Nocturnal Cannons 3

Chapter 3: Evening

I really need to know why he has chosen the sisters as his saints of devotion. Could be worse, I suppose, could be Prince LaCroix . Still, reassuring it is not.

Fortunately, I have a few years to prepare myself. Before I meet that “king”. Unfortunately, the material I was able to raise in my researches in order to prepare myself is piss poor.

Meanwhile, I need to make that protocolar visit. For protocolar sake. Present myself to the authority in charge of this station. I was surprised to find out this person is not an Asgardian, considering the importance of the work being done here. On the other hand, that is an administrative position, and, when we think about things coldly, aN AI would likely do a better job than either Asgardians or regular humans.

Admiral General Sergey Gupta. A man born in this place, 9° Generation to ascent to general post, but the first to achieve the position of commander in the station. 260 years old, he got this command 10 year ago and will likely die in office. The coronation of an impeccable life.

I know the type too well.

Before that visit I wanted to see an old acquaintance. An Asgardian responsible for medical facilities of Kinetic-Cannon project here. Unfortunately, when I was in my third bear my personal assistant gave me the bad news. Lailay was transferred from this space-station 900 years ago.

We avoid to share that sort of information through laser-net, since it can be intercepted too easily by Demons. They prioritize killing Asgardians. Besides, hidden stations like that don’t even use laser for communication regularly. When I left Madrigal system 662 years ago I assumed she was still here. Cannot say that is essential for my mission, but I was counting with her help.

To find a plausible excuse, to sabotage that mission for good.

Except for emergency channel we are limited to speed of light for communication.

Military fleets move 3% of the velocity of light, most the time. Just a little faster than Seeding Fleets. When needed we go up to 5%. In any case, there is no way to receive messages in a moving fleet.

Unless we use the emergency channel. Which is direct and ignores distance, for all practical purposes. As far as we know Demons cannot access that communication. However, it is risky. If we put too much stress in our long-distance telepaths we may lose the system for centuries. Most of them die, the survivors became irreversibly traumatized. Happens from time to time. We need to cultivate and train a new net from practically nothing.

Instead of Lailay I make contact with another doctor. A man named Gadolíneo. General, 170 years old. Too young for such a high position.

He made his career training and managing kinetic-cannons.

When I reach his office he had just being informed about my clearance level.

_So, “tenant” Igor, I presume?

_Correct. That is not really my uniform, general. Or my name.

_Figure that.

_I am A-W3, Sergio Rocha, general. What is not to be registered, goes without saying. Protocol.

_So, an Asgardian! You are the first one I met in person. This must be important. If you don’t mind the question, what this “W” stands for? The “A” is “Asgardian”, I imagine.

_”Wotan”, the All-Father. All letters in that position came from mythical deities, most of them from Norse pantheon. Wotan in the king of those gods. Means that I have been in the military for longer than most Asgardians. There are some W4s and W5s around, however. Above me.

_Make sense. What I can do for you, general?

_I need to understand the boys you work with. How they live, how they think, what kind of people they are in and out duty.

_I suppose you know the nature of their task.

_I know everything that is documented about this program. I have some experience with the program, and worked with previous generations of kinetic-cannons. I am familiar with their tactical value, and limitations, in combat. I came to you because I need the extra mile. The things we don’t register in reports.

_Personal perspective, you mean.

_ What you have for me, doctor?

_I am not sure if I understand your request. How about a tour through the installations where those boys are trained? You can interview some of them, and their instructors.

_You mean the unbroken boys, bellow 12. And their instructors.

_After that they are transferred to war vessels. We don’t have the necessary space to train them in this station, you understand.

_How about readjustment? They are biologically immortal, I understand. You must have genetic-upgrades to do, from time to time. Not to mention post-traumatic treatments.

_We don’t have much maintenance to do, actually. Psy-K don’t react well to upgrades, it is too dangerous and unstable, we seldom try that. On the other hand, surprisingly, the KCs are predictable and trustworthy. Most the time they help each other, and stay together. Fewer disciplinary incidents than any human unity.

_Part of that came from being conceptuals.

_In theory. Yes, they only have the instincts engineers gave to them on purpose. In practice, psychics are usually harder to administrate than other soldiers. Despite being conceptuals. The parameters to achieve any psychic power are so demanding that there is nothing any genetic engineer can do to “smoot” their impulses.

_Not those spychics.

_No. Braking changes them. Makes them reliable. Predictable.

_Still, you do provide treat for some kinetic-cannons here.

_Yes, we do that. About the same post-traumatic therapy applied to humans and most other branches of sub-humans. Only less frequently, statistically speaking.

_Do you allow CKs to keep contact with their former classmates, who failed the program before the braking point?

