The Lap of Luxury 4.5

The Lap of Luxury - Part 5

Mishka gently bit her lip as she fitted the last crystal into place, giving the makeshift reactor a one last look over before nodding and handing it to Astrid. It was strange, being around so many aliens. They smelled a bit weird, and didn’t act like proper ursulans, but they weren’t as bad as she’d feared when she’d suddenly, from one moment to the next, found herself standing on a set of stairs next to Astrid.

She’d only really interacted with Astrid though, a bespectacled blonde haired ‘hu-mon’ who was apparently her friend - when she grew up, at least. Which was now, sort of: her body had somehow been forcibly reverted back to an earlier state by some kind of chronomantic field. She didn’t think that Astrid was lying about that, and she had helped her overcome that horrible flooded corridor, and given her time to cast her stasis blast.

Mishka glanced over to where the tentacle monster had been vented into space, and then to where she could smell all the dead, dismembered and mutilated aliens…

She shuddered, and wiped her brow. They were just aliens, they weren’t ursulans, but it… it had still been horrifying. The worst thing she had ever seen.

“It doesn’t look… big enough,” said Astrid, peering at the small box of metal that Mishka had covered in runes and stuck a large crystal through. “Are you sure it will power the engines?”

“Yes, I have limited it to what the reactor output was,” said Mishka.

Mishka had been struck by just how basic everything was. Apart from the scanner, made to look like a magnifying glass, which was apparently her ‘future self’s,’ everything looked like it had been made by pre-academy ursulans just beginning to tinker with arteficing. A mana phase slip drive, why, it would almost be faster to just put solar sails on the vessel!

The box began to hum, and the crystal lit up as it began to draw on the aetheric grid that separated the Real from the Empyrean, making a microscopic puncture into the newer universes above and transfiguring and modulating that energy into normal mana that the ship could use. The power of the Empyrean was weaker here due to the Beneath, but more than strong enough to power the engines of this ship long enough to get them clear, and perhaps even wherever it was going. Mishka didn’t understand why her future self, who could clearly Voidwalk, was hanging about on a ship, but there was a lot about her future self she didn’t understand.

Astrid had stopped her activating her distress beacon, and insisted that her future self was… a traitor.

The thought made her feel sick, and only fear of what her people might do to her if she had indeed betrayed them had stayed her hand. Of course, she hadn’t betrayed them, her future self had…

She suspected it was something to do with how… strange her soul felt. Mishka had always been in the top percentile of natural personal mystic might, and had been put on the battlemage track to join the marines, but her soul had never felt like this. Well, part of it felt normal - a roiling ocean of energy that surged and swirled within her like liquid gold, currently at a low ebb because of all the powerful magic she’d been throwing around. But within that partially dried up ocean there was something solid and hard, definite in size and scale, but infinite in its internal geometries - immense, boundless…

And it wasn’t there by accident, she could see the faint scarring around it. It had been put there, presumably by her future self, since even she would have been able to remove it if she wanted. It wasn’t energy she could safely access, it wasn’t like she had infinite magical power, it was more likely that it had been placed there to… hide it.

From her people?

Was this what she had taken from them? Was this her betrayal?

“Ah ha!” said Astrid as the reactor lit up and began to pour energy into the thankfully intact fuel lines. She moved over to the console. “OK, if I understand this we can begin the ignition sequence for the engines.”

Mishka frowned and tapped at her bracelet, checking some. “Stop!” she said a moment later, rushing over and countermanding the startup sequence.

“What-“

“We are facing into the accretion disc,” said Mishka. “You would push us deeper, where even worse anomalies will become possible.”

“Damn!” said Astrid, rubbing her face. She looked almost as exhausted as Mishka felt. “Can we… steer from here?”

Mishka played with the console for a few moments, then tried to hack into the systems with her bracelet.

“No,” she said, shaking her head. “The systems aren’t connected. All we can do from here is a manual ignition.”

“Damn,” said Astrid. “We’ll need to get to the bridge then…”

Mishka bit her lip, her eyes flicking down to her bracelet.

She could activate a distress beacon. Her people had scout ships spaced throughout the galaxy, even if she was as far away as possible from any one of them, they could be here within the hour. Would they go easy on her? She was just a cub after all…

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

Except, she would almost certainly ‘revert’ to her true age once they left the chronomantic distortion field that the blue hole was producing…

Unless… could she maybe stabilise herself as a cub? It was surely possible…

She began to tap away at her bracelet, accessing some of the stored engrams regarding chronomantic fields and doing a search for keywords related to her situation. Surely someone, somewhere in the tens of thousands of years of her people’s history had encountered something like this. Her people were the masters of the Beneath.

“Mishka?” said Astrid.

Mishka flinched and looked up. “Um, yes?”

“I was saying, we’re going to need to go up the bridge,” said Astrid kindly. “I know you’re tired, little one, but we just need to hold on a little more.”

