Book 5 Chapter 23 - draft

The holographic display stuttered.

Nako stood over it, watching as Branch’s segment ships slowly moved into position around the Rajavan vessel.

The Knight Commander was as beaten and bruised as the office around him, Kotorn’s past anger still casting its shadow on the walls around him. His lieutenants and captains stood watching, waiting for his orders.

“Knight commander?”

He knew what order they were asking for.

To fire upon the vessel as soon as they were in position.

Nako’s eyes never moved from the hologram.

He couldn’t give the order.

He couldn’t destroy the ship.

It should have been his legacy, his lasting mark on the audfiles of history, the change of the dynasty itself! Everything he went through, would have been for nothing then.

“Hold steady,” he ordered, his freq still strong enough to silence the room.

The soldiers fell quiet and watched.

He was holding out hope that the Namegiver and Admiral would come to their senses, maybe, they had snuck away on a pirate ship instead of dooming themselves inside the abomination.

He could only delay the inevitable for so long…

“Sire?” Tifera’s voice requested over comns, Nako patched it through, “the councillor’ is safe and in recovery,” she stated, “they should be at 100% in [several hours]”

Nako nodded and dismissed the report silently.

“Lieutenant,” He ordered, a zenthi stood at attention,

“Yes, Knight Commander?”

“Withdraw our Ranger’s fighters and send orders to the segment wings,” he said with dull disdain in his voice, “Ready the slag cannons,”

“Yesir!” this men began to scramble, sending out orders to those beneath them as Nako continued to wait and watch.

Then he noticed the rajavan ship was not centered.

He braced himself against the holographic table, and peered into the lights.

The vessel was moving!

“Belay that order!” he shouted, sharp shards of ice spiked out from his presence, they couldn't of…? The rajavan vessel began to pick up speed, moving away and over the segmented wing ships, it was making an escape!

“FOLLOW THAT SHIP!” Nako roared, nearly popping out of his exo skeleton, “DISABLE IT! TEAR OPEN ITS INNARDS!”

“Follow it?!” one of his lieutenants was aghast, “but what if they jump?”

A dark, knowing chitter escaped Nako’s lips.

“Namegivers cant jump,” he answered, “not without destroying themselves,”

-*-

“Shipbrain, captain's chair!” Beau ordered and to his expectation, a chair was provided to him from the floor beneath. It was wide and comfortable, with its own computer display for him to scroll through.

“A man could really get used to this…” he murmured under his breath, the light screen flickering with menu’s and sub-menu’s of protocols and schematics. The aliens shuffled around and off the bridge, defaulting to Aralukia’s orders while Jasmine and Xant were carried off to find a place to rest.

The admiral stood over Beau’s shoulder.

“What are you doing?”

“This ship was practically designed for humans,” Beau replied, “if ‘jumping’ causes brain damage there must be a way they circumvented it, I just need to find out the record on how,”

Aralukia blinked and frowned.

“‘Searching’? Just ask the Shipbrain,” she stated.

Beau’s fingers hovered over the menu, he leaned back in the chair while he thought how to phrase the question. It was like being on the set of Star Trek.

“Shipbrain, how do you prevent brain damage while jumping?”

The screen flickered and brought a series of images before him, mostly of stasis pods and the servants working the equipment. He groaned, couldn’t suffer brain damage if you didn’t have a working brain to begin with and there was no way to ‘pull’ the helmet off them either, it was grown on to them like skin and bone.

“Looks like Xant was right, we might have to go under while going at warp speed,”

He looked over at Itsuki, the young man heard and understood the implications.

“Do you think they have stronger painkillers on this ship?” he asked beau, the older man shrugged.

“They got zombie machines and kaiju tanks, I don’t see why they wouldn’t have the good stuff,”

A small smile crept onto his lips.

“Does that mean I can sit in the captain’s chair?”

Beau sighed defeated.

“On on then,”

It was a small moment of brevity, and the kid looked small and tense in the seat. Itsuki flicked the hologram menu to the top and sat back.

“Cheif?” he asked “what’s that notification?”

The words blinked red.

“Message sent,”

Beau didn’t like the sound of that.

“Shipbrain, replay that last message sent,”

The bridge’s lights dimmed as the main hologram activated, there stood a human waiting to record the message. The first thing Beau noted to himself that the man was distressingly handsome. Conventional features, smooth skin, sharp jaw, high cheekbones and deep set eyes the colour of the void.

Cold and black.

He was dressed in a sleek nerve suit with more conventional human armour over the top, but it was hard to see where the nerve suit and his skin ended. The hologram began to detail an incident report with professional, passive-aggressive frustration.

“The organic-stock designated F18 was improperly sedated during the environmental processing procedure.” He stood and stared impatiently at the camera lens “It was during the final stages of acclimatisation, specifically repressuring the eyeballs, that the nerve endings of the surgery amalgamation were connected to F18. The candidate produced a Frequency pulse that was violent and powerful enough to cascade through the entire nervous system of The Lady of the Arc. The Lady was unresponsive and inconsolable. I have put the lady and F18 into induced stasis and hidden their location, I will be returning to Shambala and return to claim the Lady with a proper escort fleet-”

“They’re talking about Jasmine,” Itsuki interrupted as the hologram cut out. Beau didn’t answer him, digesting the information shown but not told.