_We don’t place any restrictions. They are people, after all. In the end of day. Not Alexandrine Humans, born in the military ‘sub-humans’. People, nevertheless. They can see anyone they feel like in their free time. Is just difficult to keep contact with anyone who stays in this station, once you leave it. Laser silence is the norm.

_I must talk with some of your rejected students too.

_I will get the list for you. They cannot leave this station. Unless they get specific orders to do so. Therefore, you should be able to talk with most students rejected by us. Possibly all of them. Except those who died one way or another.

_”Accident, **** or suicide”, same applies to us. And all other biological immortals.

The interviews didn’t showed me any new information I could use. Nothing relevant to my purpose, I mean.

The young general showed me the room where they do their festive reunions. The large, empty, box is a replica of those cannon rooms where the boys will work if they graduate. Except for the gravity.

An inter-stellar vessel is a cylinder, basically. No matter if it is a Seeding Vessel or a warship. Seeding Vessels variate their complementary elements more, try new stuff. Military cannot afford to step our practical considerations. In all cases, the only way to fake gravity without the right mass to get the gravity you want where you want it, is centrifuge ****.

The rotating cylinder simulates 1G, the gravity of Planet Earth by definition, by centrifuge effect. Most operations happen in the internal surface of that cylinder. That is where people stay most the time.

Surrounding that rotating cylinder there is the Shell. In the intra-Shell we have the gravity produced by the mass of the ship, only. The most external layer of military ships has considerable mass, for defensive sake, and balances the mass of the axis. Where the Moebius Tower and the engines are. The axis and the External-Shell are balanced to cancel each other, in terms of gravitational pull.

In the intra-Shell you get practically no gravity. Weapons are installed here. Also, the large empty rooms where kinetic-cannons work.

As far as function is concerned, they are weapons themselves.

Those cannons don’t need windows to see their targets. Therefore, the rooms where they work have none. Is just empty space. Cargo space, in the eyes of casual visitors.

Some captains place boys in the axial line. Same negligible gravity, but better protection. The difference in reach does not count for much, due to the scale of distance involved.

Still, the usual is for the region where KCs expend most their lives to be located in the Shell.

They get their skeletons replaced by cyborg implant at the brake. Muscles improved, organs too. The almost non-existent gravity do not affect them like it would affect virtually any biological being without that advantage.

The intention of intelligence is to give any spies the impression that those boys are sub-humans breed to operate and maintain the K-cannons. That certainly should feel like a more plausible explanation, from distance, than those boys being the cannons themselves.

_Would you mind a personal question?_ asked me the general, after our day of work.

I am sure I will mind it, but I lie for courtesy sake.

_Cannot promise to answer it. Feel free to ask.

_Were you there?

When people ask this, I always feel tempted to pretend I don’t know exactly what they mean. When is a civilian who is asking, I usually indulge myself.

_No. I am from Earth, originally, but I was not in the Solar System. When the Horror happened I was little beyond Mystery System. In a binary system named Janus IV. That news reached me 60 years after the Horror.

_Then you must have been transferred to Sealine. To fight for Humanity in the attempt to take Mystery System.

_Exactly. Mind you, we knew only regional wars up to that point. The United Command was little more than symbolic. The largest conflict humanity had ever seem had involved only a couple thousand systems in each side, and had not resulted in the entire extermination of any. Nothing close to a threat against humanity itself. People at the time had more curiosity about the Horror in Sealine than fear, even as close as I was in Janus IV. I had little idea about what I would find. Took me a long time to digest what I encountered once I reached what was left of Sealine. Humanity in general felt curiosity and little else. There was some investment in reinforce Solar System defences, but was hard to persuade governs to think strategically.

_For another 3.000 years.

_Yes, for another 3.000 years. That is the time between The Horror and…, I expended that time in Sealine and sometimes doing missions in Mystery System. The locals call it Lira System. Then, as you know, everything changed forever. Unfortunately, was too late. We kept the effort to retake Solar System for the following 100.000 years. Tried to avenge ourselves. That effort made humanity weaker, helped the demons. That was how they got the time they needed to expand their presence in the galaxy.

_Many disagree.

_I know their arguments. We should have done more to take the Sun back. The important fact is this: no. I was not there. I was in Sealine, around Mystery System, when it happened.

_Thank you for your direct answer.

_No need. I understand the question.

I cannot tell him that, but the Demons did us a favour by attacking Solar System in their first move. Until we lose the birthplace of Humanity our arrogance knew no boundaries. Our arrogance was absolute. You must have lived those times to understand the change.

After that trauma we finally managed to **** ourselves to accept the necessary compromise that gave us permanent bases inside Mystery System. With the bless of our Deshiar enemies.

