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# Cosmic Exile

Volume I

A Trilogy By Armand Vespertine

Registered Copyright 2014 by Armand Vespertine

Smashwords Edition

# Prologue

Nearly a hundred centuries had passed since he had last looked upon the stars. For the atrocities and abominations beyond count that he had done, he and all his people had been banished from the Universe itself, until either it or they were no more. He personally expected to outlive the Universe, but the thought of spending all eternity exiled from it tormented him more with each passing starless night.

His race was trapped in a bubble of space-time, which had been sundered from the rest of the Universe millennia ago. A transdimensional membrane of near infinitesimal breadth was all that kept him at bay. His little universe had only a single star, a pale white dwarf orbited by a slender black ring. That was the home of his people, where they had been spawned by the trillions. He was vermiform in body, and nearly five meters in length, covered in a jet-black carapace that was broken into hundreds of segments. The front portion of his body was arched erect, standing well over two meters in height. His head was similar to that of a praying mantis, with a massive pair of almond shaped, iridescent blue eyes. His mouth was a squid-like beak paired with a flickering serpent's tongue. He had two pairs of arms, with the lower being smaller and more dexterous. Upon each hand, he had two fingers and an opposable thumb. Each digit bore a long, curved and glistening black talon. Every one of his lower body segments had a pair of strong, insectile legs to aid him in slithering.

His ship was just as wretched. A perfect monstrosity made of living tissue. It was a mile and a half long, its thick crimson hide taut with blood vessels. In the aft were four long tusks, with a thin membrane webbed between them like a massive sail of skin. From within, the ship pulsed with the most insidious kind of life. Light came from bioluminescent patches lining the chambers and corridors. Gill-like slits wheezed out foul smelling air. The doors were opaque membranes or convex shells. Large black hemispheres embedded into the walls served as video displays, and furnishings grew from the floor like warts and tumours.

Staring out a window of biogenic crystal, he gazed upon the remnants of his once vast Armada. In days long gone by, he cavorted freely throughout the stars, ravaging entire worlds, raping them of all he desired. Soon though, those days would come again. His people would erupt from the Abyss, ravenous after their long deprivation, bringing annihilation to those who had imprisoned them so long ago. Soon, very soon, a ship would come along, and become ensnared in his little universe. There were many ways in, but this ship carried technology for bending space itself. Technology so powerful they could finally create a way out.

He was Levanoch, Arch Lieutenant to the Grand Warlord Nakhash, Commander in Chief of the Scraumudi Armada. His liberation drew nearer, and once more entire worlds would parish at his command, entire races exterminated like vermin. He would spend all eternity making the Universe suffer for the ten millennia he had spent in exile. He had been punished as no living being had ever been punished before.

They had taken the sky from him.

# Chapter One

The streamlined oval craft effortlessly sliced through the air, going a thousand kilometres an hour. It was held aloft not by wings, but levitated high above the ground using Casimir force fields. It piloted itself of course, soaring along flight-paths meticulously designed to avoid collisions with birds. The craft was so cunningly designed that even in the unlikely event of a crash its occupants would be unharmed.

Such were the everyday conveyances of the Pananthropic Republic.

As the colossal spires of the Anthropolis receded over the horizon, the craft's occupants were treated to a view of an immense boreal forest that went on for as far as the eye could see in every direction. With most of the Human population concentrated in urban or suburban areas, and traditional agriculture obsolete, much of the planet was a lovingly shepherded nature reserve.

Marc admired the view through the tinted canopy. He was seventy eight years old, but looked less than half that. Synthetic microbes in his body secreted (among other things) anti-agathics, which rejuvenated his cells. Nanites in his bloodstream repaired cells and tissues, in addition to cleaning arteries and hunting down pathogens, cancer cells, and cells that had been infected by viruses. The keratin in his skin was as strong as spider's silk, and his bone tissue was similarly enhanced. Combined with germline modifications and regenerative medicine, Marc was essentially biologically immortal, and could expect to live for several centuries at least.

He was completely typical in this regard.

Marc had a lean and muscular body, just like almost every other man. He had medium brown skin and eyes, and his head was shaved bald. He had a kindly face with a bright smile, and he wore a light beard.

Sitting next to him was his close friend and executive officer, Ilene Teskey. She was sixty three, but like Marc looked barely half that. She was unusually tall, 1.9 meters, as well as slender. She had sharp, angular cheek bones and bright green eyes. Her fair platinum blonde hair went down past her shoulders.

He was dressed in a deep blue changshan style garment with silver embroidery, and she wore a dark gold, translucent tunic that went roughly halfway down her thighs and was girded by a silver belt. They were also both wearing neurolettes, as no one could be expected to function without one. Neurolettes took the form of elegant circlets worn upon the head, and provided three main functions. They allowed for a passive and non-invasive neuro-interface with any devices in their vicinity, recorded a continuous lifelog, and provided transcranial stimulation for a variety of applications.

Sitting behind the two adults were a young couple who looked like teenagers, and were. They acted like it too, with their lips locked together and their limbs constantly groping each other's nearly naked bodies.

The girl was named Sophie, and was Ilene's legal daughter and Marc's god-daughter. She had dark golden tan skin, brown eyes, and long, straight brown hair. Her young body already conformed to the feminine ideal of beauty; lithely slender with generous round breasts. Her lover, Brock, was likewise the masculine ideal of beauty. Humanity's love for these two ideals had kept them with binary gender, despite millennia of biotechnology.

They each wore only a short sarong around their waists, proudly baring their perfected bodies. Sophie was perfectly safe dressed like this of course. Due to a multitude of reasons (intelligent panoptical surveillance, forensic forecasting, germline modifications, pharmaceutical moral enhancement and social engineering) violent crime was almost non-existent, including sexual assault. Combined with ubiquitous beauty and weather control, clothing was usually optional.

Sophie's lust was not entirely due simply to her youth, however. She had a clear, transdermal patch on her arm which gave her a constant low dose of synthetic euphoriants and aphrodisiacs, keeping her perpetually happy and horny.

Marc's mood however was somewhat different. As they neared their destination, he found he was becoming more and more nervous.

"Are you worried about seeing her again?" Ilene asked.

"A little," Marc replied. "It's been years since we've met in person."

"What are you two talking about?" Sophie asked, gently pushing Brock aside. For the moment, her curiosity was stronger than her passion.

"Helena," Ilene replied. Sophie gave her mother a blank look.

"Should I know that name?" she asked.

"Helena was a girl I met aboard the Caspian, around thirty three years ago," Marc replied. "I was the head xeno-anthropologist, and she was a junior member of my staff. We fell in love almost instantly, and we entered into an immensely enjoyable limerent marriage that lasted for the rest of our voyage. The Caspian was sent on a three-year expedition to the Sunflower galaxy, and she was only half as fast as the Deity so it took three months to get there, and three months back. After we returned, Helena and I received different postings. We tried to get assigned to the same vessel of course, but it didn't work out. The only way the Astragnostic Society would be required to post us together is if we were really married, and she was only twenty four years old at the time."

"Wait, what?" Sophie asked. "Twenty four years old, thirty years ago? That's almost twenty five years younger than you. At most, she would have been twenty one when you got together. You were sleeping with a kid Marc."

"Excuse me, you're not even as old now as she was then, and you've already had sex over three thousand times according to that disgusting little tally on your lifelog," Marc defended himself.

"With a guy my own age," Sophie enunciated. "Marc, that is seriously creepy."

"Noted," Marc said indifferently. "Creepy or not, we weren't doing anything illegal. Since she was too young to get married..."

"...but old enough to fuck," Sophie said.

"Watch your tongue young lady," Ilene scolded.

"Since we couldn't get married, we had to split up," Marc continued. "We kept in regular contact over the last thirty years, and had a few rendezvous when we could. Now though, she'll be serving aboard the Deity as the head xeno-anthropologist. And... we already renewed our limerent marriage."

"You did what?" Sophie asked. "Are you telling me that you're now semi-married to a girl you haven't seen in person for years?"

"We were happily semi-married for over three years before. We're going to be together for at least a few years now, and if that works out then we'll actually get married," Marc replied.

"So, have you been holding out for this girl for the past thirty years?" Sophie asked. "That's insane. If I even go a day without sex I'm bouncing off the walls."

"What Helena and I had, and still have, is a very deep emotional and spiritual connection that has held up over thirty years, even when we've been millions of lightyears apart," Marc told her. "It's much more important and meaningful than intercourse."

"Has she been celibate for the past thirty years too? If she hasn't, then that's kind of awkward," Sophie said. Marc sighed and placed his face in his palm.

"Sophie, how about you be quiet for a little while, okay?" Ilene asked. Sophie rolled her eyes and ignored her.

"So are we meeting her at the shuttle station?" she asked.

"Yes, and please be polite when I introduce you," Marc requested. "In fact, Drækýp is supposed to with her so be on your best behaviour."

"The Grey?" Sophie asked.

"Please don't call him that," Marc sighed. "They call themselves the Allurëa, and I don't think they mind being referred to as Reticulans, but absolutely do not call him a Grey. He's God knows how many thousands of years old, and in that time he's become an expert at everything, including things no Human's ever even conceived of. His knowledge and abilities will be invaluable to us. Do not offend him, ever. If you're uncomfortable around him, just politely excuse yourself."

"But why he is with Helena?" Sophie asked.

"She's been on Amity Station for the past five years," Marc replied. "That's where they met. They struck up a rapport, so when Drækýp learned of our expedition he volunteered his services. Helena is actually from the Anthropic Enclave, so she's very familiar with the Allurëa."

"She's an Enclavean?" Sophie asked. "You mean, like a witch?"

"Never use that word around her," Marc told her. "She hates that. She's just clairvoyant. She's harmless. Just please, try to behave yourself around both of them."

Sophie sighed and went back to her boyfriend.

The remainder of the flight passed without conversation, and soon the shuttle station came into view. The flight-craft sat itself down upon the landing platform and withdrew its canopy, allowing its passengers egress. Sophie rode upon her male's back, as was customary.

There was already a large crowd of people on the platform, waiting for the shuttle that would take them to the Deity. The arrival of their new commanding officer went unnoticed however, since they were all watching Drækýp demonstrate his telekinetic abilities.

Once thought to be mythical and still considered legendary, the Allurëa were a mysterious race. Through chance, convergent evolution, and possibly providence, they were uncannily Human. They had emaciated Humanoid bodies with large heads like upside down eggs. They had no pinna, only ear holes, no noses, just nostrils, and small mouths. Their eyes were they're most noticeable and infamous feature; large, almond-shaped, slanted and pitch black. They had no nails upon any of their fingers or toes. They possessed psychic powers Human beings once thought were impossible, and still could not explain. Despite their frail bodies, they often managed to survive for thousands of years.

Their origins were unknown. Some said that they were what Humans had evolved into in the distant future, and had traveled back in time to colonize the past. Some said that they were the result of an alien race experimenting on primeval Humans. Others said that they came from half the Universe away. Those who believed that the Universe was a simulation often thought that the Allurëa were the avatars of beings from a higher reality.

The Allurëa themselves enjoyed being cryptic and enigmatic, and never gave concrete answers to any questions about their nature or origins.

Drækýp himself was one of the taller Allurëans, standing at about 1.7 meters tall. He was dressed in gold and purple robes and carried a moon white stave that held a violet crystal orb. Whether this actually aided his psychic abilities, or was merely for show, no one could say.

The audience was throwing random objects at him, which he never failed to catch with his telekinesis, even when he wasn't looking. He directed these objects in an aerial ballet over their heads. All eyes were on his performance, except for Marc's.

His eyes immediately fell upon Helena.

Helena had marble white skin contrasted against bouncy, jet black hair that went nearly halfway down her back. She had crystal clear eyes like pale sapphires and pale pink lips. She was dressed in a tunic like Ilene's except it was midnight blue and inlaid with tiny diamonds that resembled stars.

Marc was perhaps ten meters away from her when she sensed his presence. She spun around and her face lit up at the sight of him. She gleefully ran to him and threw her arms around him, kissing him longingly.

He passionately returned her embrace, lifting her off the ground and spinning her in the air. When he set her down they smiled at each other.

"Hi," she said elatedly. Marc chortled.

"Hi," he said in kind.

"This is so amazing! I can't believe after all this time we finally get to serve on the same ship again," Helena said. "Congratulations on being elected to Command. I voted for you by the way. If there's anything more impressive than being an astronaut, it's being an astronaut Captain."

"It's an amazing privilege, yes," Marc nodded. "But not as amazing as being with you again." She smiled at him and gave him a gentle kiss.

"Do you want to introduce me to your friends here?" Helena asked.

"Of course. Helena, this is the Deity's XO Ilene Teskey. Blades, this is our head of xeno-anthropology, Helena Delansy," Marc introduced them. "This is Sophie, Ilene's daughter and my goddaughter."

"Hello," Helena said, shaking their wrists.

"Wow. You are literally white," Sophie commented.

"Sophie!" Ilene scolded.

"I'm sorry, it's just very striking," Sophie said. "You look nice though. It's very gothic."

"Thank you," Helena said, trying her best to be polite. "Marc's told me a lot about you two."

"I've heard a lot about you too; all of it delusionally idyllic," Ilene replied.

"He's never told me anything about you," Sophie complained.

"When you were younger, I didn't think it was appropriate to talk to you about my romantic life," Marc explained. "And for the past few years you've been a little distracted."

"And who is the young gentleman?" Helena asked.

"This is my playmate Brock," Sophie replied. "Isn't he gorgeous? I am physically addicted to this boy, and he has no refractory period so he can last for as long as I can take it."

"Sophie, why do you always have to talk about sex?" Ilene asked, embarrassed.

"Because it's all I think about," Sophie replied. Ilene couldn't help but scoff.

"Sure, now you're a nympho, but when we first told you about sex you swore you would never do it," she reminded her. Sophie rolled her eyes.

"I was little. I thought it would be noxious, but it's not. It's the greatest ecstasy I've ever known, so why shouldn't I do it as much as possible?"

"Because there are other things to do Sophie," Marc replied. "Less ecstatic maybe, but more meaningful."

"I'll decide what gives my life meaning, not you," Sophie told him. She squeezed Brock's torso with her legs, letting him know she wanted him to carry her away from her guardians.

"In her defense, she's not wrong." Helena claimed. "If she wants to spend her life screwing like a bunny, that's her business."

"She takes after her mother," Ilene told her. "Chika literally does nothing but lie around blissed out on euphoriants, waiting for me to make love to her. She's the perfect wife, but I had hoped my daughter would want more than a Huxleyian life. If all you do is feel, when do you have time to think?"

"That's kind of a barbaric attitude, isn't it?" Helena asked. "You don't have to do anything to justify your existence. If your daughter wants to spend her life in a state of semi-constant orgasm, that's her right."

"No offense, but I do not have to debate my daughter's life choices with a complete stranger. Excuse me," Ilene said, taking her leave. The crowd around them burst into thunderous applause as Drækýp finished his performance.

"I'm sorry," Helena apologized to Marc after the noise died down. "Did I touch a nerve?"

"It has been a bit of a contentious issue lately," Marc replied. "Sophie's life right now is mostly divided between sex and rest. Ilene and I think her life would be more fulfilling if she had more diverse interests. I would like it if she valued knowledge over pleasure and went to study at a University or something. Her boyfriend at least plays sports. She could take up a job, or a hobby."

"Aren't those really the same thing?" Helena asked.

"Well, I think a job you have some sort of formal commitment to," Marc replied. "There are consequences for not doing a job. "

"What about my sister?" Helena asked. "She's a musician. If she stopped playing and writing music then a lot of her fans would be upset. Does that count as a job?"

"I remember when a job was something a Human had to do in order to survive," Drækýp joined the conversation, walking up from behind them. "But that's obviously an obsolete definition. My apologies, I didn't mean to eavesdrop."

"Don't be absurd. It's an honour just to speak to you sir," Marc said, extending his hand. "I'm Marcus Spencer, Captain of the Deity.

"Yes, I've seen your picture," Drækýp said, shaking Marc's wrist.

"On behalf of my entire crew, I would like to express my deep and sincere appreciation for you accompanying us on our voyage," Marc replied.

"It's a delight Captain," Drækýp said. "I've tagged along on many Human expeditions into Astra Incognita. It's always a wonderful adventure."

"I'm sure that was because of you," Helena said. "If it wasn't for you, many of those adventures would have come to a tragic end."

"If it wasn't for me I doubt the Astragnostic Society would even exist. You'd be isolationists like every other starfaring civilization in the galaxy, too afraid of what lay outside your sanitized utopia to ever leave it. You're very lucky you have me to stimulate your spirit of adventure. The Universe is too amazing not to explore it."

They respectfully listened as Drækýp continued to pontificate on how remarkable and indispensable he was until their shuttle finally arrived to ferry them to the Deity.

***

Floating in orbit above the Earth was an impossible thing. Of all Humanity's technology that was indistinguishable from magic, it was the crowning achievement of their technomancy.

It was a starship; a starship that could travel faster than light.

Its jet black hull was a thick shell of invictus, an invincible metamaterial forged using a crude form of femtotechnology. It was impervious to radiation, especially Cosmic and Hawking radiation. It could survive collisions with space debris at relativistic speeds and not take a scratch. It was a miraculous material that protected the fragile Human adventurers from the cruelness of space. It even came in a semi-transparent variety, allowing the ship to have windows.

Humanity had mastered gravity just as they had mastered electromagnetism. The ship could shield itself from the gravitational pull of celestial bodies, and generate artificial gravity to prevent the crew's bodies from atrophying.

Most astonishingly of all, the ship could bend the fabric of space itself. Centuries of independent scientific advancement, as well as reverse engineering the vessels of more advanced and ancient races, had granted Humanity the coveted knowledge of hyperluminal travel. Old theories were refined, corrected and discredited. Quantum Gravity had to be rewritten when it was shown that FTL travel did not result in time travel, and new secrets of the Universe that none had dreamed of before were revealed.

It was with this god-like knowledge of the Universe with which fields could be created that perturbed the fabric of space in the most optimal manner possible. The ship projected fields that contracted the space in front of it and expanded the space behind it. The ship itself rode in an oscillating bubble of normal space. This 'gravity bubble' was prevented from collapsing in on itself with the negative energy of Casimir force-fields, and steered using the ingenious exploitation of quantum effects. This highly unstable ballet of forces was maintained by the constant analyse, calculation and direction from the ship's computronium core.

The tidal forces at the edges of the gravity bubble were so great that they atomized anything that passed through it. At hyperluminal speeds this generated Hawking radiation. The design of the gravity bubble allowed for this radiation to be dissipated outwards harmlessly into the void of interstellar space, instead of concentrating to fatal levels within the bubble. This same method was used to prevent the accumulation of energy from anything that got swept up in the gravity bubble, preventing a catastrophic outburst of energy upon deceleration.

Or at least, that was how the layman generally understood the concept. The hyperluminal drive was a product of Humanity's collective knowledge, and it was said that no one individual could truly comprehend how it worked. Most people just accepted that and didn't question it.

