Nocturnal Cannons 4

Chapter 4: Unexpected Visitant

I had not seem one of those since the early days of Expansion Age.

The first Seeding Vessels used fusion reactors, still. As auxiliary power source. So, the multi-phase reactor only had to provide energy for propulsion. Also, goes without saying, for the ship computer. The main computer in as inter-stellar ship is a hungry thing, eats a considerable lot of energy. You would not be able to fit enough fusion powerplants to feed one in a vessel, even if you didn’t had to worry about accelerate the thing with all that weight in it.

On the other hand, back them was complicated to distribute energy from one multi-phase reactor or two to the entire vessel.

Most those ships were in the small side of the spectrum, for today’s standards. Only 6, 7 billion people in side by departure. Internal space and resource for a couple dozen times that number. Not thousands of times the departure population, as people born during recent generations are used to expect. Still, that was a significant weight in residential areas, industries, thematic parks for recreation purposes. Research grounds. Intensive farms. Water reserves. Oceanic tanks with marine life. A variety of other things, that variate from ship to ship, but were and still are usual and important even if not absolutely necessary in a multigenerational vessel holding billions of alexandrine humans.

The necessary layer of shielding against radiation is negligible in that scale. Even back them, with the materials we had, that was already the case. But you need to have internal gravity, and you cannot pack enough mass to make it honestly. Ergo, you need to rotate the ship around its axis and have the human population in the surface at the right distance from that axis to those people enjoy the gravity they have every right to enjoy. Which is canonically Earth’s gravity on its surface.

Moebius Towers changed that equation considerably, once they got invented and evolved enough to be build inside inter stellar vessels. They are tricky to deal with, but tiny and light weighted compared to multi-phase reactors. And MTs provide energy in a different scale, orders of magnitude more generous than anything else we ever dreamed possible, before their invention.

Those towers also generate mass, and that’s where the “tricky to deal with” part lies, mostly. Since the towers affect others nearby. All MTs in a same stellar system must be tuned to produce a same element. Same atomic substance. Or, bad things, expensive accidents, happen. Took us quite some time to learn how to administrate that factor.

For long time the materials generated by that method was created in too small volumes to be relevant. Better towers made it a competitive source of ram materials, complementary to mining. This is the purest form of any substance, identical atoms of whatever the tower is regulated to produce. Along with the energy, as subproduct of that generation of energy.

Os course, some circumstances still ask for solar panels, wind turbines, coal consuming thermoelectric powerplants. Some asteroids only a few times the size of Month Everest on Earth are home to 50 or less families. Communities like that don’t need a MT, and usually cannot afford one. If they are close enough to a star, that satisfies their demand for energy comfortably. If not, they may use some compact fusion reactor.

That thing I was looking at was a fusion reactor like those installed in the space ships of Mystery Fleet. About the same mass and size of a nuclear power-plant from Pre Baby Steps Age. Able to generate thousands of times more energy than those power-plants, without radioactive waste or significant risk of accidents.

It was working.

_That is a, very, convincing replica.

_It is no replica. That is one of the reactors that left The Fringes of Sun System with Mystery Fleet. After The Fall survivors recovered it, and transferred to a running city on Fenrir. My ancestors called those cities “Heliopolis”, because they were build to follow liralight. Lira being our “Helios”. You certainly know that part of our History, by public documents. The light of Lira burns shadows and vampires, inside the limits of my birth system. Inside the atmosphere of celestial bodies with significant enough mass to have enough atmosphere to trigger that reaction.

_Mystery Fleet left Solar System in the year 300 of Expansion. That thing would have, what? Almost 250.000 years? More, when we take under consideration how long it took to build inter-stellar vessels back then.

