Chapter 8

“So, uh, before anyone does anything that they might regret,” I said, lifting up my hands. Several Doyen paladins were standing before me and the rest of Bravo Squad (and Vicky Smith, but I wasn’t sure that she counted yet) and each of them had their psi-swords crackling and sparking. Behind them, the civilians were rapidly fleeing the interior city. Clearly, they knew what was supposed to happen when Paladins got a bit narky.

“Kill the imp-” one of the Paladins started.

My eyes widened and I thrust out my finger, pointing behind them. “What the ever loving fuck is that!?”

One of them looked.

That was why he lived. He flung himself to the side with a yelp as the front of the city exploded inwards with a spray of stone and plaster. Men and women of dozens of races ran screaming for cover as the remaining Paladins spun around too late to see one of the knock-off sandworms that peppered Vega III’s vast deserts of petrified trees. It was not the largest of the Shai Hulud. However, it didn’t need to be when it smashed its vast, bifurcating mouth down upon the Paladins, reducing them to a bunch of smeary bits of black blood. Like my first experience with a Paladin (who had also not looked behind him), Paladins without time to prep their shields or their warforms were dead Paladins.

“How the fuck did that happen?” Opal whispered.

“Pheremones,” Vicky said, quietly. “The local worms use them when they’re under threat. I started pumping them the instant we walked through the door.”

I pursed my lips. “Well. Do you think she can stay on the team, guys?” I looked at the others. Ali gave me a thumbs up and then a huge, salacious wink. “ ... that’s not a euphemism, Ali.”

“Guys,” Tycho snarled, her voice flat and her eyes locked on Tiny Hulud. The huge beast was wriggling and writhing, then drawing itself backwards onto its body like a snake looking around. It whuffed at the air with dozens of nostrils, swinging its head around as cowering civilians tried to find places to hide. It roared and Vicky frowned.

“Ah, right,” she said. “It’ll keep eating until it doesn’t scent any more non-worm creatures. That was the downside.”

“Now you mention it!” I shouted, collecting my warform as I charged forward and tackled the worm back out through the hole it had burst into. Irritatingly, being the size of a mecha only meant that I was on par with the worm, and the two of us tumbled into the vast forest of shattered, petrified stumps. Said stumps exploded into a haze of fragments as we tumbled over and over. My psionic arm was jammed into Tiny Hulud’s mouth, keeping it from chomping down on my psionic head. Fortunately, it didn’t seem to know that my actual fleshy body was in the chest.

Unfortunately, its tail had looped around me and was starting to squeeze.

I brought my other arm swinging around, focusing on creating a triangular stabbing psi-blade on the back of my wrist. It plunged into the side of Tiny’s neck. And then I found out what happened when you stuck something with a psi-blade when it was too big to simply cauterize in a single sweeping blood. The blade dug into flesh and came into contact with gallon upon gallon of blood, pumped against the edge of the psionic field. That field, which cut by being super fucking hot and super fucking thin, immediately caused the blood to boil. Since the blade remained in contact, rather than just scything through a limb, it didn’t even manage to cauterize. The superheated blood steam just ... rocketed out of the creature’s noses.

All, like...

Sixteen of them.

It was a bit like getting hit in the knuckles by one of those water hoses they use to dig for gold. My whole torso went twisting completely around, and if this had been my real body rather than my warform, I’d have been dead as fucking shit. As it was, the momentum simply flung my flesh form against the skin of my psionic field with enough force to cause the shoulder blade of my warform to distend like it was a piece of ballistic jello and the Mythbusters had fired an anti-tank rifle into it. The blue, semi-transparent skin that made up the edges of my warform held...

For a moment.

Pop.

My warform fizzled into nothingness and yours truly was plunging towards the remaining chunks of petrified tree that sprawled beneath me. Quite a lot of those trees looked sharp as balls. I started trying to get my telekinetic field working again. My brain, too jarred by the sudden loss of my warform, only managed to make tiny sparkles at the tips of my fingers. I screamed in frustration – and then plunged into a huge mattress of warm, black fluff. My face mashed against the curling hairs and I breathed out a slow sigh of pure relief. Then my palms pressed to the hardened chiten underneath the fuzz and I realized I had fallen into a building sized spider’s butt-fluff.