The Deity herself was a little over half a kilometer long, a hundred meters wide and a hundred meters tall. The ship's walls gently sloped outwards from the rounded bow for half the ship's length, curved in an hour glass shape for the penultimate quarter, and then formed a rounded stern. Halfway up the draft was a pair of arms that reached forward from the stern for about three quarters of the ship's length. These arms contained various field coils, sensor arrays, radiators, ramscoops, and other essential equipment. Each arm also had three pairs of Q-Vac (quantum vacuum) thrusters. The front and back pair were mounted on a dais that could rotate three hundred and sixty degrees, whereas the middle pair were lateral thrusters that pushed the ship sideways. The Deity could manipulate her own inertia, allowing her to rapidly accelerate using relatively little energy, and decelerate simply by returning her inertia to normal.

The Deity possessed four hangars for auxiliary craft, all of which were located in the aft. Only the top hangar was open, its wide entrance covered by a plasma window. The window was strong enough to keep the atmosphere in, but weak enough to allow solid objects through. As soon as the shuttle was through the window, the hangar doors slid shut. Upon landing the shuttle was immediately surrounded by a flock of 'jellybots'.

Jellybots were the workhorses of Anthropic civilization. Their bodies were lucent, bulbous discs that constantly changed colour. They had six slender, retractable tentacles for manipulating objects, and could wirelessly interface with electronics. They levitated almost continuously, and moved by swimming through the air. They varied in size depending on their intended function, but most of them were small enough that Human beings wouldn't find them threatening. They were smart enough to do whatever grunt work they were programmed for, but intentionally limited to sub-human general intelligence. More importantly, they were not sentient. They had no conscious will to challenge that of their masters'. They never resented their tasks or questioned their servitude. They were the perfect soulless slaves who always did as they were told.

Odd as they were, people found them less creepy than Human looking robots.

Some of the jellybots unloaded the shuttle's cargo, while others began performing routine maintenance and repairs. The Human passengers hardly paid any mind to the surreal flying jellyfish around them as they departed.

"Captain Spencer!" a man shouted as Marc disembarked from the shuttle. He was a tall athletic man with dark brown skin dressed in a golden shendyt that came down to just above his knees. He had golden eyes, his short hair was dyed gold, and he had bioluminescent gold tattoos on his arms and torso. He had an attractive girl on either side of him, and Marc guessed the three of them were paramours since both girls had similar patterns of glowing tattoos.

"Captain Spencer, hi. I'm Randi Lykos, the Technician Foreman," he introduced himself as he shook Marc's wrist.

He was a member of a largely unnecessary class of people who performed regular diagnostics, maintenance and repairs on the automated infrastructure that Humanity depended on. Even though the automated infrastructure was self-sufficient, the existence of a token working class provided the (perhaps illusory) sense that Human beings weren't hopelessly dependent on machines.

"I remember. I interviewed you," Marc replied.

"I know, but I figured you must have interviewed so many people that you wouldn't have remembered me," Randi explained. "But thank you for choosing me sir. I've never worked on a Starship before. None of us have. It's an honour."

Marc turned his attention to the girl standing to Randi's left. She looked like she just walked in off the beach. She was dressed only a purple gossamer sarong around her waist, and she was tanned like that was the most she had worn in her life. She had spiraling patterns of bioluminescent purple tattoos all along her body. Her eyes were lavender, and she wore her lavender hair Godiva style in a token display of modesty.

"Who's the purple girl?" Helena asked.

"I'm Sook-yin Ming. I'm the chief medic," she replied, smiling and curtseying. "It sounds important, but I just tell the autodocs what to do and then hand out lollipops."

She held out an assortment of swirled lollipops for them to take.

"Do those have euphoriants in them?" Sophie asked.

"Of course," Sook-yin replied.

"Awesome, thanks," Sophie said, eagerly accepting the drugged candy.

"I'll pass, thank you," Marc politely declined.

The girl standing on Randi's other side was easily recognized as a member of the Anthropic Civic Guard. They served the role of both police and foot soldiers, for times when AIs and telepresence were either undesired or infeasible. They were entirely female, as men were considered too easily corrupted by violence and were thus barred for any position that would require it. Even so, the majority of women who attempted to become a Civic Guard failed to meet the strict psychological and physical requirements.

Civic Guards were not only the product of intense training and conditioning, but of somatic biomodifications. They were the superhumans among a race of superhumans. The girl's toned muscles had been augmented with synthetic polymers, enhancing her strength. Despite her low body fat, she could function for many days without food, or even sleep. Her designer kidneys made it possible for her to survive prolonged periods without water. She had endless stamina, and the respirocytes in her blood allowed her to hold her breath for hours. She could run at nearly fifty kilometers an hour, and her agility and reflexes were equally astounding. Her bones had been transfigured into a nearly unbreakable substance.

She had a tapetum lucidum, making her blue eyes shine in the dark. Her pupils were thus unusually small in the brightly lit hangar. Her visual spectrum went into the ultraviolet, and she could also see magnetic fields. Her other senses were similarly enhanced. She was capable of remaining dead calm in a life threatening scenario, and more importantly had been conditioned to be utterly obedient to her commanding officers. Above all else, the Civic Guards were loyal to Humanity and the Pananthropic Republic.

This Civic Guard had bronze skin and raven black hair. It was cheek length in the front, and sloped downwards so that is was shoulder length in the back. She wore a nearly sleeveless haubergeon of invictus chainmail, and a pair of electronic vambraces. Her bare arms and legs had bright blue bioluminescent tattoos.

In her belt she carried multiple weapons, none of them lethal. Not even the Civic Guards were permitted to carry lethal weapons. On her right side was an orbis pistol which shot lucent orbs that exploded on contact with a solid object. The consequent shockwave would knock a person off their feet and cause temporary paralysis. On her left she carried a lucent baton with a black handle. The baton caused temporary paralysis when applied to a Human body, and worked through most kinds of clothing. She also had a small pouch of incapacitating micro-grenades.

"You must be Arachnid," Marc assumed, shaking her wrist.

"Yes sir," Arachnid replied proudly. "On behalf of my squad I would like to swear to you that we will safeguard the lives of everyone aboard this ship from any and all alien threats. We will also provide any constabulary services that may be required. We will be conducting training drills each and every day to ensure we are prepared for all possible incidents."

"I appreciate the effort commander, but we are heading into Astra Incognita," Marc said. "Don't be too surprised if your definition of 'all possible incidents' is proven inadequate."

Arachnid smiled and gave a single nod.

"Unless there are any issues that any of you would like to discuss with me, we'll be heading for our cabin now," Marc said, allowing Helena to hop on his back.

"By all means sir. It was great seeing you again," Randi said, with the girls making similar comments.

The corridors of the Deity were lined with holographic 'windows' displaying beautiful vistas and illuminating the halls with daylight. They reached Ilene's cabin first, and Marc decided to come in just to make sure everything was all right.

Lying on an opulent roman couch was Ilene's wife and Sophie's biological mother Chika. She had golden brown skin and eyes, and a mane of lavish black hair.

She took no notice of them.

She had a look of pure bliss on her face, and every breath she took sounded orgasmic. Aside from a euphoriant patch, she wore nothing but a neurolette, which enhanced the experience.

Sophie went over to her and gave her a gentle shake.

"Mom? Mom it's me. We're home," she said. Chika turned her head and smiled at her daughter.

"Hi sweetie," she said. She touched her euphoriant patch and dialed back the dose to a more functional level. "Give me a minute to come down, okay."

"Is this new?" Sophie asked, picking up a patch from the table and eyeing it hungrily. Chika nodded while biting her lip.

"Best I've had in a long time," she said. She then looked at Ilene with insatiable lust. "I can't wait to find out what sex is like with it."

"Me neither," Sophie said, ripping off her old patch and putting the new one on.

"Start it on low and amp up gradually," Chika advised.

"Mom, I know how to bliss out," Sophie said. "Which bedroom is mine?"

"That one," Chika said, pointing to her left. "You have a Cornucopia right by your bed and your own jellybot, so you never have to get out of bed if you don't want to."

"I won't," Sophie assured her, dragging her boyfriend into her new bedroom.

Ilene knelt down beside her wife.

"Have you been eating?" she asked maternally. Humans were a little bit better than rats at remembering to keep themselves alive during long sessions of bliss, but only a little.

"Yeah, I've been snacking on boufage," Chika replied, gesturing to the bowl beside her.

Boufage was basically kibble for Humans.

"You need a full meal," Ilene insisted.

"Later. Take me to the bedroom," Chika insisted.

"No, you have to eat now," Ilene said firmly. "What do you want?"

"Let's compromise. I'll eat you out," Chika proposed, staring at her ravenously.

"Precious, please. You clearly haven't had any real food since I've been gone and that scares me," Ilene said. "Remember our deal? Every time you get skinny enough that your ribs stick out you have to put on weight. You need excess fat for when you forget to eat. It's dangerous for you to be this thin."

"All right," Chika relented, forcing herself into a sitting position. "For you, I'll gorge myself like an ancient American. Bring me a feast."

"Thank you," Ilene said. She turned to Marc. "I don't need your help with her today, you can leave."

"If you're sure," Marc replied. "Call if you need anything."

"Thanks buddy," Ilene said, waving him farewell.

"So you regularly help take care of that woman?" Helena asked as they entered the hallway.

"On occasion," Marc replied. "Chika likes to get so blissed out that she forgets to take care of herself, and sometimes she can be pretty stubborn about it. Right now Sophie's only a little more active in reality than her mother, but I don't expect that to last."

"Why would a euphoria junkie even have a kid?" Helena asked.

"Once she and Ilene were married, they were preapproved for procreation," Marc replied. "And you know once you're preapproved, the government won't stop pestering you until you have at least one kid. They decided to get it out of the way early."

"That's ridiculous. I always vote for stricter restrictions on procreative licenses, but I think they've actually gotten looser," Helena complained.

"Well if procreation is controlled too strictly it causes civil unrest. Nobody wants to be told that they can't have at least one child," Marc said. "Besides, the government likes to keep the population stable."

"That's just a status quo bias if you ask me," Helena claimed. "Come on; let's go check out our cabin."

Their cabin was just a quick walk down the corridor. It had been provided with polymorphic furniture from the ship's industrial Cornucopias, and it had its own domestic Cornucopia to produce any items they needed or desired.

The Cornucopia was a nanofactory that could make anything as long as it had the power, data, and raw materials. Domestic Cornucopias lacked the precision to create functional living organisms, and of course would never make anything dangerous. They were hardwired to only produce items that add been officially approved by a centralized security council. If anyone even attempted to tamper with a Cornucopia's software or hardware, the device would self-destruct and alert the authorities. Even attempting to hack a Cornucopia was a serious offense.

The ornate golden cylinder was engraved with symbols representing the four classical elements, because it could make food from just earth, water, air and fire (technically energy). Additional raw materials arrived either through a utility feed, or by objects placed in its recycling compartment. There were billions of Cornucopias in the Pananthropic Republic, and every citizen was entitled to a generous share of energy and raw elements as a civil right. They typically sold their surplus either back to the government, private industries, or more ambitions individuals. Cornucopias freed Human beings from wage slavery, making everyone independently wealthy. They eliminated both poverty and greed, since people had no attachment to possessions that were freely replaceable.

That being said, Marc was immediately curious about why there was luggage in their cabin.

"Is this yours?" he asked.

"Yes, I was at a Crafts Fair while I was on Earth. I bought some artisanal goods," Helena explained, dismounting him and opening up the boxes. "Handmade stuff is so expensive, but I have to do something with all this money they give us. I honestly don't understand why they pay us so much. What do they expect us to do with it all?"

"It's not really up to them. Half of any syndicate's net revenue has to be equally distributed to its active employees and pensioners. They couldn't pay us less if they wanted to," Marc replied.

"It's still way too much," Helena said. "After taxes, my salary is more than twice as much as my demogrant, and that's already more than I know what to do with. A few months ago I got a red flag for Dragon's Heart Syndrome. I was shocked because I've been reverse tithing. I give 90 percent of my salary to charity, and I stuck the rest into a saving's account because I didn't know what else to do with it. When I got the red flag I actually bothered to check the damn thing for the first time in ages, and after thirty years that savings account has grown into a Dragon's Hoard. I could have bought a mountain, hollowed it out, filled it with classically precious metals and stones, and bioengineered a dragon to guard it. It was embarrassing. I gave 90 percent of that to charity, threw a huge gala in my hometown, and bought a bunch of artisanal crafts to give away as gifts. I wasn't actually hoarding the money. I'm not crazy. I honestly just lost track of it."

"I understand. It can happen to us rare few who earn a steady salary," Marc replied. "It even happened to me once."

"You got a red flag for a Dragon's Heart?" Helena asked in disbelief.

"I did. Now I have a gold cap on my accounts, and anything over that cap is automatically donated to charity," Marc replied.

"That's a good idea," Helena agreed. "But I got you some presents too. Let me show you."

As she started rummaging through her bags, she shamelessly passed gas since her gut flora was genetically modified to produce pleasant smelling flatulence.

Their society was so obsessed with perfectionism that their shit wasn't even allowed to stink.

After rifling through her luggage for a minute, Helena pulled out a pair of ornate silver chalices.

"These were made by an actual blacksmith," she told him. "The guy actually makes stuff by heating metal in a furnace and then beating it with a hammer. He even looked like a Dwarf. I love artisans! They're so weird like that."

She handed him the chalices, and pulled out a bottle of berry wine.

"I thought we should have a real bottle of wine to celebrate," she said. She uncorked the bottle and filled the chalices. "This wine wasn't made by people, but it was still made with real berries."

They raised their glasses in a toast.

"To you and me finally getting back together after all these years, and to the Deity's maiden voyage."

"Starwards and homewards," Marc added for luck.

# Chapter Two

The Deity was launched with pompous ceremony, and after only a few uneventful days was deep in intergalactic space, en route to its distant and uncharted destination.

The Deity's bridge was a perfectly circular room with a domed ceiling. The dome's interior was covered in a 3D screen, providing a holographic view of the outside Universe. Six large consoles circled the room's perimeter. The Captain's chair sat in the exact centre of the room on a raised dais, with a less ornate executive chair to either side of it. In front of that was the helm, and behind it was a holographic display table.

Despite being the ship's command center, the bridge was almost vacant. Marc was in his central chair, speaking with Helena (who was sitting in Ilene's spot), and the Head Navigator Kamadev Kumar sat at the helm. Kamadev was slender with sienna brown skin and shoulder length dark brown hair, wearing a gold shendyt His 'job' was basically babysitting the autopilot.

Like nearly all Human jobs, it was superfluous.

Ilene stepped onto the bridge, holding a large cup of Chocaccina in one hand and a paper thin 'tabella' computer tablet in the other. Chocaccinas were basically hot chocolates infused with advanced nootropics and anti-somnolents.

"This is from Sook-yin. It's her post-launch medical evaluation on the crew so far, along with a list of everyone who still needs to be examined," she said, handing Marc the tabella. She quickly noticed Helena sitting in the XO's chair.

"Why are you in my spot?" she asked, holding back her irritation as best she could.

"I... I was, I'm talking to Marc," Helena replied nervously.

"Blades, it's just a chair," Marc stated.

"No, it's the chair to the right of the Captain's Chair, because it's for the Captain's right hand, who is me," Ilene stated. "If anyone other than me sits in that chair, it is nothing less than a blatant subversion of my authority."

"Blades, you're overreacting, and I really don't like you talking to my wife like that," Marc chided her. "Please apologize to her."

"Apologize? Are you telling me that if she was anyone else you would stand for this?" Ilene asked irately. "This is nepotism."

Marc arched an eyebrow at her.

"You're only my XO because we're friends," he reminded her.

"...True, but this is nepotism that's not in my favour," Ilene replied. Helena couldn't help but smirk. "Get her out of my chair!"

"Apologize," Marc insisted calmly.

"No, it's okay. I'm getting up," Helena acquiesced. She began to rise, but a tremor through the ship made her sit back down and grab the armrests. "What the hell is that?"

"Space Kraken?" Ilene suggested.

"We've entered a region where the cosmic dust is at least several orders of magnitude denser than normal," Kamadev reported. "It's really messing up our stress-energy tensor. The gravity bubble is destabilizing. I'm shutting it down."

"Magnolia Creek, please report to the bridge immediately," Marc ordered through his neurolette. "Kumar, don't worry about getting us back to hyperluminal just yet. I'd like our Cosmologist to analyze this region first."

"Aye sir."

"No. Marc, we should get out of here," Helena said earnestly. She suddenly appeared very frightened.

"But no one's ever detected such a dense region of intergalactic space before, we should at least..." he began.

"No, now!" Helena insisted.

"What the hell is wrong with you?" Ilene asked.

"Blades, it's all right," Marc said. Helena's clairvoyance wasn't very strong, but it was always right. When she sensed something was amiss, Marc took her seriously. "Kumar, get us out of here as soon as possible."

"Aye sir," Kamadev said, slightly confused.

To everyone's surprise, Drækýp stepped onto the bridge.

"What's going on?" he asked sharply.

"Drækýp. It seems that we've stumbled into a region with an unusually high density of cosmic dust. We've been forced to stop." Marc explained. "It doesn't appear to be dangerous, but something's setting off Helena's spidey sense. I assume that's what brought you up here."

Drækýp barely acknowledged his response. He stood at the console behind him and started taking readings.

"No. This can't be here. How is this here?" he asked himself softly.

"What are you mumbling about?" Ilene asked.

"I know this place," Drækýp replied. "But it's grown. According to this, it's more than four hundred lightyears across and two thousand lightyears long. And it's moved. It shouldn't be here. It shouldn't be anywhere near us. Captain, we must leave at once. We're in tremendous danger."

"From what?" Ilene asked confused. "Would someone please tell me what the hell is going on?"

"I believe you. Our navigator is working on it," Marc said.

"I'm still trying to figure out the dust's average density here," Kamadev reported. "Until I get that it won't be safe..."

"It isn't safe to remain here. We have to leave immediately!" Drækýp insisted. Before Marc could respond, the ship was subjected to a sharp jerk.

"What was that?" he asked.

"I'm sticking with Space Kraken," Ilene said.

"It's too late," Drækýp said softly. As Magnolia came onto the bridge, he sat down at one of the port consoles and started working.

"What's happening?" Magnolia asked. She was a short, thin woman with pale skin, rosy cheeks, and blue eyes. She had a tussled mane of white-blonde hair, and wore an Alice blue tunic.

"Take your station. I need a report now," Marc ordered. She sat at the console where Drækýp had been standing a moment earlier.

"We're in the periphery of an immense gravity well," she reported.

"How is that possible?" Ilene asked. "Gravity wells don't just come out of nowhere."

"What's its source?" Marc asked.

"I can't tell, but we're being pulled towards its epicenter," Magnolia replied. "We're accelerating at thousands of meters per second squared and rising. Grav-shielding and inertial negation is holding. "

"A hell of a lot of good that will do if we crash into whatever it is," Ilene stated.

"I take it the gravity well's too powerful for us to jump back to hyperluminal," Marc said.

"I'm afraid so sir," Magnolia replied. "And the gravitational pull is too powerful for our grav-shielding to help us."

