Chapter Twenty-Two

  History Lessons

  Nellie watched the group gather and had to admit that she was looking forward to learning about the next chapter of the First Interstellar Empire’s history. It sucked that they had earned it in blood; the loss of Mace Gardener was weighing heavily on the minds of everyone gathered there. None more so than the somber group from Haven.

  They had lost more than just a couple of their people in those two segments. It had taken something deeper from them. A part of their souls was lost in there, Nellie realized. She and Lucy had been through the same thing themselves when they lost Banjo and Vey.

  Loss is something a lot of people don’t understand until they experience it for themselves. Nellie knew she hadn’t. She had always thought loss was a space where something used to be. A gap. That wasn’t even close to the truth. Loss isn’t an empty space; it’s a vacuum. A void that sucks at everything around it, eroding everything until you feel as hollow and empty as a husk.

  Coming back from that was a long road, and it was one Nellie was still on, even now.

  They all were.

  She frowned, looking at the young Cheape, and worried that something darker was written on her face.

  “It’s anger,” Lucy said, the voice inside Nellie’s head like in the old days. “Not rage. You have rage. It burns through you, but that is kind of cathartic. Cheape has anger. It’s cold and calculating.”

  “Who’s she angry at?” Nellie subvocalized her response, not wanting anyone around her to hear. The nanites people would, but they would also know she was talking to Lucy.

  “The Builders—that’s what Haven calls the F.I.E. from what I can tell—mostly. Probably us as well. The universe? Everyone.” Lucy said sadly. “Mostly at herself for not being able to save them.”

  “Do we need to be concerned?” Nellie asked.

  “She reminds me of you,” Lucy said warmly. “So, yes. We need to help Haven and give them more leeway, or things might turn bad in the future.”

  “Ostie,” Nellie blinked and looked away from the group. “Just what we need.”

  “The perils of leadership,” Lucy winked at Nellie, but she couldn’t shake the image of the team standing arrayed around the silent Cheape.

  They looked at her differently now.

  “Everyone, let’s begin with a moment of silence, shall we?” Lucy said loudly, clapping her hands for attention. “This information came at an unacceptable cost, so we will start by showing respect for Haven’s loss. The Imperium as a whole is all the poorer for the lights lost in these two weeks…”

  /====<<<>>>====\

  Time had changed the First Interstellar Empire from an upstart into an absolute dominating force in the universe. Their conquest was complete, and there was not a settled system in the entire universe they did not control. It had been that way for as long as anyone could remember.

  No one alive could even remember a time when their grandparents’ grandparents hadn’t lived under the total rule of the Othars.

  For a society built upon the eternal search for the next challenge to overcome, it was nearly a disaster. There were no more worlds to conquer. Literally. They had expanded into terraforming new worlds in a desperate attempt to find some new mountain to climb, but their stolen and adapted technology had long ago been refined to perfection. In short, they were nearing a state of near-terminal comfort.

  Gladiatorial games, fierce competitions, and mock battles waged with real armies all served as temporary distractions for a populace that more and more looked back to the ‘glorious’ past.

  Stagnation was starting to set in.

  Their saving grace came when a distant planet on the outer arm of a distant galaxy experienced the most welcome of things: An invasion.

  Nellie knew that if the invasion had come to such a place in any other empire, it would have succeeded. A hundred-plus years of total peace would generally have led to such an out-of-the-way and forgotten planet being poorly defended.

  Not in the First Interstellar Empire.

  The invaders found not just a full garrison and defenses but a populace that was not just trained but eager to fight.

  The aliens opened portals and marched forth with a frenzy unmatched in the history of the Empire, only to meet equal zeal and dedication coming the other way. Worse still, the alarm went out immediately, and every planet in the F.I.E. was on alert before the second metal foot landed on Imperial territory.

  In the alien’s defense, there was simply no way they could have reasonably known what a sizable hornet’s nest they were kicking. They learned that lesson the hard way over the next two days as their raiding party was torn apart, the invaders' superior technology no match for the sheer numbers brought to bear against them.

  That proved only to be the start of their problems as their defeat was quickly followed by others when portals opened on other worlds.

  When it came to the First Interstellar Empire, there was no weak spot to hit.

  Still, the invasions continued, and the locals did what the Empire had always done. They captured the alien technology and adapted it for their own needs. In a matter of months, the battlefield was leveled as the F.I.E. army’s weapons and armor gained parity with their enemies.