In terms of feelings Earth may very well be irreplaceable, but in terms of strategy lose it was a small price to pay. To buy the reality check we needed as a specie.

I suspect the Demons knew that. They must have realized taking the Solar would make their job a great deal harder. Was a situation where their sadism prevailed over their sense of practicality.

If they only wanted Humanity extinct, by all cost, we would be extinct.

Because they wanted to **** us, as much as they wanted to erase us from existence, we are still here. I believe one day they will regret that hedonistic election of sacrifice efficient resolution in the altar of pleasure. Because where life exists, there is hope.

Fuck general Gadolíneo in Hell. That conversation ended my otherwise useless day in a depressing note.

No Asgardian likes revisiting the day when it happened.

Each one of us remember what we were doing when the news reached us. How we refused to believe it. How successive reports **** the change of opinion.

Sealine is only about 100 years away from Solar System, in terms of communication by laser. Telepathic Net didn’t existed by them. The travel distance was 2.000 years at that time, give or take.

Survivors escaping Solar moved in all directions, to every imaginable Stellar System. Demon Fleets hunted down some.

Was a long wait to find out who had survived. Who had escaped the Solar System alive. Who had been killed. Who had been left behind.

The percentage of Twentians in Earth population was higher than anywhere else in the galaxy. Solar System as a whole had a larger percentage of Asgardians than any other part of the Galaxy. As you would expect. All Asgardians started their life up there, back in the day when all living people was up there. In the early days of Expansion Age leave the Solar was a privilege and the people who later would be called Asgardians were excluded from that privilege.

Gradually, live in the economic and cultural heart of the galaxy became the privilege with the number of shipyards building Seeding Fleets at the fringes of Solar grew. Get a cabin in one of those ships became easier. However, by that point the label “Asgardian” was sticking on us, and most Asgardians had the necessary resources to afford the privilege to stay in Solar System.

Now, I prefer not to think about those times.

I got myself the best hotel room a not too corrupt tenant would be plausibly able to afford. I usually avoid the brute **** tool of magnetic inducers of sleep. Tonight I am making an exception.

Tomorrow, I must present myself to the general in command of this space-station.

A man I just offended today, by talking with one of his subordinates behind his back. Not likely to make our first encounter easier.

I want to kill that project. General Gupta probably can help me with that, or make my life more difficult.

On the same time, I admit. If the project work, and does not turn against Humanity, could be our only chance to win the war against the demons.

For the last 300 years human population has been decreasing. Despite the fact that we keep breeding like proverbial rabbits.

By “we”, I mean Alexandrine Humanity in general. Just like most pre Baby Steps people I never managed to adapt to the reproductive standards of Baby Steps and Expansion Age. Myself, personally.

Sooner or latter the demons will find a way to defend themselves against our living weapons. Worse, they will eventually find out what kinetic-cannons are. And start building their own.

It is a dangerous, delicate, matter.

There is no safe, or good, choice. Only question that remains is which direction seems to be the worse. Which Evil looks like the lesser Evil?

Only, as I explained, that is not my decision. My word carries some weight but ultimately no one in irreplaceable. If I cannot convince my superiors to abandon the plan I must implement it, because if I don’t someone else will. I would ratter stay in a position where I can see when things escape control, and hopefully find out a solution to minimise the damage.

There is nothing else for me to do here. I have what I came for.

Now I must see some specialists in kinetic-cannon “production”. This is one of the rare places that makes them, from embryo to 12 years old braking point. Following step takes place inside war vessels, usually. Here I can talk to some of the best specialists in this process. Including an old friend of mine, fellow Asgardian. Decent, trustworthy, individual. His personal life was always a mess, but professionally he is solid.

I hope he will point me some people to talk with. About the small daily aspects of training this specific sort of troops.

Fortunately, I was able to plan the logistic of this trip to have at least a couple years of research before that Nocturnal Vessel arrive.

In inter-stellar distances two years means almost nothing.

The vampire society is called “Nocturnal Court” in Mystery System. Vampires are obsessed by, well, vampires. Real live “vampires” are obsessed with fictional vampires, I mean. Specially those characters from “Pre Baby Steps Age” literature, if reports can be trusted.

Never met a vampire in person, myself. Only saw their ships and talked with their human thralls, during my period working in Sealine. Right outside Mystery System.

There are few vampires fighting under Humanity Banner. We call the ships where they travel “Nocturnal Ships”, in allusion to their Nocturnal Courts. I am, of course, curious about this “King”. He renamed the vessel given to him “Asylum” in reference to a computer game.

I was there, on Planet Earth, when Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines was released. Was old enough to play video games. That must help me in some way in this mission.

If I cannot sabotage it, who would be able to?