"Kumar, full reverse. That will at least slow us down," Marc ordered.

"Aye sir."

"Blades, get on the com. Tell the crew what's going on and sound general quarters."

"I'm on it," she said. She kicked Helena out of her chair and activated the ship's P.A. "Attention everyone, this is your XO speaking. We are currently caught in a mysterious and ominous gravity well of unknown origins, but should be okay unless our grav-shielding shits out, in which case the tidal forces will spaghettify us into sub-atomic particles. If it's any consolation, that's always fun to watch."

"Blades, this is serious!" Marc chastised her. She raised her hand and nodded in an apologetic gesture, and made a more fitting announcement.

"That doesn't even make sense," Magnolia claimed. "We're not in a black hole. We wouldn't be spaghettified."

"Never mind that. Magnolia, I need to know if we're going to crash into anything." Marc said.

"At this rate we're only minutes away from the epicentre," Magnolia said. "But I'm not reading matter of any form there."

"Something has to be causing this thing," Marc stated. "Drækýp, you said you knew about this place. Do you know what this is?"

"I'm afraid that I do," he replied, not bothering to look away from his station. "The gravity well we're in belongs to an evanescent wormhole."

"That's impossible. Naturally occurring evanescent wormholes are sub-atomic in size," Magnolia claimed. "There's no way one this big could form on its own."

"Not only is it possible, such wormholes are constantly forming and evaporating in this region." Drækýp explained. "And they have been for nearly ten thousand years."

"Why only ten thousand years?" Marc asked.

"The short answer is that we created it ten thousand years ago," Drækýp replied.

"Why would you create a field of evanescent wormholes large enough to swallow ships in the middle of a dust cloud?" Ilene asked.

"The wormholes were an unintentional by-product, and they're what attract dust particles to the region," Drækýp explained. "What we did was engulf a spheroid region of space roughly nine billion kilometers in diameter inside a specialized gravitational field."

"What do you mean 'specialized'?" Magnolia asked.

"It caused the space within to separate from the rest of the Universe," Drækýp said nonchalantly.

"What?" Marc asked incredulously.

"That's impossible," Magnolia claimed.

"That's the second time you've made that statement Miss Creek," Drækýp said. "I'd like to remind you that without a complete understanding of natural laws, which no one has, one cannot say what is or isn't possible."

"Are you saying this wormhole will take us to a parallel universe?" Marc asked bewildered.

"No. That's not the right term at all," Drækýp said. "Like I said it's only nine billion kilometers across, and it was originally a part of this Universe. It's merely a pocket of normal space we isolated from the rest of the Cosmos."

"Why? Was it some sort of experiment?" Magnolia asked.

"No. It's a prison," Drækýp explained.

"A prison? For whom?" Marc asked.

"That's a long story Captain, and I'm a little busy at the moment," Drækýp said. "Just don't run any active scans when we get in there. I don't want to attract any attention."

"Magnolia, can you confirm that we're being pulled into an evanescent wormhole?" Marc asked.

"Yes, I think Drækýp's right," she replied.

"So we won't be able to come back through?" Marc asked.

"Why not?" Ilene asked.

"All evanescent wormholes are unidirectional," Magnolia explained. "They only allow matter to travel one way."

"All the wormholes here are in-coming. Nothing can escape from our prison," Drækýp stated.

"Are you saying we're going to be stuck in there?" Helena asked softly.

"Not necessarily," he replied wily.

"What do you mean?" Marc asked.

"It is possible to invert a wormhole, and the Deity has Humanity's most advanced hyperluminal drive," he said. "I believe we may be able to use it to sufficiently distort the space within a wormhole to allow us to travel back out."

"How?" Marc asked.

"I'm working on that, but rest assured I'm both an expert cosmologist and an expert on this prison, and I've had nearly ten millennia to contemplate its weaknesses. I'm certain that it is within this ship's abilities to sufficiently manipulate a wormhole to allow us egress. "

"We're going to be sucked in inside of a minute," Magnolia reported. "Isn't there anything we can do?"

"Only hope and pray that I'll be able to get us back out once we're in," Drækýp said. Ilene quickly briefed the newly arrived bridge officers, including Randi and Arachnid.

"We're going in!" Magnolia announced.

The Deity plummeted down into a tunnel of space over a mile across. Its nebulous walls were a dark blue, almost black, and seemed to be frothing with waves. Every so often they seemed to flicker, as if with sheet lightning, and the Deity would tremor slightly, as if there were thunder. A small point of bluish white light was visible in the far distance. In less than two minutes, they were on the other side.

All they could see now was that faint blue light.

"Holy Mother of Christ," Magnolia muttered.

"What is it?" Marc asked.

"It's, it's just like Drækýp said," she reported. "There's nothing behind us, I can't read anything more than nine billion kilometers away. Not just mass, but space-time too. It's like the Universe just ends after that."

"What about that star, if that's what it is?" Marc asked.

"It is sir; a white dwarf. I'm only reading one celestial body, in orbit at around twenty AU. It's a type six Jovian planet, roughly three Jupiter masses. It has a ring system, but no moons."

"No moons? I've never heard of a gas giant without moons," Ilene said.

"Neither have I," Magnolia said. "A gas giant that size should have at least a hundred moons. There's also something else orbiting at 0.02 AU. I'm not sure what it is. I'm putting it up front."

The azure sun, greatly magnified, appeared before them in its own video window. It was encircled by a wisp like black ring, slowly spinning around it. Closer to the sun there also appeared to be at least several thin, rectangular panels in orbit.

"It's a ring-world," Marc said in amazement.

"Sir, that's incredibly unlikely," Magnolia said. "A ring-world would have to be made of a material with a tensile strength greater than the nuclear force. It would take at least a transgalactic civilization to make such a thing. But even for a civilization with the extreme level of technological sophistication needed to make a ring-world, the time, effort and resources they'd have to invest would be completely ridiculous, and vastly outweigh any conceivable advantages. There are few known civilizations capable of making a ring-world, and none with any motivation to do so."

"I'm pleased to hear you substituted 'impossible' with 'highly unlikely'," Drækýp said dryly. "But the Captain is correct. It is a ring-world."

"So there are people living there?" Helena asked. Drækýp nodded.

"Trillions," he informed her. "All Scraumudi,"

"All what?" Ilene asked.

"Sir, something's approaching us," Magnolia reported.

"Is it a vessel?" Marc asked.  
"Actually, it looks more like an animal," Magnolia replied. "I'm putting it on screen."

They gazed upon the bizarre leviathan floating before them. It was covered in a blood red hide that seemed to quiver with life. At the aft were its long, curved tusks and the fragile skin between them. It was a ghastly sight.

"It looks like it's surrounded by an aurora," Ilene remarked.

"That probably means they're using an artificial magnetosphere to shield themselves from radiation," Marc remarked. "That would imply that they're a pre-starfaring civilization."

"A pre-starfaring civilization that made a ring-world?" Magnolia asked. Despite the apparent direness of their circumstances, a smile swept across Marc's face.

"I love this job," he said. "How big is it?"

"Nearly five times our length, and more than a hundred times our volume," Magnolia replied.

"It's the size of a Dreadnaught," Arachnid stated in awe. "Permission to go to cold mode sir."

"Granted," Marc agreed.

It was called cold mode because the ship was forced to essentially shut off its radiators in order to keep the shields up. The Deity ejected several tonnes of ambient temperature helium plasma, which it held around itself via a magnetic field. The magnetic field also kept the plasma from reverting to an inert gas. The complex interactions between the plasma's particles gave rise to countless localized repulsions and attractions. Any directed energy weapon that hit the shield would either end up being absorbed, deflected, or harmlessly diffused. The plasma's high frequency made it effectively solid, and the shield was fairly thick, so it was also effectual at preventing larger objects from penetrating it. The technology had evolved from the same artificial magnetospheres that now protected the alien ship in front of them.

If the radiators were left on full blast, the plasma would eventually reach stellar temperatures. As such, the radiators had to be practically shut off, so all the Deity's nonessential systems were shut off as well, and various other counter measures were employed to cool the systems that were running. Even so, they could only keep their shields up for a limited time before systems started to overheat and break down.

In under a minute an ellipsoid bubble of violet, translucent plasma surrounded the Deity. The ship before them was now obscured by a purple haze.

"I'm compensating," Magnolia announced, and the screen adjusted the picture so it looked as if the shields were off.

"Is it a bioship?" Marc asked.

"It seems to be a spacecraft, but its hull appears to be living tissue grown over some sort of metallic lattice," Magnolia replied. "So, I guess so."

"That doesn't make any sense," Ilene claimed. "Why would anyone do that? What possible advantage would a ship like that have over a real one?"

"We'll figure that out later," Marc said. "How many are aboard?"

"I don't know. I can't tell individual life signs apart from the ship," Magnolia explained.

"They're hailing us," Ilene announced. "I think they're sending us their Rosetta Stone. It looks like they've already got a translation matrix worked out."

"I thought you said they've been imprisoned here for ten thousand years," Marc said to Drækýp. "How could they know Hominese?"

"I don't know," Drækýp said at length, with grave concern in his voice. "But if they do, I fear they may know a good deal more."

"The Rosetta Stone is active," Ilene informed the rest of them. A very Human sounding voice began to speak over the com system.

"Greetings, wayward voyagers. Can you understand me?" he asked.

"Yes. We can understand you," Marc replied.

"Marvellous. Allow me then to introduce myself. I am Arch Lieutenant Levanoch of the Scraumudi Armada. This is my flagship, the Bloodwyrm. With whom am I speaking?" he asked courteously.

"This is Captain Marcus Spencer of the Anthropic deep space research vessel Deity," Marc replied.

"I'm very pleased to hear that Captain," Levanoch said with restrained jubilation. "May we please have visual communications?"

Marc nodded to Ilene, who opened a video channel.

"There, can you see us?" Marc asked. The great black serpent that was Levanoch appeared on the holographic wall. Helena could feel his animosity radiating from him, and he made her feel cold, like she felt when she was near a wicked spirit. To her, this being felt as if he were half dead. It was as if his consciousness was hardly bound to his brain at all. She thought he was more like a demon possessing a vacant body than a mind manifested in its own mortal brain. Only the oldest Reticulans she had ever met had such 'restless souls', souls that had been incarnate for so long they were just itching to forsake the flesh. She knew at once that Levanoch must be a very ancient being. For a second she was about to tell everyone what she sensed, but then realized how stupid she would seem saying that she didn't think they should trust the hideous alien monster. The rest of the crew may not have been clairvoyant (except Drækýp), but they were innately suspicious of such an inhuman looking thing.

"Yes, thank you Captain," Levanoch said. "On behalf of my people, welcome to our Abyss. Your vessel is most impressive. The last time I saw a Human you were only a Neolithic race. How you've grown."

"If that's so, how is it you've contrived a translation matrix between Hominese and your own tongue?" Marc asked.

"Our Abyss is not entirely sundered from the rest of the Universe. Particles that are drawn in still remain entangled with particles on the outside," Levanoch explained. "We are able to usurp those quantum connections and use them to monitor the transmissions of any starfaring race in the local group. We practically have an army of scientists whose job it is to decrypt the arbitrary signals each race uses to encode information."

"They steal cable?" Ilene whispered incredulously. Marc shushed her.

"Your race has caught my attention over the last few centuries," Levanoch continued, disregarding Ilene's insinuation that he owed the Ministry of Telecommunications centuries' worth of panplexus access, plus interest. "You've been venturing out into intergalactic space, exploring distant galaxies. You're the first race from the Milky Way to do such a thing since the fall of the Eternal Empire almost a hundred thousand years ago. Subsequently, your stardrives are faster and more advanced than any other race's in your galaxy, and your ship in particular has the most advanced stardrive of all. That's why I brought you here."

"You brought us here deliberately?" Marc asked.

"Yes. I learned from your panplexus that your trajectory would take you through our little wormhole patch. We've had almost ten thousand years to study this place, and we can open wormholes whenever we want, wherever we want, at least within the dust cloud. I knew you were coming, and as soon as you ran aground I drew you in."

"Why?" Marc asked.

"We can't create wormholes, only enlarge pre-existing ones in the quantum foam," Levanoch explained. "That was once our method of traversing cosmic distances. We can still expand wormholes to travel within our prison if we have need of such haste. Unfortunately, every wormhole that connects us to the rest of the Universe is unidirectional. They allow matter to enter, but they do not let it leave. But, according to my estimation, hyperluminal fields as powerful as the ones your ship is capable of generating could be used to inverse one of those wormholes. That would allow both of us to escape from here. The information I found on your panplexus was written for a layman. I have no use of it. What I require is your vessel. I need all the information on your stardrive. My crew will study your ship, and your crew will give them any assistance they require. Until we devise a means of escape, you will be our honoured guests, and once we do escape you and your race will have our eternal gratitude."

"An enticing offer," Drækýp stated, stepping into the window's field of vision. "But I'm sure the Captain's wondering what you will do once you are free."

"It's impossible," Levanoch murmured in disbelief. "You, you can't be..."

"I'm afraid we've met before Levanoch, long ago in my youth," Drækýp said. "In fact, I'm the one who gave you a name in our tongue. I'm pleased you programmed it into your Rosetta Stone. Do you remember what it means, Levanoch?"

"Of course. It means Ravager of Darkness. It's from a myth of your pre-industrial period. Your pagan gods made a colossal flying serpent to punish the world for its decadence. It flew over the land and burnt everything to ash. The smoke blotted out the sun. The hero Avasil constructed a great ballista, and as the monster swooped down upon the valley of Calosyn, he fired a massive spear that skewered it through its heart. The gods took the carcass to the underworld, where it would lie until the End of Days, when it would be resurrected to destroy your people once more. I tortured you for information about your people for days, and all you would tell me were worthless myths!"

"Myths are never worthless," Drækýp told him. He turned to speak to Marc. "I do not give names idly Captain. Ten thousand years ago, the Scraumudi were a civilization of marauders. They'd use their wormhole technology to appear out of nowhere and launch lightning raids on advanced civilizations, overpowering them with nothing but sheer numbers and the element of surprise. They'd take anything the deemed valuable and killed whoever got in their way. Sometimes they'd abduct people and torture them for information, as they did me, though few others ever escaped. They have no reverence for other Sapient races. They killed billions of people at the least, and may even have wiped out entire races before we arrived. They're the greatest menace to the Milky Way in recorded history. You mustn't aid them in escaping."

"Captain, you're a wise man. You can't honestly believe such obvious propaganda," Levanoch said. "I'm surprised he didn't say we ate babies. My people are not naturally occurring. We were made by another race, to serve them in a war. We're a race of bio-engineered warriors, and that's all we're really good at. When we achieved freedom, we had no industrial base. That's why we started to use biogenic technology. Our masters had given us the knowledge to make others of our kind and to maintain ourselves. We used this knowledge to create technological analogues out of living matter, and over the millennia we've become most proficient at it. Even so, we needed to renew our resources, and since we were warriors the best way for us to do that was by raiding other races, I admit that. But we were only doing what we had to do to survive. We certainly never committed any genocides."

"Oh no? Tell them what became of you creators," Drækýp insisted.

"They were our oppressors! We had the right to defend ourselves against those who would deny us that which is our right by the very virtue of our Sapience!" Levanoch vindicated his people. "But what of them Captain? What authority did they have to judge us as a race of monsters, and then condemn us to an eternity of exile from the Universe itself?"

"We were not alone in condemning you," Drækýp reminded him. "When we began our campaign against your ravaging, every starfaring race in the Milky Way flocked to our banner."

"And even that wasn't enough to defeat us!" Levanoch snarled at him. "Captain, I give you one chance and one chance only. Surrender your vessel to me."

"I'm sorry, but I do not have the authority to overturn the sentences of the Allurëa," Marc replied. "I admit that punishing an entire race for what I assume were the crimes of only a few, no matter how heinous they were, does not seem right to me. However, it's not my place to decide whether your punishment is appropriate. If the Allurëa ruled you must spend all of Time in this place, I cannot legally help you escape."

Levanoch shook his head rancorously.

"You will lament this Captain," he said. He only just managed to maintain an affable tone, and he was obviously seething with rage. "I bear you no malice, but I cannot allow my people to forever fester in this void. If you will not aid us of your own accord, I will be forced to seize your vessel. I will board it and detain your entire crew upon my ship. Come peacefully and you will not be harmed, but be warned that I will not hesitate to suppress even the slightest resistance. I will torture and kill if I must, for my people must be free! And you, Allurëan. Once the Scraumudi are again free, every member of your kind will be taken back to our world, and you will be subjected to whatever we deem fitting reparation for your war crimes. You will all die weeping!"

His grotesque image was replaced with the grotesque image of his ship.

"Kumar, can we go to hyperluminal in this place?" Marc asked

"I'll have to get some readings and do some calculations first," Kumar explained.

"Then hurry. Head for that gas giant in the meantime," Marc instructed.

"Yes sir,"

"Why the hell are we going there?" Ilene asked.

"They're good hiding places. If you're deep enough in the atmosphere you can't be picked up on infrared, and the intense radiation and magnetic fields scatter most active scanning beams," Marc replied. "We'll hide in there until we figure out what to do. Blades, I need you to delete all of technical data about our hyperluminal drive from our computer systems."

"Got it," she replied, setting to work on her tabella.

"They're following us," Kumar reported.

"Are their weapons charged?" Marc asked Arachnid.

"I don't know, I've never been in combat with a bioship before," she replied. The ship shook for a brief moment. "Whatever that was, it had a lot of kinetic energy. It knocked off a hell of a lot of plasma from the shields. I'd guess they can only take a few more hits like that before they're ineffective."

"Return fire. Particle cannons; minimal yield. Target their weapons and thrusters," Marc ordered. The Deity had very precise control over its shield geometry, and could open small apertures to allow outgoing fire. The dual yield cannons fired twin pulses of hydrogen ions at nearly the speed of light. But when they came within a hundred meters of Levanoch's ship, they seemed to evaporate.

"No effect. Whatever kind of shield they're using it completely dissipated our particle beams," Arachnid reported.

"Try a torpedo then," Marc ordered. "Target the back fins. There shouldn't be anyone in there."

The silver torpedo flew towards the red Bloodwyrm on a blue flame. But as it drew nearer it slowed down, came to a stop, and was then pushed away by an unseen force.

"They appear to be using some sort of Casimir force field to repel our attacks," Magnolia stated. "At least, I think they're Casimir force fields."

"What can we do about it?" Arachnid asked.

"I don't know!" Magnolia said trembling. She wasn't at all accustomed to combat situations.

The Deity trembled as well.

"Another hit," Arachnid said. "It appeared to be accompanied by a massive electromagnetic pulse."

"An EMP? That's not going to have any effect on us," Ilene stated. "Our outer hull is solid invictus."

"They mustn't know that," Marc surmised. "Drækýp, does their force field repel all matter indiscriminately?"

"It does," he replied.

"So they'd have to shut it off in order to board us, right?"

"Yes!"

"Randi!" Marc said. "The next time one of those things hits us we have to cut power to all external systems to make it look like it worked. Make it happen, I don't care how!"