  The war raged on for another year before the invaders got a single planet under their control.

  They held it for only a matter of weeks before being driven back again.

  It was during the retreat from that planet that the invaders made their greatest mistake and one that would sign the death warrant on their entire race: They left behind a single portal device.

  It took the Empire almost a year to learn its secrets, but once they did… they struck back for the first and last time.

  The First Interstellar Empire broke the veil between universes for the first time, sending massive fleets and billions of troops into the unknown with a single order: Kill them all.

  What they found was a universe much further along than the one they or even Nellie and her people inhabited. It was a cold and forbidding place where only the dimest stars still shone like lonely beacons in a sky more black than sparkling. Still, worlds no longer spun, and quiet the universe their adversaries came from was near the true end of all things—the Heat Death of their universe.

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  Their entire society was huddled around those sparse and dying stars that offered even a tiny light of hope. Their attacks had not been the invasion of an aggressor but the last desperate acts of a people facing an end they could not hope to avoid if they stayed put.

  The images shown were horrifying, but the most haunting was an exterior shot from one of the F.I.E. ships. It showed a single star shining alone in what appeared to be an endless darkness.

  For a moment, every survivor of the Hub present shivered in perfect unison. There was a familiarity to that darkness that none of them wanted to admit.

  As Lucy moved on, a quiet settled deep into the crowd. The harsh memories hung in the air like a fog.

  What followed was the complete and total decimation of a society already on its knees.

  The F.I.E. forces were without mercy or compassion, taking every bit of technology not nailed down as they left any survivors to die in the darkness that was slowly claiming their universe.

  That was the worst part, of course. Those who didn’t fight back were just left to live on as best they could without hope of escape. Every portal device was taken, the last hope snatched from grasping fingers.

  When they were done, the fleet turned back and tore open a portal home, arriving back to a hero’s welcome without a single thought for the desperate alien race they had left to die in the dark.

  Several people ran off to the side, throwing up as the portal lingered for a second after the fleet passed. If you were quick enough, you could see what looked like the darkness from that universe bleeding into our own.

  Something had come through from that cursed place, and if you were unlucky enough, you had seen it. Felt it.

  Nellie exchanged a look with Lucy, who nodded grimly.

  She had seen it as well.

  The Endless Dark was real, and it wasn’t a local.

  Ignorant of how their actions would affect people tens of thousands of years later—or more—the First Interstellar Empire was overjoyed. Those scavenged devices were the answer to all their stagnation problems.

  It was less than a month before they opened the way to another universe, sending through a new fleet to see what they could find.

  At first, they had planned even more expansion, setting up bases and settling worlds in these new frontiers, but there was a problem… the multiversal approach was a little more than even the F.I.E. could manage.

  An entire fleet was lost in a universe where the oxygen molecule simply didn’t exist. The universal constant was just a little different from our own.

  Another universe was simply gone: A single organism stretching back and forth across impossible distances and of a size unimaginable by any rational scale had simply occupied it all. Eaten it all.

  More and more strangeness, and none of it profitable to the Empire.

  So, they changed tactics.

  Instead of sending fleets to settle and conquer, they became raiders. Inter-dimensional Vikings that pillaged and looted before unleashing devastating weapons that shattered whole planets and vanishing back to the Empire loaded with loot.

  The Empire changed again, dragged forward by the looted tech of dozens of not just worlds but universes. The Othars were declared a single god reincarnated again and again, while the Scions were seen much like angels on Earth. All powerful messengers that carried out the will of Othar.

  Even the Houses were seen as deified, or at the very least like high priests.

  And they all carried the same message: The First Interstellar Empire was chosen by the universe itself. The Othar would lead their society into a golden age where they would conquer every aspect of life until the entire population ascended to godhood. It was fated. It was just. It was certain.

  It would happen, no matter what rose against them.

  /====<<<>>>====\

  There was complete silence in the atrium as Lucy finished her presentation.

  “What else did they let in?” Vicky’s voice broke the tension. “Just what the fuck else did they let into our universe.”

  “What?” Someone asked.

  “The Endless Dark,” Nellie stood and turned to face the others. “It’s something from that other universe.”

  “What the fuck is the Endless Dark?” Sparks said angrily. “Why haven’t we been warned about it?”

  “The Endless Dark is something nasty we, well,” Nellie shrugged. “You had to be there.”