“Oh, stop screaming,” Victory Smith’s clicking, chittering voice was even more disturbing when it came from someone the size of a building.

When she had resumed human form, the rest of Bravo Squad had emerged from the front of the now wrecked city. They ran towards us, their feet kicking up tiny puffs of dust from the silty, sandy ground they charged along. I hugged Ali, then looked around to make sure the Tiny Hulud was really dead. And, as it turned out, even if you were a worm the size of a small train, having your brain flash-boiled by fifty gallons of blood turned into steam was not a healthy lifestyle choice. Tiny Hulud was sprawled in a massive, twitching mass.

“Oh Tiny Hulud, you died the way you lived,” I said, slowly. “Really gross.”

“Well, then,” Tycho said, her arms crossed over her chest. “Lets go back to the ship.” She snapped her fingers. A crackling portal opened and we started forward. I made sure to go last – it seemed like the right thing, considering I was in charge. And that was why I got to see Tycho step between the portal and Victory.

Victory looked bemused. “I need to go on as well.”

“You know...” Tycho said, her voice soft as she clenched her fist – closing the portal with a crack. “When I took you up last, I was a bit distracted. And everyone else seemed to be pretty touchy feely. But you know what?” She put her finger on Vicky’s chest. “No. Fuck no.”

“Uh, Tycho-” I started.

“And you!” She turned to face me. “You might be the last man left in this squad, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to just let you grab Fang’s spot. You know, we are in a military, there is a chain of fucking command.”

“I’m sorry!” I spread my arms. “But no one else looked like they knew what to do.”

We were both nose to nose now. How had that happened. Tycho breathed heavily, her hands tightening slightly.

“But you’re right,” I said, looking aside. “I shouldn’t have just assumed I’d be in charge, or just taken Vicky on with you. Vicky was working for the bad guy.” I gestured to the spider-woman, who was rubbing her shoulder awkwardly.

“S-Should I give you two privacy?” she asked. “Your mating pheremones are-”

“YES!” Tycho and I both said before Vicky could expound upon that. Vicky inclined her head, turned into a cross between a bird and a scorpion with a hunger for ocular jelly, then flew off. As she buzzed away, I looked back at Tycho. She looked at me. In unison, we shuddered slightly. But that little distraction had done what was important: It had gotten us to calm down slightly. Unfortunately, for Tycho, calming down slightly was enough to get her to start crying again. She wiped at her eyes with her hands, her eyes closing as she tried to control the tears.

“Damn it, damn it, damn it,” she whispered.

I slid my arm around her shoulder, then drew her in for a tight, tight hug. It was chaste as fuck. There had never been a more chaste hug in the history of chaste hugs. Because while we were both naked, and she was gorgeous as fuck, there was nothing sexy about her tears or her sadness, which I felt tingling and bubbling through her skin. I wasn’t the same scale of empath as Opal, but I was still somewhat good enough. I took my first impulse – which was to try and suppress the sadness with my power – balled it up and threw it into the sun. Tycho needed hugs and empathy, not a brain-whammy.

And so ... gently ... I began to focus on the simple feeling of comfort. I didn’t put it into her brain. I let it radiate from mine. It was like being a torch rather than a surgeon. Tycho sighed, relaxing into my hug. Then she drew back, her palms on my chest.

“Thanks, Pirate,” she said. “It’s just ... Fang and I, we knew each other from the early days, before Opal and Ebony joined up. And that whole time, I never had the courage to, just ... you know...” She rubbed her shoulder. “Dating is weird enough in America when you’re black. I didn’t even want to know how weird it gets when you’re dating a guy from China. In space. While you’re both fucking psychic space warriors locked in a death battle with the Empire.”

I nodded. “Word. You know, I once asked a girl out, and she called the cops on me. Thought I was a terrorist.”