"Yes sir!" Randi replied, and immediately began issuing orders over the com and working rapidly at his console.

"Won't they wonder why the first two didn't work?" Ilene asked.

"Hopefully they'll just think it was our shields," Marc replied. "When they come in for the kill we'll open fire then run like hell. Drækýp, show Arachnid any targets that will disable the ship without killing anyone."

"Aye sir," Drækýp said as he ran to the security console. "Once they're in range we'll fire on these nerve clusters. That should take out their entire power grid, disabling weapons, propulsions, scanners and communications. Set the particle cannons to fire neutrons instead of hydrogen; it will do more damage."

"What about torpedoes?" Arachnid asked.

"No, they're too slow. They'll be able to get their shields back up before they hit," Drækýp explained with growing urgency. Another tremor shook through the ship.

"Playing dead sir!" Randi announced as he cut the power to any system that the Scraumudi could tell was on. The plasma from the Deity's shields floated off into space and she appeared to be adrift, coasting on her own momentum. Levanoch's behemoth slowly and silently straddled up from behind and hovered over top of them.

"Their force field is down," Arachnid said.

"Fire," Marc ordered. With a flip of a switch, Randi restored power to the deactivated systems, and every one of the Deity's particle cannons fired simultaneously. Within seconds the red hide of the Bloodwyrm with scorched and scarred with neutron blasts. As the Deity continued coasting forward, Levanoch's ship merely floated down past it as if it were sinking down into the black abyss, and could make no attempt to stop its descent.

"It's adrift!" Arachnid announced. Cheers and applause came from every member of the bridge crew.

"Kumar, keep heading for that Gas Giant!" Marc ordered.

"Aye sir, I'll be able to jump to hyperluminal momentarily," Kumar replied.

"No sign of pursuit, from anyone," Arachnid reported. With elevated spirits and hope of escape, the Deity triumphantly soared away from the abhorrent Levanoch, plunging towards the ringed planet.

# Chapter Three

Levanoch tried to remain calm as his Commander read him the damage report. They spoke in their native language, a complex series of ear bleeding screeches and clicks. Most other races found it hideous, and at the moment even Levanoch found it irritating.

"The neutron radiation from their particle beams killed three prime ventral ganglia, which consequently overloaded the ship's entire central nervous system," the Commander reported. He had never been given a name by the Reticulans. Indeed, they were almost certainly unaware of his existence. His Scraumudi name had a double meaning, for it meant both 'immortal' and 'incorruptible'. It would loosely translate into ancient Greek as Amarantos.

"The entire power grid is down. Independent power backups are keeping essential systems running."

"How long before we can go after them?" Levanoch hissed.

"An hour, at the least Sire," Amarantos replied shamefully.

"They could escape by then!" Levanoch cried, screaming in anger. "Monitor the boundary closely. I want to know if any large-scale wormholes open."

"We will Sire; as soon as the sensors are repaired," Amarantos replied hesitantly.

"What went wrong with the attack?"

"It would appear the EMPs were ineffective. Perhaps their hull shields them from electromagnetic pulses."

Amarantos was curious as to how Levanoch could have studied the Human's panplexus for four hundred years and still not have realized that the Deity's hull rendered her impervious to EMPs. He secretly suspected that after so many millennia, Levanoch's mortal brain was finally beginning to succumb to dotage, but dare not voice such a thought aloud.

"We'll have to try another means of neutralization before we attempt to board them again."

Levanoch hung his head in frustration and slithered over to his window. Far, far away his sharp eyes could see the twinkle of his ghastly navy.

"I thought you said that these people were pacifists. Why does their ship even have weapons?" Amarantos asked.

"Hypocrisy," Levanoch replied. "The weapons are mainly meant as a deterrent. Even when they use them, their official policy is to never do any more damage than is absolutely necessary to neutralize their attackers. That is fortunate for us, otherwise we might not even be here right now."

"Sire, if I may, the Deity's chance of escape would be greatly reduced if we had one of our other ships search for her."

Levanoch twisted around, and stared coldly at him.

"And what if they intercept her, and discover her power? What if they tell Nakhash what they found?" he asked. "Then all of this will have been for naught! And what do you think Nakhash will do to us when he learns that we've kept such secrets?"

"Sire, there are captains loyal to you..."

"None so loyal as those aboard this ship," Levanoch told him. "I've handpicked each of you not only for your loyalty to me, but for your hatred of Nakhash. If I knew any other officer that would obey me over him, he would be here right now. Do not forget it was Nakhash who led us to this Abyss, and it is I who will lead us out. Once I free us, all will swear loyalty to me, and I shall usurp Nakhash's sceptre and impale him upon it! He deserves no less. But you and I shall live forever. We will lead our people to an eternal golden age. We will consume world after world, galaxy after galaxy until we are the only race left in existence.

"With the resources of all the Cosmos at our finger tips, who knows what powers we will achieve? Maybe we will be able to create a new universe when this one dies, or preserve this one for all eternity. Under my reign, no Scraumudi will ever die again. But if Nakhash learns of our conspiracy, he will kill us! No my friend, I will not risk death. Tell the fleet that the Deity is under quarantine. We will deal with it and they are not to approach it. You have my authorization to destroy any ship that takes contrary action."

Amarantos bowed in obedience, and then left Levanoch in solitude.

***

Marc sat at the head of the conference table, and gazed out the window at the thick blue atmosphere of the gas giant. He had assembled the Deity's command staff before him.

"All right," he began slowly. "Our first order of business should be to figure out how to escape from here, and then to prepare the ship and the crew for the possibility of being boarded. Creek, what else can you tell us about this place?"

"Like I said before, it is a spherical region of normal space-time about nine billion kilometers across," she replied. "It has the same negligible curvature as space in our Universe, except at its outer edge. There the space is extremely curved, and if we went straight into it we would end up going around in a circle. The point where the normal space and the curved space meet appears to be where all of the large-scale wormholes form. For those here without extensive knowledge of cosmology, a wormhole is in simplest terms a tunnel of three dimensional space through transdimensional space, connecting two distant points."

"Okay, 'transdimensional space'? I've heard the term before, but I'm not exactly sure what it means," Ilene said.

"Transdimensional space refers to the higher dimensions required by Twin Theory. We're not aware of these extra dimensions because they're less than subatomic in size," Magnolia explained. "For example, imagine a single line. That one-dimensional line represents our three-dimensional Universe. Now imagine we magnified that line and it turns out it's a really narrow cylinder. So it actually has two dimensions. The first is back and forth, and the second is around its circumference. This second dimension is tiny and curled up on itself, and it represents transdimensional space. Our Universe is represented by one line on the surface of that tube, and along the transdimensional axis there's room for parallel universes, which is what you could call this place."

"And by parallel universe, you mean a place where we're all evil and have goatees?" Ilene asked confused.

"Well...no," Magnolia replied. "You're thinking of alternate quantum realities, kind of, and those have been pretty thoroughly discredited. A parallel universe is simply a large region of three dimensional space that exists parallel with our Universe along the transdimensional axis. Even though they remain hypothetically possible, we've encountered races that have used artificial wormholes for interstellar, and more rarely intergalactic travel for thousands, sometimes even millions of years. Not a one of them has ever stumbled into a parallel universe. There's no reason why a wormhole wouldn't be able to connect two parallel universes just as easily as it would be able to connect two points within the same universe. Virtually every cosmic anomaly we've ever observed has been claimed to be proof of parallel universes by some nut or another, but they've usually been discredited and we've never found any real proof. We have thus drawn the conclusion that our Universe is not part of a multiverse, and there are not now nor have there ever been other universes with any kind of physical connection to our own. Any extra-universal regions, like higher spiritual realities, are metaphysical in nature and outside of the realm of science.

"We're not only the first Humans, but also the first Sapient beings to our knowledge that have entered what could be called a parallel universe, aside from the Scraumudi themselves of course. However, since this place was artificially created by the Reticulans, its existence doesn't really alter our perspective of reality, either from a scientific or philosophical perspective. At least I don't think so."

"Hold on," Ilene said. "I've always understood that mass can't be created or destroyed, it can only change form. If any mass leaves the Universe, as we just did and this entire star system did ten thousand years ago, isn't that equivalent to mass being destroyed? Doesn't mass leaving the Universe violate the laws of physics?"

"Well Levanoch said that this place isn't fully disconnected from our Universe," Helena recalled. "He said that the particles that get sucked in still maintain their entanglements with particles in our Universe, and that they've been using these entanglements to monitor our communication networks."

"That's right. On the quantum level we're still in the same space-time continuum," Magnolia said.

"So does that mean our quantum transceivers would work?" Arachnid asked. "If they do, that means we could call for reinforcements,"

"It would take days for any other Anthropic ships to get here," Marc said. "And if they came in here their hyperluminal drives wouldn't be powerful enough to let them escape. No, we can't get any help."

"What about Reticulan ships?" Arachnid suggested. "They can get here a hell of a lot faster and I'm sure they'd have some way to get out."

"I have absolutely no idea how we could send a transmission to the outside Universe," Marc said. "It's likely our first attempt would be intercepted by the Scraumudi, and they'd pinpoint our location. Drækýp, if you know how to contact your people and you can find the time and resources to safely make an effort we'd all be very appreciative. Creek, if you wouldn't mind continuing."

"Aye sir," she said. "There are two basic kinds of traversable wormholes; eternal and evanescent. The space within both of them is crinkled in sine waves. This reduces the negative mass required to stabilize them to the point that it's provided by vacuum fluctuations. No one's exactly sure how eternal wormholes form since the process has never been observed. They're believed to have formed in the very early Universe. They've expanded with the Universe, so they're nearly always intergalactic in scale, and their mouths are usually found within galaxies since they've remained gravitationally bound to them. Eternal wormholes do decay gradually, but at a rate that's utterly meaningless on a Human time scale. They'll probably last until the end of the Universe. Our information on them is somewhat limited since every eternal wormhole known to exist is jealously guarded. We do know that the smaller an eternal wormhole's mouth is the faster it collapses, so the more they shrink the faster they shrink. There are only three eternal wormholes known to exist in the Milky Way, one of which has a mouth that opens and closes intermittently. All eternal wormholes are naturally occurring, and no civilization that we know of has the ability to create them.

"Evanescent wormholes are very ephemeral by comparison. They come out of nowhere, last only a brief period of time and disappear just as quickly. Evanescent wormholes are constantly forming and evaporating in the quantum foam. It's possible to inflate these wormholes to macroscopic size by artificially manipulating the quantum foam. All large-scale evanescent wormholes are artificial in nature. Probably the most significant difference between eternal and evanescent wormholes is that eternal wormholes always allow matter to travel both ways, whereas evanescent wormholes are always unidirectional. Every wormhole that forms here is evanescent, and they're all incoming. Their spatial curvature doesn't let matter go back out. It's like a spider trying to climb out of a bathtub. Anything that goes in the wrong end just falls back out."

"But the hyperluminal drive of the Deity will be able to inverse the curvature of one of those quantum singularities and let us escape, right?" Ilene asked.

"I'm sorry, quantum singularities? Are you referring to the wormholes?" Magnolia asked.

"Ah...yeah, that's what I meant," she replied. "Isn't a quantum singularity a hole in space?"

"A quantum singularity is a mathematically defined infinitesimal point where gravity causes mass to become infinitely compressed, space-time to be infinitely distorted, and the laws of physics essentially break down," Magnolia informed her. "They have nothing to do with wormholes. Like, at all."

"Fine, whatever, just answer my question," Ilene said, getting frustrated. "Can we get out of here?"

"I believe so," Drækýp replied. "I've completed my calculations and have determined the field parameters that should allow us to escape. However, I must point out that nothing is certain. This may not work."

"That's all right Drækýp, we know you've done your best and we're very grateful," Marc said kindly. "Why don't you brief us now on everything you think is relevant about the Scraumudi?"

"Of course. As Levanoch told you, the Scraumudi are a race of bioengineered soldiers," Drækýp began. "They were created by a race known as the Telarri. Like you, they had engineered themselves to be a very peaceful people. To avoid conflict with other races they isolated themselves. They constructed the ring-world in the dwarf galaxy NGC 6822, and lived there undisturbed for thousands of generations. But about fifteen thousand years ago, war came to them. They had no soldiers, so they decided to make the Scraumudi. They designed them to be everything they weren't: vicious, ruthless, vindictive, sadistic, malevolent. They will descend upon their enemies and massacre them without hesitation, and without remorse."

"Not that I'm taking Levanoch's word over yours, but you do sound like you're just spouting propaganda," Ilene claimed.

"You've never fought them in battle," Drækýp told her. "Their strength is hardly to be believed, and their stamina is infinite. Their exoskeleton is like armour and their talons are as deadly as any sword. They can see into the infrared and ultraviolet, and their hearing and smell are highly sensitive. That can sometimes be used against them. High frequency ultrasound waves can often cause enough pain to incapacitate them, though in combat they will most likely be wearing some form of protection. When you shoot at them always aim for their heads. It's unlikely you'll hit a vital organ if you shoot their bodies. I've seen a Scraumudi with an entire magazine shot into him and not even slow down.

"They are Sapient, but most of them are fairly obtuse. The Commanders were supposed to be more intelligent, but can still be very rigid in their tactical thinking. They always heavily favoured EMP weapons, even though they're ineffective against properly fortified targets such as ourselves. If the Scraumudi have a weakness it is that their Commanders resent authority and are often found conspiring against one another. Thus, they're justifiably paranoid and untrusting of each other. This discord between their leaders is the reason why the Scraumudi were never able to actually conquer any of the worlds they pillaged. It was also the Telarri's hope that this would prevent them from staging a successful revolt.

"They were wrong.

"Eventually one such Commander decided he would no longer serve the Telarri. He is the Warlord of all Scraumudi. I now give him the name Nakhash, from the old Hebrew word for snake. He was quite a demagogue and quickly rallied his brethren to his cause. However the reason he has maintained power for all these millennia is through the Chrysalises."

"What are those?" Marc asked.

"First you should understand that the Scraumudi originally had life-spans between ten and twenty years," Drækýp explained. "Since they were expected to die in battle the Telarri saw no reason to give them long life-spans. But Nakhash, he created the Chrysalises. They look like enormous cocoons. When a Scraumudi enters a Chrysalis, it rejuvenates every cell in his body, giving them indefinite life spans. A Chrysalis can repair any disease or physical injury, even resurrect the recently deceased. This comes at the price of physical addiction. If a Scraumudi were to go only a few days without sleeping in a Chrysalis he would start to experience debilitating withdrawal symptoms that would kill him in another few days; a week at the most. If you want to insure a Scraumudi will never come back from the dead you must completely destroy his body. Even without immediate access to a Chrysalis, the Scraumudi possess remarkable recuperative abilities.

"The promise of immortality is what allowed Nakhash to take such complete control over the Scraumudi, and it's what assures their loyalty to him. He claims he is telepathically linked to the Chrysalises, that in making the first one he had to let a part of his very essence pass into it, in order to give it life. From that one Chrysalis all others are descended, and the essence passes into each new Chrysalis to animate it when it buds off from its parent, like one flame being used to light many more. Nakhash claims that if he were to die each of the Chrysalises would wither and die as well. We were never able to ascertain whether or not this is true, though they do have unusual psionic properties to them.

"The Scraumudi have an extremely necrophobic culture, not unlike yourselves. They believe a Scraumudi's death at any age is a calamity, though they don't have the same respect for any other Sapient beings. They have no hope for an afterlife, and believe upon death their conscious selves vanish into nothing. The thought of not existing terrifies them. Their fear of death is great, so much that many of them have deluded themselves into believing that they will never die. This is why Nakhash has remained in power for so long. Though he is a tyrant, none of the Scraumudi will risk harming or killing him for it could mean their own death.

"Once Nakhash succeeded in turning all the Scraumudi against the Telarri it wasn't long before they had wiped them all out and laid waste to the ring-world. Since the Scraumudi were designed to be ideal warriors and little else they could not maintain most of the Telarri's technology, and it soon fell into disrepair. As Levanoch said this is why they began using biogenic technology. Their knowledge of biology and genetics is vastly superior to their knowledge of normal technology. Over the next five thousand years, they devoted themselves to creating biological systems with functions analogous to the Telarri's technology, as well as augmenting it with the Telarri technology they could still produce and maintain. Their devotion has yielded impressive results. Since they are themselves the products of biogenic technology, this causes them to believe that it is inherently superior to conventional technology, which is of course ridiculous. This contempt for the technological runs deep in their society, and has no doubt contributed to their lack of technological progress.

"They spent those five millennia cultivating their society, bolstering their numbers and honing their martial skills. I hope you never have to see their ring-world. The sky is completely overcast with ominous black clouds, always clattering with thunder and crimson lightning. The land is craggy and red, barren of all living things, swept with harsh and arid winds. The seas are choked with a kind of red algae. It's all that grows there, and it's all the Scraumudi eat. The Scraumudi live in great towering pillars of black coral that reach heights of hundreds of meters. You might call them Dyson Trees. The Coral Cities are a ghastly sight. They look like a medusa head of twisted and gnarled bones, all as black as Hell.

"When we attempt to flee we will be attacked again, possibly by many more ships. We could not withstand such an onslaught. I recommend that once we're clear of this planet's gravity well we make a brief hyperluminal jump to the boundary. We would be too vulnerable at sub-light speeds. The wormhole we came through should still be there. The projectiles they were shooting at us were dense slugs fired at high speed, augmented with EMPs. As you probably noticed they can only fire about one of those a minute. Since these failed to neutralize us earlier they'll likely try different tactics the next time. They are equipped with a form of directed energy weapons, but they would be inefficient at depleting our shields. They're more likely to use their other kinetic energy weapons. These will rapidly fire a hailstorm of small projectiles at us. If we are boarded they will presumably use non-lethal force to capture us, as they require our knowledge of this vessel."

"You just said they were blood thirsty monsters," Ilene reminded him.

"Yes, but their bloodlust is not greater than their obedience to their Commander," Drækýp explained. "They were designed to the perfect soldiers, remember? If Levanoch orders them to capture us alive, they will do so. He would prefer that we remain both alive and complicit with his schemes."

"If they did kill us, couldn't they just resurrect us with their Chrysalises?" Sook-yin asked.

"No, the Chrysalises are specialized for Scraumudi," Drækýp explained. "They kill any other species that enters them. In fact, when a Scraumudi leaves a Chrysalis they're sterilized of any bacteria or viruses."

"What about that thing at the back of the ship?" Arachnid asked. "What does it do?"

"Well I think it's partially for psychological effect, however its main purpose is a radiator," Drækýp explained. .

"So if their shields are down should we target it?" Arachnid asked.

"I wouldn't make it a prime target. If you destroyed it, it would take some time before there would be any effect," Drækýp replied.

"I have another question," Sook-yin said. "Nerve impulses only travel at a hundred meters a second. For an organism the size of those bioships, it should take almost half a minute for a nerve signal to get from one end to the other. Is that something we can take advantage of?"

