”

Axle froze, and then shook his head. “No, I understand. Don’t let them get to you, that whole ‘choice’ thing was clearly meant to drive a wedge between us.”

I nodded, blinking slowly. He spoke all the right words, but an edge in his voice worried me. “Still, it can’t feel good, and I wanted to apologize.”

The Knowle stiffened his back and took a deep breath. “Well, now you have. No need, but I appreciate it. Let’s go save the Sol system, yeah?”

I nodded. “You think the Buzzsaw can damage the exotic matter on Bill?”

Axle nodded. “I certainly hope so. Bombardment from the Sand Star frigate in pursuit has had no effect, even when sustained and nuclear. Anything that chips away is simply replaced. We have spent a small fortune in morties transporting fuel to that craft just to keep up with the creature. You need to move.”

I nodded again, not feeling able to meet his mechanical gaze. “On my way.”

My pod arrived and opened a free portal to Storage. “Take care of my dog, will you?” I asked.

Axle licked his nose and refused to look at the screen but nodded. “I will also accept that increase in security you have been bothering me about.”

“I wasn’t gonna say anything,” I replied.

“But I see four personnel carriers inbound from Prescott,” he said with a shrug. “I’ll get a workstation set up deeper below ground, more layers to the security. These relic axes are rather unusual, so I think I’ll keep the spare, if you don’t mind.”

I shook my head. “All yours.”

He nodded and hung up, but before I could collect my ax and step through the portal, I got an urgent MortMobile call from Yolara Brinks. My public relations manager. I answered, already exhausted.

“I need you on Nahgah, right away,” she said. “There is talk of an invasion, you need to come make a public statement. There are riots in the streets all over the Nahgah Prime system, they’re convinced the Warlord of BuyMort has come to claim them next.”

The Knowle woman spoke in a rush, and I raised a hand to calm her. I swiped up my BuyMort interface and changed the portal to return to my last position on Nahgah. With a quick tearing motion using one gauntlet, I removed the delf woman’s mask and revealed her face, twisted in agony and terror.

When I stepped through the dazzling rainbow beam, I closed my eyes, and opened them to a military blockade. I shot a quick text to Axle to let him know, and he responded with an equally quick “Okay but hurry!”

One of the BlueCleave carriers hung overhead, and several of its smaller gunships patrolled the immediate area. Tollya was already on-site, with Yolara and a CTV camera crew. My stomach turned as I saw the tall Conda woman there to interview me.

Our long game of cat and mouse had come to an end, and she had her exclusive.

My army of hobbs moved around us, building up fortifications, medic tents, and ammunition caches. A quick glance at some of the screens in the area told me that there was a sizable Nah’gh army gathered outside the large opera hall, which was embedded in the middle of the capital on Nahgah, Laemya.

From what I could see, we owned the air, and were proudly showing it by allowing the CTV crew to film our data streams. Our relationship with Boing paid off again and again, the triangular carriers were a bulk sale deal, we even prepaid for the next decade of their production on Nu-Earth, as well as a new facility on Mars.

As I approached the lights and cameras set in the center of the ruined opera hall, I saw the stunned looking Nah’gh musician who had saved the day earlier seated in front of the cameras. I let down my helmet momentarily and smiled at her, shifting my ax to shake her trembling hand and tell her my name.

Then I sat down in the foldout chair provided, and raised my helmet as a film crew member began counting down from five. When he hit one, he pointed at the camera, and our Conda host smiled broadly, showing her many sharp teeth.

“You know, Warlord . . . over the months I have chased you for an interview, I’ve thought about what my first question to you would be. Agonized over it, if I can be honest,” she drawled.

“And now you finally have me,” I said.

“I do. Why have you been avoiding this interview, Warlord Dawes? I am such a fan that it’s difficult to avoid feeling a little hurt. Is it personal?” the beautiful, made up Nah’gh woman pouted.

I sighed and nodded. “It is. I don’t like you. I don’t like what you represent, and I don’t like the dishonesty with which you comport yourself. Your presence in this position is a cheap trick for ratings, and I take offense to having my relationship used in such a manner for your personal mortie gain.” I leaned on my relic ax and hung the stolen delf mask over the side of it. “We have real issues to discuss. Are you finished with your much-fantasized question, as a serious journalist? Had your moment?”

The woman’s scales flushed red as I spoke, but quickly changed to a vibrant yellow when I showed her, and the camera, the armored mask. It was in the form of a gruesome delf warrior face, meant to terrify as they rushed at you from the shadows. The tusks were a bit exaggerated, but artistic license was given to fanatics. They were typically quite the creative lot.

“I suppose I am,” she said, curtly. “My name is Shella, and I’ll be representing Church TV, upper planets networks. Warlord Dawes. There are a great many people concerned about the presence of your military forces in Laemya. A MortBlock has been claimed by BlueCleave, and the former owner is in a particularly unhappy state, as one can imagine.”

We all paused as the news show’s intro played.

“Good evening and welcome to the Shella Hour.

“Imagine a universe where affiliates conquer planets and battle the venerated church, a place where production and consumption are no longer the holy imperative, replaced by greed and avarice. Tonight, we're diving into such a universe—a reality where the stakes have become as high as the orbits of the upper planets.

“Warlord Dawes, a name that's become synonymous with military might, has found himself at the center of an intergalactic controversy. Alongside BlueCleave, a name that's been whispered in the shadowy corners of spaceport bars and shouted angrily in the halls of many astute smart shoppers, has claimed a MortBlock on Laemya in the Silken Sands name, and the echoes of their claim are rippling across the cosmos.

“The former owner? They're not just unhappy; they're broadcasting their grievances across the universe. This isn't a mere dispute; it's a saga that's capturing the attention of every sentient being throughout the multiverse.

“So, why does this matter to us here at home? Because, viewers, the tensions in Laemya are a mirror to our own struggles. If left unchecked, rogue affiliates might well place MortBlock's on every corner, and in the center of every city. This is the story of what happens when unchecked power is allowed to run wild through the cosmos.

“Tonight, we unpack this horrid conflict. We'll cut through the nebula of noise and bring you the truth behind the star-studded stand-off. Who is Warlord Dawes, and what are his intentions? Should we all unite to stand against this affiliate turned military force? And what does this mean for the future of BuyMort-fearing citizens?

“Stay with us as we explore these questions and more, right here on the Shella Hour.”

I nodded. “Shella. You even have a name similar to the host you replaced, did you know that? How many of your dreams have come true with this position?” I sighed and shook my head again, pivoting. “We have a terrible situation on our hands, on Nahgah and on Nu-Earth alike. My family, my mate, and my mother-in-nest were threatened by members of a dangerous cult that worship the bright plague creatures, and profit on the destruction they leave in their wake.”

Shella blinked and her scales flushed an appropriate level of orange. I shook my head in disgust and was pleased to see a burst of deep blue in the center of her scales. If I had my way, she would pay for these interviews with at least one permanent ring of blue in her scales.

“That is quite the claim,” Shella said, her oversized eyes blinking as she stared at the mask.

“These cultists came into my home,” I growled, crushing the armored mask in my grip. “They threatened my family!”

Then I stopped and took a few calming breaths, one hand raised. “And now, for defending my people, and the good people of Nah’gh who merely wanted to take in an opera, like my mate, I am accused of invasion. This is a security operation, plain and simple. Temporary MortBlock coverage has been established in order to protect this structure while we ensure the cultist threat is contained.”

Shella raised a claw and flushed yellow, but asked, “There are accusations of such claims never leading to MortBlocks being returned, in other locations. From other affiliates.”

“Absurd,” I snorted. “Talk to Coverage and Reclamation, if you want to dispute any MortBlock coverage. If you’ll excuse me, I need to address an ongoing situation elsewhere.”

“We’re not quite finished, Warlord, if you please,” Shella said. “We must at least corroborate your story, for the sake of public calm.”

I stiffened but nodded.

“Good, thank you. What can you tell us about the Warlord’s account, Mrs. Ardee?” Shella asked.

The Nah’gh musician swallowed nervously and blinked at the host a few times before saying, “Oh, he’s telling the truth about what happened, no doubt.” Her English was good but had a faint Nah’gh accent that I found calming.

I raised a hand to interrupt. “I’m sorry, but Ardee? Like the relics?” I finished my question by pointing to my own relic ax.

She shook her head and smiled. “No relation that I’m aware of. Wouldn’t surprise me if the family name came from that relic affiliate though. It wouldn’t be the first time such associations were the origins of surnames. Perhaps an ancestor of mine originally wielded your ax.”

I chuckled lightly and nodded. “Well, either way, it is nice to properly meet you, Mrs. Ardee. I apologize for leaving so quickly before, but this was not the only attack I needed to respond to.”

The Nah’gh musician smiled and nodded. “Thank you, for saving my life. All our lives.”

The sound of drums sounded in my ears. By the looks of Mrs. Ardee and Shella, they both had the same ad. No doubt everyone watching the broadcast did.

“From the anvil of history to the hands of heroes, the Ardee name has been synonymous with strength and valor,” announced a husky, muscular voice, reminiscent of Conan the Barbarian. “Introducing the legacy of the Ardee Clan...”

“Hoah!” cried a hulking background warrior. A legion of warriors stood in my mind, their weapons gleaming with a mystical light. Each weapon bore the unmistakable mark of the Ardee Clan – a symbol of quality and power.

“For centuries, Ardee Clan forged weapons decided the fates of worlds. Their craftsmanship was unrivaled, their artistry legendary. Even today their products remain relics, unreplicatable in any of the multiverses.”

A hulking Nah’gh stood over an anvil, creating a remarkable ax. The blade absorbed the light around it, wrapping it into the alloys of the weapon itself.

“The relic ax, a masterpiece of battle, was said to have been wielded by the forebearers of the Ardee name. These were not mere tools of war; they were extensions of the warrior's will, emblems of their honor. Though the great and mighty Ardee clan has since fallen from the heights of their golden age, the echo of their prowess endures. Today, we at Ardee Arms keep the flame alive, forging weapons for those who carry the future on their shoulders.”

A sleek showroom opened before me, las-rifles, plasma-throwers, the works. All stamped with the Ardee insignia. It was baffling and amazing, the first time I'd seen any insight into the origins of an artifact. And judging by the looks on Shella's and Ardee's faces, I wasn't the only noob in the room.

“Ardee Arms – Where legends are reborn. Contact out Affiliate Page for details.”

Shella, green tinge in her scales, interrupted then. “About that, why don’t you tell us what happened in your own words, Mrs. Ardee?” The Conda towered over the smaller Nah’gh and thrust a microphone in her face.

“These . . . I don’t know, cultists seems right. They all dressed the same, wore the same carved masks. They just came out of portals all over the opera house, took all of us hostage. They had guns, strange guns that could hurt even the Warlord here, when they were big enough. And swords. They held swords to many people’s necks. Including Molls and Maer Shevalanth. I saw them singled out before the orchestra pit was forced to lie down,” Ardee said. She smiled at the camera nervously when she realized she was rambling and trailed off.

“No, please, continue,” prompted Shella, the green in her scales growing more vibrant.

“Green means impatience,” I said, leaning over toward Ardee. “Better do what she says, she thinks she’s not getting the interview she deserves here.”

Shella turned bright red and glared at me with open hostility. “I’m sorry, your predecessor Shella never had this much trouble with my honesty during our interviews. I’ll try and tone down my blunt nature for you. My apologies for the interruption.”

The red grew brighter but was quickly replaced by a radiating core of blue as the Conda Nah’gh woman stared at me with open hatred, and open pain.

Ardee blinked rapidly as she glanced between us, but neither I nor the host said anything, so the musician lightly cleared her throat and shrugged. “I saw Warlord Dawes arrive, and he immediately started fighting them. He killed the two with those glowing swords, but then they-” she paused to gesture over her shoulder to the ruined stage.

“They started shooting with some oversized gun, and I thought it was hurting him,” Ardee said with a small shrug. “So I . . . helped.”

I shook my head. “She was amazing. Without a relic, she stood up to stat shot upgraded cultists, and helped me save every life in this opera house.”

“That is not, technically speaking, true,” Shella interrupted again. The satisfied purple in her scales indicated she thought she had something on me. “Two of the opera’s guests died of injuries sustained in the attack, once taken to medical facilities.”

“I can hardly be held accountable for that. The only wounds sustained by the people of Nahgah were from dangerous cultists that I am in the process of hunting down,” I said, raising my hands in surrender. “Fine, you got me! I didn’t manage to save every life here when the place was attacked.”

“Is it not true that this opera was attacked due to the presence of your mate, and her family? That this cult, as you identify them, was attempting to get to you through this attack?” asked Shella.

“Yes,” I growled, my hand reflexively crushing the mask again. “Would you like to follow that implication with an accusation of substance?”

Shella’s scales flashed bright yellow before she got herself under control and they slowly returned to a dull orange color.

“My mate, and her mother, are long-standing members of the church. Both were attacked, by dangerous lunatics, in broad daylight on an upper planet. If you would like to somehow blame them for the attack, do please, proceed,” I said. The tone in my voice clearly warned her not to do so, and Shella nodded while pretending to listen to her earpiece.

“My apologies, Warlord,” she said, still listening to her earpiece. “It was merely a commonly asked question online that CTV asked me to seek an answer for.”

“Nice dodge,” I interrupted. “But please, go on.”

“There is still the question of your military occupation of the area,” the Conda host reiterated.

I sighed and moved to stand up. “I’ve answered that. We are hunting dangerous, bright plague worshiping cultists. When we have found them, the situation will change. Until then, BlueCleave will respond to defend itself if attacked. I strongly suggest all military forces pull back for their own safety and give the situation here the time it needs to resolve itself. I’m not looking for any escalation,” I finished, standing as I did.

I hefted the relic ax in one hand, then turned back to the Nah’gh woman who shared its name. “It really was lovely to meet you, Mrs. Ardee. Thank you again for your help. I couldn’t have done this without you.”

When I finished, I leaned in and whispered, “When you’re finished here, talk to my hobbs about some security, you’re going to need it after this circus.”

Ardee had been smiling wide, but her face fell when I said that. I left the chrome helmet in place and walked away, hoping I instilled the proper amount of caution in my new public ally. The extremely vulnerable Nah’gh musician who had saved me with a modified French horn.

I stalked away from the gathering, meeting Tollya’s gaze. She frowned and nodded, arms crossed as she fell in at my side.

Chapter 21

“Okay, what are we doing boss?” Tollya raised one hand to show me the electronic scrambler device she held. Without doubt the church tv crews had cameras and mics pointed at us, but our conversation would be protected from their snooping.

“Take the city. Slowly, let them attack you as you move in, then respond. Non-lethals against locals only, no destruction or disruption of the local city, but I want it,” I told her.

Tollya blinked and took a deep breath. “That a lot of prisoners boss,” she said.

I shook my head. “No it isn’t. Disarm them, remove their armor and any potential fighting tools, then release them back into the general public. Most of what you’ll face are civilian peacekeeping forces, this world gave its real military might to the church to squander against us in space.”

Tollya nodded slowly. “I see what you mean. Nonlethal war, huh? That should be interesting.”

I smiled in my helmet. “If anyone can pull it off, it’s you.”

“Well, our troopers are very hard to kill,” she said. “It should be fine. No disruption though? Controlling routes of travel would make our lives much easier.”

“Some disruption, but we want the people here to welcome us,” I said. “Now get to it, I have to go save Sol system again.”

“Again?” she asked, head cocked.

“Yes again. Endlessly, it seems,” I sighed, as my BuyMort pod arrived.

Tollya stepped back, saluted me, and turned on her heel to walk toward a group of heavily armed starfish troopers.

I squeezed my eyes closed as I stepped through the portal, dazzled anyway by the rainbow lights until I opened them on my newest space station, in orbit of Storage. I’d decided to forgo the lengthier route in favor of the expensive option, warping in directly where I needed to be.

The other two stations were in various states of takeover, we had hobbs stalking through each, claiming the MortBlocks and dealing with any remaining church personnel. The stations were smaller and performed less important functions. Many of their residential slots were filled with cushy retirement apartments for church officials. Once they’d been robbed appropriately, we typically let them portal down to Storage at random.

My hobbs loved a bit of sadistic irony in their punishments. While still dangerous, exile to Storage was nothing like what it had been even a month earlier, when Sleem still rampaged in the planetary mega-structure. Choosing a portal-in location on Storage at random had been almost certain to get you eaten by a caustic puddle, until Dario and I had removed them from the equation of BuyMort.

Thinking of Dario reminded me to call him, get him teed up for a shot at exotic-matter-bullet Bill the beholder. While I walked through the rapidly warming, and brightly lit hallways of my space station toward the Buzzsaw’s docking port, I pulled up my phone in my helmet and called him on MortMobile.

The gray face in the phone frowned suddenly and blinked a few times. “The sapient you have reached out to is unable to answer their connected device,” he said, carefully.

I scowled at that and stopped walking. “Can you connect me to his device for a portal?”

The deity slowing shook his head, narrowing his eyes.

“Right,” I said, thinking about my options. I had to work within the bounds of MortMobile’s contract with BuyMort. “Can you astral project me to his location?”

His eyes opened wide, clouded over, and fog filled my mind from both sides, flooding in to cover my perception. Gradually it began to clear, and I was able to take in my surroundings. Dario was directly in front of me, on a metal cot with arms and legs bound. His clothing and jewelry were all missing, and he had been badly beaten.

The man’s face was bleeding from several impact strikes, and he weakly opened his eyes at my glowing presence. “Ty . . . son?” he croaked, weakly.

I looked around, but to no avail. I was in a metal box, with a toilet in the corner and a solid-looking door at one end. With a bit of focus, I honed my perceptions on the metal beneath my feet, and became aware of a steady, rumbling vibration.

“Where are you, Dario?” I asked.

“Taken,” he groaned, one eye closed fully from swelling. A thin trickle of blood seeped from his nostril, but Dario didn’t seem to notice. “Delves,” he gasped, before sighing and rolling on his side to try and breathe easier. His ribs showed significant bruising, and in spite of his nudity, that was where his hands went to clutch and protect.

“I am coming, Dario,” I said. “I’m going to get you out of this.”

I turned and focused on the door, before walking straight through it into the delf ship’s brig.

In the corner, seated behind a console, a singular delf man rose with a shocked expression, staring at my ghostly projection.

I ran past him, trying to activate the suit to no avail. My only method of mobility was what my astral projection was capable of, so I ran through corridors in the ship as an alarm rang out behind me. Its hallways were vaguely diamond shaped, narrow grids of metal on the floor leading to the various areas of the ship.

As I hurtled toward a crew member, I saw them reflexively bend their hips to give way, using bars above their head to lift their magnetic boots from the floor. Then the delf woman saw me properly and froze, a horrified expression on her face.

Too late to react, I sprinted past her, my body passing through the parts of her that returned to attempt to block my path. The astral projection had only one limitation, which I learned as I turned a corridor and hurtled through a thin airlock into open space.

MortMobile helped me out then, sliding the projection back on board the ship while I stood in a daze at the sudden expanse of twinkling black all around me. Once the reddish black metal of their ship formed around my perceptions again, I shook my head and started moving in a different direction.

Alarms rang while I ran, and I started ducking my head into passing compartments as I wound my way through the sizable craft. Most of the craft appeared to be empty cargo bays, or equally empty barracks with tightly made bunks.

Once I got far enough forward, I found the bridge, and its officer core. “Record any telemetry or location data you can, please,” I told MortMobile. I felt the deity assent in my mind as I ran through the captain and started staring at every console in the cramped room I could.

“Cancel security alert!” yelled the delf at my back. “Get a MortMobile blocker in place! Entire ship coverage!”

Within three seconds, my vision clouded over with gray fog again and my consciousness was returned to Storage.

“My apologies,” he whispered in my mind. “But contracts are contracts.”

“The data?” I asked.

“I have several images to transfer to a device, if you would like to direct me to which of your many connected devices they should go,” he carefully replied.

“My helmet and Axle’s mainframe,” I said. I started walking through the corridors toward my ship again. Without Dario, I had no clue what to do with the beholder, but I felt like I would fare better with my ship than without it.

Then I shook my head and called Axle back.

The Knowle picked up immediately. “Yes?”

“We have a major problem,” I said. “Dario has been taken.”

“Of course,” Axle said with a slump. “Both attacks were distractions, I should have realized.”

I raised my eyebrows. “I kind of feel like all the attacks were serious, can you run a quick sweep of our affiliate network and make sure no other activity from this group has disrupted or damaged us?”

Axle nodded. “Of course. Hey, look, I’m sorry about my reaction earlier.”

I hung my head and sighed. “No, you’re right to be upset with me.”

My friend shook his head. “If it were reversed? Honestly, if it were reversed, and it was Jada on the other end of the portal, I would have left you in a heartbeat,” he said. “Even with things between us the way they are, I would have gone to her without a second thought. Please. Believe me when I tell you, I understand.”

“Thank you, Axle,” I said. “Now what do we do about Dario?”

“I see the data you’ve sent over, I’ll get a team on it,” he said. “Your job is still the same, get to Sol. If we find out more, we’ll send you where you need to go.”

“Okay,” I said. Then I started running, until I was on board the Buzzsaw, with its tendrils connecting to mine, and its expansive consciousness pressing itself over my own.

Chapter 22

I broke free from my docking port and hurtled out away from the station into space. The ship’s arms changed formation automatically, and as I concentrated on flying to the BuyMort gate, they crossed over the body of the Buzzsaw in defensive formations.

While I flew the ship, I ignored the massive, floating citadel battleship from the church collecting fees. The mind ads came first, a slurry of pictures showing friendly and kind church officials waving ships through, or otherwise protecting the universe. The idea behind it was clear—pay us, we protect you. But when they flicked a holographic ad to my dashboard, showcasing membership plans and EZ-Pass plans, I ignored those too. My ship floated rapidly to the front of all the lines of other ships, and activated the gate, warping back to the Sol system.

The standard operation for anyone who ran a gate was to either destroy them with the citadel ship then and there or communicate via MortMobile to the ship on the other side and let them do it. There was no fee-jumping, no line-cutting. Indeed, as if pleading to not have to kill me, one last ad popped into my brain.

QuickGate! Skip the Lines, Save on Time! Pay your QuickGate fee today!

Didn’t matter. This was about bravado, and I was betting that no one was going to do anything. But, in my case, both ships did nothing. Once I ignored their comms request, and activated the gate on my own, they acted as though I didn’t exist.

Good, it meant the church still wasn’t ready for an open fight. I was done paying their gate fees though. If they wanted to try and force a collect, I’d be happy to destroy one of their city-sized battle citadels for them, in the process exemplifying a basic tenet of the BuyMort system. The cost-benefit ratio of pissing off its warlord.

My ship floated aimlessly as I waited for Axle, drifting along with the Sol gate and its accompanying fleets. In the distance, the BlueCleave navy was conducting salvage operations on what was left of the sacrificed Nahgah Prime fleet.

For comfort’s sake, I moved to join my own military fleet, awaiting my next instructions. Hurry up and wait.

“This is . . .” Axle started in my ear. I pulled his call up onto my helmet’s main screen and watched the Knowle sigh and shake his head. “This is bad,” he said. “Dario is in the Eternal Night system, which is . . . upper planets. Beyond upper planets, really, it’s a restricted system. Church only.”

“Certainly sounds like a cheerful place,” I said. “What intel do we have on it?”

Axle shook his head. “Not much. It’s a free-roaming brown dwarf system, currently crossing the gulf between galaxies in its home universe.”

“Hence the name,” I said. “It must be dark there.”

“Yes, terribly,” Axle replied. “The entire system is two planets, one moon each, and a small asteroid belt between them. All following a low-light brown dwarf through extremely empty space.”

“How empty?” I asked. My ship’s faster than light engines were short range only.

“The star was hurled free from its galactic cluster approximately two million years ago, shortly after it was formed. It is scheduled to go out in roughly eight to ten million years and should reach the next galaxy in about four-hundred billion years,” Axle said. “All of this is according to our astronomical records, which cannot be verified as accurate, and have not been updated in fifteen years.”

“Alright, it’s a lonely system then. BuyMort cares about that place?” I asked.

“Indeed. The entire system is rich in lithium and deuterium. The first planet in the system is also the claimed homeworld of the delves, Midnight,” Axle said.

“Are there more Eternal Night systems in BuyMort?” I immediately asked.

Axle shook his head. “None. All delves hail from Midnight. Or claim to, anyway. Not many actually live on the planet any longer, it is a tightly controlled church world. With a labyrinth underground, in the upper crust.”

“Shit. What are our chances of getting Dario back before Bill the bright plague creature does us all in?” I asked.

Axle licked his nose and blinked a few times, then shook his head. “I can’t imagine how. They’ll have him on Midnight, without doubt. You likely caught them en route from their gate, it orbits the ice giant on the outside of the rogue system.”

“And Midnight has a warren of caves, I imagine,” I sighed.

Axle nodded. “Its topography is jagged, the surface a series of high mountains and low valleys, interspersed by a deep cave network that runs throughout the crust. It was an unstable planet in the earliest days of the solar system but has cooled and calmed since then. It even has a massive surface ocean of heavy water that runs into and out of the crust at several places. It’s the primary source of deuterium from the Eternal Night system.”

I frowned. “Are you telling me that a solar system less than three million years old evolved advanced sapient life, after a significant period of topographical instability?”

Axle nodded. “There is almost no natural life on the planet’s surface, it rotates too close to the brown dwarf star. The delves have imported many forms of life to the planet, but it has long been a quietly whispered Knowle theory that the delves are lying about their origination point.”

“Strange thing to do,” I murmured.

“Not if you are without a home world,” Axle replied. “Upper planets are always home worlds, with the possible exception of Midnight.”

“Delves, originating in the Eternal Night system, with the home planet of Midnight?” I asked.

“Yeah, exactly,” replied Axle. “It all fits too perfectly with their projected aesthetic to be a BuyMort-selected name like the rest of us have, they must have guided the system’s labeling process somehow. That is part of the Knowle theory, though the ‘how’ is still vigorously debated.”

I frowned and thought for a moment. “Well, why don’t we ask someone who knows?” I finally asked. “MortMobile? Is the delves' home world actually Midnight? Or did they originate somewhere else?”

Between our screens, a visage in gray fog appeared, his bald forehead wrinkled in concentration. The deity blinked a few times, and cast his eyes upward, as though trying to find the right words.

“I apologize, I am unable to provide affiliate-specific information due to the nature of my contract with BuyMort,” he finally replied. “However, if you would like to ask your question again, it would be helpful to clarify which Midnight you are referring to.”

I smiled and silently thanked the psychic deity in my phone. His face in the fog nodded, once, then turned away and vanished, leaving Axle and I to our conversation.

“There we have it, that’s not the only Eternal Twilight system in BuyMort,” I answered.

Axle’s eyes widened and he nodded. “That’s a neat trick,” he said. “But I’m afraid it complicates our situation, instead of simplifying it. If there are multiple Eternal Night systems, they are likely all under church control. Dario could be in any one of them, and we only know of one for certain.”

“Then send me there, I’ll wreck the place until they give him back,” I said. “Destroy enough necessary infrastructure, you’d be surprised how quickly an affiliate gives you everything you want. Especially when they can’t kill you to get you to stop.”

Axle’s eyes widened and he took a breath to speak, before blinking and shaking his head. He began typing instead, and within a few seconds, the gate coordinates arrived from his workstation. “Good luck Tyson. Try not to wreck that ship. It’s the only one we have that can potentially harm Bill.”

I raised my eyebrows at him and turned to fly back to the gate. “Yeah, the whole Sol system relies on it, I know. Don’t worry Axle, I’m not going to let that arrogant thing kill my star.”

Axle cocked his head and narrowed one eye at me, but nodded and disconnected our call.

As I drifted, turning back to face the gate, Phyllis boosted into view. The flying version of her mech was small, but with its addons it was still considerably bigger than her base-level mech. The boots in particular contained miniaturized fusion engines, something primarily used in space fighter craft.

As she was considerably lighter than even the slimmest designed fighter, her speed was considerable. I flicked a new comms channel to the front of my screen as the old lady called. Her weapon was the size of her entire mech, grafted onto one arm and held out like a lance. I noticed it was pointing directly at my ship.

“Yes, Phil?” I said to answer her incoming call. Her face appeared on my screen, an angry glare dominating her features.

It was still a little disconcerting to see her de-aging. The sweet old lady I had always known had slowly changed into a sixty-something hard-ass. The thinning, tight curls of her old lady afro were smoothing, loosening, and slowly regaining her original blonde coloration. Her skin was also considerably tighter, with fewer wrinkles every day.

She wasn’t smoking anywhere near as much pot, and as far as I knew had quit the LSD entirely. So when she glared at me with her piercing blue eyes, lips drawn into a tight, thin line, I felt a flutter of fear in my chest again.

“I hear you got Doofus killed,” Phyllis growled. The tip of her lance began to glow with heat as the weapon activated. She didn’t fire it, just pointed it at me and primed the power source.

“Phyllis,” I said, carefully. “You cannot believe everything you hear in BuyMort. Doofus is fine . . . he’s going to be fine. I got him hurt, not killed. You wanna hear me out on this one or. . . ?” I let the question hang in the open space between us.

Her weapon’s glow dimmed, and she lowered it. “I’m listening.”

“You are seriously the worst bodyguard in the multiverse. Doofus joined me in defense of the library back home. He caught a blast from some kind of high end energy weapon, and it shorted his shield out. He took a bit of the residual blast, and it burned his leg. Front right, if you’re curious. He’s being treated by BlueCleave medical right now. Who told you he was dead?” I asked.

The old lady frowned and sniffed but nodded. “Been listening to chatter from the gate crowds. Guess I should check my sources first next time.”

I nodded and gave her a plastic smile that didn’t reach my eyes. “Yeah, probably.” I paused, then added, “Hey Phyllis, you know it’s not my fault that he wants to be at my side, right?”

“Oh yes it is,” she turned on me, full of anger again. “You teach him to sell his own fur, and then abandon him to BuyMort’s whims and now that he’s another of your weapons you let him do your fighting for you. His only friend hands him a sonic cannon and then wanders off to set an example for him. When he doesn’t know any better. When he can’t know any better!”

Nearly a year’s worth of memories filed through a small portion of my mind, and I slowly shook my head. “I didn’t put you in that suit, Phyll. The dead kid with the shotgun that we buried in your garden did that to you. All I ever did was ask for your help. And I didn’t know better back then, any more than Doofus does now. I couldn’t have known the path I set you both on.”

“Well you do now,” she snapped. “Keep that animal out of your shit, you moron! It’s bad enough you have me out here cleaning up your messes.”

I nodded, chin lowered in submission. “Yes, ma’am.”

Phyllis narrowed her eyes at me over the comms channel, then reached out a hand and cut it off.

She was going to be pissed as soon as Soju tattled on me for choosing Molls. For consciously allowing Axle and Doofus to die at the hands of our incredibly well-equipped attackers, as I left to save someone else. I couldn’t have known Soju and Murphy were on the way, and even then it had been a close thing.

Something told me the little Shiba Inu wasn’t going to paint me in a terribly favorable light with his talkboard when he met with Phyllis next. But there was always the chance my mission to Midnight would fail, then the whole solar system would get extinguished like a light and I wouldn’t have to worry about Phyllis killing me anymore.

Chapter 23

I shrugged and pushed on the raise-intentions pedal, swinging my ship away from her mech and back toward the gate. Once again, I ignored the citadel ship, and it ignored me.

The gate itself charged me nearly a trillion morties for the transit, and I braced myself for the experience as its rainbow lights sparked into existence around me, more ads for memberships and no waits peppering my mind.

The multiversal flow rushed around me on all sides, in all directions. As I moved, I could tell it was wrong. Sick, somehow. Stopped, held back, tied down. There was a sense of dramatic movement and flow just outside my peripherals, but what I passed through was calcified into stillness.

Pinned, like a butterfly on a board.

The walls of white strands rushing by me culminated in a dark orb on the horizon that rapidly grew until it filled my perception, and another rainbow blast of light announced my arrival in the Eternal Night system.

Immediately in front of me was a massive, scarred planet composed primarily of ice. The faint purple glow of the brown dwarf star barely illuminated the ice giant, but its light twinkled against the scars on the world’s surface.

It looked like claw marks but was far too perfect, and beyond large. Five deep slashes in the planet were placed perfectly apart, in exactly measured distances nearly hemisphere-wide. The lines were thousands of miles long, but each had the exact same edges. Each was cut precisely one-hundred meters deeper than the one above it, with the bottom of each slash being hidden in deep shadow.

Before I could study the world below me much further, an alarm sounded, and a corner of my vision pulsed red.

“Incoming attack ships, user,” a familiar, cartoon voice said. “We are currently locked onto by fourteen separate targeting systems.”

My eyebrows rose at that, and I stomped on the raise-intentions pedal as I swung the ship around to face my attackers and covered its core with the many bladed arms at my disposal.

Then I yanked the ship up and to the side, avoiding the burst of incoming physical ammunition. It glowed as it streaked past, incandescent heat trails reflected from the ice below as they hurtled into the oversized world. Railgun rounds, glowing in the dark of the Eternal Night system’s ambiance.

I jerked the ship to the side violently again, keeping ahead of the enemy ship’s tracking computers as I searched for them. The system had been named appropriately, it was far darker than I was used to, and I couldn’t physically see the enemy fleet. Even out around Jupiter, Sol provided far more light than the dim bulb of the Eternal Night system.

“Open comms channel, wide beam,” I told the ship.

“All ships, stop firing or you will be destroyed,” I said. “I’ve come for my friend, as you likely know. Give him to me and I’ll go in peace. Hurt him and I will destroy your entire system’s civilization in response.”

My only reply was another barrage of incoming fire. The ships gave away their positions when they opened fire, as the heat signatures of their ammunition got picked up by my ship and tracked. A squadron of perfectly camouflaged attack ships hung in space, outlined by my fairy fire ability with a thought.

“That was your only warning,” I growled, as I fixated on the craft in the center of their formation and stomped the raise-intentions pedal.

The enemy craft were terribly familiar. I had destroyed one in the Sleem system just before their planet was scoured free of life. Delf stealth ships.

They had hard, angular hulls, giving them an almost oblong appearance, with heavier stealth shielding around their engines at the rear to cover even their drive flares from any direction except directly behind them. The ships opened fire and hit me as I dove into their midst.

My ship’s arms rattled and pinged as the physical ammunition was deflected. My suit’s drug kicked in, slowing my perception of time and allowing me to see that each defensive blade actually moved, to actively flick the incoming rounds away as they struck.

Each round penetrated several of the whip arms’ blades before it was tossed aside, and they continually repositioned to provide full cover to the Buzzsaw.

Then I was on the first enemy ship, my Brisingida class demolition cruiser slamming its multiple arms into the enemy ship’s elongated body. Immediately personal defense cannons activated, and my ship was peppered with high velocity, armor piercing ammunition.

The arms folded across one another, creating several break-through points for each incoming round to prevent them from reaching the Buzzsaw’s vulnerable underbelly. With a casual thought, extra arms reached around from the other side of the craft and snapped off the guns with a swipe, to float free into space.

“BuyMort, I’d like to sell all unclaimed scrap in the immediate area. Follow my movements and collect as appropriate until instructed to stop or you run out of scrap to collect,” I said.

The gate above us warped in a tiny pod that started its journey across open space to us. I briefly wondered how many of the ships I could destroy before it arrived, then pressed harder on my raise-intentions pedal and watched as the Buzzsaw lived up to its name.

The matte-painted hull covering began to erupt like clouds of fluff from a pet’s toy as the Buzzsaw slapped and tore at the craft. Bladed whip arms sparked blue as they sunk into the craft and blasted away portions of it. Within seconds, secondary detonations began to bloom beneath my ship’s whip-arms as the reactor overloaded. I instinctively let go and backed the Buzzsaw off.

My focus went to the next ship in their broken formation, as their central craft exploded and lit up the area briefly. The Buzzsaw hurled itself at the next craft, who opened fire in a panic as their engines flared.

The stealth craft were fast, but nowhere near fast enough. My demolitions cruiser latched onto the ship and started tearing at it too. The pilot’s efforts to shake us pulled us both from the formation, as explosions began to tear his ship apart.

My Buzzsaw had learned where the critical systems were by disassembling the first ship, so when I turned my focus on the next ship outlined in fairy fire, it was destroyed within seconds. The whip arms thrashed into the hull over and over in the same area, blasting away portions of the hull until the delicate reactor was exposed to my violence too.

Once that part of their ship was preparing to explode, I hurled the Buzzsaw to the next victim. And the next, and the next, until there were only a handful of the enemy craft left intact, all fleeing down-sun as fast as they could.

It took a little while to catch them, as I didn’t want to waste the fresh charge I was getting by pushing the Buzzsaw into a gravity haul, the ship’s FTL capability. Chasing down the surviving craft was a matter of alternating the raise and lower-intention pedals until I was gaining on the craft without burning through too much charge too quickly.

The final two ships each flared their drives, then vanished from my screen entirely. Their fairy fire outlines also disappeared as they reached sufficient range, and from the brief drive flares I had seen, they were traveling in opposite directions.

On a snap decision, I chased the closer ship, pushing my scanning capabilities to pick it up again. They had sealed their weapon ports, shut off their drives, and were drifting in stealth mode. Silent, but streaking as fast as they could without killing the pilot inside.

I started a slow spiraling search for the enemy craft, pushing the Buzzsaw to higher speeds than a delf could survive. My search spiral encompassed the potential projections for the craft, but when I reached the outer edges of the possible routes and still hadn’t found it, I shook my head and gave up.

Instead, I engaged the Buzzsaw’s gravity haul and jumped back to the system’s BuyMort gate. After an instant of nauseating velocity, the streak of space around me halted, and the large, artificial ring hung in the foreground of the scarred ice giant again. This time I noticed its tiny moon in the distance, twinkling faintly in the brown dwarf star’s weak light.

I pressed my raise-intentions pedal and scooted around to the backside of the ring, hiding behind its bulk while I stared at the planet below and waited. The giant lines in the planet below were so clean, so even that I had the ship cast some scans down to measure them more thoroughly. It reported what I had thought, the cuts were nearly mathematically even across.

The width of each was almost exactly the same, down to the micron in most areas. What few places had differences suggested weathering after the cut, as opposed to irregularities from the cut itself.

Whatever weapon had cut that planet, it was potent.

Within minutes of my arrival, the Buzzsaw warned me of an incoming drive plume, and I smiled softly, showing my teeth in anticipation. I had been able to hide my ship in the BuyMort gate’s massive proximity by simply locking my ship’s movement through space with it and avoiding touching the ring directly. I gave it a solid fifty meters, to be safe.

BuyMort had a bit of a ‘hands off’ policy, when it came to its physical representatives.

The church’s delf pilots, however, I found myself eager to tear apart.

Then I froze, eyes wide as I realized what I had just thought, and stomped the lower-intentions pedal to the floor. The ship hung in space, arms drifting loosely as I paralyzed the computer by telling it I didn’t want any of what I was thinking about.

The death, destruction, and unmitigated violence I was about to partake in scared me with how seductive it was. How much I enjoyed the violence, if I let myself. It took conscious effort to remember that violence was a tool, and a poor one at that. No matter how that particular tool was used to cut an enemy, it cut the user too.

For a moment, I felt who I used to be, before BuyMort. I felt horror at my own actions, watching the BuyMort pod pick through the scrap field I had left for it. The transactions piled up with small, easily ignored notifications as it warped out bits and pieces of the debris that had been ships, and people with lives.

Chapter 24

“User!” my ship suddenly said, shaking me out of my momentary trance. “Break something, user! I need more charge!” The cartoon starfish appeared on-screen, pointing at my charge meter. The chase and subsequent gravity haul back hadn’t even drained it that much, it was still three quarters full. The momentary spike in anxiety must have prompted BuyMort, however, because an ad followed right after.

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I waved it away, my thoughts rolling over to Dario, nude and beaten, bleeding on the cold floor of a delf warship. I eased my foot off the lower-intentions pedal and stared at the flashing indicator of a drive plume in range of my sensors.

As I had expected, there was no place to run to in this system for them. They had probably even been left specifically to ambush me, and failure would mean death for them anyway. The gate was their only hope of substantive escape.

I shook my head, blinked a few times, and took a deep breath to clear my head. Another drive plume had joined the first, coming from roughly the direction the other ship had fled in.

I pressed on the raise-intentions pedal and fixated on the closest of the drive plumes.

The Buzzsaw sidled around the backside of the gigantic BuyMort gate structure and streaked toward the first incoming ship. Both ships immediately cut their drives. Then the second ship, further out, performed a hard turn with a large burn of their engines and dove into the ice giant planet’s orbit.

The Buzzsaw latched onto the front of the first incoming stealth ship and tore the cockpit apart within the space of a second. The delf that floated out in front of my viewscreen wore a shocked expression, and I pressed the lower-intentions pedal.

“BuyMort, sell the remnants of that ship directly to Silken Sands,” I said. “And the pilot. Direct both sales to the Library.” Then I turned and stared at the final drive plume as the ship skimmed the ice giant’s upper atmosphere and sparked a light, stuttering plasma trail.

He was so panicked to get away from me that he was diving the ice giant's gravity well, by hand, to try and gain speed. Ironically, diving deep enough to create plasma slowed him down so much he was still in visible range.

I pushed the ship and followed. Within moments, my faster ship caught up and I casually tore the drive shielding away from their rear engine, causing one of my ship’s arms to glow with heat.

Their ship plunged suddenly deeper, causing a brighter burn of vibrant plasma above the dark world. On the dark side of the massive planet, my opponent’s plasma trail was the only thing that cast any light. It suddenly flared as the ship burst into a bubble of flame, to trail down to the surface below in a shower of dying sparks.

On the far side of the planet, hidden from the system’s weak star, I felt how truly alone the rogue solar system was. The spirals of stars in the distance were tiny, mere pinpricks of light. A vast expanse of empty space, further across than the human mind can properly imagine, populated by only a single dim star and its two lonely planets.

I focused on the data Axle had provided me for the location of Midnight, the delf home world, and lightly pressed on the raise-intentions pedal again. The Buzzsaw drifted away from the slashed ice giant, then adjusted its attitude to face the brown dwarf star.

Then I pressed the raise-intentions pedal to the floor and activated the gravity harness in my ship. Another lurch of acceleration hit me, this one sustained for several gut-wrenching seconds before I arrived in high orbit of Midnight.

The world below my ship was roughly earth-sized, much smaller than the ice giant I had just left behind. It looked no less damaged though, with its primary topography consisting of rippling rows of jagged metallic mountains rising high into the atmosphere, and deep, dark chasms between them.

Most of the rippling, spiky mountain ranges held a sloshing sea in their depths, creating a multilevel, planet-wide heavy water ocean that cascaded in waterfalls between levels and ran throughout the crust. It was the source of the deuterium mining operations that made the great delf houses so many morties, when coupled with the lithium mines all through the system.

I set the ship’s scanners to full alert by talking to the cartoon starfish, a task I found increasingly distasteful.

But there was nothing in orbit. No attack ships awaiting me. No defensive fleet, no orbital platforms or ships of any kind that I could detect. I stayed alert for the possibility of stealth ships and kept the Buzzsaw’s arms in railgun round defense formation.

The planet below me slid by in a staccato pattern, my orbit slowed by the need to scan deep into each crevasse to find the dark ocean at its bottom. Still each scan came back with no potential settlements, until suddenly one appeared. The process took less than an hour, but it felt agonizingly slow.

Below me, built into one of the many tall mountainsides, was a loud radio signal providing coordinates for a landing pad. It was automated, and in delf standard language. I frowned but formed the ship’s conical front end for atmospheric entry and dove.

The plasma my steep entry formed was tinged purple in the dim light of the nearby brown dwarf, which hung massive in the distance. Midnight was practically the under-formed star’s moon. Brackish clouds swirled in the star's upper atmosphere, as its dim purple ember glowed from beneath them, burning its short life out alone in the empty nothing of the void.

My ship flicked on bright bulbs, casting beams of light to reflect from the mountain around us and create a cascade of light to the landing pad. Scans reported a hollow beneath the landing platform, and what appeared to be a large cargo elevator. The Buzzsaw’s whip arms formed around its core as I hurtled downward, raise-intentions pedal firmly pressed.

I blasted through the concrete and steel façade of the landing platform, smashed into and then through the massive cargo elevator platform behind it, and free fell down the elevator shaft. The Buzzsaw fit comfortably, so long as I kept its many arms tucked in.

Another door of metal and concrete lay at the bottom of the shaft, and beyond it my scans showed a vast network of open caverns spreading out through the mountainside. A giant hollow in the base of the mountain opened out on the other side of the door.

Some of it was above sea level, some below. But each mountain had a different sea level, so it was hard to pinpoint an exact sea level for the planet. Directly to one side my scanners told me an open ocean sat, sinking to incredible depths that well exceeded my scanners limits.

On the other was an open area of cave with several high pressure rivers running through its center. My ship easily tore a hole in the giant metal door, pushing away the foot of steel as though it were tinfoil.

Spread out in clusters between the rivers sat an entire city. Great stalagmites, curved toward one another and connected, formed broad bridges over the rivers that were also slathered in buildings.

Most of the structures appeared to be built from the remnants of a great ruined city. Mudcrete, some metal, concrete, and even BuyMort storage containers made up the rest of the structures, built directly up from whatever rubble was left. Mostly carved stalagmites. The roof of the cavern had its own cloud system, from the heated rivers streaming through it.

A constant, vaguely pleasant fog crawled across the city. The mountain itself was quite cold, and the sea heated from geothermal vents below created a pocket of livable space in the otherwise deadly world.

Heavy water snow formed at the mountain’s peaks, and the depths of their oceans boiled. The atmosphere outside the caverns was angry, and consistently stormy. Inside, a pleasant zone had formed of the mix, the fog even releasing extra oxygen into the cave city.

My ship hovered above, keeping near the cavern roof as I peered down and studied the small city. It was built into the slope of the cave, and part of it vanished into the darkness below.

In the harsh glare of my spotlights, tiny figures scrambled from structure to structure, or ran outright down the city streets, which were all rough-hewn footpaths in the stone. I zoomed in, using a combination of my own enhanced senses, and the ship’s sensitive scanning equipment.

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They were delves, without doubt. Down to the children, they were all delves, no other species was represented. They didn’t quite wear rags, but it was close. Their clothing was threadbare, repaired countless times. Most wore scanty dresses or flowing pants with flimsy cloth vests. The cavern was quite warm.

I slid my Buzzsaw craft into the dense clouds near the roof of the cave to ease the sheer panic on the streets below as I tried to understand what I had just stumbled into. Further into the cavern, away from my dramatic and violent entrance, the people hadn’t noticed my ship yet, and word was taking a while to spread.

Chapter 25

I watched one delf in particular, running from group to group, shouting a few words before moving on. Invariably, any delves he yelled to vanished inside nearby mudcrete buildings or renovated BuyMort storage containers. Every few paces, he would look up at me on the cavern’s ceiling, as though he could see the ship through all the mist and fog.

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With a heavy sigh, I dismissed the ad, looking back at the smashed-up elevator platform my ship had just blasted through. My enhanced vision showed crates of foodstuffs, medicine, and basic construction materials lined up in the cargo-loading section of its additional infrastructure. The crane beside the platform looked old, rusted and reinforced in multiple places.

“Shit,” I said, quietly. I returned my attention to the lone figure, sprinting through the small city’s streets. “I found the House of None.”

With a thought, and a quick press of my raise-intentions pedal, I had the ship secure itself to the roof of the cavern. It spread out its many arms and sunk them into the stone, opening the entry ramp for me. The warning about the ship only being able to connect with a single user arrived to sit on the screen. Its promise of brain death was intimidating.

Even if someone managed to board the ship, they would be unlikely to attempt its theft.

I stood as the ship’s tendrils fell away, and then pushed my own personal gravity harness to fly me out of the ship. It stayed up in the thick, wet fog against the cavern’s ceiling, hanging from its whip arms like bridge support cables.

Once I cleared the cloud cover at the roof of the caverns, I activated my helmet’s booming voice feature, and then hesitated as I thought of what to say. Finally, I leaned into what I knew about delf culture.

“Be not afraid,” I shouted in fluent delf. “I have not come to harm anyone, I merely have questions, I seek knowledge.”

While I lowered myself gently through the hot, wet air, I focused on the running delf I had seen. I lowered directly in front of him on one of the bridges.

He stopped and leaned on the wall of a nearby building to catch his breath, staring at me with wide eyes while he breathed heavily.

The bridge itself looked like it had come from another age. Twin deliberately grown stalagmites leaned across the flowing, steaming river below, filled with dangling cages secured to the underside of the bridge or the nearby cavern walls, as appropriate by distance.

More stone spanned the distance between both stalagmite supports, filled in by hand long ago. Many homes and small fisheries spanned the bridge, crammed onto either side to allow room in the middle for foot traffic.

“I have caused fear here, by my arrival,” I said, in delf. “For that fear, I apologize. Would you speak with me? I would like to learn about your home. Knowledge belongs to none, after all, and so should be freely shared.”

The delf in front of me blinked at my words, staring at his own reflection in my helmet with open fear. I lowered the nanite helmet, showing him my face in an attempt to garner a little trust.

Still breathing heavily from his run, the thin delf bowed and lowered his eyes. “I am at your service, Warlord. So long as you are not here to harm my house any further.”

“The House of None?” I asked. “I have no enemies within the House of None. What is your name?”

“Justin Lee,” the delf replied, bowing again.

I scowled. “That is not a delf name,” I said, looking around at the empty streets. Faces lurked and eyes shined from each of the nearby windows, especially visible in the natural gloom of the cavern.

“It is my chosen name. The name I was given by my house lord is Tin’Laer, a mere description of my work duties. I help load and transport the tin we ship out, from the mine to the . . . to the elevator,” the delf said.

“The elevator I destroyed, yes. We will return to that, do not worry. I must know, is there a human here at all? Other than me?” I asked.

Justin shook his head. “Never. You are the first I’ve seen in person my entire life.”

“That sounds pretty definitive,” I said. “What about other delves, from higher houses? Have any of them come around lately?”

The delf again shook his head, his palms opening in a barely-present shrug. “No, Warlord. Not unless our town misses a quota or needs to be punished for another reason.”

I looked back at the cargo platform near the ruined elevator shaft again. “What is this place?” I finally asked. An ad for AidLink Good Samaritan Services rose up in front of me, and I watched it as poor aliens across the galaxy were fed shitty food by a variety of kind-faced aliens. It felt like a kick in the balls, seeing how hard things were for them.

“Lithtin,” he immediately answered. A look of consternation crossed his features and he added, “Please do not share that name outside of this city. We would be punished for having named our place of living.”

“If your lords would punish you for naming your city, what would they do if they discovered you named yourself?” I asked.

“Death,” Justin answered immediately. “We of the House of None may own nothing, including our own names.”

“Which is why you give them to yourselves,” I muttered, looking around the town again and activating my helmet. The nanites rushed from my pores and formed their cohesive structure, and I activated booming voice once my HUD was in place. “You can come out, I’m not here to punish you, or harm you any further than I already have.”

I turned back to Justin and reduced my volume to normal as the helmet returned to my skin. “You offer me great trust, sharing your name in this way. I apologize for destroying your elevator. What will happen to your city without it?”

The delf nodded as I spoke, and then swallowed hard at my question. “It is good that we recently traded our quotas for food, and medicine,” he slowly answered. “Our lord will likely leave us to our fates. Our mines are quite low yield and our tin is much more than our lithium. The loss of our mines would mean little to them.”

“They’re going to just forget you exist down here?” I asked, with a scowl. The city was large by my accounting, but it was spread out across the vast cavern. At a quick estimate, I gauged at least forty thousand delves lived in the area.

“Yes. Without the shipments of medicine for our quotas, many will perish within the month. Without the food from above, many more will leave for Storage before that,” he said, eyes downcast.

“Lost, even from the House of None,” I replied, lowering my helmet again. People were starting to open windows a bit more, and some doors even creaked open. “Justin,” I said, turning to face him. “You seem knowledgeable of this world, and this city. I need that right now. Will you aid me?”

“Of course, my lord,” he replied, bowing at the neck.

“Warlord, if you have to use a title. Call me Tyson otherwise, please,” I said. I tried to be friendly, but my impatience was starting to show. “Why do you allow your lords to do this to you?”

“The House of None may own nothing,” he replied. “It is our way.”

“That you rebel against, by choosing names. For yourself, individually, for your city collectively. Do you want to live under the House of None?” I asked. “Speak freely, own your words.”

Justin’s glowing eyes narrowed as his brow furrowed. “Of course not,” he spat. “We are powerless to do anything else.”

I nodded. “We used to say, ‘a cog in the machine,’ on my home world.”

He nodded vehemently. “That sounds very much like life on Midnight.”

“Tell me something important, Justin,” I started, leaning in. “How are the MortBlocks handled here?”

He frowned and shook his head. “Not by us, of course. Our local lord owns the mountain and the seas, above and below.”

“Thank you, Justin. Let me reassure you, I'm going to fix your elevator. But you won’t be using it to haul tin any longer,” I told the young delf. Then I turned away and opened a new MortMobile call to Rayna.

She answered on the first ring. “Need battle reports?” she grunted offhandedly. “Short story is all going well, so far.”

“No,” I said, shaking my head. “Actually, I need a battalion sent to my location, with a MortBlock. We’re establishing a foothold on Midnight.”

“Foot soldiers?” Rayna asked in hobb, suddenly paying closer attention to me. “Midnight is the delf home world, boss. This is a major escalation.”

“Relief, aid, and construction actually,” I replied. “There’s a colony of delves we need to help, and then from there we can establish our foothold.”

“Hmm,” Rayna grumbled, frowning. “I’m sending the foot soldiers too, we have plenty of Golems to spare for security.”

There would be doctors with the battalion she sent me, and once they’d seen the kind of aid required, a series of portals of goods to help the people of Lithtin would follow shortly after. We had portals to spare, for little stuff like that.

Spaceships were where it got really expensive.

I didn’t expect trouble from the House of None. They were a culture of slaves, beholden to soft masters who relied on their obeisance for free labor. Or, in the case of Lithtin, cast aside once no longer easily exploitable. Still, there would be trouble from someone for my actions.

“Justin,” I said, turning back to my local guide. “What House does your lord claim?”

“The House of Sheeragore, warlord,” he replied, bowing instinctively at the sound of the name.

I smiled wide and chuckled. “Something goes right for a change,” I muttered, before meeting the delf’s glowing eyes and grabbing his hand to shake. “Thank you, Justin Lee. You’ve just made my day significantly better.”

“Oh, Rayna,” I said in a singsong voice. “Guess who’s unkempt MortBlock we’re moving in on?”

The small image of her in my HUD shook her head and sighed. “On Midnight, a great delf house, without doubt. Another powerful enemy.”

“Oh not just any powerful enemy,” I said, still smiling. Another chuckle rumbled out of me on its own. “The House of Sheeragore, Rayna.”

The tall hobb paled even further from her natural gray skin tone. “That is all of the delf houses, then,” she said. “All of them at the same time.”

“Well, no MortBlock coverage until the right moment then,” I said. “Keeping your presence here secret won’t happen, but I have a plan for that too. You dig in while I stall them. And don’t worry, you’ll know the right moment when it happens. The entire multiverse will.”

“Keep me out of your media plans,” Rayna said with a shake of her head.

“I know, too dishonest for you. You like to look your enemy in the eye, preferably over a grass sword,” I said. The hobb blinked, and her head jerked as she looked directly at me. “You’re a surprisingly gentle soul, Rayna, considering your profession. But I prefer my enemies confused, and blind with rage. That usually requires the application of some subterfuge, some weaponized dishonesty. Prepare me an anvil of this world, general. I’ll go convince our enemies to act like hammers.”

Rayna nodded tightly and saluted me, her eyebrow ridges still furrowed in concern. “I will prepare you an anvil on Midnight, my Warlord.” Then she cut our comm channel.

Chapter 26

Things had come a long way since my time as a trailer park handyman. Never in my wildest dreams did I think I’d be speaking of smashing a planet, using some offhand and impersonal colloquial to make it so. Our shared cultures had that particular metaphor in common, but the hobbs seemed to remember it far better than we Nu-Earth humans did. The metaphor itself was simple; in a contest between anvil and hammer, which breaks first?

The hobbs had lived that saying for generations. Millennia. Eons of life in BuyMort had only driven that lesson home deeper into their shared culture. Hobbs actually still had widespread use for their blacksmiths.

Ours were all novelties. Internet video stars.

Not all of the hobbs lived at the level of technology and luxury that my BlueCleave elites did. Many lived iron-age lives, if not downright neolithic. Rayna’s tribe had been reduced to mere grass-landers before their decision to join Silken Sands. What metal could be found at their level of Storage was venerated, passed down from parents to children as valued and rare tools.

Even while the church used them as a shield against the gobbs and the spiders of Storage, they had been forced to live hardscrabble lives.

Now they wore powered exoskeletal armor enhancements as they arrived in Lithtin, which did very little to help the local population’s angst.

Those few who had been venturing onto the streets quickly retreated as BlueCleave hobbs began to portal in with equipment, and overly friendly, gibbering golems.

One of the idiot creatures approached Justin, my new delf friend, to shoo him away and secure the area.

“Hi friend!” the golem said to the delf, its cheerful voice tinny through its mask. None of them went anywhere without full body coverage, and somehow our secret still held. The media thought they were specialized clay golems from the versatile CloneMort facilities, which meant our enemies likely thought the same.

“Get back!” the golem shouted with sudden aggression, and Justin froze in place, his glowing eyes shot wide open. “Get back now or lethal force will be applied. That’s my friend Tyson, I will protect him!”

The meat creature reached for Justin, who must have seen his life flash in front of his eyes, as his mouth gaped open wordlessly. I stepped in front of him with a sigh. “This is Justin Lee, Tower,” I said. “I want you to be nice to all the delves here, is that understood? Especially Justin. No lethal force. These are friends.”

Keep the crowds in control with PacifyPlus! Using the latest in beating, tasering, lasering, and other repression technologies, PacifyPlus gives you total obedience without the occasional decimation. PacifyPlus—we beat them so you don’t have to.

As I swiped the sudden ad away, the golem stopped, its heavy armor swaying with the sudden change in motion. “No lethal force on friends?”

“No, you are here to protect BlueCleave hobbs, not police the natives. Where is your CO, Tower?” I asked, looking through the arriving hobbs.

A gray hand shot up, and a hobb approached at a run.

“Officer, what orders have you given these golems?” I asked.

He raised his armor’s visor after saluting me, then produced a device and projected a screen from it onto the nearby Tower golem’s broad chest armor for us both to read. “Protection detail, BlueCleave hobbs and delf locals. No aggression required unless attacked,” the hobb read out in staggered English.

“Tower, are you forgetting our deal?” I asked the golem, ignoring the others around me for the moment. I stared at the golem’s mask while he looked between me and the BlueCleave officer.

“No, friend!” Tower reassured me, raising both hands and taking a step back as a wisp of steam escaped the neck crease in his armor. “I just got excited to see you, Tyson. I won’t hurt anyone, don’t worry!” His voice was so cheerful it made a shudder crawl down my spine.

I stepped forward and clapped a hand on the golem’s shoulder. “I’m sorry I haven’t visited more, I’ve just been so busy with all our adventures.” His body was hot beneath the armor, but rapidly cooling.

“All our adventures!” The golem happily repeated.

“You’ll follow your BlueCleave officer’s orders, right?” I asked.

“Follow your BlueCleave officer’s orders, right!” He answered, nodding dully.

Whatever spark of Tower that worried me had left the golem, but I was reminded that it was a situation I was going to have to deal with sooner or later. The creature’s benevolence hung in question.

I put it out of mind and turned back to Justin. “I apologize, my new friend. Will you show me around your lovely city a bit?”

The delf nodded shakily and peered behind me at the golem. Around us on the large bridge, the handful of portals hanging from BuyMort pods continued to produce hobbs and Tower golems, all carrying equipment crates.

Justin nodded, his eyes still wide as he stared at the Tower golem behind me. The creature was returning to help lift heavy industrial crates, filled with construction material. Within twenty-four hours, BlueCleave would have a forward operating base and humanitarian operation running within Lithtin. Within a week, it would be a hardened position with a Sand Star in orbit.

More of them if needed.

Justin pointed to the end of the bridge that led deeper into the broad, open cavern. “Across here is where I currently reside, and the local clothing washery,” the young delf man said, his voice strong and clear after his encounter with a malfunctioning Tower golem. “May I ask you questions as well, Warlord?” he asked.

“I would be disappointed if you didn’t,” I replied with a smile. At our back, hobbs and golems continued to emerge from portals. “But you must tell me what a clothing washery is first.”

He pointed to a nearby structure. It was broader than those around it, tucked into the ending corner of the bridge and built partially out of the stalagmite. Steaming water from the river below raced up a channel carved from the stone to enter the building’s base before exiting it again later on and pouring straight back into the river.

A plain mudcrete front finished its appearance, and I was suddenly reminded of a trip to Boston I had taken in my youth.

The juxtaposition of old, proud, complex architecture mixed with the sad, new, lowest bidder construction projects unlocked memories of my mother and father, happy together. On a rare vacation together when I was small.

Before my issues had driven them apart. In that moment of janky building design, I felt a weight lift from my mind.

They were both dead and long gone, and thus spared the joys of entering the BuyMort family. Neither of them had to see what it had done to their son, what he had become because of it.

“The clothing washery,” Justin said, bringing my attention back to the moment and out of my ancient memories. “Is where we bring our clothing when it needs washing, and retrieve new clothing as needed.”

I blinked at that. “Of course. None of you own anything. How does the housing work?”

Justin shrugged. “If we have need of shelter, there are many buildings available. We no longer receive new families, but when the mines were producing better ore, many workers were brought in and those of us skilled in building built new homes for them.”

I breathed out and shook my head. “I hate to inform you of this Justin, but if you are skilled in something, that means you have a skill.”

He smiled lightly. “You sound like the one who raised me,” he said, before leaning in to whisper conspiratorially. “My mother.”

“Ah,” I said, smiling wide. “You get it. You understand.”

He nodded once. “I think so, yes. This is why I have chosen my own name, rather than be known as nothing more than a tin-layer.”

“I honestly hope you don’t stay in Lithtin at all, my friend. It’s a wide, interesting multiverse out there, and I need to tell you the secret your lord has been keeping from you. It’s literally all about ownership. That’s why they don’t let you own anything. Cause then they own you.”

Justin Lee, a young delf man who had woken up on a normal day, blinked his glowing eyes at me.

“Ah well, if the House of Sheeragore is already doubting the status quo, you guys are well on your way. Tell you what, join my affiliate and have whatever kind of life you want. That you can earn, anyway,” I said, smiling and nudging him.

The delf scowled at the joke, cocking his head slightly to the side. “You are different than I expected, Warlord.”

“Yeah, I get that a lot,” I replied. “It's normal, don’t worry. I put on a big show while on TV, and I will genuinely wreck a place, don’t get me wrong. I thought my friend might be imprisoned here, that’s why I busted in the way I did.”

He nodded vigorously. “I did want to ask you about that, and if there was more violence planned, or not. It’s a bit hard to tell so far.”

I chuckled and stared around the city. “No more violence from me, Justin. Not here, at any rate.”

The delf chuckled back but clutched his hands together nervously. “I fear that may not be true, if your hobbs and golems have orders to protect themselves. Lithtin is home to many delves, and not all of us are so . . . loose with tradition. I fear your presence here will be reported soon, if it has not already been. Others will come.”

“Ah,” I said. “Yeah, I’m expecting that response, but there’s a process to it.”

He gestured down the empty main street, filled with glowing eyes in windows as we walked and talked. I noticed large plain televisions on mudcrete poles in the air, at each intersection. Each was set to the CTV channel, but played silently, with subtitles in delvish. I even knew the brand; it was the cheapest possible large screen that MortMobile offered.

Zero bells or whistles. Which meant my words would not be recorded and sent elsewhere, as nobody in the House of None owned a camera, and MortMobile wasn’t helping the other side out the way he was helping me.

“I have no doubt my presence and invasive armed forces have already been reported, but I promise you that Lady Sheeragore won’t hear about it for at least a day or two. By then, my press packet will be in place, and the mud will be in the air, so to speak,” I rambled, waving at sets of eyes only to see them vanish as windows were slammed shut.

“Honestly, our press release might be the first she hears of it, you have no idea how disorganized a large noble house is, those things are logistical nightmares. Anyway, by that time, she’ll have a PR situation to deal with, and hopefully the death of a second beholder to worry about,” I paused, my own eyes comically wide as my voice echoed across the plaza. “Oops, I mean bright plague creature, of course. They are so easy to get mixed up.”

Justin paled a bit at that, but smiled stiffly and gestured to a large building that looked like its foundations were primarily intact. The old structure had been carved from stalagmites growing straight up from the cavern floor, but something had destroyed the pillars with a searing beam. The charred remains held a building constructed of mushroom stalks in the shape of a log cabin mansion.

“This is the public house, where we decide city matters,” he said, with a small hand gesture. “I imagine it will be very busy in the coming days.”

I laughed and carefully clapped him on the back, still too hard. “I imagine it will. What kind of resistance from the locals am I likely to encounter?”

He shook his head. “None at all. We are a pacifist house entirely. Some may go to Storage and attempt to reunite with the House of Sheeragore, but none will rise up against you in arms.”

I nodded. “Of course. Well, that’ll make things considerably easier, if nobody is trying to knife my people in dark alleys or the like.”

“BuyMort, no!” He said, one hand to his chest. “Some of us may rebel at being slaves, but none of us would raise a hand against another sapient.”

I sighed and nodded. “That is noble as hell, Justin Lee. I honestly admire you for that, in the face of this kind of meat grinder,” I told him, raising one finger as I paused. “There is something to be said for sticking to a righteous act, even when you know it will enslave you. I respect your people, Justin, have since very early in BuyMort. The House of None and I go way back.”

“The rumors are true,” he whispered. “The weaver is real?”

I shook my head. “The weaver is Drusk, the mordren. As advertised, our silk is not touched by delf hands.” Then I leaned in. “But the teacher is as real as you or I.”

His smile widened and he hushed me. “I will tell only the right ears.”

We continued walking. “But the wrong ears will hear it one day soon as well,” I said. “Which is fine by me, I want them to know. Some people never learn, until you hit them in the face with reality. This moment, Justin, is a founding moment in your people’s history. Everything changes after this.”

MortMobile suddenly filled my BuyMort HUD with gray fog, and his furrowed brow caught my attention. “Emergency call from Axle,” the deity said.

I reached out to shake Justin Lee the self-named delf’s hand. “Hopefully, it changes for the better. Thank you for showing me around, Justin. I’m afraid I have to leave now, but I’ll return soon. Silken Sands is offering a life, however your people choose to live it. Try to help your people understand that for me, will you friend?”

The delf nodded somberly. “I will speak, here at the public house. And in the next district’s public house. Word of your hobbs will spread fast.”

I lifted off in the air and summoned my helmet. “Thank you, my friend,” I said, waving lightly as he went. “By the way, you’re really bad at not owning anything. Two more things you own now; my respect and friendship.”

“Goodbye warlord!” The delf shouted up at me as I flew away.

As I left Justin Lee the self-named delf, and his soon-to-be chaotic city behind, I thought about what I had told him. In this multiverse of endless struggles and power plays, what really makes something owned.

Is it the physical things themselves, that we cling to and revere? The land we work and live upon? Lithtin’s MortBlock hadn’t been updated in over a decade. Lady Sheeragore supposedly owned it, but in reality, the only thing that stopped her chapter of the House of None from owning it themselves was an ingrained culture.

Slaves, filled with too much respect for their master to take something for themselves.

It wasn’t about conquering anything, I realized. It was about trust. I trusted my managers at various levels to keep my MortBlocks operating, but if I had to put my hands on one myself, all I would have was my orbital hideout and the ship I flew toward.

In this vast, unpredictable game, I was bigger than just a warlord. I was entrusted by billions, to act in their best interests. To protect them. Everything in BuyMort came down to trust, at the very end. And most of us trapped within the system were too busy killing each other to realize it.

Chapter 27

I pushed aside the thoughts and pulled up Axle on my helmet’s main screen, flying directly toward the ship. “Report on Dario’s compound?” I asked.

Axle shook his head. “All BlueCleave security are dead, including the five starfish troopers guarding his ship. Which has been destroyed, the cannon is gone. They appear to have taken it outright.” He paused and scrolled down on the screen in front of him.

“Initial reports suggest a handful of operatives, highly enhanced and very well equipped, took out the surrounding surveillance bases, before grouping up and taking the compound itself immediately after. Ion destabilizer guns and monowire weapons again. The starfish troopers appear to have had some warning at least, but none of them made it. The church definitely knows how to damage your relic and kill anyone wearing one.”

“They must have found our missing suits,” I sighed. The affiliate had lost a very limited amount of the starfish suits since we started putting them on hobb soldiers. Three had been lost in Storage, to the Sleem. I imagined that was where the church had gotten their hands on it.

The giant globs of Sleem had taken our starfish troopers, and that was a certain way to kill one. The suit would work as long as it could to keep the trooper alive, but being engulfed in hundreds of billions of gallons of Sleem leaves one very few options. Eventually, the charge would run out and the body would be dissolved, leaving the empty suit behind.

We had instituted buy orders for the missing suits, but so had every other affiliate operating on the station, and location mattered. We’d only recovered one of the three suits, so the other two must have gone to the church for research and testing.

“That is not our primary concern. Retrieval of Dario and his cannon will have to wait, if it can be accomplished at all. I’m afraid we have a much bigger issue to deal with,” Axle said, interrupting my train of thought.

“Let me guess, Bill is misbehaving?” I asked.

“Our projections are off by a magnitude that frightens me, but it is beyond difficult to predict relativistic speeds where strange matter is involved,” Axle said. “You have forty minutes to interact with the bright plague creature, before it is out of our reach and moving too fast to do anything about.”

“What’s Bill’s speed now?” I asked, cringing inwardly at the time spent on Midnight.