“Really?” she asked.

“She was not a very smart girl,” I said, nodding sagely. “But she had tits the size of her head.”

Tycho punched my shoulder. “Dick.”

“No, I was better hung, definitely,” I said, nodding slightly. “Even back then.”

Tycho laughed. She still punched me in the shoulder. It, uh, really hurt. Tycho was strong. She was basically made of athletic muscle. Basically, everywhere the other girls had tits and butt, Tycho had lean muscle. She wasn’t bulked up, though. Just pixie slender and iron hard. I coughed, looking away. It felt kind of like a douche move to be checking Tycho out when her (mostly) unrequited love had been buried on the same planet.

“So, uh,” I said. “Should we get Vicky and head off?”

“Fine,” she said. “She proved herself. But I’m still pissed at her. And...” She prodded me with her finger. “I’m going to bring up the whole chain of command thing once we get on the ship, see what everyone else has to say about it now that we’re able to catch our breath.”

“Dude!” Opal exclaimed, pointing her finger at me. “He can see the future.”

“Oh, right!” I exclaimed. “I do have a bit of precognative sigma. I totally fucking forgot.”

“You forgot you have The Sight!?” Vicky exploded, every single spine of her sexy Sarah Kerrigan style hair standing on end.

I lifted my palms. “Hey, I have a bit of biokinesis. And telekinesis. And precog. And, uh, empathy. And telepathy. Also, I think I’m pretty good at astral projection.” I grinned. “I mean, I found this ship without a computer. Eyeballed it.” I nodded. “But also, I haven’t had any chances to practice precognative stuff. I haven’t had a teacher, like with TK and biokinesis.” I nodded to Vicky. “Thanks, sifu.”

Vicky inclined her head, her hair slowly settling back with a rippling cascade pattern that was almost as hypnotic as Ali’s breasts.

“Except that you are using precog. A lot,” Ebony said, arms crossed over her chest.

“Exactly,” Opal said. “That’s why I wanted him in charge. He might not be the most experienced tactical commander, but I don’t want the responsibility and he can see the fucking future.”

“Whoa, no I don’t,” I said, shaking my head.

“You found a starship orbiting at nearly three kilometers per second from the ground without a telescope or a computer,” Ebony said. Before I could splutter out a complaint, she held up her finger. “More accurately ... your precognative powers predicted that you’d need to find that starship before Doctor Oblivion stuck those psychic restriction helmets on your head. So, you predicted that need and planned for it hours in advance.”

“No, I could have just precogged while in my astral...” I paused. “You don’t have psychic powers in astral form.”

“Ding ding ding!” Ebony said, sounding very sarky. “Why do you think I didn’t immediately throw a fucking shitfit when you took charge?”

I looked over at Tycho. She had her arms crossed over her chest and was looking thoughtful. “Doesn’t this mean we don’t have free will?” she asked.

Vicky snorted, then lifted her hand and flicked her finger. A needle slammed into my neck and I felt my head start to swim. I sniffled and wiped at my nose, coughing. “Ah ... what?” I mumbled. Then another needle slammed home and I gasped, coughed, and sat back up again, my head clearing. “W-What the fuck, Vicky!?” I exclaimed.

“I decided to inject you with a lethal dose of cyanide,” she said, casually. “He didn’t seem to predict it.”

“That’s cause it’s out of the fucking blue!” I shouted, rubbing my neck as Ali snarled. I actually had to grab Ali with my arm and jerk her onto my lap before she leaped at Vicky. Vicky shrugged, slightly.

“It indicates that my free will is not being impacted by his predictive abilities,” she said.

“All right, I’m sold,” Tycho said, smirking slightly. “I’m beginning to warm to you, Bugtits.”

I scowled.

“As entertaining as it is to inject our glorious precognitive leader with various drugs and or lethal poisons,” Opal said, her hands clasping together. “What is the plan?”

“We have the data,” Ali said. “We should plug it into the ship’s computers and see what is there.” She nodded ever so slightly. “That’s what computers do, right?”