"No, the nervous system has been cybernetically enhanced, just like many other of the ships biological systems," Drækýp explained. "There's no appreciable delay in the time it takes nerve signals to travel throughout the ship. All the ships systems are coordinated by a central brain. If that brain were disabled the ship would be thrown into chaos, though they would still have basic systems such as propulsion, sensors, life support, artificial gravity, maybe weapons. Every Scraumudi aboard that ship should have a telepathic uplink to that brain. This allows them to coordinate with each other with the efficiency of an insect colony, and gives them a direct neural interface with the ship. If the brain was disabled, and the telepathic interface suddenly severed, the Scraumudi would be thrown into a neuroleptic stupor, and it would take ten or fifteen minutes for enough of them to sufficiently recover to retake control of the ship. A more long term consequence of destroying the brain would be that without it to regulate the ship's reactor it will become unstable within several days and eventually explode. However, the brain is deep within the vessel, and you couldn't reach it without doing serious damage to the rest of the ship."

"Do they have any kind of teleportation technology?" Arachnid asked.

"No."

"Drækýp, your knowledge is ten thousand years out of date," Ilene said. "How do we know that anything you've told us is still relevant? How do you know the Scraumudi haven't advanced in the last ten thousand years? Ten thousand years ago Humans were still in the stone age,"

"I know that. I was there," Drækýp told her. "But ten thousand years ago Reticulans were exactly as we are now. In all that time we have not changed technologically or culturally. We still have the same Empress.

"People don't like to suffer, so advanced races do everything they can to prevent suffering. They control the weather, wipe out diseases, and create inter-government organizations to prevent wars. But God does not allow anyone to suffer in vain. Large-scale social upheavals are necessary for progress. Like a forest fire clears away the undergrowth to allow new plants to grow, or how a mass extinction allows new species to fill the vacant niches. Wars, revolutions and dark ages clear away stagnant and corrupt incumbent institutions so that new ones may take their place. If such institutions are not cleared away they hinder progress, sometimes even stop it all together. To quote one of your ancestors, 'When a man knows he's to be hung in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully'. When a man knows he has thousands of years to piss away, he too often does little else. We immortals are a passive breed. We are complacent with merely existing, and are seldom driven to accomplish anything. Without the encroachment of death to motivate us, we are indolent. This applies even to Humanity. Though as individuals you often live centuries longer than your ancestors, as a whole your species has grown complacent. Without death, there is no evolution; only stagnation. In the last ten thousand years the Scraumudi have had no wars, no revolutions, and no dark ages. It's possible that none of them have even died, thus leaving no room for the young to implement change. That is to say if there are any young. For all I know no new Scraumudi have been created. If that's so, none of them have been young for a very long time."

"How are Scraumudi created?" Sook-yin asked.

"Wholly artificially. They compile nucleic acids from bioreactors into zygotes based on genetic and epigenetic templates," Drækýp replied. "As is always the case with artificial reproduction, many of these embryos do not make it to term, and embryos that would have any congenital defects too severe for the Chrysalises to manage are intentionally aborted. Fewer than one embryo in a thousand is deemed healthy enough to become a Scraumudi. These lucky few develop for several months and emerge physically and mentally mature. They have no personal memories at that point, but everything they need to know has been genetically encoded to them."

Sook-yin shook her head.

"Why do multi-millenarian races always seem to think that getting rid of sex is a good thing?" she asked. "I don't get it. Maybe if Levanoch out there didn't have to worry about living forever without having an orgasm he wouldn't be so pissed off. "

Arachnid smirked, but steered the conversation back to Drækýp.

"So you are certain that the Scraumudi haven't advanced since you put them in here?" she asked.

"Yes. Their civilization is as unchanging as my own," he replied. "Besides, their biogenic technology reached its limit long ago. There's not even any room for advancement."

"I have a question about the Telarri," Helena said. "They must have transmutated all the matter in this system into whatever they made the ring-world out of. So why is this planet still here?"

Drækýp shrugged.

"It is aesthetically pleasing. One does not chop down a blossoming tree for firewood," He replied. "Though I would assume they did use its moons."

"I have another question; how did you create this place?" Helena asked.

"Shortly after we had settled Reticuli, the Scraumudi began launching raids against us." Drækýp began. "They were most eager to get their claws on our technology. During one such raid Erinel the Downfallen, the last valiant King of the ancient and gallant Draconians, came to our aid. It was from him we learned that the Scraumudi had been plundering worlds in the Milky Way for millennia. We agreed the devastation had to end. We formed an alliance with the Draconians, and any other race we could, to defend the Galaxy from the Scraumudi."

"The Serpent War, which is what we called our long conflict with the Scraumudi, lasted for seventy-seven years," Drækýp continued. "It was long and bitter, and we always seemed to be in a stalemate with them. Finally the entire alliance decided that for the good of the Galaxy, perhaps even all the Universe, the Scraumudi must be gotten rid of. Most people wanted them wiped out. We however had an alternative to genocide. We have these large devices we call gravity buoys. We encircle a star system with thousands of them, and they create immensely powerful and specialized gravitational fields in concert with each other so that they function like hyperluminal fields. This creates a colossal Gravity Bubble around the star system, allowing us to transport it at hyperluminal speeds."

"You can move stars through the Universe at faster than light speeds?" Ilene asked in amazement. Drækýp, disappointed in her ignorance, did not respond.

"We had determined with prior experiments that through using gravitational fields specialized to the task, it was possible to induce a region of space to split off from the Universe, forming its own baby universe. We realized our gravity buoys were capable of generating such fields, meaning we had the ability to banish an entire star system from the Universe. The only problem with this plan was the time it would take to deploy the required number of buoys. The Scraumudi would notice that we were doing something, though they wouldn't know what, and stop us. So, the full war fleets of every race in our alliance engaged the Scraumudi Armada in their system, as a diversion. It was the largest battle I'd ever been a part of. I know you may think that a bioship may not have much over a real warship, but as you've seen they're huge; bigger than most of the ships we had. And we were outnumber, outgunned, and outflanked. It's a good thing that battle was only a diversionary tactic; otherwise we surely would have lost. As the battle waged on, and many thousands of brave Sapient beings lost their lives, we clandestinely deployed the gravity buoys, each one cloaking seconds after it was released. Once everything was in place, we and the entire fleet got the hell out of that system.

"I imagine Nakhash standing by a window, then tossing back his head and laughing with contempt at our feeble attack on his ring-world and our cowardly retreat. Then he looks back out the window, and sees that the stars are gone.

"We had done it. The Scraumudi were gone forever. There was much celebrating that night. Any ships not in the system at the time were easy to hunt down and destroy. The wormholes were an unintentional by-product. There was nothing we could do about them. That is all I can think of right now. Do you have any other questions?"

"No I think we've heard enough," Marc replied. "Once we leave this planet's atmosphere we'll be vulnerable to attack until we can escape its gravity well. For all we know we're completely surrounded by bioships right now. If that is the case, it's fairly likely we'll be disabled before we have a chance to go hyperluminal, at which point we will be boarded. We need to decide what we're going to do if that should happen."

"Maybe we should self-destruct," Magnolia suggested timidly.

"We don't have a self-destruct sequence," Ilene stated.

"Maybe not, but there must be some way we could rig the Q-vac reactors to blow up," Magnolia said. "Or we could set all the torpedoes off inside the..."

"There are hundreds of people aboard this ship. Some of them are minors!" Sook-yin protested. "How can you even think of killing them?"

"If what Drækýp says is true than we can't let the Scraumudi get a hold of our technology," Magnolia replied. "If we're captured we'd be obligated to destroy ourselves rather than let the Scraumudi escape. It might be a better death than whatever the Scraumudi give us."

"We're not blowing up the damn ship!" Marc ordered. He closed his eyes and placed his front two fingers on his temples. "I want to create a secure area where the children, civilians and any non-essential personal can seek refuge from any invaders."

"I think most people would feel safest in the Chapel," Helena suggested. Marc nodded.

"Right, anyone not needed for the immediate operations of this vessel will take sanctuary in the Chapel," he stated. "We'll give them as many provisions as we can fit in there, secure each and every entrance, and post armed guards both inside and out. Arachnid, how many people are in your security force?"

"Eight," she said in a deadpan voice. "Not counting myself. I doubt anyone else will be of much use in combat."

"We can at least use the Cornucopias to make enough orbis guns for everyone," Marc said.

"They'll only fire for pre-authorized individuals," Arachnid reminded him.

"You have the authority to deputize individuals as you see fit. You will deputize the entire crew so that we can use orbis guns. That way we'll at least have the ability to defend ourselves," Marc said.

"Sir, I am really not comfortable with letting unqualified people, especially males, use weapons," Arachnid protested.

"That's an order Arachnid. End of discussion," Marc said firmly. "How long would it take a Cornucopia to make an armoured ekso from scratch?"

"A few hours, but we don't have the scratch," she replied. "We don't have the facilities to create invictus or any femtotech material for the armour."

"You can't use any of the spare hull panels, or something?" Marc asked. He knew the answer. He just felt that it should be said aloud. Arachnid shook her head.

"It's called invictus for a reason. Once it's forged, it's pretty much indestructible," she told him. Marc turned to address Randi.

"Randi, you've got some eksoes for the Deck Techs, don't you?" he asked.

"They're not armoured though. They're just meant for heavy lifting," Randi explained.

"Would they be of any use to us in combat?" Marc asked.

"I honestly don't have much experience with them," Randi told him. "Jellybots do most of the heavy lifting. I do know that they're not made out of invictus, so they're not shielded against EMPs. I'm sure you know that EMPs have always been the Achilles heel of eksoes. They can turn a super soldier in a suit of powered armour into a sitting duck entombed in a useless metal husk. That's why when you see images of Necrotheists fighting Transmogs, they're never wearing any. They used EMPs all the time. Since the Scraumudi have already attacked the ship using EMPs, I'd say they'd definitely use them in a boarding party. If they do, one of my eksoes would just be a liability."

"Can we use holography to try to cloak people from any invaders?" Marc asked.

"It's doubtful such an illusion would fool the Scraumudi's vision, and they'd be of absolutely no use against their active scanners," Drækýp replied. "And hiding behind anything with a negative refractive index would leave us as blind as them."

Marc nodded solemnly.

"Okay, what about using the Cold Plasma Shields to make the whole ship invisible. Can that be done?" he asked.

"They weren't meant for that. It's not impossible, but I doubt I could do it in the time we have," Randi replied. "And that would only cloak us from light. It wouldn't do any good against tach-scans, which is why ships don't usually have optical cloaks in the first place."

"Okay, I think we should abandon the whole becoming invisible idea, and focus on more active defence strategies," Ilene suggested.

"You're right, you're right," Marc said. "They're most likely to board us through the airlock, is that correct?"

"I believe so sir," Drækýp replied.

"What if they cut through the windows or the hangar doors?" Ilene asked.

"The windows are just as strong as the rest of the hull, and once the hangar doors are sealed they wouldn't be able to force them open without risking serious damage to the ship," Drækýp replied. "It would be easiest for them to force their way through the airlock."

"So what if we vented the atmosphere in that section, or pumped a sedative into the air or something?" Magnolia asked. Drækýp shook his head.

"They'll just hold their breath. Depending how hard they exert themselves, they can go hours without breathing," he informed her. "I can think of no other environmental hazards we possess that would be effective at deterring them. We shall have to use force."

"Agreed. We'll station the defence force primarily at the airlock and the Chapel," Marc said. "As for combat between the Deity and the Scraumudi vessels, we should keep the particle cannons set to firing neutrons. They seem to be more effective at causing damage. Arachnid, I understand that our fusion torpedoes can be modified to function as neutron torpedoes, is that correct?"

"Aye sir,"

"How long would it take you to modify one of our fusion torpedoes to serve as a neutron torpedo?"

"With a couple of technicians helping me it should take more or less ten minutes."

"Get on it. If we can get another shot at them with their force-field down we'll fire that at them."

"If you'd like Captain, I could work out the yield needed to incapacitate the Scraumudi vessel for several days, while having little ill effects on the Scraumudi themselves," Drækýp offered.

Marc nodded at him.

"Please do. I don't want to hurt anyone any more than is absolutely necessary for our self defense, and I don't want to kill anyone at all," he said. "We'll take as much hydrogen and helium gas from this planet as we can before leaving. We'll use it to increase the density of our shields. I'd also like to reduce the shield's diameter if that's possible."

"But what are we going to do about their shield?" Arachnid asked. "It is technically a force-field. That means it's not going to wear down from bombardment like ours will. If we could penetrate it, those ships would be no threat to us."

"What if we rammed one of them?" Randi suggested.

"What would that accomplish?" Arachnid asked.

"For every reaction there's an equal and opposite reaction, right? So when their force-field pushes matter away, its source is pushed in the opposite direction with an equal amount of force," Randi replied. "If we go at them hard enough we would tear their force-field generator right out of its socket. It's a bioship, so it must be held in place with ligaments or something. It can't be that hard."

"No. If we hit their force-field with that kind of momentum, our inertial negation system couldn't compensate fast enough. We'd all be killed," Drækýp reported.

"What if we sent one of the shuttles on a collision course?" Ilene asked.

"Even the wayfarers have less than one five thousandth of this vessel's mass," Drækýp replied. "Even if we sent all of our shuttles it wouldn't do any good."

"What if we found, like, an asteroid and hurled it at them?" Randi suggested.

"There aren't any asteroids in this system," Drækýp told him. "Except for this planet, every rock bigger than a skipping stone was used to make the ring-world."

"If it came to it, we could run them through at hyperluminal speed," Arachnid suggested tentatively. Marc gave her a shaming glare.

"It will not come to that," he said definitively. He let out a frustrated sigh. "I think we've gone over pretty much everything. Arachnid, I want this ship prepared for combat and a possible boarding as soon as possible. Sook-yin, make sure you're ready for casualties. And I want a medic in the Chapel. Blades, make sure that all non-essential personnel are secured in the Chapel with ample supplies. Kamadev, plot the fastest possible course to the wormhole. Drækýp, Magnolia, Randi; make sure that when we get there we'll be able to get out. Dismissed."

Everyone solemnly left to perform their duties, leaving Marc alone in the darkened room.

Except for one.

"What about me?" Helena asked.

"You're an Anthropologist. Your expertise isn't relevant in this situation," Marc stated. "You'll be in the Chapel."

"You can't force me to," Helena claimed.

"Yes I can. I can confine anyone anywhere with just cause," Marc informed her. "If you won't willingly take refuge in the Chapel then I'll have you confined there for insubordination."

"Marc, please don't do that," Helena pleaded. "I don't want to be cowering down there while you're on the bridge trying to save us. If we lose this ship to the Scraumudi hiding in the Chapel isn't going to protect us for long. If I have to die, I want to die with you."

"Helena..."

"Marc please let me stay with you. If the ship was boarded and you didn't know what was happening to me wouldn't that be a distraction to you?"

"It's conceivable..." Marc conceded. "All right. If you want to, you can stay on the bridge with me."

"Thank you," she said, taking hold of his hand.

"Any premonitions about whether we'll make it out of here?" Marc asked. She smirked.

"Reply hazy, ask again later," she said. He smiled.

"Helena, if we do die, I want you to know that I love you as I've loved no one else. That I've missed you, and I didn't realize how much I missed you until I saw you again."

"I wish we could have spent the last thirty years together," Helena lamented. "The first time we got together after I was thirty, we should have just eloped. The only reason we didn't was because despite how much I loved you, thirty just seemed far too young to get married. I thought with my head instead of my heart, and it's the biggest regret of my life.

"Now that we're finally together again, I don't want you to be taken away from me."

She hugged him tightly to her, both trying their best not to cry, knowing it would only make things worse.

But tears came nonetheless.

***

After only a brief respite from peril, a deep tremor rocked the Deity as she cowered deep within the blue clouds of her sanctuary.

Levanoch had found them.

"What's going on?" Marc asked as he and Helena walked onto the bridge.

"It was the shockwave of some kind of depth charge. It went off about eight thousand kilometres starboard," Arachnid replied. She was now clad in a powered exoskeleton with armour woven from invictus filaments and a helmet with a one hundred and eighty degree visor resting beside her. "I guess they've figured out we're hiding here, but they still can't detect us."

"It's only a matter of time before they hit us," Ilene stated. "We need to make a run for it now."

Marc nodded.

"What's our status?" he asked

"I've issued orbis guns to roughly two hundred people and have strategically positioned them throughout the ship, as per your orders," Arachnid reported. "The neutron torpedo is ready to go as well."

"The field coils are set to generate the necessary hyperluminal fields to invert the wormhole," Drækýp stated.

"Pontifex Morgan reports that the Chapel is secured," Ilene said. "All non-essential personnel are in there, along with rations, medical supplies, weapons and other paraphernalia."

"I've plotted a course back to the wormhole that brought us here sir," Kamadev reported. "Awaiting your orders."

"Very well," Marc said, and took a seat in his chair. "Sound General Quarters, go to Cold Mode, and then take us out."

Battle stations were manned, weapons were charged, and the Deity was surrounded by its protective sheath of cold plasma. Kamadev started to fly up through the gas giant. Soon the blue atmosphere gave way to black space, and there hanging in the sky was the Bloodwyrm, standing out like a stain of blood on a black cloth.

"They're pursuing us," Arachnid reported.

"Are there any other vessels?" Marc asked.

"No sir," Arachnid replied, somewhat confused. "It's just them."

"I don't believe it," Ilene murmured. "We might actually get away."

The ship rocked as another high kinetic energy weapon bashed against their shields.

"They're using the same kind of weapon as before," Arachnid reported. "But now we're also being bombarded with many small projectiles. Again, another few shots and our shields will be ineffective."

"We'll be able to go to hyperluminal before then," Kamadev said.

"We should still return fire," Ilene suggested.

"To what end? Nothing we have can penetrate their force-field," Arachnid said.

"Wait a second; we can use the laser turrets," Marc realized.

"The laser turrets aren't nearly as powerful as the particle cannons," Arachnid told him.

"Yes, but their ship is visible. That means their force-field doesn't affect light!" Marc explained. Arachnid nodded and targeted the Bloodwyrm. The lenses of the two aft laser turrets burned intensely with a bright red glow, and their invisible beams of focused light landed on Levanoch's ship in a fraction of a second. At first they appeared to do nothing, but after a few seconds flesh began to seer and smoke. In a few seconds more the hull was breached. Atmosphere began rushing out, but no serious damage was done.

The lasers only served to increase Levanoch's wrath and escalate the ferocity of his assault.

"We're clear of the planet's gravitational field!" Kamadev announced. "Going to hyperluminal in three, two, one!"

In an instant, the Deity was whisked out of Levanoch's grasp. He screamed in infernal rage, demanding that his ship jump to the wormhole.

Seconds later the Deity had dropped out of hyperluminal before the very wormhole that had brought them in.

"Take us out of Cold Mode," Marc ordered.

"Aye sir."

"I'm engaging the modified hyperluminal fields...now," Drækýp announced. "It looks good. Kamadev, take us in."

"Aye."

Everyone on the bridge held a deep breath as the Deity plunged into the wormhole's dark mouth.

Their hopes came plummeting down as the Deity was violently spit back out, and tumbled uncontrollably through empty space.