“Approaching a third the speed of light. You might not even have forty minutes,” Axle said, his mechanical eyes flashing as he looked over fresh material from his tracking team. “The Sand Star frigate is holding up well, but so are the church’s camera drones. Our capabilities are being unraveled for the church military to see, including whatever you do to that thing once you arrive.”

“Good,” I said, showing my teeth in a cold grin. “I want them to know, we own space. This is the moment to reveal those capabilities. None of their ships can stand to us, none of them can stand to us, and I want them to stop squandering their fleets on us just to probe our strength. We overwhelm them here, with Bill, and they’ll step back to regroup. Which means we can make more moves on more planets. How much do you want to bet every mountain on this planet is full of slave delves, just waiting for a better life?”

“How about . . .” he paused and squinted at a number that raced upward on one of his monitors. “Four-point-eight nonillion morties?”

I dove on board the ship, closing the ramp with an afterthought once I was already in the heavy chair and entangled with the ship’s own tendrils. With one foot held down on the raise-intentions pedal, I eased out of the fog cloud and saw thousands of tiny red eyes below staring up at me.

Of course, hiding in the fog had meant nothing, delves all saw in the infrared spectrum as well as ambient light. The ship was essentially one giant radiator after a fight or reentry, and its spread out arms must have glowed like a sun.

I quickly dove out of the cavern, tucking in the ship’s arms and rocketing skyward. My ship’s charge was still full from wrecking Lithtin’s elevator, so I just nodded and ordered a BuyMort pod.

“Well, that’s a lovely number, I wonder how we could possibly spend that many morties,” I joked, as I paid a fourteen-hundred trillion mortie fee for an instant portal to Sol System. A pod ripped into space at my side and warped me back home directly alongside the racing Sand Star frigate and bullet-shaped beholder named Bill.

Within the time it took me to look up at the screen, they were gone. Far distant specks of bright blue fusion, hurtling down-sun so fast they were barely visible against the massive, burning star.

My cabin went opaque, and my ship formed a delicate flower formation of heat radiation at the rear, while I pressed my raise-intentions pedal to the floor and gave chase.

The sensation of hurtling toward the sun, already massive in my viewscreen, at break-neck speeds, was not pleasant. I felt fear again, deep in the core of my belly. As hard to kill as I had become, I was in yet another situation that could easily kill me if it went wrong.

I pushed aside the sensation and ordered my suit to hit me with an injection of the precursor pain drug, the one that slowed time without dulling my perception of the ship’s sensors. Then I pushed the ship into a gravity haul, expending part of my charge to instantly catch up with the beholder.

My Sand Star frigate broke off, no reason to continue the chase, as I pushed my ship toward the glittering black bullet and latched onto Bill’s side.

Instantly my charge began to drain. Not just from the ship, but from my own personal starfish suit as well. It wasn’t extreme, but it was rapid enough to concern me and I pulled the ship's many arms back, following alongside the massive celestial object. At that speed, the Buzzstar’s charge still ticked down, but physical contact with Bill seemed to drain the ship’s capacitor at an advanced rate.

Annoying stuff, strange matter.

Bill ignored me, aside from some eyes of flame floating beneath the surface of the strange matter. His fusion plume was massive and originated deep within his changed body structure. The glittering black material was partially translucent up close but appeared completely black from afar.

At the beholder’s base, near its front end, my attention was caught by an opening. It ran like a great slit across the bottom of the beholder’s bullet-shaped nose cone, gaping open to accept the rushing solar wind that accumulated on the bullet’s conical nose. Flashes of red and white plasma seared through the black of the strange matter, creating an effect not unlike a grinning mouth, filled with ever shifting teeth.

I pushed the ship closer to the beast’s front to inspect the beholder’s exoskeleton better, and saw its eyes, watching me. Two great shallows in the front of the beholder’s body showed blazing red and white plasma eyes that rolled back to watch my ship.

The Buzzsaw’s many arms spread out, radiating the heat coming into my ship from Sol and drawing a little charge from it. I glanced at my solar positioning map on my HUD and was unhappy to see that we were just inside the orbit of Venus, racing ever closer to the center of the solar system. To the giant raging ball of fusion at the heart of everything I had ever known.

In a moment of sheer frustration and exasperation, I called the creature. MortMobile connected me to the beholder, and to my surprise, they picked up.

“Eager, gloating acceptance,” MortMobile told me, before turning aside and becoming a tunnel of gray fog.

On the other side of my screen was the beholder’s primary eye, burning flames wreathed in more burning flames. “BE NOT AFRAID,” Bill said, something smarmy in their voice making me angry.

“You’re going to kill my star, Bill,” I growled back. “Stop your aggression and leave my people in peace.”

“AGGRESSION? PEACE? PEOPLE?” Bill slowly asked, their voice a deep grumble. “YOU KNOW NOT OF WHAT YOU SPEAK, APE-CHILD.”

“Ape-child? Really? At least now I know where the damn delves get it from. You can’t even interact with our reality unless you’re wearing a fancy suit. You don’t belong here!” I shouted in frustration. “Get out of my solar system and stop interfering in three-dimensional affairs!”

My feet played a careful game with the raise and lower-intentions pedals, as I raced to keep up with the beholder, but had to avoid attacking them.

“MY KIND BELONG WHERE WE PLEASE, MORTAL,” Bill rumbled in my head. “YOU HAVE TAKEN TWO OF US. NOW WE TAKE YOUR STAR TO BRING THEM BACK.”

“I’ll kill you first, Bill,” I warned them. “I’ll take you the way I took the others.”

The bullet’s eyes rolled back to stare at my ship, floating along above him at insane speeds. My own ship’s internal speedometer told me we had just pushed past half the speed of light and were still growing ever faster.

“Wave off, Bill! Stop!” I yelled.

The red and white mouth opened wider, into a rigid, violent grimace, and Bill’s ‘eyes’ rolled forward, toward their target. Toward the center of Sol. Then the MortMobile connection was cut off.

I let off the lower-intentions pedal and laid into Bill. I went for the eyes, slapping and ripping at the glittering strange matter. My ship’s blade arms were able to cut into the beholder’s outer surface, but when the atomic breaker energy fired, the strange matter simply absorbed it.

Shocks of blue lightning coursed through the glittering material of the beholder’s shell, before vanishing into its depths.

No atomic cohesion was lost, no violent eruption of material occurred, and my ship’s charge dropped even further with each strike. Finally I pulled back to assess what little damage I had done. Even the gashes and breaks caused by the ship’s blades refilled nearly immediately.

The strange matter hull of the beholder utterly defeated my demolition cruiser’s abilities.

Instead of causing atomic instability that led to an explosion, my ship’s atomic breaker charge was simply absorbed by the strange matter.

I pulled back and matched Bill’s speed, while accessing the Knowle library on Earth. Images of research and writings done on the concept of strange matter filtered onto my screen, magnifying as my interest in them grew.

Strange matter did not behave the same way regular matter behaved, at a subatomic level. At sufficient density, which I had to assume Bill had achieved by that point, it behaved much like a superconductive capacitor. The math I couldn’t quite make sense of, but the general gist of the notes told me that any form of energy I threw at the beholder would simply be absorbed by its new strange matter shell.

Cube had never been an option. Where he could normally deliver a massive jolt of direct current to overwhelm and short out a beholder’s exo-suit, Bill’s simply would have absorbed it. The beholder’s shell would absorb any energy it encountered.

Which explained Bill’s dive into the sun. If bombarded with enough energy, with enough pressure, moving close enough to the speed of light, mathematical predictions stated that strange matter could form an unstable wormhole in the fabric of spacetime. If that happened in the upper core of Sol, the star would vanish within minutes as the reaction expanded. The entire solar system was at risk, but Venus, Terna’s planetship, Nu-Earth and Mars would all definitely be devoured by the unstable anomaly.

“Tyson, Bill’s speed is increasing again,” Axle’s voice broke my reverie. “It’s now, right now, or never! Do something!”

I blinked, pushed the ship, and latched onto Bill’s side, near the tail. The Buzzsaw’s charge was just under half and contact with the strange matter drained my ship’s capacitor through each limb. With a deep breath, I stomped on the raise-intentions pedal and activated my ship’s gravity haul, focusing on pushing Bill as hard as I could.

At the same time, Bill increased our speed to near that of light, and my ship was torn free, pushed away by the sudden increase in velocity. I’d pushed against the beholder’s tail, just as they pushed their own speed to close that of light.

My ship died, its charge completely drained, and I drifted into an extreme high orbit of Sol. The Buzzsaw’s arms spread out slowly, drawing energy into the ship’s core while I watched a glittering streak splash into the sun’s surface near the bottom of the orb.

Instead of driving themself deep into Sol’s core, Bill merely skimmed it, punching through the star’s convective zone and back out the other side. A great plume of plasma followed Bill’s glittering streak, reaching out from the star in a violent solar flare.

From up close, even with my ship’s filters active, I was nearly blinded by the flash that followed, as Bill suddenly imploded. A blinding flash of light radiated from Bill as their body violently deconstructed into an unstable wormhole.

Outside of the star, the gaping tear in spacetime consumed the massive plume of solar material as the naked beholder at its center tried to hold itself together. The jagged tear, vibrant purple-blue in the black background of space, pulled at the beholder’s flames, tugging bits of it away as the gigantic ball of living flame strained and pulled to stay in our dimension.

With a great heave, the wormhole swallowed Bill and snapped shut. Sol remained whole, hanging massive in my viewscreen while my ship slowly recharged.

Important Occurrences of the Late BuyMort Period - Bill’s attack run on Sol; a Summary

In the late period of BuyMort, intense conflict and strategic upheaval was the rule of the multiverse, all pretenses gone, open warfare concealed but well felt by all sapient species. Sometimes called the Age of Tyson, it was a struggle between the affiliates and power structures of old with the upstart rise of the new. Correctly observed at the time as a cataclysmic changing of the guards, the era prominently featured WarCEO Tyson Dawes, known as the Windowpuncher, and his coalition of rising affiliate allies. Despite desperate action against him from long-established power bases, his moves and decisions continuously reshaped the fabric of the multiverse in unprecedented ways.

It was in this time of upheaval that the Nu-Earth faced off in war with the Beholders. Enigmatic and powerful astral entities that extended into unknown dimensions, their anger at Tyson's resistance to their rule and his elimination of two of their kind brought about a series of existential threats that posed the real possibility of Tyson's collapse and the end to Silken Sands market domination. After the defeat and destruction of the atmospheric beholder, a new attack was launched upon the Nu-Earth star itself.

Seemingly indestructible, Tyson and his affiliate allies struggled and planned ways in which to eliminate the threat, theorizing vulnerabilities and planning to exploit them. In a feat considered legendary still today, Dawes leveraged this theoretical understanding of the beholders and devised a plan to neutralize their threat. This was a feat that, of course, was considered impossible by many at the time, beholders being worshiped as extra-natural beings by most.

As the multiverse held its breath, sapients watched the live feed broadcast, no doubt holding their breath in anger, fear, awe, or admiration. The intricate game of commerce, power, and technology, played under his direction, had come to a single defining point in history.

Chasing the beholder popularly termed 'Bill', Tyson piloted a dangerous relic ship from the Teslak Cooperative, reaching near-light speeds in his battle. Records indicate that a failure on his part would have not just ended his affiliate and his life, but also brought back the beholders he had previously slain. An event that might have possibly led into a crusade by the Beholder's against all life.

Bill’s projected methodology of destruction and rebirth for his slain kin was to pass through Sol at light speed, wearing a strange matter shell. This would have created a wormhole reaction in the star’s core, consuming all of its energy to tear a massive hole in the fabric of space time that would have immediately devoured all planetary bodies inside the Sol system’s asteroid belt.

By pushing the beholder’s thrust at a critical moment, with his relic ship’s faster-than-light capability, Dawes was able to convert impending disaster into triumph. The strange matter reaction ignited a tear in the fabric of spacetime as Bill had appeared to intend, but outside of the star, where the only energy source to feed the reaction was Bill themselves. The unstable wormhole, instead of consuming Sol, destroying Silken Sands, and creating a doorway for the other slain beholders to return, simply consumed Bill.

Pushing himself, Tyson Dawes succeeded in defeating the beholder by using their plan against themself, an achievement that sent shockwaves rippling through the multiverse. Tyson Dawes vaulted to new heights, the name Windowpuncher now synonymous with great tactical acumen, his very image spawning a brief religious frenzy around the figure that is difficult to shake even today, with the clear gaze of history.

The balance of power within the cosmos, already tottering on the precipice, spiraled into its last period of collapse, the political and economic implications ending long-standing alliances, shattering local monopolies, and sending credit levels and affiliate ranking into another mess of unpredictable numbers. Dawes rode the waves of it all, leveraging the chaos and setting new precedents in the annals of history.

- Knowle Institute of Multiversal History

Chapter 28

I watched the space where Bill had vanished closely, but nothing further happened.

A thin trail of plasma arched back into Sol from the area, an oversized solar flare that had erupted in response to the beholder’s passage. Instead of absorbing the star’s radiative fusion from the core and creating a large, lasting tear in the fabric of spacetime, the beholder’s shell had been exposed to just enough raw energy to start the wormhole reaction.

While active, it swallowed a bit of Sol’s outer chromosphere, but nothing we would miss. A larger than average flare shot off into space with all the destructive force that act of nature implied, but it was aimed at nothing. No world or fleets were in its path, so it amounted to a solar belch.

I sat and breathed heavily, watching the scene as the CTV drone hovered around my ship. The Buzzsaw’s many arms caught the solar wind, and I rode out of Sol’s outer orbits. My capacitor quickly reached a full charge, and I activated a gravity haul out before the ship could overheat much more in the star’s proximity.

I arrived, glowing with heat and radiation, in orbit of Nu-Earth, where my defense fleet stood off against the newly arrived mercenary fleet. My enhanced vision and the sensors on my ship blended to show me a single Sand Star frigate hovering between the fleets. None of them were firing on each other.

The enemy fleet was primarily composed of the great white triangular carriers we were both using, with a handful of scattered support vessels. Fighters from the Nahgah Prime fleet, a smattering of Orkreshi battlecruisers, and at least two dedicated salvage vessels that looked human in design. They both reminded me of the submarine I had helped so many months before, with cranes and ready cargo bays visible even at a distance.

Apparently, they had expected to be able to collect scrap.

A surge of anger filled me at the thought, and I unconsciously pressed the raise-intentions pedal. In a blink, I was on the larger of the scrap vessels, my still-glowing with solar heat Buzzstar ripping through its vulnerable structure with slapping motions of its bladed arms.

I burrowed into the craft violently, shoving my own ship deeper into its hull as I continued its destruction. The faces of helmeted astronauts came and went, torn through like everything else, until the ship’s reactor was in my grip.

I ripped it apart and gravity hauled back out of the craft before it could fully detonate. The other scrapper vessel had already turned away, and my lip curled at the thought of them trying to run. Now, after they knew there would be no scrap, no profit for them at this intended slaughter. Only now that they knew there were going to be no morties, they wanted their lives instead.

With a short wind up, I sent my super-heated ship through their vessel in a gravity hauled buzzsaw of tearing metal and watched from afar on the other side as the craft exploded.

“BlueCleave Navy!” I shouted, activating the local comms. “This is Warlord Dawes. I want their fleet. Take it.”

A hesitation filled my ears before Captain Thresher replied, “Yes sir. Right away sir.”

The Sand Star burst into motion, streaking forward into the enemy fleet. Detonations followed as it buzzed in between them like a hummingbird. Streaks of linear beam fire followed it, and as I watched, one of the shots struck an arm of the craft, blasting glittering bits of it into space.

The Sand Star was damaged, but only on that extremity. Its wounded arm no longer fired or provided thrusters for the ship’s momentum, but it was far from out of the fight. The church’s countermeasure for our Sand Stars seemed to be overwhelming linear beam cannons; many of the opposing craft were equipped with them.

If they weren’t so focused on my agile Sand Star frigate, the rest of our fleet would have been in big trouble. We were outclassed, and even our clever hobb-designed armor upgrades wouldn’t save most ships from a direct hit from one of those cannons.

I activated my ship’s gravity haul and blinked into place directly in front of the enemy fleet’s flagship. Its gold trim and purple paint combined with its position at the heart of the fleet to give its importance away. The hostile fleet’s leadership was clearly on board.

So I tore the craft apart. In a flurry of movement, the enemy fleet’s leadership was exposed to the vacuum of space, their bridge walls torn apart by the Buzzsaw. A linear cannon shot sunk into my ship’s arms, blasting through them all and skimming the craft’s exterior, tearing away a swatch of armor from one actuator.

I’d wanted their attention on me instead of the more vulnerable ships, but my own craft was far from invulnerable. It had shaped its arms to deflect the incoming shot and damaged several in the process. But it saved the core, with me, and the ship’s reactor, so I decided to simply move. Make myself a harder target to hit, like our Sand Star pilot.

Without a primary control crew, the flagship was disabled, so I focused on my next target and gravity hauled to their ship.

Over such short distances, it barely drained my charge, which was immediately replaced as I savaged the enemy fleet. My ship repaired itself as needed, and there was plenty of material available to replace its slurry with.

My Buzzsaw was able to tear off gunnery emplacements, snap loose drive control panels, rip apart attitude-control nodes, puncture life support systems, and shatter cockpits. Each ship I left in my wake was disabled in some significant way, and the same was true of the Sand Star pilot. As long as we didn’t stay in one place for too long, we avoided being shot by their expensive, effective energy weapons.

The Sand Star pilot was primarily occupied with the carrier fleet. The unaffiliated, unofficial Church carriers split as soon as I attacked, their smaller cruisers breaking free to maneuver as ours did the same. Our Sand Star pilot focused on the carriers to even the odds in that fight, as missiles and linear particle beams began to fill the space between fleets.

We were outgunned, technically. Our ships were equipped poorly by comparison, for the most part. But the addition of a Sand Star frigate and my own Buzzsaw more than evened the odds.

Molls and the orbital mansion had been moved to the far side of the planet, and Jada had assigned one of her Sand Stars to defend it. Three others streaked up from the planet’s surface to join in the fight, red smears of plasma in the atmosphere announcing their arrival.

I was able to let go, to just sink into my lower brain and revel in the violence. Like an ape that had just discovered it could brain its fellow apes with a femur, I laid into the enemy ships wantonly, gracelessly, and with terrible efficacy.

My ship burrowed into other crafts with lashing bladed arms, blasts of blue energy, and bursts of ruined interior. Notifications flashed and were ignored as I gave in to my base instincts and reveled in the massacre the battle had become.

Finally Thresher’s familiar, bearded face projected onto my viewscreen, and shouted, “Wave off Warlord! That ship has our people on board!”

My fugue state popped like a bubble, and I realized what I had done. The craft was already ours, our troopers were aboard, taking prisoners and securing the ship.

I stomped the lower-intentions pedal as stuttered memories flooded my mind, of all that had happened since Bill had vanished. The memories were laced with exhaustion, and I rubbed my eyes to ward off the yawn that threatened to overwhelm me.

The ship was alright, they’d caught me before I damaged anything critical. There was merely a large hole bored in the side of the craft, which the boarding teams would have to carefully work around.

“Sorry Captain. Where do you need me?” I asked quietly, backing my ship carefully out of the hole I had already dug in the massive, triangular ship.

“Permission to speak freely?” Thresher immediately asked, his eyes wide and jaw clenched.

I nodded.

“I don’t. We were negotiating their retreat to the gate when you arrived and turned this into another of your signature messes. Now if you don’t mind, kindly fuck off so I can clean it up,” he said, before taking a breath and straightening his shoulders. “Sir,” he added as an afterthought.

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The ad suggestion shook me to reality, and I nodded again. “Understood. Carry on, Captain.”

“Yes, sir,” he snapped, before cutting comms.

I sighed as I pulled my ship out of the dwindling battle. Once an entire squad of Sand Star frigates was involved, the enemy fleet crumpled within seconds. All that was left was the confiscation of ships and the imprisonment of crew.

Chapter 29

Again the thought of our lunar prison and its necessary expansion entered my mind, but it was already underway. A quick glance at the affiliate progress screen confirmed that. It was one of hundreds of thousands of assets we kept listed. Fortunately, the lunar colony was designed to rehabilitate, not merely imprison.

Those who went there would hopefully enter Silken Sands society at large, in one of our many worlds. They would work, make lives, and quietly forget that they had once served an empire of callous disregard and exploitation.

BlueCleave rehabilitation even had programs to reunite rehabilitated family members, spouses, and even just friends. It helped our prisoners adjust to Silken Sands by knowing they had people already part of it, just waiting for them on the outside.

Hell, even the small city on the moon that was growing up around the spaceport and rehabilitation complex was becoming something real. The domed operation already contained over a million people, and its population was growing daily.

While I stared at the screen, my ship started to slip into Nu-Earth’s atmosphere. Its arms formed its entry cone, funneling the friction plasma and lessening the impact of the rushing air all around me. With a powerful thought to hold still, I stomped on the raise-intentions pedal and the ship jerked to a halt in midair.

Elevator station was directly above, and I knew I was being watched, but I couldn’t help it. I froze, unsure of what to do next.

I had barely saved us from that beholder. It was mostly luck and instinct, I had hoped that if I could just push their drive direction enough, they would have to make another run at the star. It had worked out better than that, but it sounded like the beholders could come back somehow, if enough effort and energy was applied.

Still, it seemed an enormous task, given how Bill had been attempting it. I had to wonder if the church had the resources to accomplish the return of their beholders but had no means of knowing either way.

A calming presence entered my roiling mind, accompanied by gray fog. The turmoil in my mind eased, artificially. Everything dulled, as though a heavy, warm blanket was thrown over my brains.

“Incoming call from Molls,” MortMobile said.

I sniffed and nodded, blinking rapidly as the tears I hadn’t noticed welling up faded away. “Thank you, MortMobile. You can ease off the emotional aid. I’m alright, and I should be myself when I talk to her.”

“A mind such as yours cannot be so ill at ease, my friend. For the sake of us all, it simply cannot. Take consolation in your great acts, and in the many lives you have improved,” the face in my mind said. “Including my own.”

I took a few deep breaths and closed my eyes, nodding. “I’m ready. Thank you.” His emotional influence left me, and the reptilian face of my mate appeared on screen.

“My love!” Molls’ voice filled my ship, and I smiled in spite of myself. “Are you okay?!” She was fluctuating between yellow and pink, so I raised my gentle smile for her to see. The color in her scales flushed purple and she sighed in relief. “You scared me when your ship just stopped.”

“Tell me you haven’t been watching CTV?” I groaned, already knowing she had been.

“I was worried,” Molls pouted. “After everything that’s happened the last few days, have you even rested?”

I shook my head and pulled up the news feed for myself. It showed a split screen. One view on my ship, floating above the Pacific Ocean, and the other in space as my crews cleaned up the enemy fleet. Bits and parts floated by the cameras, which kept switching to different vantage points. CTV must have deployed dozens of camera drones, once the fighting had stalled enough to warrant the risk.

With a quick step on the raise-intentions pedal, I shot out an arm from the ship and destroyed the CTV camera drone watching my ship. An instant later, I watched it happen on screen, and chuckled when Molls scowled.

“Really, Tyson, was that necessary?” She asked.

I pressed on the raise-intentions pedal further and piloted the ship toward Prescott. “Sort of,” I answered. “Operational security says I shouldn’t let them follow me to port. Plus it felt good.”

“Oh as if anyone will think you have that thing parked anywhere but the Prescott spaceport,” Molls scoffed. Then her features softened, and she rippled with green, before returning to her resting state of light purple. “When are you coming home?” she asked.

I sighed and shook my head. “I have no idea, my love. Not just yet, at any rate. It’s been a bit crazy since I last saw you.”

“I know,” she said, quietly. “I’ve been watching. Everyone has. Thank you, by the way, for saving me. Twice, if you include Bill.” Her scales flickered pink momentarily.

“You don’t have to thank me,” I said. “That’s my job.”

Molls blinked her oversized eyes and set her phone down with a sigh. “Saving the entire solar system from a crazed beholder is not supposed to be anyone’s job,” she spat. “But I was mostly referring to your rescue of myself and my mother, on Nahgah.”

“Ah,” I said. “About that, I’m sorry I was so upset with you,” I told her, pausing to shake my head. “I just . . . I feel like your mother is out to get us, sometimes. Like she intentionally used you as bait for the Church forces.”

“Those weren’t Church, though,” Molls said. “They were something else, I’ve never seen warriors like that in service to the Church before.”

“It was delf house warriors, my love,” I said with a small sigh. “Church warriors in all but name.”

“But you said they were a cult,” Molls said, eyebrow ridges furrowed. “A cult of beholder worshippers.”

“Well, that would be the entire church, in my opinion,” I started. “But I was lying. I know they’re working directly for the church, under Lady Sheeragore. Likely lesser houses she holds sway over. Disposable fodder, really. Just fighters they can throw away without having to deal with public outcry over their aggression against the multiverse’s most popular new affiliate.”

Molls’ scowl deepened as I spoke, and she remained silent as I finished, looking at her hands clasped in her own lap.

“I am sorry, my mate,” I replied. “You must be feeling a great deal of hurt and stress. I know you’re not exactly happy with the church these days.”

A flash of vibrant red flowed through her scales, before Molls took a deep breath and nodded. “I spent nearly two decades learning a pack of lies, meant to control people and force them to offer value without exchange,” she said, scowling as the red returned. “Now, seeing the true face of the beholders, I just . . .” she drifted off with another angry sigh.

“On top of everything else, I know. I’m sorry, my love. I cannot help but feel responsible,” I said.

I piloted the Buzzsaw down to BlueCleave’s portion of the spaceport. Its airspace was covered by BlueCleave air control, and the massive warren of hangars beneath the port was a great hiding place for a ship the size of the Buzzsaw. Not that I expected to need to hide it for long. After my planned conversation with Rayna, and another visit to the Teslak Cooperative, I expected to field dozens of Brisingida class demolitions cruisers.

Each with its own zealous hobb pilot, equipped with a fully upgraded starfish suit and no compunctions about violence.

But first, there were other battles to be briefed on, and an ass-chewing for my interference in fleet operations, I didn’t doubt. It was my fleet, but Rayna still got pissy when I did things that were too unexpected, or outside of operational norms.

“It’s not your fault, Tyson, all you did was stand up to them. BuyMort, I just feel so stupid. All those conversations we had, now I can understand what you meant, why you were so angry. You could see it then, even though none of the rest of us could,” Molls said. “What the church was, I mean. You could see it even at the start of all this, when I was still a clueless pawn.”

I nodded slowly, then shook my head as she finished speaking. “I dunno, I feel like I just assume the worst of those who hold power, and rarely get proven wrong.”

Molls chuckled and nodded. “You are rather pessimistic, my love, I’ll grant you that. I’m just sorry I couldn’t hear you on this topic before. Truly, my love, my mate, I am sorry.”

I shook my head as I brought the Buzzsaw in for a landing. The pad below me would drop into the superstructure beneath the spaceport, then reclose once I was down. Lights on the pad brightened and dimmed in a circle, to indicate my landing placement, and three hobb attendants wearing bright orange vests arrived to accompany myself and the craft below.

“I never held you responsible for the church before, Molls, and I certainly don’t now. They’ve built an empire on lies, you were just part of that without knowing you were lied to as well. But you’ve taken what they taught you, the tools of psychological manipulation, and you’ve put them to use for good, here on Nu-Earth. On our homeworld, you and your ‘flock’ have really been making a difference with your mental health aid,” I reminded her.

Molls turned pink and shyly looked away before saying “Thank you,” quietly.

“No, I mean it Molls. I saw what this world was like before your help. I come from a civilization that treated mental health like it didn’t matter, and you saw how quickly that civilization fell apart the instant BuyMort arrived,” I told her. “What you do matters, what your fellow priests do matters. They’ve come from every corner of the multiverse, to work under you, specifically because you are doing the work you were always meant to do.”

I took a breath and waited as the docking platform unlocked and clunked into its elevator configuration. “You adhere to the calling, not the job. You’re a priest of BuyMort the way priests of BuyMort were always supposed to be, not the twisted version the church tried to force on the multiverse. As this fight expands, I expect your department to get a lot more recruits.”

Molls was smiling, a mix of pink and purple rapidly flowing through her scales. “Do you really?” The handful of disaffected priests that had been attracted to Nu-Earth up to that point had been a trickle, but I did expect it to become a flow once war broke out properly.

I nodded at her. “Most people know the church isn’t what they claim to be. More and more are figuring that out every day. After the beholder attacks recently, I can’t imagine their internal faith structure is doing too well. You can expect an expansion soon.”

Molls nodded and smiled again. “But when can I see you?”

“Soon,” I sighed. “I’ve got some things to wrap up before I can come home, and that’s if another battle doesn’t break out somewhere critical.”

“I understand,” she said, her scales flickering with green momentarily. “I love you, and I hope to see you soon.”

“I love you too, Molls. And I’ll be home soon, I promise. I need the rest, if nothing else,” I sighed.

“Yes, you do. I’m not sure what those enhancement patches have done to you exactly, but you’ve been pushing since Sleem. Before that even, really. You need to take some downtime, my love. Preferably with me, of course,” she coyly replied.

“Is that your medical opinion?” I chuckled.

Molls snorted and scowled, turning green. “I am not a doctor, and you know that.”

“No my love, you are far more important than a doctor. Your mental health aid has helped me more than you can know. And I’m sure it will help my affiliate too,” I told her.

“I live to serve,” Molls said snidely, with a mock bow.

I chuckled at her. “Don’t worry, that part wasn’t intentional. Just one of the many benefits of having you in my life.”

Molls flushed a deep purple and her eyes glistened as she stared down at her phone. “Tyson, I miss you.”

“I miss you too, and I’ll come home as soon as I can,” I replied. “I love you.”

“I love you too,” she answered, before I regretfully cut the MortMobile connection.

Chapter 30

There were a dozen more communication requests waiting on my various platforms. I ignored most of them, as they were primarily from Axle, trying to reach me with multiple communication methods. It was my intention to call him back immediately, but a text from Jada caught my attention and I opened it.

Axle’s former mate was commanding one of our carriers defending Nu-Earth, she was in orbit at the moment, assumedly sending troopers to board enemy craft and take them. But she’d taken the time to text me and had attached an image file too.

When I opened it, I saw a still frame of my glowing-hot Buzzsaw streaking through the second salvage craft. It had been taken in the instant before the craft’s reactor detonated, and simply showed my ship, in buzzsaw arm-formation, blasting through the far side of the other ship.

The only words attached to the text were “Thank you.”

I made a mental note to check in on her, but it seemed like my actions weren’t despised by the entire Nu-Earth fleet.

The elevator platform my ship was seated on shifted into motion, and I watched through the still-active sensors as I was moved below ground. A metal cap for the docking platform sealed above us, and mechanized struts moved my ship through the spacious underground docking and maintenance area.

Dearth had dug out most of it for us, but we’d had to continue their building plans when we took over. Quite a bit of it was functional, but a few sections were still under construction. The Buzzsaw was moved into a berth in one of those sections, freshly constructed and part of our landing platform elevator system already. But to its side was a plain wall of Arizona dirt.

I stared at the dirt and pressed accept on the cheapest call from Axle waiting for me. It was on BlueCleave comms, our own system, so most of the expense would be eaten up by the operation itself.

“Sorry, Axle,” I started. “I’m popular right now.”

My Knowle friend nodded. “Infamous even. I have several issues that require your attention, but none so pressing as this; Elegy has accepted your invitation. The inquisition will be arriving in full force before the end of the day. All of our relic-equipped troops are expected to be in field parade position, including all of our active relic fleet, for immediate inspection.”

I chuckled. The physically laced message had served its purpose. “What time is it now?” I asked, eyebrows furrowed. “The sun was up while I was landing, I think.”

Axle shook his head. “It’s morning, early morning. When was the last time you slept?”

I shook my head and moved to disconnect from the Buzzsaw. My suit began retracting tendrils at the same time as the oversized pilot’s seat did, and I stood shakily, vision blurring intermittently while my head throbbed. I blinked and steadied myself on the seatback. It was the first time I’d gotten a headache since I installed my aimed shot perk patch.

Axle blinked and licked his nose. “When was the last time you ate something?” he asked gently.

I frowned and thought, cycling through the events of the past few days. “Not recently.” I was able to recall the last meal I had eaten in nearly perfect detail but was unable to remember to eat before my body began to suffer the consequences.

He sighed and looked away, before turning back and nodding. “Look, you might want to consider some rest and recovery before Elegy arrives. That delf is angry, and from all I’ve been able to learn about him, vindictive. Your lies and his willingness to believe them has already humiliated him once. He will be out to dominate and humiliate you in return.”

I nodded. “I know. Don’t worry, I have a plan. What do you need me for? There’s time.”

Axle sighed. “Nothing you’re in any state to help with. I have some battle reports, but some are still ongoing. The Venus fleet is having a few issues, we misread the enemy's intention and sent the wrong ships. They’ve sent a small fleet of agile fighters, and we stationed heavy armor carriers, expecting capital ship attacks on the plantation vessels.”

“How bad is it?” I asked.

The Knowle shook his head. “It’s not. I’m redirecting another few Sand Stars there right now to aid the fleet, via portal.”

“But you wanted me to go,” I replied, sagging against the doorway.

The starfish suit could do a lot, but it couldn’t replace my cellular, biological energy with its own. At least, not without replacing my cells. It would be simpler to have a good meal and some time to digest it.

“I did. Your new ship is now publicly capable of FTL travel,” he mentioned.

I nodded. “Keep it to me, I want them focused on me, on my ship. Don’t let them know the other Sand Stars can do it too, not yet. We need to keep them guessing.”

Axle frowned. “Hence the expensive portal. Your goal of obfuscation won’t be simple though, Elegy is bringing an entourage. Including an astro-mechanic. They have clear plans to pry our secrets out of us this time, why did you invite the inquisition to our home in the opening salvos of our war against the church? I’ll be surprised if they don’t attempt to arrest you.”

I chuckled weakly. “You’ll see. Don’t worry, it’ll solve the problem of the inquisition. Permanently.”

“Is there a specific reason you don’t wish to tell me the details of your plan regarding the inquisition?” Axle carefully asked.

“Yeah,” I sighed. “You’d try to talk me out of it, and I don’t have the energy today.”

“I am not certain of Elegy’s rank within the inquisition, Tyson,” Axle told me. “High, certainly, but I have significant doubts that he is the head of that particular wing of the church’s intelligence operation.”

“Doesn’t matter how high ranked he is,” I said, shaking my head. “He’s the public face of the inquisition. He’s what people think of when they think of the inquisition. His fleet of black ships, his oversized hats, his specific brand of arrogant malice is how the inquisition presents itself to the rest of BuyMort.”

When recognition didn’t dawn on my friend's features, I continued, “Intentionally. They present themselves using this delf on purpose.”

“Oh BuyMort, you’re going to publicly assassinate him!” Axle exclaimed.

I nodded wearily. “Yes, but think about what that act will do to their entire power structure. To those who lead the church.”

“Being perfectly honest with you, my friend, you’ve already enraged church leadership beyond reason by killing their beholders,” Axle snapped. “Bright plague creatures, dammit. Tyson, what possible benefit could there be in this assassination?”

“It will weaken them, Axle. Significantly,” I said. “We’ve proven their angels to be nothing but dangerous astral pests, now we cut their most feared humanoid power structure off at the knees, on live television for the entire multiverse to see.”

Axle blinked, licked his nose, and sat back in his chair. A few moments of contemplation followed which I used to silently order a meal from the local yarsp vendor through BuyMort.

“I’ll need to order more security for all of our top personnel,” he finally said. “We should perhaps also recall Lee before you perform this spectacle of yours.”

I nodded, a small smile on my lips. “Of course. Tell him to put out the word that I’m just looking for Dario, first. Before he leaves the upper planets, I mean.”

When Axle frowned in confusion at me, I chuckled. “Whatever it is I do, whatever happens next, I’m only doing it to find Dario. Tell them it all stops the moment my friend comes home unharmed.”

Axle nodded and wrote something down on a pad at his side. “I will relay that. What about the cannon?”

“They’ll never give up the cannon. It’s one of a handful of things that can actually stop a Teslak ship. By the way, expect a really big drain on the expense account; we’re about to buy a bunch more ships from them,” I told him. “But Dario we can get back. I’ll never find him, the trip to Midnight was foolish, I know that now. Aside from the new MortBlock coverage we’re stealing, I mean, it was a waste of time.”

Axle shrugged. “Time we thought we had. Bill was not expected to make such large speed jumps.”

“They were fueling the strange matter from within, I think directing it to increase their velocity. I saw a mouth. It looked like Bill was drawing radiation from Sol. That was likely the cause of the unexpected jumps in speed,” I said offhandedly. “The closer they got to the star, the faster they were able to go.” A BuyMort pod arrived and deposited my meal in the hangar bay, and its transaction-complete whistle echoed strangely off the cavern and concrete walls.

“I’m going to get some rest now,” I said. “And then I’m going to really kick off hostilities between us and the church.”

Axle shook his head. “You won't be getting much rest, I’m sorry to tell you. Yolara has been quite insistent that she speak with you.”

“Oh for . . .'' I sighed. “Of course. I’ll get in touch with her right after I talk to Rayna. Just let me go eat my yarsp wrap first. I’ll be good to go then, I promise.”

My operations manager nodded grimly, then reached out and disconnected our call. I sighed in relief and looked into my ship’s embarkation tunnel. The aching sense of exhaustion was all consuming, and the only thing that motivated me to even move to exit the ship was the smell of food coming from my open landing bay door.

Fortunately, my starfish suit had a full charge, even if I didn’t. I engaged the gravity harness, floating while my arms and legs dangled limply, and I followed the scent of food through the air like a cartoon character from my youth. The yarsp wrap was in excessively greasy wax paper, just the way I liked it.

I ripped open the paper and started eating, consuming nearly half of the wrap in my first over-eager bite. Before it was gone, however, a familiar hobb approached across the tarmac of my secluded landing pad, her boot heels clicking as she came.

Chapter 31

“Hi Rayna,” I said, mouth full of perfectly seared and seasoned yarsp.

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I had noticed the vendor carefully measuring and sloshing out the sauce that came with each wrap. It seemed a shame to devour such a carefully assembled delight in three oversized bites, but I was hungry. I shrugged and finished the wrap as Rayna approached the ramp and looked around at the ship.

“Impressive. When do we get more?” she grunted.

“Soon, but these are weird ships. Only one pilot per craft, and they have to have a fully upgraded starfish suit to hope to survive piloting one. It certainly did come in handy killing that last beholder. Although, based on what they said before-hand, I kind of doubt they’re dead at all. Just removed from their ability to interact directly with our dimension,” I said.

Rayna listened as I spoke but sighed at me when I finished. “So they might come back,” she finally grunted.

I nodded. “Maybe. Seems like it would take a lot of effort though. Bill seemed to need to consume our star to do it, so I assume it’s not a simple task for them.”

“Only ever heard of a few, throughout all BuyMort legends. Think maybe we got them all?” the tall hobb woman asked, leaning on my ship’s wall.

I shook my head and laughed. “Our luck isn’t that good. I have no idea what we’re going to do about the next one, without Dario and his cannon.”

“You handled the last one fine, I’m not worried. Fleet actions are going well. Mars, Saturn, Terna’s World, all doing well. Venus should be under control soon. Their fleets are becoming our fleets; our astro-mechanics will have work for years,” she laughed. “This is a time of great prosperity for my people, our casualties are even at record low levels! No starfish troopers lost in the Sol fleet actions, and only a dozen or so golems. Our people’s greatest victory to date, and we are not even dying to accomplish it.”

I nodded grimly, wiping the sauce from my beard and thinking of Spectre. “I have another gift to claim, one final advantage to give to the BlueCleave tribe,” I trailed off, thinking of the Teslak Cooperative and their ships. Thinking of the massive hangar door I had seen on my last visit. “I’m not sure exactly what it is just yet, but I’ll be delivering it to the main staging area soon, so clear some space please. It’s going to be big, I think.”

Rayna nodded and pulled a tablet device from under one arm, making a note on it before looking back to my face. “You look terrible, boss. When you last sleep?”

“I dunno, sometime before Sleem,” I said offhandedly, not bothering to think about it.

Rayna shook her head and blinked. “Boss, that was a week ago.”

I raised my eyes and chuckled at her. “Oh,” I said. “That would certainly explain why I’m so tired.”

Apparently my upgraded gray matter had its limitations.

“I can’t sleep just yet, I have to talk to Yolara Brinks,” I told her. “She probably wants me to make an appearance or something, explain my attack on the fleet.”

“Yeah, nobody in fleet command is particularly happy about that. I saw it coming, of course, but you surprised a lot of my mid-level staff,” Rayna said. “The arrogance of the church bringing scrapper ships, I knew that would bring out your fury.”

Hobb could be florid at times, as a language. ‘Bring out your fury’ was her people’s version of ‘piss you off,’ it just didn’t translate quite as well. It reminded me of the remedial civilization I had come from and made me wonder what her people were like before BuyMort.

The hobbs had certainly found a way to survive, and even thrive, but it was down to their warrior culture. It kept them not only alive and fighting, but in-demand by most affiliates, and paid for their work. To a degree, anyway.

Before my arrival in the BuyMort system, hobbs had been considered an essential part of any affiliate. Now, those who didn’t remain in Storage primarily lived under Silken Sands.

Axle often fretted about the sheer percentage going directly into BlueCleave from Silken Sands, but I knew better. It was worth every mortie just to see the hobbs all come to work for us, to make lives within our affiliate.

Any time I looked at one of our hobbs, from the elite astronaut soldiers down to the street vendors slinging yarsp, it felt as though I was seeing the approval of the only people within BuyMort I needed approval from.

I sighed and sold the greasy yarsp wrapping paper, then nodded to Rayna and we began walking out of the underground hangar. The walk wasn’t anywhere near as long as I feared it would be, there was an elevator to the surface at the edge of my platform.

It was one of what appeared to be hundreds, if not thousands of potential platforms. There were flat, concrete and steel landing pads extending into the gloom of the underground cavern, stacked neatly on rails that allowed a multi-directional cargo elevator to move about freely between them.

The areas even seemed customizable, with some landing platforms being stacked nearly touching, and others spread out with football fields of empty space between them. Silken Sands construction had been busy in the months we’d taken the space elevator and attached spaceport from The Dearth Conglomerate.

They’d driven the elevator into the ground nearly a mile down, for stability and other logistical reasons, but our engineers had been hollowing out the mountain and desert nearby for our own uses. The ground was supported by thick pillars, and composite roofing material for each cavern. Only the walls were natural stone.

Rayna held the elevator door open for me, as I lagged behind her, staring and taking in the massive underground space.

“You’ve never been down here before, that’s right,” she said as I finally stepped into the rounded elevator car. It, and its mechanisms were tucked into the nearby railing, so I had to step over a significant gap to enter the car.

“Nope, heard about it a few times though,” I said, still peering out the windows at the dimly lit space.

To be perfectly clear, there were plenty of lights. Big ones, even. The sheer amount of space between racks of landing platforms and structural support pillars ensured that the area stayed quite dark. Even my enhanced vision couldn’t make the far end of my own small section appear.

The elevator started moving with a jerk, and I settled in for the ride. It was shorter than I expected too, with the car racing upward and into a hatch in the reinforced ceiling. The tube-shaped elevator opened its doors and I stepped out into BlueCleave’s primary armory, on their base.

“Wow, that really is big down there,” I muttered.

“Only a few dozen pads in the whole spaceport, there’s just no way to operate it without the parking garage,” Rayna said offhandedly. “Now, let’s see this gift you promised our tribe. What is the final weapon BlueCleave will wield against the church?”

I smiled and nodded, pulling up the Afflqwst notification. “Give me just a minute, and I’ll go get it for you.”

Chapter 32

“Is that staging ground clear?” I asked, my hand hesitating in midair.

Rayna nodded with a shrug. “All the ships you bought last time took off to go fight, and it’s not like I put new ones there.”

I chuckled and yawned, pulling up my Afflqwst notification.

Quest – Kill the beholder in Sol system before it causes catastrophic damage to your affiliate’s primary star.

REQUIREMENTS:

1. Kill the beholder building speed for an attack run at Sol. (complete)

The primary solar system of operation for your affiliate has been secured by successfully fulfilling this quest.

REWARD – Item coupon, purchase unlock.

The reward coupon firmly in mind, I sat down, leaned against the wall of the armory, and entered the Teslak Cooperative’s store page. Time slowed to my perception as my mind raced, feeding electrical data back and forth in a complex dance of neuron and nanite.

Spectre was there, waiting for me. My exhaustion covered my mind like a scratchy blanket, and as I looked over the digital ghost of the salesman who had changed my life. He and his veritable landmine of an affiliate. I got annoyed looking at his eager, helpful face, knowing that I’d become the unwitting pawn of a dead man.

“Change to your other recording,” I ordered. Surprisingly, the projection obeyed.

Spectre was there, bleeding through his bandages and sporting fresh burn scars on his neck and shoulder. He looked like he was barely holding himself up, primarily by bracing his hands on the counter. “Yes?”

“Tell me how you can keep your affiliate station hidden within a black hole,” I ordered.

Spectre’s projection blinked into an answer state, and he chuckled before coughing and spitting out a glob of bloody phlegm. “No,” he replied. “Neither of us has the time, and I will only give you so much power. You are here to destroy BuyMort. Not the multiverse itself. Ask as many different ways as you like; that information is simply not yours to ask for. You have no right to it, if you’re unable to figure it out for yourself.”

The projection blinked back to his former state, leaning heavily on the counter. “Yes?” he asked with the exact same impatience.

“How many starfish suits can I purchase?”

“Of the original one-hundred-thousand base level starfish suits available to your affiliate, you have claimed seventy-nine thousand and forty-two. This leaves twenty-thousand, nine-hundred and fifty-eight suits available for purchase,” Spectre answered. His voice sounded different, as though an advanced computer was putting his words together from different sound samples, as opposed to the smooth speaking nature of his recordings.

“Of the seventy-nine thousand and forty-two claimed suits, thirty-two thousand eight-hundred and four have first level upgrades, three-hundred and nineteen have secondary upgrades, and four are completely upgraded. Each base level suit is capable of being upgraded a maximum of three times,” Spectre rattled off next.

The four were easy enough to count, that was me, Rayna, Tollya, and Jada. The first level upgrades were for our fleet, no doubt. That sounded roughly like the right number for our total naval fleet, each with a base level suit and gravity harness at the least.

A lot of my ground troops had chosen the armor, or fists for their first upgrades, but we limited secondary upgrades to high ranking officers. It helped prevent defection attempts.

There had been a handful, but none that succeeded. The hobbs were generally too loyal for defection from a winning army, and the rest of my starfish troopers were watched closely enough to notice if they went missing. Both out of adoration by their fellow troops, and suspicion by those that outranked them.

Over the eight months of build up to the Sleem event, I’d personally chased down two defectors and returned their inert suits.

The others never made it off-planet. They were caught by their own squad members. Hobb justice was swift and uncompromising, and the defector’s inert suits were added to our small collection buried deep under Axle’s library.

They were disassembled in an attempt to understand the technology, or to reverse engineer any of its better tricks. None of them were available to us. Through tremendous effort and expense, we opened the suits to discover their inner parts smelted into globs of nothing.

Metallurgical analysis was about all we got out of the dead suits, and all that told us was that the metal was incredibly strong, light, and of a completely foreign atomic alignment. The way the plain iron interacted with the traces of metallic hydrogen in the suits simply could not be reproduced in our universe’s physical laws.

Relics operated outside of our natural laws, that was the whole point. They were so old, they were from universes that ran on different laws. Wherever Spectre and The Teslak Cooperative were from, they could do amazing things with the atomic chart we knew. Their version was just more interesting than ours.

Spectre’s image suddenly changed in front of me. “You’re asking about the numbers. About what’s left. That’s good, it means you’re building an army, exactly like I’d hoped you would. In fact, if you’re not building an army, you would never have even made it to the first ship unlock, so let’s focus on those momentarily,” he said, blood seeping from one ear slowly.

“I’ve allotted one hundred Sand Star frigates to be claimed. Once claimed, like the suits, there are no more to claim. These ships are tough, especially compared to what you should be facing so far down the stream, but they’re not invincible. Be careful with them, they’re all you get.” Spectre’s image flickered and he was clean again. Bloodless, pristine apron in place, he smiled politely at me.

“How can I be of assistance today?” his image asked. I guessed my conversation with my maker was done and slid the item coupon across the counter. It became a physical item in the ad-space interaction, since I wasn’t a physical item myself anymore. My standing annoyance level was only enhanced by Spectre’s reaction to the slip of paper.

“Oh sir!” the projection exclaimed. “Our finest product. Peerless, truly, the COT is a peerless ship. Only a limited number were ever manufactured, you’re quite the smart shopper to recognize this deal.”

I frowned at the projection, scowling and cocking my head. Then the floor opened, and our platform began to rapidly descend. The smaller bay filled with Sand Star frigates made much more sense, and I anticipated the bay doors below us opening next. I peered over the lip to watch our descent grow ever closer.

Once the doors slid open, I was gifted with a view of dozens of Brisingida class demolitions cruisers, arms retracted, docked against the walls. There were somehow more of them than the Sand Stars, even at a glance, but I ignored that detail as the much larger bay door below us cracked open.

It opened onto the black hole, swirling accretion matter glowing up at me from the gigantic stellar sinkhole.

Our elevator platform lowered rapidly through the still-opening door, plunging toward the black hole before jerking to a halt hundreds of meters below the Teslak space station. Something above us moved in the darkness, undulating and rippling in the deep shadows against the bottom of the massive station.

Bright lights began to click on around the monstrous creation, illumination drones shining directly onto my new ship. A massive, spike-covered blob with twenty stubby arms splayed out radially around its lumpy, moving core lay below. As I watched, the massive, spiky ship began moving its stubby arms, appearing to feel around its environment as it lifted off and approached our significantly smaller elevator platform.

“The Crown of Thorns is our premier capital spacecraft, perfect for any spatial endeavors, military or civilian. Ablative, reactive, self-repairing armor is the ship’s primary defense against micrometeoroids at FTL speeds, or hostile weapons fire,” Spectre explained happily as the spiked beast of a machine lowered past us at frightening speeds. “Your choice of course,” the clean projection added conspiratorially.

The behemoth craft changed direction and rose up to encompass and surround the elevator platform, its spikes rising above our heads before it stopped dead just beneath the guardrails. Its movement had been so rapid and precise that it touched the bottom of my platform, and Spectre’s light projection stepped away from his counter to walk onto the ship’s exterior.

I followed him cautiously, stepping onto the stable metal pathway beneath my feet. Spines with thick bases, and razor thin tips riddled the craft, creating an intimidating forest to walk through. As I followed Spectre, onto segmented armor plates that shifted to form a solid walkway between the thicket of metal thorn, glowing faint red with the Hawking radiation from the nearby black hole.

“The entire craft is built to resemble a living organism, and as such, it can perform industrial mining with its underside, or military operations with its topside thorns, each of which can penetrate any shielding or armor system yet made, and carry a starfish suit equipped soldier,” Spectre rasped. He had changed forms without my even noticing, the ship held my attention so fully.

It was big. Too big. The staging ground was not going to be able to handle it, not by a long shot. The ship was roughly the size of Prescott, give or take a few miles. We walked on a single out-stretched arm, toward the center miles away from us. All around us light drones hovered, illuminating the titanic ship directly. With even one of these ships, I felt sure I could overwhelm the Church's fleet of battle citadels.

“The underside of the ship is something you need to see to fully understand,” Spectre growled. “Please lift off, and the Crown of Thorns will turn over for us.”

I blinked and followed his instructions, lifting from the deck and floating free above the black hole. My stomach lurched as the ship plunged away from us. As I lifted above the spines, I was given a good show of them as the ship began to roll against the terrifying spatial backdrop.

Each thorn’s edge was visibly sharp, with raised, bladed edges spiraling the boarding torpedo to its tip. Clearly even my tactics were hand-crafted by this long dead elf. I gritted my teeth and watched his projection, standing calmly on nothing as razor sharp spines blurred past us.

The motion of the COT was shockingly rapid, and we passed between two of its short arms with a roar of movement to see the underside of the city-sized vessel. Great metal plates retracted from the center of the ship’s underside, entire neighborhoods worth of material vanishing into blue-lit dimensional gateways.

In great, glowing channels leading into the center, what appeared to my eyes to be lava flowed along the craft’s underside, contained within thick walls that remained on the bottom of the starship. The rivers of suspended liquid metal all flowed from the great center of the ship, where a massive lake of glowing reddish yellow metal rippled placidly.

An ocean of liquified metal, churning and sloshing against unseen tides from within. The heart of the massive ship, uncovered.

“This ship has a significantly larger gravity drive than what you have seen from Teslak so far,” Spectre said. “It is capable of a great many things that may seem strange to you.”

“It can feast upon a moon, if you so desire, to produce more thorns. Or a fleet. Anything you feed it will be contained and destroyed by the drive’s pool, for your use, for the ship’s use. You can construct as many thorns as you need, forever. Fire them at the enemy fleets while empty, and you will still dominate any space battle you enter,” he said, almost reverently. “They generate a strong ionic pulse as they travel, which is at a speed that is close to your speed of light, if you so desire. No shielding system can keep them out, no armor can resist their cutting, atomic breaker-edged blades.”

We stared at the massive, living furnace below us as the sheer enormity of the ship’s underslung lake passed us by at breathtaking speeds.

“I hope you understand the destructive tool I am delivering into your hands. I also hope that you have assembled a sufficiently like-minded affiliate by this point, or you will be sorely disappointed. This craft will require a significant crew to be of any real use, although they need not wear gravity harnesses themselves,” Spectre said, leaning in as though genuinely interested in what he was telling me.

“The gravity drive on board is among my finest creations. It is capable of controlling the individual gravity of each crew member on board, or in close proximity, as though they were wearing a gravity harness themselves. Anyone who serves on board will be able to fly, as a perk of service,” he continued.

I quietly listened.

“Once a thorn is fired, its replacement begins immediate construction, in each node. While vulnerable to very few weapons, during this stage the thorn is at most danger. Construction delays can cause the nodule to shut down for longer than it normally would, as the wreckage is cleared,” Spectre paused and glanced back at me. “Oh, the entire ship is maintained by an armada of autonomous drones, you’ll get used to them. Bloody things are everywhere, they have to be, ship like this. Held together by dimensional gates, optimism, and thick tape.”

Below us, the ship began to curl inward on itself. The stubby arms showed surprising flexibility as they came nearly together to cover the underside of the ship. Its lake shined from between the limbs, radiating heat.

“Beautiful, is it not?” Spectre whispered. He coughed weakly and spat another wad of bloody phlegm into nothing. Before it vanished, I saw that it was brighter red than the last one had been. The slow trickle from his ear had become a steady flow, with traces of clear fluid interrupting the blood. Skull fracture, spinal fluid in his bloodstream.

I struggled to imagine what was keeping him standing. Certainly not any of the tools he had strapped me into. With a grimace, I almost sneered in satisfaction as I realized I was watching Spectre die. He had recorded as long as he was able.

“My finest engine of destruction, aside from you, whoever you are. Take this ship, and rule all of space. Eat their ships. Eat their asteroid fields, their moons, land on their planets and eat their cities if you please.”

He wheezed and collapsed against nothing, holding onto an invisible object with his forearms. My sense of vague satisfaction vanished, and I nearly moved to help him, before remembering what I was watching.

“Gravity is one of the primary forces of three dimensional space. If you can control it, with the grace, and . . . engineering that has gone into this ship, you will control all of space. Every planet,” he whispered, eyes closed.

The image of Spectre breathed heavily for a few long minutes while the ship unfurled again beneath us. Its armor plating slid into and out of massive dimensional gates, similar to my own armor, and gave the stubby arms more reach than they would have been otherwise capable of.

“Go,” rasped Spectre. “Take my final weapon and use it to do what I was not able to do in my own time. Follow the multiversal flow to its source and destroy BuyMort. Kill this idiot machine, before it destroys all of existence.”

His grip loosened, and I saw surprise flicker across his eyes as the projection slammed ungently to the floor. Spectre exhaled one final time, before finding his lungs too weak to take another breath. His eyes widened, and he stilled.

With a flash, his projection changed back to the pristine, clean aproned version of Spectre. We were at his counter in the space station again, with the black hole outside where it belonged. Spectre raised his gloved hand, the coupon held in it. “Would you like to complete your purchase sir?”

“No, I need to speak with your other version again,” I whispered, knowing what would happen.

“I’m sorry sir, I don’t understand that request. Would you like to complete your purchase?” he replied dully.

Whatever program had run Spectre’s wounded half, it had self-destructed upon his final explanation. The last information he was willing to give to a long-distant tool he had carefully crafted. All that was left of him was the empty-headed sales-projection. Happy to sell us the rest of the ships and suits, and upgrades we would need, but nothing more than a complex vending machine.

I had to wonder what would happen if I were to fail. Would the Teslak Cooperative go back to sleep? Reset its interaction protocols, build more starfish suits, and wait for the next fool to ask for its help in defeating BuyMort?

“Yes,” I said, suddenly more tired than I had ever been in my life. “Send it to the open desert south of Prescott.”

Then I pushed back from the ad space and exited The Teslak Cooperative’s sales page for what I hoped was the last time. Monsters lurked in its depths, and I had just ordered one.

Chapter 33

Rayna looked at me and frowned. “What’s wrong?”

I shook my head and ran a hand over my stubble, trying to blink away the dry, overused feeling in my eyes. “It’s big,” I said. “Unusually big. I’m also not sure exactly how we’re supposed to use this thing, but I think it’s going to make a hell of a splash when the inquisition comes to inspect us. You need to recall Admiral Omen, he’s going to want to see this. I authorize an immediate portal from the affiliate account.”

The hobbs frown deepened, her gray, pebbled features wrinkling comically.

I chuckled weakly and stood back up, using the armory wall as a brace. “We have to leave town, it’s going to be south of here. C’mon, let’s fly.”

Rayna stiffened. She wore one of our four fully upgraded suits but used it mostly as a status symbol. Her position within our army was that of leadership, strategy, and organization of her troops. Not direct combat any longer.

But she nodded and raised off the ground with a grunt, floating uncertainly. “Don’t laugh, I need to practice a little bit before we go outside. Troopers might see.”

I nodded and watched as she reacclimated herself to the gravity harness, and her ability to fly. It made me marvel at her personality momentarily, while the comical show played out. She was the kind of person who regularly forgot she could fly, simply because it wasn’t how she was used to getting around.

Well, that and how insanely stressful everyone’s lives had become since Sleem. The place was a pure gold mine, and the single Sand Star frigate that guarded the gate kept all comers at bay, so our fleets could loot the entire solar system.

We’d even begun to control how often something could be sold, based on BuyMort’s going prices for the materials it would produce. But that was Axle’s massive financial projections department.

Rayna and I just made sure our military empire was unchallenged. She floated steadily through the air without flapping her arms or kicking her legs, then landed confidently in front of me and nodded. “Ready, boss.”

I nodded, and we exited the armory, before lifting off into the sky. We weren’t the only things in the air heading that direction, several aircraft and drones were streaking from Prescott and the elevator to the sudden spectacle in the desert south of the city.

To the giant, writhing metal starfish that had just arrived, covered in gleaming thorns.

When I saw the obscenity of the ship on my own planet, I felt a moment of shame for what it was certainly about to do to the power balance in the universe. It was perched off the ground, keeping its liquid metal underside protected and hidden while its massive limbs all stood solidly on the Arizona sand.

Residual heat from its previously exposed molten ocean had created glass craters at its footprint, and each limb extended several long, broad boarding ramps across the glassy craters to accommodate. Semi-trucks and larger cargo vessels could easily use each ramp. Each opening was also more than large enough to fly a small ship into.

A news program in my helmet displayed the smoking vessel with a chyron that read “Creature or relic? What’s next for Nu-Earth?!”

“Okay, this is a situation,” I said. Rayna nodded at my side.

“BlueCleave rapid response team, cordon off our new ship. Drive back civilian aircraft and destroy unaffiliated camera drones.” Her voice sounded in my helmet, but it connected to all of BlueCleave’s military operations.

Within seconds, troopers took off from the base behind us, flying through the air and smashing into drones, or diverting aircraft as our own people mobilized to board the ship. Small explosions peppered the air, as millions of morties worth of expensive press equipment was destroyed.

The footage they got before the destruction happened would more than pay for replacements, so none of the press cared. They just swarmed like flies to whatever might bring them eyeballs on their content, whatever might drive engagement to get them paid.

If we blew up their drones, they’d just send more, and keep them further away.

My new ship hulked over the desert, black and white smoke boiling from between its twenty great arms. Each of them sat with their ends open, great doors welcoming all who wanted in.

That was my first priority. I pushed my suit and flew at the nearest opening, diving inside the well-lit craft.

The space was massive. Taller than it was wide, but with full sized railcars on either side of the arm’s embarkation area. One looked like it was for passengers, while the other looked to be for cargo only. Oversized cargo hooks and chains were secured to the ceiling alongside their railing, to load and unload cargo as needed.

There was also a clear area for small spacecraft to enter and then raise above the cargo and passenger platforms.

As soon as I entered the ship proper, my armor activated and slammed my helmet in place over my nanite helmet, which caused me to dismiss the latter.

“Welcome aboard, Starfish! I’m your Crown of Thorns operating system and I’ll be guiding your user where they need to go!” an enthusiastic cartoon version of the ship announced.

My own cartoon starfish appeared beside the other and happily cheered. “Great! My user has prevented me from speaking at this time, so I’ll refrain from any further comments!” he replied.

“Welcome aboard, user, in that case,” the ship said. “What would you like to do, now that you are aboard The Crown of Thorns?”

“Direct me to the command center? The bridge?” I asked hesitantly. A line of lights appeared on my HUD, guiding me down to the passenger railcars.

“Can you close all the doors, please, ship?” I asked. “I don’t want anyone else coming aboard right now.”

“Of course, user. You are my registered owner, after all, although I’m not sure how much I appreciate being owned. I’m semi-sapient myself, you know,” the cartoon said. “Ahhh, just teasing. I’m merely semi-sentient, although I do have to follow every order you give me.”

“Then can you open the doors for Rayna of the BlueCleave associate, and give her full access to the ship?” I asked wearily.

“Of course.” the new cartoon starfish said. I followed its instructions to the nearby railcar and sat down on one of the plush cushioned seats.

The passenger car was absurdly nice inside. It had smooth, molded wood handrails and soft, high quality seating with plenty of space for even mordren passengers in each seat. A gobb would feel positively dwarfed, but for a hobb it would be sheer luxury.

At regular intervals in the railcar were boxes of growing plant-life. When I later checked, I learned that all the flora on board was from Arizona. The ship had scanned for its destination, and decorated accordingly, bio-printing the plants within the space of minutes.

The car jerked into motion and began to pick up speed. We bypassed the cargo and embarkation area quickly, though it went up the arm for a surprising distance, a tunnel for small ships to fly through buttressed by docking alcoves and smaller cargo bays. Above us, thick nodules in the upper portion of the arm’s roof indicated thorn bases mixed into the heavy armor plating.

There were thick, hanging structures in the ship’s upper portion surrounding each nodule, including what appeared to be housing modules, docking ports, and more compact cargo bays. Almost as if the ship expected each area to be self-sufficient, receiving goods and passengers from the other structures scattered around the Crown of Thorns.

The car floated free of its rail and continued its forward momentum, as we diverted around the magmatic core of the ship, which extended down into the arms. It flowed into secured nodules on its own, a series of thin streams leading to and from crewed sections like nerves spreading throughout the massive ship. A constant supply of alloy to create new thorns or armored plating with.

A shocking amount of open space existed within the ship’s hull, with sections for crew mere platforms above molten void, or built into the sides and ceiling of the hull. Its molten core flowed and splashed against the great arm’s sides, a natural lake in the gravity of Nu-Earth.

Somewhere, deep in the magmatic heart of the ship, was its core gravitic reactor. A device that harnessed gravity on a scale that rivaled the power of stars.

All of the bizarre, open assemblage of the interior before me showed that I was on board a structure held together by sheer engineering. My car rose above the giant, molten center of the ship toward a hovering platform near its roof.

The platform was attached to the ceiling directly in the center of the massive craft. My ship was a hollowed out mountain with a molten core, and its bridge was at its very top.

I arrived on the humble platform and looked around. It was circular, with guardrails all around its edges and a clear view of the rest of the ship. A handful of stations, with raised interactive displays were scattered around the platform, but a central captain’s chair was obvious.

It was raised, and capable of swiveling to see any of its surrounding stations clearly. When I approached and sat down in it, a wall of see-through screens arose around me, providing an overwhelming amount of information at first glance.

“I am capable of interacting with fourteen-hundred-thousand different sapients at the same time, with full efficacy,” the COT informed me. “Of course, I can be crewed with as few as one, if so needed, but functionality would be somewhat limited in that instance.”

“Save it,” I told the ship’s AI. “I’m not your captain. He’s on his way though, so prepare a welcome informational package for your incoming command crew.”

“Certainly. I have multiple system tutorials available. Would you like to access any of them now?” the COT asked.

The captain’s chair was comfortable. Extremely comfortable in spite of being made up entirely of metal. It moved, sensing my body’s structure and altering its own to better accommodate. I yawned as I watched a car take off from the only open door on the ship, toward the bridge.

“Offensive capabilities,” I muttered, only paying half attention. My enhanced vision zoomed in on the now-floating passenger car coming toward me, and I could see the figures of Rayna, Tollya, and Admiral Omen on their way toward me.

“Against most three-dimensional space-faring vessels, you will find little substantive resistance. Simply activate the ‘gravity hooks’ system and haul them into the furnace below. The material will be absorbed by me, the Crown of Thorns, to be used in creating more thorns!”

As the machine mind spoke, a cartoon played out on one of my many surrounding informational screens. The Crown of Thorns curled and pointed its many arms at a ship wearing an angry face in spray paint on its prow. Not-quite-invisible lines of gravity drew the ship inward toward the molten mouth of the COT’s underside.

The antagonistic ship turned tail to run, and increased its engines output dramatically, but struggled to move at all.

“Gravity hooks, once locked on, are very difficult to escape,” the cartoon COT told me. The smaller ship was drawn in, comical expressions of distress on its painted prow before the COT simply ate it. It vanished into the liquid metal ‘mouth’ with a comical gulping sound.

I imagined it happening in real life for an instant, with thousands of sapient aliens or even humans on board the craft as it was eaten. The fear, the sheer overwhelming panic, the inability to do anything to alter fate once this ship had you in its grasp.

A brief pause indicated a change in topic, and then the machine continued. “If you’d prefer to take the ships, or destroy them from afar, simply deploy thorns. Thorns are projected by the ship’s gravity drive, and as such have customizable speeds and deployment purposes. Boarding parties are accompanied by an aggressive viral computational program that disables door and security systems that may otherwise hinder progress.”

A cartoon showed of the spike embedding itself in an enemy ship, whereupon its triplicate doors swung open, and a trio of starfish troopers emerged cracking their knuckles and searching for foes. As they moved through the ship, black lines of code raced along the hull, attacking doors and shutting down automated turrets with showers of sparks.

“Of course, if so desired, the thorns can be used as high velocity projectiles and simply destroy an enemy craft. Or bombard a planetary surface for precision destruction,” the COT calmly explained.

Cartoons of both examples played on my screens. A crowd of aggressive spacecraft were perforated by the thorns, blasting through first shields, then armor and hull. Each thorn could be thrown at up to three-quarters the speed of light. The ships on screen were shredded. Holes punched through them with such sheering, violent force that the exit wounds were massive.

The planetary bombardment scenario showed thorn after thorn streaking into a city and causing earth-shattering detonations where they struck. Buildings fell, mushroom clouds rose, and craters quickly replaced civilization.

I felt sick and stood from the chair. The screens blinked off around me, and I saw the approach of my military command team.

Chapter 34

Tollya disembarked the car first, her arms wide and eyes casting about the strange bridge. “What did you buy?!” she yelled, running over and lifting me in a bear hug. “This ship is amazing!” the hobb released me and went to a railing, leaning over to stare down at the reactor below. “Way bigger than Church Citadel battle stations!”

“It’ll eat them for lunch,” I said quietly. “Literally.”

Rayna stared at me, eyebrows furrowed. I ignored her and turned to the short-statured Korean man before me. “Admiral Omen, your station,” I said, motioning toward the captain’s chair.

He frowned but nodded and moved to walk past me. I stopped him by grabbing his elbow and leaned in close. “Be careful, Omen. This weapon is . . . well you’ll see. Never mind, just talk to me before you use it for anything major, please.”

Omen scowled but nodded a single time.

Rayna approached. “What’s wrong, Tyson?” she asked.

I shook my head and cast my arms around the massive, cavernous area. “This weapon will crush the Church. Crush them,” I reiterated. “We’re going to have to be careful how we use it, or the public will turn against us in a major way.”

Admiral Omen’s brow furrowed, and he nodded sharply. Then he turned and marched up to the captain’s chair, tucking his service hat under one arm as he sat down. Screens of light sprang up around him, and the man began glancing between them, familiarizing himself with his new station.

I stalked to the edge of the bridge, gripped the railing, and stared down into the roiling heart of my newest war machine. A reactor that produced control of gravity was in there somewhere, far out of our engineers reach. We’d have to try and reverse engineer the Brinsingida class drive instead, but something told me that ‘short distance FTL capability’ meant our teams weren’t going to gain the kind of knowledge they were hoping for.

Tollya approached and leaned backwards against the railing. “Why are you sad-sack-of-crap, boss?” she asked casually.

I rolled my eyes at the hobb and pointed down one arm of the COT. “Look down there,” I said, directing her vision. “You see those star shaped spots on the ceiling and wall around that entrance?” I asked her.

The hobb frowned and squinted in the direction I was pointing. “No,” she admitted with a shrug. “You have better eyesight than you should, boss,” Tollya added, lowering her voice. “Be careful if that’s one of your secrets.”