  “Where?” Cheape asked.

  “The Hub,” Vicky said hollowly. “We were trapped in a lightless world for months… the darkness, it was… different. Heavy, and…”

  “We can’t explain it,” Nellie shook her head. “If you never experienced it, you can’t understand. There are no words for it.”

  “You saw it for yourselves,” Lucy said, bringing back up the image of the portal as it closed. Just for a split second before it sealed, there was something that blocked out the stars around the portal. “But that is not the important part.”

  “What is then?” Cheape asked.

  “This,” Lucy brought up a new image. It was the background for one of the last shots of the Empire. There was a figure there, like the others, but it was slightly too perfect. The uncanny valley kicked in the moment you looked at it.

  “You think they had synthetics?” Nellie asked.

  “Had them or stole them,” Lucy nodded. “Which is why I have a theory as to the next Segment.”

  “You think it needs a synthetic to open the iris?” Nellie guessed.

  “I have asked Salem to send some our way,” Lucy smiled. “They will be here within the hour.”

  “What about the Endless Dark?” Vicky called. “What do we do about it?”

  “For now, nothing,” Lucy shrugged. “Maybe there is something in the next Segments about it, but as things stand now we can no more affect it than when we were on the Hub.”

  “Fuck,” Vicky shook her head. “Well, excuse me for sleeping with the lights on for a while.”

  “Not a bad idea,” Nellie chuckled. “I think it will be a while before any of us sleep in the dark again.”

  Once the meeting broke up, Nellie made sure to catch Cheape’s eye and beckoned her over.

  “Yes, Ma’am?” Cheape said politely.

  “Can we talk, Cheape?” Nellie asked, turning to walk away from the others.

  “Of course, Ma’am,” Cheape nodded and followed, but Nellie noticed that Sparks and Gas Tank were shadowing her a few steps back.

  That was new.

  “I want to talk about what happened in there,” Nellie nodded to the Red Iris. “And the other one, really.”

  “How can I help, Ma’am?” Cheape asked, her voice flat and emotionless.

  “You aren’t the first, you know,” Nellie said carefully. “I went through what you are right now. Losing people, I mean.”

  “Yes, Ma’am.” Cheape nodded. “We have seen the statue.”

  “They weren’t a fucking statue when I knew them,” Nellie was getting a little irritated at the woman’s stiff formality. “Banjo was… I saved him from a Drop Jelly myself. He was like a kid brother or something. It was… he was under my command, yes, but I loved him. Vey was one of my first friends. I was there when he was ‘born’ for want of a better term. There are no words for the pain I feel when I think about him.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that, Ma’am,” Cheape said diplomatically. “But is there a point? I have a lot to do.”

  Nellie let out a frustrated laugh.

  “My point, Cheape,” Nellie said through clenched teeth, “Is that you can’t blame yourself. I mean, you will. Always, probably. I do. But you can’t because that takes their choices away from them. Banjo made a brave choice. As did Vey and the others. Mace included. Blaming yourself robs that from them. Don’t.”

  “Yes, Ma’am,” Cheape said, her voice thick with unshed tears. “I will… I will try to remember that.” She sniffed and looked away. “Anything else, Ma’am?”

  “Just one thing,” Nellie said. “Don’t let it consume you. Feel the pain, and then let it go. If you don’t, well, you’ll never be the same.”

  “Did you let it go?” Cheape asked directly. “When that boy who was like a kid brother was killed? When that synthetic you were always there for died? Did you let it go?”

  “No,” Nellie chuckled bitterly. “And now, when I think someone I care about is being taken from me, I want to burn the universe to the ground. Like I said, don’t hold onto it, Cheape. Be better than I was. Okay?”

  “I… I’ll try, Ma’am.” Cheape nodded, and for the first time, Nellie thought she might have actually listened to something she had said.

  “That’s all I can ask, Cheape,” Nellie shrugged and sighed. “I really am sorry about your people. It doesn’t help, but I am sorry.”

  “Thank you, Queen Nellie,” Cheape bowed.

  Nellie dismissed Cheape and hoped she had done enough to help the woman out.

  Cheape was another victim of how busy Nellie had been in the recent months. There just hadn’t been time to help the woman out. In fact, Nellie had to be honest and admit she had just dumped Haven on the young officer and not even thought about it again.

  There had been a lot of that lately, and she had to stop before it caused a disaster for everyone.