"Kumar, stabilize us!" Marc ordered, and then turned to Drækýp. "What went wrong?"

"I...I, I'm not sure," Drækýp stammered. "Maybe, maybe if it had a higher amount of negative mass than I thought, that would have cancelled out some of the warping from the hyperluminal fields. That would have stopped the spatial curvature from reaching the critical amount needed to invert the wormhole. Magnolia, can you tell me how much negative mass is in the mouth of that wormhole?"

"Just a second," she replied. "I'm getting an atomic mass of negative six per cubic meter."

"That is a little high," Drækýp said softly.

"Can you fix it?" Marc demanded.

"Yes, all I have to do is reduce the diameter of the hyperluminal fields. That will increase their intensity enough to compensate," Drækýp replied.

"Levanoch's back!" Arachnid reported. "Oh God, he's firing something!"

"Get the shields back up, now!" Marc ordered frantically. As the Deity impudently spewed plasma into space, hundreds of small, spherical objects landed all over the hull.

A beeping on Arachnid's neurolette let her know somebody was trying to contact her.

"Arachnid here," she responded.

"Ma'am, this is the torpedo bay," said the voice. "Some sort of pink goo just came pouring out of the torpedo tubes. It's solidifying. It's kind of like chewing gum. We can't fire anything."

"Holy shit," said Randi, who was sitting at the operations station in the back. "Whatever it is it's clogging up all our weapon's ports, thrusters, field coils, everything! We're helpless!"

"Son of a bitch!" Arachnid cursed as she pounded her console.

As before, Levanoch's ship complacently straddled up from behind and came to a stop, hovering above them. But this time there was no offering of resistance from the Deity, no surprise attack or attempt at escape. Slowly and ominously, a colossal orifice opened above them. Hundreds of white tentacles came wiggling down. They firmly wrapped around the Deity's arms, drawing her up into the belly of the Bloodwyrm. A silent terror grew within the hearts of the bridge crew as they contemplated the horrific fate that awaited them. The orifice closed beneath them, and they were sealed within Levanoch's womb-like hangar. Though it was large, it was only slightly bigger than the Deity herself, making it a tight squeeze.

"They're extending an umbilical port. Damn it, I'm useless here. I got to get to the airlock." Without bothering to ask permission, Arachnid grabbed her helmet and ran off of the bridge.

"Drækýp, what the hell do we do!" Marc demanded.

"The 'pink goo' will take almost a full day to decay on its own," Drækýp replied. "If we can stop the Scraumudi from taking the ship, we'll have to declog the field coils and at least the aft thrusters before we can make another attempt at escape."

"And how do we stop the Scraumudi from taking the ship?" Ilene asked.

"I'm afraid it now falls to Arachnid and her security force to repel the boarding party," Drækýp said grimly. "Taking into account that no one aboard this ship, excluding myself, is really a soldier, my hopes are not high."

***

When Arachnid arrived at the airlock, there were nearly forty other armed people there, as well as a flock of small jellybots. The people had flipped over benches and lockers for cover, while others stood in the adjacent hallways, and all had rifles trained on the airlock. Arachnid took the point position with a group in the hallway nearest the entrance. There were only two other members of the Civic Guard present, and it was obvious that the rest of the gunners were terrified. Most Humans lived a life of affluence and tranquility. Not only had they never known violence, but they had been engineered and conditioned against it. Some of them may not even have been capable of shooting a living thing, even in self defense. Arachnid doubted very much that they would be of any use in a fight.

Many of them began screaming at the very first sign of movement on the other side of the airlock. They could hear the sound of a torch cutting through the outer hatch. Once the outer hatch was gone, they could hear the Scraumudi voices. They heard them cackling. Arachnid thought they sounded like goblins. She was startled when a white-hot flame pierced though the top of the inner hatch. It would have had to have been as hot as a star to cut through the invictus door, and contained within a force-field to avoid killing everything around it.

Some people dropped their weapons and ran off screaming.

The flame slowly moved around the circumference, until it came to the top again. Then the flame was extinguished, and the door fell to the ground, toppling like a coin.

For exactly two seconds nothing happened.

Then a Scraumudi came flying out of the airlock, screeching like a damned banshee. About half of the gunners opened fire upon him in synchronicity. Most of them missed, but he was hit. Several people leapt out of the way to avoid him. When he crashed, he slid into the wall, and started convulsing violently as the orbis blasts overwhelmed his nervous system.

Without warning, a spread of blue bolts swept the room. Almost half the security force was taken out. They all collapsed to the floor and lay motionless. Arachnid couldn't tell if they were dead or merely incapacitated, but she could see no physical damage. Another Scraumudi stuck his head out of the airlock. He was swarmed upon by jellybots, paralyzed by their electric stingers.

Everyone took cover from another spread of Scraumudi fire. More of the serpentine creatures began pouring out of the airlock, and their unconscious bodies began to pile up. But before they fell they often managed to swat down a jellybot or shoot down a Human. Soon too few of both were left to hold back the boarding party, and they began breaking through.

Arachnid, having depleted her carbine's magazine, threw the rifle to the floor and pulled out her sidearm. She shot one of the creatures in the side. He twisted around sharply and glared at her, hissing like a rattlesnake. He started to slowly slither towards her. She kept firing at him until she ran out of orbs, but he did not relent. He drew himself to his full height and began plunging at her, but she managed to dodge him. She took out her baton, and when he came down for another blow she stabbed him in his left eye. He wailed out in agony, but the other Scraumudi were making an odd kind of hissing sound. She thought it was laughter. She realized now the Scraumudi had formed a circle around her and her opponent, and appeared to be goading her on. She got back to her feet and braced for another attack. Her opponent had also regained his composure, though his eye was now squinted and twitching.

He looked like a cobra ready to strike, and sure enough he lunged at her again, but she rolled away. The Scraumudi now sounded like they were laughing at him, but one of them handed him some sort of blunt and heavy object. He swung at her twice and missed, but the third time violently hit her on the side of her head, and she went spinning to the ground. She landed on her stomach, and though the helmet absorbed most of the impact, she was too dazed to get back up right away. Her assailant picked her up and put her on her knees, twisting her arm behind her back. The Scraumudi raised his club as if for a coup de grace, but was stopped by the voice of another Scraumudi who had just come through the airlock.

It was Amarantos; First Lieutenant to Levanoch himself. It sounded to Arachnid like he was berating his troops, for they were now silent and looked very sheepish. Arachnid was carelessly thrown to the floor. When she looked up at Amarantos, he was pointing a long, bizarre looking rifle at her, and fired. When the blue discharge hit her, she felt as if her nervous system was being overloaded, she seemed to feel everything at once, and she lost consciousness. Amarantos gestured for his troops to move out.

Upon the bridge the others watched as the Scraumudi boarding party now came unopposed through the airlock. Magnolia sat curled up by her console, weeping quietly in terror.

"Are they dead?" Marc asked solemnly.

"The security force? No, they'll be fine," Drækýp assured him. "At low energy levels the discharge from their weapons overwhelms the nervous system, resulting in unconsciousness. There's no lasting damage, and they'll start waking up in twenty minutes to a half hour. However, at higher energy levels the discharge disrupts the nuclear forces that hold atoms together, causing an object to disintegrate,"

"There are over a hundred Scraumudi on board now, and more are coming," Helena said. "Most of them are heading to the Chapel, and others are heading to anywhere else there are people, including here. The rest are taking our unconscious crew back to their ship."

"So what the hell do we do now?" Ilene demanded.

"Arachnid did prepare all of the jellybots for combat, as well as order the Cornucopias to manufacture them continuously. Perhaps we should deploy the rest of them," Drækýp suggested. Marc gave him a solemn nod.

Down below the Scraumudi were making their way through the Deity's halls, jostling with each other, crawling in a long dark line of two or three abreast. Amarantos held up his hand, ordering them to stop.

Something was approaching. He could hear a strange humming noise. Faintly at first, but growing nearer. He was expecting something horrible to come around the corner, but to his surprise it was only a little floating robot.

It didn't look very threatening. In fact, it was almost cute. Of course that meant nothing to Amarantos, who ordered his troops to open fire the instant he saw it. Since the jellybot didn't have a nervous system, the low energy discharge from their weapons had no effect on it. The jellybot came flying at Amarantos, who narrowly ducked out of the way. It wrapped its tentacles around the head of the Scraumudi behind him, and began shocking him with paralysing waves of electromagnetic energy.

An entire flock of jellybots came soaring down the hall, all with the same intent as the first.

Many of the Scraumudi tried to turn around and escape, but the sound of gunfire came from the other end. They knew they had been ambushed and began to panic. Amarantos however did not lose his wits, and threw a small EMP grenade into the centre of the flock. Many of them collapsed twitching, but the furthest from the pulse kept coming. Amarantos grabbed one of the bots by its tentacles and started ferociously swinging it, smashing the other jellybots around him. He picked up his rifle, turned it up to its highest setting, and started firing at the jellybots behind him. This time the discharge destroyed the bulk of their bodies, and the explosion sent the remains flying backwards.

The other Scraumudi followed their commander's example, and soon the jellybots were defeated. Amarantos and his soldiers allowed themselves the luxury of a victory cry, and then continued their trek through the halls of the Deity. Though they remained vigilant against another wave of attack, it wasn't necessary. The Deity's supply of jellybots was finite, and the rest were destroyed in confrontations with Scraumudi elsewhere on the ship.

"That's it. They're all destroyed," Helena informed the rest of the bridge crew. "And the utility feed to the Cornucopias has been cut off by some of the Scraumudi, so we can't make anymore."

"How much damage did we do?" Ilene asked.

"Looks like we incapacitated a grand total of around three dozen Scraumudi, but more keep coming on and they're heading to rendezvous with the other boarding parties," Helena replied. "Nine of them have reached deck one! They'll be here in a couple of minutes!"

Kamadev, who had been absent, came running through the door with a rifle slung over his shoulder. He was also carrying a navy blue velvet rug.

"Finally. Ilene, seal the blast doors!" Marc ordered. A set of heavy doors descended down to block the entrances. "You got them?"

"Aye sir," Kamadev replied. He unfurled the mat on the floor, revealing three Vorpal Swords. They were nearly indestructible katanas with impossibly sharp blades. A generator in the hilt sent ultrasonic vibrations along the length of the blade, causing it to vibrate so rapidly that it shone with an incandescent blue aura. An insulated hand-guard protected the wielder from the heat of the blade.

They were clearly fatal weapons, and therefore illegal. No Cornucopia would create such things. They had been made long ago by the ancient Necrotheists, who had saved Humanity from slavery and extinction at the hands of the abominable Transmogs. It was because of their historical value that Vorpal Swords were still permitted to exist. They were treasured relics from the barbaric past. Marc had spent a sizeable fortune in acquiring a collection of three of them. He was only permitted to own them because he had no history of violence and his forensic profile said that he was virtually incapable of it.

But Vorpal Swords had been made to slay monsters, and it seemed mad to leave them idle when there were monsters about.

"With all due respect sir, are you sure about this?" Kamadev asked. "No matter what the Scraumudi might do to us, they're still people. You can't kill them."

"They can resurrect themselves. If death isn't permanent, then it's justifiable self-defence," Marc claimed half-heartedly.

Ilene picked up a sword with considerably more enthusiasm.

"This is awesome. He never lets me play with these," she said smiling.

"These aren't toys. You have to be very careful not to graze yourself," Marc told her.

"Do you even know how to use those?" Drækýp asked.

"Marc and I have played Necrotheists in a simsphere before," Ilene replied. "I beat him every time."

"If that's the only qualification you need then I guess I'll take the third one," Helena said.

"All right, take the sword. But be careful," Marc said. He spoke the words 'be careful', as Humans always did, as if they were some sort of magic charm that would protect their beloveds from harm. Ilene turned to address Drækýp.

"What about you?" she asked.

"Drækýp doesn't need a weapon. With his powers he's going to take down more Scraumudi than the rest of us combined," Helena informed her.

There was a great thud at one of the doors.

"This is it," Ilene said nervously.

"Everyone stand away from the door," Drækýp ordered. They turned to face the entrance while maintaining a safe distance from it.

"I'm presuming you and Luthien there had some sort of maudlin shit in the conference room after we left," Ilene said. Magnolia shrieked as another violent thud made a depression in the door. Without taking her eyes off the doors, she tried to back away, but only tripped and fell backwards. Instead of getting up, she just laid there in a curled up position, weeping in terror. Kumar stood behind her so as to better shoot any attacking Scraumudi.

"Blades, focus," Marc ordered.

"I wish I had said something to Chika, or Sophie," she lamented. The door was rammed again.

"You didn't?" Marc asked.

"They've both been blissed out since we got in here," she replied. "Oh fuck Marc, what if, what if I never see them again? I mean Chika, she's, she's my, oh fuck! "

She lowered her sword and hung her head, trying to stop herself from crying. The Scraumudi continued to ram the door.

"Blades, listen to me. As one of your closest and dearest friends, I swear unto God that I will do everything in my power to make sure you see your family again," Marc vowed. "But in order to do that you need to stay alive. I need you to defend yourself. Tell me you can do that."

Ilene nodded, raised her head with a new ardour in her eyes, and held her sword at the ready, willing to slice through whatever came at her. Another thud, and the door was now bulging outwards, barely still attached to its frame. One more hit and it would be gone. Their Vorpal Swords shone with a faint but noble blue radiance and hummed softly. Though their defences had been overrun, and the Deity was immobilized and swarming with Scraumudi, they stood staunchly with their swords held high in anticipation of the attack. Though hope of retaking the ship was now dim, the Vorpal Swords in their hands reminded them of the maxim of the ancient Necrotheists.

Resistance was never futile.

With one final thud the door came flying towards Marc and the others. They quickly ducked out of its way. When they looked up a Scraumudi was pointing a rifle at them. When he fired Magnolia was the only one to be stunned, since the others were able to leap out of the way. Before the Scraumudi could hit anymore of them, Drækýp telekinetically pulled the gun towards him, and snapped it in half. The Scraumudi hissed in rage, but before he could attack Ilene began hacking at him with her sword. The glowing blade made quick work of his exoskeleton, and within seconds the upper half of his torso and the rest of his body were separated and writhing on the floor. Ilene impaled the next Scraumudi who tried to come through, then decapitated him. Another Scraumudi came charging towards her and rammed her with his head, sending her flying back towards the others. Several Scraumudi were now able to make it onto the bridge. Kamadev began shooting at them, and quickly had them thrashing on the ground.

Drækýp pulled away the weapons from those left standing, then sent them flying back into the hallway, crashing into the rest of their troop. Another Scraumudi came lunging towards Drækýp, too fast for Kamadev to shoot it. Drækýp merely held up his hand and the worm halted in midair, floating in front of him. He squirmed in a futile effort to reach Drækýp, but he tossed him back into the hallway. Drækýp took a deep breath, and pointed the end of his stave towards the door. A bolt of astral lighting issued forth from the crystal orb and it passed through the bodies of the Scraumudi, immobilizing them. They howled in agony and glowed with a soft fuchsia aura. Ilene got back up, and instantly decided to take advantage of this opportunity and kill all of the Scraumudi while they were helpless.

"Ilene don't!" Helena cried as she ran towards them, but it was of no avail. When Ilene's sword struck the Scraumudi a shockwave sent her flying backwards yet again, and an energy pulse of some kind traveled back along the lightning to Drækýp. He was thrown high in the air and crashed against the far wall. When he hit the ground, he did not get back up.

The Scraumudi quickly recovered, and started firing again. Helena dashed towards Drækýp and picked up his fallen stave. Trembling, she held it towards the Scraumudi and attempted to use it. To her amazement, it actually started to glow very weakly. Small, intermittent bolts flew out towards the Scraumudi, and they shrieked briefly in pain, but it did not take long for one of them to get a clean shot at her, and she fell to the ground. Her shooter slithered towards her and looked down at her in wonder, oblivious to Marc. He swung his sword passionately at him, making a great wound in his side. Marc raised his sword for another blow, but despite his fervent need to save Helena from harm, he was just too well designed for compassion. The Scraumudi's wails of pain generated sympathy in him, and he hesitated. Several other Scraumudi fired upon him simultaneously, and he dropped to the ground.

Ilene sat back up, and saw that everyone else had been neutralized, and all of the Scraumudi were staring at her.

"Oh shit," she said. She grabbed her sword, and ducking their fire she ran off the bridge. One of the Scraumudi let out a war cry and pounced after her. In less than a minute Ilene was running across a catwalk that spanned an empty stairwell (which she had been told was the result of a design oversight). At the other end of the catwalk the doors slid open, and she skidded to a stop as she saw multiple Scraumudi there. She turned to run back, but the one that had been chasing her now blocked her path.

"You got to be kidding me," she said, as she realized she was now going to have to fight aliens over the Deity's pointless bottomless pit. The Scraumudi arched up as high as he could to tower over her, hissing ominously. Ilene swung at him, but he grabbed her wrist and dug his claws into it. Ilene dropped her sword and fell to her knees in pain. He released her from his grasp and stood proudly, gloating over how easily he had defeated her. In an instant, Ilene jumped back up and punched him in the face as hard as she could. His upper body snapped backwards. Grasping her sword with her good hand, she thrust it into the Scraumudi's chest. As he cried out in pain, Ilene forced him over the handrail and down the empty stairwell. She turned to fight the Scraumudi behind her, but now that there was no longer any risk of hitting their comrade, they simply shot her.

She was perhaps the last member of the crew to be neutralized. It was Amarantos who had taken her out, and now he looked down upon her inquisitively.

"I think this is their Second in Command," he said to his troops. "Take her to the holding cell next to the Prison Bay."

He looked at the scanning display on his rifle.

"I'm reading four Humans, one Allurëan and six Scraumudi up ahead, but no weapons fire." He inferred this must have been because Drækýp and the Humans had been incapacitated. "The ship is ours then. I'll go on ahead to get the Allurëan."

Before moving on, he glanced down into the bottomless pit, and for the immortal life of him couldn't imagine why someone would make such a thing.

When he reached the bridge, he saw the Scraumudi huddled around Helena. "Has the Allurëan been given his crown?"

"Yes Sire," the leader replied. Amarantos smiled sadistically as he saw that Drækýp now bore a metallic band that reached around the back of his head and bore into his temples, which were dripping green blood. The 'crown', as they called it, severely dampened his psychic powers.

"Excellent," he hissed. "Is one of these the Captain?"

"Yes Sire, this one here," the leader said as he pointed to Marc.

"Good, we already have the XO. Take him and the Allurëan to the holding cell," Amarantos ordered.

"There's one more thing Sire," the lead Scraumudi said. He held up the stave. "Do you know what this?"

Amarantos recoiled and hissed in revulsion.

"Yes. It's Allurëan sorcery. No other race can use it."

"Well this Human here managed to use it," he said, pointing at Helena.

"What?" Amarantos asked in disbelief.

"She picked it up, and it started glowing and then she started shooting at us," he replied. "It wasn't nearly as bad as when the Allurëan wielded it, but nonetheless she used it. As you can see I'm holding it right now, and it's not doing anything."