I chuckled and nodded. “Thanks Tollya. Well never mind, it’s just docks for the Sand Stars. I’m willing to bet there’s more too, for the demo cruisers.” I glanced at her confusion and corrected myself. “Buzzstars.”

Her eyes widened in recognition, and she shrugged. “So what boss? Seems like this ship is the whole package, everything we need to beat the Church at their own game. Why does that mean you turn into . . . this?” she finished, gesturing vaguely in my direction.

Heat bloomed up from below as the ship’s drive cycled, stirring the hovering lake of liquid metal. I shook my head as I felt the dry heat. It would be quite comfortable for any Nah’gh who served on board, but none of the other species would feel uncomfortable either.

I sighed and shook my head. “You’ll understand later, Tollya, don’t worry. Right now, just figure out how we can best use it, okay?”

The hobb nodded eagerly and smiled wide. “Oh I can think of a few ways already,” she said, before frowning and gesturing around. “Wait, what weapons systems do we have?”

“None!” shouted Admiral Omen from the captain’s chair. “None that are direct weaponry at any rate. Boarding spikes and the oversized gravity harness itself appear to be our primary offensive and defensive capabilities. Aside from extremely standard armor plating.”

Rayna frowned. “How that helpful?” she grunted in English.

Admiral Omen shook his head at her and turned back to his screens. “I will learn more, but so far this ship appears to be the dominant military vehicle of the multiverse.” He trailed off as something on-screen caught his attention and he swiped to make it wider. “It claims to be able to control the gravity of any incoming projectile, not just stopping it, but turning it back on its sender if desired. Singular. Most singular,” he muttered.

“Yeah, it is that,” I said, gripping the metal railing so hard it crimped beneath my fingers.

A soft alarm began to chime, accompanied by a yellow light radiating through the floor from Admiral Omen’s chair.

From beneath the bridge platform, a flying starfish drone appeared, causing me to back up a step. The drone was roughly my size, but wide and shaped like the cartoon starfish I’d been dealing with in my own head for most of a year at that point.

It had no face, but used its arms to manipulate the metal, heating and reshaping the simple hand rail before flying away back beneath the bridge. I stepped off and used what felt like my own gravity harness to fly beneath the bridge platform. There were roughly a dozen of the drones attached to the underside of the bridge, just waiting to be useful.

With my enhanced vision, I zoomed in on other areas and saw hundreds of them tucked away in cleverly hidden docking ports. Thousands, once I extended my search.

I noticed my own suit wasn’t showing me any charge warnings, and remembered Spectre’s warning that anyone who was within the COT would be able to fly.

“That’s right user!” Announced the COT’s cartoon, annoyingly reading my mind. “I’m controlling your flight by monitoring and mirroring a complex series of interactions between your intercranial nanites and the gravity harness upgrade within your own suit. Your charge will stay the same regardless of any maneuvers you perform.”

“Crown of Thorns,” I said. “Adhere to my own starfish suit’s interaction parameters.”

The cartoon zipped its mouth, padlocked the zipper, and then tossed the key over one shoulder. I glared at it until its eyes widened comically, and it popped out of existence. Then I floated in lightly to land on the bridge again.

Tollya laughed from one of the chairs on the bridge platform. “BuyMort above, Rayna, come see this!” she called in hobb. Once my general arrived at the station, Tollya launched her screen into some presentation. I watched on the reverse side of their screen as one of the thorns slammed into a city and replaced it with a mushroom cloud of dust and debris.

I looked away, back down to the roiling liquid metal ocean below. The dome we occupied gave the impression of a dark night sky, gleams of machinery and sharp edges reflecting twinkles of light from below. Our glowing sea of superheated metal was like our own contained sun, sort of. The light emitted was always dim, as if in early twilight or dawn.

The lake of molten metal extended down the arms of the COT a small ways but was primarily contained in the center of the craft in a great, rising ball of liquid metal.

“I want to see a thorn up close,” Rayna suddenly announced. She stepped up to the lip of the railing next to me and prepared to fly, but Admiral Omen interrupted her with a simple clearing of his throat.

“If you’ll wait here, I’ll have one delivered for inspection, General,” he said. “I’d like to see one as well.”

Rayna’s eyebrows raised in surprise, but she nodded and leaned against the railing at my side.

From amidst the warren of catwalks and stations spread out along the ceiling, a sudden puff of ice and dust caught our attention, as a thorn began to slide inward. Its square base narrowed as more of it emerged, until the complete spike was fully inside the craft.

Then the thorn floated toward us rapidly, before coming to a halt directly in front of Rayna and me. The base was broad, flared, and had three access doors, one on either side. Near its base was a blurred section of metal beneath radiant blue lights. I glanced up to see similar blue lights in its launch base.

We were all graced with a view of the thorn, and a projected light screen even appeared alongside it, explaining its features in detail. Even the blades near the thorn’s tip had special metallurgy that went into them, increasing cutting power while better enabling a computing connection to disseminate the thorn’s malicious programming into the enemy vessel through hull contact.

Of course, if the thorns were loaded with explosives, or fired empty at tremendous velocities, they were simply incredibly powerful missiles. Anti-ship torpedoes. Moon-splitters. Asteroid devastators. City annihilators. Really the tactical uses were as varied as they were brutal.

With the Crown of Thorns’ primary gravity drive pushing them through acceleration ports in the hull and armor, there was very little that could withstand an onslaught by its oversized metal thorns.

“One moment,” Admiral Omen said, raising a hand while focusing on one of his screens. He swiped and pressed at the air in front of himself, interacting with a curved wall of light. The thorn flew away, back to its deployment port. “The entire ship appears to be modular,” he muttered with a frown.

A large, triangular block approached us from below, near the thicker armored armpits between each stubby arm. They appeared to be secured to the roof of the ship in neighborhoods, with wide catwalks between individual structures. When it arrived, it was easily big enough to fit my old Airstream into twice, with plenty of room to spare.

“This is a residential unit; the ship is equipped with tens of thousands of them. Each will comfortably house a family. If they’re not in use, they easily convert to storage units as well,” Admiral Omen read. “All of which can be moved using the ship’s central gravity drive. As I have just displayed.”

I blinked. “Handy if one section is damaged,” I said with a shrug.

“Exactly,” Admiral Omen answered, not bothering to look over. “Almost every part of the ship can be moved, that’s how it handles active defense. If we were hit by something that can penetrate our armor and hull to this level, it simply sinks into the molten lake below, to feed the drive. The Crown of Thorns will actively move sensitive compartments out of the way of incoming damage. Without disturbing their contents.”

Admiral Omen nodded sharply, as though he had just found something he had been looking for.

He pointed to a large light-screen in front of himself, as the display I had watched earlier played out again. A cartoon version of the Crown of Thorns casually ‘ate’ another starship by dragging it into the underside of the massive craft and into the ship’s molten underside.

When exposed to the vacuum of space, the COT withdrew its molten underside and deployed great dimensionally anchored gates to protect it from the cold, as the gravity drive required great amounts of heat and pressure to function. Ironically, the vast majority of the heat and pressure it required to function was generated by it upon being activated, so refueling the ship was a simple process. Anything its molten lake ‘ate,’ would increase the ship’s active charge. If it exploded, or burned particularly hot, so much the better.

COT’s general control over gravity contained any explosive force that occurred within its molten core, redirecting the potential and kinetic energy to its drive, where it would be simply absorbed. Massive capacitor cells were stored all over the ship, Admiral Omen brought one of them up for us as part of his initial inspection.

The ship beamed the energy it produced directly to them from the core. It was also capable of simply sending excess energy into space if desired.

“It can quickly rebuild any of these modules if damaged,” he said reverently. “Including all armor plating and hull components.”

There were a handful of major parts, mostly down in the mouths of each arm, that were not modular. They stayed in one place no matter what, but Admiral Omen pulled up video of those. Each of the stubby arms’ tips was covered in the roughly human-sized starfish drones. Most were idle, in docking bays that likely charged them.

A handful of the starfish drones were in flight across the cavernous hull to one task or another. I watched as another of Admiral Omen’s summoned modules came up, hovered in front of us, and then was returned.

When there was some portion of the modules attachment that was not directly handled by the ship’s gravity drive, the starfish drones were there in droves to assist.

“Potential compliment is half a million souls,” Admiral Omen said softly. “This ship is meant for families to live on board, while it goes to war.” He shook his head tightly, frowning at the screen he read. “What kind of warship contains schools, and playgrounds?”

I nodded. “This wasn’t meant to be a warship, Admiral,” I said. “I honestly think it was an advanced mining ship, before the relic affiliate we bought it from altered it. Added the thorns. Turned it into a weapon,” I spat bitterly.

Rayna, Tollya, and Admiral Omen all stared at me after I finished speaking, as though waiting for more.

I shrugged at them. “That’s what most of our relics are, repurposed industrial machines that are simply so advanced that they look like unimaginable weapons to us.” I sighed and leaned back against the railing on both elbows, allowing the bar to rub my lower lumbar muscles. “Of course, it says something about our society that everything, at first glance, looks like a weapon to us.”

Admiral Omen frowned, blinked at me a few times, and then silently returned to his screens.

Rayna and Tollya looked at one another, then Rayna cocked her head toward me and turned away. Tollya approached.

“Hey boss . . .” she started gently. “Sure you don’t want to tell me what’s weighing down your soul?”

“Mortie for your thoughts,” I chuckled, translating the hobb prose. “Mortie for your thoughts, Tollya. That’s the Nu-Earth phrase you’re looking for.”

She shrugged and matched my pose, stretching her back against the railing. “Not really looking for your phrases anymore, boss. You speak hobb well enough now, I just talk to you. Talk to you like a hobb.”

“So you really want to know what’s weighing down my soul?” I asked.

Tollya shrugged. “Maybe not, you’re the warlord. I don’t want all your burdens, but this one seems bigger than the others. Might crush you if you don’t share.”

I chuckled and gestured around us. “It is bigger, considerably,” I said.

“You’re upset about the ship?” Tollya asked, confusion furrowing her pebbled brow.

I nodded. “I am. I am very upset about the ship,” I admitted.

“Why?” the thin gray alien asked, now standing in front of me, hands on her hips. “Why be upset about this new, amazing ship?”

“The kind of death and destruction that the church has done to the hobb people over the last ten thousand years? This ship will do it back to them overnight,” I told her. “There will be repercussions to that act, and not all of them will blow back against me alone. I’ve been recently reminded how vulnerable those around me can be.”

I paused and sighed, nodding at Tollya. “That’s what weighs on my soul, Tollya. I got Doofus hurt, Molls and her mother are both scared to death, and Dario is just . . . gone. Him and the cannon both, just slipped through our fingers.”

She paled even further. “Boss, I am sorry. So sorry, I thought the security was tight enough. Dario always wore so much magic, I never thought they could take him so easily. I won’t make the mistake of underestimating our enemies again.”

I took a deep breath and held it, nodding as I realized that I had just accidentally shamed one of my closest remaining friends. “I’m sorry, Tollya, I didn’t mean to blame you. It’s not your fault, nobody saw that specific attack coming, and they feinted at us from like four different directions at the same time.”

“Still,” Tollya said, back stiff. “My area. My responsibility.”

“You lost starfish troopers trying, Tollya. Some of our best, original tribe members from Storage. There was nothing more you could have done,” I said, waving a hand dismissively at her. “It was not your fault. I mean that.”

“With this ship, we’ll get him back,” she said. Her eyes cast about the ceiling to the many thorns set within it, and then nodded. “With this ship, we’ll do anything we want to do.”

I nodded and took a few breaths as I thought through my next steps.

“Admiral,” I finally said. All three of them looked at me, but I focused on Admiral Omen. “I’d like you to take this ship to the Nahgah Prime system and secure the solar system’s gate for me. How long will you need to make ready?”

Admiral Omen’s eyebrows raised slightly, and he frowned in thought. “The ship is intuitive,” he announced. “Highly intuitive, a single pilot can operate this vessel if need be. I’ve run through the tutorial for takeoff and general space-flight, I feel confident in my ability to fly the mission immediately, if you desire it.”

I shook my head. “No, wait until after I’ve dealt with the Inquisition tonight.”

Rayna shrugged and looked between us. “I can have this ship staffed in twenty-four hours. Enough for a flight crew, support staff, a few of the new ships with crews for fleet actions,” her voice trailed off as she looked around. “Starfish robots do all the hard work, our people just need to move in.”

“Twenty-four hours sounds perfect,” I said, dully. My eyes were glossing over, everything ached, and I had more meetings to attend before I could rest. “Do you need me for anything?” I suddenly asked, desperate to be away from the ship.

Rayna thought about it for a long moment, then shook her head. “Few battle reports, some more damage to Sand Stars. The Church is getting better about countering those. Some things to talk about on Midnight, but that’s not pressing. Go. Get some rest, boss. You look like you need it.”

I yawned, nodded, and then stepped off the bridge into open space above the molten heart of the ship. With a surge of motion, I plummeted out of the ship’s open door in a long swooping arc. There was actually a slight change, a differing sensation when the ship gave control back to me over my own suit. I’d flown a decent way away from it by then, at least a few dozen miles.

My fear of the ship grew, and I went to the next important task on my list to avoid having to deal with it. With the thoughts about what I was about to do to the multiverse with it. I closed my eyes and blazed forward, the multiverse now at my beck and call.

Chapter 35

There was still a lot that I needed to do. But first, I needed to go see my hurt dog. I was exhausted, and I wanted to go to Molls’ embrace badly. She was worried I was angry at her, but I immediately understood her mistake, and why she had made it. I’d kept too much of the war from her, and that had to end.

But, first, Doofus. I had to know how bad it was.

Axle’s library had its own infirmary, and I flew over the mountain to the old facility without breaking the sound barrier. I landed quietly in the outer garden and walked toward the front entrance, which had been hardened in my absence.

Behind a pair of starfish troopers in power armor holding heavy railgun weaponry, I saw the destroyed statue, its arm still extended offering me a metal book. Offering knowledge, the Knowle way.

Axle had Doofus being treated in his own infirmary. The two had become closer after Axle stopped being with Jada. Once she was out of the picture, their animosity evaporated, and the large dog often hung out in the cool library grounds, when he was around.

I walked into the sterile infirmary, and my heart dropped. Doofus was on a table, oxygen mask over his snout while his chest moved slow and steady. His front limb was gone, a series of stitches where it once connected to his shoulder. The skin around the amputation was burned, scarred and covered with artificial skin.

Axle had spared no expense, which I made a mental note to thank him for, as I slowly approached the unconscious dog. Guilt dragged on my every step, made each heartbeat feel too hard. A mordren doctor, still in surgical scrubs, entered the large room from the other side. She raised her scaled chin in recognition.

“Ah, Warlord. Good, I need to give this report to someone, and you’ll do,” the mordren surgeon said. “The limb itself was fried, no use after a weapon’s strike like that, even reduced as I’m told it was. The dog is lucky to be alive, being hit by an ionic destabilization burst. I suggest a prosthesis, the patient is young and still otherwise healthy. He’ll adjust well enough, earth canines are among the most resilient sapients within the BuyMort system.”

I smiled, in spite of the clutching pain in my guts. “Coming from a mordren, that is high praise,” I replied.

She smiled back and nodded. “Indeed, canines have my respect. For a slave species, anyway. Here,” she added casually, handing me a bottle of pills. “He’ll need these daily, there was some residual damage that went deeper into the chest, affecting his sinus node.”

I frowned sharply and scowled at the bottle of pills. “Cardio-stabilizers?” I asked, bewildered. “What is this?”

“Without those pills twice a day, his heart rhythm will be disrupted, which will eventually affect all aspects of his life and health. His day to day should be fine with the medication though, and once you find a sufficient prosthesis, he can return to active duty. Canines are unusually resilient to emotional trauma, even from something like a limb loss, but watch him for any sudden mood changes. That might indicate an issue,” the mordren recited.

Without responding, I stared down at Doofus and took a few calming breaths.

The mordren doctor cocked her head at me. “Are you alright?” she asked.

I shook my head. “Chronic stress and sleep deprivation,” I muttered. “But thank you for helping him.”

“Of course,” she replied curtly. “I complete my contracts.”

I clamped down on my reaction. Of course it was just a job, everything was. Nobody cared about the hurt dog but me, my operations manager, and my viciously unpredictable bodyguard.

Soju poked his snout around a nearby curtain, immediately proving me wrong.

He projected two light buttons on the floor, before pawing them in order while stretching and yawning. “Chicken-monkey,” the dog’s talkboard said, neutrally.

I focused on my senses and heard Murphy's heavy, steady breathing coming from behind the infirmary’s nurse desk. It lowered into a growl momentarily, and Soju huffed before stalking away a few feet.

The little dog stopped, looked at me, and projected his light board again. “Chicken-monkey hurt Doofus,” he said.

Murphy stood and barked once angrily, his shadow on the wall showing an aggressive stance. Soju sneezed and trotted away, exiting the infirmary.

The mordren surgeon watched the entire exchange silently, then turned to face me and shrugged. “Canines,” she said. “Anyway, are you able to authorize payment? I’d like to head home now that my patient is stable.”

I numbly read and signed the forms, and the mordren doctor left with a quiet word of thanks.

Murphey walked over with long, lazy strides, stretching as though he had been recently napping. It seemed like both of my dog’s battle brothers had stayed with him after the fight. Another thing I should have done but couldn’t.

With a quiet sob, I leaned over the table and lightly pressed my head down onto Doofus’ chest, carefully avoiding his surgical site. “I am sorry, Doof. I am so sorry.” His chest heaved in a sigh, and as he let it out, the big dog whined faintly.

Molls arrived then, via portal. A BuyMort drone had sneaked in behind me without my notice, but she announced her presence with a light rattle of her tail. When I looked back, tears welled in my eyes as I looked at her.

She was bright yellow and had a single new permanent ring in her scales of the color. It was quite beautiful on top of the red and purple, but my heart broke the instant I noticed it.

“I beg your forgiveness, my mate,” she whispered. “My foolish actions have put our entire affiliate at risk, and lead to the maiming of one you care for deeply. I have been naïve. I have been selfish. And I have been stupid!” she spat, as more red flooded into her scales, chasing out the yellow only briefly before she bowed her head and lowered her body until she was shorter than me by a full head.

Then she spread her arms and raised her eyes to look into mine. “Forgive me, I beg you.”

I left Doofus’ side and went to her, pressing the Nah’gh woman into a hug and lifting her up to her proper height at the same time. “I don’t blame you. No one blames you. There’s nothing to forgive, you didn’t do anything to hurt us intentionally.”

She suddenly returned the hug, turning purple as she held me close. “It had just been so long. I know you told me to stay put, to stay safe, but you were gone so long. I didn’t think it was still dangerous, I hadn’t seen the news about the fleets, the entire thing just went right over my scales.”

“I’m sorry Molls. There’s so many fights now, everywhere across the BuyMort network. I should never have left you up there without the information you needed, I am sorry,” I sighed into her breasts. “I wanted to hide you from my war, and I dragged you into it anyway.”

“You should not ask my forgiveness,” she said hurriedly. “You have shielded me from so much, since I came to your world. Tried to tell me what BuyMort was so many times, what the Church was.” Molls hesitated, met my eyes briefly, then crushed me in a tighter hug. “I hear you now, my love,” she whispered in my ear. “I am so sorry, and I hear you now.”

I pulled back to kiss her lightly, then we pressed our foreheads together and I stared into her massive, vibrant green eyes. “I’m going to need to talk to your mother, Molls,” I said quietly. “I forgive you, for whatever you want my forgiveness for. From my eyes, it's not even needed, but you have it. But I need to speak with your mother.”

Molls nodded, a fluctuation of colors racing through her scales while she struggled to meet my eyes. She nodded again, and whispered, “please don’t hurt her.”

I nodded and pressed her close again. “Of course, my mate, my love. Of course.” We pressed our foreheads together again for another long, intimate moment.

“I am going to scare her though,” I said. “Badly. I’m going to scare the entire multiverse in a few hours, Molls. Are you sure you want to stand at my side?”

She blinked and recoiled mildly, cocking her head and scowling. “Always. I do not understand what you mean, but always.”

“Tonight,” I whispered. “I am going to feed Elegy to Cube, on live Church Television during our inspection’s welcome.”

Molls slid back, looking me in the eyes with concern.

“It is a show, a shock to the Church’s power system, to their elites. I have laced a psychic message to lure him here in spite of the clear danger to his fleet, and that knowledge being a public matter among the Upper Planets will sow mistrust of all MortMobile communication,” I said. “It is the deal I have made with the entity for his help. I must free him from use, so that he may return to his own universe, sealed off from BuyMort in exchange for his services long ago.”

Molls went pale white, all color vanishing from her scales as she stared at me in the dark infirmary. Murphey growled, and loped past lightly, to return to his place behind the nurses’ counter. I noticed he had a clear line of sight to Doofus on his stretcher.

The color in Molls scales returned hard, bright, pulsing yellow as she stared at me.

“Once this happens, we are at full war with the Church, which we will crush in open combat immediately. We have the ship to do it, any world we desire can be made ours,” I told her. “My army of Tower golems and starfish troopers await to claim the Multiverse for Silken Sands, and you ride beside me at the head of that battle tonight.”

With a long hesitation and a deep breath, I added, “if you so choose.”

Molls stood, tall and beautiful, even in yellow. Slowly, I watched her scales change from yellow to green, and then a brief fluctuation with red brought them to a solid, lasting purple as her heart beat audibly faster. “I’ll wear my finest, in that case,” she said lightly, before leaning in to kiss me.

Without much care or effort toward discreteness, we made love on the infirmary floor. Murphy quickly got up and left through the open door.

Chapter 36

I fell asleep almost immediately and when I awoke, I found that Molls had moved me to a nearby infirmary bed, covering my nudity with thin, unsatisfying blankets. Almost immediately I was struck with an ad, one that I let roll in confused disorientation as I tried to get my bearings. This was an audio-visual one, and it must have cost a lot of morties because it was surreal.

Around me was a dimly lit, sterile hospital room. On the bed next to me, a patient lay shivering under a thin, gray blanket.

The intercom crackled on, its words coming through smooth and baritone, honey for the ears. “In the depths of discomfort, every patient deserves warmth and care.”

A light went on in the opposite corner of the room. Their patient area was papered over with bright and vibrant colors, and a patient snuggled under a thick, vibrant blanket, looking content.

Narrator (Voiceover): “Introducing BuyMort's UltraComfort Blankets - where healing meets luxury. Production item A54398700BTA, full stock and priced beneath the competition. That’s BuyMort, the greatest Mart in the Universe!”

A cold feeling rolled over me. This was an ad from actual BuyMort, for an actual BuyMort item. Probably produced billions of years ago given everything I knew now. It was chilling, like listening in to a convention of Cthulhu and friends.

In between the patient and I, blocky letters appeared, shifting from an alien text to a recognizable English. “UltraComfort,” they stated. “The Future of Healing.”

The voice continued, “Why should the sick and injured settle for less? With UltraComfort, they don't have to.”

A woman walked out, glitching once between some ancient arcane being I’d never before glimpsed, and the happy 1950’s nurse slash housewife my mind was bending her into being. She held up the blanket I was using and UltraComfort, highlighting the differences.

“Gone are the days of scratchy, thin blankets,” she informed me. “UltraComfort blankets are woven with the latest thermal-regulating fibers, ensuring optimal warmth and softness.”

Walking over, she handed the UltraComfort to the patient next to me, and he covered himself, smiling and visibly more comfortable.

“Suitable for sensitive skin, and infused with healing nanotechnology, these blankets not only provide comfort but also accelerate recovery!” the nurse chirped, her cheeks rosy as he held another of the blankets before me, tantalizing me with its apparent 5 star coziness. Over a quadrillion reviews were listed, the blanket whispered. 4.9 stars.

The nurse leaned forward, her hot breath whispering into my ear. “It’s the Softness that Heals. Get yours today.”

The scene faded away and I was back to myself. In my head, the intercom left me with its parting words. “BuyMort UltraComfort - Because healing should feel good.”

I sat up, letting my nervous jitters pass.

With a sigh, I swung my naked legs off the table, scowling as I remembered the events that led to me on a table with three hours of sleep in my addled crystalline brains. With a heavy round of blinking, and a solid yawn, I nodded at MortMobile and he turned into a tunnel of gray fog to allow me to speak with Axle.

“Where are you?!” he said. “The new ship is drawing all kinds of attention and you said you would talk to Yolara. She’s furious and looking for you.”

“I’m in the library infirmary,” I groaned. “Second floor, it’s a nice view actually. Good place for a nap. Went to check up on Doofus and got . . . distracted. Fell asleep on one of the beds in here.”

“Oh you’re quite close, I should have checked my cameras,” he muttered.

I remembered my activities with Molls and my eyes widened. “Yeah, maybe don’t do that. I actually need to go over those and erase some footage,” I said.

Axle stopped, scowled, and licked his nose at me, but then nodded. “Moving on, the Inquisition’s fleet is in Sol space. At your orders, we’re not hindering them, but they’ve refused a military escort at gunpoint this time. I don’t know that your ‘laced message’ is doing what you hoped it would do,” the Knowle informed me.

“No, it's doing just fine,” I replied. “Let them come, let them land. Provide VIP parking, expensive alcohol, etcetera. All the standard show, I want them to feel like we are subservient from the get-go.”

“And where will you be during this show?” Axle asked.

I stood and looked around to find my clothing, which Molls had left bundled in a chair next to the infirmary bed she had tucked me into. While struggling into the pants, I peeked out of the drawn curtain I had been left behind.

The infirmary was empty. At some point, someone had come and collected Doofus, because his bed was missing too. I bitterly thought of the delves that had hurt him, and snarled as I answered Axle’s question.

“Front and center,” I growled. “Tonight, we kick off the invasion of the Upper Planets on live television.”

He was quiet for a long moment, before the Knowle sighed lightly and nodded. “I suppose I’ll work up some more MortBlock coverage teams, we’ll be running low on those soon I suspect.”

“Thank you, Axle,” I said. “Coordinate with Rayna and Tollya for where to send them, we’re starting off with the Nahgah Prime system, and Midnight.”

My friend licked his nose as his eyes widened, but he nodded. “Understood.”

“Is your security appropriately upgraded?” I asked. “Once this goes hot, I expect more attempts.”

Axle nodded idly. “I’m good, I’ll be using portals to move between several logistics hubs depending on my work from now on. You’ll have access, as will military leadership, but otherwise it should be quite difficult to predict my movements. I’m the only one who has access to my complete schedule, and I’ll be keeping it that way from now on.”

I nodded slowly as he spoke, then pulled on my socks and boots before standing up. “Right. Good, you seem ready this time.”

His mechanical eyes flashed as he glanced my way. “Indeed, I hope so. Personal shielding and weaponry have been charged to the affiliate account, I hope you don’t mind.”

I snorted. “Are you kidding me? Spend whatever you want, we all need you safe. It’s just morties.”

Axle frowned, but covered it with a hand, rubbing at his face tiredly. “With the new fleet purchases, our expenses have actually exceeded our income from Sleem, by the way. Numbers are moving in the wrong direction again while we wait for some of the larger, outer planetoids to sell.”

I nodded back. “That’s what Midnight and Nahgah Prime are for,” I said with a smile. “We make that work, and we won’t be worried about morties ever again.”

“Yolara will be arriving soon, I felt I should warn you,” Axle said. “She made me promise to ping your location to her if you were in-system, once I tracked you down.”

I smiled lightly and shrugged. “That’s perfect actually, I need to get in front of some cameras. Thank you, Axle.”

He nodded and reached out to disconnect the phone. Within seconds, I heard the distinctive sound of high heels clicking toward me through the library's quiet halls.

“There you are!” Yolara exclaimed as she entered the infirmary. “Of all the places to find you, you’re not hurt, are you?”

I nodded and smiled wryly at her. “Oh no, I’m just great. Fell asleep, Yolara, no excuse.” I raised my hands in surrender.

She stopped walking toward me and balked, her nose wrinkling before she looked around the room, sniffing lightly. “I had hoped to get you directly in front of CTV cameras, but you need to shower first.”

I shrugged and clanked my armor shut, before shaking my head. “No need, let’s go,” I said, my voice mechanically enhanced by my suit. The eye slits on the armor glowed blue, which I felt would make a nice contrast to my delf enemy’s natural red glow.

The fact that it covered my sex-doused scent was merely a bonus.

Yolara turned on one of her pinstriped high heels and marched back out the doors of the infirmary, only pausing to check and be sure I was with her. I followed obediently, even boarding the wholly unrequired Dearth flier she had waiting on one of the library’s landing pads.

“I’ve been promising an interview for hours, so if you name a location, CTV will portal in immediately. On our mortie, of course, considering all the delays,” Yolara said, her voice raised over the craft’s engines.

“Good!” I shouted back. “Have them portal in on BlueCleave’s base, at the staging grounds. I’ll warn Rayna, get a deployment there to police them.”

While I hurriedly called my general and arranged the press conference, Yolara called the press to do the same.

“Yes,” I heard her say, “I have him with me in the vehicle and will NOT be letting him out of my sight until the presser.” I chuckled under my breath, turning my attention back to Rayna.

“Already done, boss,” the tall hobb told me. “I figured you’d want a few special squads for tonight, so I have them ready in the barracks. Activation signal sending now, the squad will meet the press and keep them contained.”

“No naked Tower golems, right?” I asked, chidingly.

“One time event, boss. Plus, nobody saw.” Rayna was defensive about that incident, one of the Tower golems had seemingly ‘broken’ after returning from a particularly grueling tour on Storage and ran in circles around the BlueCleave military base nude before they had managed to put the thing down.

When I had asked Tower about it, he claimed to have no knowledge of the event. When I pressed him, using his name to draw out his more cogent self, he made some suggestions about his golem’s individuality that troubled me. It seemed the golem had seen too much trauma, made too many friends, and then immediately killed them with its club-fists.

PTSD in our golems was not something I had thought I would have to worry about, but Tower was also not exactly my most trustworthy ally, so the strange event had remained unsolved in my mind. A significant concern, but not something that could precipitate the cessation of golem use by the military.

They simply filled too many roles. Our military was tiny compared to the Church’s, but our soldiers didn’t die often. A significant advantage in any military engagement. One that would lessen rapidly if we stopped using Tower golems.

He was our front line, any significantly dangerous military role was filled by his golems. A literal meat-shield against the multiverse, spread out across the front of my military. Protection. My friend, the Perfect Physical Being, Destroyer of Worlds. Tower.

“Anyway,” Rayna said, pulling my attention back. “Everything is in place, just like we planned. Hard to believe it's happening, but it’s all ready.”

“It’s time. No more secrets, no more hiding. No more lies. Just the good fight,” I told her. “Just BlueCleave against the Church.”

“No boss. The way you played things, this last year . . . “ she paused and took a breath. “It’s the whole multiverse against the Church.”

“I sure hope so,” I said, and hung up.

Yolara was glaring at me. “I overhear the absolute worst things on this job. Alright, my press conference is a secret ambush, delightful. What signal should I look for to avoid the slaughter?” she asked politely, crossing her claws over her lap.

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Brinks,” I said. “I’ve been impolite and abrasive with you, and I owe you an apology for that. But yes, your presser is going to be a slaughter. Don’t worry though, it will be quite limited in scale, and I need the press there for my announcement following it. You shouldn’t be in any danger.”

I leaned in and added in a lower tone of voice, “Just stay clear of Cube, you’ll be fine.”

Yolara Brinks, public relations, licked her nose and tensed. I followed her gaze to the window, where Cube sat in his building form, hiding in plain sight. Our press conference stage was set up directly in front of him, at the far end of the staging grounds, where the shining hulk of the Crown of Thorns was visible in the distance.

Chapter 37

Our hovercraft came in to land in an open space near the press tables, but not so near it would cause a disturbance. CTV had actually brought a partial set to Nu-Earth with them, an oversized roundtable for guests to sit at and bicker was in place at the center of a cluster of aimed cameras.

Multiversal TV was one of the difficulties on my list, when it came to freeing MortMobile. He was still majorly tied up in that service, in spite of all the changes we had made already.

Hobbs and Tower golems escorted us from the hovercraft to the press area, and my worst nemesis yet, Shella the Conda host was there waiting for me.

I shrugged again and put my suit of armor away, exposing my chest to the early evening air, and the gaggle of cameras nearby. My mirrored anti-magic helmet stayed on, as the crowd had come to expect that of me by then.

As I approached, Shella flicked out her tongue and blanched at my scent. Her scales turned green, then orange, before fading back to neutral white. She had a new blue ring of permanent pigment around the outside of her scales, but aside from that recent addition, Shella’s scales stayed white from pure willpower.

“Warlord!” she exclaimed for the cameras. “Welcome! We’ve been eagerly awaiting your explanations for the recent chaos the BuyMort markets have been experiencing.”

Yolara nodded and pushed me forward, staying back with the ring of CTV workers. They’d assembled a small stage in front of Cube, who appeared for all appearances like a building complete with holographically projected doors and windows. None of the gathered press seemed to notice the giant Cube’s presence, their focus was on the mobile TV set they’d built directly in front of him.

Tollya had prepared him for his role, and the big metal creature was surprisingly eager to try delf treats.

I approached the table, pulled out a backless stool and casually sat down in it. Then I leaned forward on the presenters table and shrugged. “Chaos? What do you mean?”

“Since your direct sale of Sleem just a little over a week ago, the markets for construction materials have been overturned entirely, to start,” Shella said, shuffling the empty papers in front of her. “Not to mention the complaints of genocide.”

I nodded grimly. “Genocide. Yeah, genocide, about that. See, there’s this thing about that day I don’t really talk about,” I said, raising one finger. “But I think it's time that I did.”

Shella allowed a ripple of orange surprise flow through her scales before calmly returning to neutrally pearlescent white. “Do please, go on. You have the Upper Planets attention, thanks to your MortBlock claim on Laemya.”

“We had to hit the Sleem planet with a shot from our trans-dimensional pulse ion cannon, you all recall. My good friend, and affiliate partner, Dario made that shot. Everyone watching this transmission owes him their life, just bear that in mind as I explain,” I said.

Then I clasped my hands together and took a deep breath. “When we were moving into position for that shot, the Sleem themselves sensed our intentions, and attacked in force to stop us. They flooded through the new BuyMort gate and attacked both our ships, and the gate itself.”

“Yes of course, we have detailed footage of the battle for Sleem,” Shella said, waving a claw as if impatient for me to get to the good part.

“Excellent, in that case CTV can corroborate my next claim. Dig through that footage and look very closely for a delf stealth ship. One joined the battle on the side of the Sleem, and attempted to attack Dario’s ship directly,” I said.

Shella turned bright yellow momentarily and raised a hand to her mouth.

“I know,” I said, nodding my head slowly. “The cult members that attacked my mate on Nahgah, the ship in Sleem, even the attacks here on Nu-Earth are all connected. I believe we are dealing with a small but potent faction within the church itself that worships bright plague creatures and wants to prevent Silken Sands from the market dominance we have so rightfully earned over this last year.”

I finished by leaning into the cameras. “They’ve directly aided bright plague creatures in an attack that would have wiped out our solar system. The death of sapients, on a mass scale, seems to be the aim of this cult, and I’m afraid the only military force taking them seriously right now is BlueCleave.”

The Conda Nah’gh woman across from me blinked rapidly, and shook her head, looking around at her studio staff for help before taking a steadying breath and facing me. “Your claims are unprecedented, Warlord, you’ll have to forgive me for being taken aback.”

I nodded. “You keep having to cover me, and you’ll end up with more yellow and blue stripes in your scales than you know what to do with,” I said, spite heavily lacing my words.

Her eyebrow scales furrowed, but she controlled the reaction as red and green colors swam through her scales. “I . . . uh, we need to cut for a quick advertisement break folks. We’ll be right back.” She turned to her cameraman and gave him the deadliest glare I had seen on a Nah’gh yet.

The human raised a hand and yelled “Cut! Back in five.”

Shella’s head whipped back to face me. “Asshole,” she muttered.

“Ambulance chaser,” I replied, before adding, “Uncle Tom.”

Bright green flooded her scales and Shella barked a harsh laugh. “Insane Nu-Earth humans. I don’t even know what your insults mean!” she spat at me, arranging her stack of papers.

“Stop playing with those, there’s nothing on them,” I answered, causing another flood of red to cascade through her scales.

“What is your problem?!” Shella hissed at me.

“You are,” I replied. “The hiring manager who chose you too, but I don’t have direct access to them, so I’m going to take every bit of my frustration, anger, and disgust at your hiring out on you instead. Every chance I get. Until you quit.”

Shella blinked at me, her eyes wide as green and yellow flickered through her scales.

“Yeah, you better practice up on that color control, you’re embarrassing yourself on Upper Planets television,” I sneered, leaning back in my chair.

“Fine by me,” she said, sniffing and raising her head straighter. “Confrontational journalism is more profitable anyway.”

I snorted and nodded. “Yeah, that makes sense. Of course you’d delude yourself into thinking that’s what you’re doing. Well, go on then, ad break is over in sixty seconds. Have at thee,” I chuckled.

“Have at thee?” She asked, raising both claws in frustration before turning away and motioning for one of the silent, encircled staff to approach. “How am I supposed to do my job when my subjects just speak incomprehensible gibberish?!” she muttered to herself.

The aid approached, holding out a bottle of blue colored juice in front of her. The young woman was human, and stared at my shining chrome helmet with wide, fear-filled eyes. Shella snatched the bottle from her, but the young woman stayed and stared, blinking occasionally.

Shella noticed and rattled her tail, breaking the young woman’s freeze reaction. She jumped and ran back to the crowd of other CTV employees surrounding us.

After she was able to take a few swigs of her juice and swallow a pill she tried to keep cleverly hidden in one palm, Shella tucked the bottle away below the hastily assembled table and turned back to the cameras to wait.

Before long, the cameraman shouted for quiet, and then started counting down. When he reached three, he became silent, using fingers to count us down the rest of the way. At one, Shella picked up her stack of blank papers and shuffled them, smiling into the camera with clear, white scales.

“Welcome back viewers, we’ll continue with the much anticipated interview of Tyson Dawes, Warlord of BuyMort, in just a few moments. Right now our cameras are cutting to an orbital view of the Inquisition’s fleet, just now arriving in orbit of Nu-Earth,” Shella said, pressing one finger to her ear and nodding.

I glanced at the feed in my own helmet, causing the tiny image to increase in size. Three jet black, cigar shaped warships approached Elevator Station from a distance. One broke free and took up an orbit around the station itself.

The ship’s gun ports were closed, but the threat it represented was immediately clear, as the other two ships began entering Nu-Earth’s atmosphere. We heard a sonic boom from above as two blurry fireballs in the distant sky approached.

“Right, that would be the standard fleet formation for a hostile world, coming from the Inquisition folks. This looks like more than the average military-capability inspection,” Shella said.

I decided to take back the cameras. “Well of course it is,” I said, bringing the host’s attention back to me. “The last time they were here, we lied to them outright about our military capability. I expect they’re not happy to be returning.”

Shella’s scales went pure orange, and she stared at me dumbfounded. After a long moment, she recovered enough to clear her throat and straighten her shoulders. “Are you informing us that the last inspection Nu-Earth underwent was a sham?”

“Oh of course,” I said. “There was a dangerous cult embedded in the highest levels of the Church, we had no choice if we were to protect the entire BuyMort system from the Sleem. For whatever reason, this cult seems to desire mass casualties, I assume as a method to take over the church from within. But fear not, we have good information available to us and have identified the majority of the cult’s leadership.”

The cameras all swung away to focus on the two sleek black Church warships landing in the Prescott spaceport. Where we had been visited by the gold, silver, and red inquisition ships the first time around, these were all solid black. The color we were supposed to fear.

I smiled beneath my helmet as I saw their drive plumes flare on the distant landing pads.

“Inquisitor Elegy will be arriving shortly,” Shella said. “In a rare interview, the Inquisition would like to refute your claims in front of all BuyMort.”

I nodded and smiled inside my helmet again. “I am certain that they would.”

“While we await the Inquisitor General, I’d like to ask you a few questions about your MortBlock hold on Nahgah, in the city of Laemya. This is Upper Planet’s territory, where land ownership is terribly complex. There is a citizen, of noble lineage no less, who is accusing you now of outright theft of his MortBlock,” Shella recited, reading from a teleprompter attached to a camera placed at my back.

“I’m entirely disinterested in the whining of wealthy landowners. There is a threat to be dealt with on that planet, in that location,” I said, emphasizing my last few words with finger stabs at the table. “I am dealing with a threat to all of BuyMort; a cult that fetishizes and worships dangerous cosmic anomalies. That matters more than a temporary military hold on a MortBlock. Not like it’s the first time something like that has happened. We’re at war, after all.”

“Yes, it seems wherever you go, there is war to be found,” Shella said snidely. “Being a warlord, I would assume it’s because you respond to the outbreak of war, of course. But still.” She raised her claws to begin counting. “First we were told it was a faction of incompetent managers within The Dearth Conglomerate.”

I cut her off. “Are you suggesting The Dearth Conglomerate didn’t deserve what the market did to it?” I asked quickly, sitting forward to attract the attention of the camera. “I’m not at fault for following the tenets of BuyMort when my competitors fail to.”

“Next,” she continued, eyebrow scales raised. “We are told that your armies must set up camp in the Upper Planets to defend us all from the Sleem.”

“Which they did!” I refuted. “You guys call me genocidal over it.”

“Finally,” she bulled forward with one claw raised, unperturbed. “We are expected to believe you are fighting for the Church itself when you take MortBlocks on Upper Planets from Church nobility, while the Inquisition has landed on your military’s home world with black ships.”

“Yeah, well that last part you may want to stay and watch,” I said, facing the camera with my shining helmet. “This cult has far-reaching tendrils. Not even the Inquisition is free of them. But, straight answer, yes. I do expect you to believe that. I’ve been proven right at every turn along this path you describe, and I’m right about this moment too. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have important guests to go and welcome. I’ll return shortly.”

Before she could respond further, I flew upward, out of frame and hurriedly jetted toward the pair of black ships in my spaceport.

Chapter 38

With a few whispered instructions to my cartoon starfish, my armor covered me from sight. The armor plating extended with a special light absorptive coating, which made me a black blob against the night sky. I could watch without being easily discovered. I’m sure there were CTV camera drones searching for me, and I preferred to stay off their footage to preserve my upcoming surprise.

In the small screen in my helmet, Shella was stalling for time, speaking to the audience while touching one ear cavity as though she were wearing an earpiece. In reality, they had a channel to her BuyMort feed connected, through which they could provide her with real time information. Instead of focusing on my absence, they quickly turned to the Inquisition’s landing parties. Drone footage provided silent coverage from above.

Armed delves marched from their ships to be greeted by waiters holding buckets of champagne, and high end transport services offering luxury travel accommodations. No military presence from BlueCleave was anywhere to be seen.

Even the regular pad guards were missing.

The aggression of the delves quickly began to look absurd as they pointed weapons at serving staff and drivers, shouting questions those people couldn’t possibly hope to answer. Exactly as Rayna, Tollya, and I had planned, confusion was the first thing they dealt with upon arrival.

There was no military for them to badger, threaten, or force to submit. Just regular people doing jobs. Already serving them.

I felt a twinge of guilt for putting the workers at risk, as the worst-case scenario had them all gunned down by frustrated Inquisition delves. From my vantage point in the sky, I waited to dive in if that started happening. But quickly I spotted Elegy among the other delves on the landing platform, standing and staring around himself.

The delf took in the scene, scowling as he tried to make sense of it. He glanced between the different parties of workers on their knees, before raising one hand to a temple as though he had a headache.

Within seconds of his departure from the ship, he was calling for calm, and directing his soldiers to stand down. The hapless servers and transport drivers all bowed and scraped, going to their knees or bending low to avoid violence. There was complete submission to Elegy and his team on the landing pads.

Listening devices embedded in the area picked up audio and transmitted it to a select few of my military command, me included. I heard Elegy clear as day when he walked up to a hobb wearing a tuxedo outside of a hover limousine. The delf waggled his handgun as he spoke, never pointing it at them, but carelessly flagging those around him.

“What is this?” he demanded. “Drinks, luxury hovercraft, servants. What are all of you doing here on my landing pad?”

“We were hired by Silken Sands to welcome you back to Nu-Earth, my lord Inquisitor!” the hobb replied, head lowered. “To provide refreshment, transport. There is a news conference with the Warlord awaiting your arrival. We were paid to deliver you and your escort to the BlueCleave staging grounds, on-base.”

An advertisement took over, broadcasting to the minds of all watchers at once. It was an expensive one, top quality production, something that really put emphasis on the fact that the Inquisition had just militarily invaded a posh reception.

Visuals opened up onto the breathtaking expanse of Nu-Earth, first the world spinning with its cities shining like stars at night before zooming down to a cityscape where modernity and fantasy converged, neon lights flickering like sparkles of fairy dust, painting the night in hues of purple and velvet. Starships soared above, carving luminous trails across the sky, their paths a rosy hew in the beautiful sky.

“In a universe where power and elegance collide, Silken Sands is your gateway to unparalleled service. Whether you're a high-ranking official or a warlord, we ensure your arrival is nothing less than extraordinary. Welcome to Nu-Earth, welcome to the Silken Sands experience.”

On a sleek landing pad made even more gorgeous by the multicolored lights that ringed it, a line of hobbs dressed in the epitome of elegance and grace stood waiting. Each of them cradled a tray of exotic refreshments, their contents an artful blend of the rare and the divine, steam circling playfully from mugs next to crystalware thick with frost. Beside them, hovercrafts of the rarest and most elite designs sat parked in spacious rows, their shined surfaces mirroring the celestial ballet above.

Watching the ad as I flew, I saw it zoom in on the lead hobb. He lowered his head, bowing, before welcoming the watcher forward with a graceful sweep of his arm. On his vested uniform, the Silken Sands emblem hovered, a 3D logo above a 2D sigil.

“Welcome to Silken Sands Premium Accommodations,” he said, his voice a handsome mix of baritone and Rico Suave.

As he narrated, the visuals shifted to a kaleidoscopic slideshow, highlighting the elegance of the offered amenities. Holographic menus shimmered in the air, detailing a symphony of flavors and textures. A vast entertainment hall rose, showing the latest in games of chance, before splashing into a hover pool the size and depth of a small mountain.

His voice returned, though he was no longer in sight. “Silken Sands: Where Luxury Meets the Frontier of Tomorrow,” he finished, the ad fading away with a fit of glitter bomb and applause.

The delf commander ran one hand along the edge of his wide, black hat and slowly shook his head with a sigh. “Hirelings, the entire lot. Any weapons among them, commander?” he barked to an armored delf some distance to his side.

“None, sir. Some cameras, listening devices in the area that are active and transmitting, but no weaponry detected,” the Inquisition soldier shouted back. “Shall we secure them?!”

Elegy sighed and shook his head with a shrug. “No, what point would there be in that? Send them away and deploy the skiffs; we’ll go to him. If he wants to be humiliated on CTV, so much the better.”

The Inquisition soldiers around him moved, ignoring the terrified serving staff and marching to the underside of the ship. It cracked loose with a hiss, and a burst of soft purple light as the bottom of the ship extended down to the ground, between its landing gear.

Long mechanical arms released the rounded, bottom portion of the ship that had descended, and it floated about a foot above the ground. The underside of the ship looked like it had been shaved flat.

The skiff wobbled as they began loading weapons on it and then boarding themselves, but the first delf on board sat down in a pilot’s seat and stabilized it. By the time Elegy was taking a proffered hand to climb aboard, it hovered perfectly still and was filled with standing delf soldiers holding large linear particle beam rifles.

They formed a perimeter around Elegy and raised their weapons as the pilot took off. Elegy’s skiff easily hovered sideways from beneath their ship, then took off into the night sky. Another skiff filled with more armed delves joined in from the other ship’s landing pad. They flew up, over the port and banked out toward the desert, and the shining press conference in front of Cube.

I followed. Silently flying through the night at the tail of both skimmers, I waited until we were coming in to land, and then zipped up and planted my feet at Elegy’s side. Before waiting for his reaction, I grabbed him around the shoulders with one arm and hauled him into my side, hard.

“Hey buddy,” I growled into his oversized ear. “Glad you came.”

He resisted, as soldiers around us suddenly noticed my presence and began reacting. I squeezed harder, and his arms flexed back against my strength. He was clearly enhanced with several stat shots, but the delf Inquisitor gasped with effort against just one of my arms.

I clamped my other arm around him and squeezed, as his eyes went wide with pain. Ribs cracked, then broke, and he squeaked in pain.

Yellow light flared on melee weapons around me, and ionic disruptor rifles whined out of my hearing range as they spun up, barrel tips blurring with gathered power.

“Think you can cut me down before I crush his spine?” I asked, booming voice active. “Stand down or I kill him.”

The delves around me hesitated, so I looked down at Elegy’s pleading eyes. “I’m going to let you take a breath in just a few seconds, and you’re smart enough to know how you need to use it. Get ready,” I said, before easing the pressure on his torso.

“Stand down!” the delf screamed, pain racking his body. He bit down on something in his mouth, and sighed with sudden relief as some kind of drug entered his body.

“That feel better?” I asked, reapplying pressure to the point he couldn’t breathe. “Here’s what’s happening, Elegy. You’re coming with me in front of those cameras, and you’re going to admit to everything. The people of this multiverse are going to know the truth about the Church, and beholders.”

Elegy squeaked, as the skiff settled in for a landing. I let go and he gasped in pain again, before I switched my grip to one around his throat with my elbow. The delf’s wide brimmed hat fell off as we exited the ship. I held him out in one arm in front of myself, as armed delves all pointed weapons at my back.

When we approached the circle of cameras, gasps were audible from the gathered crowd. I casually dumped the injured, drugged delf into one of the chairs at the press table, before flopping heavily into the seat directly at his side.

Shella, bright yellow, approached the table while clutching a microphone. “The Warlord appears to have taken Inquisitor General Elegy hostage and seems to want to make a statement.”

I nodded, dropping my armor while leaving my nanite helmet in place. “Hostage is a strong word, his army is at my back. Feel free to open fire, guys, shut me down and take him back.” I turned to look at the small army backed up against Cube, spotlights and cameras on all of them.

They held weapons but refused to point them upward at us.

“Oh of course, now that this is public, none of them will make a move without Elegy’s say so, isn’t that right?” I asked, slapping Elegy on the back lightly.

His eyes boggled, and he gasped in pain.

“Elegy here is one of the heads of the cult I describe, one of its leaders. His men are all part of it too. Here, watch, I’ll prove it,” I said. Then I pulled my chair around to  Elegy and brought my helmet in close to his face. “The House of Shireen,” I said.

Elegy’s eyes widened and he reared back in his chair, staring openly at me with fear, and realization.

“The House of Shireen,” I said louder, turning back to the cameras. “Was one of the cult’s sects, and it came here to Nu-Earth in our earliest days, carrying with them a bright plague creature. It tried to enslave us and killed some of our people. The House of Shireen was its primary pool of servants.”

“You killed my cousin,” Elegy slurred, leaning heavily against his chair back.

“I did, and I killed the bright plague creature she worshiped. The same as I’ll kill the one you worship too,” I told him. “Just as soon as I can find it.”

I turned back to face the cameras and ignored the wounded delf at my side. “People of BuyMort, particularly those in the Upper Planets, hear me,” I said. “This cult is fully embedded within the various arms of the Church associates, and I have been tasked with rooting it out. I am hereby announcing the invasion of Nahgah, in the Nahgah prime system by BlueCleave military forces.”

In the distance, the delf ships lifted off from my port and began approaching. I watched on my helmet’s internal camera as the ship orbiting Elevator Station opened its gun ports and shifted to a broadside position.

“Admiral Omen, weapons free,” I muttered. My active com channel picked it up and the Crown of Thorns behind us in the desert came to life with a dull buzz. It lifted off from the ground and hovered upwards, hanging massive behind us and Cube.

The two Inquisition ships were fast approaching, but suddenly arrested their momentum, coming to an abrupt stop in the air above the BlueCleave base.

Screams from the gathered crowd of CTV personnel were drowned out by a huge buzzing eruption from the Crown of Thorns. A small shockwave passed over us, and the delf ships began being dragged sideways toward the larger craft.

The shockwave had been the craft’s underside opening, exposing us all to the magmatic core and causing a wave of super-heated air to push across the desert and mountain.

Both inquisition vessels opened fire on the base below, with a full complement of missiles and devastating rapid fire PDCs. All of the projectiles halted upon leaving their respective barrels or launchers and were dragged along with the ships toward the nearby hovering Crown of Thorns. A trail of missiles and bullets to mark their progress.

“Hear me BuyMort!” I shouted over it all. “Today I unleash upon the corruption within the Church a relic ship of unfathomable power. See how easily it destroys the Inquisition’s best!” I shouted, turning and whipping an arm out toward the spectacle.

The two ships were dragged, engines burning as hard as possible to get free, into the glowing underside of the massive relic ship. Two disparate, and distinct eruptions followed, appearing as bright bulges in the magmatic lake.

Next, the Crown of Thorns fired half a dozen of its thorns into the night sky. CTV footage rapidly caught the movements, as they were announced with bursts of blue light from the craft. In orbit, the third Inquisition vessel was torn apart, as the thorns punched through the craft in six shattering blows.

Elevator station’s shield helped protect it against the subsequent explosion, but the entire space elevator wobbled.

“Cube!” I shouted, grabbing Elegy by the back of his collar. “Eat the delves!”

I hurled the delf Inquisitor up into the air, and he was followed by a spotlight as he arced directly into Cube’s opening mouth. The massive creature happily accepted the treat and ground his teeth together, creating a wet mulching sound to punctuate the end of the Inquisition's most public-facing officer.

Next, my oversized pet, to the screams of those nearby, poured his liquid metal tongue down onto the ground and coated all the delves lined up in front of him, before solidifying the material and hauling them all up into his mouth. Some screamed, some fired weapons at him, some tried to cut themselves free. All died.

Burgundy liquid dripped from Cube’s giant metallic mouth as the screams and grinding of his victims carried across the psychic television network into the homes, ears, and psyches of every sapient being in the Upper Planets.

From the assembled crowd around us, Molls slithered forward. She was wearing her mother’s golden armor and carrying her hard-light bow. Behind her, Doofus proudly marched on his new mechanical leg. His gait was strong, and his head held high as he came to sit at my side.

Molls stood and snarled openly at Shella, holding her bow and flexing her fingers with one hand.

“There is more than one Midnight!” I shouted to the cameras, slipping an arm around Molls’ waist. “More than one system of Eternal Night! This cult has hidden them from the rest of us, to grow in power secretly! To take over our beloved Church from the inside! To destroy the very market we all serve!”

The stunned camera crew did their jobs. One of them focused on the giant metal Cube monster at our backs, and the slow dribble of wine-colored blood that streamed from his still-moving lips. Another focused on the devastating warship hovering at our backs, using a long range camera drone to view the entire thing, as it blotted out the sky behind us, glowing with heat from its exposed core.

“And now,” I said, placing my other hand on top of Doofus’ head. “Now we know of them. Of their plans, and who a great many of them are. Now begins the war against the cult, against death itself. Good people of BuyMort, do not fear. BlueCleave will cleanse our beloved market of this new threat, as they have done with similar threats so many times before!”

I finished by shaking my head. “To my friends, expect my troops. They will be there soon, to help bring our multiverse back to some semblance of normalcy after these heinous attacks. To my enemies . . . expect me.”

With that, I nodded to our host, who was trembling and staring at us, her claws clutched so closely to her chest that her mic picked up her rapid, fluttering heartbeats.

Shella, her claws openly shaking as she turned to face the cameras, bright yellow, raised the microphone to her scaled lips. “That appears to be the end of the Warlord’s prepared remarks,” she said quietly. “We’ll return shortly, if we are allowed.”

The handheld microphone fell from her claws.

Someone in the now hushed CTV crowd said, “Cut.”

Chapter 39

Tollya approached from one of the nearby buildings. She had a large troop of soldiers with her, all armed and wearing facial coverings. “Ladies and gentlemen of CTV!” she shouted. “Please gather your belongings and follow me, I will direct you to your portal-out location! Time to go home!”

The troopers all spread out, cradling their weapons and offering to help carry heavy equipment. Our army was firm, insistent, helpful, and polite as it kicked the Church’s for-profit news crew off their base. Our anti-air systems took care of their camera drones in the area.

I turned and embraced Molls, lowering my helmet to kiss her through her own’s face shielding. It tickled and sizzled the edges of my beard, which made Molls laugh. Her scales flushed purple, and she leaned into the kiss for a long moment before rolling her eyes at me.

“You’re dramatic,” she said.

I shrugged and chuckled. “I suppose I am. Still. Can you imagine the Upper Planets right now?”

She nodded and sighed. “I can, and I’m honestly worried. What about reprisal?”

“This is reprisal,” I replied, harsher than I meant to. “For too much to recount.”

Molls nodded, lowering her eyes. “You’re right, of course. The way the church abandoned us to Dearth in the early days should have taught me what you already knew,” she sighed. “What you tried to tell me, in your own way.”

I frowned. “Which is?” I asked.

“That the whole Church is a cult,” Molls said, matter-of-fact. “One that worships morties, and nothing else.”

I sighed. “I’m sorry, Molls,” I said quietly. “Part of me never wanted you to have to face up to any of this.”

She frowned and shook her head, a flash of reddish orange showing in her scales. “I am called to help people, to heal their minds of illness and pain. How can I do such a thing at the behest of a lie?” she spat. “I will take the tools I have learned and use them to better the lives of those around me. Perhaps I will worship your Pasta instead of BuyMort.”

I smiled widely at her. “Molls, I think you’d be the best Pastafarian there ever was. Once we talk about it just a little bit more.”

Tollya approached, an oversized chem-rail rifle in her arms, and a beret on her head. The weapon would fire conventional ammunition with shaped charges to initially propel the titanium-lead slugs encased in iron SABOT sleeves, which were then further accelerated by magnetic coils surrounding the barrel. The weapon was devastating, had amazing penetration, and incredible range.

Seeing my stare, she casually flipped an ad from the weapon into my brain space.

Like what you see? Say hello to the Tornet Elys Devastator. High-tech weaponry from the Cronos of Zanzu V, the Devastator is a weapon designed not just to give damage . . . but to take it as well. A robust structure and intricate engineering boosted by highspeed chemical and magnetic rail propelling mechanisms means that even the most conventional of ammunition is given a life of its own. And with the Tornet Elys Devastator, shaped charged, titanium-lead slugs, flame-based magnesium rounds — all ammunition is welcome with the chamber of this bad boy.

An animated overlay came to life within my mind space, illustrating the Devastator's complex inner workings. It highlighted the firing mechanism, where shaped charges propelled the slugs, which were then further accelerated by the magnetic coils.

The scene abruptly shifted to a high-octane action sequence. A character clearly based on Tollya stood equipped with the Devastator in a simulated combat environment. With each pull of the trigger, the Devastator unleashed its fury. Rapid firing, the rounds pierced through thick metal with ease, and distant targets were struck with unerring precision. Each slow-motion shot captured the weapon’s raw power and the lethal accuracy of its projectiles.

Over this display of might, the narrator's voice resonated, “In the hands of the skilled, the Devastator becomes more than a weapon; it's a declaration of intent, and a fulfillment of destiny.”

The final scene captured the character ceasing fire, the Devastator’s barrel still smoking in her grasp. She surveyed the aftermath as the camera zoomed out to encompass the full extent of the devastation wrought.

“The Tornet Elys Devastator. 5,600,000,000 morties. 4.9 stars.”

I whistled at the price tag and the power. It was the kind of gun Tollya would be comfortable taking on small fighter craft with, on foot.

And my second in command, armed with such a weapon, casually nodded her head for me to follow her. Molls and I did, immediately. Once we were under cover, in a nearby armory building, Tollya turned to grin at me.

“Damn boss,” she said. “I mean, I know you said, ‘open war,’ but I didn’t expect you to feed one of the highest ranking, most-feared Church officers to Cube on live TV.”

“Think that’ll make ‘em angry?” I asked.

Tollya laughed out loud, raising the weapon to one shoulder. “Seventeen more black Inquisition ships just arrived at the Sol gate. What do you think?”

I frowned. “I think that doesn’t make sense. We’ll just kill or take their ships. They have to know that by now.”

My second general shrugged. “Eh, gate fleet is engaging them now. They whined about Phyllis having gone home, but it should be fine. We recalled their damaged Sand Star and replaced it with a fresh one already. Getting repairs done now. There are bays for them in the COT. Ship is fixing other ship,” she said with a grunted laugh.

I blinked and turned to look at my mate. “Molls, what do the extra black ships mean?”

She was a faint yellow and clutched her hands together. “The Inquisition means to shut down our gate. Prevent ship travel. They will start attacking cargo and passenger ships, to discourage others from coming to this part of space. We are being excommunicated, I think, but no one has reached out to make it official.”

“Tollya, I want that Inquisition fleet taken or destroyed,” I said. “Now.”

The tall hobb nodded casually. “I thought you might say that. Orders have already gone out,” she replied. “Like I said, gate fleet is engaging them now. I’ll keep you in the heat of it, don’t worry.”

I nodded. “Do that please, I want to stay informed.”

“Go, boss. Go home. You still look half-dead, get some real rest,” Tollya said, changing her grip on the heavy rifle to rest it against one shoulder. “You have an army now. We do the fighting.”

I shook my head. “Tell me where I’m needed, and I’ll be there. You know that.”

“You’re not needed, boss. That’s the whole point. We have ships, troops, weapons. Starfish suits that make us harder to kill.” The hobb paused and shook her head with a shrug. “You can take a day off. There’s enough of us to cover.”

Molls pulled my face toward her. “Come home, please. Come home with me. I haven’t eaten in days, and I’d love to share a meal with you.”

I nodded, blinking rapidly as I looked between the two alien women. “You’re right, of course. I just . . .”

“Feel responsible for the whole multiverse?” Molls asked, eyebrow ridges peaked.

Tollya snorted a laugh. “Is that all? Seems like he feels responsible for more than just that,” she added.

“Okay, okay, I get it. I’ll take some downtime,” I said, raising my hands in surrender.

“Good!” Tollya said. “That means I can quit babysitting you and go fight.” She grinned and hefted the rifle again, shifting her grip as her starfish armor clanked into place. The tall figure with glowing blue eyes stepped aboard an elevator and pressed a button, before the machine bobbed into motion and lowered her out of sight.

“Can we portal to the tower? I miss our penthouse so much,” Molls asked.

I nodded and ordered one, taking a moment to browse through our BuyMort screens.

The affiliate was doing well, but Axle was right. Our slush fund was draining. We’d hit a lull in the sales coming from the Sleem system. All of the inner planets and easily reached asteroids of any significant value had been sold already. We had expeditions heading to the outer planets, but some of them were scheduled to be traveling for weeks to reach the system’s Oort cloud.

Our income would be slow for the foreseeable, which is where Nahgah came into play. There was a very specific reason I wanted land on that planet. Its topography and civilization centers made for a unique planetary investment, especially since I had erased all Sleem overnight.

In the week since then, massive expansions of MortBlock coverage went out across the planet. The serpentine people of Nahgah moved to reclaim their lost lands, once the threat of the Sleem had been handled for them.

But the area was prime food growing territory. The Sleem had been a threat on Nahgah for decades, slowly encroaching from the thick forested areas and smaller mountain caves to slowly coat the planet’s surface, driving its other residents further and further up the heavy wooden root structures that covered the world.

Those roots were worth a lot of morties on their own, so a massive part of BlueCleave’s battle plan was focused around taking patches of them we could cultivate and use to produce high-quality timber.

But the land beneath and between the root structures, while swampy, could house, feed, and sustain billions once it was properly cultivated. It would be the perfect location to move many of the people from Storage, and possibly Midnight.

With more civilization spreading across that formerly limited planet, there was plenty of open ground literally waiting to be claimed. Expeditions from all the top tens were being sent.

My hobbs were under orders to respect any territories already claimed, but aggressively attack and invade them if provoked. As soon as I had told Rayna about invading the planet, Axle had started the logistics work needed to claim it through BuyMort and start making it all profitable.

Nahgah was the future. So long as we could keep all the fighting isolated and out of major city centers, it was the perfect arena for affiliate battles and contests of economic will. Once Admiral Omen took the Nahgah prime gate for us though, that dynamic would swing dramatically in our favor.

The Church ran all of the gates. All of them. Without exception, each BuyMort gate you went through had a Church battle citadel sitting on its gate, advertising the strategic importance of gate control with gold filigree and thousands of laser turrets. Once we took the gate, our influence on the planet would increase, but our resistance from the Church in other universes would also increase.

Not all of my people wore starfish suits, and not all of our ships were relics of obscene power. I had vulnerable shipping routes to be concerned with, not the least of which involved Tertiary. As I walked through the portal into our penthouse with Molls, my mind drifted to the distant system. If traffic from Tertiary was cut off, TransPoCo would fall off the top ten list within days.

No matter how pissy the Church was about me, even they couldn’t do that to TransPoCo. They were the perfect necessary ally, and my embedded presence limited the Church’s offensive capabilities.

On the other side of that equation, I couldn’t lose TransPoCo as an ally. Under any circumstances. While I heard Molls say something in the background, I thought about redirecting Admiral Omen to the Tertiary system instead of Nahgah Prime. I wondered if that was the first gate we should claim instead.

“Tyson!” Molls snapped. Her scales were faintly red, and she scowled at me from above.

“I’m sorry,” I said, wincing as the compulsive apology slipped out.

She shook her head and embraced me, her scales flooding purple. “No, I know. I get it, you have so much to worry about. But if you let it, it will consume you.”

I hugged her back, sighing into her breasts. “I’m afraid that if I look away it will all fall apart,” I confessed.

“It won’t. You generals can reach you. Axle, wherever he is, can reach you. If they find Dario, or something happens that requires your direct intervention, they can reach you,” Molls said. “Try and let that fact comfort you against this obsessive stress compulsion you’ve developed.”

My eyes widened comically as I looked up into her face. “Obsessive stress compulsion? That sounds bad. Official diagnosis?”

Molls smiled, showing her true teeth momentarily before coiling her tail around me and pulling me in closer. “Don’t make fun of me, you know the words all apply.”

“Shit, they do, don’t they?” I asked with a sigh. “Fine. I admit to being obsessed with stress. Compulsively.”

I sat down in her big comfortable chair with a heavy flop. “What should we have for dinner?”

Chapter 40

Six hours later, as the night was its darkest, I carried Molls, sleeping and coiled around me, through a portal to our orbital mansion. I left her sleeping in our bed there, activated my armor, and flew out of our BuyMort pod airlock.

With my gravity harness and aimed shot perk patch, making use of the standard pod airlocks had become second nature. They opened, cycled, and closed rapidly, to allow the passage of the pods. Most of them even worked with automated sensors. My ability to use them was limited only by on-board security systems.

Once free of my satellite mansion and in the cold confines of high orbit, I took off flying toward Prescott. The orbital mansion was on the other end of the planet from it, so I had a bit of a flight to make and wanted time to think anyway.

While I had been engrossed with Molls, and spending quality time resting, several important things had happened in my absence. The events proved the competency of my affiliate.

The MortBlock in Laemya on Nahgah had grown significantly after several skirmishes with local police and what was left of the city’s armed forces. BlueCleave used nonlethal methods only, holding back their Tower golems and merely pushing back the forces around the destroyed opera house.

Once disarmed, unarmored, and relieved of any weapons or tools, the Nahgah private security and municipal peacekeeping forces were set free. Some went back to their bases, got re-equipped, and tried again with other squads and battalions, but the result was always the same.

No losses for us, no losses for them, but our stockpile of weapons continued to grow while theirs emptied. Without significant military aid from the Church directly, Nahgah would slowly become a bloodless victory for my affiliate.

Hyperbole of course. In war, civilians always suffer. Always.

However, the only deaths were civilians fired upon by local forces, or local forces taking friendly fire. This fact quickly became global news. They also used local businesses or residences for temporary bases, or even firing locations.

We did not.

It was hard to argue with an army that simply would not kill their foes. BlueCleave hobbs quickly began to look like the good guys to the locals, and that rising tide of sentiment helped aid in our victories. And then shortly after, our acquisitions.

It helped that we focused on getting the local population back to business, and respected their property rights, once the MortBlock had changed hands. Once we took over, we let people live their lives and go about their business, now associates of Silken Sands instead of whoever held their block before. It seemed like that was all the city needed to acquiesce to our occupation.

We received almost no civilian resistance, and our hobbs were often welcomed. Rather quickly, that was not the case for the Church’s armed forces in the area.

Meanwhile, on other parts of the planet, landing parties had begun staking new territory in the heart of Sleem-inhabited swamps or rainforests. The land was incredibly rich from generations of industrial absence. The Sleem also left behind their own rotting bodies, which, while caustic to the land, were still profitable, and could be easily cleaned up with direct sales to BuyMort.

Ironically, though, other affiliates were putting up ads asking for the direct sale of Sleem to themselves rather than BuyMort. It was a desperate call for a dying resource by whole industries fully dependent upon them. Over the last few days I’d experienced a whole variety of them from every angle of commerce, from The Final Cache of Sleem Essence - A Luxurious Legacy, an ad for preserved Sleem corpses by a Knowle Science affiliate that surely was making premium morties turning them into museum pieces, to Revolutionary SleemTech - The Future is Now, a visual burst ad that peppered my vision with a series of neon and metallic landscapes, a vision of a perfect utopic future

But it didn’t stop there. Sleem was the cornerstone of a number of Affiliated products, from Sleem Savories Industrial, a snacks and dried foods affiliate, to Eco-Sleem Labs, a group pledging to use the last of the Sleem to replicate their essences and fill the multiverse with a viable and high quality substitute.

And behind all of them, BuyMort itself was buying Sleem at a premium since we’d performed a genocide on them. It seemed the system recognized Sleem corpses as a finite resource and was paying for them appropriately.

The landing parties were accompanied by BlueCleave military, Tower golems for labor and security, and the best technology our affiliate could provide, based on their biome of choice. Swamplands, rainforest, or the rare grassy highlands, we had prefabricated habitats packed and ready to deploy.