_Correct. Techno-magic, mixed with vampire blood, made this reactor more durable. The people responsible for it had practical purposes in mind, and would probably have changed the performance of that artefact considerably if they could. Fortunately, that happened when techno-magic was a newborn, as far as human mages were concerned. They didn’t knew how to improve this thing beyond making it more reliable and durable. It was given to me by a mecha-family, in a moment of history when it was already a historical relic. Prize treasure, signal of status. But functional, as it still is. That was thousands of years before the Shadow Cage brake open. When your superiors gave me the Asylum I had it transferred from my personal yacht to here.

_Will not deny, I am impressed. Such are the advantages of being a vampire king.

_You are extremely rich yourself, I was told. Asgardians born before Baby Steps Age cannot avoid that fate. Since you receive a respectable amount of money every end of year, just for staying alive. The older you are, higher the payment is. About every alexandrine human contributes with resources for that fund, proudly. A Fairy Queen dedicates her existence exclusively to administrate, multiple and divide this resources, and she is possibly the sharpest financial mind in existence. Being from XX century, instead of XXI, your payment must be enough to buy yourself a entire Seeding Ship every year. Am I wrong?

_A Seeding Ship, yes. Not something like that.

_Yes, that one is a rare thing. I suppose it bring you memories, since you used to work with reactors like that when they where common. You are, what? 1.200 years older than this reactor?

_Give or take. Your majesty.

Betty Boop, BB, my personal AI assistant, cut my sleep 2h before the proper time. I was confuse, feeling cold in my extremities, when she repeated the explanation for why she did that. There was someone insisting in talk with me, personally.

I was in that hotel room, and took me another moment to remember what this place was and why I was here.

Was no surprise that general Gupta had been informed about my presence in his station. This space station has only around one trillion residents, and it is a military installation, secret, high level of security. To command a place like that you must have acquired competence in the art of keeping yourself informed.

What surprised me was his decision to push things in that direction. He was angry, I presumed, had every right to be.

I was until this point prepared to swallow some nasty tasting wasps, and apologise to him.

After I drink my coffee, and eat my breakfast.

To interrupt my sleep like that!

Who this short-lived man imagine he is?

What he thinks I am?

I opened the door of my hotel room without thinking. Wearing nothing but boxer shorts. Ready to destroy that little general for his suicidal arrogance.

Instead, I lost my balance and almost felt on my back. It was no short lived general, the thing on my doorstep.

It was him. The face, the blue eyes, subtle inclination of the bald head. The tattoo covering one side of the face. Everything but the dirt white T-shirt. Same posture, holding cigar.

The fat, or corpulent, bartender of The Asylum, in Santa Monica. Right from Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines to that hotel corridor.

He was wearing a long coach that could have been taken from a German pilot during World War 1, if wasn’t so new. But there was a layer of fine red velvet inside it. The rest of the clothes had a even more exotic flavour. Light tactical armour from Pre Horror Fenrir, in Mystery System, decorated with WW1 military inspired details. Only contemporary element was the beret. I recognized the insignia.

Was the same I had been wearing in my tenant uniform since the beginning of that mission.

_Your majesty._ I finally managed to say. As respectfully as I was able to.

He was not supposed to arrive in this station for at least another 5 years!

_Pleasure to meet you. I apologise for this intrusion, Sir. Would you prefer to be addressed as general or tenant? I understand one is your real rank, the other your identity for this mission.

_Your informants are better than mine, your majesty. According to my sources vampire kings leave that sort of meeting for their subordinates. Unless you are a duke or a knight and I am making a fool of myself.

_No, general. Your deductive powers served you well. Under different circumstances I would have sent someone else, possibly. In this occasion, I knew I would be abusing your tolerance by invading your space and interfering with your plans. I though would be less adversarial to do so in person.

_I am flattered.

_Besides. Since I was **** to humiliate myself by fleeing my birth system, and placed my fate in the hands of your govern. Adjust my costumes to your protocols is the least I can do, to show my gratitude for the kind welcome your people gave mine.

_Are we in too much hurry?