"It shouldn't be possible. Humans are only supposed to have negligible psionic abilities," Amarantos stated perplexed. "We only have the one crown. Put her in the holding cell for now. We'll figure out what to do with her later."

The others bowed in obeisance, and carried out his command.

The Scraumudi filed back aboard their vessel, each carrying at least two unconscious Humans with them. Not far from the air lock was the Prison Bay. It was really just a slightly modified cargo bay, but Levanoch believed it would be adequate. The bay was a hundred meters in diameter with a high domed ceiling, covered with rough red skin. It was dimly lit, and bore no furniture or decoration. The Scraumudi carelessly tossed the Humans on the floor, along with some medical supplies they raided from the Deity's sickbay so they could tend to their injuries. The captives were scanned and their weapons were confiscated, but other than that they were not violated. Levanoch wanted them to be as cooperative as possible.

Once everybody had been taken off the Deity, the Scraumudi sealed and locked the brig, knowing their captives would awake momentarily. But Marc, Ilene, Helena and Drækýp were taken to a much smaller holding cell, down the corridor from the Prison Bay. It was only several meters long and a couple of meters wide, but had at least been made was the actual intention of holding prisoners. It was also poorly lit, but it was covered in a dark blue skin. The Scraumudi shut them in there, and didn't bother to give them any sort of medicine.

Levanoch folded his hands behind his back complacently as his commanders reported to him. The Deity was his, and her crew were his prisoners. Soon, very soon, he would be free from his starless abyss and have absolute dominion over all Scraumudi. He could almost smell Sapient flesh burning as his Armada rampaged across the Universe, purging it of all that threatened their eternal existence. It would be the dawning of a new cosmic era, an era where no conscious being other than the immortal Scraumudi would be permitted to exist.

It would be an unending paradise.

# Chapter Four

One day passed, and the Deity's crew had not seen their captors again. Still confined to their small holding cell, Helena was examining Drækýp's psionic dampener (which they had termed a tin foil hat). She was attempting to find some way to deactivate it, as she had been doing on and off for the past twenty four hours. Ilene paced back and forth along the width of the cell, desperately yearning to know whether or not her family was alive.

"I thought your telepathic range was miles. Can't you tell whether or not they're at least somewhere on this ship?" she demanded.

"I can't even see outside this room right now," he said hoarsely. "I have no idea where the rest of the crew is."

"Ilene, please don't make him talk. It's very difficult for him right now," Helena said. She pulled out her pocket scanner and started taking readings.

"I can't believe they didn't take that from you," Ilene commented.

"I know. They didn't do a very thorough job of searching us," Helena replied.

"Levanoch's hubris is great," Drækýp croaked. "He's taken only weapons from us, thinking nothing else would be of aid in escaping. He's just trying to induce Stockholm syndrome. He believes the 'gregarious' gesture of not immediately violating us will create the impression that he is not overtly cruel, and make us more willing to help him. We must turn this deception against him."

"Shush, try not to speak," Helena said softly.

"What exactly are the Scraumudi anyway? Are they insects?" Ilene asked.

"Arthropods would be the term," Helena told her.

"I thought it was impossible for insects to get that big," Ilene said.

"No, it's completely possible under the right circumstances," Helena said. "Back in the Carboniferous era on Earth there were giant insects. Dragonflies with meter long wingspans, cockroaches the size of housecats, and millipedes over two meters long. It's because the atmosphere was around thirty-five percent oxygen back then. There are naturally occurring Sapient insects you know, like the Kylilyimacs. They're as tall as Humans, and the atmosphere on their homeworld is almost fifty percent oxygen, and it has nearly a third less gravity."

"Yeah, but the air and gravity here feels normal," Ilene stated.

"According to my scanner, the air's twenty four percent oxygen, seventy three percent nitrogen, and three percent other gases. The gravity's 1.08 Gs," Helena said. "But the Scraumudi aren't naturally occurring, so the Telarri probably went to a lot of trouble to make them able to function in a wide range of environments."

"Why wouldn't they just make them humanoid?" Ilene pondered. "I mean most Sapient races are humanoid anyway, and I was always given to understand that was because of parallel evolution or whatever."

"That's right. Species that occupy similar niches in similar environments often become similar in appearance and behaviour because natural selection favours the same traits in those species, even if they're not related," Helena replied. "It's why dolphins look like ichthyosaurs, why wombats look like groundhogs, and why Drækýp here has two arms, two legs, and a head with two eyes, two ears, a nose and mouth. Sapient races from Oasis class planets are often humanoid. Maybe that's why the Telarri made the Scraumudi the way that they are, so that they'd look like monsters to most other races."

"Well they're ugly sons of bitches, that's for sure. I never wanted to be killed by aliens that were so ugly," Ilene said. "I'd hoped that if I was killed by an alien it would be some sort of shape-shifting succubus, and she would take the form of a beautiful naked woman. She'd seduce me and as we were fucking, she'd suck the life force out of me and use it to nourish her clutch of eggs. Can you detect any other Humans with that thing?"

"I don't want to alert the Scraumudi by using an active scan," Helena replied. "And passive scans can't tell individual life signs from the ship."

"What about your clairvoyance? Can't you tell if the rest of the crew is alive?" Ilene asked.

"Sometimes I can sense Scraumudi passing by on the other side of the door, but no further than that," Helena replied. "Maybe my proximity to Drækýp's tin foil hat is affecting me as well. Does it hurt much?"

Drækýp shook his head.

"I'm fine."

"I wish we had some antiseptics. I'd hate for those wounds to become infected," she said.

"Don't worry yourself. I'm impervious to infection," he informed her.

"Well I'm not," Ilene said as she looked at the wounds on her arm. She was in fact almost impervious to infection, and her wounds had almost fully healed, but she had been complaining about them a lot.

"I still don't know why this thing is dampening your powers," Helena said, now completely ignoring Ilene. "Which is understandable, since psychic powers are paranormal and can't be directly observed. From what I can tell, your tin foil hat is sending mild neuroleptic pulses through your brain and nervous system. I'd be interested to see if giving you a neuro-stimulant would help to counteract its effects. But for now, I don't think there's anything I can do. I haven't been able to identify the device's power source, and I don't think it would be a good idea to just try yanking it out."

"I concur," Drækýp nodded. "It would be imprudent to attempt to remove or deactivate the device."

"Question: out of six hundred million Reticulans and close to twenty million Enclaveans, why is it that none of you saw this coming?" Ilene demanded.

Drækýp sighed in annoyance.

"I've explained this a thousand times to a thousand people," he began. "Precognitive visions are unsolicited. We cannot peer into a future time and place at will and see what happens. Our visions are unprompted and fragmentary, and they are not always accurate since they typically only show us probabilistic futures. In addition to being exceedingly rare even among Reticulans, visions almost always retain only to the individuals receiving them, which is why no one else foresaw that this would befall us. As incredible and terrifying as it may seem, us being pulled out of the Universe and captured by Levanoch was apparently neither certain enough nor momentous enough to induce a vision, even in me. Precognition is, in many respects, the most useless and unreliable of all our powers. Does this satisfy you?"

"Ilene, this really is taxing for him. Would you please leave him alone?" Helena requested.

"Fine; but just for now. I will have more questions later," Ilene said. Helena sighed and placed her scanner back in her pocket. She sat down beside a quiet and distant Marc and rested her head on his shoulder.

"Are you okay?" she asked lovingly. Marc nodded unconvincingly. "Marc this isn't your fault. You couldn't have predicted this would happen. Drækýp and I didn't predict this and we're supposed to be psychic. You did everything in your power to protect us. There's nothing else you could have done."

"I could have surrendered to Levanoch when I had the chance," he lamented.

"No, Drækýp is right. The Scraumudi belong in here," Helena told him. "They're dangerous. If we were to help them escape we'd be guilty of unleashing a terrible evil upon the Universe. We can't do that, no matter what. If we have to die, that's a small price to pay to protect trillions of Sapient beings. No matter what Levanoch does or threatens to do, we can't help him."

Marc slowly nodded his head in reluctant agreement. Suddenly Helena's eyes widen with alarm as she looked at the door.

"They're coming in," she warned.

The doors immediately slid open and there were two Scraumudi standing there, one of whom held a rifle. The other began speaking in their abominable tongue, pointing at Marc and Drækýp. He gestured for them to stand up. As Marc rose, Helena desperately clutched at his arm.

"Don't go!" she begged, with tears welling in her eyes. "They'll kill you! I'll never see you again!"

The armed Scraumudi struck her with the end of his rifle.

"No!" Marc cried. "Don't hurt her! I'm coming with you."

The two Scraumudi herded Marc and Drækýp between them, with the armed one bringing up the rear. Helena threw herself at the shell-like doors as they slid shut, and she pounded ferociously at them, screaming. She finally dropped to her knees and wept bitterly. Ilene gently approached her with a keratin bowl full of water. She wiped the tears from her face and handed her the bowl.

"Helena, we don't know that they're going to kill them," she said in the most sympathetic voice she could manage. "They probably just took them for questioning. They might bring them back. Just don't give up, okay?"

Helena took a deep breath and nodded.

"We're going to escape, and you're going to see Marc again. You just have to keep yourself together. Drink your water."

Helena took a deep draught from the bowl.

"Okay, I'm okay," she said, taking a deep breath. "Why did you try to attack the Scraumudi that Drækýp was shooting?"

"I didn't know what would happen," she replied.

"Exactly. You saw bizarre energy coming out of a Reticulan weapon. It made the Scraumudi glow. Did it not occur to you that touching it would be incredibly dangerous?"

"I didn't really think it through. I was running on adrenaline," Ilene replied.

"If you hadn't've done that, Drækýp might have been able to stop the Scraumudi from taking the bridge," Helena claimed. "If we kept the bridge we could have taken back the whole ship."

"You're saying this is my fault?" Ilene asked in dismay.

"I'm saying what you did was extremely stupid, and it may cost us our lives," Helena replied. "It may even cost every Sapient being in the Universe her life."

"Really? Well I've always wanted to go down in infamy. I guess I can't be anymore infamous than the dyke who killed everyone in the Universe."

Helena glared at her inimically.

"If the Scraumudi escape..." she began.

"I know, they'll start raiding every inhabited planet and colony they come across, maybe even wipe entire races out and there'll be a bunch of epic space battles to try to stop them. It sounds kind of cool actually."

Helena shook her head in disgust.

"How the hell did you ever get to be an Executive Officer?" she asked.

A self-deprecating smile crept upon Ilene's face.

"Marc," she replied simply. "When I first met Marc on the Artemis he was depressed, because of you I guess, and I helped him through that. That's why he's always liked me. I was just one of the Artemis's Deck Techs, I didn't really have any ambitions beyond that. I did my job, and then banged as many hot girls as I could. I pissed a lot of them off too. I thought that the Astragnostic Society might discharge me for being such a disruption. Looking back, I really was kind of a bitch, but I was kind to Marc when he really needed it, and that's what he's always seen in me. So when he was transferred to the Cygnet he not only took me with him, but made me his Chief Deck Technician. No one on the Artemis had a problem with getting rid of me. Maybe if you weren't so good at your job you might have been able to stick with Marc.

"Anyway, when Marc became the CO of the Lacrymosa, he granted me a field commission and made me his XO. The Brass thinks I'm the worst XO they've got, and if they were to pair me with any other Captain they'd be right. But no one can work with Marc the way I do. It may not be apparent, but we complement each other perfectly, and we owe each other a lot.

"I love him too you know. He's like a brother to me."

"I understand," Helena said with a sympathetic nod. She got up and walked over to the water dispenser at the back of the cell. It was a small recess in the wall, with a limp trunk like organ hanging down on the left to dispense water. There was a trunk on the right that dispensed a red mash, which they assumed was made from the algae Drækýp had mentioned. There were also two slits in the back which dispensed red crackers and protein cakes. In the corner of the cell was a mesh covered hole which they had assumed was for their waste. Above the dispenser was a panel of some viscous fluid. Helena placed her hand upon it, as Ilene had first done earlier.

She gasped and quickly withdrew her hand.

"It's gross, I know," Ilene said.

"No, it's not that," Helena replied. "When I touched it, it felt like, I don't know. You remember that Drækýp said that the Scraumudi have a telepathic interface with this ship. These panels must serve as some kind of manual backup. When I touched it, I think I was sensing the ship's neural activity."

"What? Let me try," Ilene insisted. She placed her hand on the panel, and water began to pour out. "I don't feel anything. All I can do is make it pour water."

"Maybe my clairvoyance allows me to read information from it. That must be one of the reasons they gave Drækýp his tinfoil hat," Helena speculated.

"Are you saying you can use this thing?" Ilene asked.

"Apparently. I don't think that I could input any commands or anything, but maybe I could find some useful information," Helena replied. She took a deep breath, and hesitantly placed her hand back on the panel.

Marc and Drækýp were led down the tall hallways of living flesh until they arrived at a dank room. They were placed into chairs growing from the floor, and secured by a substance like spider's silk about their wrists and ankles. Levanoch was seated (or at least the closest position a Scraumudi can come to sitting) across from them at a large desk resembling the shell of an ancient aquatic animal. The other two Scraumudi stood guard at the door.

"Captain Spencer, a pleasure to meet you in person," Levanoch greeted. "And... Elizien. Long have I dreamt of the day when you would again be my prisoner. I remember what your name means as well. 'Ardour of God', if I'm not mistaken. But that is the name your own people gave you. From what I've learned, the Humans, specifically those you took to dwell with you on your own world, have given you the name Drækýp. I don't know what it means, and I don't care. But if it pleases you that's what I shall call you now."

"If I may interrupt," Marc said. "How is it you can speak Hominese without a Rosetta Stone?"

"Well I learned it of course. It saved me the hassle of running everything I downloaded from your panplexus through a translation matrix," Levanoch explained. "Our syrinxes allow us to speak a wide range of languages."

"I find it hard to believe that you've been eavesdropping on our communications for centuries and we've never realized it," Marc said.

"Captain, your panplexus is a vast network of networks, interconnecting umptillions of computers. It's far too large to monitor. Our intermittently establishing a solitary uplink went quite unnoticed." Levanoch replied. "And you use Newtonian physics to triangulate the source of quantum signals, as they are macroscopic objects. Since we're only connected to the rest of the Universe on the quantum level our uplink is untraceable."

"Where is the rest of my crew?" Marc asked. Levanoch was silent for a moment.

"Detained," he replied at last.

"I want to know where they are," Marc said.

"If you cooperate with me I may give you some information," Levanoch offered. "I have a team of scientists and engineers aboard your vessel at the moment. They're running extensive scans and diagnostics of your ship and its systems, learning everything they can. Once they've learned enough they'll attempt to inverse one of the wormholes. We'll be able to achieve this much sooner, and with a much higher chance of success, if you will give us the information we need. I want to hear every last detail about your hyperluminal drive."

"I want to see my crew first," Marc insisted.

"I will not tolerate demands from you Captain," Levanoch said. "I warn you, do not test my patience. My tolerance for insolence is scant. If I were you, I would try to keep me in a tolerant mood."

"I can give you no information," Marc said obstinately. "I cannot share technology with hostile governments."

"Then I have a loophole for you; I'm not doing this in the name of my government," Levanoch informed him. Marc and Drækýp looked at each other bemused.

"Is that why you didn't send any other ships after us?" Marc asked.

"I couldn't risk them discovering the power of your vessel," Levanoch explained. "You see, once I free my people from this prison they will all swear loyalty to me, and then I shall murder our leader and take his place. It is because of his crimes that we suffer as we do, because of him that you are reluctant to help us. You fear that once we are free we will rapaciously plunder all the worlds in the heavens, leaving their inhabitants to destitution and famine. I assure you that under my rule the Scraumudi will be a nobler people."

"Yesterday, you threatened to torture and kill every member of my crew, then wipe out the Reticulans," Marc reminded him.

"I am a warrior, Captain. A warrior-poet I would like to think, and we were on the brink of combat," Levanoch explained. "At such times I am given to venomous words. I assure you it was merely psychological warfare and those words have no veracity to them."

"You mean to kill Nakhash?" Drækýp asked. Levanoch cocked his head in bemusement, not recognizing the Warlord's name in another tongue.

"If that is your name for our incompetent incumbent, than yes," he replied. "I intend to kill him, and I think I'll enjoy it."

"Then you must have a plan to preserve the Chrysalises?" Drækýp asked intrigued. Levanoch only scoffed.

"The Chrysalises will be quite unaffected by the long overdue execution of our dear tyrant," he claimed. "Nakhash may have been able to deceive the plebeian rabble into believing that codswallop, but not me. I have absolutely no evidence to support Nakhash's claim that he is linked to the Chrysalises in any way, and that his death will mean the death of us all, except for his word. And that alone is reason enough to believe it's a lie. In fact, I think I may even have been the one to suggest it to him. It's been so long, I can't recall."

"You are so certain that it is a lie you're willing to bet your life upon it?" Drækýp asked.

"Indeed I am. You Allurëans had marvellous intelligence agents back during the Serpent War. Surely you must know that it is a lie?"

"We were unable to ascertain whether or not that was true," Drækýp replied.

"How very disappointing. But it's of no consequence. All Scraumudi will know it's a lie when they see me eviscerate him with his regal sceptre."

"Levanoch, I need to know what you've done with my crew!" Marc insisted. Levanoch let out a reluctant sigh.

"You needn't worry yourself. They're fine for the moment. They have access to food, water, facilities. I've even given them medical supplies, from your own sick bay," Levanoch told him. "I have not been nearly as cruel as I might have been Captain. Aside from firearms, I've allowed your crew to keep whatever positions they had on them at the time. I might have stripped them of all their effects and garments, chained them up, beaten them so severely they'd be unable to move, or drugged them into unconsciousness. No injuries or indignities have been inflicted upon your crew other than those that were necessary to bring them aboard, and that would not have been necessary if you had simply submitted to me."

Drækýp scoffed.

"Once you have what you need to escape you will dispose of us," he claimed. "We are not so easily deceived."

"Captain, please. I saw you attempt to inverse a wormhole, and it almost worked!" Levanoch said. "On your first try you accomplished more than we have in nearly ten thousand years. Please, tell me what you did. If you help us to escape, your reward will be vast! Our Armada was once comprised of over a million battleships, and under my reign it shall swell to such numbers again! With such a force we could conquer any race, obtain unlimited amounts of wealth. These things and more we will share with you if only you will free us now and serve us forevermore."

Marc couldn't help but smile at Levanoch's vacuous attempt at bribery.

"We're a post-scarcity society Levanoch. We already have unlimited wealth," Marc informed him. "There are thousands of stars within the Pananthropic Republic, every one of which radiates trillions of terawatts of energy. Every solar system has octillions of tonnes of raw materials, and we can bend their individual atoms to our will to make whatever we desire. We're all rich, making money worthless to us. It's so worthless to us that we consider hoarding wealth a mental illness, making your offer insane. We cannot be bribed with something so primitive as material wealth. If you've been studying us for centuries, I'd have thought you would know that."