And none of that even included the new moves we were making on the root clusters themselves. As a top ten, our credit scores and assets gave us access to that real estate market whether the local root owners liked it or not.

New patches of fresh cutting were beginning to appear all over every strand on the planet, as we further infested it’s every aspect. The Nah’gh people were all used to living alongside hobbs, and the slight shift in power dynamics didn’t affect most of them. It was difficult to care that your planet was being taken over, when your life was either not changing at all, or being actively improved.

Our system of government was a benevolent military dictatorship. The Church’s system of government was an exploitative military dictatorship. The choice became easier and easier for people the closer to the conflict they were.

With billions of hobbs entering our affiliate’s services, there was no shortage of workers willing to fill the labor roles required of our expansion. BlueCleave took a full twenty-five percent of our total income. That meant a lot of what we produced went directly into the hobb population.

Those who operated security often shared homes with those who performed the labor they were securing. In Australia, they built spaceships to fill our endless orders, and the Church’s. Though we were assured their ability to complete the orders of the Church was decades behind, thanks to the front-loading of our own orders.

Boing primarily built large triangular carriers, with smaller cruisers that could dock and undock for various objectives. We used several to shuttle workers to and fro between Venus’ orbital living station and the upper atmosphere, where they worked.

Several others were engaged in combat with the Church’s delf forces across the multiverse. While I had spent time with Molls, Tollya formed regiments and marched troops aboard the Crown of Thorns. She ordered several dozen Brisinginda class demolition cruisers and had them portaled into the docks inside the COT.

Inroads had also been made on Midnight. I read the reports while I flew.

Our initial incursion had been greeted with skepticism and fear, but also with a sense of interest. As soon as our medical teams began offering treatment, and our food vendors set up shop to provide them with free meals, the population’s trepidation evaporated.

We were quickly overwhelmed with requests for aid and sent another entire battalion to reinforce the original group of hobbs and golems. More medicine, particularly antibiotics and immune-boosters. More food, a lot more. We were suddenly feeding an entire village, none of them had been eating to any kind of healthy standards.

Our MortBlock expedition found a massive network of mine tunnels surrounding the town, none of which was held by an updated MortBlock. Most of it had been changed enough by mining activity over the years that we were easily able to claim the town of Lithtin itself, and the surrounding lithium and tin mines it was clearly named for.

This included a good portion of the ocean, and extended for several miles in all directions, even belowground. It turned out Lithtin sat above a similar cavern city below that filtered deuterium out of the heavy water ocean.

We got the MortBlock for that too, and the expedition just kept delving. By the time I checked in on the operation, we owned three towns much smaller than Lithtin, and its sister city a few miles below.

A deuterium extraction pump in dire need of repair and upgrades became my affiliate’s official property under BuyMort, since it hadn’t been maintained in so long the MortBlock simply no longer recognized it. As with the majority of the territory we took on Midnight.

But not all of it was happy news. I read a report about a dissident faction in the House of None that refused our aid and wished to stay in service to the Church, and the greater noble houses of delves above them.

I watched a video where Justin Lee, the delf I had befriended there not long ago, spoke at a city gathering point.

“Why should only we, of The House of None, live in opposition to the BuyMort network? I want to have a family, a home! I want to have a name, and I’m not ashamed to admit it! It is not right to own nothing, to be nothing!” he said passionately. I saw our earlier talk in his words and smiled.

And then, before the crowd gathered before him could properly react, someone threw a fish head at the delf on stage, and shouted, “Treason!”

It struck his narrow chest and bounced off to flop onto the mudcrete stage.

“My people, please!” he pleaded, but a small faction of delves all seated together began to boo and hurl rotten food items at him.

“Treason!”

“Our loyalties are to our great houses!”

“The House of None serves!”

Shouts and jeers from that section of delves drove Justin Lee from the stage, and the other delves in attendance quickly scattered. Only the small, vocal faction remained, trying to identify hooded faces as they hurriedly walked away.

I paused the video footage and sent a message to the commanding officer to put Justin Lee under protective coverage. The plain fact of the matter was that some of the slave delves who lived under The House of None banner would not change that life willingly.

Tradition could be potent, and some of these people genuinely believed they were meant to be in a servile position. That it was natural to work for those above them, and to live a life without possessions. Without even a name.

That lack of a sense of self was potent social conditioning, but I knew exactly what would break through it.

Time, and basic humanitarian aid.

My prediction about the clusterfuck that delf upper command structures would become the moment I killed Elegy had come true. While the reports had gone out to the upper houses that Silken Sands was invading their territory and making MortBlock claims on Midnight itself, that information was going to take its sweet time reaching the right pointy ears.

I could feel the sudden lightening of MortMobile, as the Church swiftly abandoned it as a primary communications source. Lady Sheeragore intentionally and willingly cut herself off from the most direct forms of communication available to her. So I consumed her MortBlock while she was busy hiding from her own paranoia.

My letter to Elegy had become a matter of public knowledge and great speculation throughout the Upper Planets, as intended. Generally it was agreed that I had somehow teamed up with the entity that ran MortMobile and was receiving special treatment because of it.

A rare Knowle scholar from the Church even openly predicted the relationship as it accurately was. A simple back and forth exchange of favors that fell within contractual bounds, but which benefited me above other sapients connected to the psychic deity.

He laid out several ways I had recently lightened the load on MortMobile and pointed heavily to the letter as psychically laced.

As the Church moved away from MortMobile, they began utilizing a series of different communication methods. Communicating between universes became an immediate problem that the utilization of messengers overcame, but I wasn’t expecting anyone to come check on the situation on Midnight any time soon.

And even if they did, my hobbs were digging in. The cavern produced breathable air on the planet, where such a thing was not necessarily guaranteed, at least that close to the surface. Deeper belowground, the ocean’s flow and evaporation provided enough air to breathe, laced with deuterium though it might be.

Almost immediately, projections began to flow in from the mine, and the deuterium pump. Workers were dispatched, with tools and materials required for upgrades. Infrastructure printers and construction teams to operate them were deployed, alongside more military to protect them.

Chapter 41

We began the process of fortifying Lithtin for an eventual attack, building bunkers throughout the city and bringing in another demolition cruiser to respond to any ship-sized threats. The vocal faction against us remained non-violent though, not even throwing food the way they had at Justin Lee.

They merely scowled at us and watched our troops every movement.

I instructed BlueCleave on Midnight to be hands off with the locals. They were told to help them however they could, but not to intrude on them or force them to do anything. A walled perimeter was kept around any sensitive areas, like our barracks or command bunkers, but beyond that they were free to come and go among the soldiers.

My teams exploring the mines quickly realized they required oxygen to reach any significant depths. Anywhere the oceans didn’t flow, and produce that effervescent mist, the oxygen levels were too low for most sapients.

I was stunned to read in the medical reports that the delves of the House of None on Midnight exhibited higher than average abilities to hold their breath. Their red blood cells were capable of carrying more oxygen than even their own cousins from different worlds.

Justin Lee explained mining traditions to our cultural contact, a Knowle assigned to the Midnight unit at Axle’s insistence. They would carry buckets of water with them into the depths of the mine, boiling it to release the oxygen once they reached a work zone.

Some of the work zones were easily a fifteen minute walk from the oxygenated surfaces of the mine, and the delf miners simply held their breath as they walked, before setting up their camp with special deuterium burners at their base like Sterno cans.

Only once the bucket had been brought to a boil could the miner take a deep breath over it, before turning to their stone-breaking.

The more of the reports coming from Midnight that I read, or watched, the more respect I had for the House of None, and the delves that inhabited it. They were a mighty people, in many unexpected ways.

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A set of Raff’s Rebreathers had been requested from the primary armory to Midnight, so I personally approved it and flagged it as urgent. Something told me that the mine Justin Lee explained was mostly tapped out, actually had much more to offer.

Delf high houses were stupid, I decided, as I flew in over Prescott. They used fanatic slave labor but hindered them in their work by spending nothing on them.

Lithtin’s lithium mine had once been so rich that the town had been named for it. The House of Sheeragore spent millions of morties establishing the town and migrating a population of slave labor to it. Then, when the surface level of the mine’s lithium ran out, they ignored the population they had placed there.

Fed them meager scraps for the meager tin they could still produce.

The rebreathers were simple devices, cheaply manufactured by us, in a factory we had stolen from Dearth. It produced many diving and water-exploration tools and toys, for which there was somehow always a decent market.

Rich or poor, the allure of many worlds’ oceans was too much for sapients to resist. We are always called home, after all.

With a cheap tool, I expected the miners to hit lithium again, and soon. Much to Axle’s consternation, I had been rapidly studying mining since our acquisition of Tertiary, and my predictions were hits more often than failures. It bothered him that I was able to keep up with him in geology, when we discussed it.

His knowledge, gained over a lifetime of pursuit and study, was suddenly being outshined by my own. An irradiated, lead-poisoned human from a violent backwater planet on the frontier of BuyMort. He never said as much, but I could sense it in his frustration.

I wasn’t supposed to get smarter than him. That was an offense he could not forgive, I saw it in his face during our meetings and calls regularly.

Prescott passed below me as I banked in to land, slowly and carefully, at my destination; the home of Maer Shevelanth.

Her house was shaped like one of the giant root structures on Nahgah, but it had been plonked in the mountain desert just Northwest of Prescott. It, and the surrounding fenced-in region, stood out.

Gyuru, Molls’ father, had been busy cultivating a small spider ranch using the tools my rancher Drusk had provided him. He quite proudly displayed the ranch, filled with hand-carved spider poles, courtesy of original BlueCleave tribe members.

His bragging rights among his friends from the Upper Planets had increased since he moved out to the fringes of BuyMort. The spider ranch was covered by an energy field, customized to protect them from a variety of threats while leaving their environment otherwise unaltered. It presented as a faintly glowing greenhouse filled with thin cactus-like spider poles and had the added benefit of attracting local flying insects.

Each pole was designed to provide the spiders with plenty of areas to web for both hunting and housing. Hunting webbing was collected daily for a minor profit, but Gyuru felt a tremendous amount of pride in that income stream.

I bought his silk, lumped it in with ours, and resold it. He didn’t know that, because I had a rotating set of lower affiliates do the purchasing for me. They even pretended to compete, out-bidding one another and placing orders far into the future. The only stipulation for the affiliates that I used was that my involvement could never be made apparent, under insinuated pain of death.

So it was to my great surprise that I was fired upon, when I landed in my friend’s driveway. The moment I breached their grid, really. A series of small, but potent stutter-fire laser turrets opened fire on me. My armor clanked into place with a thought, and I stood in the driveway while the security system continued to fire on me.

The tiny stutter beams were annoying, they repeatedly blasted me with tiny pulses of laser blasts. This heated and cooled my armor between each blast, causing eventual instability. Bits and flakes of armor began to shed as the barrage continued, so I sighed and crossed my arms.

Gyuru’s voice came over a hidden loudspeaker somewhere. It sounded like it was above the double-wide garage doors.

“Oh my, I am so sorry. Just a moment, I’m working on shutting the system down!” he exclaimed. “For the life of me I can’t understand why you weren’t exempted. You should be on our white list!”

I chuckled and did my best to ignore the laser fire, most of which was directed at my head, heart, and groin. “It’s alright my friend, I understand. And I’m in no danger, take your time.”

My suit dropped a small chunk of armor onto the driveway and hurriedly replaced it from the factory core at my chest. Within a few seconds, the security grid shut down, and the many small turrets returned to their hiding places. Mostly within the compound’s wall or obscured by patches of cacti.

A moment after that, the garage doors raised and Gyuru slithered out to greet me. He was chagrined, his smile wide enough to show fang tips. “I am so sorry, what a rude greeting that must have been. Come, welcome, welcome into our home.”

I cocked my head and retracted my armor. “Shouldn’t Maer do that?” I asked quietly.

He sighed and nodded. “Indeed, but I doubt she is going to at this point, and I weary of traditions so strict, so far from Nahgah. You are my friend, you saved her life directly, and you are welcome in my home.” He threw up a clawed hand. “It is done. If she is mad with me, she is mad with me.”

I chuckled. “It is, on occasion, unavoidable.”

Gyuru laughed heartily, guiding me through his garage into their house proper. “Even with one as gentle as Molls, I imagine it is so,” he agreed.

“I am deeply grateful for that gentleness,” I said. “It has, without exaggeration or hyperbole, saved my life many times this last year.”

Gyuru nodded seriously and frowned, pretending to understand what I meant. He was a good friend, in his own way. The cause for my visit pressed on my mind, and yet more guilt began to fill me.

“Gyuru, I must admit, I’m not here for a friendly visit. I don’t mean to frighten you, but . . . well, you likely saw what happened last night,” I said.

The older Nah’gh man stopped and leaned on the nearby wall with one arm. “Yes. I did not think to see an end to Inquisitor Elegy in my lifetime, let alone one so . . . spectacular.”

I nodded. “He was directly connected to one of the bright plague creatures we’re dealing with. No denial possible, he was one of the cultists. An important one.”

Gyuru sighed and raised his snout to the ceiling. “And Maer used to work for him,” he whispered.

“I only want to talk with her,” I said. “Nothing more.”

Gyuru turned to face me. “If I asked you not to?” he asked.

I grimaced and shook my head. “I’m sorry my friend, I would have to insist. I will hurt no one here, but I must speak with Maer regarding Elegy.”

He nodded and blinked rapidly, before turning and gesturing for me to follow. We moved through the dome-shaped mansion’s curving halls before reaching the main lounge area, where Maer awaited us.

She was lying down on a Nah’gh relaxation couch, which was long. Even though her scales had solidified throughout the years and chosen their rings of color, the center of each was punctuated by bright yellow, and she was breathing heavily at the mere sight of me.

“I . . . I haven’t welcomed you into our home,” she stammered. “You shouldn’t be here.”

I nodded and bowed at the waist. “And I apologize for the intrusion. I would leave you in peace and privacy if I could.”

Gyuru slid around behind his wife and took her claw in his own. She clutched at his hand, drawing it down and holding it with both of her own.

“First, allow me to assure you that I am not here to harm anyone,” I said, walking to another lounge chair across from Maer and sitting down on it. “And Gyuru, you are welcome to stay. I know my presence here is frightening after last night’s events, and I want you to feel as safe and comfortable as possible.”

“Then you would need to undo the events of this past year, free my daughter from your grip, and vanish as though you never existed!” Maer snapped, unable to help herself. The vitriol in her voice was apparent, but I ignored it.

Instead, I nodded. “You’re right, of course. Events have grown beyond any of our control, and I worry about each and every sapient that is close to my heart, including your household. Molls is innocent in all of this. I’m the one who wouldn’t stop fighting,” I said. Then I paused and met their eyes with my lips in a thin line. “And yet, I wouldn’t change the past year. And more importantly, neither would Molls.”

Maer scoffed. “A young woman blinded by infatuation, hardly the source of judgment and wisdom I tried to mold her into.”

I frowned and shook my head, eyebrows furrowed. “See, that right there. That is the reason you are not close with your daughter. That is the reason she hides from you, and cries after you visit.”

Maer gaped at me, her mouth and eyes hanging wide. I noticed her mouth did not open wide enough to reveal her hinging jaw, but I couldn’t expect even a statement as brutally honest as mine to break through her lifetime of social conditioning.

“And now that you’ve set her up as bait, wittingly or not, I can’t imagine she’ll ever go anywhere with you alone again,” I added, hanging my head as I said it. “The fact of the matter is that you have broken faith with me, and with Molls, Maer. Neither of us trust you any longer.”

I let my words hang in the air for a few moments, before adding “I need you to tell me everything you can about the Inquisition, Maer. I need you to prove you’re on our side here, to prove you’re on your daughter’s side.”

Maer blinked rapidly as her mouth hung open. Then, she slowly composed herself and swallowed once, hard. After that, she nodded. “What do you need to know?” she said in a small voice, still clutching her husband’s hand.

“Start with the opera on Nahgah,” I said. “Tell me how that came to be.”

“I don’t . . .” she started. Gyuru reached his other hand around and clamped it on her shoulder, a look of deep concern on his features.

“Tell him, my love. Please,” he said quietly.

Maer looked sharply up at him, then took a deep breath and nodded. “I was contacted by my former operations handler, from the Inquisition. They told me they had tickets and couldn’t use them, and with the spider ranch up and running I could afford the portals.”

“You used to work for the Inquisition,” I said. It was a statement, not a question, but Maer raised up and answered it anyway.

“Yes. It was my sacred duty to hunt down anyone who threatened the tenets of BuyMort, on behalf of the Church,” she said.

“On behalf of the Inquisition,” I corrected.

“You say that as if you have any clue what the Inquisition is!” Maer snapped.

“A threat,” I replied, waving a hand dismissively. “If you’d be so kind as to fill me in on the gaps in my knowledge, I would be appreciative. That is quite literally the purpose of this visit, after all.” I shrugged and sat back in the lounge chair, resting my hands on my knees and facing Maer for her response.

The Nah’gh woman spluttered. “I-” she started a few times before snapping her mouth shut and exhaling forcefully.

“Would a drink help, perhaps?” I asked lightly, looking up at Gyuru. “I’ll happily reimburse you some Tip Black Magic if you have any left. I’ve got a few bottles from recent forays.”

They stiffened. Gyuru shook his head and sighed. “Of course. I should have thought of that. We could all use a drink for this conversation.”

He slithered to the nearby cabinet and retrieved the bottle with a few glasses. “I wonder how much of this we can safely consume, if you have entire bottles to replace it. Molls mated well, I stand by that assessment.”

“Those bottles are spoils of conquest. Our former neighbors and friends, homes raided and stolen from at gunpoint!” Maer spat.

I nodded, as if it were entirely normal. “Yes. That is how BuyMort works. I’m trying to ‘win,’ so to speak.”

“You cannot take the entire Church, warlord,” she replied. The fight was going out of her as her husband poured three completely full glasses of the rare, expensive liquor. He carefully brought hers and mine to us, setting them down on our lounge cup holders before he returned for his own.

As he crossed the room, he sipped at it to avoid spilling. His glass was the fullest by far.

“I knew a change was coming,” he said, in a strong, but quiet voice. “The numbers have been growing weaker and weaker, the entire thing is so easy to knock apart.”

I nodded again, raising my glass. “So terribly easy.” I took a gulp of the nearly magical liquor, savoring the berry blend on my palate.

“I won’t deny any of the things you say about me, Maer. I am a killer, a thief. A robber baron, a genocidal maniac who kills angels while convincing the entire multiverse that they’re pests,” I said. “I’m playing by a very clear playbook, and it works because the system I am playing it against has made itself vulnerable to exactly this moment,” I said, raising a finger to continue. “Elegy was the public face of the Inquisition. Now that he is dead there is an opportune moment to strike at the heart of this rotten empire. Where can I find the primary residence of Lady Sheeragore?”

Maer blinked and nearly dropped her glass. Gyuru helped steady her hand, his eyes glued on the over-full tumbler.

“I couldn’t possibly-” she started, before scowling and waving a claw. “Midnight.”

I nodded and leaned forward again, cradling my tumbler. “I doubt that, but . . . where on Midnight? Which hemisphere?”

Maer scowled. “I don’t know, Tyson. How could I possibly know where one of the highest ranking board members of the Church keeps their personal residences?”

I shrugged. “Very well, I believe you. Instead, why don’t you give me the location of Inquisition Operations.”

Maer’s eyes boggled and she nearly choked on the small sip of her drink she had taken. After carefully swallowing and putting the glass down, she faced me again. “You’re mad,” she said plainly.

“Worse,” I replied. “I’m unkillable, armed beyond reason, and possessed of a disproportionate amount of willpower.” I stood, taking my drink with me, and began to slowly walk the room, looking at various items around their lounge while I slowly spoke.

“When BuyMort first arrived, it was a scramble just to continue breathing,” I started. “I remember the first days, when I slept in other people’s homes and ate what meager scraps they could afford to share with me.” There I turned and faced Maer. “Tell me, have you ever eaten instant oatmeal?”

She glared at me until I broke into a smile.

“It’s not the hardship I make it out to be, but the contrast with how I eat now must be pointed out,” I said, punctuating the statement with a hearty gulp of Tip Black Magic. A little of it even sloshed into my beard. I wiped it clean with the back of my wrist and smiled again.

“I resolved to survive this system, this hell, back in those early days. And you’ll never guess why,” I said, looking into my glass and enjoying the multiple points of color that rose and vanished within the black liquid.

“Molls,” whispered Gyuru. Maer and I both looked sharply up at him, and I nodded, pointing with one finger.

“Yes, Molls,” I replied, raising my glass. “Your daughter arrived and showed me that not all of BuyMort was horror, death, and greed. My world, barely worth living through before, improved somewhat when she arrived.”

“I hardly-” started Maer, but her voice faded out to silence when I turned and locked eyes with her.

“Molls is the reason for a great many things, in a great many people’s lives right now. Including yours,” I told her. “She showed me that BuyMort had more to offer than just harm. The fact that she has chosen to stand at my side, in spite of what I have become, is testament to her loyalty. To her strength, and to the strength of her convictions.”

Maer stared down into her glass hard, eyebrow scale ridges furrowed. “And now she has stood with you publicly, openly. On CTV for all to see!” she spat.

“Making herself a target in the process, yes,” I agreed with a nod. “So again I ask. Where can I find the Inquisition’s primary operational hub?”

Maer took a long, deep breath, held it for a moment, and then let it out in a sigh. “Operational hubs, plural. And we’ll need to talk at length about the one in Nahgah Prime; it’s the one I know the most about,” she said, defeat clear in her voice.

Chapter 42

“You have to understand,” Gyuru broke in, raising a hand. “The nature of our position, of our former positions within the greater Church affiliate.” He shook his head and sipped at his glass before continuing.

“I managed projected MortBlock risks on spacecraft for a subdivision of a shipping associate operating across three universes. Maer was only an analyst, for BuyMort’s sake! She looked through personnel files all day, cross referenced found footage, and tried to properly evaluate a criminal’s threat potential,” he continued, gesturing with his glass a bit more freely since its level had gone down a bit.

“She sat behind a desk,” I replied, nodding along. “Wouldn’t have all that much sensitive information to share.”

“Exactly!” said Gyuru, pointing at me with his tumbler. “I knew he would understand; he’s quite a bit smarter than you give him credit for Maer.”

I nodded at that too, smiling gently. “Quite a bit,” I repeated. “Just an analyst, huh?” I asked, facing Maer as I spoke. Her glower sank into an angry glare. “Would you like to tell him, or should I?” I asked the angry Nah’gh woman, meeting her gaze with a blank expression.

A long moment passed between the three of us where no one spoke, until Gyuru clicked one of his claws against his glass of liquor and scowled. “Tell me what, please?” he asked plaintively.

“Once I analyzed the threats, I ran them down and . . . killed them in BuyMort’s name,” Maer hesitantly said. She looked up over her shoulder at Gyuru as he slithered to the other lounge chair I had recently abandoned and sat down in it with a slump.

“You mean . . .” he started, before shaking his head and shrugging. “I thought the armor was for all the officers, in case your station was attacked,” he whined, eyes downcast.

“I am sorry, husband,” Maer said, reaching across the gap between the lounge chairs to touch his hand. “I was sworn to tell no one, especially not my family once I retired.”

“But we met after your retirement,” Gyuru said.

“Yes,” Maer said, her jaw clenching as she looked down. “You were . . . chosen for me. Your position was viewed as appropriate, and your retirement was near. It would allow me the quiet home life I desired and give the Inquisition someplace innocuous to retire an operative.”

“Chosen?” Gyuru asked quietly, no longer looking up. He scowled and stared at the floor. “Like a pet?”

Maer came off her lounge couch and slid to him, her body as low to the ground as she could make it. To me, it looked like she was crawling on her stomach toward him, and when she arrived, she grabbed both of his hands in her own.

“No! No, my love, nothing like that!” Maer insisted. “The Inquisition has to take precautions, screen everyone for any potential threats to their informational security,” she explained. “I asked for this life with you, yes, but . . . it was not the way you are thinking.”

Gyuru blinked a few times and met her eyes before sighing with a shrug. “Then tell me how I am wrong, please, my love. I must be wrong about this.”

“And you are, I assure you, husband. Please, please, give me the chance to explain,” Maer begged.

Gyuru stared at her, and then slowly reached for his glass of expensive alcohol again, saying nothing as he drank from it deeply. Suddenly our minds were grabbed by BuyMort, and ad space sprang up around us as the ring of classical music rolled over us in waves.

The three of us were sitting in a low-G alien bazaar, the packed club full of wealthy and high-elite people, aliens of various species bustling about. Suddenly, everything froze and the music stopped to the sound of a scratched record as a booming voice echoed through the place.

“Tired of drinking those hoity-toity liquors, sanctioned by the church to be guzzled by the pompous elite?”

“Yeah,” said several members of the crowd, others nodding their approval. I saw Maer’s eyes take on a slightly angry cast and understood that in the recent past no affiliate would have dared ask a question like this in one of their advertisements.

“OOOH YEAH! Are you ready to elevate your senses to the COSMIC LEVEL?” the narrator asked, his voice getting deeper and more masculine, a grinding threat of violence in its undertones.

Our heads automatically turned, our eyes zooming in on the source of the voice: a larger-than-life, flamboyant green skinned alien with pecs the size of my head and neck combined. He was wearing a cowboy hat and a pair of super reflective glasses, and the entirety of his body screamed in-your-face confidence. In his hand was a bottle of citrus yellow liquid, with the NU-Earth words ‘Alien Brandy’ stamped on it lengthwise, a text that glowed with an otherworldly light.

“This isn't your average drink, punk,” the alien screamed, stomping over to where we sat. “This is Alien Brandy! The brandy that's OUT OF THIS WORLD!”

As if to demonstrate the fact, he whipped the bottle at one of the transparent aluminum port windows, somehow shattering it and jettisoning a few nearby onlookers into the cosmic void.

He snapped his fingers, and the window was back in place. The Macho Alien ran and leapt from stall to stall with exaggerated, superhero-like jumps. “OOOH YEAH!” he screamed several times.

It was obvious that someone had run a janky ad AI on old Nu-Earth ads to try to sell us product, which wasn’t a bad idea considering how wealthy we were all becoming, but they hadn’t run any culture checks on it afterwards.

Maer went to flick it off, but it required all three of us to dismiss the ad and I refrained. We could get back to the gravity of the situation in a minute. For the moment, I wanted the distraction to alleviate the emotional distress for Gyuru, who was sitting quietly staring at the tip of his tail.

“Made from the rarest ingredients in the galaxy! Each sip is like a supernova in your mouth!” the Macho Alien said, before screaming and tearing off his shirt. He threw off his hat and underneath it was a red bandana with the words ‘Alien Liquor’ now popping off it in 3D holographic font.

The Macho Alien ran howling at the bar setup and vaulted in, smashing shoulder-first into the bottles and glasses arrayed there. He started punching bottles, broken glass flying everywhere. Then spinning, both hands suddenly holding some Alien Brandy, he bowed to us and poured each of us a two shot snifter. The yellow liquid within sparkled like the stars themselves.

“It's got FLAVOR that spans galaxies! POWER that defies gravity! Alien Brandy - Snap into a Supernova of Flavor and Unleash the COSMIC WARRIOR in you!”

I sighed, a bit sad that it was over. “BuyMort,” I said, nodding to the woman. “What timing it has.”

She looked disoriented, but quickly snapped back into her anger. Her head whipped around, and she glared at me with blazing anger in her eyes as she rose to full height. “You!” she exclaimed. “You’ve ruined my relationship with my daughter, and now you threaten to take my husband from me as well!”

I moved to face her, feet planted as I met her eyes. “You drove Molls away yourself. And your own lies are what threatens your marriage now. So explain them,” I growled back into her face. “And explain them well.”

Maer still glared at me, but she backed down and returned to her seat. She thought for a long moment, taking a sip of her own drink before turning back to face me. “Fine. The Inquisition found me a list of suitable candidates to settle down into a new life with at the end of my term of service, and I thought Gyuru was the most handsome of the options. Once our ‘chance meeting’ was arranged, everything progressed naturally from there.”

“Well, that’s not nothing,” said Gyuru. “Most handsome, I mean.”

I smiled softly and nodded. “I am sorry, my friend. It wasn’t my intention to cause your family so much pain, and I had no idea you were in an arranged marriage.”

He chuckled scornfully. “Neither did I,” the Nah’gh man said frankly.

Another ad appeared and we all paused, the two of them looking askance at me as it played.

“Divorced? Ready to relight your fire? Welcome to Crunch – the ultimate dating portal.”

Life's too short to dwell on the past. At Crunch, we understand the power of moving forward. That's why we've created a dating platform that transcends traditional boundaries and opens up a universe of possibilities.

I shook my head at the tactically distasteful timing of it and flipped the ad away, waiting as they followed suit.

“Please continue, Maer,” I said.

She slumped further. “My handler was my primary point of contact, but I saw and . . . heard of more that may be of use to you. Locations. People. Targets, essentially, since it's the Inquisition or us.”

“I think we should pause here,” I said, tipping my glass back and finishing the rest of the expensive alcohol in a gulp. “I’ll have some of my people reach out today, conduct some proper interviews. Get the specifics on paper. So long as you still feel like cooperating, of course.”

“How lovely to pretend I have a choice,” Maer snarled.

“You do,” I replied. “This option is distasteful, but the other is unthinkable. That’s all. You still have a choice, but now that you understand that choice, it feels like there never was one to begin with. That’s good, Maer,” I said, shaking my head. “It means you have a conscience after all.”

Gyuru and Maer both stared at me with slack jaws.

I smiled softly, set the empty glass down on the shelf, and nodded at the couple. “You two have things to discuss, I’m afraid,” I said. “I’ll show myself out. Expect my people soon.”

Without waiting for a response from the devastated couple, I left their home and closed the front door behind myself. My sharp eyes picked up the nearby hobbs in the desert, hidden from view in foxholes. I knew at least one of them would have a gravity harness upgraded starfish suit, and that there were more squads in the nearby hills.

All keeping guard over my mate’s family, living in their displaced mansion.

I decided, as I flew away from the fractured family in my wake, if they wanted to move back to Nahgah I would make it happen for them once I owned enough of the planet. But before I could do that, I had some other things to attend to.

Chapter 43

Soaring over Prescott toward the spaceport and military base, I checked my messages. Axle had forwarded the most recent updates on our acquisitions. Both Midnight and Nahgah were showing some seriously profitable expansion opportunities.

More sites were being landed on and explored across the planet, but so far Lithtin was the only source of civilization we found. The delf populations on the planet seemed to be spread out, and thin. My medics attached a note to the file about Midnight that average life expectancy was roughly forty years of age.

Wealthy delves lived to be at least three-hundred years old.

But life on the planet was harsh. Midnight had its mines, still with untapped lithium reserves of extraordinary purity. All we’d had to do was equip the delves with rebreathers and they were happily pushing the depths of their mines to find new ore deposits and breathe new life into their town.

Below Lithtin, the BlueCleave exploratory crews were discovering more and more unattached territory, and claiming it. An ancient delf city had been discovered deep below Lithtin, at the bottom of a formerly blocked off mining shaft.

Already our Knowle archaeology department urgently requested an expedition, and I happily approved the financial request, with an additional five billion morties tacked on for good measure. I wanted them to learn about the delves' home world, as much as possible. The ruins were a great place to start.

Some of the initial photographs, taken by exploration team hobbs, showed remarkable signs of civilization. The cavern had an entire city spread out in it, totally empty. Just ruins of buildings carved into spiraling stalagmites and stalactites. There was a severe disconnection between the two types of structures. The buildings growing upward were smaller, and far less extravagant in their architecture.

Those hanging down from the ceiling were intricate, filled with windows and balconies. The chamber had once had a thick, cascading waterfall running through its center, though the stone shelves and river bed carved from metal were all empty.

No water, no air to breathe, no people. It made sense, in a terribly economical sort of way, but the images I saw did more than drive my interest in the planet.

I was specifically reminded of the tapestries the House of Shireen had brought with them.

Scenes of royal delves, stitched into ancient spider silk weavings, as they looked down upon their lower caste from the upper stalactite structures, idly watching as their world crumbled to corruption and greed. The city I saw in our exploratory team’s photographs was similar to the city depicted in the House of Shireen’s tapestries. How it connected with the lies of the delves on the world-stage about their home planet, however, didn’t come to me just then.

All of it was owned by Lady Sheeragore’s personal MortBlock, which had been left unrenewed for so long that almost none of it was valid any longer. Our teams were able to just walk in and take the territory. Holding it was going to be another story, but the cavern system was full of choke-points for BlueCleave to build small bases into.

The opportunity on Nahgah took a shockingly similar form to that on Midnight. While my Knowle science department was thrilled about the opportunities on Midnight, that information was limited within the affiliate. Only a small handful of the most trusted, most skilled, and most expert Knowles were trusted with that precious knowledge. Axle was surprisingly good at compartmentalization. He kept my small army of Knowles working on the right projects, in spite of their natural curiosity and seemingly species-wide tendency to get side-tracked.

Most of my Knowles were invested in a completely different set of ruins, in a vastly different universe. On Nahgah, in the Nahgah Prime system, one of our teams had uncovered a forgotten Lamia city within the deep rain-forested swamplands of the planet.

The structures were tucked away in a thick patch of rainforest that spanned between two great root clusters, and the images coming back from it were disturbing to say the least.

Everything from about shoulder level down was worn smooth by the Sleem’s caustic bodies, as they’d populated the former city and used it as a base to breed from. Above that level, where heavy, water-filled vines drooped to cover most of the stone work, the carved shapes of Molls’ gene forbearers were shown in bondage to regular Nah’gh.

The popular historic teachings were quite the opposite. The Conda Lamia had oppressed Nah’gh, not the other way around. At least, that was what the teachings available within BuyMort said, and all the available history on the subject came from those teachings.

Yet the carvings were undeniable. The city seemed to predate BuyMort by a few hundred years, and showed larger, hooded serpent people enslaved by smaller, sleeker, darker colored serpentine people. Carvings of abuse were abundant, one building in particular was ringed by carved depictions of execution methods for the Conda slaves, some quite graphically represented.

Our Knowle archeology and BuyMort historian teams were unreasonably excited by the discovery, and several expeditions were being planned and paid for in advance, even while BlueCleave continued to cordon off the ruins and stake MortBlock claims throughout the area.

The cultural implications of the Nah’gh having originally oppressed their Conda Lamia cousins were shocking, and the information immediately went public. Some of my best Knowle archeologists went on CTV to explain that the cycle of abuse and enslavement had clearly been swinging between the two sides for millennia, and that the original abuser was likely to never be found.

It brought a strange sense of peace toward the Nah’gh who bore the Conda gene. They were treated better in public, given more respect, and generally no longer feared. The mistrust between racial off-shoots of the same species began to finally dissipate.

There even appeared ads that simply existed to spread a message of conciliation and togetherness between the two groups. My favorite was the one of a Conda Lamia dropping her ice cream cone on a Nu-Earth playground, a dusty hot place somewhere in New Mexico, and a Nah’gh running to her. At first it looked like there was going to be a fight or confrontation, but instead he gets to her and portals in another ice cream, courtesy of a BuyMort pod. It made me smile, knowing that people wanted to get along.

Or at least, that a major affiliate thought there were morties to be made in the appearance of people getting along. I didn’t care if they got there by the wrong road, it only mattered that they got there.

Other expeditions were reporting more normative findings. Land for growing food at scale, timber operation zones, even an excellent lake for fishing a native species of eel that was quite a popular menu item across BuyMort.

Hundreds of revenue streams were opening on Nahgah, as my exploratory forces spread out across the globe and began getting into small skirmishes with other affiliates and associates. The vast majority of them were Church associates, so the skirmishes tended to go our way.

None of them were as equipped or coordinated as we were.

Several locations were flagged as vulnerable to attack, however, and seventeen were flagged as currently engaged in battle. There was even a casualties list for me to browse, which I did momentarily. Thankfully it was filled with injuries and dead Tower golems, instead of the names of hobbs, humans, or any of the other sapients who worked for us.

We were losing people, without doubt. Hell, one of the reports I read was in regard to a Knowle archeologist who, upon seeing the ruins on Midnight, had passed away from heart failure. He got too excited, his heart seized, and he died on the spot.

Nobody’s fault, yet I felt the guilt of his death as if I had killed him myself.

But the vast majority of our people in harm’s way were surviving the harm they encountered. Even if they weren’t equipped with starfish suits, our people in hostile environments all had Tower golems as escorts and plenty of safety equipment.

We didn’t send our people out unprepared, and it paid off. Our affiliate was gaining ground on Nahgah again, in a very literal sense. We’d backed off most of the established Church military zones, but that was just so we could focus on taking profitable land instead.

What Church forces remained were in the major cities, and we left them there. With the exception of my opera house base in the middle of downtown Laemya, all of my operations on Nahgah were either rural, or based in the deep wilds.

Control was shifting my direction in general.

The Inquisition fleet at Sol gate had been taken within twenty minutes of their arrival. They’d managed to put up a decent fight, but the Sand Star frigates were the Sand Star frigates, and once my specialist pilots got involved the fight changed quickly.

Exposed weapon portals were destroyed, attitude thrusters torn off, and drive shielding detonated. The delf ships were disabled, then boarded and taken.

The only point of note in that report had been that when boarded, the delves took their own lives instead of being captured. Without exception, they were equipped with detonation packets in their own heads, which they were capable of activating.

Every delf we encountered on board captured ships had the same loose-eyed gaze, dark blood dribbling from eyes, nostrils, and ears. None of them could be saved, let alone questioned.

Still, it made taking the ships easier, so I didn’t complain.

Chapter 44

I just flew into range of the humming Crown of Thorns ship, in the desert south of Prescott’s Mountain. Once its core took control of my suit, my charge stopped its slow drain and I hovered over the massive, undulating ship.

The thorns it had fired earlier were already rebuilt, their metal darker black to match its source, the eaten Inquisition ships. I gave a thought to what happened to the bodies within the COT’s molten core, but quickly discarded the line of thought as irrelevant.

My take-off timer was getting low, less than three hours before the Crown of Thorns took off to travel to the Nahgah Prime gate and claim it for Silken Sands. Thus far, the only retaliation from the Church had come from the Inquisition itself, and that fleet had been rapidly taken for our own purposes.

They were limping to Nu-Earth, and Elevator Station’s dry dock as I watched my own new ship prepare to take off.

Lines of semi-trucks filed into the single open blast door at the end of the limb closest to Prescott. Its ramps were heavy duty, in spite of being sheet-thin. I assumed more structural support from the gravity drive, it held the ship together where normative structural integrity simply never could have.

As I flew in closer, I saw personnel carriers mixed in with the cargo trucks, and entire families tucked into their open seating. Scant belongings were carried, with some suitcases and crates. There was even some livestock; a full-sized mush bug pen was being brought in from Sundew Valley foods.

They’d expanded considerably and could afford to donate a sprog of the useful insects to our ship, as part of our affiliate’s home-away-from-home initiative. A ‘sprog’ is the official term for a group of mush bugs, as well as a colloquial reference to rowdy hobb children. I learned that while skimming the prepared reading material on the ship’s initiative; something our interspecies relations department came up with in a hurry for families boarding the Crown of Thorns warship.

What the initiative meant, in simple marketing terms, was that you got to keep all the comforts of home if you volunteered to serve on board the new ship. It was more than capable, with entire sections of interior devoted to crop growth, or recreation. The ship even had several movie theaters, something Admiral Omen had told it to create.

His experience on board submarines was critical to guiding the home-away-from-home initiative. He had told the interspecies relations board to ‘make it as comfortable, and morale-infusing as possible.’

They had taken him seriously. As I flew on board the ship, I saw a thriving city in the early steps of being built.

The Crown of Thorns was producing new platforms as needed, using the extra material from the devoured ships, and some gathered Arizona sand, to construct entire city blocks that we could fully customize.

One of the sections I flew past had a game of grass swords being played, where dueling armies of hobb children rushed one another’s fortresses, armed with stinging grass blades, and stiffened wraps of grass armor.

My people were turning the ship into a home, before it was sent off to conduct war. Something about that process helped ease my guilt, and I smiled to watch the hobb children play. One of them flew upward awkwardly, landing behind their friend and scoring a stinging cut, only to be accused of cheating.

Further in, I witnessed an accident as a cargo laden barge veered too quickly on one of the cargo paths that ran around the exterior of the ship. It crashed through the guardrails and began to fall toward the molten core below.

Then it froze in midair, and several starfish drones detached from nearby docking ports to attend the cargo craft. Within seconds, the vehicle was back on its route, and the guardrail had even been fixed. The gravity drive at the ship’s heart really was capable of a million tasks at once.

And the AI which drove the ship was unlike the one in my own suit. It was obedient still, but dramatically more intelligent. It was capable of not only responding to a situation but taking charge of it and forcing the outcome to our advantage.

Even flying within range of the giant craft meant death, if the computer wanted that outcome.

I flew toward the main command deck to join Admiral Omen as we began our operation.

In the back of my mind, I remembered that our every step would dictate a coming response from the Church. A coming storm. The Inquisition had primarily been concerned with the control and confiscation of relics, and a rogue relic had wiped their public forces out overnight.

The multiverse was watching. Holding its breath as it realized the size of the fight coming its way. Entire affiliates started stockpiling food, water, weapons, armor, bullets, and bandages. We couldn’t make enough to keep up with the demand, and our enemies couldn’t pay us enough for the products we provided them.

The entire damned mess was connected, a rotten web filled with rotten spiders, disabled from too much success. Now they watched, with eyes wide and breath held, as I brought the flame to their webbing.

Admiral Omen saluted me as I landed and stood from the chair to offer it to me. I scowled but nodded and sat in the central bridge seat. He stood at my side, hands clenched behind his back as he looked over the many screens in front of us.

“The ship is ready at your word, Warlord,” Admiral Omen said. “But I would advise providing us another two hours to complete the onboarding process of our battalions’ families. It would harm morale to leave them behind after our promises otherwise.”

I nodded. “It’s only two hours,” I whispered. My eyes went to the platform I had seen with children playing grass sword wars. It floated by toward an armpit of the ship, where its armor was thickest, and attached itself to the wall, connecting with another series of newly constructed portions. Together, they comprised a small village, complete with a park for hobb children to play in.

“We offer them a chance to surrender first,” I said suddenly, turning to lean in Admiral Omen’s direction.

He cleared his throat. “If you mean that as a question, we assuredly do. They will refuse it, of course, but we will offer. That offer of surrender will be as public as their citadel station’s destruction will be.”

“Should we take it, instead, you think?” I asked.

He shook his head, not bothering to meet my gaze. “No, I do not. That is not the lesson you seek to teach our foes.”

“I don’t know, Admiral,” I said. “I’ve been rethinking that lesson lately.”

There he turned and faced me, eyes locking with mine. “Have you?” he asked casually.

“I worry,” I started, frowning and leaning forward with a sigh. “I worry that we will lose support of the people that populate the Church’s many worlds, if we are too ruthless in our Nahgah Prime campaign. I would like to attempt to use a lighter touch than we previously discussed, if you think it possible.”

Admiral Omen nodded as I finished speaking and turned back to his many screens. He swiped one away, then started reading another. “Would you prefer my honest counsel on this matter?” he asked. “Or is this an order, and you are simply being . . . hesitant to give it in clear language?”

“Honest counsel,” I replied immediately.

“You worry far too much about the common man’s response to your actions, for a warlord,” Admiral Omen said. “Frankly, I grow concerned that it will hinder you, causing inaction to become your stance where action is required.”

“Are you concerned that is happening here?” I asked.

“Yes,” he replied immediately. Admiral Omen swiped all of his screens down, minimizing them before he turned to face me.

“I believe your first instinct to destroy the Nahgah Prime battle citadel, and everyone aboard it, is the correct move to make,” he said. “If we take it, then they will try to take it back. It will become a quagmire for my battalions, instead of fuel for our conquest of the system. I had thorns planned for several planetoids, with more planned once our metal stores are replenished. If I were to adjust to your new plan, those thorns would need to be used to place boarding parties in strategic locations aboard the citadel. Our entire initial assault phase is disrupted, and the advantage of surprise is lost entirely.”

I listened and nodded. “Mercy is a fool's errand, then,” I said.

Admiral Omen stiffened his shoulders and cleared his throat briefly again. “Perhaps not. Perhaps a compromise would suffice. The citadel will take some time to consume. We could extend that time, while still launching our thorns, and provide the enemy crew the chance to abandon ship as portions of it are consumed. This will lower the casualty rate, and perhaps provide some of the good will you seem to seek from our enemies.”

I nodded and looked at my feet. “Agreed. What are your thorns meant for?”

“Military targets. Your man Lee is with Maer now and she’s providing coordinates for strategic targets. Our best chance is to hit them with obliterating force the moment we arrive in-universe,” he said coldly.

“Agreed,” I repeated, turning away to watch the boarding process. “Make it happen, Admiral.”

“Yes, Warlord,” he snapped with a salute, before turning and bringing his screens back up.

I watched over his shoulder, but it was all boarding information. Different sectors of the ship were reporting their ready statuses, and since the ship could take off and fly without cargo even needing to be secured in place, most of the light boards were showing green.

While I sat and waited, I watched my top military commander work.

Admiral Omen rapidly switched between screens, flicking them forward or back with small movements of his hand as he stared at them and took in the information. I read over his shoulder and took it all in too, seeing as I had nothing better to do, and it seemed like the kind of thing a leader should probably do.

Most of it was inventory screens. Shipping manifests. Crew documentation.

We were starting off light, with only three divisions of BlueCleave regulars. This gave us roughly thirty thousand fighting hobbs to field at any given time. Each division came with a special forces unit of thirty hobbs wearing double-upgraded starfish suits, carrying more expensive weaponry, and graced with extensive training.

Most of the hobbs in our special units wore the gravity harness upgrade, but the rest of it was a toss up between the armor or the fists. Their unit commanders typically separated them into fire teams that could support one another more easily. The armor plating was insanely useful, as those hobbs who had taken it as their first upgrade were showing some advanced capabilities with theirs.

Some of them were capable of growing their own offensive spikes, only an inch in length, which could then be fired like short-range shrapnel bombs. Some were showing advanced camouflage capabilities, vanishing into a blur of bent light, or even broadcasting their form to another location while hiding their own, like the reaper hounds had done. Meanwhile, others were capable of extending their armor out to the sides while under fire, covering their team-mates as well as themselves.

Versatile upgrade.

Those with the fists, like me, typically advanced in destructive capability as they upgraded, but also massively enhanced their capacitor storage. We were, to a hobb, capable of outlasting our counterpoints that took upgrades other than the atomic breaker gauntlets first.

The hobbs who had taken the gravity harnesses first were clearly the most capable fliers, but there was more to it than that. The technology seemed easier for them to use naturally, as though it were instinctual. For me, I had to concentrate on where I wanted to fly, and at what speed in order to get those results.

Molls did it all as though she were breathing. Like some kind of serpentine dragon, she weaved and looped through the air around me in easy circles when we flew together. I often struggled to keep up.

All of this was mentioned in the division data on Admiral Omen’s screens. (aside from the details about Molls.) I was impressed at the man’s ability to read; he was nearly as fast as I was. But, then again, I suspected he was skimming the information, and I was reading every word of it.

Two hours passed as I absorbed and reviewed information. Maer delivered not only the space station her former handler worked from; she had given us an entire stellar cartouche for the Inquisition inside Nahgah Prime.

I was surprised to discover installations outside of the solar system, in different parts of the Nahgah Prime universe. They were an old universe, by BuyMort standards. There’d been more time to expand and grow to other parts of their home galaxy. Not beyond though.

Nothing far enough away, or big enough in scale to trigger a new BuyMort gate being constructed. As much as the Church wanted those parts of the galaxy rich in treasure, they wanted them to themselves. A BuyMort gate would mean other affiliates being able to expand into the area, unless the Church controlled the secondary gate with violent force.

The way I planned to control the only gate in the Nahgah Prime universe.

Orbital mechanics, thorn flight projections, and payload options all slid by Admiral Omen on his screens. He made some adjustments here and there, all of which I approved of without speaking, and set the thorns firing program to its armed status. Once the ship was able to achieve the correct attitude in Nahgah Prime space, the thorns would fire on their own.

Starfish drones loaded those we wanted loaded, mostly with extra weight for an increase in kinetic damage. One was filled with mo-gas drums and a small firebomb. It was headed for a planetoid circling a gas giant, to strike an estate within a forest. A mad orc lived there with his giant cyborg crab pet, and none of us wanted to deal with him directly.

Aside from that minor war crime, the thorns were loaded with nuclear material, or simple shaped blocks to increase their overall mass. Just a giant block of heavy material within the boarding-seat. Once the thorn penetrated whatever it was being shot at, the extra metals would ensure higher destructive capability.

The list of immediate targets was long, and not all of them were military, strictly speaking.

Chapter 45

Lee and Maer were still talking. Gyuru had gotten exceedingly drunk and went to bed already. But as my mate’s mother provided names and locations, we added them to the targets list.

The Crown of Thorns was all the for-profit media could talk about, and with good reason. It had better ratings numbers than any other topic on the BuyMort web. Even long range photography and video, which was all we were allowing, was trending and being shared on every media platform the market had to offer.

We had the multiverse’s attention, and our pending arrival in Nahgah Prime was something that was even being speculated. Our ground forces were inordinately aggressive and numerous, the talking heads all reported breathlessly into their microphones. A space-based invasion was a natural next step.

Of course, so was a complete lockdown of our own system. Or Tertiary. Some of them even speculated that we would be heading to the new Eternal Night systems, and the new Midnights I had spoken of. Unconfirmed and publicly denied by Church leadership though they were.

The talking heads gathered and talked, eagerly. Advertisers flocked to the eyeballs watching the talking heads, and our products proliferated ever further. When we had taken the primary manufacturer slot from the Dearth Conglomerate, we had invited ourselves into every other affiliate’s homes without their knowledge.

Axle’s data teams collated and pondered the attention spans of the wealthy, paid close attention to what they wanted in their lives, and then built and sold it to them. While I drove them to new heights of fear and paranoia with my invasions, my sales teams sold them weapons, armor, ammunition, freeze-dried food, and even prefabricated bunkers.

The affiliate hummed in perfect harmony, the shark-toothed businessmen stepping into the wake of the terrifyingly competent military and making things all flow my way. The wealthy upper planets were treasure chests, piggy-banks, and bearer bonds themselves. Whoever held them held their value, their worth.

And I was coming to hold the first of the Upper Planets as my own.

Admiral Omen swiped one last screen away, a final check of all personnel, and turned on his heels to face me. “Ready to depart, Warlord!” he barked, standing at attention.

The gathered hobb bridge crew, including Tollya, all turned to face me.

“Take us to the gate,” I said, eyes lidded. “If the Church battle citadel approaches us, destroy them with the gravity drive. Same deal though, give them time to abandon ship.”

“Yes, Warlord!” shouted a dozen hobbs and one man. They all turned away from me and began manipulating their portion of the massive ship’s computer, telling it what they wanted from it as the spacecraft hummed louder.

We lifted sharply, but then the sensation of movement ceased entirely. The ship projected screens of our surroundings as though we were in a dome atop the ship, and red plasma flashed across its armor as we rose through Nu-Earth’s atmosphere. Rapidly, the planet fell away behind us as the gravity drive flung us toward the Sol gate at hundreds of thousands of kilometers per second and climbing.

There was no sensation of movement, and I glanced at various areas on the ship to see my people unbothered by our departure. Their lives were aboard the Crown of Thorns, and while some of them watched Nu-Earth shrink away to nothing on screens, most of them didn’t care enough to notice. Daily life was already well underway, and everyone had some moving in to do.

The COT was capable of both styles of FTL travel common within our relic fleet. Mortie-free instant travel via the BuyMort network itself, or a gravity haul. A gravity haul bent the laws of physics by allowing gravity to pull the ship in any direction faster than the speed of light, by many orders of magnitude.

Only the gravity drive itself kept the craft together during a gravity haul and protected everyone on board. Basically the same thing I experienced in my demolitions cruiser, on a much grander scale.

At my instruction, we pushed the ship up to a minor gravity haul, coasting toward Jupiter at just over twice the speed of light. I sat and watched the screens around me as we traveled, and a short while later, the Crown of Thorns neared the BuyMort gate in high orbit of the massive planet with only a small portion of its overall capacitor charge used up.

With a crackle of fragmented space-time, my monstrous ship de-accelerated into position over the gathered fleets, lined up to use the gate. Immediately, I sat forward as the Church battle citadel lurched into movement.

“Open comms,” I ordered.

“Aye, Warlord,” shouted a hobb at a nearby station.

As I watched on screen, the massive, gilded Church ship spun away from its position squatting over the line of ships waiting to traverse the gate and accelerated toward the gate itself.

“No response, Warlord!” shouted my hobb communications tech.

We all watched on screen as the battle citadel continued to accelerate, lifting toward the center of the gate as it did. With a brilliant rainbow flash, the Church fled my system, rather than face my relic ship in battle.

I snorted a laugh, and it was quickly taken up by my bridge crew. Within moments, hobbs, humans, Orkreshi, Nah’gh, and many other species on board the COT were laughing at the absurd scene.

Where a city-sized icon of wealth and violence had hunkered, like a fattened golden spider on the rim of its web, suddenly empty space hung black in the flashing wake of its rainbow-tinted departure.

Once the laughter on my bridge had calmed sufficiently, I nodded to my comms officer. “Open comms to all ships in the region.”

“Aye, Warlord!” the hobb shouted. He turned and pressed a button on his station, and then faced me with a nod, raising one headphone up to listen.

“All ships, all fleets, this is Warlord Dawes in the Crown of Thorns relic capital ship. The Church no longer directly controls this gate, Silken Sands does. All line fees are now waived. Contact the BlueCleave military fleet if you require aid, or to resolve any traffic conflicts,” I said, pausing before adding, “This gate is now open. Free use to all who have good intent.”

The event was immediate news, as was my statement. But to make sure the message got out everywhere, I rolled into ad space, setting an Ad AI to write up a quick advertisement about Silken Sands free gate entry and exit. I watched as it generated a sleek and enticing ad. The headline was bold and catchy: Commerce and Travel Await: Unlimited Access, Unparalleled Opportunities! Below the headline, the ad featured a striking image of our newly acquired gate, shimmering with a welcoming glow, signifying open access to all.

The body of the ad was equally compelling, emphasizing the ease of travel and the boundless possibilities that Nu-Earth, and the Sol system offered. Experience the freedom of movement! Nu-Earth's gate is now open to all, welcoming traders, adventurers, and dreamers. Discover new markets, exotic locales, and endless opportunities. Whether you're looking to expand your business, seeking thrilling adventures, or simply wanting a fresh start, Nu-Earth is your gateway to a universe of possibilities.

To wrap it up, the ad included a disclaimer in small but clear text: BlueCleave ensures safe and regulated travel for all visitors. Terms and conditions apply.

I approved the ad for immediate distribution across all major networks and BuyMort channels then exited Ad Space, returning my mind to the stars. I watched on a tiny screen in my helmet as we approached the gate ourselves, the Crown of Thorns dwarfing all the other ships nearby.

BuyMort’s gate began flashing repeatedly, as ships who had been held to a specific order were suddenly freed to use the gate without waiting. I realized it had been yet another way the Church capitalized on everyone who needed to use a gate.

By making them wait, they could sell the ships fuel, food, water, medical care, and repairs. And of course, with the captive audience fee of cold empty space, they were able to charge a premium for it.

Our people would help those who needed help for reasonable prices, or just to help them if that was all there was in it. No more ships would detonate waiting in line because they couldn’t afford the repairs they needed to survive. Or suffer crew dead of thirst, asphyxiation, or even starvation simply so the Church could get another padded bill of sale.

I looked up as the BuyMort gate flashed wide, crossing multiple beams to create our portal. The charge was astronomical, I was financially committed the moment I took my massive ship through a BuyMort gate. Our complete market domination of the Nahgah Prime system was going to be necessary, just to keep us in the black.

As we transitioned through the extra-dimensional space of the multiversal flow, I stood and offered the chair to Admiral Omen.

“Admiral, if you please,” I said. “Proceed with your invasion of Nahgah Prime.”

Chapter 46

He nodded curtly and sat, just as we arrived at the Nahgah Prime system gate.

Their gate was in orbit of a large, outer planet, akin to our own gate. Their gas giant was smaller than ours, but Jupiter is special among gas giants. Not many in the BuyMort system can boast its sheer size.

But large planets, removed enough from the system’s star to avoid any kind of interference, seemed to be BuyMort’s modus operandi for its gates. It made sense, they needed a large planet to keep the gates in a secure orbit as mass and energy passed through them. BuyMort was amazingly economical sometimes.

Instead of using the gates’ built in movement capabilities, the gates pushed away from the planet when they passed matter and energy through themselves. Then, they were slowly pulled back into place by the gas giant’s gravity.

Only rarely did the massive ring’s thrusters engage, such as when something the size of my relic ship came through.

Admiral Omen sat up and took in the view of our surroundings. “Open local comms, all ships, all fleets,” he barked.

“Yes, sir!” shouted the hobb comms officer.

“All ships in the Nahgah Prime gate region,” started Admiral Omen. He took a breath and steadied himself before continuing. “This universe is now under the direct control of the Silken Sands affiliate. All military vessels are required to stand down arms and leave this system immediately. Failure to comply will result in your destruction.”

I scowled at him, from the side, but refrained from interrupting him.

“Comms, open a channel to the battle citadel directly,” he said next.

“Yes, sir!” shouted the hobb. A small screen opened in front of Admiral Omen, and on the other side of it an elf wearing a stiff-collared uniform appeared.

“Church crew, you are hereby ordered to stand down all arms and evacuate your ship. Bright plague cultists have been identified aboard your craft, and their acts of sabotage mean the entire vessel must be demolished at once. The demolition process will however be slowed in order to provide the loyal Church affiliate members time to abandon ship,” Admiral Omen informed the enemy captain.

Behind him, the ship’s massive bridge showed ornate wood and gold fixtures around the portals and doorways. Opulence, everywhere.

The elf sputtered, blinking rapidly. “You dare?!” he finally summoned. “You dare threaten a guardian of the gates??”

“You’re not listening, and you need to,” said Admiral Omen, strangely calm. “Sound the general alarm, all hands abandon ship.”

The elf scowled at that, took a deep breath through his nose, then turned to face someone off screen.

“This has gone far enough,” the elf captain said. “Unleash the full complement upon them.”

Harsh, slicing beams of light erupted from a thousand cannons across the battle station’s ornate rims, cutting into the COT’s armor plating as Admiral Omen swung us into attack position.

Thorns fired as we moved, with small red screens of light indicating each target they were rushing toward. None went to the massive ornate structure in front of us though, these thorns were performing long range assassination and destruction missions all throughout the Nahgah Prime solar system.

I read over Admiral Omen’s shoulder as a thorn fired at roughly half the speed of light toward one of the system’s outer planets. It would intercept a small moon that orbited the planet and utterly annihilate the planetoid body, shattering it by passing through its core at nearly one-hundred and fifty thousand meters per second.

The minor Inquisition military outpost on the moon was mostly a supply depot for long distance jumps out of the solar system. A kind of waystation before exiting the Nahgah Prime OORT cloud. Our thorn would turn it all into a small, glittering ring of debris circling the planet.

I snorted. Only a few minutes in-system, and we were already beautifying the place.

“Deploy the Brisingida fleet, as well as the Sand Stars. I want laser defense operations only from the Brisingidas. Allow the Sand Star fleet to remove the turrets,” Admiral Omen yelled.

“Yes sir!” came the reply from a nearby hobb. The tall alien swiped at his own screens of light, and in the distance, relic ships began to descend from docking ports.

A heavy laser beam, blue with tinges of white, cut through a portion of the COT’s armor plating directly above the bridge, and I felt a slight lurch of movement as the ship hauled our platform out of the way. The beam sizzled through the ship’s atmosphere and truncated in its mass of molten metal.

From the tips of the Crown of Thorns many stubby limbs poured a mass of relic ships, all with hobb crews aboard. The demolition cruisers spread out across the body of the Crown of Thorns itself, catching and absorbing most of the laser beams, as starfish drones raced across the massive ship, repairing laser wounds and applying fresh plating.

The Sand Stars dove and jabbed at the battle citadel, each pass destroying another laser battery, or PDC emplacement. With over a dozen Sand Star frigates in the fight, the Church craft quickly lost offensive capability.

I frowned as I watched a camera view of the destruction, then swiped it up closer to inspect. Each of the laser turrets that was being destroyed acted in a terribly strange manner. The eruption of flame and force would occur, but the fragments locked into place immediately after the explosion, hanging in space, still vaguely shaped like a weapon turret. Just blown out.

Each turret had exploded but every fragment was held perfectly still once the explosion had passed.

I realized with another moment of woozy fear just how powerful the Crown of Thorns really was. While we destroyed the laser turrets of the enemy battle citadel, the COT used its gravity drive to reach out and hold each fragment of the ship in place, so that it would not go to waste by flying away.

Or cause civilian harm by striking any of the gathered merchant fleet.

It helped our cause that we had warped in between the battle citadel and the fleet of civilians, so when the news replayed our brief, one-sided struggle later, it looked very much like we were defending them from the Church.

The Crown of Thorns rotated internal modules across the ceiling, walls, and floor as we moved into position to consume the battle citadel, avoiding laser cuts that got through, and adjusting any delicate modules positions to shield them from the opening of the ship’s ‘mouth.’ As this movement occurred, several thorns fired, and several screens changed color in front of Admiral Omen.

I fixated on one, focusing on the tiny live-feed video attached to it, and watched as the thorn approached a drive plume before tearing through the vessel attached to it an instant later. The feed cut out as the thorn was destroyed in the explosion of the craft’s central reactor. Even though the target was hundreds of millions of miles away, orbiting another planet in the solar system entirely, the thorn had been precisely aimed.

Other thorns fired, some detonating nearby stations or ships, while others left the solar system entirely and streaked away to find targets in the OORT cloud, and beyond.

My focus on the thorns was diverted by a massive sucking sound as the ship’s primary doors began to open. This involved millions of tons of metal tucking itself away into dimensional storage gateways, and as it occurred, part of our atmosphere was yanked from the craft.

Only a small part though, the rest seemed to simply stay in place. No shield, just empty space on one side of our open doors, and breathable atmosphere on the other. The COT’s gravity drive was holding each and every molecule of air in place across the entire craft, all while countering the unrelenting vacuum of space.

The battle citadel loomed massive below us, the gravity drive hauling against its engines as the other capital ship tried to escape through sheer brute force. Bright drive plumes flared up at us from hundreds of locations across the Church’s battle station as it attempted to resist our gravity drive’s hunger, but the fight was never a fight to begin with.

Our ship, the Crown of Thorns, was in complete control. The rate of intake was slow only because Admiral Omen had ordered it to be, not because the enemy craft was effectively resisting our ship’s primary weapon; its ability to control gravity.

The battle citadel had no more hope escaping us than it did a black hole.

Admiral Omen’s lip twitched, and I glanced at his screen to see fuel projection numbers dwindling as the battle citadel spent its power attempting to flee. He was annoyed that my delay was costing him extra charge for the COT, I realized with a small smile.

The very top spire of the battle citadel breached our ship’s atmosphere and plunged the golden statue at its tip into our gravity drive’s molten containment ocean.

I heard cheering from all around me and stopped to look around. The bridge crew, along with hobbs spread across every mile of the COT, were elated, cheering the battle citadel’s slow demise. Only I, and Admiral Omen, were stoic.

“The relic ship, under BlueCleave control we are told, appears to be devouring the Church’s battle citadel,” said one of the CTV talking heads in my helmet. I pulled up the tiny screen to see an outside view of the confrontation.

Sand Star frigates and red-hot glowing Brisingida cruisers floated lazily in a cloud around the engrappled behemoths. The smaller ship’s jobs were finished, but the citadel's many weapons had proven ineffective against the Crown of Thorns anyway, as it simply repaired and replaced any armor that was damaged, and hull breaches meant nothing to the ship.

The demolitions cruisers had shown the multiverse that energy weapons were not going to work against our fleets, as they absorbed and radiated the captured energy through long, glowing arms that dangled against the black of space like kelp in an ocean.

While they luxuriously swarmed the nearby area, the Crown of Thorns slowly ate the battle citadel.

As the demolition began to process, the COT scanned the other ship thoroughly, and I skimmed the information. The enemy craft had been an orbital battle station, something an ancient affiliate had once mass-produced and sold to other affiliates in some of the earliest days of BuyMort. Now, only the Church had them, and I realized each was technically classified as a relic itself.

There were only so many of the battle citadels, all in what was considered ‘safe’ BuyMort space. Any system without a battle citadel sitting guard on the gate was considered lawless and tended to be infested with pirates. Though less so in the year I took residence within BuyMort. Most of the pirates had fleets I wanted, so I hunted down and stole them in that first year, repurposing each for my own navy.

I felt a small pang of sadness as the Crown of Thorns demolished the relic. Unless Axle’s deep BuyMort research team could find the original affiliate, there was no hope of replacing the ship.

Still, my hobbs cheered as it was destroyed. For the entire three-hour process, cheering and parties broke out across the massive ship. Escape pods attempted to eject from the citadel at one point but were frozen in place immediately outside of their ejection ports, so that was a useless gesture as well.

I imagined the crew, which had to number in the thousands and likely had families on board like my own ship, would flee. I imagined they wouldn’t stay and die, and in the same breath I carefully avoided looking at the population numbers for Storage.

I killed a lot of people that day, I have no doubt. But, in a moment of weakness, and what I now considered cowardice, I don’t know just how many.

The citadel was eaten, enveloped by the molten lake at the heart of my ship and deconstructed. When a compartment exploded, which began happening frequently toward the end of the process, the gravity drive contained it.

Each detonation presented as a colorful bloom under the liquid surface of the lake, rising in a broad bubble toward the various platforms around the craft. Like a fireworks show, the explosions rose in intensity and frequency until a massive, final detonation signaled the reactor’s demise. Its many engines and rear thrusters made another bundle of small, rapid pops under the liquid metal.

And my people cheered.

Chapter 47

Almost immediately, the media began running cover for my military. They started questioning everyone they could, seeking any reaction that would drive ratings, advertising revenue, and credit level ups. Even man-on-the-street interviews on the Upper Planets became all the rage momentarily.

A Nah’gh man in a business suit on his way into a large, glass building scowled into a camera and denounced the invasion, citing tradition and the Church’s trustworthy status. Then, the next woman behind him, a human with silver pinstripes on her suit disagreed with everything the Nah’gh man had said.

On another world, a moon-eyed and homeless Nah’gh man fishing off a dock in the swamps at the foot of a root cluster, swore how he had seen the cult members himself. The strange, toothless Nah’gh nodded and spoke with clear confidence, carrying forward my fiction as if it were his own new religion. This cult was real, in his mind.

Whatever shadows had spooked him while alone in the dark, he’d justified them with my crusade, my violent lie. As did others, less easy to ignore.

A major share-holder within TransPoCo made a public statement denouncing the cult, and the bright plague creatures they worshiped. The second-ranked top ten affiliate affirmed our shared value of life, and the quality therein for all its workers.

Our initiatives spread almost as quickly as our lies, and some of TransPoCo’s grunt workers suddenly found luxury living accommodations aboard their ice-carvers in the OORT clouds, and silica duster tread-platforms above the super-heated surface of Venus.

Social media drove our war propaganda, and Church personnel found themselves with a choice to make. Were they cultists? Or were they with us?

Alongside all the social media outrage, which major public-facing members of the church became immediately embroiled in, personnel numbers began to fall for the Church. Reminiscent of what had happened with Dearth once we got properly embroiled with them, employees were leaving in droves, all across the Church’s various associates. Mercenary contracts began to become more expensive for them as well, as the heartless, mindless algorithms that determined the rates decided that the Church simply wasn’t the safe bet it used to be.

The numbers didn’t lie, and our military victories were stacking up while their failures did the same.

The Crown of Thorns sat over the Nahgah Prime gate and announced to the entire universe that gate travel was now policed by BlueCleave naval forces, for no charge. Orderly conduct was expected, but no more extortion from the governing body meant trade flowed easier, and more profitably.

In the days following our invasion and subsequent takeover of the gate, its traffic flow increased by forty-two percent. The system experienced a small gold rush, as trade flowed through the gate unobstructed.

Our ground invasions on Nahgah, thorn strikes on all Inquisition forces in the Nahgah Prime system, and control of the gate delivered the system into Silken Sands hands. My hands.

We rapidly fielded a new fleet, filled with fresh recruits and former enemies, to control the gate as the Crown of Thorns traveled to orbit the moon around Nahgah. Nearby, but not so close we would frighten the world’s population.

Most news crew ships were sent packing with a strong warning, some were destroyed when they ignored the warnings and continued to try and take footage of our ship. Orders were simple. Everybody got a chance to make the right choice and walk away, to keep their life.

If they ignored that choice, they ignored that choice.

On the ground of Nahgah, our farms rapidly spread out across the planet, supplying much needed food as rapidly as possible. I kept our overhead profits on food sales at a complete zero, every single mortie we made went back into making more food.

The minor affiliates working for us to actually produce the food got to get rich, but the greater Silken Sands affiliate deferred from profit in order to actually feed the Upper Planets.

As expected, numbers on Storage spiked as Church worlds experienced mass evacuations overnight. Primarily the working-class people who kept the Upper Planets societies running.

Axle had to get involved as our employment markets suddenly opened up to dozens of universes, and hundreds of planets across the multiverse. It seemed like all of BuyMort was suddenly hiring, and we were processing our people into those roles as quickly as we could, pulling from Storage based on length of stay.

Those who had been there the longest had priority to get out and get into a real life somewhere in the multiverse. That’s how the employment lottery worked now that Silken Sands ran it. We had an entire third of the megastructure’s space station fleet dedicated to the task.

Many worlds began to feel the creep of a Silken Sands MortBlock. Our knowledgeable Knowle businesspeople, industrious hobb military, and varied workforces began to spread across all of BuyMort, widening the multiversal aspect of our business further and further.