_Not at all, general. I can wait for you in the lobby if pleases you. Then I suggest we talk during breakfast. There is a fine breakfast house not too far away from here. A few floors above us.

_Since you are here, there is no need to. We are military men in the middle of a war, after all. Biographical accidents or not. If you don’t mind sitting for a moment or two, we can start talking while I dress myself. I presume I can avoid the line about inviting a vampire inside, since you must have heard it enough times by now. So, if you allow me the question, some vampires eat human food others don’t. Correct?

_Yes. Most vampires in my court maintain the habit, but some other courts prefer to abandon it, completely. For us it is a choice, but we must keep the practice of eating or we lose the capacity to do so. Specially when we are young. I eat socially, but with satisfaction. As my, corporeal profile may suggest.

I had heard about the vampiric capacity of change physical appearance at will. Project illusions too. Not all vampires have both, but vampire kings are more gifted in those resources than their subjects.

To look like that on purpose was a peculiar choice. Fat, bald. On the other hand, I don’t suppose his appearance suggested to any person casually walking by him that he is a vampire king. Someone who knows the game from Troika and has it fresh in mind could make the connection. Since the predilection vampires have for Pre Baby Steps Literature about vampires is common topic for jokes.

However, that practically restricts the universe of people who would be able to make the connection to Asgardians. Twentians, more likely. And not all of us.

Even them. Well, this character in his fictional context, in Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines, wasn’t a vampire. He was a mere human, working for the vampire sisters, who didn’t even seems to know vampires exist in his world. What an odd choice, for a king!

Now this!

I was curious to see this Asylum interstellar ship. From inside, as far as I can say from the parts of the ship Captain Norris, Vampire King Cal D Norris, personally showed to me; the place wasn’t as sinister as imagination makes it.

I suppose that makes more sense.

The vessel belongs to vampires, and everyone knows that. But vampires are, by necessity, a very small percentage of the population. Main difference between the Asylum and other ram vessels I have travelled in is not the presence of vampires, but the total absence of humans.

We have subhumans in the Integrated Forces, but the vast majority of IF personal anywhere is composed by alexandrine humans. Specially in positions of command.

The Asylum has no human. Everybody living in the vessel is either a vampire or a subhuman.

Because the vampires need to hunt intelligent beings with blood, to stay sane. Hunt and drink from, unwillingly, people. Who try to escape of fight them, while being hunted. Alexandrine Law do not tolerate the possibility of those hunts, when the preys are alexandrine humans. Our governs, generally speaking, raise no objection against those hunts on principle. Just demand humans to be excluded from the category of potential prey.

Deshiar refuse that compromise. That is the reason why humanity is at was against the Deshiar and their human-based vampires.

I never had considered the subject too deeply. As I had to consider, while I was inside that vessel. However, perhaps is not too absurd to say that most subhumans would choose freely to live in societies like that. Where they are at risk of being hunted and potentially even killed by vampires, in a moment of predatorial insanity. Moments like that are know to happen during vampire hunts.

Maybe I would prefer that risk too, if I was a subhuman.

To be spared the company of humans. And all the potential danger implied by that company. To say nothing about the fact that humans will always necessarily holds unfair advantage over subhumans, in any society shared by both groups.

My generation, and the ones that followed immediately after, designed human society in the Consensus of Alexandria. To guarantee that unfair advantage could never be taken from humans. Since our blood descendants would be in too much advantage without it, for being limited to a lifespan of only 300 years.

Now that I know Cal in person, I no longer feel so adamant in my opposition to that project of Nocturnal Cannons.

He did not choose to build his identity around the cult to a mad vampire club proprietary and Camarilla’s Baron. His choice was to build it around the personable bartender who works in that night club. Who is, himself, a humans. For all we know, as decent as a person as the next guy in Santa Monica. That nuance, when you stop to think about it, makes a world of difference.

The speaks about a person who is trying to be good, and serve other people to the best of his abilities. Not about someone who seeks power for the sake of power.