“Right, honey,” I said, squeezing her butt playfully. Ali squirmed and giggled, nuzzling my neck. She planted a few feathery kisses there and I shivered slightly. Then, with a supreme effort of will, I gently pushed Ali back to her seat. She pouted slightly, but accepted this. Soon, we had dragged the central computer core down into the main living room. It had several cheap looking screens that could unfold for us to all look at the same interface. Just like everyother interface on this POS spaceship, it looked like it had been designed in the 90s. The early 90s.

I tried to plug the black USB that I had been given by the evil as fuck shifty ass black hole aliens. It didn’t go in. I rotated it. Still nope. I rotated it a third time, producing an irritated: “That won’t-” from Ali.

It slotted in.

“What!?” Ali scowled.

The screen flickered, then turned black. I tensed and Tycho lifted her hand, clearly ready to snap her finger and whisk each and every last one of us away from here. Then there popped up an image of a planet. It was blue and green and, unlike Earth, had one big ass continent. It was mostly on the upper half of the planet, leaving a vast expansive ocean on the southern hemisphere. It looked dusted with white frosting – ice – and the very top of the planet had poles far bigger than our poor Earth’s did at the moment. Several cities glowed visibly in the night side.

Astrometric data began to ream out.

PLANETARY DESIGNATION, HUMAN: Keplar-138b

STAR: Red Dwarf

CONSTELLATION: Lyra (200 light years from Earth)

POPULATION: 2 Billion

NATIVE RACE: The Race

PRIMARY GOVERNMENT: Distributed Meritocratic Geneticocracy with Parliamentary Supervisional Government.

SECONDARY GOVERNMENT: Localized Warlords

TECHNOLOGY: Between 4 and 11 on the ALD (see File 2)

I scratched my head. “What the fuck is a Distributed Meritocratic Geneticocracy?”

“Sounds like gibberish,” Opal said.

“It sounds like eugenics,” Ebony said, her voice flat.

“As I said! Gibberish!” Opal threw up her hands.

The screen shifted to show one of those Da Vinci style X diagram of two humanoid figures. They looked a bit like Dr. Oblivion. Wide nose, big heads, slightly sloped foreheads. But there was one tiny little itty bitty difference between them and the Good Doctor.

“Why the fuck aren’t they blue?” Opal asked, looking at me.

“Good question,” I said.

“Maybe Dr. Oblivion dyed himself blue,” Ali said, nodding.

“Yes, but why?” Tycho asked.

“Cause it looked cool?”

The view changed to the internals of the humanoids. My brow furrowed. “Okay, uh, anyone else getting creeped out here?” I asked, pointing at them. Ali shuddered slightly.

“I ... am...” She said, slowly, looking away. I squeezed her shoulder – but I was unable to look away from those organs. Those ... very familiar organs. Two lungs. A spine. A heart in the right place. Not even roughly the right place. They were literally in the right place. The ribs were built the same. My brow furrowed even harder as the view cut to the what looked like an image of a Keplarian city (I was not going to call them The Race, it sounded way too fucking pompous.) It was a city that looked like it had stepped right out of the 1950s. There were flying cars buzzing by in the background, and clothed Keplarians walking along, chatting with one another. Their forearms even had large pip-boy style wrist computers. They were laughing and talking in that frozen moment, looking very human. The center-piece of the city, though, appeared to be a large, art-deco style skyscraper that was festooned with statues. At a distance, I couldn’t tell their exact details, but I could see there was a lot of them.

Then it clicked.

“Holy fuck!” I exclaimed, leaping to my feet – which meant I slammed my head into the ceiling, thanks microgravity.

But as I floated and rubbed my head, Ebony finished the line.

“They’re Neanderthals.”

We all sat in complete silence for a few moments. Well, they all did. I was still rubbing my head until I remembered I had biokinesis and swept the pain away by fixing what little damage had been caused. I pushed off the ceiling and back down into my seat. I brushed my hands through my hair to try and get it to lay flat as Ebony broke the silence again. “That’s pretty fucking out there.”