Without realizing it, I allowed forty-eight hours to go by without contacting Molls after the invasion of her home universe. My mind was so preoccupied on the hundred and fifty thousand different battles or business deals I needed to be worried about.

My machine, my giant, unstoppable machine of an affiliate, continued to grow and rise in the top ten rankings.

Our weapon and warship sales were a gigantic part of the rise, in spite of the sales being primarily to our own associated affiliates. It was all cyclical at that size, all incestuous. It simply didn’t matter who the morties were going to or coming from. It just mattered that they were moving, and nothing moves like a war economy.

While I sold my enemies some of our ships, and some of our weapons, I bought some of theirs in exchange. None of it mattered, we all threatened each other on social media in the daylight, and then did back alley business deals with each other when the cameras were off.

Lady Sheeragore purchased several of our generic power armor frames for her personal guard. I purchased ammunition for Tollya’s fleet from her. It all happened through affiliates and associates, but I watched from above, and the complex web of business had its vulnerabilities.

A major part of BlueCleave’s salvage and repair division’s job was finding church sabotage on the ships we purchased from their associates. Little things like missing door bolts, so that entire sections of the craft would occasionally just burst off while in flight.

Upon inspection, of course, we found that several rounds of the ammunition we purchased were laced with deadly radiation that would kill the crew of any ship that attempted to load them into their on board weapons. It was a clever trap, if we didn’t carefully inspect the ammunition, the vulnerability would not have been found until far too late, and several of our ships would have become graveyards overnight.

Of course, our own associates were able to slip in vulnerabilities in the power armor that wouldn’t make themselves known until heavy use was applied, so I couldn’t really blame them for trying.

It was all in the game Lady Sheeragore and I played now.

Within a week, as I predicted, she noticed my encroachment on her MortBlock, and delf troops began arriving in ambush squads, killing random House of None members until BlueCleave could arrive and kill them or chase them off.

The message was clear, and Storage began filling with innocent victims again. Justin Lee was targeted for assassination and barely saved by a jabbering Tower golem. The thing managed to carry the wounded delf to a nearby BlueCleave base without a head, making friendly gurgling sounds with its exposed esophagus the entire time.

Lithtin quickly changed. Something in the people hardened when Justin Lee went down, and suddenly our squads were showing up to face captured assassins. Usually wrapped up in fishing nets, or quick-setting mud-crete.

The local delves may have been non-violent, but they weren’t above trapping and capturing their assailants, and the city of Lithtin was theirs. They walked its streets every day and night, shared its homes, and knew all its best hiding places.

I immediately began arming and training them. They wouldn’t accept anything lethal, but the net guns and immobilizer pad traps we provided them didn’t offend their ideology, so they were happily accepted.

A wounded, but happily recovering Justin Lee helped organize the entire thing, acting as a liaison between our affiliate, and the House of None.

Not all of them chose this path of course. There was a significant surge of depopulation, and many of the city's houses emptied overnight immediately before the kill squads began their work, indicating foreknowledge of their arrival.

Rayna had been true to her word though, and the area was an anvil. Any disruption or violence was noticed and responded to immediately, and squads of BlueCleave were roaming the streets, with Tower golems to terrify their potential foes.

Our expansion into Midnight was slowed, but not stopped. I sent ships to the region, with Brisingida and Sand Star escorts, to establish a dominant presence in orbit of the planet.

Every ship in space cost me morties. Thousands of them, at the least, per hour. Even the efficient Sand Star frigates, with their primarily carbon-based fuel and ammunition source, cost thousands of morties to transport carbon blocks into as needed.

In the vast majority of systems the Silken Sands affiliate encroached upon, we had no military cover. But our people were filling required roles, in necessary infrastructure. Every inch gained in MortBlocks on the Upper Planets guaranteed my affiliate’s future as I clawed more and more of the Multiverse into my own pocket.

Of course, all of that advancement fell under the shadow of two new beholders that made sudden and terribly destructive appearances.

One, completely draped in shadow and burning only a low, purple colored flame internally, simply appeared above our prison complex on the moon, in the Sol system. It hung, barely visible, but massive in its presence over the wide-spread facility, covered in barely visible weaponry and looming death.

Then it lashed out with arms of inky shadow, and beams of purple that caused massive fireball explosions anywhere they touched. In an hour, our facility on the moon’s surface was completely destroyed. Millions of rehabilitating prisoners were killed in an instant, as the entire lunar facility was demolished.

After that single act, the dark beholder vanished again. I immediately increased security on all of my most important facilities, but the purpose of the attack seemed quite singular. That beholder had wanted our prison on the moon gone, and I quickly began to understand why.

Church crews, both in space, and on the ground, began to fight back a lot harder than they had been before. The dark beholder had sent the multiverse a quick, effective message with the destruction of my rehabilitation center. Our fighters were quickly forced to kill far more often than they had been before, and that simple change started to fluctuate and ripple with implications as it moved through the culture of BuyMort.

The other beholder arrived on Tertiary, rising from the ocean massive, encompassed by a shell of swirling liquid. Its inner flames were vibrant green, causing the liquid around it to shine that color as well.

Even as great tentacles of hardened water began to sweep the surface level structures off our mining operations on Tertiary, it flooded the mine’s lower levels, breaking through solid walls of stone with annihilation beams from the tips of its watery arms.

My troops on Tertiary immediately began to fight back, of course. Their deaths gave us valuable insight into the beholder’s abilities, as the entire thing was caught on various scanning devices from multiple angles. My heroic hobbs, firing their weapons and charging at the extra spatial monster with their war picks, all died.

It killed every one of them on the first island it attacked. All the workers, all the security, and the families of both that lived with them on the island. Then it began to slowly travel across the planet’s watery surface toward another major mining facility under my control.

The instances occurred simultaneously and were widely reported as the first military losses our affiliate had suffered. They also signified the beginning of the end of the beholder war.

Chapter 48

I went home after the attack on the lunar base, to my orbital palace with Molls. It had been two weeks since we’d invaded the Nahgah Prime system, and so far all conflicts within that solar system had gone our way. But I’d neglected the alien woman I was mated to again, and when I arrived in our domed mansion, her scales were a faint reddish tint.

“Hi Molls,” I said, leaning into the toasty living room.

She was curled up on a corner of the long, plush couch we had as the centerpiece of the room. It was horseshoe shaped, easy for us to hang out on and cuddle, but that rarely happened any longer. I was never home, but I noticed a nest of tissues and dirty coffee cups on the end table by her corner.

I sighed as I felt an ad invade my headspace.

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I doubted the Robocleaner would help at all with the real problem presented here. All this mess meant she spent a great deal of time in that spot, some of it in tears. The ad, of course, was completely unaware of this critical context.

Fucking BuyMort.

“I’m . . .” I started but stopped when her face whipped around toward me and the red in her scales increased.

“If you apologize again, so help me,” she replied, looking back at the TV.

It showed our fleets, our troops, our new business ventures, all being covered by the ever present buzzing of CTV camera drones. A constant, hype-inducing stream of negative-emotion-laced information being presented to everyone that watched.

Stress programming. Nervous system damage, packaged, presented, and consumed.

“Well, I am. I don’t know what else to say. Compulsive apologies are part of who I am,” I said. I sat down on the far edge of the couch and lowered my head. “I didn’t mean for everything to get so complicated,” I told her. “So dangerous all the time.”

“You’re only here because of the new beholder threat,” Molls said. “To protect me?”

I nodded. “The affiliate needs me. I should be out there.” It wasn’t a lie either. The relic ships were incredible, and we were unparalleled in space-based combat. But they always needed me to step in when something unexpected arose.

Just the day prior, one of our nuclear-loaded Sand Star frigates had accidentally struck a passing BuyMort pod with its sandcasters while in battle, and the creature it summoned was still making headlines. A massive, oblong moon-grub was warped in, immediately dwarfing all the ships in the nearby battle. Several were destroyed just crashing into its gargantuan body.

Then the creature started eating ships. Gigantic, horrifyingly long ganglia shot out of various orifices around the creature’s body, reminding me of a sea cucumber. The thin, but strong tongues captured several vessels and dragged them into its many mouths, where explosions lit up the creature’s translucent skin.

It reminded me of a single-celled organism, only blown up to a macroscopic level that dwarfed our fleets and caused gravimetric disturbances in the system for weeks.

I actually killed it by punching through its body and flying around inside it until I found a core organ of sorts. It looked exactly like the mitochondria I learned about in high school. Once that was destroyed, the thing just kind of deflated. All its tongues went limp and drifted, and the massive beast was unresponsive to all stimuli.

A giant, planetoid-sized grub corpse floating in the system.

Our ships had suffered fewer losses than the enemy’s fleet, but it was still a frightening moment of vulnerability for BlueCleave. If we crossed that BuyMort line, our powerful relics summoned BuyMort bugs that were highly difficult to deal with. If one of them got loose, it could be devastating for a solar system.

Still, that bought me very little sympathy from my neglected mate.

“Take me with you,” she said. “I’m sick of this place, it feels like a prison. Just take me with you, wherever you go.”

I blinked and slowly nodded. “You’re right, of course. I should never have tried to keep you here, this was always meant to be an escape, not the opposite. I’ve been paranoid, just focused on trying to keep you safe. But you deserve a life.”

“At your side,” she reminded me, sliding up and gripping my metal-lined hand in her claws.

“My queen,” I suggested.

A ripple of purple and green fluttered throughout her scales, meaning I evoked a complicated emotion. Her scales betrayed both enjoyment of the topic, with impatience likely attached to it.

I reflected again on how unfair it was for Molls to wear her every emotion on her skin in such a way but brushed it aside. The way my mind worked at that point, there was no way for me to ignore it.

“You’d have to make things a lot more official if that was your intention,” Molls finally said, having chosen her words carefully. She’d learned to do that since my cognitive upgrade.

It seemed like she mostly enjoyed being attached to me as I was at the time, my nanites and crystal colonies practically dancing with BuyMort. I was more machine than man, but I was still me, and she seemed to like the improvements. For the most part.

As we spoke, an important business deal slid across my vision and I made sure to avoid looking too closely at it as I carefully scrawled my signature in midair.

Molls noticed, her huge, green eyes going to the unnatural hand motion, but she merely blinked and said nothing. With another flick of my wrist, I ordered a BuyMort pod to take us back to my personal quarters on the Crown of Thorns.

It helped me cover for working while I was with her. Hopefully she would think I had just been ordering our pod. Once it arrived, she happily grabbed a bag she’d set aside and slithered through the portal with me, onto the Crown of Thorns.

I waved away an acquisition sheet from my BuyMort menu with the pod receipt. It was just something Axle needed me to sign off on, another buyout.

Since the beholder’s arrival on Tertiary, MortBlock owners couldn’t sell their operations quickly enough. We were the well-known targets, after all. So we bought up the rest of the world on discount, and soon all the workers of the world were in the same plight as our workers.

Hunted by a beholder.

Bubbles, the media had named that one. Its many watery tentacles boiled and bubbled from within, creating the sensation of many eyes constantly moving along its oversized appendages. Security footage, enhanced and blown up after recovery, showed us something interesting about its attacks.

The creature seemed to slam its liquid tentacles onto the island, but its outer shell’s limbs solidified the instant before they made contact. Where it was close to any physical structure other than the oceans of Tertiary, the creature’s outer surface seemed to harden.

A frozen sheen of hard, nearly metallic ice formed, and then Bubbles swung it, bashing all that stood before the beholder to shreds. It reminded me of my own slapping, tearing Brisingida class ship. From the tips of them, bolts of blue would fire, freezing an entire housing facility before the limbs would swing in to finish it off.

The day the beholders attacked was the same day Molls moved in with me permanently for more reasons than one.

Inky, the dark beholder that had destroyed our moon facility, had taken over a million lives in under ten minutes, and then vanished. The entire facility was reduced to rubble with the shadowy sweep of the creature’s arms, or the dark purple-black explosions from its tendrils’ ends.

Both of the beholders watched emotionless as the destruction beneath their giant, fiery central eyes unfolded. Within hours of the first facility on Tertiary being hit, the second attack was already looming. People were publicly asking where I was, and what I was going to do about it.

BlueCleave was already evacuating the facility, and Yolara was running cover by saying I was personally responding. Telling everyone that response would become public soon, but that she couldn’t say more, lest the Bright Plague creatures be listening in.

It worked as a reminder to BuyMort society in the Upper Planets that they could trust nothing of what had been built up around them. Any of the systems, organizations, or groups could easily be influenced by the Bright Plague cult, as wide-spread as it was.

And now that we were attacked in public, the cult was all but accepted as fact. The Bright Plague creatures, and their evil delf servants, were among them.

Strangely, the beholder on Tertiary seemed to be moving slowly enough that we would be able to completely evacuate its next target before its arrival. We would even have a few hours to spare. It was just drifting over the oceans, slowly meandering toward its next target, watery tentacles dangling into the oceans below.

Molls looked over my shoulder from my cabin on board the Crown of Thorns. It hung near the bridge, but out of sight and earshot. A soft, reddish glow warmed us from below, and Molls basked in the light, leaning out my window to stare down at the molten lake.

“What if someone falls?” she asked.

I’d dodged her near mention of marriage by ignoring it, and then zoning out thinking about work. Not a great solution, but she seemed willing to let me get away with it, so I turned and shook my head.

“What if someone falls from here?” I asked, as I stepped up behind her. “The ship would catch them,” I said. “In fact, if someone tried to fly into the center of the gravity drive in order to kill themselves, the ship wouldn’t let them. It controls the gravity of everyone on board.”

She frowned, her lip scales showing a hint of her upper fangs with the movement. “That doesn’t sound very free.”

I nodded. “It’s not. You’re right. I particularly hope everyone made it off the citadel. That’s an awful, fear-filled way to die.”

“I know they did, my love,” she replied. “You were merciful, methodical, and slow so that they could make it. There’s no point troubling yourself with it, at any rate. The exodus occurring from the Church began even before that moment. The Sol gate citadel fled!” my Nah’gh mate insisted. “A gate citadel, running away, is unheard of. You scared off one of the strongest ships in the known multiverse, and then ate another.”

Her scales flushed purple, and she coiled her tail around my legs loosely. “And now most of their employees are coming to work for us.”

“’Most’ is a bit generous,” I said. “But yes, a decent amount of former Church affiliate members have joined Silken Sands already. Same thing that happened with Dearth, really. It’s not been a choice between affiliates like this in a long time, I suspect . . . but the system still understands it.”

“Many,” I continued, pulling her into my arms as we stared out the window at the glowing gravity drive together. “Many simply follow the wealth, wherever it may flow from. Some few are ideologues, like us, but it’s not so often that we are this hard to kill. I think that . . . during this reformation of what BuyMort is, we can finally bring it to an end.”

Her coils went slack, and she dropped my hands. Her scales flickered yellow and pink, then yellow again, before settling into a deep blue. “So the worst of the rumor-mongers are right after all,” Molls whispered. “You actually do want to destroy the whole thing.”

“It will set us free,” I said emphatically. “You’ve seen what it’s become.”

Molls pulled away, crossing her arms as the blue in her scales deepened. “That doesn’t mean we throw everything we know away.”

I shook my head. “I’m not asking for that. It will be odd, not being able to travel between universes anymore, hard even. I have thought about that. I’ve thought about it a lot, actually, in the last few months. There’s a process to it, but yes, I want to dismantle the BuyMort system,” I finally told her.

“Now you and Axle know it for certain,” I added, my eyes downcast. “I let it slip with him early on. He’s never looked at me the same since.”

Molls stood at a distance for a long moment, her claws clasped together as the blue swirled with other, more complex emotions. Pink, green, and even orange mixed ground with the blue, until finally she smiled, and purple began to show at the core of her scales again.

“I used to believe in BuyMort as a deity,” she said. “A benevolent god. Can you believe I used to pray to it that all the other Conda children would have presents on their birthdays like I did?”

“We can make that happen!” I said, reaching for her again. “It is so screwed up that Conda children don’t get presents when other kids do, but you don’t have to pray to fix it! Anything you want, we can make happen ourselves.”

She smiled and accepted my hands into her own again. “Together, I believe in our world. Whatever shape it may take.”

“Then come with me to Tertiary, my love. We have a beholder to kill,” I whispered next to her head, as she leaned in to embrace me.

I didn’t see the flicker of yellow that passed through her scales at my words.

Chapter 49

After reassuring Molls, I stepped away to speak with members of my command crew.

They were waiting for me on a conference call with MortMobile and had been since the new beholders arrived.

I entered a portion of my cabin designed for communication with multiple individuals. The MortMobile connection went into several hanging screens around a desk with a comfortable seat for me. My own MortMobile device was embedded in the desk, so as long as I sat there, I would be visible to those I called.

On the screens waited projections of Axle, Rayna, Lee, and Admiral Omen. Omen was on board the COT with me, but it was more convenient to leave him at his station, and I wanted my cabin to be a place just for family anyway. Someplace Molls could feel safe from my work.

“Hit me,” I said as I flopped into the chair. The door slid closed behind me, and I opaqued the floor panels with a tap of my foot. It was mildly unsettling to have the floor mostly see-through, and the room darkened significantly with the panels opaque. Overall, I questioned that design feature, but it had all been built by the COT’s advanced starfish AI, so I didn’t question it out loud.

Last thing I wanted was for that thing to find a loophole in its instructions to avoid speaking with me and launch into some explanation of a system.

“Tertiary is our primary priority,” said Axle. “The facility on the moon is tragic, and we have search and rescue teams working the rubble now, but that’s all we can do there.”

“Chance some got into bunkers, or suits in time,” grunted Rayna in English. “Not hopeless, but Axle is right. Nothing to respond to, bright plague creature vanish.”

“Unlike the one on Tertiary,” I interjected.

The ad came suddenly, and I paused, my mouthing hanging open and the spit dribbling out.

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SpaceGuardian Pro: Protecting Your Universe, One Takeover at a Time. 549,000 morties, 2.3 stars

“You there boss?” Rayna asked.

“Yeah, just some scam bait. Now, Tertiary?”

“Exactly,” said Axle. “We need to protect our investments on that planet, our clients are already getting skittish, even though we’ve barely missed any orders because of the attack. Tertiary is an important tactical universe, a fuel station for the middle planets. Enough damage there could cut the Upper Planets off from the Lower and Middle Planets.”

“What’s being done to head off the next attack?” I asked.

Axle shook his head. “Nothing. Evacuation of the facility itself, and we’re taking some of the more expensive stuff we can extract with us. The plan is to have one person remain behind, and then sell the entire island to BuyMort directly, right before the bright plague creature can attack, thereby minimizing our losses.”

I nodded. “I don’t like doing that, let’s get a plan in place for the next island it goes after, if that’s what happens.”

He nodded and turned to jot down a note.

Admiral Omen cleared his throat. When we were all paying attention to him, he said, “What kind of escort should I prepare for you, Warlord?”

I shook my head. “You and Rayna coordinate on that. I plan to confront this one directly, see if I can’t drown it. Haven’t seen one of these things held underwater without a protective shell yet, makes me wonder what would happen if I forcibly submerged one.”

“May ‘Bubbles’ prove to be an appropriate, predictive title,” said Admiral Omen.

“If Inky shows up again, I want to know about it right away,” I added.

“The creature is likely to attack carefully, considering how lethal you’ve been toward their kind,” Lee said, finally speaking up. “In the Upper Planets, there is some significant whispering taking place that the beholders are almost all dead. That you’ve killed the majority of them, and that ‘bullet’ Bill was their leader.”

“Significant whispering?” I asked. “How vague.”

Lee shrugged, the old man’s mustache bouncing with the movement. “Someone who I trust to have access to accurate information on the subject has said as much, but your cult talk has clammed up most of my sources.” He raised an eyebrow at me scornfully before clearing his throat to continue. “Something else you may care to be aware of, Inky is not an unknown entity. This one has been talked about in the circles you sent me to watch over. They refer to it as The Blackguard though.”

“What have you heard?” I asked, leaning forward on the desk.

“Not much, and a little too much at the same time. Hard to know what to trust. The Upper Planets are places where rumor holds the same value as truth to a great many, and it can be quite difficult to make significant inroads with those who hold actionable intelligence,” Lee said. “Especially since you ate one of their gate-keeper battle stations.”

I nodded. “I understand. A little professional difficulty wouldn’t stop a man like you, I assume?”

Lee smiled ruefully and slowly nodded. “Matter of fact, I got a Knowle archaeologist, wants to claim asylum from the Church. We agree to bring them on board Silken Sands operation, in a similar position to the one they hold now, and they share the knowledge they claim to have on the subject.”

“The subject being Inky, specifically?” I asked. “Or BlackGuard.”

Lee nodded. “The Blackguard, but yes. Since your stunt with MortMobile and the delf Inquisitor, things are coming apart at the seams in the upper planets. All the affiliates are growing more insular. People are being left out in the cold more and more, and some of them are finding violent ends instead. I’ve lost three contacts to murder since you took the Nahgah Prime gate.”

“Are there places you can still go?” I asked bluntly. “To make contacts, to gather us the information we so critically need?”

The older man leaned forward and took a deep breath, staring at me over his glasses. “Sure,” he finally said. “Risk is growing every day though.”

I nodded back. “Understood. Let me know if it becomes too much for you to manage. Get the defector, instant portal them on our main account.”

“I protest,” Axle said suddenly, raising a clawed fingertip in the air.

I scowled in alarm and turned to face him. “Elaborate,” I said.

“A Knowle from the Church archeology division, which is massive, by the way, and well known for their affiliate-run corruption, would very likely be a plant. A mole. If we take them in, give them access to sensitive information, even have them encounter a Tower golem, it’s all a major security risk,” Axle explained.

“And I trust my source,” answered Lee, looking at Axle’s projection across the table. “My man wants to defect. To help, as he says, with the bright plague menace.”

“Tyson, if I may speak bluntly,” said Axle.

I nodded.

“What Knowles there are left in the BuyMort system have all come aboard Silken Sands already or are owned wholly by some important secret the Church uses to keep them on a leash. The Skull Valley library has brought them all in. It is the greatest Knowle undertaking since the evacuation of the second Knowledge before its bombardment. This Knowle may indeed know things about Inky that may help us, but he could just as easily be a spy being sent to undo us from within,” Axle calmly explained.

Lee shook his head. “Let me get this straight, you’re making your argument against my source here, based on race?”

“Species,” I interjected. “But the point is understood.”

“Tyson,” Axle said. “I know my people. I know BuyMort, and how my people work within it. This Knowle cannot be trusted. Their hour of approach is wrong. It’s far too late, and that alone makes them suspect.”

I looked him in the mechanical eyes and nodded. “Lee?” I asked, turning.

The older man shrugged and shook his head. “Race-based commentary aside, I know he has access to what he’s talking about because he already gave me this to show you. He even said you might mention the bombardment of second Knowledge.”

Lee’s projection slid a piece of paper across the desk, and a notification from MortMobile arrived to inform me of a data-sharing fee being tacked onto the meeting price.

But the paper projected out to all of us. We got a physical, not really there, version to hold in our own hands and inspect.

It was a picture of Inky, The Blackguard. The beholder was in the cargo bay of a large spacecraft, I could see the forcefield holding in the atmosphere through the open door behind it. All of the creature's shadowy tentacles radiated from its back and reached around front of its darker-than-black body, with each in the process of firing a bolt of energy onto a planet below.

The planet was being demolished, it appeared, with each burst from the beholder’s weaponized body approximating an asteroid strike everywhere it hit, erupting the ground in massive, purple-black explosions.

But the creature’s eye was staring into the camera, rotated back through its body of black smoke, staring in flaming, amethyst curiosity.

“This is . . .” Axle said, “This is Knowledge, the second and final Knowledge added to BuyMort. Destroyed by a Church battle citadel, a bombardment just like that. As I said,” he trailed off, rubbing his chin. “It is not speculated that the Church used a Beholder to perform this bombardment. Giving us this picture is . . .” the Knowle shook his head. “This will divide my Bright Plague Response team for weeks. Already, without even being here, this Knowle is seeding distrust and division in our ranks. Sharing a secret like this is too big to trust.”

“To you it may be,” I said. “To the rest of the affiliate, I’m not so sure. We don’t invest in each other’s planets aside from financially.”

“That is because hobbs have no home world left!” Axle exclaimed. “And the affiliate is eighty-six point three percent hobb.”

“We have a home world,” Rayna replied. “Nu-Earth.”

Axle licked his nose. “That’s not what I meant. Historically, hobbs are migratory, all past hobb home worlds have been erased from the BuyMort gate registry, and hobbs primarily exist in Storage.”

“Like gobbs, I know,” Rayna said in English, her eyes hard. “I’ve heard it all before, power-monger,” she added in hobb.

“Woah,” I said. “The enemy is not in this meeting. Everybody take a step back and get a hold of yourselves.”

Lee snorted, his mustache fluffing out momentarily. “Well, you don’t need me. You’ve heard my pitch. Let me know. My guy says he thinks they suspect him for sneaking out that photograph. Some kind of big alarm over there. Sooner would be better.” With that, he cut his channel feed and vanished. The photograph went with him, puffing out from each of our hands.

Axle blinked rapidly, and his ears were flat back against his head. He looked between Rayna, Captain Omen, and me before shaking his head. “I guess! We have to verify the real photograph; we have to know.”

“You have to know if the second Knowledge was actually destroyed by Inky,” I said.

Axle’s lip twitched and he nearly bared his teeth at me, controlling the reaction by licking his chops instead. “We have to know if this Knowle has critical information about Inky. We cannot ignore the possibility, likelihood of a trap not-withstanding.”

Rayne stiffened. “BlueCleave guard,” she grunted. “Keep defector safe, keep affiliate safe from defector.”

Axle nodded. “Yes, I agree, please do that,” he said. “I apologize, I didn’t mean to . . .”

“Call my people homeless?” Rayna asked bluntly.

Axle cocked one eye and nodded. “Pretty much that, yeah.”

“In BuyMort,” Admiral Omen suddenly said. “We are all homeless. If you do not understand that, then I pity you. Deeply.” He turned to face me. “I await your orders, warlord.” His projection vanished as well.

“Me too. We go coordinate about escort,” Rayna grunted, and the call shifted its focus to her. “Let Warlord get ready to leave.”

“Yes, I need to do that. Thank you both. Please, put aside any personal animosity. We’re all under literally the most stress anyone in the known multiverse has ever been under. Give each other space for that,” I instructed them both.

Rayna faced me and saluted, her stoney features stalwart as ever. “Of course, Warlord!”

Axle licked his nose, dipped his head in agreement, and said “yes, Warlord.”

I disconnected from the call.

Chapter 50

“Molls!” I yelled. “I need stress relief!”

As soon as I exited the meeting room, she slid to my side and pressed against me. “After a war council meeting? How surprising.” She playfully pressed her breasts into my face, since I was at face level with them pretty much constantly anyway.

Molls was fully clothed, in her priest robes. They did a good job of covering her body conservatively, so I mostly got hit with soft cloth that had pleasant weight behind it, but I laughed anyway, and she flushed purple.

“Yes,” I said, wrapping an arm around her waist and hugging her close. “But you have cured my stress. Now pack, we’re leaving for Tertiary. Oh, and first we need to go get you some upgrades.”

“Woah, Tertiary, we’re really going toward the beholder?” Molls asked, her eyes wide and scales orange with surprise.

“Bright plague creature when in public my love, but yes, I plan to go kill it. You said you wanted to come with me, so you’ll be on the escort craft that follows.” I leaned in a bit and smiled crookedly at her. “Sorry, my attack ship only seats one, or you could totally come with on that, too.”

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Molls flashed yellow before calming to a soft orange with a core of softer yellow. “I think the escort craft will be fine,” she said in a small voice. “I never thought I would be witness to a beholder’s death.”

“Oh it gets better,” I told her. “We’re heading to Teslak to finish your upgrades, before we leave for Tertiary. I am not putting you in harm's way without proper protection.”

Molls went a little stronger in yellow coloration at that but nodded and stretched out her hand to follow me into the system’s ad space.

We sat down in comfortable lounge chairs the COT provided, held hands, and closed our eyes.

I opened one of the many Afflqwst notifications, which were my primary way into the storefront. I opened my eyes onto Teslak’s top floor, the swirling, yet still black hole out the windows looming. A shiver crawled up my spine as I thought about the modified spacecraft below. Each had been designed for industry, and then changed by Spectre for war.

The hologram stood before us behind the counter, prim and pristine. “How may I assist you today?”

I walked toward him and leaned on the counter as Molls slithered toward the windows.

“Starfish suit upgrades. And open the Perk Patch selection for this transaction only, please,” I said. “Close it immediately after we are finished here, same restrictions as before.”

“What manner of starfish suit upgrade are you inquiring after, sir?” the projection asked politely.

“Armor and breaker gauntlets,” I answered. “Hey babe, what order do you want those upgrades in?” I asked.

She glanced back at me, scales green, and shrugged. “I don’t know what order I should take them in,” came her reply.

“Well, if you get the breaker gauntlets earlier, you get a bigger charge pool. But your armor will be weaker. I have the weakest armor, and it’s still kinda kickass, so I don’t think it’s a bad tradeoff. But I have seen some of the armor hobbs do some wild stuff, so I dunno what you would want.”

Molls stared at me and thought for a moment, flicking her tongue in and out. “Armor, then gauntlets. I want to explore the extra armor benefits. Charging the suit is easy, I just break your hobbs’ little glass sperm thingies.”

“Okay, I’m not sure what those armor benefits will be with it being your second upgrade instead of first, but I’ll order it,” I said. “Oh, we should probably talk about Perk Patches too.”

“Perk Patches?” she said. I could hear the fear in her voice and chose not to turn and look at her scales. I knew what color they would be.

“Yeah, Perk Patches,” I replied. “I’m sorry.”

“Well, tell me about them before you make it sound so scary,” my mate said, slithering quickly to my side.

“That’s the thing, they kind of are scary,” I said. “These patches are meant to upgrade an army into unkillable machines like me, but I’m not using that aspect of this relic affiliate. It’s too much power. The patches replace every important cell in your body with crystalline colonies of tiny symbiotic creatures. You become them, and they become you, in a very real sense, depending on what patches you take,” I explained.

“There are three,” I started. “Wait, before I explain, are you aware of Stat Shots?” I asked.

“Oh of course,” she said, waving a claw. “Everyone on the Upper Planets knows about those. Nanotech injections that kind of upgrade your abilities. Some are for muscle tissue, some are for epidermal areas, some are for your brain.”

“This is a lot like that. It was actually a competing product at one point. But they’ve been changed from what the product was, and they work in a kind of cyclical manner with one another. If you take a Power Shot Patch, you will increase dramatically in physical strength,” I told her.

“Doesn’t sound so bad,” she replied. “Only one though? Stat Shots are usually measured in how many of each you get.”

“These go beyond the abilities of even eleven-stacked Stat Shot ratings,” I answered. “That’s the maximum a sapient body can take, excluding mordren, so our product is much better. It will also allow you to store kinetic energy in your extremities. In your case, likely your hands, head, and tail. You’ll be able to use this stored energy to increase the power of any strike by thinking about it.”

“You have yet to say one thing that scares me about these Perk Patches,” my mate said, a bored look on her face. She blinked and changed her expression. “They sound great, don’t get me wrong. I’m just not getting your doom and gloom.”

“Well, I’m not done yet,” I said. “The next patch is StoneSkin. This will primarily replace your epidermis with a series of crystalline colonies that act as your skin cells. They will learn from any attack you take and become resistant to that kind of attack the next time you experience it.”

Molls nodded.

“They will also move into your major organ systems and slowly replace them with crystalline versions as well. All of my major organs already are,” I told her.

The cold, raw nature of my description was starting to get to her. I could see it on her face, the slow realization of what the combination was going to mean.

“This will strengthen your organ function. Your heart will pump blood more efficiently, your lungs will process oxygen much more rapidly. This will combine with the increased needs of your muscle colonies, and both systems will make the other stronger. I’m not sure what my lifespan is going to be with these patches, but it does seem possible that I am no longer capable of a natural death,” I explained.

Molls nodded. “I understand so far. Something tells me another foot is about to fall,” she said.

“Shoe is about to drop, my love, but you came really close that time,” I said with a smile. “The final patch is called Aimed Shot, and I’ve come to realize it was meant for me to be able to properly pilot the Brisingida class ships. Our pilots are doing fine without it, but they’re nothing like me flying one.”

“No, clearly. They’re almost clunky comparatively, it’s a big point of commentary on the news,” she replied.

“What Aimed Shot does is replace your brain matter, completely, with a set of crystalline colonies of nanoscopic animals,” I said. “It will permanently alter your personality, as you have seen in me over the last few months. It will also increase your senses, at will. Sight, sound, smell, touch, even taste can be enhanced at will. Your ability to recall events, names, numbers, anything you encounter, will eventually be easy to recall perfectly,” I told her.

“I have an eidetic memory,” I said. “Along with perfect sensory, visual, and information-based recall. I can remember every moment of every day I experience, if I so choose to. The entire experience comes with a degree of control,” I assured her. Her scales were creeping toward yellow.

“I am still me, I feel like myself. Clearer headed, better able to intake information, deal with tasks, categorize ongoing issues that I am dealing with,” I told her. “But there is no doubt about it; I am changed. I am not at all the man I was when you met me. When we talked, over a year ago, in Mr. Sada’s attic while the dream storm wore itself out.”

“That was the first time I had ever seen your suit do what it does,” she said. “I was terrified.”

“I apologize for something important, my love. I fear we may have trauma bonded,” I said.

“But which Perk Patches you want, if any, are completely up to you,” I told her, hands raised. “I will not force this change on you if you don’t want it. Honestly, the suit upgrades are optional too. You can just use it to fly like you do now if that’s what you want. It will protect you, as will I.”

“No,” Molls said, sliding past me to the counter where each of the upgrades and patches awaited inspection. “I want the starfish suit upgrades, those feel like completing something I’ve started. Plus, it’ll make me really hard to kill, like you?” my beautiful mate asked.

A small part of my heart broke.

“Yes,” I said flatly. “It will protect you, so long as it stays charged.”

“And the StoneSkin patch, that’s just even more defense,” she said.

“Eventually, if you train it, it will allow you to fly naked through open space while comfortable,” I said. “Though, to get there, I gotta warn you, it’s going to skin you a whole bunch of times.”

She waved a hand. “Oh, I molt every six months anyway, I don’t care about that.”

My eyes widened. “You do?”

“Oh Pasta, stop proving my mother right, please,” she huffed. “Of course I do, and it's super personal, so I don’t do it around you, or anyone else. Ever. No Nah’gh does, and we don’t really like to talk about it a whole lot either.”

“Ah,” I said. “Consider it dropped. StoneSkin sounds like a perfect Patch for you then. Power Shot?”

“I mean,” she said, frowning. “It just makes you stronger?”

“Sort of. That encompasses a lot. Your muscle tissue changes over time, but so does your bone tissue, to support it. You’ll become made of metal on the inside by the time they’re done, more or less. My tissue has strong silver tones when cut,” I explained. “Bone especially.”

“Unsettling, but not a deal breaker,” she said. “I’ve never been opposed to becoming a badass cyborg, like if mother pushed me to cut my tail like hers. This way seems less obtrusive than most other forms of chroming-up, though.”

There were a few moments where she stared at the products on the counter, then she pointed with two fingers. “StoneSkin and Power Shot. No offense meant to you, but I think I want to stay myself. Rapid personality change doesn’t sound like a fun thing to go through, and it might change things between us.”

I rocked back on my heels, using the counter to settle myself. “Please tell me you’re not making this decision based on our relationship, Molls,” I said.

“Well, partly, yes. ‘We’ are important to me. I like us the way we are, we’re kinda perfect when you’re around. To me anyway, I’m never sure what your experience is like anymore . . .” she finished, trailing off at the end.

I grasped her hands, feeling her even through the ad space as she raised her giant eyes to meet mine. “I treasure every moment,” I said. “You are, without any competition or doubt, my favorite person.”

“No one even comes close?” she whispered, smiling.

“At all,” I said without hesitation. She flushed purple and slid her hand over mine.

“We’re done here,” she said. “Let’s get these upgrades installed.”

“Oh,” I said. “The patches are unpleasant. Like, really unpleasant, but it's short. It’s a really brief period of time that it hurts, but boy does it hurt.”

She frowned, her chin doubling comically when she pulled her head back. “Hurt how?”

“Like itchy burning but turned way up,” I said. “You guys don’t have fire ants, of course?”

Molls frowned deeper and shook her head.

“Well, it's like that, as useless as that information is,” I sighed. “But either way, it’s short. Just grit your teeth, hold my hand through it, and it’ll be over in an instant. Every so often, you’ll feel the colonies inside, by the way, but that never hurts. It’s just kind of strange. At first.”

“Okay so like a bad insect bite, and then egg-pregnancy symptoms,” she said. “And I mean, the suit was fine, and you were all worried about that too.”

“Well, you’ve eaten clean food and breathed clean air all your life. You also had access to immediate, competent medical care when you needed it as a child, so there were no injuries, pollution scarring, or cancers to repair,” I said. “Most people who put on a suit are not exactly so lucky.”

She flushed pink and lowered her head. “I know, I’m sorry.”

“It’s not your fault, I just want you to be ready. This is going to be different,” I said.

“Okay,” she replied, then leaned in to quickly kiss me before cutting the connection.

Chapter 51

I charged everything to the slush fund, draining rapidly as it was. The outer planets in Sleem had only gotten us so much, but it was still substantive. Nonillions substantive. We instantly ruined the market on ice nine and sold it at fractions of a mortie per ton, but BuyMort was happy to buy and store it at the least.

Then I instructed Spectre to hide the Perk Patch product line again and unplugged, shutting off the ad space. Within minutes, a BuyMort pod approached, escorted on all sides by starfish drones. It warped in two large boxes, and two small boxes, then whistled its tune and flew away.

Molls wasted no time in applying the starfish suit upgrades. They clicked into place easily, latching onto the already present silver lines in her body and quickly shrinking to become innocuous. The dimensional gating implanted in Molls’ skin was even better hidden than mine, running in small rivulets between her scales.

When she first deployed her armor, I was impressed. It covered her and moved like a second skin, from the top of her head to the tip of her tail. Her movement was completely unhindered, which she marveled at. Even the best Nah’gh tailors struggled to create full coverage clothing that didn’t hinder movement significantly.

We went for a flight together, to test out her new suit, before she applied the patches. It was something she delighted in, and I found it comforting. Watching the joy I managed to bring another through my labors and mistakes made the effort worthwhile. So while we waited for Admiral Omen and Rayna to work out what my escort was going to be, I went flying with Molls.

She zipped and streaked through the inner portion of the Crown of Thorns, looping around me in rapid circles.

“Deploy your armor, I want to see it!” I yelled, as we swung wide around the molten center of the ship.

Her scales seemed to brighten momentarily, as the dimensional gates opened, and her armor plating clanked into place around her body. Her suit gave her wings, light gossamer metal that expanded from her armpits and at the tip of her tail. It increased her maneuverability immensely, and she squealed in delight as she spun wildly in the air beside me.

My mate seemed to take to her new armor naturally. Its expanded surfaces gave her incredible increases in aerial agility that I would be hard-pressed to match, if I could match it at all, even with the Aimed Shot colonies in my brain.

She zipped and looped around me as we flew, and I processed all of the back-logged work requests Axle had been sending me. It was a constant thing, I had started to doubt the Knowle slept because of the frequency his side of the affiliate would send me something for approval.

Then he told me he was using a paid addon from BuyMort, to automatically send me the things I needed to sign once the other party had sent them in to us. Reading them while flying with Molls made me feel dishonest, as I was supposed to be intentionally present during our time together, but I ignored the feeling.

The feeling of those requests piling up was worse.

And I read every word of every agreement. Axle rarely missed any predatory language in our contracts, but the few pitfalls I had helped him avoid he had expressed amazement at. It was another element that made him distrust me. He struggled to understand how I could read all of the small print so quickly, with such accuracy.

I had told Molls about the Perk Patches, and the thought to do the same with Axle regularly ran through my head. But every time it did, I got more and more uncomfortable. Instances of his authoritarian attitudes and behavior toward working hobbs always gave me pause, and I never could manage to risk the trust.

The more I thought about it, the less I understood why though. It wasn’t a solid, known thing, I didn’t have a good grasp of why exactly I mistrusted my operations manager, but I did. There was just something there that prevented me from being okay with the thought of him being smarter than me again. Call it survival instinct, or paranoia. I could never quite pin it down.

But I also couldn’t bring myself to trust him with the Perk Patches either.

Rayna, Tollya, and the rest were a much easier decision. Their people had been oppressed and crushed by the system they lived under for eons. The life they were living at that time felt perfect to me. The Perk Patches would change that life, and I didn’t want it to change. It was selfish, I admit, but it was the reason I hid the Patches from them too.

Of everyone I trusted, Molls was probably the least trustworthy with the secret I gave her to keep. But at the same time, I owed it to her more than any of the others. Not a great reason, but the only one I have to give.

Work done, I concentrated on being present and flying with my mate. We did a few slow laps of the ship, which was massive inside, with plenty of open space for us to enjoy, before settling back in my quarters.

“Alright my love,” I said as she retracted her armor. It was a little unsettling seeing her form covered in battle armor, with glowing blue eyes, but when it retracted, she was smiling so widely I forgot about it immediately. “I have to go work,” I told her, with a smile of my own. “Need to coordinate with Admiral Omen before we leave.”

“Boring!” she exclaimed. “Go, I’m going to pack. Again,” she said, sneering.

“Hey, you wanted to come with me. I go a lot of places these days, not my fault,” I laughed, smiling as she threw a spare heated robe at me. “You shouldn’t have unpacked so quickly.”

I ducked the garment beside our open window, chuckling as it sailed out over my head.

“Oh no!” Molls yelled, slithering quickly to the window, but backed up as the thick cloth robe re-entered our quarters, floating seemingly on its own. The COT AI floated the robe into the room, then laid it gently on the bed so the garment didn’t wrinkle. “Oh,” said Molls. “Well that is pretty handy.”

I smiled, quickly kissed her, and then flew out the window toward the ship’s command bridge.

Admiral Omen saw me coming and turned off his screens to stand at attention while I landed. “Warlord!” he shouted, saluting me with a thump to his chest.

The rest of the bridge command crew followed him, Tollya smiling as she saluted me. She operated the weapons system and went back to designating targets for thorns.

The newest batch of thorns had some gold filigree in them, randomly smelted from the ship’s core and machine factories. The citadel had been gold plated, primarily. There were a handful of actual golden statues and tower toppers on the battle platform, but most of it was normative ship metals. Iron, various steel alloys, titanium, some metallic hydrogen or helium here and there.

But the gold tickled me.

We were hitting Inquisition targets still, annihilating facilities, ships, small planetoid bodies, and even private residences on major planets in the Nahgah Prime solar system.

And now, we were doing it with their own powerful relic ships, melted down and repurposed.

The ship’s original design must have been primarily about mining. Spectre, and his weaponization were terribly effective though. Where I could see raw ore processing and loading centers in my imagination, thorn building structures were stuck to the ship’s inner shell. What was once a tool for rapid delivery of mined material had been turned into a devastating weapon.

Tollya was even working with a Knowle crew-member on a project that would allow us to fire the thorns through the BuyMort gate, so we could dominate other solar systems from whichever one our ship happened to be in. It was a complex task that I wasn’t sure they would be able to accomplish, but if they could it would be a game changer for the war.

Already the Church was pulling its forces out of Nahgah Prime as quickly as they could, before our relic ship destroyed them from halfway across the solar system, in the blink of an eye. There was one space station in particular that the news just couldn’t stop playing over and over.

It hung peacefully in orbit of the system’s primary inner ice giant, its glimmering metal rings and centrally constructed orb reflecting the solar light off the surface of the planet beautifully. Then, an instant later, it shattered like a glass ball, a streak of something passing through it to detonate below on the icy world, creating an explosion easily visible from space.

Try as hard as they could, the news programs that ran with the story simply could not slow down their footage enough to see the object that had struck the space station and destroyed it. The closest they could get was a black blur exiting the space station in a fuzzy, low resolution freeze frame.

The thorn was distorted by its own movement, impossible to recognize or identify. I saw the flash of gold on the image and smiled coldly. The Church was not ready for a fight, they were losing massive amounts of territory and facilities since I arrived in Nahgah Prime.

We continuously blamed the imaginary cult we had uncovered within the Church, or claimed we were striking them when we couldn’t easily cast blame on them. It was the perfect foil for attacking a religious organization.

Some members of the Church, on the Upper Planets, had even attacked neighbors or friends after suspecting them of being part of the cult. My plan to spread paranoia and undercut the Church’s ability to fight back was working.

Without MortMobile, the ability of the disparate Church military wings was severely hampered. We were getting resistance, both on the ground and in space, but it was minimal. What was fighting us was what was already there, and with almost no ability to call for reinforcements.

MortMobile wasn’t giving us the kind of information the Church thought he was, but any chance his contract allowed him to, he gave something away. Some name, face, or set of coordinates we were not supposed to have would land in our lap, so long as we were able to decipher the cryptic ways in which he provided that information.

Axle’s library had set up a team of Knowles, MortMobile historians and researchers. They spent as much time talking to the entity as he would allow, and valuable intel began to steadily trickle out of their department.

More targets for future thorn strikes.

As I stood on the bridge of the Crown of Thorns, I took in all the visible screens around me, and the tactical information it all displayed. Tollya was busily inputting targets for thorns, having the computer begin a thorough analysis of the orbital mechanics required to hit the target, depending on desired effect.

There were plenty of ships being targeted with slow moving thorns that would barely punch through the surface of the ship, before deploying its own sealant and plugging the hole behind it, while the troopers inside were deployed with its door-opening viruses, assuming the thorn made contact with any of the ship’s computer infrastructure.

Even a simple wire would do.

They were equipped with a variety of weapons, but the favorite for boarding operations was still the classic Highwater Blaster with solid lead slugs. The hobb boarding crews liked to make a point of their skill with the primitive projectiles, aiming perfectly between armor plating and avoiding damage to critical, or non-critical systems on board.

I watched one such crew as it took a delf carrier. The large craft had been hit with several thorns, and had about two dozen starfish troopers on board, wreaking havoc. It wasn’t even a proper military vessel; it was a fueling and repair station for the Inquisition ships in the area.

Soon it would be one for our ships instead. The large craft hovered just outside the system’s asteroid belt, beyond Nahgah, and between the BuyMort gate. Perfectly located for a fueling station, but unknown by the majority of the system.

I expected it to be producing morties within sixteen hours, knowing my affiliate’s efficiency. Advertisements were no doubt already being drafted, for the new fueling station, a giant delf ship that nobody had ever seen before, hiding in the fringes of an asteroid belt.

BuyMort was experiencing a rise in unusual occurrences like that under my leadership. And I was the all-but-confirmed leader of the system at that point. The market followed my whims, and everyone was enthralled to the market.

Church leadership was still considered the rulers of the multiverse, with Lady Sheeragore, of House Sheeragore, the public face. But many suspected her house was enthralled to a beholder like the House of Shireen had been. I just couldn’t figure out if it was one of the beholders still alive and attacking us, or if I’d killed theirs already.

For all I knew, Bill was Sheeragore’s beholder. Her forces certainly seemed in disarray; we barely met any resistance from House of Sheeragore soldiers on any of the Upper Planets we were investing in. When it did occur, it seemed accidental. Like they had stumbled across us and were wholly unprepared for the resulting combat.

Most of them didn’t even carry monowire weaponry.

Something in the back of my mind twitched at the thoughts. It made me uncomfortable how easy she was to defeat, even on a multiversal scale.

Some proper delf troops had arrived on Midnight via portal and were almost immediately put down by BlueCleave hobbs and Tower golems. The fight was barely even a fight, and it occurred outside of the city's limits.

One of our tunnel outposts, barely more than a four-man watch post with mudcrete shelter, had engaged the delf troops and wiped them out. Again, all declined to be captured, activating a suicide charge if they felt capture loomed.

Something about the conflict didn’t make sense, I realized as I watched the various combat information screens around me. It was too easy. Too one-sided.

They had actually learned their lesson and seemed to stop throwing ships at us. It was out of character for the Church and had me concerned. But it would have to wait, I had beholders to kill, and I trusted Admiral Omen to run our operations in Nahgah Prime while I went to hunt Bubbles on Tertiary.

The admiral was still standing at attention, awaiting my orders and watching my face with inscrutable eyes.

“Admiral,” I started.

“Yes, Warlord!” he shouted again, standing even straighter than before, somehow.

“I want you to continue to engage Inquisition targets, at your and Tollya’s discretion,” I said.

“That action goes well,” he agreed. “We will continue it.”

“If anything hostile comes through the gate, I want you to give them enough time to abandon ship,” I told him.

“Even if it is delf cultists?” he asked, eyes sharp.

I sighed and shook my head. “No, I suppose not them. Anyone hostile at this point is likely not going to be talked down.”

“At my discretion then,” he asked, tone flat.

I hesitated. “At your discretion, Admiral. For my sake, try to lean into mercy wherever you can, though,” I said. “The Crown of Thorns is under your command. Dismissed.”

“Yes, Warlord!” he shouted, saluting me and turning back to his station.

I felt almost as though I were wasting both our time trying to reinforce that message of mercy, but Admiral Omen was likely right about the Church’s delves. Any of them who came at us were unlikely to stop and were likely to be equipped to actually cause harm to our craft, or our people. It was the right move, giving him more rein, I decided as I stepped off the platform.

Chapter 52

By the time I had floated back down to my cabin to collect Molls, she was packed and ready. Her mother’s armor was on a rack in the closet, secured to it permanently as a display piece, and I smiled to see it.

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Molls' scales rippled purple at my expression, and she slithered close to hug me. “I’m ready when you are,” she said, kissing me on the cheek. “Patches weren’t so bad, by the way. I did em already. They were just itchy for a few seconds.”

I nodded and pointed toward the domicile unit's front door. She had a better pain tolerance than me.

A rail-less rail car was waiting for us, and I had received the fleet plans for our trip to Tertiary. It was quite minimalist. A Sand Star frigate would accompany us, as would my Brisingida cruiser. Beyond that a simple tactical ship was following, with luxury accommodations if desired, and a full suite of scanning and communications on board.

The larger ship, still only a light cruiser, would be manned by a skeleton crew of volunteers. There was never any shortage, but this mission was dangerous, so we were only bringing as many as we could manage.

Our logistics ship would hide in Tertiary’s fifth LeGrange point, following at a safe distance. Both my attack ships would enter the planet’s atmosphere and engage the beholder, Bubbles, before they could cause much more damage.

Selling our MortBlock covered mines was a painful way to minimize our losses. The mines, if allowed to be operated, produced a massive amount of profit compared to what we got when we just up and sold them.

And Bubbles made sure to destroy anything we left behind, so there was no other option on the planet.

Three facilities had been evacuated already, and we were posed to sell our third island. Each time we did so, the market price for the ore plummeted, so not only were we hurting ourselves; we were losing favor with our fellow affiliates.

Still, they rallied behind us when we offered to go fight the beholder for them, so the complaining didn’t get too loud in public.

I helped Molls carry her suitcases on board the rail car, which hovered off our balcony as if it belonged there.

“If it goes bad,” I started.

Molls shook her head. “It won’t. But if it does, I know. I portal out to the COT. We’ve been over it a bunch of times, I even have the portal ordered and waiting. All I have to do is say yes and it’ll arrive, via instant pod,” she said, raising a finger to cut me off before I could ask.

“Okay,” I said, nodding and breathing out the anxiety I felt. “That’s good.”

“I could help fight, you know,” she muttered, arranging a bag by her tail as the railcar floated away toward our ship’s berths.

“A beholder?” I asked, eyes widened.

She shrugged. “You can fight them,” she said. “I’m wearing the same suit now.”

I shook my head and blinked rapidly. “I am merely surprised you want to, my love.”

“I still have Mother’s bow; perhaps they are vulnerable to hard light weaponry,” she said with another, smaller shrug.

“My love, my mate, please,” I started.

She sighed. “I know. I’ll wait and stay safe.”

“I’ll be using Cube,” I said. “And I’m not even sure it’ll work, I don’t want to lose you, Molls. A beholder can kill us, I have no doubt. Bill didn’t, but only because he wanted me to be consumed by his wormhole. He was arrogant, and underestimated his opponents,” I finished, looking at her seriously.

Molls slumped and nodded, her scales a deep green. “I get it,” she said. “But have you thought that maybe I would rather die at your side than watch it happen on some screen?”

I blinked once, hard. “Shit. No, I did not. I am sorry, I genuinely never thought of that.”

“But,” she said, raising a clawed finger. Our car slowed as it approached the dockyards on an arm. “I understand that I am not combat trained, and that I would likely be underfoot. I’ll stay on board the cruiser,” she said. “But I’m starting combat training. I’m done watching you fight. From now on, while you’re fighting, I’m going to be learning how to fight.”

I stared at her as the railcar slid to a smooth stop. “I’ll hire you the finest combat trainers Silken Sands can find,” I whispered. “And a better weapon than that hard light bow. That thing is . . . I don’t mean to be rude, but that thing is for shooting Sleem. It’s a varmint weapon.”

Molls gasped. She lightly slapped me across the cheek, smiling and flushing purple as she did so. “How dare you?” she hissed playfully. “But I do look forward to going weapon shopping.” She slid from the rail car and headed toward my Buzzsaw, hanging from the ceiling nearby.

Cube was there, beneath the Brisingida class cruiser. He was part of our plan and had been portaled into space near the BuyMort gate in Tertiary at great expense, since he counted not only as livestock, but his mass was large enough to trip some extra charges from BuyMort on the portal.

Still, we were going to need him to fight Bubbles, and the plan was that I would carry him with my cruiser. It was capable of a great many delicate maneuvers, I was hoping I could throw him at Bubbles and short out the beholder.

We stepped out onto a large, open platform, where a cigar-shaped ship with many communication and scanner spines emanating from both ends sat parked, being loaded. Rayna was there, personally overseeing the mission, in spite of her many responsibilities.

“That important, huh?” I said to her as we approached.

The hobb woman turned to glance at me, and saluted, before nodding and returning her gaze to the loaders. They were all starfish drones, carrying various bits of cargo aboard the ship and returning in rows. The crew all stood by on the tarmac, chatting idly or wandering around looking for something to do.

“Almost done, boss,” Rayna grunted in English.

“Small fleet,” I said.

“Ordo flying your Sand Star, you’ll be fine. Room for Molls on board, if she wants,” Rayna grunted at me. Molls was digging in her bag behind us, but she looked up at the mention of her name.

“Oh yes please!” she exclaimed. “Finally! Some adventure!”

I took a deep breath and nodded. “Yeah, that is one of the things we’ll do alright,” I said.

“Well, since my ship only takes me, and cannot fly otherwise, I guess I have to fly it there,” I said. “So yeah, your choice of the cruiser or the Sand Star.”

“Sand Star,” she said instantly. “As if that’s even a choice.”

I reached for her elbow as she slithered by me and looked her in the eye. “Good luck, my love. Bring a sick-bag, keep it ready. It’s different than flying by yourself.”

Her scales flickered yellow, but she shook her head and laughed, returning to purple and sliding off toward the nearby Sand Star. Ordo and another hobb were already in front of it, in their armored flight suits with helmets tucked under their arms.

I saw Ordo point at his helmet, and Molls shook her head. She set down her luggage and summoned her armor with a clank. Ordo’s friend jumped out of his skin and had to retrieve his fallen helmet as Molls and Ordo chuckled. He nodded and waved her aboard the craft, and Molls floated up inside its open hatch.

Chapter 53

Rayna nodded at me, and I floated off to the Buzzsaw. Its door opened, and I easily floated up its hallway and into its singular cockpit. As I was locking into the seat, an intrusive thought had the blades of the ship twitching before I could get my foot on the lower-intentions pedal. The thought had been about what would happen if I just ripped out of the Crown of Thorns. As soon as I boarded the Buzzsaw, I wanted to start tearing shit apart. It felt like a reunion for just an instant, and in that instant of joyful bond, my ship and I wanted to see what would happen if we tore out of the COT, face-first.

But the Buzzsaw revved up and tore a section of the ship’s wall to shreds, which were floating peacefully in front of us as a warning from the COT displayed on-screen to avoid further violent behavior against the ship or security measures would be deployed.

I slowly and carefully tucked the Buzzsaw’s arms back into neutral position, flying toward the COT’s exit. Our small flotilla drifted out of the Crown of Thorns, feeling the irritated presence of its semi-sentient AI for a few hundred thousand kilometers. It didn’t speak, but I could feel it helping our ships move with its gravitic drive, ensuring that we left.

The Crown of Thorns would repair itself, it was fine. A small army of the little starfish drones were, no doubt, working on it at that moment.

We approached the BuyMort gate and paid our fee to transition to Tertiary’s solar system. Cube was there, hovering in space and waiting for me. I slid in with the craft and gently cradled the large beast with the ship’s many limbs.

He turned suddenly, shifting weight internally to accomplish the movement in zero-g. “WHO IS THAT?”

“It’s just me buddy, here to take you for your treat, as promised!” I replied. Keeping the ever-growing creature’s emotions in mind was increasingly difficult.

Still, he was almost certainly a necessary weapon. This beholder appeared to be especially vulnerable to Cube’s electrical overload. I just had to hope it would work the way it had before.

I was treated to the lines of calcified multiverse through my ship’s sensors again, and that sense of tremendous movement outside our lanes of travel. Then I was in Tertiary’s space and flying toward the planet with Cube held in front of me.

“THIS IS FUN!” he shouted, his voice reverberating through the metal of my ship.

“Glad you’re enjoying the ride buddy!” I yelled back, hoping he could hear me. “Get ready for a big fight and another beholder treat!”

“BEHOLDER TREAT!” Cube roared in excitement. They seemed like his very favorite thing in the entire multiverse to eat.

Hours later we began to enter the planet’s atmosphere, and red plasma roared off Cube’s body. I hoped the encounter would go well.

But, as we all know, hope can be a four-letter-word.

Our fleet executed its maneuver flawlessly, with Molls gracefully exiting the Sand Star to join the cruiser awaiting in the planet’s upper orbit. Meanwhile, the Sand Star and I plunged into the atmosphere, tracing a fiery red path behind us. Positioned strategically above and to my right, my companions blazed their own trail, looking all the world like a comet ready to plunge down into the planet and end all life on it.

Bubbles’ location was public knowledge, the massive, watery beholder was slowly stalking toward another of our mining facilities on the planet, tentacles dangling lazily in the ocean below as its fiery, green eye rotated to look up at our incoming ships.

The Sand Star frigate wove around the outside of Cube and I, peppering the beholder from high above with nuclear ammunition. Tiny explosions covered its watery body, blasting away fragments of the beholder’s armor.

It immediately regrew as the beast drew liquid from the ocean below, replenishing its own outer shell as quickly as we could blast it away. We cleared the clouds, and I threw Cube at Bubbles. All it took was a stomp of the raise-intentions pedal, and my unusual pet was hurtling end over end toward the beholder.

When the two made contact, the strike was direct. My ship had aimed perfectly and thrown the building-sized creature exactly where I had wanted him to go.

Cube struck the hardened surface of Bubbles, just above the creature’s eye, and a massive spark flowed through the surrounding ocean. Bubbles raised several tentacles, gripped Cube, and hurled the creature off from themselves. My pet roared his displeasure until he sank beneath the green waves of Tertiary.

I mentally noted the location. He would be fine, since Cubes had no need to breathe. But he would be annoyed if we left him down there for too long.

With our main plan of attack a failure, I resorted to plan B, which was gut instinct.

“Ordo!” I shouted. “Keep your distance but lay as much fire on that beast as you can!”

Bubbles rose angrily up from the ocean, keeping only a single feeder line descending below. A thick tendril that allowed the creature access to the ocean.

Bolts of hardened water rattled and pinged from my Buzzsaw’s defensive formation arms, rapidly damaging them and requiring the ship to perform a complex dance with most of its frontal arms to defend me in the cockpit.

Ordo grunted his assertion, and what had been a peppering became a hurricane of miniature, shaped projectiles, each filled with fissile material. The ship’s sandcasters opened up, and Bubbles’ appendages began to harden, and then shatter.

A bolt of pure blue energy fired from the tip of one before it crumbled, and the Sand Star barely missed being destroyed. As it was, an arm of the ship was smoldering and non-functional. It hardly mattered, the ship could run almost as efficiently on four arms as it could on five.

Once you got down to two things got a bit hairy, most of our pilots reported. But four was nothing to worry about.

Ordo continued his onslaught, and I hurtled into the beast headlong, raise-intentions pedal floored. When my ship’s rear arms all grappled the beholder, its own body solidified and resisted the blades.

But it couldn't resist for long.

My ship started launching tiny blue atomic disruption blasts from its blade edges, gripping the beholder, the blades sinking in and staying. I wrestled it up, but it pulled me back down, hard.

My ship was powerful, and Ordo’s aim was impeccable even with damaged portions to his craft. I hung on, and we fought the beholder, but I in no way had the grapple under control at any point. Bubbles had me much harder than I had Bubbles.

We went down, the beholder dragging my ship underwater. Ordo, fearless as ever, followed. Portions of his craft filled with water from the damage, and I heard emergency bulkheads closing over our comms, as well as the grunt of his pilot trying to keep up with our dive. He couldn’t fire our nuclear ammunition underwater, so the ship’s damage capability dropped dramatically as Ordo switched to hollow, shaped nano-tubes.

The water grew darker, and Bubbles grew stronger. My ship’s arms, formerly capable of holding back the beast’s with only a single row, now doubled up to protect me. The Buzzsaw’s charge drained rapidly as I stomped on the raise-intentions pedal and pushed its drive to its fullest in an attempt to reach the surface.

Bubbles pulled back, suddenly much more powerful. To deploy the sandcasters using effective aqua-dynamics, Ordo had to maneuver the ship closer. So when a tendril of water hardened into ice-seven delivered a backhanded flick, his ship shuddered violently, thrown off course by the sheer power of the blow. Sparks erupted from its armor plating, and I heard my friend and loyal fighter grunt as he was hit.

“Sand Star, pull back, regain altitude and await low-orbit engagement, I’m going to draw them out,” I said. “Get out of here Ordo and be ready to rain down hellfire on them!”

“Yes boss!” he shouted, hauling on the ship’s controls.

Bubbles had every advantage below the waves. My ship was draining charge rapidly enough to warrant a dancing cartoon starfish, albeit tiny and off in my peripheral vision. I pushed even harder, draining charge faster than I could get it as I held the beholder’s mighty tentacles at bay and attempted to break them.

On my screen I watched as the damaged Sand Star frigate broke off and regained the air. My tiny CTV portal eagerly reported on the development from a hundred different angles, from camera drones and actual manned ships all over the area.

There is no sapient life in the multiverse more willing to risk their life for a story more than a for-profit journalist. It brought out something primal, something almost suicidal in their nature, where nothing but the shot mattered, nothing but the story of the moment.

A beholder, even one known for mass-destruction, was nowhere near scary enough to drive them away.

But I knew what Bubbles wanted, which meant I had all the power in the fight. Bubbles’ goal was to publicly disrupt my critical infrastructure and show that I couldn’t defend my civilians. Much the same as Inky, though something had been much more methodical about Bubbles.

Bubbles hadn’t left after their first attack. Or their second. They were meant for me to attack directly. An obvious trap I had no choice but to respond to.

Which left only the one motivation that I could use against the beholder. It wanted to kill me personally. In public, preferably.

I ejected from my seat, set the ship’s self-destruct for five seconds, and flew down the open tunnel into the ocean beyond Bubbles’ grasping tentacles. Time slowed for me, and I turned just enough to watch the beholder try to get rid of my ship before it imploded.

A tiny black hole tore the ship apart and devoured it, tearing any parts of the beholder’s armor away that were too near. The Buzzstar’s final act, its violent implosion, destroyed the beholder’s armor faster than it could form. Bubbles’ fire hissed as ocean water made brief contact, and the beholder screamed.

It wasn’t vocal, no sound waves brought me the scream, but the resonance in my mind was unmistakable.

“BE! AFRAID!” roared the beholder into my mind, but I blocked it out with a quick thought. Lowering the volume of any incoming stimuli was a side effect of my crystalline colony brain.

At the same time, I activated my own booming voice and shouted back, sending an echoing challenge to the beast while I pushed my own gravity suit and streaked skyward. “Three down!” I roared at the beast. “Two to go.”

When I blasted above the surface, Bubbles was hot on my trail, metallic water-tipped tentacles desperately reaching for me. They swirled and tangled as I dodged, zipping between them with ease. The creature was nearly as fast as I was, which meant it had no advantage whatsoever unless it could get me in its grip.

Which, being faster, I was able to simply deny them. I had to give a thought to Spectre, and how well he had built me for the job of destruction.

A streak of glittering blue hurtled over my shoulder, freezing and burning a line across my back in its wake, reminding me that the beholder could also hit me with its energy projectiles.

I focused, summoning another flood of my chemical aid to my altered body, further slowing my perception of time. Meanwhile, I pulled up multiple camera angles of our conflict and started paying attention to each of them.

My eyes flickered back and forth, and my body responded, whirling, changing direction, and slamming through tentacles as needed, fists-first. Bubbles chased me up from the ocean, a long, ever thinner tendril extending down into the waters below.

“Support cruiser, start your approach for long-distance bombardment,” I said. My comms channel automatically connected me to the captain, and I could see Molls strapped into a chair in a battle-ready position, as safe as she could be.

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“Warlord!” the captain shouted. “We’ll be in range in seconds, what are your orders?”

“Target long range high-energy laser cannons. My coordinates, sending them now. Hit the entire area, sustained, five second bursts from each cannon,” I ordered.

“Warlord, yes, but that will hit you,” my hobb captain noted, concern obvious in his voice.

“I can take it, Captain. Fire away!” I yelled. The hobb on the screen grinned and yanked on a lever. A couple seconds later I was bathed in the warm glow of weaponized light, as the beholder’s umbilical cord evaporated from top to bottom.

I swerved back and slammed fists-first into Bubbles, who raised a hardened shell of overlapping metallic-water arms. I activated my Breaker Gauntlets and blasted away the tentacles in front of me, even as Ordo opened fire again, peppering every bit of exposed surface and fragmenting it away.

With flawless timing, I caught and chopped off an attacking tentacle, dropping it to the oceans below with a mighty splash. Bubbles shot off a bolt of blue power toward the Sand Star frigate and I used the opportunity to streak directly at the creature’s central eye.

The beholder raised a defensive tentacle, but I slammed through it, slashing it into gallons of flying water as I hurtled into Bubbles’ primary eyeball.

I glanced off in an explosion of blue light as the creature’s armor shattered, and it was splashed with liquid from its own arm. My body suffered a searing burn, but I told the suit to hold off on repairs. I was already full of painkillers, and everything still worked, so it hardly mattered.

Again, Bubbles screamed in pain. This time it was picked up by every psychic camera in the planet’s various orbits. Even with the multiverses’ mistrust of MortMobile, spectacle was spectacle, and a beholder screaming in obvious pain was something new.

Something that would drive ratings no matter what.

I spun in midair and slammed another heavy blow against the creature’s core. Metallic water shattered, then splashed away, some of it hissing into the orb of flame in its center.

Anytime it did, a jolt of powerful mental anguish flashed across the entire planet, and all satellites and ships in orbit. I continued my rain of blows, accompanied by the damaged Sand Star frigate, firing its sand casters wherever possible.

Bits of the beholder’s armor blasted away continuously as Ordo and I dodged the panicked beast’s clumsy fire, and dangerous tentacle lashes. While I kept the pressure on its defensive abilities, Ordo systematically took the beast’s exoskeleton apart.

Its exoskeleton was clearly designed on the molecular manipulation of water, but with our support cruiser firing its long-range laser and cooking any attempts to connect to the ocean of Tertiary, Bubbles couldn’t rebuild what we broke.

The moment I had been waiting for came, and Bubbles noticed their predicament. The beholder disengaged and began to dive.

What had been a beating became, in an instant, an onslaught. Where I had been brutally tearing apart the creature an instant before, I was a living tornado chasing it down to the ocean so far below.

Bubbles blinked, looked back and forth between me and the ocean, and accelerated.

Ordo’s mad pilot slammed the Sand Star into the beholder at an angle, coming up from below as the ship’s metal instantly seared red-hot. He kept firing until an instant before impact, and the two bodies spun off course from one another, shining parts glimmering in separate trails.

I chased the one with the water droplets. With each blow of my enhanced fists, I blasted away more of the beholder’s armor, until, as I had timed the beating for, we hit the ocean. I activated both Breaker Gauntlets and blasted away Bubble’s central armor as it formed, and the ocean of Tertiary poured into the beholder’s fiery eyeball.

This time there was no splash, no sprinkling. The entire beholder was engulfed by the blue-green water of Tertiary, and steam erupted.

A psychic shriek sounded instantaneously but cut out just as quickly. With too much of a grounding agent pouring in, Bubbles dissipated. The entire oceans of Tertiary had drowned the beholder. Both physically, and on an energy conversion level at the same time.

Bubbles was now simply unspooled energy, forever trapped in the oceans of Tertiary.

I rose slowly from the boiling sea, bits of the creature’s armor sliding off me, losing form for the last time. It had tried to form, to protect its owner, but there was nothing left to protect by the time most of it could harden.

“Bubbles beaten to death by the Warlord of BuyMort! Tertiary, and the fuel markets, celebrate,” ran the first headlines. And so the legend spread.

The beholders’ arrogance had cost them. Bubbles clearly laid themself out as bait, never expecting a direct confrontation to go so poorly so quickly. By the time Inky showed up and wiped out the evacuated orbital installation, all the news outlets were already fixated on my ability to beat a beholder to death with my (approximately) bare hands.

Within six hours of my victory on Tertiary, a new app took all of our internet services by storm. It was a game where you killed beholders and took their armor to upgrade your own mechanical enhancements.