“He’s in active duty gear,” he said outloud, organic stock and candidates were put in pods, which meant that those in command of the servants would be awake while jumping. “Admiral, tell your men we’ll be on the move soon,” he began to walk out of the bridge, “frosty, you’re with me,”

-*-

“Damage report?”

the councillor's head bobbed on screen, Nako did his best to remain calm as he delivered the news.

“During the Rajava onslaught, most of the forces were rallied to the ambush, leaving the pirates with an opportunity to escape. They have ransacked the engineers' wing and had reclaimed at least half of the ships they had been captured with.” The knight commander felt a deep sense of shame as he detailed the devastation caused during his transition to power.

“The collateral damage of military units is, depressing. The new vassal variants were devastating to the rangers' efficiency, and those that did survive, abandoned their post to follow after the humans and pirates. We are currently looking at a loss of nearly 60% of units in the Engineers wing,”

The councillor nodded gravely but did not speak, their own retinue had been irrevocably damaged during the evacuation, exposed to human and princess freq blasts.

“The segment of the station containing the engineer's wing has suffered a lot of structural integrity, the Rajavan ship had created several holes and whatever personnel and equipment the pirates had not taken were sucked out in the vacuum upon their leave.”

“Leave?” the councillor exclaimed, shocked but not distressed.

“Yes your honour,” Nako responded, “the ship is currently picking up speed and leaving the quadrant, their inability to jump means we will catch up to them eventually.”

“... let them leave.”

“You honour?”

The councillor rubbed their brow, relieving tension and pain as they spoke,

“The unit losses are devastating of course, but, the station is still intact and Engine lord Viitoic assures me the data collected was extremely valuable. Let the ship leave the quadrant, we shall recover from this set back and regroup.”

Nako stood there, stunned.

“But, but, we lost everything! The humans! the pirates! and the Rajava, the station was  devastated under my command…”

The councillor raised a hand, to calm the young commander.

“We lost those humans,” they said slyly “the 22 unknown pods that you so cleverly ‘auctioned off’ are still within GC space and our authority…”In all the chaos nako had not even had the time to think about the rerouted pods, they were too far ahead in his scheming.

“And knight commander, the Arvas right to acquisition of Cargo is still in place, any data you might have requisitioned through Essander is still yours.” the councillor chuckled to himself “While a batch born, you are still a Council Citizen… The humans will have relinquished all authority they had so the very valuable Dog DNA is yours to sell.”

Nako frowned.

“Relinquish authority? Councillor, the humans are still a recognised creator-intelligence, the information would still belong to them, their presence in the quadrant notwithstanding.”

“Any data gathered about the humans while still aboard Branch is now ours to use. since the humans forfeited their position to negotiate for citizenship and became an enemy of the Council-”

“And the imperium!” The Praetor strode in to interrupt the meeting, he was missing an appendage or two, and very battle-worn, his freq is continuously flickering in and out like a bad radio signal.

and yet the councillor was strangely calm about the uninvited guest.

The Praetor embraced Nako as though he were a respected family member, squeezing him in an overly tight hug.

“My boy, you stand as strong as ever!”  he put nako down and smoothed out the cape on the commander's shoulder “Stronger warriors have been stiffed from lesser foes, my own knights are barely walking after such a fiasco!” the dramatic windbag walked in circles between nako and the councillor hologram. He had lost a few arms but not the want of pageantry.

“The humans have allied with our eternal enemy the Rajava and absconded with a daughter of the imperium!” the praetor stood beside the councillor and actually let the qzetillian speak.

“And with humans as their genetic base, the lives of both the Council and imperium are in catastrophic danger from Rajavan retaliation, there is only one action we can take.”

Nako looked between the two.

“And what action is that?”

“We are going on the preemptive,” Kiljorn answered.

“War,” the praetor replied gleefully, ”A joint crusade to rid the galaxy of the Rajava once and for all!” he pulled a long blade from his side, a sword encrusted with so many red gems it dropped nako’s mandibles open as it was presented to him, “a fine sword, but not quite worthy of yourself Fleet Admiral Commander,” he all but thrust it into Nako’s hands “I’ll arrange for a proper ceremony, but this will do for now,”

Nako held the sword in his hands, gripping it tightly as the news sunk in.

“Fleet Admiral commander…”

“Your details have been updated and you will receive the benefits shortly.” the councillor informed him, Nako clasped the sword to his hilt, standing proudly before the powers that be.

“Where will I be directing the fleet if we don’t know where the pirate stronghold is?”

“We arn’t seeking out Aralukia’s forces, the Rajavan vessel or the namegiver stragglers”

The hologram flickered away from the councillor's head and instead had an image of the galaxy, with a long and direct flight path.

“We are going to the source,” the councillor stated, “we going after ‘Earth’.”