“Ok,” said Mishka, following Astrid slowly over to the door that led to the flooded corridor. She exhaled. The flooded corridor. Again.

As bad as that room full of dead aliens had been, the corridor… that was worse. And she would need to force that coral growth back again…

She let out a small sob and looked back at her bracelet. There was an article there from a study of a blue hole, where a science team had encountered something similar. She might be able to find a way to stabilise herself at this age, activate her beacon, refuse to go back through the flooded corridor. It wasn’t like Astrid could force her - the alien was much taller, but Mishka was stronger.

But…

But she didn’t want to hurt Astrid. She liked Astrid.

And… and her future self must have had a good reason for betraying the Ascendancy. Surely?

She swiped her fingers and pushed the article on the blue hole away, instead accessing her personal journal. The latest entries were about how wonderful ‘Pescian’ food was, something about some kind of psychic octopus and… fighting herself? Astrid was mentioned several times, mostly in fond terms, although there were a few mentions of her being ‘exasperating.’

Mishka went back further, years and years and years of travel until, finally, she reached an entry marked ‘I have no choice.’

Personal Log Entry:

Mishka ver Tetriarch Bloodmoon Zealarian Sessia,

General: Seven Rings,

Secretary of Intelligence,

Commander of the 7th Ursulan Legion

18.23, 6th of Fourthmoon, 231,923 NAC

Nothing else to be done. I’ve tried to convince the rest of the Council that this is insane, that this goes beyond paranoia, that I have no more love for xenos than them, and that our security can be guaranteed by the well established practice of neutralisation and containment of any species that progresses too far up the developmental ladder, but they will not listen.

‘The Final Victory,’ the ‘Breaking of the Cycle.’ Even if it weren’t monstrous and excessive and supremely… inelegant, it could have disastrous consequences that even we cannot foresee. I have written my letter of resignation, which will be delivered after I secure the shard and leave.

I am sure that my actions will label me a traitor, and perhaps I am.

But in spite of all we have done to secure ourselves and our place in this universe, I am resolute in my conviction that this is a stain that the soul of the ursulan people that they will not be able to bear. That I will not be able to bear.

To say nothing of the potential unforeseen consequences of meddling in the fundamental life-cycle of creation.

Perhaps, I am a coward. I am certainly a traitor.

So be it. My mind is made up, and my stratagem is already in motion.

Once my distraction occurs, I will secure the Empyrean Shard and voidwalk… somewhere to buy myself the time I need in order to figure out a way to destroy it.

After that, I will return to ursulan space to receive my punishment, which is certain to be execution.

In the event that someone finds and reads this diary, know that I did this out of love for our people, and that I still believe in the righteousness and purity of the Ascendancy. I hope that future generations will look upon my actions as regrettable, but necessary. But if not, then I resign myself to ignobility and infamy for the sake of that selfsame future.

Glory to the Ascendancy.

Mishka reread the journal entry. She was vaguely aware that Astrid was getting annoyed at her, but that didn’t matter. She had been on the Council? A Seven Ring General? Secretary of Intelligence? That was a mere a step below the Marshal, de facto second in command of the Ascendancy itself.

And she had thrown that all away because this ‘Empyrean Shard’ — likely the thing she felt in her soul — had been so supremely terrible and dangerous that she would rather destroy it and damn herself to execution than follow… whatever this ‘plan’ for it was?

That seemed insane.

“Mishka!” said Astrid, grabbing her arm and, rather weakly, trying to move it. “We need to go! Now- wait, are you crying?”

Mishka wiped her damp eyes and looked up to see Astrid had opened the door, revealing the murky darkness of the water beyond her conjured membrane. “Ah, yes, we- we should go…”

“Hey, it’s OK - we made it through the corridor once, we’ll manage it again,” said the hu-mon, mistaking her sorrow for fear.

Astrid smiled warmly, and wiped the tears from Mishka’s face with a little embroidered cloth. The blonde woman really was not what they’d been told aliens were like at the academy. She was nice, and brave, and kind, and had put herself between Mishka and the monster…

“I’ll be with you, every step of the way,” said Astrid.

Mishka stared up at the blonde woman. If her people came, would Astrid be OK? Probably not, the hu-mon clearly had a translation symbiote that Mishka’s future had given her. That would be detected and, well, she was just an alien. They probably would shove the entire ship into the blue hole and be done with it.

Mishka gulped and closed her eyes. No, she couldn’t activate her beacon.

She wouldn’t damn the woman who had been so kind to her, this whole ship, just because she was scared. Besides, her future self had known what she was doing, and decided it was necessary. She wouldn’t second guess herself.

“OK?” said Astrid again.

Mishka nodded, closing the diary entry before taking Astrid’s hand.

“OK,” she said, and stepped forward, back through the barrier, and into the flooded corridor oncemore.