It had killer advertising as well:

Beholder Brawl: The Warlord's Challenge

Game Description:

In the aftermath of the Warlord's legendary triumph, the cosmos of BuyMort has found a new pastime that bridges worlds and systems alike. “Beholder Brawl: The Warlord's Challenge” is not just a game; it's a revolution that pits the wits and bravery of players against the mighty beholders.

Gameplay Overview:

Embark on an epic quest across the galaxies of the BuyMort system, from the dense industrial complexes of Storage to the lavish cities of the Upper Planets. Assume the role of an aspiring warlord, challenging beholders in intense combat. With every victory, you strip your colossal foes of their armor, using it to forge unparalleled enhancements for yourself and your friends.

Features:

Dynamic Combat System: Engage in battles that require strategy, reflexes, and courage. Each beholder you face has unique abilities and weaknesses, demanding players adapt their tactics.

Customization and Upgrades: Utilize the armor and technology of fallen beholders to customize your character. Hundreds of combinations of mechanical enhancements ensure that no two heroes are alike.

Expansive Universe: Explore a richly detailed universe with dozens of worlds, each with its own story, challenges, and beholders to defeat.

Social Integration: Form alliances with players from across the universe to take down the most formidable beholders. Share your achievements, trade enhancements, and dominate leaderboards.

Join the Brawl:

Are you ready to step into the arena, face the beholders, and carve your path to glory? Download “Beholder Brawl: The Warlord's Challenge” now and become part of the legend.

It looked amazing.

I got Axle involved, and within fifteen minutes, we were getting a percentage of the game. It quickly became the most popular game both in Storage, and on the Upper Planets, marking a rare moment of cultural alignment for the BuyMort system.

Chapter 54

Cube was grumpy.

First, because of how much time he’d had to spend at the bottom of an ocean before we could recover him, but primarily because there had been no promised beholder treat. I’d had to explain to him that it just vanished once the water touched it, but he didn’t seem to understand.

Only after Tollya spent some time with him, using a video of a raccoon trying to wash cotton candy, did Cube understand what had happened to his beholder treat. At that point, he’d sat in the water where it happened and drank some but still looked depressed.

Just not the same thing, I guess.

Molls came down to Tertiary for some press conferences with me. It was a lot more fun answering Shalla’s questions with Molls at my side. Their relationship was frosty and drove ratings like nothing else could. Everybody loved a good cat-fight, especially the advertisers that paid based on nothing but how many eyeballs were watching the content.

So we started doing interviews as a duet. I brought Molls on, and she never failed to pick a fight with Shalla. Our latest interview was a roundtable about the influence of Silken Sands over the past year.

We were being dragged across the coals for causing a lot of death, basically. Shalla steel-manned the argument against us.

“The death rate is undeniable, Warlord. Even your own departments report that the overall population of BuyMort has dramatically reduced since your military-based affiliate came to power. You’re already ranked sixth on the Top Ten, and show no signs of slowing,” she read from one of her blank papers. “But what about the little guy? What about the affiliates in-between, who are being essentially forced to change allegiances? What about the affiliates that have been lost, just gone off a cliff, like so many have this last year?”

Molls’ tail rattled and she flashed red. “You say all of those things as if they were the fault of Silken Sands somehow,” she snarled.

“Well,” Shalla started. “Our sources and data are pointing to a likely causation factor here somewhere.” Her own scales stayed a neutral white while Molls’ brightened a bit.

“Right,” I growled, my helmet broadcasting my voice. “Me, not dying when dishonest, violent affiliate heads tried to kill me.”

Shalla’s scales turned vibrant purple momentarily, before sinking back to her neutral white as she actively controlled her emotional response, leaning forward. “Is that an admission?” she asked.

Molls bared her fangs, showing the rows of stilettos in her mouth as they rose forward along her jawline. She quickly got it under control, but moments like that drove ratings, so I never discouraged her.

“You dare?!” Molls hissed. “This pathetically run system was a shambling corpse, just waiting for the next Sleem to fall completely. Silken Sands is the only thing that has kept this system, filled with people, alive at all!”

“No one is questioning the daring actions of your affiliate, Priest Molls. Please try to regain some calm,” Shalla said blankly, shuffling her papers as she stared at my mate. “No one here is threatening you.”

Molls slapped the papers off the desk, causing Shalla to turn vibrant yellow and back away, instinctively lowering her body to appear less threatening.

“You insult us, every time we grace your show with our presence, and accuse us of horrible things,” Molls nearly shouted. The red in her scales was getting dark enough I started to worry about another permanent ring, touching her arm to bring her down a bit.

“It’s how she makes a name for herself, badmouthing those who actually work to make the multiverse a better place,” I muttered to Molls. “Ignore it, she provokes you intentionally.”

Shalla shook her head and yellowed furthered. “I don’t know what you mean, Warlord, please.”

“No, I agree, let’s get back to the subject at hand,” I replied tersely. “You were accusing me of destabilizing the entire BuyMort market.” I waved a hand dismissively. “Obviously absurd. The system was unstable long before I arrived. A bunch of obscenely wealthy, incompetent fools at the helm of everyone’s lives. How about quality of life, how has that statistic done under Silken Sands rule?”

“Yes, your employee and resident satisfaction numbers are regularly higher than your opponents in the market, but you cannot be suggesting that improved morale justifies the deaths of so many. Billions of lives have been lost since Nu-Earth entered the BuyMort system,” Shalla said with a casual shrug.

It was my turn to get angry and crack another table. This time, I leaned on it so hard the glass front crushed beneath my palms. Shalla jumped and turned a brighter shade of yellow.

“Eight billion of those deaths were from my planet!” I said harshly. “Because BuyMort’s unrequested arrival destabilized my entire world! And you use those deaths as though they were my fault somehow?” My hands clenched and Molls, a solid shade of purple, laid a claw on my thigh to calm me.

“I am not the cause of this system’s problems,” I said, with a forced calm. “I am simply responding to them, and some of those responses have made powerful people angry. That’s the story, plain and simple. You represent those angry, powerful people, so you bring their point of view to the public as though it had any kind of wide-scale support. You even attempt to intentionally anger both my mate and myself during interviews in order to increase your own ratings,” I spat. “Who are you to judge my rescue operation?”

“Rescue operation?” Shalla asked, suddenly green instead of yellow. The sudden change added a few particles of hardened blue to her already forming new permanent ring.

“That’s how I think of the affiliate sometimes,” I said quietly. “Just trying to save as many as we can.”

Molls kissed the back of my hand, then turned and glared daggers at Shalla. It was how our interviews usually ended, which was fine by me. I used their interviews against them, but the affiliate that ran them couldn’t resist the advertiser fees, so they kept facilitating my disinformation.

After a quick stint on Tertiary, reporting on my victory, and the death of Bubbles, Shalla’s show had become the number one source of news for all of the Upper Planets and Storage.

Not great for the people trying to get honest news, but useful for me, and my purposes.

The next item on my list was to destabilize the culture I needed to attack, and their imagined love triangle with the sexy, angry news lady was all I needed to get into their homes, into their heads.

Along with any news program that carried my image went an automatic surge of trust for what I said. Church command quickly realized it and paid for blocking services for their own critical infrastructure.

But even they couldn’t afford it for everyone. Or perhaps wouldn’t.

Most people in the Upper Planets didn’t believe it was happening enough to pay the exorbitant fees to block it, and nobody in Storage could afford to anyway.

I had to notice that no matter what happened to MortMobile, his services still brought in a premium for BuyMort. At times it felt like my every step had been anticipated and capitalized upon as it happened. Or at least prepared for redundancy.

Costs went up for communication, but fewer and fewer extraordinarily wealthy people were still using him for that. At the same time, television costs had dropped so low that almost anybody in Storage who wanted to could watch the news.

Still, MortMobile claimed his headache was getting better by the day, so while I noticed the increased charges his services cost, I didn’t care. The main goal was being accomplished, slowly, but surely.

We even had our own rival news programming to CTV running on our own various networks. Each especially programmed for the different levels of political involvement of the consumer. It was assumed by many to be open propaganda, but I made sure we had accurate reporting mixed in to keep our own populations happy enough to keep watching it.

That improvement didn’t mean we had no problems at all, of course. Speaking of those, our biggest concern was Inky.

After my spectacular defeat of Bubbles, Inky retaliated by attacking a magma kelp ship on Venus, before vanishing the instant my defense fleet could engage them. All they’d managed to accomplish was kill a few dozen workers, and destroy a good portion of the crop, but it was clear the beholder’s real intention was to wear down my system.

To attack one thing after another, without retaliation, until my employment numbers started dropping. This theory was further proven by a brief attack on our Saturn gas mining operation, costing us an entire drilling platform, and thirty-seven souls, plus another four hundred and nine worker positions.

Thankfully, the tactic wasn’t working quite well enough to be damaging just yet. And an interesting thing had happened, that changed all my plans and directed me to a singular location.

The beholder’s next target had been Terna’s world, but they had managed to fend off the attack without any damage and seemed to injure the beholder with an intense burst from an energy weapon platform the size of most small cities.

It was easy to forget that Terna’s world had defenses, primarily because of how much surface space was dedicated to farmland. The other half of that equation was defense technology, tucked in wherever it could go between all the grow houses.

Going there to meet the enigmatic and elusive leader of this planet rose on my to-do list when I saw footage of Inky recoiling after taking a blast of vibrant silver energy. It just looked like it hurt.

Part of their shadowed body flickered, and then the beholder blinked out of existence, running away from the conflict through a micro-tear in spacetime. They had yet to reappear.

Diplomatic back channels were already working at a frenzied pace, getting my people and Terna’s people together to talk about the two of us getting together. I couldn’t help but recognize a little bit of corporate red tape in her behavior, but it wasn’t every day the Warlord of BuyMort wanted a meeting.

Since Cube had gone home to pout, I found myself in urgent need of a new strategy to confront Inky effectively. And Terna had a weapon that seemed capable of hurting them. So we were on our way there.

My demands for Dario’s freedom stopped, and I no longer searched for new Midnights. Since we’d discovered the existence of additional Eternal Night systems, we had found half a dozen gate addresses for copies of the solar system. Including one named “The Dirge of Twilight,” instead of Eternal Night.

We had colonies on all of them, attacking unattended MortBlocks near the rippled surface of Midnight.

Our best working theory was that The Dirge of Twilight was the delves’ original solar system, but we found no delves or signs of civilization on the planet. Our teams kept at it, while installing new mines, but the emptiness of the planet was eerie.

My public demands for Dario back increased, as did my strikes on Church facilities. We had plenty of thorns to go around. Everybody who pissed me off got one.

We kept it to military targets, for the most part. But a handful of particularly obnoxious public figures had private asteroids or orbital mansions suddenly destroyed as well.

It was war. A war between entrenched, lazy establishment, and a hungry new force that understood the levers of power at play. And if a few silver-spoon idiots got fragged, so be it. Nobody would miss them, least of all me.

Eventually, I killed the right person, because I received a MortMobile call from the House of Sheeragore. Before I accepted it, I stepped through a portal into my orbital mansion. Now that Molls was no longer using it, it made for a decent safehouse for things like answering calls that could summon armies down on top of me.

Fortunately, the only person who was sent to my location once I answered the phone call was Dario. Naked, half starved, beaten nearly to death, but alive. He collapsed out of the portal into my living room with a wheeze.

I immediately snatched a blanket off the nearby couch, and tossed it over his prostrate form, before turning my attention back to the still-connected phone call.

“Anyone else care to step through? Take accountability for this?” I asked the shielded line. It was nothing but gray fog, the user had paid a premium to hide their direct identity. All I knew was that I was speaking to someone within The House of Sheeragore.

Unsurprisingly, no response came. They stayed on the line though, curious to hear what I had to say.

“Tell you what,” I started with a light sigh. “You send through everyone who had a hand in this man’s treatment, right now.” I paused to let the words sink in and add a touch of gravitas to what I had to say next. “Or I’m coming for each and every one of you personally. And I’m going to hold anyone who shelters or aids them to account for their crimes. Every single one of you, do you hear me?”

The line disconnected. Good thing for them too since my pod was arriving to portal me to their location. I’d already flagged BlueCleave emergency services, a ship was on its way to my mansion. It wouldn’t matter if I was there for Dario or not, and I wanted some bloody justice.

Instead of simply portaling to their location, something MortMobile would almost certainly facilitate for me regardless of any protections paid for, I would have to hunt them down the hard way. One by one, piece by piece.

It was fine; it folded into my standing plan anyway. I was already chipping away at the Church, its military capabilities, and its financial streams. That’s all it was; chipping. Like getting ice for your drink from the local iceberg. The Church was a massive organization, it made up the majority of civilization within BuyMort.

And yet, my unending creep was now focused on the Church and its vast networks of profit and power. I would have Dario’s torturers in time. It could wait.

Meanwhile, I turned to comfort my friend, and saw a man changed completely. When I reached for him, gently, he recoiled as though struck. I stood and left him to his blanket, which he seemed to covet, hugging it to his body.

“I’m sorry, Dario, we’ll get you fixed up. Anything you need,” I whispered, feeling how hollow the words were even as I said them.

“I gave them nothing, Warlord,” Dario said, shivering. “Nothing!” He had no fingernails, just lumps of scars on the ends of his clenched fingers.

I shook my head. “It’s okay Dario. I don’t care if you told them everything. I’m just glad to have you back.”

“They kept the cannon,” he grunted. “I wouldn’t transfer ownership, but they kept it. Kept knocking me out and experimenting on me with it too. Thought you should know that, Warlord,” Dario said, around broken, gilded teeth.

“I expect to face the cannon in battle soon, Dario, don’t worry. That’s already part of my plans. All I cared about was getting you back. You’re safe now,” I lied, straight faced.

There’s no such thing as ‘safe.’ Just varying degrees of it.

BlueCleave's rapid response team docked with the orbital mansion, and I left Dario’s side to open the mansion doors for them. From in the near distance, I watched as a crew of armed hobbs stormed onto my perfectly manicured lawn and covered the nearby areas with their weaponry.

“Over here. Med unit please!” I shouted, waving to them. The hobb at the head of their formation stopped, saluted stiffly, and turned back to the ship to obey my orders. The rest of them continued their work, securing the orbital platform and surrounding my mansion.

Within seconds, a specialized three-hobb team was coming from the ship, with a hover-gurney held between them as they jogged in my direction.

Dario was soon sitting up and sipping at a bottle of blue juice, still wrapped in his blanket as he answered the hobb medic’s questions. His beard had been burned, torn, and scalped away in various parts of his face, and the rest of him matched. It seemed like the Church had been heavily engaged in torturing Dario for his access to the cannon, but some of his scarring and wounds suggested medical experimentation as well.

The hobb captain who ran the rapid response team took me aside to talk about it, and we spoke in hobb, to avoid Dario overhearing us.

“Physically, he’ll be fine. Some broken bones. Scars. Malnutrition. Normal for what he’s been through. But, Warlord, I worry about his mind. They broke him, badly. I have no doubt he gave them any secrets he had, and they only gave him back to you because they got what they needed from him. I’ve seen it before,” the captain assured me. “That man has no loyalty but to anything that will prevent him more pain.”

I nodded. “I’ll take it under consideration. Treat him carefully, captain. Check for implanted bombs before taking him aboard your craft, trust nothing about this situation. But get him the help he needs.”

The hobb nodded, his already thin lips ground together into a grim line. “Yes, Warlord!” he barked, before saluting and returning to his duties.

After a thorough scan to determine that he was safe to transport, Dario was flown directly to the hospital unit on Elevator Station. I followed and contacted Yolara Brinks.

The terrified Knowle answered on the first ring, a bright smile on her lips, and ears flattened back against her scalp. “Yes, Warlord?” she asked cordially.

“Set up a presser on Elevator Station, please, just outside the med ward. We’re going to use Dario’s poor treatment by the Church for all its worth,” I said.

Yolara licked her nose, nodded, and disconnected the call. Within five minutes, there were various representatives of the different for-profit news outfits that worked the systems arriving on my space station. A great many of the smaller organizations beamed their footage out through the gates, through various satellite networks situated around the Sol gate.

CTV was there, or at least, their sacrificial lamb team was. Shalla and her small team of assistants and crew members had stayed on, with a MortMobile connection. It was the only one in the Church still operational, but that was because of customer demand.

There’s nothing like a little supply and demand to tip the scales in one’s favor, and I had what the entire multiverse wanted. Any bit of news that came out of Sol was gigantic ratings and ad revenue for everyone involved, so Shalla stayed.

She approached the medical bay’s waiting area, where I sat, helmet in my hands. A new ring of permanent yellow complimented the blue in her scales, and I looked up at her approach to see her flush further yellow.

“Warlord,” she said, anxiously gripping the microphone in her claws.

“Yes, thank you for coming,” I said calmly. “Let’s wait for the others, they won’t be long.”

“As you say,” she replied, bowing her head and slithering back to be with her camera crew. They conferred in low voices as other crews began to arrive. Some portaled in, some docked with the station and boarded, some simply rode express elevator cars up from the surface of Nu-Earth.

After allowing enough of them to gather, I stepped up in front of a hastily prepared microphone stand.

“I address all of BuyMort tonight,” I said, tension obvious in my voice. “I got my friend back, but he’s been hurt. Badly. And often. I request all press to honor his privacy during this critical recovery period, but I am glad to have my friend back.”

I turned from the mic as though finished, and then stepped back and shook my head. “I’m going to hunt down the people who hurt my friend,” I said. “And when I find them, I’m not even going to kill them myself, I’m just going to send a thorn. It’s a chore,” I said, helmet facing the cameras. “But it’s a chore I’m looking forward to.”

With that I broke up the press conference and told Yolara she was free to go for the evening. She calmly informed me that it was three-fourteen in the morning, but that she was grateful to be released.

I sat and waited on the doctors, but the report I waited for was minimal. He had some broken, and improperly set bones. Some scarring on back and chest, as well as a couple missing digits on one hand.

Malnutrition was the worst of it; his weight was dangerously low. They clearly barely fed him, and as a result he was suffering from a variety of illnesses that would clear up with three good meals a day for a couple of weeks. He was also dehydrated, but that was being handled through IV already.

All in all, Dario was in for a couple of surgeries. It would be his choice as to when they occurred, and to what level of complexity he wanted to go in regard to replacing any missing function. I cleared an expense account for his recovery. That included everything, he was given carte blanche.

Especially for regular mental health counseling.

Within the hour, Elevator Station’s tapes of Dario’s arrival, strapped to a hover-gurney, were leaked to the press. Within hours of that, images of his shriveled, cut up and burned face were all over the various multiversal news networks.

It spread out slowly, but I was beginning to realize that Sol was the beating heart of the BuyMort system. Whatever was left of the Church was so covered in spiderwebs it simply wasn’t potent enough to protect itself any longer.

I increased the invasion of Nahgah Prime.

We moved on several Church installations, and if questioned, said they were cult controlled. It was very difficult to know who was or wasn't a cult member, when it came to armed Church personnel, but we assured everyone who would listen that BlueCleave had very good intelligence when it came to that sort of thing.

We said it often enough, and with enough emphasis, that it became part of the normal discourse when the issue arose. Well, of course BlueCleave hit another Church outpost, but it was the cult, don’t you know? It’s always the cult. BlueCleave doesn’t attack the ‘good’ Church.

The lie did our work for us, spreading like wildfire throughout the various associates and affiliates that made up the Church itself. None of them wanted to be cult, and any who suspected they were part of a cult section had avenues of escape. We made sure of it, with our pipelines in Storage.

All one had to do was hop to a specific address in Storage, which we made sure was widely known in the Upper Planets, and you would be processed by our anti-cult unit.

It was a BlueCleave MASH unit with a psychologist that asked them a series of predetermined questions designed to make them feel like they were being deprogrammed, followed by a stay at a spa. It was just at a straight up spa, we just pampered them, and they gave us everything for it.

We got more addresses for thorns, more ships to take or destroy, and yet more targets outside the Nahgah Prime system that were quickly going to become an issue if not addressed.

Nahgah Prime, however, was rapidly becoming ours. As I floated in Sol system with Molls, heading toward Terna’s world, my troops and business sharks did their work. The more of the planet we owned, the easier it was to get.

Nobody wanted to be the last one to get in on a trend, after all. And it wasn’t like our Knowle businessmen gave the Nah’gh much in the way of options. Everyone was selling, it was clearly happening by military force, and nobody was saying a damned thing against it.

My military dictatorship was a benevolent one, aside from the occasional genocide. Legitimate genocide too. We wiped out all the Sleem. None survived, even those we had shielded for research purposes.

But for the most part, it was great to live under. You were kept safe, everything was clean, there was no poverty to deal with, and life was generally better than it had been before. BlueCleave was good with their community outreach, hiring plenty of former Nah’gh to help reassure their neighbors and friends of our intentions.

I floated in zero g, watching as Molls slowly twirled while reading her book. We were aboard the luxury stealth cruiser Rayna had assigned to our fleet. It seemed the most diplomatic of our remaining options. My Buzzsaw was gone, and our Sand Star frigate needed some time in dry dock to repair it.

Docking with the Crown of Thorns would send a swarm of the robotic starfish drones to repair any and all damage done to the ships, but ours was still combat effective, so I wanted it kept with us just in case.

I’d jump into Teslak and buy a new Buzzsaw if I really needed one, but something about that ship made me want to avoid flying it. I got a little too free with my hands, when I was latched into one of those things.

After my fight with Bubbles, Molls had suggested I take a break from the Buzzstars. Then again, if she had her way, I’d be on vacation for a year before I took any serious action again. As it was, I felt silly floating down-sun in a cigar covered in glowing needles, in a luxury suite, bathing in a light shower of vitamin-enhanced hard light.

It was quite refreshing, cucumber lime scented with just a hint of Drumu. As I floated, I wondered what it all was that I was floating in, and an ad soared up out of the darkness.

Mist Mastery: The Essence of Luxury

Refresh, Invigorate, Relax

You're a man's man, working hard every day, giving 12 hours to the boss before heading home to the cot to rest those muscle aches away. And like any man's man, you need some HARD SPA ACTION!

Welcome to Ethereal Mist. Grab up some ice cream and chocolate, put on a onesie, and envelop yourself in the manliest cloud of serenity that morties can buy. Comes in a variety of hardcore fragrances like Cucumber Lime, Rose-Petal Orange, and Aged Bourbon. And every charging capsule is infused with just a hint of Drumu.

Be Hard. Be tough. Get Mist Mastery. 45,990 morties. 4.9 stars.

Molls sighed and yawned, stretching as she drew a line on her tablet to mark her place, and left it floating as she wriggled for the comfortably padded wall. There she snuggled into some comfort-webbing, blew me a kiss, and curled up to go to sleep.

I spent some of the time in flight resting, but most of it I spent working. I wanted to study Terna’s world, but I was swamped with incoming land buys and associate acquisitions. More and more people were jumping ship on the Church, as it became obvious who the real power in BuyMort was.

Me.

BlueCleave as well, obviously. No hobb horde had grown more powerful faster in the history of BuyMort. We even had a presence on Terna’s world, though the delegation was small, and more diplomatic than anything else.

They would be meeting with us and our local residential diplomatic staff, a Knowle, a hobb, and a human. Made me wonder why everything seemed to come down to species, but the representation was celebrated on the planet-ship, so I shrugged and accepted it. Marketing knew their shit, I mostly left them alone.

The awareness that I had become hardened to the system I operated within did not arrive in my mind, even with what I had done to Dario. Not until many years later.

I focused on my mate, on Molls. My beautiful, alien distraction that healed my mind when I was in her presence. There was guilt, for the leak of the footage, but the greater good outweighed it and I allowed myself to ignore it.

Tollya’s lessons about relaxation and being available when actually needed were starting to sink in a bit. The ship was mundane, for all its comforts, and our speed was adequately slow for Molls and I to spend some quality time. Restful time.

She read a lot, I worked the logistics side of Silken Sands with Axle, and our tension relaxed over the course of the three-day journey. Most of that time was spent in the master cabin, which had sleep netting and magnetic seating across floor and ceiling.

It was like being in a big, comfortable, football-shaped rubber-room. All the walls stretched and bounced, even the door had comfortable padding added in case of collision. Our portals to view the stars were clear, yet the external layer of each had the feeling of foam rubber.

It was bizarre to press against. Like squishing something that looked like it was made of nothing.

I stared at the stars and quashed the faint feelings of guilt I felt for throwing Dario under the bus immediately after his retrieval. It had felt like the best I could do for him.

As he attempted to convalesce, the news media spread his video like a wave, showing his injuries in detail and speculating on how exactly he was tortured. He was immediately inundated with interview requests, which he had to fend off from his hospital bed, in the few hours of consciousness his body could muster each day.

A starfish suit had been offered and refused, so classic medical care it was. Our resident mordren doctor was on board his ship, taking care of him as he slowly healed. She liked our contracts and was talented, so we happily paid exorbitant fees for her to care for our wounded VIPs.

The stars of my own home universe were at least all the right color. I stared at them while I floated next to Molls to cuddle up to her and sleep some more. It came easily to me when I tried, and stargazing was a perfect method of relaxation beforehand.

After three days of slow flight, we arrived at Terna’s world.

Chapter 55

When our luxury cruiser entered the vicinity of Terna’s world, we were immediately surrounded by smaller ships that formed into an escort ring around us. The other ships were small, each piloted by a single hobb. One of them waved to us as they flew by the windows.

An ad popped up in my vision, a mostly unintrusive corner window instead of the brain dominating full experience ads or the vision-text ads that had become more and more common as affiliates desperately struggled to maintain sales.

In it, I could see the cold, silent expanse of space. The camera slowly zoomed in on a single, sleek ship, suspended in the void. Its design was striking—a needle-nose front with an intricate network of large radiators that unfolded like petals from its six distinct wings. The radiators pulsed with a soft, otherworldly glow, hinting at the power contained within. It was dormant, but not for long as suddenly the ship sprang to life, its radiators expanding and contracting rhythmically as it prepared to dart into the unknown.

A smooth female voice piped into my mind, her voice both wondering and bragging at the same time.

“In the relentless pursuit of perfection, where every detail is meticulously crafted, and every innovation is inspired by the dreams of the fearless, the Razorwing emerges. A marvel of engineering, born from the convergence of art and science, it stands at the pinnacle of space combat technology.

The Razorwing isn't just built; it's forged in the fires of ingenuity, designed to thrive at the edge of possibility. Its unique six-wing structure is a testament to the audacity of our engineers, who dared to reimagine the future of flight. These aren't mere appendages; they are the heart of the Razorwing's unmatched agility, each wing housing radiators capable of dissipating heat from its blazing pursuits across the cosmos. This thermal management system is the key to sustaining prolonged engagements, ensuring that you stay cool when the action reaches its boiling point.

But the innovation doesn't stop there. The Razorwing is equipped with a propulsion system that defies the laws of physics, capable of instant acceleration and nimble maneuvers that leave adversaries grasping at shadows. Its needle-nose, a beacon of precision, houses a weapon system that is both elegant and devastating. Each spine, a long barrel with a lightly glowing tip, is not just for show—it's a promise of lethality.

Imagine yourself at the helm of a Razorwing, dancing through asteroid fields with grace, cutting through enemy lines with precision, and outmaneuvering opponents with ease. This ship doesn't just perform; it anticipates, reacts, and adapts to every challenge, making you not just a pilot, but a force of nature.

Welcome to the edge of tomorrow. Welcome to the Razorwing. Engineered for those who dare to reach beyond the horizon, for those who seek to redefine the rules of engagement. Are you ready to push the boundaries?”

It was an incredibly unique design; I wouldn’t have been surprised to learn that it was a Teslak or other pre-BuyMort relic were it not for the fact that they were being advertised for manufacture in the BuyMort sales app. It made me wonder just how these people were making them. Perhaps they also had a pre-BuyMort benefactor.

The scene faded to the Razorwing leaping into hyperspace, leaving a trail of light in its wake, as the logo and the tagline “Engineered for the Edge” appeared on the screen, followed by the most curious affiliate tag.

BROUGHT TO YOU BY NOMORT TECHNOLOGIES. BETTER MODELS AND EXOTIC ITEMS AVAILABLE ON SITE. SCHEDULE YOUR PHYSICAL APPOINTMENT TODAY.

I wasn’t sure what that was about, but it raised a lot of questions. I had a feeling this meeting was going to be a good one.

Our diplomatic escort brought us closer and closer to the glittering dot in the distance. The world ship was nestled neatly between the orbits of Nu-Earth and Venus, but it had been on the far side of Sol when we set out to reach it. Molls and my military leadership team had both agreed the break would be good for me.

And to my near-disappointment, I wasn’t needed for anything while we were in transit. It wasn’t that I minded the down-time; I just felt the need to be out there, to be doing something. But Inky hadn’t been seen since the incident on Terna’s world, and it was important to find out why.

The planet-ship was primarily covered in semi-translucent greenhouses, where food was grown, and power was gathered through solar arrays in each rooftop. It was so far away still that none of the rest of the crew could see it yet.

But my enhanced eyes and brain took in a wonder. A great, round, moon-sized ship with a cluster of massive engines tucked into its backside, and a dazzling, reflective surface. It was one of the brightest dots in the sky back on Nu-Earth, even beating out its neighbor, Venus. The world ship also had its own artificial moon, a reflective sail that cast soft light onto the ship’s night-side.

We floated into low orbit easily, and our escort craft moved ahead in a line to guide us in for a landing. As we came in lower, natural gravity started to gently take hold and lower me to the floor of the craft.

Molls still hung in her netting beside the window, coils everywhere as she snored lightly.

There was an open air spaceport awaiting us near the equator of the world-ship, on its night-side, and as we landed the captain informed us we were able to leave the craft without any protective equipment, that the atmosphere was breathable and the weather pleasant.

I frowned but settled in to wait for my explanations. My briefing on the world ship had been light when it first arrived. I was assured it had no weapons that would harm Nu-Earth, and given very little information about their defenses, which I found rational at the time.

There’s only so much we needed to share with one another in order to do business. It’s not like they had all the specs for the Crown of Thorns, after all.

I shook Molls lightly to wake her, and she stretched and yawned before realizing she was in gravity and extricating herself from the netting.

“We’re here?” she sighed.

“Yes indeed, just now landed. Waiting for the world ship’s welcoming team to arrive and escort us to their boss,” I answered.

She nodded and started getting dressed, wrapping herself in her traditional priest robes and activating the heater in preparation. Its coils glowed from inside her hood, and I smiled at my mate, before taking her hand and exiting our suite.

We were greeted by our own ship-board assistant, who stood from her desk beside our door and stepped into place directly behind us, holding a clipboard with our schedule. I had it memorized, of course, but the assistant would be useful to Molls, as she was splitting off after our scheduled dinner with Terna to explore the world on a tour. She was primarily there to spread her new word, one of mental and spiritual health care.

If successful in convincing her diplomatic contact that her services were needed, there was a good chance of setting up a clinic on the world-ship. If we could get MortBlock creep happening on Terna’s world too, that wouldn’t exactly hurt my feelings.

As soon as I stepped off the ship and checked the MortBlock status of the world ship, I knew that was not going to happen. The MortBlock was held by a single person, Terna NoMort. The entire MortBlock, covering the enormous construct. She owned every square inch of it, from the greenhouses sparkling on the surface to the reactor core at its heart.

There would be no MortBlock creep on Terna’s world. I would have to just deal with the hobb leader directly. She didn’t even have any subdivisions to it, which made me wonder if her people were allowed to have personal possessions at all. Not so much as a locker was separate from the primary MortBlock. I had never seen anything like it on a body the size of her world-ship.

We were on a rounded platform, on a spire-shaped spaceport. The towering structure had several round disks rising around its main building, to the point they obscured the building beneath, like a giant Christmas tree. Our landing pad had an oversized pathway that allowed vehicles leading inward, and a hover car was approaching our ship from the interior as we disembarked.

Our trio of diplomats were aboard the floating limousine, and stepped out to cordially greet us, along with a disparate trio of people. Assumedly Terna’s diplomatic envoy. But what got my attention was their species.

One was a hobb, but the others I’d never seen before. Not in any of my vast exposure to the BuyMort network.

One reminded me of a mordren but was tiny. Only three feet tall, at the highest tip of his horns. He was dressed in business garb of the BuyMort style, a black suit with silver pinstripes, and shiny black shoes. Seeing a mordren so small disorientated me momentarily, but the next creature I beheld was a complete shock.

By all appearances, he was a mole-man. He stood, stooped somewhat, with massive silver claws extending from each fingertip, and a long nose that tapered into a point.

Our trio of diplomats arrived at my side, and the human immediately whispered into my ear, “He’s a grimm. Don’t stare. He’ll take it personally.”

“What the hell is a grimm?” I whispered. “A mole-man?”

The human at my side flinched. “They have very sharp hearing, sir. I wish you hadn’t said that.”

“A grimm, my Nu-Earth friend,” said the grimm in a low, rumbling tone. “Is me. My people come from a world with no surface life, we developed much like your moles. Calling me a mole-man is not exactly inaccurate, but here on Terna’s World, it is considered quite uncouth. We are not moles any more than you are an ape.”

Molls slithered forward and bowed, lowering her head and greeting the grimm cordially with a light handshake. He was terribly careful with his claws as he reached for her own hand, and they smiled pleasantly at one another.

“Please excuse my mate. He is very direct and forthright, but his intentions here are friendly, I assure you,” she said. I frowned but nodded.

“My apologies, I uncover crass portions of my nature every so often, and regret that your first impression of Nu-Earth humans has been tainted by that personal failing,” I added, with a slight bow of my head.

“Oh, you are not the first, Warlord Dawes. Many Nu-Earth humans have come to live and work on Terna’s World. All who wish to escape the BuyMort are welcome,” the grimm replied. “My name is Huloo. Please be welcomed.”

The human at my side whispered in my ear again. “I’m Jane, our hobb is Hanga, and our Knowle is called Grange. Their hobb is Bordin, and their mordren is Gal’tank.”

“So that is a mordren?” I asked in quiet tones. “I’ve never seen one so . . .”

“Short?” Gal’tank replied from beside the limo.

I sighed and nodded, turning to face the approaching trio. “I apologize, I didn’t think my words through.”

“No, don’t be sorry!” said Gal’tank, cheerfully. “I am considerably shorter than the mordrens you employ or fight against, I take no offense. Not all of us follow the Path of the Dragon, and not all of us come from BuyMort-occupied worlds. I opted for a life of peace within the BuyMort, serving Lady Terna’s diplomacy department. It has brought me tremendous joy, and I do not regret my choice to ignore the Path.”

“Still, I am putting my foot in my mouth here, and it’s not terribly diplomatic,” I replied. “But, that said, I appreciate you letting me off the hook.”

“We were briefed,” said Bordin. “We expect, and even welcome some direct speech.”

The hobb was taller than most I had working for me, and his arms were slightly longer. Legs too, when I glanced at them. He was skinny for a hobb too, not covered in lithe muscle like those I was used to.

“Can I ask?” I started. “Are you indicative of the species living on this world-ship?”

Huloo shrugged and shook his mole-like face. “In the way that a window shows you the world outside, perhaps. There are a great many more people living here than just grimms. Many peoples that you of the BuyMort would simply not know.”

I stood still and thought for a long moment, watching as Molls made her way to the limousine. Only when she gestured to me did I step into motion and follow. The multiverse was bigger than even I knew.

What small portion of it I could see was only that which was within the BuyMort network. Somehow, on Terna’s World, they had access to more.

I slid into place beside Molls, and the others in the political delegation joined us. The hovercraft’s ride was smooth and its interior spacious. It drove us into the central pillar of the space port and onto an oversized cargo elevator. With a lurch of movement, we started heading down, into the depths of the World-Ship.

Chapter 56

When the oversized metal doors at our front and back slid open again, moonlight poured into the tinted windows. We pulled onto a full-sized city street, complete with buildings that reached up to the ceiling high above. Some of the structures reached directly up to the roof we all sat under, marring the otherwise beautiful artificial skyline.

I saw a bakery, and I reached out with my mind, trying to get a feel for the place by seeing some of their advertising. But, for the lack of better words, my BuyMort app faltered. A message materialized before my eyes, stark against the backdrop of my mind: “Error: Null and Void. The requested Multiversal Resource Locator entity cannot be accessed. Affiliate unregistered.” The words hung in the digital air, an enigma wrapped in the code.

Surprised, I tried again, this time looking out towards a grocery stand. Again, I got the same results, a confused app screen hanging in my head, and a chill ran down my spine. These businesses existed outside of BuyMort! It was either that, or else the world-ship was paying huge morties to block me from the ad network.

An ad for an unhackable BuyMort extension popped up before me and I swished it away, fascinated.

The artificial sky screens showed a mild evening, funneled from cameras on the surface. All around me houses and apartment buildings rose, and I found myself staring out the window of the hover-limo at the strange ship’s interior.

While the surface had been focused around growing food, the level we traveled through seemed to be focused solely on housing. As we passed side streets, I saw children of various species playing in alleys. Adults chatted and laughed with neighbors and drank from brown glass bottles or performed various household chores.

None of them so much as looked up as we passed.

The streets were clean, the structures maintained, and the people looked content, if not downright happy. With a simple raised eyebrow, I looked at Jane and she nodded.

“This is hab block zero-zero-one. Our meeting with Terna is at her personal residence,” she informed me.

“Very hospitable,” I replied.

“That’s our Terna. Direct, honest, and forthright,” said Huloo, his small eyes glinting as he gently smiled.

Our hovercraft navigated the streets slowly enough for us to take in the sights as we traveled through the hab block. We approached a far corner after a short drive and pulled onto a long driveway up to a normative-looking house.

It was made of mud-crete, like many of the residences in the hab block, but carefully shaped and molded to resemble brownish concrete. I was surprised at how well the material worked to create comfortable looking homes, when worked with enough time and effort.

Terna’s house was dual level, with a boxy garage attached to its side, and a large garden bunched between it and the dual corners it was shoved into. Vines crawled up the screen-walls, obscuring the view from outside near the ground, and most everything growing produced food of some sort or other.

I even noticed a small nest of winged insects, filing into and out of a box-shaped hive. They wandered between the various flowering plants, giving the impression of fat bumblebees with bright, pastel coloration.

A singular hobb woman stood in the driveway to welcome us, dressed in a black business suit with silver pinstripes. For the first time since I entered BuyMort, I felt as though that fashion choice was specifically for me.

It was what Terna expected us to expect, apparently.

I examined her closely, looking for tells. Terna's eyes were larger than those of an average hobb woman, and they sparkled with a gleam of inquisitive intelligence. Her figure was thinner and more lithe than was typical for her kind, a trait that, in another life, might have led her down the path of modeling in the pre-Shopocalypse world of Nu-Earth. There was a grace to her movements, a poise that spoke of confidence and self-assuredness. And the way Terna stood in the driveway, with her back straight and her head held high, suggested a figure born to command, or else forged to it through the hard trial of the BuyMort multiverse.

“Welcome, neighbors!” Terna greeted us. “I am so pleased you are able to visit our world-ship. Please, come in, I have a meal waiting for us.”

I smiled and nodded to the hobb woman, then turned and took Molls’ hand in my own. Her claws gripped my hand nervously, and her scales kept fluctuating between pink and yellow as we followed our host into her home.

As we stepped over the threshold into Terna's home, I glanced around, trying to take her measure. The room was modest, its surfaces worn smooth by years of use and care. Light filtered through small windows, casting gentle shadows over handmade rugs that looked tribal in design and nature.

“Did you make those?” I asked, surprised.

She nodded. “The BuyMort isn't the end-all nor be-all of manufacturing, Window Puncher.”

My eyes wide, I noticed that much of what I saw was handmade, presumably by Terna herself. The house itself was stone and wood, and a large dining table commanded the center of the room, surrounded by chairs that had each been built to a different design, none of them like the other. Above the fireplace, a collection of items caught my eye—each peculiar in its own right, from rudimentary tribal weapons to odd trinkets and even a hide-bound shield.

The air was thick with the tang of herbs and something sweet simmering over a fire, though where that fire was I couldn't immediately see from where I was standing. On the farthest wall there was mounted a peculiar bow, a quiver of arrows, and a blade, each cared for with a respect that spoke of their importance.

I arched an eyebrow, looking at her.

“Please, sit!” she said, gesturing to the chairs. The hobb woman walked to the far end of the table and sat at its head. Jane guided me to the other side of the table, facing directly across from Terna, and seated Molls at my right. Everyone else sat down in their chairs seemingly at random.

The diplomatic envoy teams were completely comfortable with each other. I suspected they were social outside of their work roles, watching the way they interacted. Jane, our human representative, even seemed to be lightly flirting with Bordin as they sat down next to each other.

When I looked up, I saw Terna staring at me from across the table, a tiny smile on her lips. When our eyes met, she raised a glass of clear water to me and took a sip from it.

The meal proceeded, with Terna getting up and serving us herself from the kitchen. At a glance, it looked like a team had cooked the elaborate meal, but Terna was making a point of serving it personally. She carried platter after platter to the table and set them down in front of each of us, filling the table with options before reclaiming her own seat and nodding to Bordin.

The hobb tapped his own glass of water and stood. In passable English, he said, “I would like to engage in a Nu-Earth tradition and offer a toast to this gathering. May we all walk away as friends.” He raised his glass and took a sip.

I frowned, but nodded and raised my own glass. Molls clinked hers to mine and we both took a sip. The rest of the delegation followed suit, and Bordin sat back down. There was little talking during the meal, which was mostly alien vegetable medleys with some cutlets of yarsp, to make us Nu-Earthlings feel more at home.

What talking there was consisted of Jane and Bordin flirting, and the rest of us making polite, idle conversation. Terna sat silently and watched, a small smile on her face as she watched each of us. She seemed to take particular interest in Jane and Bordin, watching their interactions with warm eyes.

Shortly before our meal finished, Terna stood. She looked at me, and nodded her head to indicate I should follow her.

“Ahhh, the diplomacy finally begins,” said Huloo. “And we poor diplomats must miss out.”

Molls smiled and raised her glass. “To backroom diplomacy, and all that it can accomplish.” She looked at me and whispered, “Behave, please.”

Huloo chuckled under his breath, and I stood to follow Terna.

She led me into a study just off the main dining room, and I was again struck by how modest her living spaces were. The study was small but held many treasures on the walls and large desk, I assumed from Terna’s various adventures.

There were two thick, comfortable chairs in the room, one on either side of the desk. As we passed by the first, Terna motioned toward it, before flopping casually into the chair behind her oversized desk. She lifted her feet, in modest dress shoes with silver pin-striping, onto the desk and sighed in relaxation.

“So,” she started, keeping a friendly tone to her voice as she spoke in near-perfect English. “Tell me, who do you think you are?”

I blinked. Her delivery was so friendly and polite, but her words were what I would normally consider hostile. “Excuse me?” I asked, confusion evident in my own voice.

“I want to know who you think that you are,” she repeated, her tone perfectly cordial. “There is so much out there about you now, so many images and videos, so many stories. I don’t know what to think of you, and I would like to. So tell me who you think you are.”

With a sigh, I sat back in my chair and looked up to the ceiling. “Your world has surprised me about once every ten minutes, and your question is no different. I guess I haven’t given a lot of thought to who I think I am.”

“Well, are you the ruthless warlord everyone says you are?” Terna asked.

“Sure,” I said with a shrug. “Though I doubt I would have called myself that. It was something that came out of my takeover of Arizona in the first week of BuyMort on Nu-Earth. Someone on the news said, ‘Warlord of Arizona,’ and it stuck. Besides, I’m only ruthless to my enemies.”

“It is good to be your friend and neighbor, so far. We’ve yet to find a solar system with such stability for the World-Ship, even considering our brush with The Blackguard. We cannot sell our food quickly enough to match demand. My people are all wealthy and happy here. They find you terribly convenient, and I have to admit that I do too,” Terna said. “I haven’t had to fight anyone for months. It’s been a wonderful vacation.”

“But you still want to know who I think I am,” I replied.

Terna smiled and nodded.

“I think I’m a guy who didn’t know how to stop going to work when my world ended,” I said. “I think I got lucky, got a relic welded onto my body, and survived what I shouldn’t have survived. This system is a meat grinder, and I’m just the random chunk of broken metal stuck in it.”

“The BuyMort is a ‘meat grinder?’” Terna asked, her gaze piercing me.

“How would you describe it?” I asked her back.

“A demon,” she replied without hesitation.

I smiled. “Hey, look at that, some common ground,” I said. “A demon though? BuyMort isn’t alive, you know that, right?”

Terna nodded. “I do, but it was a long road arriving at that determination. I was raised as a No-Mort.”

I blinked in surprise again. “What does that mean? Your team mentioned it when we landed, but I don’t understand the term.”

Terna frowned and shook her head. “The explanation is in the name. The No-Morts do not use BuyMort. This act protects them from it somewhat, and from the network it operates on. You would be hard-pressed to hire one of them or send an assassin after them. Most of our people are No-Morts. We’ve even got a few of your people working their way through the process to become a No-Mort.”

My heart rate rose at her words, but I maintained an external calm. “Please tell me more about No-Morts,” I said. “I was not aware that it was possible to avoid BuyMort.”

“Well,” Terna said. “If it’s in your universe, it’s not possible to avoid it. But, if you refuse to use or engage with it, and solely discard the advertisements it sends you, you will slowly cease to become part of the BuyMort network. It cycles through itself so often that it will simply forget about you if you don’t use it.”

My jaw dropped. “It cannot be that simple,” I said.

The hobb woman across from me laughed and took her feet off the desk to face me directly. “Oh of course it isn’t simple, but it can be done. And my people are all dedicated to the concept. It is a peaceful life. We wish for as many people to live that peace as possible. I am an enemy of the BuyMort, and the rumors say you may be one as well.”

I nodded, deciding to be completely honest with her. “My primary goal is to destroy BuyMort,” I said. “Now there are three people who know that for certain.”

Terna nodded slowly, her eyes wide and watching me. “I appreciate the gesture of trust. Allow me to repay it. Come,” she said. “Follow me.”

Chapter 57

Terna led me out of her study and back into the dining room. Molls and our assistant were getting ready to leave for her outreach meetings, and it looked like Jane would be accompanying them. It didn’t thrill me to be separated from Molls on an uncontrolled world, but Terna was already showing so much trust just having me on board her delicate and vulnerable world ship that I merely kissed Molls on the cheek and told her to have fun.

I struggled to imagine the world ship and its occupants becoming my enemies. I couldn’t see it happening, not after what I had heard in Terna’s study.

The possibility of escape from BuyMort!

Clearly, her operation on the world ship was built around the concept, so it wasn’t like it was easy or cheap. But life without BuyMort was possible, and that singular thought drove me.

I already owned a small empire, which was growing every hour, on multiple worlds. I was taking the Church away from its owners piece by piece, bit by bit. There was nothing that made me hesitate at a long process, if it meant freedom from BuyMort at the end.

So I followed the tall, thin hobb woman from her home and down her driveway. We walked casually, almost slowly down the road. She waved and smiled at the people, who all rose or lifted their bottles and glasses to her.

Children approached and were greeted with a smile, before she gently told them to go play and our walk continued. We approached the nearest exit, which was merely two blocks away from her driveway’s bottom. It was clearly marked as a door, but the screen-wall still covered it to look like twilight. The juxtaposition hurt my eyes, but as we approached it sunk into the ground to let us pass, revealing a dark, narrow corridor behind the wall.

She turned left, so I followed her. We walked side by side in the hallway, alongside piping and covered wiring with access ports at regular intervals. The utility tunnel ran far into the distance ahead of us, and overhead lighting clicked on as we entered darkened areas.

“You want our weapons,” Terna suddenly said. It was a statement, not a question.

“I do,” I said immediately. “I need to kill Inky, before they kill more of my people.”

“And destroy more of your affiliate,” she added.

I nodded, which elicited a smile from her. We turned at an intersection and walked deeper into the ship’s utility areas. On the occasion we passed a worker in orange coveralls, Terna greeted them warmly.

Try as I might, I couldn’t identify the species. They were short, hairy, and vaguely feline in appearance. Only came up to our waists, but happily accepted a quick scrub on the top of the head from Terna. When I smiled at one of the creatures, they quietly hissed and returned to their work, cleaning one of the many pipes in the lengthy tunnels.

“Our walk is long, would you prefer to take a tunnel tram?” Terna asked near another sliding door in the hallway.

I nodded, eager to get to the weaponry my people needed to defend themselves.

Terna nodded back and pressed a palm to the side of the doorway, on a reader pad. The door beeped and swiftly dropped into the floor. It opened onto an empty, railed tunnel, and Terna leaned in the doorway to wait.

With a sudden whoosh of air, the car we were waiting on arrived and slid its own doors open sideways to allow us entry. The car was only sized to fit four at most, and it jerked into motion at the press of a button on the side.

Terna looked out the window as the train car slid past another hab unit, this one filled with arboreal denizens and a thick artificial forest. I still saw pathways and roads between the base of the trees, but those seemed reserved for technical drones that maintained the forest.

All the people swung or clambered between the branches themselves, including a handful of humans. It was strange seeing them walk and run between trees on plank bridges, with the ape and lizard-like aliens that filled the other residences.

But again, the area was marked by peaceful cohabitation. Neighbors, to talk and share life with. A concept that had become foreign to my world because of BuyMort. We had cities, industry, businesses, and jobs, but rare indeed was a simple neighbor.

Most of the people residing in Prescott didn’t really know or care about each other. It was my giant machine that kept them all on the same path, mildly competing with one another to raise me personally up.

As our tram car slid around the hab unit, hidden from sight by the screen wall, I saw all the ways my society was failing its people.

I saw happiness, family, and peace.

All things I had a version of, but not in the purity of form that Terna had managed for her people. My affiliate focused heavily on those aspects of daily life for our military, but the rest of it ran by pretty stock-standard BuyMort rules. We were less brutal than most in the system by far, but Terna silently showed me what life under BuyMort could really be.

She showed me what it would look like if I actually prioritized a good life for all of my people, instead of the elite handful that kept us in power.

I watched in silence as the lesson sank in, and the tram car sped on its path. Once the arboreal hab unit was behind us, we were engulfed by more tunnels with railed walls.

“So,” Terna said. “What do you know of the BuyMort population numbers?”

I frowned and looked at my feet. “They’ve taken a steep dive since I rose to power,” I admitted.

“Indeed they have, across many worlds. You have destabilized the system that many lives rely upon,” Terna said. “By providing you a weapon, I will become part of that rolling wave of death.”

I shook my head and scowled. “So why are you?”

Terna smiled gently. “Because you are more right about the beholders than you know. Your convincing lie about their origins is shockingly close to the truth and removing them from our dimension is to the benefit of all.” She shrugged at me and continued, “The system was already unstable, already causing mass death on a multiversal scale. You appear to be consolidating power and resources to survive it, which I can understand more than most.”

I nodded and gestured to the world-ship all around us. “What is this if not a shelter from the chaos of BuyMort? I’ve been here for two hours and I can see what this place is, what it was built for, what you’ve made it into. A safe haven.”

Terna smiled again, this time with a hint of sadness in her eyes. “Yes, my own bunker from the universe. I can see why it would appear so, but my motivations in acquiring this technology were primarily for other beings. Are yours?”

I stared at her and thought for a long moment. “Yes and no,” I finally answered. “I am driven, compelled, required to destroy this thing that has us all in its grasp. From a personal standpoint, I have never hated, or desired the destruction of anything the way I desire it for BuyMort. At the same time, I know I must prioritize the protection of all life, wherever I can.”

“Yet you invade the Upper Planets, feed your enemies to your pet on television, and make war on the single most powerful entity within the BuyMort, your mate’s own Church,” Terna said. “You can see my need for clarity, yes?”

I nodded again. “Of course. I think, much like you, that this system is inherently harmful and damaging to the people that must live within it. I was given no choice but to become part of BuyMort, and I deeply resent that aspect of it. Why should my world have to suffer and die because of some idiot tool of trade? It doesn’t make sense to kill entire worlds for nothing but a quick mortie.”

“Then you meant what you said about Sleem, which I had assumed already given our intelligence on the situation,” Terna said. “This is good, I do not much care to associate Terna’s World with successful genocide, but . . .”

“Given the situation,” I repeated with a shrug, my eyes going back to my feet.

“You feel shame for this act?” Terna suddenly asked, mildly surprised.

“Of course!” I said. “From day one I hated and feared the Sleem, but I never thought I would be the one to actually snuff them all out. I didn’t want that, it was forced on me. Others who could have acted chose not to, buying anti-Sleem bunkers for themselves and their loved ones and ignoring the problem for the rest of us. But I certainly didn’t kill them for the morties.”

“But you did immediately sell the planet, making many morties,” Terna replied.

I nodded. “That’s what this system is. Everyone excuses the harm they cause by saying ‘if not me, then someone else.’ I feel like I take responsibility for my actions. The entire solar system of Sleem became a tool once they were all dead. And it was a tool I needed to fight the church. Now that the Sleem are gone, all of BuyMort has fallen to chaos.”

“Removing that many customers at once will do that to a market,” Terna said, nodding slowly. She kept her eyes pinned on my own as we spoke, watching my every movement and expression carefully.

I sighed. “Look, I’m sorry. I didn’t want any of this, but now that it's here and I have so many to protect, I can’t stop fighting. Not until the fight is over. Or I’m dead.”

She nodded again. “I understand. Which is why I will help you, I merely wish to know you while I do so.”

The car suddenly braked, then changed tracks at an intersection. We traveled a short distance further before it changed again, and we started moving upward. Toward the surface of the world-ship.

“The Blackguard is composed of dark energy, manipulating dark matter to create its shell,” Terna announced. “This is why you cannot see their attacks coming.”

“I’ve had my military scanning for Inky - sorry, the Blackguard since they started hitting us, but we’ve never managed to see any of the attacks coming. That’s because Inky is made of dark matter? Great, I know almost nothing about that concept.”

She smirked. “That is okay, neither do I. One does not need to know exactly how harsh the winter will be in order to prepare for it. That information would be helpful, certainly, but I can give you a tool that will work to harm The Blackguard. Even disperse them if you are persistent enough.”

“Disperse?” I asked, already knowing the answer. Terna and her people clearly knew the beholders better than I did.

“Yes, disperse. That is all you can do, alter their energy-form enough to disperse it, and prevent them from causing further harm in our dimension. They are fifth-dimensional beings, and so can only interact with our dimension through the use of energy manipulation,” Terna explained. “Their true forms are so tiny their entire universe is the size of a single atom in ours.”

“So they are extra-dimensional parasites!” I said. “I just thought they acted that way.”

“They do,” Terna replied. “No regard for sapient, matter-based life, due to their immortality as living energy. And their real selves are so tiny to us that we would never notice their activities at all if not for the monstrous bodies they build within our dimension. Otherwise they exist always just out of sight, within the curvature of space-time itself.”

I scowled, thinking about the implications. Terna knew way more about beholders than I did, and more than any of my Knowle scholars did. People who had spent their lives studying the creatures knew dramatically less than the hobb woman in front of me.

Her world was becoming a more important ally by the moment.

Chapter 58

The tram car slowed, and eventually came to a stop in the middle of the tunnel. Our doors opened, and a door in the wall slid up, allowing us to exit. Across the utility tunnel, another doorway slid open, and we stepped into a strange room with a solitary hobb seated at a console near a dark window, sipping from a steaming mug.

“Good evening Hroll,” Terna said cheerfully, and the hobb nearly dropped his drink. From the scent, it was clearly mush bug tea.

He set the hot mug down carefully instead, then swiveled in his chair and broke into a huge smile. “Lady Terna! What could bring you up here, and on my shift no less.” His face suddenly fell, and he grew frightened. “We’re not under attack, are we?”

“No, nothing like that, Hroll, you can relax,” Terna answered with a chuckle. “Sorry to worry you, I’m just showing a friend and ally our primary weapons system.”

Hroll’s eyes widened. “And you chose my dish to do it in?!” He stood and bowed, before smiling broadly. “Welcome! Allow me to light things up a bit.” There he paused again and looked at me, blinking a few times at my lack of attire, as well as my armored pants and boots. It was refreshing to go unrecognized for a change, but the hobb technician did serve to remind me how absurd I had become in the name of a system I hated.

“I sorry,” he stammered. “Should speak English.”

“No need,” I replied in fluent hobb. “I’ve learned your people’s language, including several regional dialects. Though your accent I can’t quite place.”

“No-Morts,” said Terna with another smile. “We’ve developed our own ‘regional dialect,’ as you call it, here on the World-Ship.”

“You mean on Terna’s World,” corrected the technician.

“I never agreed to that name,” sighed Terna. “At any rate, light her up for us Hroll. We have much to see and discuss.”

The hobb nodded and swiveled back in his seat, pressing a series of buttons before gently pulling down a large toggle on his console. As he pulled it, lights beyond the windows illuminated an inverted dome, stretching out at least three football fields in the distance. I stared as I took in more detail.

Along the walls of the dome were several oversized struts that all rose to the top, where a single spire of metal jutted from the floor. The central spire was conical at the base and narrow at the top.

“How much of a demonstration would you like, Lady Terna?” Hroll asked.

“Warm her up for us, won’t you? Ten percent capacity should be more than enough to show off, and won’t risk damaging the surface plates,” Terna replied.

“Yes, my Lady,” Hroll said, turning back to his console.

Terna rolled her eyes and quietly sighed, but perked up as the chamber outside the window began to glow brighter.

Energy traveled between the struts, racing up from the dish’s bottom and coalescing around the tip of the spire. It sparked and jumped from one strut to another, snaps and bolts of lightning jumping to and fro as if in play.

“What am I looking at?” I finally whispered.

“Multi-spectrum, multiphasic energy coalescence around a central laser pillar. It’s not good for extra-long ranges, but neither is The Blackguard, so that shouldn’t be an issue,” Terna said. “This weapon fires multiple frequencies, at multiple ranges of intensity, all at the same time.”

“What kind of energy are we talking about here?” I asked.

Terna puffed out her cheeks and chuckled while shaking her head. Hroll laughed out loud.

“How long do you have?” he asked, turning in his chair to look at me. “Microwave, gamma, high-intensity infrared, protons, electrons, antiprotons, antielectrons.” Hroll stopped to take a breath and I raised a hand to stop him.

“How do you fire protons and antiprotons at the same time?” I asked.

“Oh we don’t, it’s multiphasic. So we fire staggered bursts of all forms of energy this ship can harness, and it all reacts on impact,” Terna said. “I’ve yet to encounter something that could withstand everything being thrown at them the way this weapon platform does.”

I leaned to look out the window and focused on the spire. It was a gigantic, multi-barreled laser cannon barrel.

“What you’re primarily seeing is the over-charged electrons and protons. They get a bit uppity when they brush against one another in the dish,” Hroll explained. “If actually fired, the weapon would display considerably more light and color.”

“That’s plenty, thank you Hroll,” Terna said.

“Shutting it down, my Lady,” he immediately replied, turning to his console and reversing many of the commands he had originally made.

The dish area stayed well lit, and I stared at the weapon construct. It was too big to effectively mount on anything but the Crown of Thorns, and I seriously doubted many of our normal Boing ships would be able to even produce the energy needed to fire it. They all ran on fairly conventional power plants and engines.

“Assuming you have a large enough power supply, this weapon will unspool The Blackguard for you easily,” Terna announced.

“Just throw the kitchen sink at them,” I muttered.

Terna’s head cocked to one side, and she stared at me. “No, that would do nothing. The Blackguard would likely destroy it upon contact. You must avoid physically touching them during your battle. Overwhelming them with energy weapons is the only way to fight them. The dark matter body won’t interact with regular matter unless The Blackguard specifically chooses for it to. And then, it is explosively destructive. A kitchen sink would be a terribly ineffective weapon.”

“It’s a saying where I’m from,” I replied, still staring at the many smaller features in the chamber below us. Bubbles of metal and hatches showed, as well as a lot of shielded cabling. “A metaphor. It means use everything you have.”

Terna smiled. “I like this saying. It is very appropriate to describe this weapon. The only limitation on this weapon platform is the reactor it is attached to. It takes a great deal of power to fire even once.”

I thought about the multiple energy transfer and alteration processes that had to occur for what she described and nodded my agreement. “It will help defend our planets at the very least, even if we cannot find a way to field it in space.”

“Are your planets not in space?” Hroll asked from the console.

I chuckled and nodded, as Terna did the same.

“Apologies, many of my people live insular lives, with little awareness of the greater BuyMort system,” she explained.

“And why would we want to know that demon?” scoffed Hroll. “It offers nothing of value.”

I smiled and clapped a hand on the hobbs shoulder. “You’re absolutely right, Hroll. I like you, you seem like my kind of hobb. Thank you for showing us this mighty weapon.”

“Oh no, thank you for coming by. My shift has never been so exciting,” the smiling hobb replied.

Terna bowed slightly to the friendly hobb and turned to leave. “I will be happy to provide your affiliate with the building specifications, but you have more important issues to worry about right now.”

I frowned. “What do you mean?”

She waited for the door to close behind us before she said, “The Church has invaded the Nahgah Prime system with a relic ship of their own. It is currently en route to your ‘Crown of Thorns.’”

My eyes went wide, and I immediately pulled up my own communications pages. Almost none of the BuyMort attached comms worked on Terna’s World; she had a blackout for most forms of BuyMort-to-sapient communication.

But tucked away in my HUD was a missed call from Axle, as well as a message to respond ASAP. Both had come from Nu-Earth, via our own communications service. No surprise at missing them; I had turned off all my notifications when I sat down for my diplomatic dinner. I’d expected it to be much harder to convince Terna to support my cause, but as we took the tram back to her habitation unit, I realized I was being used.

“Oh why didn’t I see it before,” I sighed, watching as the arboreal hab unit rolled by again, in reverse this time. “You’re giving me the weapon so you don’t have to fight The Blackguard yourself, aren’t you?”

Terna winced, then shrugged and shook her head. “No. I’m giving you the weapon system because you need it, and you are my ally.”

She paused and took a deep breath before letting it out. “That is the worst thing about being part of the BuyMort. The lack of trust. The enemies behind every shadow. The capitalizing on one another. It never ends. I understand your suspicion and do not resent your accusation. If The Blackguard comes here, we will fight them. Same with the Church, now that we are officially aligned, militarily.”

I shook my own head. “I’m sorry I said it. That was rude, and I probably still have some lead poisoning. I was grown with it in my body and brain; it affected everything about my life, and I never even realized it.” With my head lowered, I nodded at myself. “Lead makes humans stupid and aggressive. Still, that is no excuse. You’ve shown me and mine nothing but kindness since we arrived. I was wrong to assume the worst of you.”

She smiled gently and reached across the tram car to pat my hand. “Think no more of it. I understand. You are of the BuyMort, it must be in your nature to mistrust those you do not know personally, or you would not have survived this long, even with your impressive relics.”

“Would you like some?” I asked. “We have some suits, even ships we could share in payment for your weapons technology.”

She chuckled and shook her head curtly. “No need for payment. This is a gift to a friend whose cause I support. Once the beholders and Church are dealt with, I suspect our worlds will become closer than ever.”

I nodded enthusiastically as the tram car changed directions.

“You can fly, yes?” Terna asked suddenly. I noticed that we were no longer on the same track we had been on before. The car’s movement felt like it was heading up.

I shrugged and sat back, awaiting our destination with a growing sense of unease. A relic ship from the Church was never a good thing. “Not exactly, but also yes. I can control my own gravity, which means I can fall in whatever direction I want at whatever speed I want.”

“Good, I am dropping you off at a nearby surface hatch. You’ll be able to see the spaceport and your landing platform from there. I would appreciate it if you refrained from calling a pod in sight of my people; it can be a frightening experience for them. Many suffered greatly at the hands of the BuyMort before coming to my world-ship,” Terna calmly explained.

“What about my people?” I asked.

“All are welcome here and will be safe; your mate included if you desire it,” she answered immediately.

“Oh, I don’t think she’d like that. I promised her she could come with me wherever I went,” I replied.

Terna scowled and then shrugged. “Very well, I will have her meeting interrupted and get her to your landing pad as well.”

“Oh crap, no don’t do that either,” I said, raising a hand. “She’s been talking about this outreach since we left Nu-Earth three days ago. I couldn’t take it away from her. Do you have a Terna’s World comm system I could use to speak to her instead?”

“Of course,” Terna replied, reaching for a panel at her side. From within it, she produced a handheld mic, like something off an old ham radio, and clicked the button on its side. “This is Terna NoMort. I need direct comms with a visitor. Molls Shevalanth, of the Nu-Earth delegation. Connect the call directly to Tyson Dawes’ ship.”

A tinny voice came back almost immediately. “Connecting planetary communications, my Lady.”

She sighed, but carefully kept her finger off the button. Then she pressed it and said pleasantly “Thank you!”

“You really don’t like that ‘my Lady’ stuff, huh?” I asked while the comms device at her side clicked and buzzed with light static.

“I despise it, but leadership has its costs. Among them, giving your people what they want,” she replied. “I would rather just be Terna to all, but they insist on elevating me above others with an archaic title. Any attempts to get it to stop are just met by consternation and upset. Easier to just let them call me what they like.”

“Kind of like my warlord title,” I said.

“A bit, yes,” she admitted, before standing and gripping a hand rail over our heads as the tram car began to slow. “We’re close to the surface exit now. I’ll open it from here.”

“Thank you, Terna,” I replied, meeting her eyes. “I’ll be back as soon as I can, but I wanted you to know how much I appreciate your help.”

She shrugged and offered a single chuckle, while the cart came to a complete stop. Then she punched a button and pulled the doors open with a lever. As she did, an external hatch opened as well, and I flew out of the World-Ship’s interior.

Chapter 59

The outside surface was confusing at first, a myriad of structures attached to greenhouses disorienting me with flashes of reflected starlight. But as I flew, the glittering grow houses faded out to a massive field of long grasses and gentle trees, and I knew I was heading in the right direction. Soon I saw the Christmas tree-shaped spaceport in the distance and hurtled toward it, careful to keep my speed below the sound barrier to prevent panic or damage to the world-ship. True to her word, Terna had dropped me off close by.

Once I landed and boarded our ship, I hurried to the bridge and activated our BlueCleave comm unit. The ship’s link was more powerful than my personal link. It would reach Nu-Earth faster. Not being able to use MortMobile was debilitating, and I smiled to think of the entire Church military apparatus being hindered in that way permanently.

I was only avoiding the service as a courtesy to my host.

My message to Axle was a simple request for information; I wanted to know where the new Church relic ship was going to be. I had to intercept it.

While I awaited his response, I pulled up Molls on the ship’s comm unit, before immediately transferring the call to my personal unit. She answered immediately.

“Terna’s people have told me. I’m on my way to the spaceport now.” It sounded like she was out of breath.

“Molls, we can’t use the ship. It’ll take way too long, and we’d be abandoning our diplomacy team if we did. We’ve gotta portal out,” I told her. “Are you sure you want to come with?”

“Of course I do. Where you go, I go. But Terna doesn’t want pods here!” she exclaimed. “She explained her BuyMort teams use them, but only from secretive ports near the engines, to avoid her population having to see them.”

“We have to lift off, fly into space, gravity haul far enough away to avoid being seen, and then summon our own instant pods,” I told her. “Unless you’d rather try using one down by the engines. I don’t, that sounds hot.”

“Yes, I meant to ask her about damage to the pods, but with the situation at hand, I just . . .” she trailed off.

“It’s okay Molls. Just get here as quick as you can,” I replied.

“I’m close by,” she said, her voice a bit shaky. “But flying into space?”

“I know,” I said. “This is your first time, isn’t it? I’m sorry; it’s going to be uncomfortable until we can get our pod.”

Molls lifted up above the edge of the platform then, her own glittering armor deployed already. I ran out of the ship and deployed my own, before taking her metal-clad hand in my own and nodding at her.

She looked up at the stars above us and swallowed hard. “Tyson, I’m scared,” she said. Her armor covered her scales’ reaction completely, but I could imagine the shade of yellow she must have been.

I squeezed her hand and nodded. “I always am too. You get used to it, but maybe we should try the engines.”

Molls took a deep breath and shook her head. “No, there’s no time for screwing around. I can do this. Let’s go.”

I nodded and gently embraced her, before activating my suit and pulling us up off the surface of the World-Ship. She helped, pushing in the same direction I was going, and we left the solid surface behind, to float into space behind the ship.

“Are you ready for a gravity haul?” I asked her. She shook her head, then took a few calming breaths before nodding without responding verbally. “Okay, here we go. Just a short one.”

I activated my suit’s gravity haul function and carried Molls with me as I went. It was only a half second of disorienting movement, but Molls gagged and clutched at me harder.

“Don’t throw up in there, my love. You won’t enjoy the experience,” I warned her, hurriedly ordering an instant pod.

It rippled into space at our side, and we waited for Axle’s return message with coordinates to arrive. The ship’s comms officer was waiting to forward it to my personal unit. It just had to travel through the vast reach between our worlds to arrive.

As soon as the message came, I input the coordinates he gave me, and the pod flashed us out of space with its rainbow beam.

We arrived in Nahgah Prime space, in high orbit of the planet’s moon. Our fleet was deployed from the Crown of Thorns and waiting. The Sand Stars were out front, with a few dozen Brisingida demolitions cruisers behind them, and the massive Crown of Thorns itself as a backdrop.

“Molls, quickly,” I said, and she nodded. She leaned her faceplate against mine briefly, before turning and flying away, toward the oversized ship at our backs. Within a few seconds, I saw her enter the ship through a door at the tip of one arm.

I felt much better about her being on board the Crown of Thorns before I turned to see the incoming relic ship we had to fight.

It hung there, two cones attached at the thick end, whirling toward us like a child’s toy. It glittered golden in the light of the solar system’s star, hovering silently in the distance. Then it separated, each of the cones extending away from one another while a great, glowing blue line unfurled from between them.

I started joining combat channels as I watched, the final being a direct line to the Crown of Thorns command bridge.

The oversized, cone-shaped ships pulled further apart from one another, and the glowing line started to lose first its color, then its glow entirely. Soon, the separated relic ship simply hurtled toward the fleet. I focused my enhanced eyes on the space between it that had been glowing a mere moment before and could make out almost nothing at all.

Merely a faint shimmer between the ships.

“What am I looking at here, people?” I asked, my voice taking precedence over the usual chatter.

“We are not sure, coordinating with Knowle Relic Research division as we speak,” replied Admiral Omen. “Hold a moment, we’re receiving a comms request from the incoming ship.”

“Take it,” I ordered.

“At once,” my admiral replied.

“Behold!” A grim voice announced. “The Thread of Fate has come to cleanse this system of Silken Sands heresy! The Church takes back its rightful ownership of this system, and all who stand in our way shall be cut down!”

A sudden blare of triumphant orchestral music torched our ears. In our eyes, the symbol of the Church of BuyMort appeared, dead center, but with an ominous, angry red fringe.

“The Thread of Fate. A gift of divine origin, made to punish those who sin too greatly against the divine might of BuyMort,” a voice spoke in ominous tones. “Many have risen against it. None have succeeded. BuyMort is supreme, BuyMort is necessary, and BuyMort’s voice is the Church itself. Its anger made manifest is the Thread.”

The symbol of the Church disappeared, replaced by a semicircle of five grim-faced and obviously high-ranking clerics.

“The Church is merciful, but it is also just. Those who defy the laws of the multiverse are given their retribution. But it is not too late. Repent and lay down your arms so that we may take you into our embrace!”

“Our advertisement is our warning, and our warning is our mercy. Ignore it at your peril. This has been a presentation of the Church's Ministry of Truth. Stay vigilant, stay faithful, and may the light of the Church guide you through all darkness, satisfaction guaranteed!”

The ad faded out, and everyone shared terrified glances. I started to calm them, but Molls cut in suddenly. “This is bad! Admiral Omen!” I heard her voice over the connection to the bridge, and realized she must have flown straight to it once she’d boarded the vessel. “Admiral Omen, pull your ships out!”

“What do you know?” he snapped back.

“The Thread of Fate is unstoppable! I’ve only heard of it in legends, childhood fairytales, but it always ends the same way! You cannot fight this ship. You must run!” Molls practically screamed. I imagined the hobb officers surrounding her, in case she needed to be restrained.

“Molls, what are we up against?” I asked. “What does this ship do, in your fairy tales?”

“It cuts entire worlds in two! Your ships won’t hold up against it. You have to run!” she screamed back.

“Fire thorns!” Admiral Omen ordered. “All Sand Stars, engage!”

The capital ship at my back suddenly unleashed hell, dozens of thorns streaking past me with a burst of electric blue light. My Sand Star pilots all flew at the craft, opening fire with their sandcasters.

The incoming relic ship glowed, from the fattest end of each cone, and the line between them became visible again. Each ship was so far apart that my fleet had to split to engage them, Sand Star frigates and the now-popular Buzzstar cruisers splitting into two fleets as they closed range.

I floated in space, my armor and fists my only weapons. But they would do, I decided, as I flew toward the incoming ship. As I approached, its scale became apparent, and the ship blocked out the stars behind it. The cones were big, each roughly the size of a Church battle citadel, just missing the boxy edges and gilded ramparts.

No, this ship was something else, designed for a specific role, a singular task.

The thorns impacted against a vibrant energy shield, all detonating against it and causing no damage to the ship itself. My Sand Star frigates were able to get through the shields, with their multitude of projectiles opening small portals in the thick shielding to blast away small portions of the hull.

But that’s all they were, small portions.

I flew up close, feeling the energy of the shield crackle as my armor brushed against it. But pushing through it at slow speed wasn’t an issue. Within seconds, I was inside its shield range and flying right at the thickest edge of the cone.

A familiar blast of energy streaked out from the cone’s ridge, the swirling ball of black and white energy striking me before I could react.

Lightning ran through my body, and my momentum continued. I slammed into the ship and bounced off, denting its armor plating and hurtling into open space beyond it. My second trip through its shield hurt much worse than the first, but it allowed me to pass.

“Admiral!” I shouted, my suit dark and growing colder by the second. But there was no response, my comms had shut off too. Everything, even my BuyMort menu and icon, were temporarily just gone. My ions had been robbed of charge, my entire suit was dead, and my own electrical field had been disrupted enough to momentarily kill my connection to BuyMort.

This thing was all the Church had told us it was, and more.

Chapter 60

The system rebooted, my mouth suddenly filled with the taste of burnt tin once more. The icon in my vision returned, and I almost sighed in relief.

“BuyMort! Prince Rupert’s Drop! Now!” I shouted again. At my demand, a pod ripped into place at my side and deposited a cardboard box, which was immediately lost to space as I continued hurtling away.

As I went, I flipped end over end, and was able to see the battle playing out in small pieces.

The same thing that had happened to me, was happening to all of our Sand Stars, and even the Crown of Thorns. The cone-shaped ships ignored the smaller craft after hitting them with their transdimensional ion pulse cannons but sent a continuous stream of ion pulses at the COT. One followed another, striking the ship and rippling out across its surface.

“BuyMort, I need a Prince Rupert's drop, delivered without packaging, directly into my right hand!” I yelled. A screen popped up before me, BuyMort One Second Delivery, with an exorbitant 7 figure transport fee as well as a box that I had to check with my mind that indicated additional fees might be added to it depending on local conditions. I groaned at the inanity of it all but paid the fees anyway. A second later, a portal opened before me, and there was no pod. Just simply the bulb itself, spinning lightly, rolling into my outstretched hand.

I seized it. Gripping the bulb tightly, I heaved my armored, freezing body into position to break its tail.

When I pinched it, the entire thing blossomed in every direction, tiny shards of glass floating away as my suit hummed back to life. Heat and air returned, and I took a deep breath before steadying myself in space and turning back to face the combat I had been cast aside from.

“Omen!” I shouted, my comms kicking back in with the suit’s charge. “It has ion pulse cannons. Get the fleet back! Pull away, use the gravity drive to-” I stopped as I watched the Thread of Fate slice an arm free from the paralyzed Crown of Thorns.

My capital ship was moving up, out of its path, but the cones were fast, and the seemingly empty space between them cut through my ship like a knife through a cloud.

“Each hit from their transdimensional pulse ion cannon is taking our gravity reactor offline for a fraction of a millisecond. We have no offensive capabilities. The ship can barely keep itself together,” reported Admiral Omen.

“Get out of there!” I yelled. “Get away from their relic ship! Gravity haul out!”

“Agreed,” came the stoic reply from Admiral Omen. The oversized ship became larger as it moved out of range of the Church’s relic weapon.

The Crown of Thorns grabbed its own arm with the gravity drive and pulled it back into place as it went, sealing the wound with deployed armor plating.

My smaller ships chased the Thread of Fate but were unable to do anything to stop it. The cruisers that got close enough to engage were all hit with a pulsed ion shot and drained of all charge like I had been.

Space in its wake glittered with drifting Sand Stars and Buzzstars alike, all drained of charge. The Crown of Thorns lurched, gravity hauling out of the area suddenly and leaving a clear line of sight to the moon and planet below.

The Church’s relic ship kept going, its cone-shaped parts far enough away from each other to pass on either side of the planet. I watched in horror as the moon suddenly crumbled. Explosions arose from its surface in a line, the many settled areas destroyed as easily as my capital ship’s arm had been cut loose.

The Thread of Fate proceeded to slice the entire moon in half, causing mass devastation on its surface as it did, until the planetoid body simply crumbled and burst, shattering against itself and wiping out all life in an instant.

“BlueCleave military on Nahgah Prime! Evacuate everyone to Storage, right now!” I yelled into my comm unit. “Get every living being you can off that planet within the next sixty seconds!”

“Oh, BuyMort . . . no!” I heard Molls whisper, tears obvious in her voice.

“Get off the planet, as fast as possible!” I yelled again. “What the hell is this ship!?”

Axle’s voice sounded in my head, through a MortMobile connection. “It’s a cosmic string,” he whispered, in awe. “This shouldn’t be possible. What do we . . . how . . .”

“Just get those people off that planet!” I shouted, to anyone who could hear me and do what I said. But even as I flew toward the world, I saw the line form on its surface, fire and destruction spreading from the cut while it deepened further and further. It severed entire root colonies, collapsing untold tons of wood and cities into the swamps below. Magma erupted from the great wound, earthquakes shook the continents apart as I watched, and billions of people died in seconds.

BuyMort pods and facilities were destroyed, but the cosmic string had the benefit of being classified as a natural disaster by BuyMort, so no bugs were called, no response was made. The planet of Nahgah Prime simply died.

Part way through the planetary cut, the world began collapsing in on itself. The string’s effect was miles wide and cut a trench through the world that was visible from space. Within seconds, the tectonic instability and planetary gravity kicked in and crushed what was left in its wake.

I watched, mouth agape, as the entire planet smashed in on itself, spraying earth and stone into space. Then the mantle became exposed, and molten metal gushed out of the world like its lifeblood. When the cosmic string interacted with the planet’s core, the entire world erupted into fragments.

The Thread of Fate was fine, its monstrous shields protected it from the incoming, high-speed debris until it could jump to FTL and vanish. My own fleet, however, suffered many casualties. I darted from ship to ship, using my own suit to shove them out of the way with short term gravity hauls, but I drained my charge too rapidly in the task, and three dozen of my best and brightest pilots died in the fiery hell of the planet’s demise.

Some of my fleet had managed to get their ships recharged with their own emergency PRDs, and escape the battlefield, but more of them died than survived, all while I dodged fireballs and great splashes of mantel hurtling in my direction.

Finally, I used the last of my charge to gravity haul out of the area, in the direction I had seen the Crown of Thorns go. The wave of flying debris thinned the further out it got, and the Crown of Thorns was waiting to catch me as it used its restored mastery of gravity to deflect the remains of a dead world.

I hung in space, tears in my eyes as my great capital ship slowly dragged me aboard. “Molls,” I whispered. “What can I do?”

“Just get here, please,” she moaned, tears obvious in her voice. “Hold me.”

Chapter 61

Blasting forward through space at breakneck speed, I dodged through the whirling debris, flying past spinning rocks and red-hot, molten mantle as I made my way towards her. A large geode flung by, almost battering into my side, its hollowness cracked open and the glittering dust of its minute crystals lazily arcs in swirls around it.

I had to be careful. This entire area had become a death zone, and I wouldn’t be any good to Molls if I let myself get pancaked by planetary debris.

Soaring through space, dodging and pirouetting when necessary, I came to the ship and cycled through the airlock, its gears whining and grinding as the air hissed around me, and debris clattered against the armor plating. Hurrying through the corridors, I burst onto the bridge and collected her, taking her out and flying us down to our residence nearby.

Once there, she sobbed uncontrollably for ten minutes before calming. It was difficult, but I ignored all the notifications, ads, and comms requests that came into my personal link during the chaos that followed the Church’s attack.

Nagah Prime, namesake of the Nah’gh people, was gone. Half of our relic fleet was gone. I thought of the scarring in the ice giant near Midnight but pushed the thought away.

Instead, I held my mate and listened to her cry.

Her entire world, not just upended, but crushed entirely. And it was, yet again, my damned fault. I’d brought the war to her doorstep when I refused to let the Dearth Conglomerate kill her, way back on day one of BuyMort. Not like there had been much choice.

As she laid in my arms, clutching at me and sobbing for her lost home world, I thought of my own. Of the first days again, the choices I made, the path I set us all on. I was that chunk of metal in the meat grinder I had told Terna about, without any doubt. Only now, the machine I had broken was getting other people killed.

A lot of other people.

I silently ordered a heavy dose of Nah’gh-safe sedative, and ignored the pod that delivered it. Once Molls had settled enough, I offered it to her, and she gladly swallowed the pill. She was desperate to be unconscious, rather than face the reality of our new world, without her home planet in it.

Within seconds, she was in a deep, mercifully dreamless sleep that would last for hours. And I was free to deal with my affiliate in the wake of our most devastating defeat.

When I floated up to the bridge, the crew was silent, merely watching me as I approached Admiral Omen.

He stood and offered me the command chair, which I took, slumping into it with a sigh.

“Report,” I said.

“Nahgah Prime is gone, but so is The Thread of Fate. It jumped to FTL shortly after destroying the planet. We are in the process of recovering what remains of our fleet, and await your orders on how to proceed,” Admiral Omen said, his back stiff and eyes staring straight ahead. Directly past me, to the COT’s damaged arm.

Repairs were already well underway, with what appeared at first glance to be over a thousand starfish drones buzzing around welding at the slash in our capital ship. At least it looked like that was going to be temporary. We had never been the enemy’s primary target. They had always meant to take away my only fully owned Upper Planet.

Using a cosmic string. Until that day, a theoretical side effect of the big bang that had birthed one universe from another.

One dimensional space, trapped within three dimensional space, in the form of a miniscule thread a single atom in width. Admiral Omen flicked me scans of the ship, visuals and technical capabilities. It, like our own relics, rebuffed most of our scanning technology. But the Admiral was classically trained when it came to the military arts, and redundancies were always part of that training.

Observational records showed a glowing blur between the two ships that controlled the cosmic string. Cameras were nearly useless, as any sufficient zoom showed nothing but a zone of blue-lit energy, blinding the sensors to anything else.

But I watched the footage closely and saw as the ships came to full-extension that the line wavered. The cosmic thread’s containment was imperfect, allowing it to swing wildly once fully extended. We had gotten lucky it hit us when it did, or it would have carved the Crown of Thorns into atoms, instead of just slicing off an easily repaired arm.

Admiral Omen had closed range to use the gravity drive against it, but its use of what appeared to be several transdimensional pulse ion cannons had been effective in preventing the COT from engaging it effectively.

Sand and Buzzstars began to enter my capital ship, hauled in by the gravity drive once our recovery teams in freshly charged Buzzstars brought them to the Crown of Thorns. They were set into their docking ports and began charging as their pilots disembarked.

I fixated, watching each of the hobbs as they climbed out of their ships. I’d never seen them so demoralized. Medical crews met them on the tarmac, but none of the pilots that had survived were physically hurt.

We’d just been overpowered for the first time since our warband had formed. As strong as I had become, a single blast from our stolen cannon had rendered me useless. I watched, helpless, spinning through space and slowly freezing while my fleet had been scattered, and my mate’s home world annihilated.

And my enemies complained that I was too powerful.

As if to hammer the point home, a powerful broadcast battered across my consciousness, multi angled footage of our fleet getting its ass kicked. At the bottom of the footage came the news chyron, filled with large and intense words, accompanied by a deep voice speaking them enthusiastically enough to make me growl.

BREAKING NEWS! WINDOWPUNCHER DEFEATED! SILKEN SANDS ON THE ROPES. IS THIS THE END OF TYSON DAWES? STAY TUNED!

I’d just been shown what power looked like. The Church, rather than accept the loss of an Upper Planet, had chosen to remove it from the board entirely.

That changed the game we played.

“Admiral Omen,” I barked suddenly, causing the entire bridge crew to startle, except the man I was yelling for.

“Yes, Warlord!” he shouted back, still looking straight ahead.

“I want targets. Upper Planet targets, through the gate. You have four hours to get that program operational,” I growled, before lifting off the deck and heading to my room again.

Molls was still asleep in our bed, as safe as she could be, and I winced to realize I wouldn’t be there when she woke up.

“Yolara Brinks,” I said quietly, summoning her image in my helmet with MortMobile.

“Hello, Warlord Dawes,” she said, bowing her head in greeting. “I’ve been expecting your call. I’ve taken the liberty of setting a press conference. Would you like it in Prescott or Elevator Station?”

“No presser, just an interview. I want it on Midnight,” I said. “I’ll pay for Shalla and her team to travel both ways and guarantee their safety. They get the exclusive.”

Yolara’s ears flattened, but she nodded and made a small notation on her clipboard. “Midnight, exclusive interview, understood. Will . . . will my attendance be required?”

“Only if you want to come,” I said. “Not everyone gets to visit the delf home world.”

She smiled tightly and nodded once. “I’ll pass, thank you, if my presence is not strictly necessary.”

“I won’t force you to go anywhere you’re not comfortable going,” I said. “Just get me that interview.”

“She’ll jump at the chance,” Yolara said, before disconnecting our call.

The gray face in the fog smiled at me, before whispering, “Thank you for easing my burden.”

I realized he was talking about Nahgah and gritted my teeth. “It’s about to get a lot lighter. Just stay tuned,” I growled.

“Axle,” I said next, calling the Knowle, wherever he was. Even I never knew his location, which constantly changed.

“Fearful acceptance,” MortMobile said, then turned aside to link our call.

“Yes?” Axle said. “How can I help?”

I sighed and shook my head. “I need to know how bad it is. What we’ve lost, what our capabilities are when it comes to getting it back.”

“Well, it's not good. We’ve lost the single most profitable planet in our portfolio. Your warning to BlueCleave on the ground had some effect. We’ve seen a major surge in Storage from Nahgah Prime. But it looks like millions. At the most, perhaps ten or fifteen million people,” Axle said. “I’m keeping an eye on the numbers, things are still coming in.”

“That means billions are dead,” I said, slumping.

“It does,” he said. “To say nothing of the financial hole we are now in. A great deal of morties was spent on planetary infrastructure, and most of it had not paid itself off before the planet’s destruction. Of course, a great deal of the affiliates we owe those morties to have been annihilated with the planet, so there’s no way of knowing how bad our losses will be just yet.”

“Keep me posted. I have a way to keep the media’s focus off our loss, but it won’t be pretty. Be ready for more conflict, and perhaps a way to make morties off it,” I told him.

Axle nodded, his ears flat and lips tight. Then he cut our connection.

I ordered an instant pod then, using it to portal directly to Midnight. I stepped through, into a BlueCleave forward base near the village’s meeting square. They were already setting up for an interview, so I stopped them with a shout.

“Not here! We’re setting up all the way down below!” I yelled, stopping the activity around me. A large, semi-circular desk was already being assembled, but the techs stopped working and looked up at me in confusion.

A hobb commander approached, saluting before awaiting my instructions.

“In the old city ruins,” I said, turning toward the commander. “We also have to evacuate every delf on this planet, as quickly as possible. Get them to our other worlds, use as many portals as you need. Make it happen, commander. Find Justin Lee to help you.”

The hobb saluted again and turned to marshal his forces. Within moments, hobbs and Tower golems were scrambling all over the village. They started the long-expected evacuation of Midnight.

Our delf on the ground, Justin Lee, had already been preparing the town for this eventuality. He had spoken at length of new worlds, with easier work to make something for themselves. His knowledge of other delf encampments and settlements had been invaluable, as it had led to other delves, with more knowledge of their world.

Their numbers were in the high hundred millions by the time I decided to use their planet as a piece in my great game against the Church. BlueCleave had a presence in each place we had found delves. They had set up bases, fortifications, and dug in to get ready for a fight.

I patched into the primary BlueCleave communications network for the planet, being run by a small handful of ships in high orbit.

“All BlueCleave personnel on Midnight, this is Warlord Dawes. Evacuate your populations of delves and prepare for battle. Be ready to evacuate yourselves if the order goes out. Portals will be available for all, from the primary affiliate account,” I announced, before setting up the service to do exactly what I had claimed it would.

Axle likely would not be happy with the expense, but I wasn’t going to risk the Thread of Fate showing up and destroying another planet full of people.

Chapter 62

My personal guard worked to get the items we required down below, through the tunnels and into the ruins of the delves’ former city. Shalla and her team arrived via portal from Nu-Earth, outside in the square.

I ignored them, allowing my hobbs to corral the team and confiscate their equipment. They were treated gently, but firmly, and told they were not welcome to wander or record while on Midnight.

Of course, I was aware that one of their cameramen had ocular implants. They allowed him to record anything he saw and upload it directly as it was being recorded if he so desired. I quietly gave orders to BlueCleave that would control what he was allowed to see and waited for the results.

Whoever he was uploading the video to was likely to be unhappy about the contents of that video, which I was counting on for my interview.

I watched the human from a distance, as he slowly scanned the area, focusing on any House of None delves who wandered by. He would catalyze an attack against Midnight, which I hoped would not come from the Thread of Fate. I needed that ship, and the cosmic string it contained, but I didn’t feel ready to face it in combat again just yet.

At the very least, I needed to destroy it before it took any more worlds or lives away from my affiliate. Something cold came over me as I watched the man record his surroundings, and I used that cold to smile at him when he focused on me.

A rare shot of me out of my helmet would also push the Church in the direction I wanted them to go. After the demise of Nahgah Prime, I was going to need some humanizing for my public image. Once again, I decided my enemies should do that work for me.

When I stopped smiling, the man quickly looked away, blinking rapidly as he uploaded the images and video to the highest bidder. A Church associated affiliate, I had no doubt.

Within an hour of the team’s arrival, we were trekking down through the tunnels and mineshafts that lead to the ruins of an ancient delf city. Once we arrived, with everyone wearing respirators and breathing tanks, my hobbs began setting up several large, broad-bottomed cauldrons filled with heavy water.

Above them were tall tent tops, that would help keep the gasses down at our level, to be breathed instead of just floating away to the roof of the cavern and beyond.

The largest breathing setup was hidden directly in front of the round table the interview was to be conducted at, but we set up a handful more for the camera crew and security teams. Many BlueCleave kept their masks on and ranged in patrol but were far enough away to keep them off the cameras entirely.

The Knowle archeology teams had been evacuated before we arrived, along with all their gear. They were not happy about it, but with the battle I had planned to invite, there wasn’t any choice. They could study what was left when I was done with the place.

A few minutes later, Shalla sat across the desk from me, breathing the effervescent fumes from boiling heavy water nearby. She had no papers to adjust or fiddle with, and so leaned forward on her elbows and clasped her claws together to begin our interview.

“Nahgah Prime,” she said. “Why don’t you tell us what happened, in your own words?”

“The Church destroyed an Upper Planet, rather than see it legitimately transfer into the hands of superior management,” I growled, fists clenching and unclenching as I spoke.

“The Church, not the cult within it?” Shalla asked for clarity. Her scales were tinged lightly purple, which drove my anger further.

“I no longer believe there is a difference,” I answered. “My investigations have uncovered cultists at the highest levels of Church management. The cult runs the Church, as evidenced by Nahgah Prime’s destruction, and the death of billions. No proper affiliate would behave in such a destructive manner. Besides, the Thread of Fate ship announced that it was there on behalf of the Church. We have recordings to share. Your team should be receiving them now.”

“A heady accusation,” Shalla said. “Are you saying the entire Church apparatus is controlled by this cult?” Her words nearly dripped of derision.

“Of course not,” I snarled, cracking the new wooden desk under my fingertips as my hands stiffened in anger. Shalla’s scales went from purple to yellow, and I nearly smiled. “The Church is a massive organization, with trillions of employees. I’m obviously referring to affiliate leadership.”

“That is still a weighty accusation, Warlord Dawes,” Shalla replied calmly, the color in her scales deepening. “Especially without any Church leadership here to refute it.”

“Right, because you have to hear from both sides of a disagreement to get a clear picture of that disagreement,” I mocked. “What unique nonsense. Only for-profit media would have that perspective. Any sapient creature left alive in this system can easily see the aggression and mass death being handed out by the Church.”

“Suggesting that the media should not be for-profit? Are you so against the teachings of the Church you would advocate for media slavery? Make us all work for free?” Shalla asked, sneering.

Without waiting for me to respond, she continued. “Some would argue that you are the cause of that aggression, that your actions are not sanctioned by the Church at all and are, in fact, against the best interests of the general BuyMort population,” she said. “Which, I’m sorry that I have to point out, has declined drastically since your rise to power.”

“Yes, it has,” I admitted. “It really has. A lot of people are dead that wouldn’t be dead if only I had laid down and died for The Dearth Conglomerate’s greed. But, if I had done that, my affiliate’s priest would have been assassinated, she and I never would have fallen in love, and you wouldn’t have the cushy job you have now.”

I took a breath as her scales flickered from yellow to pink.

“Look, I’ve only ever done what BuyMort has allowed and encouraged me to do. I follow the tenets of BuyMort, unlike our enemies within the Church. I’m not a servant of The Dearth Conglomerate, the Sleem, or the Church. I recognize harm when I see it, and I try to minimize that harm,” I explained carefully. “I am not the cause of this system’s instability. I am simply responding to it.”

Shalla sat forward and raised the scales above one eye. “Are you telling us that your affiliate no longer works directly for the Church?”

I nodded. “I am. The Church has become something it was never meant to be, due to corrupted leadership. I’ll happily dare anyone to honestly refute that claim, including Church leadership. Everyone who works for the Church knows what it’s become. They have to live it every day.”

“I would just like to take a moment to reinforce that the views expressed here are not views that this broadcasting associate shares in any way,” Shalla said. “We need to take a small break and confer with our affiliate leadership. The interview will very likely continue shortly, so do please stay tuned.”

When the lead cameraman gave us the all-clear, I focused on his eyes to see the miniature cameras there still recording. They physically zoomed in or out when he focused on different objects, an easy tell to the hidden recording tech.

“What the hell are you dragging me into?” Shalla hissed at me.

“Worst case, your untimely demise,” I snorted in reply. “Won’t bother me if it happens. Don’t know if you’ve figured this out yet, but I don’t like you very much.”

“The feeling is more than mutual,” Shalla snarled.

“Oh, I’m sure it is,” I muttered, staring at her cameraman. He’d begun to sweat, in spite of the chill temperatures in the cavern. The cauldron at his back was heated by an electric burner, but it wasn’t heating the area very much at all; certainly not enough for him to be sweating.

I smiled coldly and turned back to face Shalla. “You may want to take cover instead of continuing this interview.”

Her scales flashed yellow, and she scowled at me. “What? Why?”

“Because your lead cameraman has been using his implants to send our location to someone since well before we started filming. How much do you trust your team?” I asked.

She glanced at the man, who was pretending not to hear us. Then she blinked rapidly as her scales went through a shifting series of colors.

Doubt, fear, anger, even impatience all flooded through the Nah’gh woman’s scales as she watched my impassive face for any hints of what I was planning.

“When they come, they’ll come for you too,” I slowly said, meeting her eyes. “For daring to show this place to the greater BuyMort system.”

The production manager suddenly began counting down, letting us know we were coming back to live MortMobile television, and that our interview had been cleared to continue. The morties coming in from advertisers were too much to ignore.

When his countdown stopped, Shalla got control of her expression and turned in her seat to face me.

“Tell us more about this location, Warlord Dawes, and why you chose it for this interview,” she said, pausing to directly address the cameras. “During the break, he was explaining that the location was chosen specially, to make some kind of point to our audience.”

“It was,” I agreed, nodding. “We’re on Midnight. Specifically, in an archaeological site. My scholars found an ancient delf city, predating BuyMort’s arrival on this planet by thousands of years.”

Two of the three cameramen began sweeping the ruins around us, gathering images and video for the multiverse.

“I wanted your audience to see what we’ve discovered, to share the mysteries of Midnight with everyone,” I began, leaning forward to show real interest. “You see, we’ve discovered something important down here, regarding the great delf houses.”

Shalla blanched and turned vibrant yellow. “Do please be careful how you present this information,” she said. “Our audience is less receptive to threats and lies than you may be thinking.”

“Oh that’s just your own personal bias against me showing. I haven’t come to threaten anyone. During this horrible time, when Nahgah Prime has just been destroyed, and billions of lives have been lost, people need an uplifting story,” I said, turning to point at the ancient structures all around us. “You see, we’ve discovered the origination point of the greatest delf house in BuyMort. The House of None.”

Shalla frowned and cocked her head to the side. “I’m sorry, did you say ‘greatest’ delf house?”

“I did,” I replied. “By far the oldest of the great houses still active, and it has a population larger than all the other great houses combined. And they were abandoned here, on a world with little air. In spite of their challenges, we have uncovered tens of millions of delf people living on this single planet. Who knows how many more are on other Midnights, in other universes.”

Shalla gasped, and turned to face the cameramen, drawing a claw across her own throat as she stood and slithered over to their cauldron. She was so yellow that another permanent ring had formed.

“We have to leave, right now!” I heard her exclaim to their director.

“You really should,” I agreed with her. “My hobbs won’t be able to protect you all.”

“It’s not us they’ll be coming after you idiot!” Shalla snapped at me. “Your precious House of None will be wiped out before the great houses will accept such blasphemy!”

“Blasphemy? Against another sapient?” I chuckled. “Impossible. But you should go. I’m spoiling for a fight, and you were nothing but bait. Get gone while you still can.”

In the distance of the cavern, I saw the sudden motion of a BuyMort pod in flight. It had dipped in from the other side of the ruins, coming down through one of the great structures. I had to wonder briefly if there was a withered fruition center in that spire somewhere, before smiling at the small army of delves that portaled in.

Each of them was armed with yellow light-edged melee weapons and linear rifles. A small group was even setting up a portable transdimensional pulse ion cannon, bolting it into the cavern floor.

The fight I wanted had arrived.

Chapter 63

“BlueCleave, attack!” I roared, flying into the air to draw the enemy’s fire.

My enhanced vision picked out hundreds of delves as they portaled in, each in expensive powered armor, carrying expensive weaponry. My own troops started shooting, hitting shields and armor, and picking the occasional enemy off with a well-placed or powerful enough blast of energy.

In my head rolled the unbidden sound of dramatic orchestral music, swelling in intensity. I snarled as I saw the image of our battle being broadcast to untold trillions of beings across the multiverse. An ad from CTV for the very broadcast I was the subject of. What an algorithmic genius BuyMort could be.

A dusky voice echoed through my ears. “A monumental showdown unfolds in the heart of Midnight as Silken Sands heretics defy the justice of the Church. Despite an array of cowardly tricks and traps, the battle is progressing well, the engaging forces confident that victory will soon be at hand.”

The obvious bias was hilarious, and I barked a laugh. That was going to be a hard claim to back down from after all was said and done. I fully intended to force CTV to issue a retraction.

I followed the movements of the enemy delves and was hit with another ad, reeling at what must have been the high-bids involved with shoving it down the throats of the news viewers.

Vidal Power Armor - millennia of innovation, service, and honor, fit exactly to your body and needs.

Crafted from the rarest materials across the universes, each suit of armor represents the pinnacle of duty, each alloy soaked in the sacred blood of saints and heroes. Designed for the elite, now on sale for all, these suits are not just the best in defense. They hold the power of the Holy BuyMort itself.

From energy-efficient shielding to adaptive electro-camouflage that blends with any environment, delvish armor is not just here but now open to the public, available for a limited time only.

10,000,000 morties, 5 stars

I shook the ad away, surprised. It made the armor look all-powerful, but I recognized what it was, with the pleading for more morties evident in the fake star rating, the high price, and the certainly exaggerated claims.

As more enemies arrived, I saw that they came in a desperate mix of many types. Some of the soldiers acted elite and experienced, well-trained and ready for the fight, but others were obviously there against their will, terrified draftees struggling to maintain fire in the face of my forces.

Wealthy children of elite delf families, pressed into knighthood and military service with only perfunctory training.

I pitied them.

Not enough to stop what was coming for them, but I did feel a brief moment of empathy.

Many of the Church soldiers had shields to overcome, and a handful were even capable of flight. They clearly expected our starfish suits in this encounter. The delf warriors looked impressive, in their matching uniformed armor. My warriors actually were impressive though, and quickly began racking up kills while the enemy was still portaling in.

The shotguns were still in play, but mostly by my shock troops who could fly. Everyone else on Midnight was using high-quality plasma weapons for ranged combat, even if it was just plasma ammunition fired from their favored Highwater Blasters. It was effective against both armor and shields, making it ideal for combat against Church troops. The only downside was the extreme expense per round fired, comparatively.

I had no idea how much it cost to fire the linear rifles my enemy was equipped with, but they weren’t being shy about spending the ammunition against me. I was pursued across the ceiling of the cavern by near misses, and the rain of stone chips all around me.

My flying hobbs carried Tower golems into the fight with them, hauling each by the collar of their armored suits and dropping them to horrify and tear apart my enemies.

Their unending requests for friendship were almost as disturbing as their raw physical capability. Each took massive amounts of damage before they went down permanently and were capable of ripping apart even Stat Shot enhanced delves.

The enemy hadn’t gotten their transdimensional pulse ion cannon fully set up yet, so I struck that area first. I landed like a meteor, slamming into the group of delves as they scrambled to get the weapon bolted down. It was scrap before it could get into play, but I sighed in frustration as I saw another cannon portal in at the rear of the growing army.

They had a lot more of those than I was comfortable with. I’d relied on the rarity of the item to prevent it from becoming a true threat, but that was clearly no longer the case.

I was swarmed as I watched, delves with glowing, yellow-edged weapons rushing into the crater to attack me. With a grunt, I activated my Power Blow ability and slammed a fist into the jaw of the first delf to reach me. His upper torso splattered against his comrades, and I took off into the air again, cracking a sonic boom that flattened the rest of the group.

“Axle!” I shouted as I flew up, toward the cavern’s ceiling.

“Yes, Warlord!” he replied almost immediately, his face appearing from a cloud of gray fog in one corner of my HUD.

“How do they have so many of these cannons?!” I hurtled up, into the massive, hanging delf structure built into an oversized stalactite. It was time to find out if there was a fruition center there, but I was gambling that it was empty.

“Their relic research division is much larger, older, and better funded than ours. If I had to guess, I would blame Dario. Under torture, he likely told them about the device and how to find more of them, using his mother’s research to fill in their gaps of knowledge. The Church hunted her for years before she was killed in an attempted kidnapping,” Axle rapidly explained.

I blasted upward through the stalactite, smashing through empty building after empty building on my way to the top.

When I arrived at the wide, broad base of the stalactite, I activated two of my breaker gauntlet charges, along with another Power Blow in each arm for good measure. The pillar cracked, hard, and something shifted in the roof of stone above me. Chips of stone and dust rained from the cracked concavity I had formed, seeming to drift almost lazily down.

Then I was falling, many tons of stone and metal ore driving me and the building-sized stalactite onto the battlefield below.

My shock troops would fly away, I became certain as I tumbled and bounced against my plummeting environment. I, on the other hand, was going to have to trust in my armor, and my breaker gauntlets to get me out once it landed.

I’d be fine, I decided in the moment, anger outweighing any intelligence or wisdom left in me. It wasn’t like a planetary body hurling erupting volcanoes at me, I’d survive the fall so long as too much stone and ore didn’t come with us from the cavern’s ceiling.

As soon as I had that thought, the stalactite and ground met in an eruption of kinetic force and exploding stone. I was tumbled around like a ragdoll in the collapsing rubble, until I was pinned. To escape, I heaved upward against the slab pinning me and activated my gauntlets, blowing a hole in the crushed stalactites top. That gave me enough space to gain momentum and blast out of the wreckage, flying back up to the cavern’s ceiling to find another.

This time, I chose a smaller stalactite, and aimed for its base with my scuffed and dented armor repairing itself. A linear rifle shot punched through my leg and tore a chunk off of my thigh, but I just grunted and ignored it. The suit would fix me, and I was giving it plenty of charge. Even the pain barely registered anymore.

As I smashed through the second stalactite, I looked back to see the devastation my first had caused. The delves' front line had been crushed, literally, and my question about the fruition center in the pillar was answered. No BuyMort bugs arrived to kill me, so I knew I was in the clear on that front.

Thankfully, what few pods were crushed in the collapse were counted as natural disasters, since I hadn’t personally touched the stone that flattened them. BuyMort was so painfully stupid at times, it almost rivaled the great delf houses.

They were happily throwing away thousands of their best warriors and billions of morties worth of gear, because I had publicly hurt their pride. I saw Lady Sheeragore’s crest on some of the warriors and gear that portaled in and smiled to know our conflict had finally gone hot.

It made things so much simpler for me.

My second stalactite landed, punching a hole in the cavern floor and collapsing the delves’ rear line, including their second pulse ion cannon.

They all focused on me while I was on the field of battle, they couldn’t help it. I was like a living meteor, slamming through them and the stone around us to cause devastation. All the while my quietly competent military stepped into the area of opportunity my gaudy distraction caused and mopped up.

Several delves with flight-capable armor chased after me, but they were clumsy by comparison. I’d been controlling my own gravity for most of a year at that point, fighting in the air of the great cavern came as naturally as breathing.

An ironic thought to have, in the suffocating cavern.

I dipped low to avoid the first flier in pursuit, then slammed upward as they swiped at where I had been with a glowing, yellow edged monowire weapon. They were crushed against the stone, and my suit silently thanked me for the charge, displaying the dancing starfish cartoon in a small window near the top of my HUD. I’d turned off its sound, but something about the cartoon itself I had grown strangely fond of.

It annoyed me, but when I was without it, I found myself missing it.

The next delf swung in from below and tried to cut me in half with their own monowire sword, so I stopped dead and allowed him to embed his weapon in the cavern roof above us. From behind, another two flying delves rammed unexpectedly into my waiting fists.

I cracked a sonic boom as I accelerated instantly past the speed of sound and tore through the last delf with both fists extended, searching for another stalactite to break.

My face was a mask of bloody rage, and pure sneering hatred as I tore the enemy delves apart. BlueCleave hobbs caused chaos and wreckage along the delves weakened and split the front line as I distracted the bulk of their forces. I played the wrecking ball and my troops calmly and effectively operated their firing line, moving steadily through the enemy to surround a small group of command group delves.

While a handful of those delves escaped via pod when they saw how disastrous their assault was going, my hobbs captured the majority of them. I smiled coldly as I watched it happen from above, before slamming my fists into a final stalactite that caused a major tremor to rip through the cavern floor, knocking all combatants off their feet momentarily and collapsing several stalagmite buildings.

The archaeological team was going to be furious with me.

I lost several Tower golems in my own assault, but I had stopped caring about those. They were fodder, to be used exactly as I used them. My friendship with the creature Tower himself went neglected, my visits to his fruition centers had dwindled to nothing in the months my conflict with the Church had grown.

But they got up before anyone else and went right back to ravaging the enemy army. Each was equipped with heavy armor, and weighted club fist weapons. They simply charged at the delves, screaming their desires for companionship before bashing them into crushed and broken corpses.

My gauntlets were out of charge, so I abandoned the stalactites and dove into the mass of delf soldiers myself. I streaked through them, tearing them apart with sheer gravitic force and the blunt brutality of my own armor.

The occasional lucky hit shot through me, or sliced off a part here and there, but I just ignored the wounds and kept going. My suit pumped me full of pain killers, time slowed, and I mowed them down like grass.

I took out all of my pain and anger over Nahgah Prime on them by hand, a whirlwind of kinetic damage and blunt force trauma for a quarter of an hour. It wasn’t a battle at all; it was a slaughter. Shalla and her crew were escorted to a safe distance and allowed to portal out by BlueCleave troops, but one particularly brave, or mad, cameraman stayed and recorded the entire thing.

He focused his implants on me, which BlueCleave allowed. Anything that furthered my legend was alright in their eyes; the sturdy hobb people had never had someone so powerful to rally behind. I was a pinball on the camera, a glittering streak of destruction and chaos that was too hard for even the experienced and foolhardy cameraman to keep track of with mere ocular implants.

But he captured enough of it to embarrass Lady Sheeragore. While the battle raged, she announced that she would be making a public announcement. I laughed at her redundancy, before ripping into another of her warriors and tearing him out of his expensive armor. It was bolted into his skeletal structure, but I wanted to see if it could be repurposed for my own troops.

I wasn’t thinking clearly. That much is obvious to me in hindsight. The battle changed who I was in a structural way. I let go. Embraced my inner anger, my carefully hidden desire to cause pain to those who had hurt me. Lady Sheeragore’s troops paid the price that desire demanded.

My vision was red, my armor covered in gore, and my mind awash in vivid memories by the time I caught hold of myself again. Once I tore into a Tower golem and splattered it across the cavern by mistake, I stopped and caught my breath, looking around at the carnage.

They were all dead. None of the original attack force survived, aside from the officers BlueCleave had captured and removed from the battlefield.

Again we lost no hobbs, but the close call with the Tower golem made me stop and take a minute to breathe and get my head back on. If that had been one of my hobbs, everything would have fallen apart in a heartbeat.

I shook my head again, slinging gore off my visor and clearing the red from my vision.

Chapter 64

I fixated on my communications windows, and the other battles playing out all over Midnight. The few House of None delves left on the planet jumped ship or died in the crossfire. Lady Sheeragore’s soldiers seemed to have orders to execute them on sight, because we lost thousands.

Still, we saved millions, so I didn’t feel much guilt about it at the time. By that point, the sides were clearly demarcated for all, and everybody knew the fight itself was overdue. I just pushed the Church to hit me before they were ready to hit me.

The battle for Midnight was extraordinarily costly for the House of Sheeragore, in both lives and morties. For BlueCleave it was an average Tuesday; they just went to work.

I flew across Midnight, hitting hot spots and helping BlueCleave wipe out the hostile delves. I also tried to help save the ones we liked, protecting several House of None hold-out pockets. By the time I left the planet, we’d captured a handful of Sheeragore’s officers and prevented them from committing suicide.

Our teams immediately began negotiating with them. Offering lives and freedom if they cooperated, and executing any who didn’t have information to offer. We had several to go through, after all.

I stopped helping the combat effort on Midnight when Admiral Omen called me to report. He had a ready status on our first targets through the BuyMort gate in the Nahgah Prime system. When I arrived on board the Crown of Thorns via BuyMort portal, Admiral Omen began ordering the strikes.

The COT was a safe distance from the BuyMort gate in the Nahgah Prime system, firing thorns in a slow, methodical manner. Each was warped away by the BuyMort gate for a charge, and deposited in another universe, traveling at the same rate they had been on the other side.

From there it was a matter of orbital mechanics.

One of our best Knowles, who had spent their life in research and deep math, was suddenly pressed into service to help us murder people in other universes. I watched as he helped on the bridge, providing thrust vectors and predictive orbits for targets, a look of sheer misery and stress on his hyena-like face.

Other Knowles, all part of Axle’s business division, orchestrated the cleanup of Nahgah Prime itself. No reason to let a planet go to waste, after all. They rapidly organized teams of daring entrepreneurs to track down the ruined remains of the planet and start a mass-scale sales effort.

Axle had the unenviable task of refilling our coffers as I rapidly emptied them. The fees for each thorn passing through the gate were variable, but none of them were cheap. Higher velocities and masses demanded a higher portal price from BuyMort, and the affiliate’s mortie count finally started to spin down faster than it spun up.

BuyMort noticed our defeat at Nahgah Prime as well, and our credit level took a hit. Then again, so did Lady Sheeragores. From the financial system’s perspective, we had all lost that fight the instant the planet went to pieces.

Lady Sheeragore’s announcement was apathetic. She summoned an openly-terrified Shalla to provide a counter-interview, where she had a well-dressed and groomed spokes-delf provide the same scathing list of accusations Silken Sands had been ignoring since its inception. Even the host’s yellow scales receded to a neutral white as the dull interview progressed.

Clearly Shalla’s apology tour for having dared to insult the delf great houses, even unwittingly.

I watched the first half, but when it became obvious that the tall delf woman who was the face of the Church was merely going to sit and sulk on her throne in the background of the interview, I got bored and turned it off. Counter programming was already in place, as Yolara Brinks went to work.

The intrepid Knowle publicist arranged expert witnesses to push out war analysis and propaganda that favored Silken Sands as we challenged the Church on the public stage. We made all kinds of wild accusations, ranging from neglect of their military, all the way to intentional malfeasance in business practices.

Every public statement or move the Church had made since we arrived on the scene was hauled up and spun. Each fact surrounding the conflict was twisted, pushed to the forefront of the public’s consciousness, or carefully stepped around in the various press services that operated within BuyMort.

While the Church spent their time and morties trying to defend themselves from our true and baseless accusations, we threw as much mud into the air as possible and kept them on their backfoot.

Our media campaign coupled with thorn strikes in multiple universes to great effect, and public perception began to turn against the Church for the first time in millennia. Not all of our thorns hit their targets at first, but they were instrumental in fine-tuning the math required, and soon we were as lethal in any universe as we were in Nahgah Prime system.

The Church’s media campaign, on the other hand, showed the damage we were doing. Advertisements were flying through the multiverse, advertisements for wildly metaphysical indulgences like soul insurance, and apocalypse bunkers, or physical pieces of the holy BuyMort.

But none of it was more desperate than the End of the Multiverse Apocalypse Sales Event being run on the Church Network. Pitched in front of a shimmering, exploding space battle, ships of every make and insignia ripping into shreds of gnarled metal and glittering plasma, a delf in holy robes with golden trim bowed and greeted all before him, smiling sweetly.

In the holy words of the sales manifesto, it is said that the customer is always right. So long as the seller is right as well. It is upon this foundation of equality and justice that BuyMort has guided our worlds and universes into the great era of modernity that it experiences today. Same minute shipping, on demand, to all with the morties to buy it. Morties made by the wit and grit of the customer.

A perfect world.

And now that perfect world is coming to an end. Canceled and broken, accused of being cultish and heretical. The heathens of Nu-Earth have broken the system, and all of us will die with it.

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The delf man grinned manically, gesticulating at a whole lot of nothing in an almost fevered sort of sales dance.

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The age of the Church was coming to an end, both publicly and violently. Really, it was the only way to kill an organization the size and power of the Church. We had to go after not only their structural capabilities, but their image in public as well.

The cult story still played, but we no longer gave the greater organization behind it any slack. At that point, the public dialog was about how the Church’s leadership had all been corrupted by the cult or were willingly part of it.

It rapidly became more financially viable for the many news organizations in BuyMort to question the Church’s leadership than feign obedience to them. That financial motivation meant that the actual news didn’t matter as much as what made them morties.

Some fields should never have become industries. If asked, I would have placed journalism at the top of that particular list. Without proper journalists holding the powerful to account, we simply manipulated the truth and twisted the public’s minds to our benefit.

After the battle on Midnight, the Church’s public image was so tarnished that associated affiliates even began jumping ship in droves. And we were there, ready to bail them out and take them in. Axle complained, but I largely ignored his complaints.

Morties were for spending. He took issue with the rate I spent them at, but I knew it was necessary. We weren’t bailing out useless affiliates, each one of them was an investment in the future of the entire multiverse.

Especially once the Church started trying to take back what was left of the Nahgah Prime solar system. The vast majority of operations in that universe had changed hands, which made it a perfect target for Church violence.

Privateers began hit and run operations on local merchant fleets, primarily using delf stealth ships. They showed up immediately after the destruction of the planet, meaning the Church had set them loose in the system beforehand, and waited. The privateers capitalized on the chaos of Nahgah Prime’s destruction, and our distraction with cleaning up the planet’s remnants.

Admiral Omen requested more ships to defend against them, which sent Axle into a further panic about our finances, as we dumped hundreds of trillions of morties into The Teslak Cooperative for additional relic ships, and portals to deploy them. Our military constituted the single most important investment we could be making at that point in time, so I personally approved the expense, overriding Axle’s well-written letter of official complaint.

Once I had returned to the Crown of Thorns and showered, I pulled up his letter to read silently. Molls was still asleep on the bed behind me, so I bottled my reaction to my operation manager’s words.

Axle Hargrave Seeker

Operations Manager, Silken Sands

To Tyson Dawes, Warlord of Nu-Earth and Commander of BlueCleave,

I am writing to formally express my concerns regarding the recent financial decisions taken by our leadership, specifically pertaining to the allocation of morties towards The Teslak Cooperative for additional relic ships and deployment portals. While I fully understand the imperative need to bolster our military capabilities against increasing threats from the Church and other adversaries, I must question the sustainability of our current expenditure trajectory.

The request from Admiral Omen for more ships, while strategically sound from a military standpoint, has plunged our finances into a precarious position. Our reserves, once a ballooning dividend reflective of Silken Sands' economic foresight and strength, are now being drained at an alarming rate. The sheer magnitude of this investment into military assets, though arguably essential, significantly limits our operational flexibility and our ability to respond to unforeseen economic challenges.

Moreover, it is imperative to consider the broader implications of these financial decisions on our affiliate's stability and morale. As Operations Manager, I have witnessed firsthand the unease among our staff and affiliates regarding our current fiscal health. The belief in a balanced approach to our challenges—not solely reliant on military might but also on economic stability and innovation—has been a cornerstone of our success. I fear we are straying from this principle.

I am fully aware of the gravity of our situation and the existential threats we face. However, I urge you to consider alternative strategies that do not compromise our economic integrity. There are ways to enhance our military preparedness without resorting to such drastic financial measures—innovations in technology, strategic alliances, and more efficient use of existing resources, to name a few.

I recognize that this letter may not change the course of our current strategy, and I am prepared for my concerns to be filed away, as has been the practice. However, it is my duty as Operations Manager and as someone deeply committed to the survival and prosperity of Silken Sands to voice these concerns. My loyalty to our cause and to you as our leader remains unwavering, but I believe part of that loyalty involves speaking out when the path we are on seems fraught with risk.

I do not make this protest lightly, nor with any illusion that it will alter our current direction. My commitment to Silken Sands and its people remains absolute. I have no intention of abandoning my post or shirking my responsibilities, especially in these perilous times. However, I felt compelled to make my stance clear, to advocate for a future where Silken Sands not only survives but thrives, through balance, innovation, and prudent stewardship.

With all due respect and continued loyalty,

Axle Hargrave Seeker

Operation Manager, Silken Sands

He was clearly upset.

I simply filed it away, the way he asked me to at the end. Knowing he was going to be ignored, he had made his protest as strong as it could be, without resigning his own position. I kept his personal fleet well-funded, to the point that it made the Knowle feel like he wasn’t actually free to just quit, even if he wanted to.

There was too much at stake, and the sheer level of firepower and defensive capability surrounding him at all times meant he would never feel safe from the Church again. He was constantly reminded that he was one of their primary targets, wherever he went, whatever he did.

Once I had dealt with his letter of protest, I floated outside to watch the molten ocean churn and made a call to his office. He wasn’t going to like the conversation, but it was necessary, like so much I was doing then.

“Brusque acceptance,” reported MortMobile as he connected our extra-secure direct line.

“I assume this is about my letter?” Axle said in the place of a greeting.

“It isn’t, but that’s a reasonable assumption. I know you’re unhappy with the rate of expenditure for the affiliate, and I hate to break this kind of news to you on a day like today, but it’s definitely going to get worse before it gets better,” I told him.

The Knowle sighed and licked his nose. I hadn’t seen him with his ears up in months, but they were flattened against his skull extra tight that day. “What is it now?”

“The project files you were sent from Terna’s World, have you set up a team for them yet?” I asked.

“Well of course, but the projected costs are beyond insane. I cannot in good conscience start production on such a massive project, especially if it's in all of the locations you earmarked for defense. We absolutely will go out of business if we tackle this project right now,” Axle replied.

“Bad news, old friend. We don’t have a choice,” I told him. “Things are ramping up to a larger conflict in Nahgah Prime, and I suspect we don’t have much time after that before the BlackGuard reappears and lays another of our installations to waste.”

“How certain are you? I’ve seen the footage that accompanied the weapon designs, it looks like the Blackguard was badly injured, if not killed outright. It just vanished after the weapon strike,” Axle whined.

“Look, Axle. I apologize, I really do. None of this can be comfortable or easy for you, and I never meant to put you in this position. But we have no choice right now, the Blackguard is still very much alive and a major threat. We must begin rapid construction as soon as physically possible.” I sighed and ran a hand through my hair.

“I wish that was possible, but even one installation will cost us hundreds of trillions of morties. The power generation needs alone are monstrous, not to mention the antielectron and antiproton containment fields. We simply cannot afford this weapon,” Axle explained.

“We have far more than that in our account right now,” I said. “At least one nonillion still. And we’re making more every second that passes.”

“We’re losing morties faster than we are making them, and these large-scale purchases are seriously harming our credit rating,” Axle tried to calmly explain. “We cannot continue making these kinds of buys.”

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“You see?” he asked, licking his nose and grimacing. “The vultures already circle.”

I nodded and took a breath, staring at the COT’s gravity drive core. The hot, liquid metal surged and wavered across the surface, casting soft light that never seemed to settle. Reflections of it wavered across the ship’s bulkheads as I thought.

My mind fixated on the Blackguard, the last beholder. They showed up to attack our most vulnerable installations, but with the escalation that was occurring, I couldn’t expect that pattern to continue. The next time they showed up, they were going to hit us where it hurt.

“Fine,” I suddenly said. “Get me one installation built, just one. Can you do that?”

Axle sighed and shook his head, before nodding with a grimace. “It won’t stop at one, but yes.”

“It will stop at one, Axle. I have a plan,” I told him.

“Oh, you do? Is it anything like your plan to usurp the Dearth Conglomerate? Because that almost got us all killed,” he snapped back.

“It is, actually. Should be a little safer, but a lot more people will be at risk. I want you to build the installation in the mountain that Prescott is on,” I said.

Axle blinked rapidly, his forehead creased. “Most of Prescott is now built down the slope, into the desert. Toward the space station and elevator. All that’s left up there is the foundations of the old city.”

“I know,” I replied. “That’s why I want it up there. I’m going to lay a trap for the Blackguard. You’re comin’ home, buddy. You and all the rest of us. Once the installation is complete, we’ll leak our locations to the press and wait.”

My Knowle friend nearly bared his teeth in fear at my suggestion, then shook his head. “I won’t be bait.”

“Fine, then stay out of it. The rest of us will be bait! You can stay mobile, and I’ll just lie and say you’re with us anyway,” I snapped. “Just get it built!”

“I will,” he replied, hands raised defensively. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to . . .”

I raised a hand to cut him off and took a deep breath. “No, I’m sorry Axle. I’m out here fighting the Church on multiple fronts and trying to protect my people at the same time. I shouldn’t have gotten angry at you, none of this is your fault. And I meant what I said, you don’t have to be there,” I replied, eyes downcast. “I shouldn’t have yelled at you, and I apologize.”

Axle blinked, licked his nose again, and nodded. “It’s alright, I understand. I’m approving the Kitchen Sink for one installation in the old Prescott mountainside. I assume you want it over-looking all of Prescott below?”

“And the elevator. We have to protect that too, or business on Nu-Earth will become far less viable,” I replied, shaking my head. “I don’t mean to ignore your concerns, and I do value your advice.”

“But you’re fighting a war,” he answered. “I know.”

“More than that, my friend. You’re not fighting that war,” I told him, my voice flat and calm. “I truly appreciate all that you’ve done for the affiliate, and I sincerely doubt any other sapient in the multiverse could have done what you’ve done, in such a short span of time no less. But you are not out here killing beholders and fending off the Church. You can’t prioritize the morties when we’re dying for the affiliate. Much more importantly, we’re dying for the people who comprise this affiliate.”

“You’ll have the weapon you need,” Axle replied, after a brief silence. “And I am glad I’m not part of the violence. I can’t imagine what you go through on a daily basis, but I know I used to see you get torn apart and put back together over and over again. It can’t have gotten much better since then, given the scale of escalation that’s occurred.”

I nodded slowly as he spoke, then sighed. “It hasn’t. But . . . I keep fighting so that one day it might.”

Axle nodded back. “But where will it end?” he said quietly, looking down at his own claws. With a sharp breath in, he looked back up and said, “I’ll keep you posted on the Kitchen Sink project.”

“Thank you, Axle. I filed your letter, as you requested. It’s part of the affiliate’s primary leadership archive,” I said.

He nodded again, slowly this time, then reached out and disconnected the device.

MortMobile stared at me, empty of expression, before my own device shut itself off and he vanished.

Chapter 65

I shook my head and flew up to the command deck. A commotion had broken out among the officers, and I was hearing some chatter I wasn’t particularly comfortable with. Something about multiple battle citadels arriving through the BuyMort gate.

As usual, it was worse than I expected.

The Church’s entire fleet of battle citadels arrived at the gate just hours after our attack on Midnight. Right in time for Molls to wake up from her drug-induced nap. I watched the massive war-stations portal in, one after another, as Molls drifted up from our room. Her armor receded as she arrived on the bridge, and I winced to see another solid blue ring in her scales.

Permanent, unless she decided to let her suit skin her and start over. It also mismatched with the permanent rings on her face, where her suit had repaired her broken nose once, long before she learned to turn off its worst features.

“What is happening, Tyson?” she yawned, before noticing the screens all around her. “Oh no . . .” she whispered, one hand going to her mouth.

“I assume the Thread of Fate will warp in from wherever it’s been hiding, once we engage with their fleet,” announced Admiral Omen.

Molls slithered over to my side, and I carefully wrapped an arm around her waist.

“I’m sorry, my love. I didn’t think this through, and now your entire home system is a warzone. We should have branched out to a different solar system, left your world out of this fight,” I said, my posture slouched.

She slowly wrapped her tail around my shoulders and leaned on me. “I forgive you, if you feel that you need forgiveness from me,” she whispered. I looked up to see her eyes, brimming with tears, looking down at me as she forced a small smile. “It’ll be okay.”

I glanced at the wall of monitors my officers were attending, and the fleet of battle citadels still assembling. The COT was far enough away that the Church’s fleet wasn’t immediately attacking, but it couldn’t have been more than a few minutes away. The space stations appeared to be creating a formation of some sort, and glowing links of energy were starting to connect some of the outer stations.

“Molls,” I said, looking into her eyes. “I’m sorry, but I have to . . . you have to go, it’s not safe here.”

“You said I could stay,” she breathed, yellow and green swirling in her scales. “No matter what, I can stay with you.”

“I know, and I’m sorry. But look,” I whispered back, pointing at one of the screens. “I have to go deal with that, and I’m not sure we’ll survive this battle.”

More than one head turned on the bridge, but they were smart enough to keep silent.

“I don’t want to make you fight the Church, Molls. Or die for my fight. I just want you to be safe,” I said, as tears threatened to form in the corners of my eyes. “I need you to be safe.”

The blue in her scales pushed out to the edges of each scale, and pressed into the hardened, permanent rings that defined the most important emotional moments in Molls’ life. Her own tears fell freely, and she nodded briefly.

“I’ve missed about a thousand calls from my mother, anyway. I should probably go home, check in on them,” she said. “When will I see you again?”

I shook my head and winced, looking away. “I’m not sure, but I’ll come home as soon as I can.”

“Okay,” she replied. “Be careful. I love you.”

“I love you too, and I am so sorry,” I said, gripping her hand. “I can’t let this war hurt you anymore, I have to end it. And I don’t want you to see me do it. Please don’t watch the news for a little bit.”

She flushed orange, blinked a few times, then nodded. A BuyMort pod arrived and flashed a rainbow beam, warping her back to Prescott.

I turned to Admiral Omen, my hands clenching into fists. The structures on the screen behind him glowed brighter, and rapidly approached the Crown of Thorns.

“Kill those battle stations!” I roared. “Deploy all thorns!”

“Belay that,” barked Admiral Omen. “Fire one thorn, at the central station.”

I watched on screen as a single thorn launched from our ship smashed into the growing energy field around the battle citadels. It erupted on contact.

“Where is the Thread of Fate?” I asked.

“Unknown, boss! It has not passed through the BuyMort gate, so we are assuming it is still in-system. The cost to move it without a gate would be astronomical, we’ve done the calculations,” said Tollya. It was good to see her still part of the command crew for the COT, I trusted her judgment.

I shook my head, thinking of our action on Midnight, and the scars on the ice giant planet that solar system’s BuyMort gate orbited. “It’s not still in-system, or they wouldn’t be throwing their battle citadels at us like this. I think I know where they keep it, and where it’s going to hit next.”

With that, I turned away and pulled up a MortMobile comm channel with the commander in charge of our remaining forces on Midnight.

“Pull everyone out,” I told the stiff-backed hobb. “Evacuate all remaining civilians and military personnel, now. I expect your planet to get hit by the Thread of Fate soon.”

“Not many left here, just holding major junctions near towns and cities. How long do we have, Warlord?” the commander asked. He waved at someone off-screen to get their attention and call them over.

“Not long, probably within the next half hour. Move as fast as you can and put your scanner-ship on high alert. If orbital tells you the relic ship has arrived, just get our soldiers out,” I replied. “Save as many House of None delves as you can but get our people out as your priority. Those few delves who remain likely wish to die on their home world. Don’t let our hobbs get killed trying to save them.”

“Yes, Warlord!” the hobb barked, turning to start issuing orders even as I disconnected the comm channel.

“Move the Crown of Thorns in,” I ordered the bridge crew. “Get closer to their fleet. We have to avoid the Thread of Fate surprising us again, if it is in-system. I expect it to attack Midnight while we’re bogged down here, though.”

“Yes, Warlord.” Admiral Omen turned to issue his orders. “Fire thorn at low velocity, standard boarding speed.”

Another thorn left the ship, this time traveling significantly slower. It breached the station's shared energy field but was immediately cut to shreds by dozens of high-powered laser cannons.

“Move in, deploy Buzzstars!” barked Admiral Omen. The Crown of Thorns began to approach the enemy fleet, even as they continued closing with us.

I watched as dozens of Brisingida-class cruisers dropped from their mooring docks and flooded toward the tips of the arms. As we approached, the Crown of Thorns shifted into a ready position, top facing directly toward the massive enemy fleet with gleaming thorns in ready position.

“I’m going out there,” I announced. “You know what to do, Admiral.”

“Agreed,” he snapped dismissively, focusing on his screens. “I want thorns prepared for each of those battle-stations!”

“Sir!” a hobb shouted. “We don’t have enough thorns for a full complement on every station.”

“Deploy the Sand Stars! Destroy their weaponry before they overheat the Buzzstars, protect our fleet!” Admiral Omen yelled back. “And give me a number for each citadel!”

“Ten thorns each, sir!” came the reply. “With only eight for the last citadel!”

I glanced at the screen and made a quick count. There were thirty battle citadels in formation now, an impenetrable golden wall of war coming our way. That added up, the COT started out with three-hundred thorns if fully battle capable.

The enemy war stations were in a non-standard formation surrounding a central citadel to create a square with lines from each corner meeting at the center citadel. Each link in their web added to and formed the heavy energy shield that covered the fleet.

“Leave the central station for me and watch out for incoming pulse ion fire!” I yelled, before hurling myself off the platform and flying toward one of the exits at high speed.

I burst out into a warzone, as the COT’s fleet began engaging with the incoming fire from the battle citadel armada. Locked in formation, flying close to one another, the stations all shared a shielding system that prevented their own lasers from penetrating offensively.

That shield dropped momentarily, and every citadel in formation fired simultaneously, using every laser cannon at their disposal. A massive burst of weaponized blue-white light poured out onto the Crown of Thorns, immediately slagging a Buzzstar and their pilot. Only the empty starfish suit remained, glowing with heat. It showed the shape of the body burned out of it, being slowly rebuilt.

A hole was burrowed in the Crown of Thorn’s hull and then out the other side. The oversized shield went back up after only a fraction of a second, but the damage to the COT was substantial.

It was already producing new armor plating and compartments to recover, and thanks to the gravity drive a hull breach wasn’t a real problem to the people on board. I felt it at my back, slowing my speed so that I could enter the enemy’s shield. It was doing the same for all the relic ships of my fleet, preventing pilot error from wiping us out against the energy barrier.

I felt it as I pushed through, even wearing my armor. Electricity coursed through my body and arced from my fingertips. Then I was through, and I surged forward, pain and anger driving me. The central citadel’s spires rose up to surround me and I braced myself for impact, as laser beams fired all around.

One of them hit my midsection and knocked my flight path off as I came in, heating my armor red hot and diverting me into a nearby gilded tower. I ripped through metal and exposed the entire tower to vacuum as I blindly hurtled into a laser turret’s energy capacitor.

It exploded and I was sent pinballing through more bulkheads. Even my hardened, near-metal bones started to break, and I mentally braced myself to get a new spine again, along with a whole bunch of new ribs.

Then part of my skull gave way, and I blacked out. I was unconscious when I collided with another component that exploded and sent me flying free of the battle citadel.

A moment later I came to as my suit happily ground out brain matter and bone. I felt the rush of the painkiller and willed away the time dilation effect. My armor opened to allow my new spine to be installed, and I gasped when it clicked in place. The bones had been silver in color as the starfish suit’s central turbine printed them.

I was floating in space, spinning away from the damaged central battle citadel. One entire corner of its primary laser defense grid was still in the process of exploding, detonations rapidly spreading to the walls surrounding it.

The long, central spire had its own shielding system at the top, forming a translucent bubble of golden-tinged light around itself. I got control of my velocity and started flying back in, toward the middle of the battle station.

When I tried to zoom in my vision on the spire, nothing happened. My brain damage and replacement. It had replaced my visual cortex with a fresh one, not capable of my advanced sense of sight until the crystalline colonies moved back in and redecorated.

That could take days.

I growled and streaked toward the top of the central pillar, stopping just short of the buzzing energy shield. A metal-clad hand sparked as I brushed the shield and got a good look at what it protected.

The battle citadel’s main command bridge.

With a smile, I slammed both fists into the shield. My breaker gauntlets blasted blue light and momentarily collapsed the shield. I almost dove through a portal of translucent plasti-steel but stopped an inch away, fist raised. The crew inside panicked and ran, leaving a bewildered elf captain almost alone. I slowly circled the ship’s bridge until I found an emergency airlock at its top, hidden beneath a tall, golden statue of a delf holding a trumpet.

It had a manual override tucked away beside the statue, mechanical in nature. I merely heaved at it for a moment, and the door slid silently open, and then closed behind me. In another minute, the inner door tore free and allowed me access into the bridge, where the terrified command crew awaited me with weapons in hand.

“Really?” I scoffed, my helmet amplifying my voice so that it echoed off the stately bulkheads around us. The bridge was decorated in gaudy gold and ivory, with black console screens to offset the questionable interior.

“Open fire!” shouted a familiar elven man in a captain’s hat. It was an old point of contact with the Church, Captain Ransom Broadleaf, head of my initial military inspection. Apparently his failure to detect my secrets had not kept him from advancement. In the Church at that late date, failure seemed to mean promotion, as he was leading the Church’s final attack on Silken Sands’ relic fleet.

Several low grade laser beams hit my armor, and I raised my hands in mock surrender. “Oh no, ow, please don’t hurt me,” I sneered, as I slowly stalked toward the first officer in my path. Another delf.

They broke so easily, and the looks on the rest of their faces helped me ignore the sick crunch the hapless officer made when I struck him down.

“Keep shooting, maybe this time it’ll work,” I said, turning to walk toward the next officer.

“Stop!” Captain Broadleaf shouted. “Stop, we surrender!”

The clatter of weapons hitting the deck accompanied my heavy bootsteps, as I continued toward the next officer.

“Who said you guys get to surrender?” I asked, crushing the delf’s skull as I shoved him through his console in a small explosion of sparks.

“Just stop! Please! What do you want?!” screamed their Captain.

“You see, Ransom. I warned you about this, a long time ago,” I said, raising a finger as I shook my head. “You’ve known this was coming.” I reached for another delf officer, a woman cowering at her console, glowing red eyes squeezed shut, tears streaming down the ridge of her high cheekbones.

“No!” Captain Broadleaf screamed. He fell to his knees, and I stopped, clicking my metal covered hand shut just short of the terrified delf.

“Do you have a transdimensional pulse ion cannon aboard?” I asked, still not looking at the tall elf in the captain’s hat.

“We do! You destroyed one, but there’s another, ready to fire,” he replied.

“Then guess what? You open fire on your fellow citadels, and I stop killing people. For now,” I told him. “Only deal you get, so you better make good on your end really quickly. Honestly, if you even think about it for too long . . .”

“Do it!” Captain Broadleaf shouted. He slid back into his captain’s throne, slumping in its comfortable-looking cushions. “Fire on the nearest battle citadel!”

The Crown of Thorns was out the main window, and on all of their remaining console screens. It crackled and buzzed, lighting arcing between the thorns and heating the tips to a glowing red as it tried to pass through the massive energy shield.

Its momentum halted part way through, thorns paralyzed and sparking in the massive energy field.

The other citadels all opened fire with their own transdimensional pulse ion cannons, and I watched the true capability of my monstrous relic ship as it used gravity control to avoid the incoming fire. All across the Crown of Thorns, armor plating shifted and moved, entire segments of the ship separating to allow incoming fire to pass through without harming any interior segments.

Pulse ion cannon fire hurtled directly through the ship, not making contact with any portion of it, as even the molten ocean at its center separated like the Red Sea to allow passage. Once stuck in the combined shield of the Church’s battle citadels, my relic carrier focused all its power on protecting itself.

The ship’s complex defensive dance didn’t prevent all the hundreds of separate laser beams from making contact, but the Buzzstars helped in that defense as well, absorbing incoming fire and radiating it out into space with their long, dangling arms.

“Fire right now!” I shouted, and the order was obeyed.

Chapter 66

The central battle citadel turned its weapons on its neighbors. A dark blob of pulsed ion fire smacked into the citadel at our side, and the collective shield immediately collapsed. The citadel fell out of formation, dark and lifeless as residual pulsed ion discharge sparked among its golden peaks and caused detonations in its energy capacitors.

Several dozen small explosions began tearing the wounded space station apart.

The Crown of Thorns started moving again, keeping up its defensive action as its thorns began to uncouple in preparation for firing.

“Fire again!” I yelled.

“I can’t!” came back the shrieked reply. “It has to recharge!”

“How long?!” I barked.

“Sixty seconds,” came the reply. A delf male at a nearby weapon’s console cowered down onto it as I approached.

I waited, watching as Sand Star frigates began their own attack runs, tearing laser turrets off walls and towers, picking apart the enemy fleet. True to my orders, my own citadel was left alone.

This time the Crown of Thorns focused its gravitic abilities on protecting our ships from the explosions, instead of keeping every fragment for consumption. At the same time, it redirected much of the metal fragments back into the citadels. More laser turrets burst in a hail of shrapnel, as those with functional shields sparked and deflected the incoming debris.

Fires raged on board my own citadel, I could see the alarms on their consoles. The command crew was close to panic, and the war station was close to death, but I didn’t care.

The deal was for their lives. I was still going to destroy their relic fleet, down to the last citadel, before I made good on my end.

“We have to evacuate!” shouted an officer at the rear of the gaudy room. “Structural integrity is failing all across the ship. We have only minutes!”

“Sounds like your problem. I’m just fine in the vacuum of space,” I sneered. “Keep firing!”

As the terrified weapons officer beneath me targeted another battle station, I glared back at Captain Broadleaf.

“Stay where you are,” I growled.

In the same breath, I summoned a BuyMort pod. One flashed in at my side, and a portal opened on the floor.

“You can all go through that, once we’re done here,” I announced. “And not a second before. Hold your stations or I’ll kill you before you can take a step.”

“Redirect emergency shielding to the central pillar’s structural control!” yelled Captain Broadleaf. “Buy us some time up here!”

“Of course your ship is built around the concept that the officer’s lives matter more than the crew,” I scolded. “That’s the reason all of this is happening. Don’t you idiots see that by now?”

Nobody replied, aside from a light whimper from the weapons officer near me.

“Crown of Thorns command, help hold the central citadel together. It’s under my command until it detonates,” I yelled into my comms.

“Yes, Warlord!” Tollya replied. Admiral Omen was audible in the background, calling out targets and redirecting the smaller relic ships.

Outside, the battle raged as citadels began falling apart under our onslaught. Once the shared energy shield was down, it was all but over. The Crown of Thorns, freed from its paralysis, opened fire. The first thorn to each citadel carried an oversized electromagnetic charge, and once it detonated, it took down the citadel’s shield for half a second.

In the space of that half second, other thorns were fired at high velocity, punching through the battle stations in various vulnerable areas. All around me, explosions blossomed in the dark of space.

My citadel fired another three times before the battle ended in a wave of massive explosions. Each of the battle citadels collapsed in on themselves and became so many clouds of hanging scrap. The Crown of Thorns held it all in place, once the massive ship no longer had to dodge enemy fire. A field of debris that spread across hundreds of thousands of kilometers would feed the monster relic ship for weeks.

Of course, in the chaos, someone hit a pod. So my problems weren’t over just yet. We didn’t know how many pods were destroyed in the mass demolition of the battle citadels, but the creature BuyMort warped in was memorable.

The press called it a ‘vortex spider.’

It loomed massive in the near distance, blotting out the stars and portions of the BuyMort gate as it gripped the structure with its many inky-black legs.

Red eyes that emitted streams of rust-colored light shone from part way up the creature’s bulky body and a gaping mouth opened that drew in all ships, all wreckage in the immediate area. The small smattering of civilian ships daring the battle to gather footage or score salvage from the wreckage were immediately drawn in, tiny eruptions marking their demise in the vortex spider’s gaping black hole-powered mouth.

The Crown of Thorns alone resisted, hauling back on its own fleet and my lone remaining battle citadel. It rumbled and shook as the vortex spider and the COT played tug of war with the comparatively flimsy space station.

I grabbed an actively cracking wall and glared at my captives. “You move and I’ll kill you!” I reminded them. Fear-filled faces stared at me, then out the window behind me, and one of the delves broke.

He stared at the vortex spider outside, his eyes wild with fear, and then he sprinted for the portal. I streaked toward him and splashed through the hapless creature, reinforcing my threat. The rest of the command crew screamed as they were splashed with their friend and colleague.

The vortex spider closed its mouth in frustration as the Crown of Thorns proved difficult to devour, causing the released gravitic forces to tear the gate apart in a shower of rainbow light and shattered metal. Fortunately, BuyMort blamed the bug and didn’t summon anything else. The vortex spider hulked toward us through the destroyed ring, its many eyes tiny red suns that washed us with Hawking radiation from within its darker-than-black body.

The Buzzstars and Sand Stars in the debris field were caught in the same tug of war as me when the vortex spider opened its mouth again, trying more forcefully to drag us into its gravity well powered gullet.

The Crown of Thorns lurched forward as armor plates were pulled up from its surface. The Sand Stars and Buzzstars all seemed to be flying toward the larger ship but kept getting dragged backwards in stuttering motions.

A few small explosions occurred in the spider’s mouth, my relic ships being devoured.

“Fire on that thing! Aim for the center of its mouth!” I shouted, pointing out the fractured windows all around us.

The delf weapon’s officer screamed and slapped at a button, and a ball of transdimensional pulsed ions followed a burst of high-intensity lasers down the spider’s gullet.

The Crown of Thorns launched everything it had left at the same time, using the relic ship’s maximum outgoing velocity of roughly half the speed of light.

The vortex spider hiccupped, its mouth hanging open while its exposed gullet suddenly showed starlight through the creature's entire body in ragged holes.

“Alright go!” I yelled, pointing to the portal behind me. There was no chance the ruined battle citadel would hold together any longer anyway, so I let my prisoners escape to Storage. They sprinted through the portal, only Captain Broadleaf looking at me.

His face was rigid, eyes locked wide open.

Once they were all gone, I bolted through the broken airlock and blasted aside the outer door with a final burst of breaker gauntlet energy, even as the citadel finally broke apart behind me, explosions consuming its central pillar.

The vortex spider retched, and its mouth began erupting streams of dark energy. Behind me, the Crown of Thorns pulled me and the rest of its ships back inside. One final time, the vortex spider tried to inhale us all, but choked on the swirling dark energy all around it.

“BuyMort!” I shouted, pointing at the looming beast. Its red eyes flickered a few times, then blinked out, and it hung in space, wrapped around the ruins of the BuyMort gate. “I’d like to sell that!”

Purchase: Cosmic Leviathan Arachno-Hulk corpse, ancient, massive. Rarity, Mythic. Quality, fair. Mortie cap for insectile remains reached; 250,000,000,000,000 morties dispensed.

Purchase: Portal Gate Ruins. Rarity: Rare. Quality, poor. 18,789,112,247 morties dispensed.

As I was pulled back into the Crown of Thorns, I saw it reassembling the debris field, and adding my detonating battle citadel to the mess.

Once the remains were crushed together, there was only about two citadels worth of rubble to consume, but the COT did exactly that. Thorns started to print in their ejection ports, and the ship’s battered armor got repaired as streams of molten metal flowed to every damaged section on board.

Starfish drones swarmed across the interior and exterior, every single one of them deployed to help. Repairs would take only hours. Our losses were not small, but most of our people had survived. Nobody on board the COT had been hurt, but most of them had to shelter in special bunkers to avoid the laser fire. The bunkers were moved around the ship violently, and even with its control of the passenger’s gravity, injuries were reported.

It had been a close thing, especially that particular BuyMort bug. Our relic ship was only capable of controlling so much gravity, and the vortex spider had clearly been sent to kill the COT.

“Admiral,” I said, arriving on the bridge in my torn and blasted pants. “Avoid hitting anymore BuyMort pods, please.”

Admiral Omen glanced up, scoffed once, then ignored me. “Good work,” he said over one shoulder, still focused on his screens.

“You too,” I replied. “Now how the hell are we going to get home?”

Tollya arrived then, holding a portable console screen. “BuyMort will likely rebuild the gate,” she said. “But we’re probably going to have to stay in-system with the fleet until then. Ungated systems are expensive to portal out of.”

“Yeah, I bet,” I said, leaning against the railing and panting.

“You okay?” Tollya asked.

I nodded wordlessly and put my hand out for her tablet.

She handed it over. A casualties list. Jada’s name was at the top.

“Oh . . . fuck,” I said. I hadn’t even known she was flying in that battle, and she’d died in the maw of the vortex spider. One of only three ships the COT couldn’t hold onto.

My memory stopped me cold, and I remembered that I had seen her die. I just hadn’t cared about the pilots, in that moment. I only thought of the ships.

I paled and went over the side to fly to my cabin. After I had emptied my stomach thoroughly, I looked at the rest of the casualties. Hobb pilots, two of our best. The hotshot pilot I had wondered about getting killed had finally died, crushed in the vortex spider’s mouth. Another I didn’t recognize, which left me mercifully empty of guilt.

With a shaking hand, I called Axle.

“You survived!” he answered immediately. “Oh that is good, I have to tell Yolara. The press is going insane, what happened to the BuyMort gate?” My Knowle friend stopped talking when he saw my pallor.

“Axle, I-” I started before my voice broke. “I’m sorry, Axle. Jada . . . she . . . she’s gone.”

He stiffened, his lips curling back to show teeth. “How?”

“The bug. The fucking bug got her. I couldn’t kill it fast enough,” I babbled, the words pouring out of me. Excuses. “I failed her.”

“We aren’t together anymore,” Axle said, managing to get his teeth put away. “I-I don’t know that either of us could have stopped her. I have to go.”

With that, he hung up, and MortMobile was staring at me, impassive as ever.

“Shit,” I whispered.

The next call I made was to Molls, who was as worried as I had expected. She and her mother were in the penthouse in Prescott, watching the news with yellow in their scales. Her mother’s scales no longer showed it of course, but the reaction still occurred.

Molls wept in relief on the phone, while her mother glared coldly in the background. I reassured her that I was alright and that I’d be home soon, talked to her until she calmed down, and then hung up after telling her that I loved her.

I slumped on our bed and thought of Garthrust. The Orkreshi priest of BuyMort working for Dearth that I had beaten half to death in defense of Molls. For a long moment, I worked to convince myself that I didn’t wish I had let him kill us both, to save us the pain of our present.

Then I thought about Terna. The hobb and her world ship, and how they had defied BuyMort instead of becoming part of it. With the Church hobbled, and its policing ability in all universes destroyed, I needed to start working toward that reality.

Really, there was only one thing left that the Church could do to me, and I had the ability to carefully orchestrate when it would happen. It felt like a stalemate to me.

Now that the Crown of Thorns knew to dodge pulse ion cannon fire, the next encounter with the Thread of Fate would go very differently. I just needed to provoke them into using it on me.

But, until that moment was right, I had work to do.

The affiliate was reeling. We’d all but lost the Nahgah Prime system, business would be difficult to run while the BuyMort gate was down. Plus, our primary military asset was stuck in-system unless we cared to pay an absurdly high portal price.

The vortex spider and ruined BuyMort gate had brought in some morties, at least. A few hundred trillion to offset the cost of our new Kitchen Sink project on Nu-Earth. Using my home planet as bait for the Church’s final weapons gave me pause, but the plan wouldn’t work on any other world, or in any other universe.

The Blackguard was somewhere, probably still in my solar system, licking its wounds. Recovering from the blast Terna’s World had given it and preparing to go back to destroying my affiliate piece by piece.

I watched footage of Midnight’s destruction. It was over faster than Nahgah Prime had been, the Thread of Fate just sliced through the metallic world, and it shattered. Our people had tried to sell the world to BuyMort to avoid its destruction, but there were still indigenous delves on the world, sapients using the structure. So BuyMort allowed it to be annihilated instead.

Its endless rules, what was and wasn’t acceptable within the system. None of it made any damned sense, of course, but that was the law we all had to live under. BuyMort’s law. Only the morties mattered, and every step it took under the guise of preserving sapient life seemed to destroy it instead.

The Church relic ship jumped away immediately after its work was done and went back to being missing. Clearly the Church wouldn’t hesitate to portal it around as needed, expense be damned.

Axle started working on a portal for the relic fleet home if needed. If we had to use it, it would cost close to a nonillion morties, and would likely signal financial doom for the affiliate. But Nu-Earth couldn’t have been far down the list of worlds that the Thread of Fate was assigned to destroy.

Our thorn strikes stopped as well. We experimented briefly with using a BuyMort pod to warp the thorn from one universe to another, but BuyMort charges racked up again, and we quickly abandoned the idea. It would bankrupt us just trying to learn how to do it correctly.

In fact, most of our business and war options in that system ground to a halt. A stalemate with the Church was achieved; one that only the destruction of Nu-Earth and my death would free them from.

I just had to make sure I was ready for them to hit us.

Chapter 67

For the defense of the Sol System, Phyllis was called to Mars. Rayna assigned her there, and then left me to tell her about it.

Phyllis’ mech was at the point of development that it not only was capable of long-distance space flight, but it allowed her to leave it behind wearing only a set of braces bolted into her skeletal structure. Her age had reversed to her mid-forties, and I found it odd to see her face mostly cleared of its lines.

Though I did gain a better understanding of how she had lured so many German officers to their graves, back when she was even younger. At roughly forty-five, she was a knockout beauty. Her long, full blonde hair and striking blue eyes unsettled me while I explained her new station to the surly woman. The only response she gave me was an icy stare, followed by a curt nod at the end.

She’d been helping out on Tertiary, defending the wealth-laden and vulnerable planet from the sudden surge in piracy that followed the destruction of the Church’s battle citadel fleet. And she’d been successful. Piracy in her sector dropped by 85% during her rotation there. But reassignment to Mars meant little to Phyllis. She went where we asked and fought who we asked her to fight, usually without much in the way of a response. Reports from her own teams informed me that she no longer partook of any kind of intoxicant.

Her primary mission was to secure the planet of Mars, but really, she was there as a first line of defense. A distraction for the Blackguard to hit, if they came back into play before my trap was ready. She immediately set about building up the orbital and planetary defenses on Mars, fully expecting an attack.

There would be no Kitchen Sink on Mars. Axle had made that clear and I couldn’t override him without putting the affiliate through serious financial harm. So instead, Phyllis got to work installing a series of heavy energy shields over all of our installations. Nobody on our team knew if they would defend against a dark energy bombardment, but we had them already in stock, so it was a no-cost solution that helped our people feel safer.

Doofus went with Phyllis. That hurt, at first, but I was quickly too distracted to focus on it or feel the distance that was growing between me and all of my friends. All that I could do was try to protect the sapients I loved.

If they walked away from me, I had to trust that they would take care of themselves. But really, I wasn’t worried about Doofus with Phyllis around. She would more than protect him, she would flatten mountains to keep him safe.

The construction project in the old Prescott Mountain range went well, but not well enough. Things were moving too slowly for my tastes, with the construction’s end date projected at nearly a month out.

My attempts to divert funding to it went poorly, as every stream of morties we had was tied up in making sure the affiliate stayed afloat. Repairs to affiliate infrastructure were expensive, as were the many fleets we had in multiple universes.

Each ship cost a certain number of morties per hour, just to keep them floating in space. And it wasn’t like we could stop purchasing new ships either, much to my dismay. If we didn’t buy 'em, the Church did, and then we’d have to face them in battle. Either annoyingly soon, or someday in the distant future.

So I had a choice. Let the Church get one up on us or continue riding our ledgers on a razor thin line between solvency and the dreaded red line. I chose the fight. I always chose the fight, but it had started to wear on me after a solid year of chaos and violence.

Axle did a good job of managing our fleet's many complex financial needs, using his network of Knowle managers and middlemen. But still, a lot of morties left our accounts just to prevent the Church from spreading their piracy menace or gaining a foothold in our main solar system.

He wasn’t wrong about our credit rating either. I hadn’t paid much attention to it, since it had always been on the rise, but now that it was taking hits things had changed. Our affiliate’s BuyMort benefits got scaled back once our rating fell low enough, and suddenly portals were much more expensive again.

We still had to use hundreds of them per day to operate the affiliate at a multiversal level, but without the scale of discount we were getting before, that task became much more difficult. Axle’s warnings came to life, and Silken Sands started to fall even further behind the Church.

Where we were spread wide, taking care of our people and ensuring no solar system or universe went without, the Church was free. They consolidated their forces and abandoned entire worlds that had become unreliable sources of income.

Which is not to say that they weren’t still using those planets, solar systems, or universes to make themselves income. The methodology just changed. Once we took out their primary policing fleet, the Church immediately resorted to wide-scale piracy.

Freebooters and privateers suddenly started grabbing hold of Church planets and ravaging formerly safe Church shipping routes. All while paying their tithe, of course, but the Church actively denied any involvement. At the same time, they lamented that hostilities with Silken Sands had taken their protective fleet of battle citadels away from the multiverse at the same time the Nahgah Prime gate had been lost.

Really, it was all a senseless waste, according to their spokespeople. The return of wide-spread piracy was predictable, they gloated, while smugly pointing the finger at us.

And it worked. Favorable reviews for Silken Sands, once a constant flow, turned suddenly sour overnight. We weren’t quite pariahs to most, but we were starting to take blame for the multiverse’s problems. As I read some of the most recent reviews, I suddenly understood how the executives at The Dearth Conglomerate must have felt when I came for them with my own media storm.

Anyone else getting concerned? - 3 stars.

While I’ve been a fan of Silken Sands for a long time, recent events have made me reconsider. Initially, their service was impeccable, providing access to very valuable goods and raw resources. However, with the recent economic collapse and ongoing war, it's hard to overlook the possible connections. I want to think the Windowpuncher is the hero we need, but things are kinda looking fishy. Hope they address things soon and reassure us all of their intentions.

Disturbed - 1 star

What a nightmare. Silken Sands seemed like a blessing, but their unchecked expansion ain't no accident. They wrecked the economy, drove me and the missus right out of a job, and whether or not it was intentional, their bull-stupid CEO and his actions have led to the deaths of trillions. I can no longer support an affiliate that acts like some sort of space empire.

The End of Times - 1 star

'Lo and Behold, for is it not clear that when the economy is high, all benefit? Beware the Sapient that desires income equality, for all his prognostications are death and poverty for all.' Book of BuyMort 32:117

It's clear now that Tyson Dawes is the Anti-Mort. His reckless behavior against the system is born of some anti-BuyMort Derangement that was talked about directly in the good book.

The Church is not a cult. Let me repeat that for all you who aren't listening. THE CHURCH IS NOT A CULT. Silken Sands is, and his constant play at being a do-gooder is going to kill us all.

Silken Sands promised us all batter times. Instead they shoved us into economic ruin, stellar war, and mass-death. Whole planets have been eliminated. The Beholders of BuyMort have been made nigh extinct.

It's about time someone put a blaster to that damn Windowpuncher's head and save the multiverse. Maybe then we can all get together and put things back right.

I ignored the bad press and sent ships after the pirate fleets. We couldn’t spare much more than a single Sand Star frigate or Brisingida demolitions cruiser per solar system, but that was typically enough. Our relic ships roamed the multiverse, brave pilots facing down entire fleets of well-armed and funded pirates.

An attempt to regain stability, in a rapidly spiraling system. The result was more destroyed ships, and more death. At least we got paid for the salvage. Every mortie mattered, and any extra we managed to make went into the Kitchen Sink project at my insistence.

Two of our triangular, modular ships docked permanently up in the mountains where Prescott used to be. They were quickly gutted, their power plants hooked up to provide quick and easy additional charge to the project’s many capacitors. Weapons, armor, and any secondary systems were cannibalized for the rest of the fleet. We had plenty of those Boing triangular carriers in service, and with the boost in piracy, they always seemed to need repairs.

But the Kitchen Sink’s primary power source was deep underground. A massive fusion reactor was built into the mountain, as the Kitchen Sink’s primary foundation. It buttressed the yarsp hive and had to be secured to keep them out of it. It also required special shielding to prevent the yarsps from soaking up tons of excess radiation, thereby poisoning our entire population.

Considering the aggressive insects were still our capital city’s primary meat source, I thought the extra expense was well allocated.

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All of that was for a single weapons system, using two firing dishes. Both looked down over Prescott, and both were hidden from view by retractable doors camouflaged to look like the ruins and forest that naturally graced the mountainside.

But I knew where they were, and anytime I found myself in Prescott over the month the Kitchen Sink took to build, I found myself staring at the mountainside. Dreading the return of Inky, also known as the Blackguard.

Molls hadn’t been happy about being left out of the battle for the Nahgah Prime gate, but after seeing footage of the vortex spider in action, she quickly got over her anger at me and my broken promise. Instead, she clung to my side, staying close as often as my unpredictable schedule would allow.

She was my confidant about the Kitchen Sink and everything else in my life, but she didn’t ask to follow me into battle anymore.

And battles were plentiful in that month. Hundreds of solar systems in dozens of universes needed my help, almost all of the time. I only really came home to protect the Kitchen Sink if a credible threat to it was reported. Even then I spent my time only half paying attention to her. Mostly my mind was on the project, the plan, the trap I wanted to spring on the Church.

In the month Nu-Earth’s most important weapon system was built, we lost one planet per week to the Thread of Fate.

The Church’s relic ship liked to show up and remind us that it existed, and that we were helpless to stop it. Any of our ships conventional attacks were simply warded off by its unusually strong energy shield. That shield displayed the ability to prevent even slow-moving attacks from penetrating, cooking anything that tried with a surge of focused energy.

But usually any ships that got too close drifted away dead, their reactors and capacitors drained by pulsed ion cannon fire. As an insult, the Church let us keep them. The Thread of Fate flew with a small escort of fighter craft, but they never opened fire on our ships once disabled.

They used their own gathered footage of such incidents to showcase their mercy, and how effective their military still was. But I knew it was all a one-trick-pony. They had nothing left but the Thread of Fate, and possibly a single, injured beholder.

I’d gone over the footage of Inky’s wounding from Terna’s world so many times that even I couldn’t tell what happened anymore. The beholder arrived suddenly, a cloud of roiling black smoke in space forming into the creature’s shell before it extended several purple-black glowing tendrils and prepared to bombard the world ship.

Then a thick stream of vibrant white light shot out and struck the beholder, creating an instant of blinding uncertainty in the film. Once the whiteout cleared, all that remained of the beholder was a cloud of purple-black smoke reverting to the still emptiness of space.

On some of the days I obsessively scanned the footage, I went away comforted that the Blackguard was dead. Other days, I felt the cold dread of certainty that they still lived and were coming for my home planet as soon as they recovered.

My fear drove me to greater acts of violence against the Church, and its pirates. Without proper restraint, I was a force of nature. I tore ships apart as easily as I did the people within them.

The planets we lost to the Thread of Fate hurt us almost as badly as the credit hits that BuyMort assigned to each loss. We were starting to be considered poor custodians of our affiliate by the system, which fulfilled the Church’s primary goal.

They didn’t have to beat me in a fight if they could take away my affiliate through brute force instead. We sold everything we could, and evacuated every sapient on the worlds once we knew they were going to be demolished, but with the enemy relic ship’s FTL capabilities we got very little advance warning.

Billions died. BlueCleave hobbs, civilian workers, innocent bystanders, even Church personnel in the wrong place at the wrong time. Every death hurt Silken Sands, and that was the point. The Church was far older, and seemingly more vicious than we were. But I fully intended to prove them wrong on that front, and my opportunity finally arrived in the form of critical intelligence from Lee’s network.

Lady Sheeragore’s personal location.

Specifically, the intel had come from the new Knowle BuyMort archeologist that Axle had warned me against taking in. He had come forward with an exclamation of personal guilt toward his years serving the Church, and of loyalty to Silken Sands in our darkest hours. Axle, of course, considered the information suspect.

But I didn’t care. Lady Sheeragore’s location was the final ingredient I needed to bait my trap. It was likely a trap for me, Axle explained, but he conceded she would almost certainly be there as bait if that was true. Bait, and to watch me die in person, as painfully as her personal guard could make it.

Her secure bunker against the multiversal apocalypse was a small floating city hidden in the clouds of a gas giant deep inside remaining Church territory. The universe was so deep within BuyMort that the speed of light was slightly lower than in my own. Even the physical laws there would work against me, but so long as that universe had gravity, I had the tool I needed to kill her.

It was guarded all to hell and back, of course. But that didn’t matter to me, I was so angry and desperate that by that point I would have struck her down if she was on the surface of the sun itself.

I ordered my relic fleet home as soon as the BuyMort gate in the Nahgah Prime system was rebuilt, which was forecast to be within the day. Construction had proceeded at a breakneck pace once the gate was down. Business had to continue, after all. BuyMort had a one-track mind, if it had a mind at all.

The fleet would return to Nu-Earth and dock at the Prescott spaceport. All of my top military brass and critical affiliate infrastructure leadership would be ordered home as soon as the ships were in place, and then I would make my move.

All I had to do was wait for the Kitchen Sink to be completed.

Chapter 68

At my request, Lady Terna sent technicians to aid in the construction project when it stalled. Her small army of Grimm mole men that kept the world ship in good working order decided to spare a handful of techs to help us out, in spite of our proximity to the evil BuyMort.

They were insular. Very insular, they even brought their own food to eat. My people were insulted at first, but their insight into the complex project proved to be invaluable. Within a week of their arrival they left again, declaring the job complete, and the weapon ready.

My own inspection of the facility was done in secret, and we had to simply trust the Grimms’ word that the weapon would fire. Each dish was capable of only one load per five minutes, lest critical damage overtake the firing system.

We would get two shots at the beholder, when the time came. The five minutes of downtime for each dish meant those two shots would have to count, or the beholder would be free to ravage my capital city.

All of my friends, my partners in business, even my family went neglected as I obsessed. The Kitchen Sink became all I cared about as the project drew to a close, and one night it came to a head with Molls while I was in town to oversee its final charging process.

The mountain hummed with power as the monstrous reactor beneath us funneled massive amounts of energy into the weapon’s capacitors, reservoirs, and containment fields. There was so much anti-matter present there, a containment failure would quite literally crack the planet.

I had my most important employees on standby all day, waiting for an emergency communication to flee Nu-Earth via instant portal. Finally, when all checks came back green, and the weapon system was ready, I went home to Molls.

We had spent the afternoon making love, and then retired to the penthouse living room for an evening meal when she caught me staring out the window at the mountainside.

“Oh for . . . just go,” she nearly hissed, her eyes narrowed and scales full of vibrant red.

I turned back to face her, blinking. “I don’t know what you mean,” I replied.

“You want to be at your precious Kitchen Sink, so go!” Molls yelled.

“I don’t,” I said, shaking my head and taking a bite of locally sourced yarsp. “I just keep slipping into thoughts about it, I’m-”

“So help me if you apologize!” Molls said, her scales even brighter red as her tail rose over her shoulder to rattle.

I closed my mouth and frowned. Icey silence filled the dining table between us, until I shook my head. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to do, Molls.”

“You’re not supposed to need to be sorry in the first place!” she yelled. “You’re supposed to be here, to be present. With me!” Her tone shifted toward pleading at the end, and I could hear the pain in her voice.

I was silent for another long moment, before I finally nodded and wiped my mouth. “You’re right, of course. I’ve been distracted.”

“Ha!” she scoffed. “That’s one word for it.”

“Well, what word would you use?” I asked gently.

The red in her scales did reduce, but she pushed her oversized platter away, mostly uneaten. “Absent.”

I winced but nodded. “None of this was supposed to go this way. All I want is to be with you. Everything else just . . . keeps getting in the way.”

“Then let’s leave!” Molls pleaded. The red in her scales swirled out as green replaced it. “Be with me, if that’s what you want. Stop this endless war and be with me! Take me somewhere, leave the affiliate to Axle and Rayna. Why does it always have to be you?!”

I sighed under my breath and shook my head, staring down at the table. Unable to meet her eyes. “It’s my fight, Molls,” I answered. “I started all of this, and so many have already died. I have to finish it.”

“But when does it end?!” she cried. Oversized tears formed and fell immediately, and Molls stood to slither away into the bathroom.

I heard huge, gasping sobs and stood to follow. When I reached the doorway, I stopped. She was slumped against the sink, weeping into it so hard that she retched and vomited. I went to her side and handed her a towel, which she snatched to wipe her mouth clean with.

We ignored the recently eaten yarsp in the expensive sink and slid down to the floor together. There were no more words, I just held her while she cried.

After about half an hour of hurt feelings and tears, Molls calmed and reached up to gently touch my face. “Please, Tyson,” she whispered. “Please, let’s just go. Take me anywhere but here.”

I took a few deep breaths and shook my head. “I really am sorry Molls, but you know I can’t do that. I love you so much, and all I want is to go away and be with you. But where would we go? How could we live with ourselves, knowing we left our people here to die?”

“You built them their weapon, they don’t need you to fire it!” she cried, choking on a sob again. “I love you, Tyson. I love you! Please . . .”

Tears finally formed in my own eyes, and I marveled at them for a short moment, surprised I was still capable of feeling so much pain. After all the times I had been skinned, torn apart, and welded back together, causing Molls to cry always hurt more than any of it.

“We will leave,” I told her. “I’ll take you anywhere you want to go, and we’ll just live our lives together. But not until the multiverse is safe from the Church. I can’t walk away from that fight, not while it’s still a threat to everyone around me.”

Molls winced but nodded. “I know,” she breathed. “But I had to ask.”

I hugged her close and shook my head. “I love you so much, Molls. I think I always have, since that day in Mr. Sada’s attic. You’re why I fight, and you’re who I’m coming home to after I win that fight.”

She sniffed. “But then you’ll be off to fight BuyMort itself. The Church isn’t the end of your fight.”

“No,” I said, shaking my head. “The Church is the end of it. I’m done, I don’t want this anymore. I’ve seen now what it would do to the multiverse to take on BuyMort, and I don’t want to put anyone through that hell. It’s not my place, not my fight.”

She looked up into my eyes, and I smiled at her gently. “I mean it, my love. I’m done, as soon as we’re safe.”

Molls wrapped her tail around me and pulled me into a crushing hug, sniffling again before kissing me on my forehead, eyes, and finally lips. “Thank you,” she whispered. “Thank you, Tyson.”

“Well, Terna won’t be happy with me, but Axle will,” I said with a small chuckle. “Not that I care either way,” I whispered, stroking her scaled head against my chest. “I only care what you think, Molls.”

“I’m sorry,” she breathed. “I’m so sorry, I never meant to become like this, to make demands of you. To ask you to change. It’s not like me, I just wanted to be around you, to be with you.”

“I know,” I replied, holding her tightly. “I know, Molls. It’s okay. You’ve helped me focus, once again. Showed me what is truly important in this hellish maze of a system. All that matters is being with you. I won’t do anything that threatens that ever again.”

“Once this fight is over,” she asked.

“Once this fight is over,” I replied, nodding slowly.

Chapter 69

Later that night while she slept, I silently floated out of our penthouse. The tower would be safe, until I was done with Lady Sheeragore, anyway. After that, I expected Molls and her family would have to retreat to one of the many bunkers we had in place around Prescott.

I did feel a twinge of guilt for the ten million or so people that had come to populate the spaceport city. Not many of them would have access to bunkers when the Blackguard came, I just had to hope we could take the creature out fast enough to avoid mass casualties.

Once my final orders to the Kitchen Sink installation were given, and the weapon was in standby mode, ready to fire, I pulled up the portal I had waiting for me and approved the expense.

Rainbow light enveloped me, and the next instant I was falling into a gas giant’s atmosphere.

Below me was the city, gleaming through the thick clouds swirling around me. A quick glance at my helmet’s sensor readout told me the planet’s upper atmosphere was composed primarily of hydrogen and helium, as expected. It was far enough from its system’s star to be cold however, and the consistency felt like flying through polystyrene foam.

I approached the floating city with caution, staying in the thicker portions of the atmosphere to avoid detection. But the vault city was empty. The thing looked like a giant, stained snow globe hanging in the murky clouds.

The lower half of the orb was solid, filled in with armored machinery that kept it afloat and protected it from the immense pressures of the gas giant. Its top half was full of glittering spires and flickering snowflakes. The city was set to present an artificial winter, with heavy snow on the streets, and a thick black cloud front covering its top.

I approached, and the city responded by moving away. It plummeted rapidly, down into the planet’s lower atmosphere. The translucent alloy its dome was made of had to have a threshold, so I followed. All around me, the clouds thickened, splashing against me as I sped after the vault city.

My suit’s armor had a threshold too, and I started to feel a mild pressure at the back of my sinuses as the atmosphere grew into a flimsy aerogel soup. I blasted and splashed through chunks of the sky while I chased the vault as low as it would go. I hit the entire city with my fairy fire tracking ability, as it regularly disappeared from sight.

The glittering trail led me ever downward, through miles of thickening sky.

When it suddenly stopped, I flew up to the dome and used my enhanced vision to search for a way inside. To my side, an airlock hissed open, and I went inside without a second thought.

When it cycled through its pressure change and the drain on my suit’s charge eased up, I took a deep breath and floated into the city. I hesitated when I felt the massive orb sink even lower, but a quick glance around the orb’s inner structure showed monstrous structural reinforcement. Powerful directed energy shields that hunkered over structural flex points, reinforcing the orb by pressing out against the external pressure from within.

The city itself was a mere handful of glittering towers, with snow-filled streets between them. As I floated down toward them, I picked out a handful of exposed turrets, all inactive but waiting.

I couldn’t just smash that place apart; the inherent threat was clear. If I engaged in my usual routine of mass destruction, the planet would crush us as the orb imploded. Which meant there was a secondary vault, where I would find Lady Sheeragore. Likely with a pod ready to escape somewhere else, if needed.

With a short smile, I summoned my own pod, and watched as a purchase ad rose before me, time slowing to a standstill.

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The cost was something I would have flinched at in the early days, but I ignored it at that point. Axle’s complaints be damned; he wasn’t there. I ordered the pod to rotate around me like an orbiting moon, and then I moved cautiously down into the city streets.

On either side of me, I saw glowing, weaponized grids of mono-wire shutting down and retracting into the building’s sides, and the street below. The entire abandoned city had been retrofitted in an attempt to cut me to pieces, I could see the clumsy welds and barely hidden power cables.

No wonder they had the snow turned way up.

“I just want to talk!” I yelled, looking around as I raised my hands and lowered my armor. I figured it was the only chance I had to get close to her, but what came my way out of the snow was not Lady Sheeragore.

A small army of delves wearing heavy powered armor approached, moving cautiously through the snow as they surrounded me. Each of the suits bore powerful, reinforced arms with glowing mono wire whips gripped between their hands. The only way I could tell they were delves was the translucent dome head covering on each suit.

They almost looked like deep sea divers. Small, lit up HUDs flickered from inside each, and I sighed as they encroached on me.

“My goodness, look at all of you. Expecting trouble?” I asked.

They all stopped well out of arm’s reach, holding their mono wire whips and watching as their comrades got into position. By the end of it, I was surrounded on all sides, each heavily armored delf a dozen paces away.

“Well,” I asked with a shrug. “You guys are certainly not the main show here. Either get to your work or take me to who I want to see, servants.”

The group of delves held their position for a long moment, before one finally stepped forward and extended one hand. A holographic projection erupted from the suit’s palm, and the bust of a delf man in a silver pin striped suit glared down at me.

“Speak, Windowpuncher,” he said.

I chuckled and shook my head. “You really want me punching windows in here? Seems like that would be to no one’s benefit.”

“What do you wish to say?!” he hissed.

“Well, for you to find that out, you just have to ask your ‘Lady’ for permission to be in the room when we talk,” I replied, applying hand quotes as I did.

“If you have something to say, you can say it to me,” he said.

“Oh, I’m sure I could. But I don’t deal with the help,” I answered, crossing my arms in defiance. “Take me to Lady Sheeragore, or I wreck the place, and then I’m off to Storage.”

Storage was a free portal, from anywhere in the BuyMort system. I could take a much cheaper portal home from there. Plus it would be nearly impossible for anyone to follow me through Storage, as massive as it was and with as many entrances and exits as it held.

The hologram froze, paused, its huge face glaring down at me while the delf man behind it spoke to someone off-camera. Then it returned to life, and his glowing eyes were narrowed.

“Very well. Follow the guard, they will escort you,” he said, lips in a tight line as he stared down at me.

The nearest delf in power armor clicked his hand shut and the hologram cut off. I saw an image of the delf man in the HUD, and the guardsman gestured for me to follow.

“Keep your distance, folks. I’ve been known to bite,” I quipped, falling in line behind the delf as he stomped away through the snow.

Other guards fell in behind me and to my sides, but all of them kept far enough away to keep me satisfied. One stepped too close, eyes leery and mono wire whip at the ready. I snarled and snapped my teeth at him, and he fell over backwards trying to get away from me.

I laughed out loud and kept walking, alone in my mirth. My heavily armored pants kept my lower extremities warm as I drudged through thigh-high snowbanks, keeping to the path cut for me by my leading escort.

Our trip diverted underground in short order, and I passed close by the delf in power armor who held up the hatch for our little entourage. A passageway roughly the size of a subway tunnel back home allowed us access to the vault’s undercarriage.

“Careful, it's about to stop being funny,” I growled as one of the guards moved too close to me again. This time I just stared at him with my jaw clenched as he carefully backed off with heavy, metal-clad footsteps. His armored hands kept his mono wire whip as far from me as he safely could, and I only unclenched my fists when he was far enough away. The rest of the guards relaxed when I did, and we continued our short journey to the heart of the vault city.

Chapter 70

When we arrived in Lady Sheeragores bunker, I figured it was roughly at the center of the structure. She was secured behind another sheet of reinforced translucent metal, seated on a plush throne inside a much smaller version of the vault itself.

The orb Lady Sheeragore sat in was secured in what appeared to be a launch tube, hovering in place with fuzzy energy fields at its bottom. The room I entered was cleared of all personnel aside from two guards that entered with me and stood at the door, and a familiar, well-dressed delf at the window.

“Fascinating,” I breathed as I entered, taking in the room. It appeared to be a control room for the reinforced pod Lady Sheeragore was in, and the delf at the far end raised a hand to stop me.

“That’s far enough,” he instructed, reaching a hand out to hover over a large, red release button on the console at his back. “If you make any threatening moves, I will launch my Lady’s vault-pod and she will be out of your reach. This button also starts the city’s self-destruct sequence, which will not take long once it has begun. Do you understand the terms of this meeting?”

I nodded with a small sneer. “I do,” I answered. “But I have to ask, you’re not going to be doing her talking for her, are you? That wasn’t the deal, so if that’s your intent, just hit the button and let’s get this over with.”

He snarled, and his hand twitched over the button, but he held to his restraint. “I am not. Lady Sheeragore has decided to grace you with a personal audience before your death, at your request.”

I waved away the pod as it hovered in front of me, then pointed at it. “You sure seem certain about my death. What’s your answer to my little insurance policy here?”

“Portal out, go ahead,” he replied with a grimace. “We have cameras operating all over this city, and especially in this room. You will be proclaimed a coward to the multiverse.”

My eyebrows raised momentarily as I laughed. “Says the man-servant of a woman in a panic room.”

“Enough!” Lady Sheeragore suddenly said. Her eyes blazed as she stared down at me, and she gestured to her servant to step aside. “What do you have to say to me, you destructive lunatic?”

I nodded and took a breath, glancing over my shoulder at the guards in power armor. The rest had stayed right outside the door, ready to rush in single file if needed.

“Oh I wanted to offer you the chance to surrender,” I said with a shrug. “You know how it is; killing CEOs is just bad business. I’d rather avoid it if possible. You’d be treated well as my prisoner. Perhaps I’d even allow you to join the House of None, once I’ve dismantled your remaining assets.”

Lady Sheeragore raised a hand to her neckline, clutching at metaphorical pearls. “The audacity,” she breathed.

“I’m so much worse than audacious,” I said, lowering my voice and eyes as I smiled at her. “Something tells me you already know that though.”

“After the chaos and waste you have wreaked upon the Church, upon my Church, you dare to offer me submission?” she hissed.

“Yeah,” I said, smiling at her grimly while I activated a BuyMort extension to record everything I saw and heard. It would record, at some expense to me, as long as I wanted it to. “The other option here you really won’t like, so I strongly suggest you come on out of there and come with me. You have a lot to answer for.”

“You genuinely expect me to answer to you?!” she snarled, rising up from her throne in anger.

“Well, not to me, but to the billions of families you’ve left in mourning. To the untold market value you’ve cost this system through your arrogance and deceit,” I said, ticking off the points on my fingers. “You have to answer for your crimes against BuyMort. I’m just giving you the courtesy of choosing a non-violent way of doing that.”

“You are beneath me, scum!” Lady Sheeragore raved. “You and your entire affiliate, all of you should be serving the House of Sheeragore!”

“Like the House of None, you mean?” I asked gently. “Those delves are so much better than you, with all your gold and comforts. You are weak, Lady Sheeragore, and your weakness has cost us all far too much already.”

Her glowing eyes narrowed. “You will pay for that, human. Kill him!”

The delf in pinstripes splashed against the translucent metal wall as I hurtled into him as fast as I could go. I caught his severed hand before it could fall onto the button and turned to hurl it at the incoming guards.

The first guard snapped up his mono wire whip and sliced the limb in half before it could reach his power armor, as he churned his mechanically enhanced legs to reach me. I summoned my own armor and slammed into him, making him pull his whip back to avoid hitting my hovering BuyMort pod.

His heavily armored frame hurtled backwards into the crowd of other guards at the door, and I turned to face the two left in the room with me.

The first stepped forward and carefully flicked his whip at me, the glowing tip of it snapping just over my shoulder as I dropped low and swept his heavy legs out from underneath him. I slammed my fist into his chest-plate and activated my power blow ability, sending the power armor frame skidding back into the doorway and crushing the delf inside.

With the door effectively blocked, I turned to the last remaining delf with an enhanced growl.

“Kill him!” Lady Sheeragore shrieked from behind me.

The guard lunged at me and I vaulted over his head, then turned in midair to grab his armor-frame and slam it down into the metal floor. It caved in and the delf was wedged in place.

In the doorway, the cluster of power armor was sliced through by a golden yellow mono wire. It lashed out twice more before a kick sent the pieces of delf and armor through the door frame at me. I hovered quickly to the side to avoid it, protecting my BuyMort pod.

The moment my legs touched the far wall, I pushed off it and flew directly into the doorway with both fists extended. I activated my power blow ability in both hands and sent the squad of delves scattering back into the tunnel beyond.

“You’ll never win this fight, human!” screamed Lady Sheeragore from behind me. “This vault is too low for BuyMort to operate once the pressure gets in! You’ll die here, pod or no!”

“Oh shut up,” I groaned, as I hovered over to the button and slapped it. “Get lost. I’ll kill you in a minute.”

Her orb opaqued and dropped out of sight as she howled in rage.

I pulled up my BuyMort menu as the power armored delves at my back groaned and tried to get their frames moving again. None of the remaining guards seemed invested in running for their lives, they just seemed to want to get to me, to fulfill their Lady’s order.

“BuyMort,” I said, focusing back on the empty escape shaft. The translucent metal began cracking as liquid clouds swirled up from the bottom of the shaft before it sealed its doors again. The vault was falling once more, I could feel the momentum. “I need to buy a very specific ship, and I need it fast. Give me options for pressure resistant, gas giant, planetary assault craft!”

Lady Sheeragore’s personal panic room was capable of surviving more pressure than the vault city, so I figured BuyMort had to have something similar that I could use. Smaller surface area was better, when it came to keeping pressure at bay.

BuyMort happily threw out several expensive options for me to browse through, but I had no time for leisurely shopping. Asking it to generalize the sales spiels and stats, I scanned through the ships on my list.

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Titan Striker X2

Description: Built with an ultra-dense alloy frame, the Titan Striker X2 is designed to withstand extreme pressures and corrosive atmospheres typical of gas giants. Equipped with high-thrust engines and advanced navigation systems, it’s perfect for swift planetary assaults.

Features: Pressure-resistant up to 300 atmospheres, dual ion thrusters, and a reinforced cockpit.

Price: 450,000,000,000 morties

Vortex Raider IV

Description: The Vortex Raider IV offers exceptional maneuverability and durability in hostile environments. Its shielding technology is capable of absorbing radiation and deflecting intense heat, making it ideal for deep atmospheric missions.

Features: Radiation and heat shield, 360-degree assault capabilities, and emergency auto-eject system.

Price: 380,000,000,000 morties

Nebula Commando V7

Description: This craft is a favorite among elite forces for covert operations on gas giants. It features stealth technology, extended life support systems, and is equipped with state-of-the-art weaponry.

Features: Stealth mode, extended life support, and armament bay with customizable weapon options.

Price: 520,000,000,000 morties

Goliath Explorer GT

Description: The Goliath Explorer GT is built for endurance and strength, able to dive into the depths of any gas giant without compromising on safety. Its spacious interior and powerful engines make it a top choice for longer missions that require additional crew and equipment.

Features: High-capacity oxygen tanks, triple-layered pressure hull, and cargo hold.

Price: 60,000,000,000 morties

Orion Assault Pulsar

Description: Compact and agile, the Orion Assault Pulsar is specifically designed for rapid deployment and high-speed maneuvers in thick atmospheres. It offers cutting-edge targeting systems and a robust defensive matrix.

Features: Advanced targeting system, defensive energy shield, and high-speed atmospheric entry capabilities.

Price: 40,000,000,000 morties

The Church of BuyMort Oracle MK-1

Description:  Made for operations within high-pressure vault cities, the Celestial Oracle MK-1 is engineered for functionality in liquid-heavy, high-pressure atmospheres. This perfect-sphere ship is optimized for launch from structures similar to vault cities and is equipped with a special high-pressure-capable torpedo for strategic strikes under extreme conditions.

Features: Single high-pressure torpedo, orb-shaped design for optimal pressure distribution, and launch capability from similar vault city environments.

Price: 720,000,000,000 morties

It was from the Church itself, made for use with high-pressure vault cities. Specifically, it was designed to fly within a mostly liquid, heavy pressure atmosphere, and be launched from a vault city exactly like the one I was currently destroying. The orb-shaped ship even offered a single pressure-capable torpedo, which the seller, Lady Sheeragore’s personal affiliate, assured me would function even in a gas giant’s ocean surface, if necessary.

I bought it, told BuyMort to warp it into the launch tube my prey had recently vacated, and then changed my portal destination to the ship’s cockpit. Before I stepped through, I heard alarms start blaring behind me, and the crackle-crunch of high-density metal starting to fragment. The translucent wall in front of me spiderwebbed cracks, and I smiled as rainbow light enveloped me.

The pod-ship was designed for humanoid hands, and I quickly hit my own launch button on the inside. It skidded and sparked against the warping tracks before bursting out the bottom of the vault city and diving deeper into the murk of the gas giant.

Alarms on my craft immediately informed me that I was too low for sustained flight. I had minutes to find and kill my enemy, so I pressed the expensive ship for all it was worth.

Deep scanning trackers immediately picked up Lady Sheeragore’s panic room and I veered toward it, still recording. I glanced back to see the glittering ball of the vault city suddenly crumple inward, imploding violently and sending shards flying straight down at us.

Her panic room turned suddenly, flying away from the path of the shrapnel as it gained speed. I followed, narrowly missing the many tons of crushed metal as it hurtled down to become part of the planet’s liquid metal surface.

With a snarl, I waited for my targeting system to lock onto her panic room, as I kept my own new ball-shaped ship close behind her. As soon as it was locked, I hit the fire button and a tiny, glowing orb launched from the front of my ship. It streaked across an open patch of sky and struck her ship, bursting into vibrant pink flame.

Lady Sheeragore died as her panic room imploded. The delf woman was crushed into paste in a fraction of a second, a particularly ignominious death for someone of her former station. One moment her pod was flying, the next it was merely crushed garbage falling into the gas giant’s depths.

There couldn’t even be a funeral.

I cut my recording and directed my own craft to fly up, out of the atmosphere. Once the atmosphere thinned, my alarms receded and I was able to summon a specialized pod to warp me and my new ship back home.

After I had piloted the shiny disco-ball of a ship onto a landing pad, my first call was to Yolara Brinks.

Chapter 71

The ship opened by splitting in half, so I floated out of the cockpit and allowed my hobb ground crew to retract the entire landing platform into our subterranean parking garage while I spoke to my publicist.

Axle wouldn’t be happy with how expensive it had been to kill the Church’s final vestige of leadership, but I knew it was worth it. Things started to move very quickly after I gave our head of public relations the tape proving the delf woman’s death.

Our relic fleet had been closing in on Nu-Earth, having come through the rebuilt Nahgah Prime gate earlier in the day. Once they arrived, I ordered the story of Lady Sheeragore’s death to go wide and recalled all of my top generals and affiliate staff to Prescott.

Their trap had failed miserably to kill me, so it felt like an opportune moment for me to lay a trap of my own. My month of planning was over, and it was time for implementation.

An interview with Shalla was scheduled, but this time she refused to do it in person. Instead, she was secured in a completely different universe, and we spoke over a MortMobile connection.

The eyes, ears, and minds of nearly every sapient left in the BuyMort system tuned in to watch, their fear of MortMobile forgotten as the Church affiliate stock plummeted. She was at a normal news desk, in her studio somewhere safe from me and my antics.

I was on the bridge of the Crown of Thorns, all the system screens around me shut down to protect proprietary secrets.

“Warlord,” Shalla began. “I am told you have news to share with the BuyMort system?”

“I do,” I said, steepling my hands together in front of me. “The final majority shareholder in the Church is dead. I have killed Lady Sheeragore, of the House of Sheeragore. The leader of the cult is finally dead, and Silken Sands can take its rightful place at the head of the BuyMort system.”

Shalla’s scales went yellow, but she quickly got the reaction under control and returned to a neutral pale white. “That is quite the claim, and of course unprovable since the House of Sheeragore has gone underground to avoid your military campaign against them.”

“First off, I can prove it. Your staff should be getting the footage now. Please, feel free to waste everyone’s time by going over it at length before showing it,” I replied, sitting back with a sigh.

Shalla looked off-screen, listening to someone we couldn’t hear, before she nodded and turned back to her camera. “I’m told the footage is authenticated through BuyMort’s recording system, we’ll go ahead and play it now. A warning to the audience; what you are about to see may be disturbing.”

“Only if you’re a beholder cultist,” I scoffed.

Shalla glared at me, but ignored the comment as the video began to play. It started in the middle of my conversation with the delf leader and ended with the destruction of Lady Sheeragore’s panic room-ship.

“The Church’s rapidly dropping credit rating should also provide some authentication to my report,” I said when it finished.

“While that is undeniable, your claims are in question. Are you stating that Silken Sands has destroyed the leadership of the longest lasting, most financially stable affiliate in the BuyMort system?” Shalla asked, the yellow creeping back into her scales.

“I am,” I replied with a nod. “And I’m letting the entire multiverse know that Prescott on Nu-Earth will be holding a celebration of that great victory. All of the Silken Sands leadership team will be present, as we celebrate the hard-won freedom from oppression that all peoples within the BuyMort system can now enjoy.”

“Freedom?” Shalla gasped. “From stability? From economic success?”

“From oppression, Shalla, as I already said. I don’t expect someone like you to understand. You’re a millionaire paid by billionaires, how could you possibly be in touch with the average person living under BuyMort?” I asked rhetorically. “Without the Church, Silken Sands is on the rise again, and will be assuming full economic control of the BuyMort system once we achieve rank one in the top ten list. Our projections show that should be within the week.”

“And that is why you have waged this war? To usurp the Church’s place on the BuyMort leaderboards?” Shalla asked, mouth open.

“Of course not, that will merely be final proof of the Church’s defeat,” I replied. “And if you track it as closely as I do, you’ll know the rise of Silken Sands is inevitable.”

“Now that you’ve murdered your competitors?” Shalla asked, tapping her empty papers together against her desk.

“Now that I’ve removed an impediment to multiversal prosperity,” I corrected. “How many times have people died for lack of bribes paid to the Church? What they called tithes. How many ships detonated in line at the gates for want of basic aid that would have cost the Church next to nothing, but never came? Why must morties matter more than lives? Can you answer for the crimes of the Church, Shalla? I know I couldn’t.”

“And that is why you have attacked them? These are your reasons?” she asked, avoiding my eyes.

“Yes. This is why I have destroyed them. Not merely attacked, successfully destroyed. There is no more effective Church leadership or military remaining in the BuyMort system, and Silken Sands is going to celebrate that fact,” I told her, and the audience at home.

Before she could cut in, I laid out the most important part of my trap. “Tonight, about six Nu-Earth standard hours from now, we will be throwing a party across all of Prescott. Any sapients in the BuyMort network of good intent are invited to join us to celebrate the end of the Church. And don’t worry if you’re late. Our celebration will run for at least three days.”

Shalla blinked and her scales flickered orange. “You are confident in your victory, aren’t you?” she muttered, turning to face an off-camera aid. “Very well, CTV will have a crew present. We will keep the multiverse posted on these events. Please stay tuned for analysis and commentary on the Silken Sands takeover.”

With my interview finished, I cut the feed to Shalla without further comment.

I ordered a squadron of hobbs to secure Molls and her family in one of our deep bedrock VIP vaults and got to work organizing the last steps of my trap. The Kitchen Sink was my first stop. I had the crew running it put on high alert and made sure the dishes were charged and ready to fire at a moment’s notice.

All they would have to wait for was their coverings to slide back.

Next, I stopped by the spaceport and assigned pilots to our many assault craft. The relic fleet was manned and ready, with full combat-ready teams aboard each Sand Star frigate, and Admiral Omen at the helm of the Crown of Thorns. All the ships remained in port, docked on the surface of the spaceport with all the appearance of an unsuspecting target.

Once our manned defenses were in place and ready, I went to check on Cube, our final ingredient.

If I knew anything about the Blackguard after watching all of their attacks on our facilities, they were going to approach the spaceport first, likely from the desert. That creature liked to put on a show when possible, to terrify its victims before killing them.

And with our city in the grips of celebration, the beholder would almost certainly want to be seen as it approached to do its work.

Cube was stationed at the edge of the spaceport, in his building shape. We projected doors and windows onto his body to complete the illusion so that he looked like any other five or six story building in the city.

“TYSON!” he bellowed as I landed. “CUBE HUNGRY!”

“Well, buddy, you sit tight and we’ll bring you something special to eat.” I had to hope that Inky was edible, as Cube was still a bit sore about Bubbles, and what he viewed as a robbery. The ocean had eaten his treat, and he held a grudge against anyone who mentioned beholder treats from that day on.

“No eating ships, right buddy?” I asked.

“NO EATING SHIPS!” Cube affirmed. Tollya had trained him well.

My thought process at the time was that he would know what to do with a beholder when it arrived. But really, he was merely our first line of defense if the Blackguard hit us unexpectedly. Using my strange, alien pet as a decoy gave me a twinge of guilt, but it was all or nothing at that point.

Like magic, at my word the city threw itself into celebration. My desert city below the ruins of old Prescott was alive with music and revelers within an hour of the announcement. Our affiliate needed to do very little to aid in the burgeoning party. We simply made a series of small purchases, adding alcohol and food to the festivities where needed.

I watched from above, hovering in the night sky as my people celebrated.

Prescott was alive, vibrant, and full of lights. People warped in from all over the multiverse, with continual small pops of rainbow light. BlueCleave was out in the streets, patrolling and partying alike. They were good at blending into the celebrating crowds, and presented a low-impact security presence, even while enjoying themselves.

My high-profile affiliate leaders were busy making statements to the press and partying like everyone else. Nice and visible, most of them completely unaware, but partying. Even Morbin made a rare public appearance, drunk on blue tequila, of course.

Axle remained secure in a distant universe, surrounded by his security fleet.

While I floated there, I thought about the path I had carved through BuyMort since its arrival on my world. Nu-Earth, formerly just Earth, was forever changed the instant those nanites flooded into all our brains. But really, we’d already been doing to ourselves what BuyMort came and did to us. Just slower.

I knew how to exploit the BuyMort system because the systems I lived under before it shared commonality with it. That singular, fundamentally broken and harmful tool; morties. Or money, the name didn’t matter. It was just the nature of the tool itself.

Currency: the eventual end of all things civilized.

Spectre had known too and planned accordingly. Competition is and always was the opposite of cooperation, and cooperation is the foundational building block of all forms of civilization. Once that night was over, if it all went according to plan, there would be nobody left for my civilization to fight. Nobody left to compete with.

As I watched a cloud of black fog begin forming in the desert just to the west of my spaceport, I wondered who we would fight when it was over. I wondered what would keep us from fighting ourselves.

“Kitchen Sink,” I whispered into my open comm channel, as the Blackguard started forming its shell in front of me.

“Yes, Warlord!” came the immediate response.

“Open the shutters and prepare to fire on my position,” I muttered, flying closer to the emergent beholder.

Then I activated my helmet’s booming voice feature with a thought. “Inky!” I shouted, my voice echoing across the desert. “You should know, the last time a beholder came to my planet, it didn’t end well for them.”

The swirling mass of black clouds became a shell, from the center of which stared a massive, purple-tinged flaming eyeball. Behind me, I heard screams cut through the din of music and celebration, as the city started to notice the beholder.

“YOU. INVITED. ME,” said the Blackguard, as tentacles of shadow extended from its central bulk. They scorched the ground and glowed blackish purple as the many limbs began a hypnotic threshing movement. The desert threw up dust clouds as the oversized beholder loomed, moving steadily toward my city.

“Technically, I only invited sapients of good intent. I don’t think you apply for either,” I muttered, watching the beast’s trajectory.

As soon as one of its limbs touched Cube, the first structure leading into the city, my pet sparked. A lightning strike flooded up the beholder’s limbs and through its circular shell. The Blackguard hesitated, its great purple eye swiveling down to stare at the structure that had caused it a twinge of pain.

“BE. AFRAID.” the creature rumbled, its psychic voice bouncing off the mountains. “YOUR. END. HAS. COME.”

“Wanna bet?” I asked.

Over either shoulder, two streaks of brilliant white light shot out of the mountainside and punched through the beholder’s shell. White light and detonations filled its dark energy shell, while its tentacles all went stiff. The light continued to spread, white energy replacing the black fog of the beholder until it raced through every tentacle and sparked against the ground.

Then the Blackguard erupted. The beholder screamed as it blew skyward, excess dark and regular energy streaking into the upper atmosphere.

A beautiful light show followed, as radiation played against Nu-Earth’s electromagnetic field and created a violent aurora in the night sky.

The screams behind me turned to cheers, as the city returned to its party. The final beholder within the BuyMort system unspooled and died to the sound of raucous applause. Their true form, an entire universe smaller than a single atom, became trapped within the rapidly cooling glass of the Arizona desert.

Cube roared his displeasure, while waving his long, liquid-metal tongue in the air to try and catch some of the beholder’s essence.

I was glad I hadn’t promised him a beholder treat, at the least. His disappointment wouldn’t be pointed my direction again.

While the aurora played itself out in the atmosphere, I stared up into the sky, looking beyond the colors to the black of space beyond them. Waiting. Watching for the final threat to my people, and my world while counting the seconds.

My pilots took their cue and rose into the sky in a cloud, lifting from the planet’s surface in preparation, even as the Crown of Thorns itself silently levitated behind them.

After a count of only sixty seconds, the twin golden cones of the Thread of Fate arrived in high orbit, crackling with energy from its FTL jump. The ship immediately moved to separate, a long golden thread unwinding from within the thick ends of the two cones.

The moment I had long feared was finally upon me. Thankfully, I had prepared. The Kitchen Sink trap wasn’t just for the beholder.

My relic fleet rose to meet the threat, passing through the dwindling aurora with the Crown of Thorns pushing ever higher. The Brisingida cruisers spread out and started intercepting energy weapons fire. Some fended off laser fire while others soaked transdimensional pulse ion fire, falling back to Nu-Earth only to regain charge from the plasma of their re-entry.

All of the many Sand Star frigates opened fire on both halves of the Thread of fate, pouring nuclear ammunition into its shields as the Crown of Thorns surged forward.

The Thread of Fate suddenly stopped its momentum, both halves straining to come apart as the Crown of Thorns held it in place. The potent gravity drive pushed against Nu-Earth and gripped both halves of the Church’s final relic ship. The cosmic string began vibrating from the tug-of-war, slipping back and forth within its containment field and slicing apart any ships that came too close to the conflict.

I watched, helpless to do anything about it as a Sand Star was cut cleanly in half, falling to burn up in Nu-Earth’s atmosphere. Bright red Buzzstars flitted about between the monstrous ships, absorbing weapons fire and attempting to avoid the violently fluctuating cosmic string.

“Kitchen Sink, report!” I yelled, flying upward, my instinctive drive telling me to join the battle.

“Two minutes to weapons ready, Warlord!” came the response.

“Not good enough, melt the dish if you have to! Get it there faster!” I shouted. My armor clanked into place around me and I dipped to catch a falling Sand Star that had taken a pulsed ion cannon shot. I strained and shoved against it while it struggled to get its reactor fired up again, then I let go and it flew back into the fight.

As I watched, the Crown of Thorns was pushed back, closer to the planet. The Thread of Fate engaged extra engines along the rim of its dual cones, blue fusion fires jetting out behind it as it shoved against the COT’s gravity drive.

“Admiral, can you hold them?!” I asked.

His window in my HUD lit up and I saw the strangely darkened bridge in the background. The crew was recovering from another jolt of unexpected movement, and I was glad I’d ordered all non-essential personnel off the ship for the encounter.

Of course, if it failed to hold the Thread of Fate, Nu-Earth would be destroyed too.

“Yes, Warlord!” Admiral Omen strained. “But not for long, charge is drying up!”

I manipulated my HUD to show me the inside of the ship, its gravitic core surrounded by a molten ocean. The floating pool of liquid metal was noticeably smaller, and its coloration was darkening as I watched.

“All or nothing, Admiral!” I told him. “Just like we planned!” The other man nodded once and turned back to his station.

“Prepare to fire thorns!” he roared to the bridge crew. I heard Tollya’s voice shout in the affirmative as the entire ship slid back towards Nu-Earth again.

“Kitchen Sink, now!” I yelled, turning back to look at the planet. My enhanced eyes zoomed in on the mountainside and I saw the firing sequence start.

One of the dishes slagged under the intense heat and energy, an instant before its side of the mountain erupted in black smoke and dust. My breath caught in my throat for an instant while I watched the rolling cloud of dust fall down the mountain to encompass Prescott.

Then a bolt of pure white hurtled up from the planet, punching a hole through first the dust miasma, and then the atmospheric cloud cover. The Kitchen Sink fired upward and struck one of the energy shields surrounding the Thread of Fate.

The golden shield sparked and cast lightning bolts of yellow to all ships in the region, before it visibly dissipated.

“Open fire!” I shouted.

Admiral Omen relayed the order and Tollya fired a dozen thorns up and through the Thread of Fate’s starboard cone. Gold and gray metal splashed out from the far side of the craft, and the ship began to explode in sequence. Every thorn left a gaping hole that filled with fire and shrapnel, tearing apart one half of the Church’s final relic ship.

While it listed down toward Nu-Earth’s atmosphere and the Atlantic Ocean, its twin lost its own shield. The ship struggled to hold onto its end of its one-dimensional cosmic weapon, reinforcing shields focusing in on the base of the string itself.

The string, freed from its confinement, lashed through my fleet and cut a dozen ships in half as its tip reached down into the planet and tore a gash across southern Mexico. It instantly created a new canal, ocean water rushing in to fill the deep gash in the planet’s crust.

I pushed my suit and streaked toward the remaining cone-shaped craft.

“Crown of Thorns, hold your fire! If we destroy the other half of the ship, we lose all containment of the string!” I ordered.

I hurtled toward the thick edge of the cone and blasted into its command bridge just above the cosmic string’s containment field. It was obvious, with a giant bubble of translucent alloy providing a view of the entire field of carnage.

The crew on board was sucked out into space as oversized blast doors slammed shut on the rear of the bridge, protecting the rest of the ship from the hull breach. All of the controls were touch-screen based, the same ostentatious gold and ivory decorative scheme making the ship’s controls obvious. I hovered rapidly to the main steerage section, marked by an oversized wooden steering wheel bolted to the deck and a rapidly cooling delf corpse still wedged into the wheel.

With a grunt of frustration, I pushed my mind to remember the delf language and rapidly pressed a series of buttons on the screen beside the steering wheel. Then I hauled on it and turned the half of a ship away from Nu-Earth, accelerating as fast as it would allow me without entering FTL.

The cosmic string whipped back around and splashed through the Pacific Ocean, creating a temporary cut in the deep water’s surface before it crashed back in to fill it. I ignored the planet at my back, and my own fleet as I pushed the Thread of Fate away from my world, away from my people. On its rebound, the cosmic string snipped off the far side of my cone, and fresh alarms blared to inform me of the damage.

My FTL readout was still green, so I input the Jupiter gate’s coordinates and hit the command to make the ship perform its jump. The cosmic string, still contained on one end, dangled and trailed behind the ship as it streaked through space, causing all stars through the viewport to streak and lengthen for an instant of nauseating movement and speed.

Then the string hurtled toward the ship itself, and I spun the wheel to pull away from it, emergency engines engaging and blasting fusion streams as the ship pulled away from its own madly gyrating weapon.

I ordered a portal to the only universe I knew the string would be safe in and watched as rainbow light shot out toward me, taking us away.

To Sleem.

The solar system was empty, except for its main star. Our affiliate had done a great job of cleaning it up, removing each planetary body for a hearty paycheck. It was the perfect dumping ground for a weapon like the cosmic string. With another grunt, I hauled the nautical-style steering wheel around and slapped the FTL drive activation once more.

The drive cut out after only a few seconds, but it was enough to get me free from the gate and avoid damaging it with the cosmic string.

Another whip-crack of the one dimensional line of space had the entire golden top spiraling away from itself in pieces, as explosions began to spread. I pushed my suit and hurtled out of the shattered viewport, carefully avoiding the cosmic string as I left.

Behind me, it continued to gyrate and whip around, until the glowing point of energy connecting it to the dying relic ship blinked out and it spun free. I lost sight of the string the instant it was disconnected from the relic ship, it had been the only thing making it visible. All that remained of it was a violent shimmer as the ship’s exploding remnants were cut through a final time.

It burst into an expanding bubble of flame, before collapsing in on itself as the flames all winked out. The ruins of the ship drifted away, thousands of tiny points of shrapnel glimmering in the light of the system’s only star.

I sighed in relief and turned back to the System’s BuyMort gate. The gate had shifted into a stable orbit about as far from the sun as Venus was from Sol, so I pushed my suit into a gravity haul to get there quicker. Having the string in-system with me made me nervous, especially since I could no longer see it.

When I arrived near the gate, I saw a rainbow flash announcing the arrival of a ship. I hauled up short, watching as a Sand Star frigate approached my position. My first thought was that a rescue had been mounted. Axle could track my gate use, so Admiral Omen and the fleet had to know where I had gone.

That thought vanished as a hatch below the main bridge bubble opened, and a transdimensional pulse ion cannon fired a single blob directly into my chest. The frigate was only a few hundred kilometers away when it fired, and I had no chance to dodge the blast.

My suit instantly went dark and stopped responding to my mental commands. Even my ‘magic’ nanite helmet shut down and fell to dust inside my starfish suit. I drifted forward until I bounced lightly off the Sand Star’s hull. The collision started me on a light, uncontrolled spiral as I ricocheted away.

Inside my starfish helmet, MortMobile suddenly appeared from a cloud of gray fog. He looked concerned, but only told me that I had a call coming in. My mind raced as I accepted the call, but I already knew what was happening.

Admiral Omen was on the other end of the line, seated in the Sand Star’s piloting chair. He was alone inside the relic ship.

“Warlord,” he said in greeting, his tone cold and devoid of emotion.

“Admiral,” I replied. “I suppose I should have seen this coming.”

He nodded, looking down. “I did warn you this would happen, if you threatened the affiliate or those who live beneath it.”

As my dead suit spun lightly away from him, I began ordering a PRD from BuyMort. “You did,” I said. “I suppose you’re a man of your word, whatever else you may be.”

“Then you understand,” he said, inputting a command on his console. “My apologies Tyson, it really isn’t personal.”

As my pod warped into place beside me, Admiral Omen opened fire with the ship’s sandcasters. Several micro-tubules detonated against my helmet, blasting apart the inert armor even as I was sent spiraling away from my BuyMort pod.

It happily warped in the Prince Rupert’s Drop I had ordered and it drifted away from me, glittering as I spun end over end. The concussive force hit me with an instant headache even as my armor ruptured and exposed my face and head to vacuum.

The next blast hit me square in the face and tore away the upper half of my skull. Without any charge in my starfish suit, Admiral Omen had effectively killed me. The last thought that went through my head before everything went dark was how well he’d thought out my murder. About how easy it would be to blame my failure to return on the Church’s final relic ship, and cosmic string.

My headless corpse, still wearing its shiny, dead suit of armor, drifted away from the BuyMort gate and fell into an irregular orbit around Sleem’s star.

How do I know this, if I was dead when it happened?

Well, if you think death means you don’t have to go to work under BuyMort, you haven’t been paying attention.

The End.

Epilogue

My dead body wasn’t technically the only thing floating around in the Sleem system. There were a handful of minor planetoids we had missed. Small asteroids, mostly. None bigger than a Volkswagen Beetle, with the majority of them in the basketball-sized range.

The occasional comet passed through the system as well, from the distant OORT cloud it hosted. Most of those weren’t worth the effort it would have taken to run a ship out, land on them, and sell them to BuyMort after a MortBlock claim had been made.

But primarily it was just me and empty space, floating around the star as it traveled its way through the universe, almost free of encumbrances. All it hauled along with it was that handful of space trash I described above, an inert BuyMort gate that nobody used, my dead, armored body, and the wreck of the Thread of Fate.

The cosmic string the ship had used as a weapon vanished, drifting free in the universe I used to dump it in. It wasn’t held in sway to the star like I was, eternally falling into its gravity well and then being pushed back out by its solar winds.

If I could remember the time I spent in Sleem, I would probably describe it as the most peaceful days of my entire existence. For just under a century, I drifted through space. Alone, betrayed to my death, and simply gone to all who had known or loved me. A peaceful, dead exile in deep space.

I was in a void, gripped by frozen oblivion for decades while I drifted. Unaware from the moment Admiral Omen blew my head off, right up until the moment my still-clenched fist blasted through a fragment of the Church’s last relic ship. My suit’s charge spun up, its central printer began working, and thin tendrils dragged chunks of skull and brain matter back into place.

Then, after I was put back together, my suit began thawing out my body, replacing parts too damaged or exposed to be used. The crystalline colonies in my body, long dormant, began to stir again.

And my eyes opened, onto a completely foreign multiverse. It was time to get to work.

The End (of Book 6)

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About the Authors

Damien Hanson

Damien is a writer, a gamer and an educator. He lives in Gimpo-Si, South Korea with his wife and son. He likes to meet up with friends and roll dice whenever the opportunity presents itself and has authored several stories.

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Joseph Phelps

In competitive or cooperative video games over thousands of logged hours, Joseph has always sought out unconventional gameplay and created his own fun.

He's the kind of gamer that ensures the ESRB cannot provide appropriate ratings for online games. It's this type of unusual and amusing gameplay that he brings to the LitRPG and GameLit genres, with wildly aggressive competitive and unconventional single player dynamics at the core of his storytelling. Join him and find out for yourself.

https://www.amazon.com/Joseph-Phelps/e/B07WZCJ39T/