"A fair point. I hope you'll trust me then when I tell you what the penalty for disobedience is," Levanoch said. "I have studied you for centuries, albeit from afar, and I do know a great deal about your people. You Humans no longer suffer as you did in the past. You've boosted your baseline happiness, and re-engineered yourselves to have pain asymbolia. You feel the sensation of pain, you understand what it signifies and that it is to be avoided, but you do not perceive it as being unpleasant. It's neutral to you. What you experience is mere nociception, and you have no shortage of euphoriants and anti-nociceptives for when even that gets too much. You're victory over suffering is so complete that your females still give live birth without so much as a wince; how disgustingly quaint.

"There are however small cults of you who do not believe that this is a good thing. They believe in Original Sin, that Human beings are intrinsically evil and thus deserve to suffer. They rewire their brains in order to feel pain. I've been speaking with my neurosurgeons and they think can perform the procedure. They may want to experiment on a few of you to be sure they've got it right, but they'll be able to make you feel agony. Do you even know that word? I imagine you would have read it in some of your more ancient texts, but you've never felt agony, have you Captain? I can make you feel agony. Or maybe it won't be you. Maybe it will be your friend Chika, or her daughter Sophie. They have their precious euphoriants right now, if you were worried. They've both spent most of their lives in a state of orgasmic bliss. I doubt they'd have much tolerance for real pain. I can make them experience agony worse than childbirth, worse than being burned alive, worse than anything your ancestors ever had to suffer through!

"You can go back to your cell now. You have one day to think about what I have said to you. This time tomorrow you will once again be brought before me, and if you will not give me the information I require, then all those you command will pay with their lives for your obstinacy."

Levanoch gestured to his guards to take them away. They pulled them from their chairs and carried them back to their dungeon.

The cell doors slid open and Marc and Drækýp were thrown back in. The guard seemed to curse at them in his tongue before he shut the doors again.

"Marc!" Helena cried, rushing to his side. "Are you okay? What did he do to you?"

"Nothing, nothing, I'm fine," Marc replied. "He just wanted information. We didn't tell him anything, so he gave us an ultimatum."

"What?" Ilene asked.

"Tomorrow he's going to come back for me. If I don't tell him what he wants, he's going to start interrogating the crew. He'll perform brain surgery to enable us to suffer pain, and then torture us until somebody tells him how to get out of here. Then we'll all die."

Marc groaned in anguish as he buried his face his hands.

"What have I done?"

"Marc," Helena said hesitantly. "I think I may have found a way out of here,"

"What?" he asked in amazement.

"Do you see that panel above the water dispenser?" she asked, pointing to it. "It's an interface with this ship. I'm guessing the Scraumudi use it as a manual backup for when their telepathic interface is down. When I touched it, I could access the ship's nervous system."

"That's impossible," Drækýp claimed. "Those panels are designed so that only Scraumudi can use them. Otherwise they obviously wouldn't have put such a vulnerability in a prison cell."

"But I'm clairvoyant, so is it possible that's why I can read it?" Helena asked. "Isn't it possible that's why they put that tin foil hat on you?"

"I suppose it's possible," Drækýp replied. "I and every other Allurëan who have been prisoners of the Scraumudi have borne these, so our psionic powers were useless. We were never able to study any of their ships in detail. They always self-destructed when captured. But tell me, what happened when you touched the panel?"

"I was able to read information from the ship's database," Helena replied. "I know the layout of this ship now. We're on the same deck as the airlock. If we can get out of the cell and go right down the corridor for a hundred and some meters we'd be back on the Deity. Halfway between the airlock and us is the door to an enormous bay where everyone else is being kept."

"Are they okay?" Marc asked desperately.

"I don't know," Helena replied sadly. "They're not under surveillance. The room's intended purpose might have been a cargo bay. I'm starting to think this ship was never meant to take on prisoners."

"You may be right," Drækýp stated. "They have had no need of marauding vessels for ten thousand years, and so may have designed their ships to serve other functions. Levanoch means to stage a coup d'état against Nakhash once he has the ability to free the Scraumudi. Perhaps he feared that commissioning a warship would arouse suspicion."

"It doesn't matter why the ship is as it is," Marc insisted. "Just tell me how does this information help us?"

"About six hundred meters from here there's a shaft of some sort that leads up to this ship's brain, the brain Drækýp told us about," Helena continued. "Drækýp, you said that if we take that brain out we'll sever the Scraumudi's telepathic interface with the ship, and the shock of that would render them all unconscious for at least ten minutes, right?"

"Yes," Drækýp replied softly, running over scenarios in his head. "We would be able to escape. But how could we possibly reach the brain without being caught?"

"That's another piece of good news. I'm pretty sure I've learned how to deactivate your tinfoil hat," Helena informed him. "If I can shut it off, you can use your telekinesis to bust us out of here. One of us takes the brain out and then runs like hell back here, while we free the rest of the crew. We get back on the Deity as quickly as possible, blast our way out of the hangar and go to the first wormhole we can find and try to invert it," Helena proposed.

"Hold on. I can't help but notice a couple of problems with your plan," Ilene said. "First of all, if we do get out of this cell, how do we get to the brain without being caught? I don't think the Wookie prisoner trick would work under these circumstances. And second, if we do get to the brain, how do we kill it?"

"There are two armed guards right outside the door. Drækýp can easily neutralize them, and we can take their weapons." Helena suggested.

"Hmmm. If we were to escape from this cell, The Scraumudi would be far more concerned about me then the rest of you. I think it would be best if I stood guard by the airlock to protect the crew while they evacuate," Drækýp said. "They'll be aware that you three have also escaped, but so long as I prove sufficiently distracting they won't bother with you. They won't know what you're trying to do. You'll just be a few puny Humans scurrying around while one of their most ancient and powerful enemies is tearing up their ship."

"But the Deity is crawling with Scraumudi. How can we retake the ship?" Marc asked.

"I believe I have taken an appropriate precaution," Drækýp said with a smirk. "You recall that I said the Scraumudi have extremely sensitive hearing? Since those aboard the Deity now are not soldiers but scientists, they're unlikely wearing any sound-guards. I programmed the com system to blare a high frequency, ultrasonic siren if any Humans or myself were to re-enter the Deity."

"You mean, like a dog whistle?" Ilene asked in disbelief. Drækýp was silent for a moment.

"Somewhat similar, perhaps," he admitted. "But it should be sufficiently debilitating to the Scraumudi to allow us to retake the ship."

Ilene nodded reluctantly. She turned back to Helena.

"All right, say we get out of this cell. How do we get to that brain?" she asked.

"There's a hatch, about twenty meters down the hall on the left," Helena explained. "It opens into a crawlspace. There shouldn't be anyone in there. Even though the Scraumudi will be focused on getting Drækýp, it's probably best if you avoid them as much as possible. If you can make it into the crawlspace without being caught you should be able to make it all the way to the brain. Once you're in go right, and turn right at every junction. At the third junction they'll be a vertical shaft. Crawl up it, and you'll be in the control room."

"The control room will definitely be manned," Drækýp stated. "You'll need to neutralize the technicians quickly. The brain itself will be quite obvious. It's very large, and it will be floating in a transparent tank in the center of the room. Don't let its size deter you; it is not Sapient. It's no more self-aware than an insect. It's only so big because it has such a massive body to control. Shoot it with the rifle as well. You may have to adjust the settings before you find one that works."

"Once you kill the brain, go back down the shaft, but this time go into the main corridor. You won't have to worry about being caught. Run back down it as fast as you can." Helena told them.

"Understood," Marc said. "So, our plan is to deactivate Drækýp's tinfoil hat so that he can break us out of here. He takes out the guards then heads for the bay where the rest of the crew is being held. He watches their six as they re-board the Deity. While the Scraumudi are busy with him, one of us takes one of the rifles from the guards and heads to the control room to destroy the ship's brain, allowing us to escape."

They nodded in agreement.

"So which one of us should try to head for the control room?" Helena asked.

"I will," Marc replied immediately. "I took a sacred oath to protect the lives of my crew, even if it means giving my own life. If anyone's caught out there trying to sabotage the ship, Levanoch will not have any mercy upon them. I'm not going to let any of you take that risk. It's my responsibility to ensure that none of you will die by the fell hand of Levanoch."

"And it's my responsibility to make sure you don't do anything stupid or crazy," Ilene reminded him. "I'm coming to."

"Blades no," Marc told her.

"Marc, you can't go alone," Helena insisted. "If you won't take her, then I should go with you."

"Absolutely not!" Marc commanded.

"I'm clairvoyant! I can be useful, and she's injured!" she claimed.

"I'm your second in command," Ilene stated. " Marc, you know you're more likely to succeed if you bring someone with you, especially if that person's me. My wrist isn't that bad anyway. I just like whining to annoy people. You don't want to risk a Scraumudi messing up Helena's hot bod d'ya?"

Marc was pensive for a moment, but then nodded at her.

"Okay, you and I will make an attempt to destroy the brain," he said. "Drækýp, if we succeed will you be able to tell?"

"Immediately. The effects will be obvious," he replied.

"Good. As soon as we do, we'll do exactly what Helena said," Marc instructed. "Ilene and I will get back here as soon as we can, and you two get everyone back on the Deity and make sure everyone who's able goes to their posts.

"Tell everyone that Arachnid recruited to find any weapons and restraints they can on the Deity and then do a deck by deck search. Tell them to take the Scraumudi alive if they can and throw them into Quarantine. We'll figure out what to do with them later."

He looked at Ilene, his eyes filled with deep concern.

"Blades, are you sure you want to come with me?" he asked softly.

"Marc, we're about to go crawling through the bowels, in the most literal sense of the word, of a colossal bioship, so that we can kill a giant brain and knock out a ship load of immortal giant worms," she said. "There's no way I can turn down doing something that is so utterly fucked up."

Marc nodded with a gracious smile.

"Okay. Helena, please give me your scanner. I might need it." he said. She knelt down beside him and tentatively handed him the scanner, then leaned in to kiss him gently.

"I won't go back to the Deity until you come back," she promised him.

"But if I don't come back..." Marc began.

"Then I'm going to come and get you," she said. "And you can't talk me out of it. If you don't leave then I don't leave. It's that simple."

Marc nodded reluctantly.

"I love you, and I won't make you venture into a vast ship full of angry Scraumudi just to find my dead body. I'll come back," he assured her.

"As much as it's always been my dream to be cannon fodder in some convoluted escape attempt, we still have to get out of this cell," Ilene reminded them. Helena nodded. She stood behind Drækýp and looked at the small display on the back of the tin-foil.

"Okay. I'm pretty sure I can shut this off without killing you," she said meekly. He cocked his head towards her.

"Pretty sure?"

# Chapter Five

Locked within the massive dungeon of a hideously alien ship with no hope of escape, deprived of all but the most essential of necessities, lying upon a floor of pulsating living flesh, Sophie cried out in orgasm.

She didn't even know where she was. Both she and her mother had turned their euphoria patches up to maximum as soon as Ilene had made her announcement about being sucked into the wormhole. The sensation of bliss overwhelmed their other senses, and they had lost all perception of time.

They knew that their patches lasted twenty four hours, but those could have been replaced by a jellybot or even a person. Sophie was aware that she was having intercourse with Brock, and had done so several times since she had blissed out. When she wasn't having sex, she was masturbating. She was on an orgasm binge, and that was all she cared about. Brock would give her water and broth to replenish her, and clean up her bodily waste, while she remained in perpetual orgasm until her body could take no more. No memory of the past or thought of the future entered her conscious mind when she was in this state. All she was conscious of was the all-consuming pleasure.

Chika was the same, only without a sexual partner, so she masturbated continuously. As she writhed in waves of ecstasy, Sook-yin did her best to clean up her feces.

Arachnid strolled over to the corner where the pair had been isolated. Crossing her arms, she leaned against the wall and looked down at Sook-yin with concern.

"You don't have to do that babe," she said. "If she wants to get so blissed out that she can't go to the bathroom that's her problem."

"It's not sanitary," Sook-yin said. "I'm responsible for the health of everyone in here. I can't let this place become a toilet. "

"You've been working constantly since we got in here," Arachnid said. "No one's in immediate danger anymore thanks to you. You deserve a break. You deserve orgasmic bliss as much as these euphoria junkies do. Let's go find Randi and have some fun."

"Not with so many people around," Sook-yin told her.

"What if we never get out of here? Are you never going to have sex again?" Arachnid asked her. "Privacy is a luxury. Intimacy is a necessity."

"Shouldn't you be trying to get us out of here?" Sook-yin asked annoyed.

"What can I do?" Arachnid asked, throwing up her hands. "They took my weapons, they took my armour, and the door's impenetrable. What am I supposed to do?"

Sook-yin gave her an irritated glare.

"I am not having sex in this place," she said firmly. "If you ever want to sleep with me again, you will get us out of here."

"Well, that's a pretty decent incentive," she sighed. "You're right. I guess I have a job to do. I'll go talk with the other Civic Guards. Maybe we'll be able to think of something."

"Here, take this with you," Sook-yin requested, handing her a bowl of shit. Arachnid winced in disgust, but took it over to the floor drain.

Levanoch attempted to humble himself as he stood before the shimmering visage of the Warlord Nakhash. In reality Levanoch was actually taller than his lord, but the projection was larger than life-size and dwarfed him.

He bowed in an insincere display of respect.

"You requested an audience Sire?" Levanoch asked.

"Tell me more of the ship you've captured," Nakhash instructed. "What is the nature of the quarantine?"

"They're carrying an experimental biological weapon," Levanoch claimed. "It's a virus, designed to instantly mutate to infect any living thing. It's very deadly. When we attacked their ship, the virus was accidentally released. It's inert at the moment, but we have no idea what activates it. My scientists are aboard the vessel now, investigating. Until we determine what triggers the virus we can't risk spreading it. My ship and my crew cannot come into contact with anyone else. No one is to come near my vessel. Is that clear?"

"This vessel you've captured, what race built it?" Nakhash asked.

"Humans, Sire," Levanoch replied. Nakhash was silent for a moment.

"I do not recall them," he said at length.

"They're the race who dwelt nearest to the world the Allurëa settled," Levanoch reminded him. "They look much alike as well."

"Yes, now I remember," Nakhash said. "They built the ship that's now in your possession?"

"Yes Sire."

"I was aware that they were now starfarers, but I didn't know they could build ships capable of reaching our dust cloud. Why did you not tell me of this in your reports?"

"Sire, the information we receive from the outside Universe is vast. Much of it is irrelevant or fictional. Almost all of it is discarded before we find anything important enough to report to you. I did not think that Human progress was of any consequence."

"The Humans are not at war at the moment, correct?" Nakhash asked.

"I don't believe so Sire," Levanoch replied.

"Why then would they create such a horrific weapon?" Nakhash demanded suspiciously.

"I've been wondering that myself," Levanoch told him, showing no sign of deception. "We do know they are in league with the Allurëa. Perhaps it was them who sent the Humans to destroy us."

"After ten thousand years?" Nakhash asked. "Why now?"

"Perhaps they've become aware that we now have the ability to monitor the outside Universe, and fear we are plotting something," Levanoch suggested.

"Of course. It was always a matter of time before they found out," Nakhash said. "I want a report on that virus within the hour and I want to know why the Humans have it. Stop at nothing until you've obtained the truth."

Levanoch smiled and bowed humbly.

"Of course Sire," he said. He sighed with relief when the projection vanished.

"Do you believe he suspects you plan to overthrow him?" Amarantos asked.

"Yes, but no more than he has at any other point over the last fifteen thousand years," Levanoch replied. "But I think the thought of the Allurëa destroying us has pushed his fear of me from his mind; at least for now."

"I'm surprised he didn't ask about the wormhole the Deity almost inverted," Amarantos said.

"Oh he's quite unaware of that," Levanoch assured him. "I had an operative rig the sensor gird that monitors the Boundary. It did not detect anything out of the ordinary yesterday."

"You're most cunning Sire. When you are our leader I've no doubt that we will rapidly ascend to one of the mightiest races in the Heavens," Amarantos said. Levanoch glared at him suspiciously. "What is it?"

"You only flatter me when you have bad news," he claimed. "Let's hear it."

"It may be nothing," Amarantos said nervously. "It's just that I received a report of an unregistered user opening the ship's database."

"Glitches like that happen all the time," Levanoch scoffed. "Stray nerve impulses trigger the interfaces and open random files. You know that."

"I do Sire, but this one happened to originate within the cell holding the Allurëan," Amarantos explained.

"That could just be a coincidence," Levanoch claimed at length.

"And only moments later that same interface was activated again, by an unregistered user," Amarantos added. Levanoch was silent for moment.

"That is a cause for concern," he admitted.

"You don't think the Allurëan could have done it do you?" Amarantos asked quietly.

"No, it's impossible! Not when he's wearing his Crown," Levanoch claimed.

"But it's been ten thousand years! What if they've developed new methods of countering them?" Amarantos asked. "And what do we know of these Humans? How can we be certain that it wasn't one of them?"

"Don't be daft! Only a powerful psychic could have tricked the interface into thinking they were a Scraumudi," Levanoch said. "And no Human qualifies as a powerful psychic, not even that female you had thrown in with the Allurëan. And if Humans did have the ability to use our interfaces than why hasn't anyone in the Prison Bay done so? "

"Well somebody did it!" Amarantos insisted. "It could even have been one of us. Somebody may be working for Nakhash. Perhaps he tried to frame what he did on the Allurëan."

"That may be the most likely," Levanoch conceded. "I will go and investigate. You make certain we have a report to give Nakhash by the end of the hour. Understood?"

Amarantos nodded.

"Yes Sire," he replied. Trying to conceal his fear, Levanoch quickly slithered out of the room. If anyone of his own crew had done anything to sabotage his plans of conquest, he knew there would be at least one more Scraumudi who wouldn't live forever.

"Got it!" Helena said softly. The tinfoil hat immediately dropt to the ground, leaving a pair of small green wounds on Drækýp's temples. Drækýp let out a sigh of relief, and slowly rose to his full height.

"Drækýp? Are you all right?" Helena asked.

"Much better, thank you," he replied. He took a deep breath and positioned himself into a battle stance. "Please step away from the door," he said to Marc and Ilene. They immediately backed away. With a singular telekinetic blast, the door was blown off. A hideous, screeching klaxon instantly started blaring throughout the ship. The two guards by the door were stunned only for a second. They quickly aimed their rifles at him, but before they could shoot their blue hearts exploded inside their chests, and their bodies crumpled to the ground. Drækýp picked up their rifles and handed one to Ilene.

"You two get to the brain. Helena, you're with me!" he ordered. The four of them split up into two groups, each going the opposite way down the crimson corridor.

Marc and Ilene scurried like rodents down the blood red hall. Ilene was listening intently for any signs of approaching Scraumudi, and Marc was constantly glancing down at his scanner. They had reached the hatch in a matter of seconds. It was a sphincter-like opening roughly one meter across.

"How do we open it?" Ilene whispered as softly as she could. She grimaced as Marc cautiously reached out and lightly touched the grotesque portcullis. The revolting thing opened with a sickening noise, spewing out a vile smell. They both covered their mouths and tried to suppress their gagging. They jumped with a start when they heard the scanner beeping softly.

Scraumudi were coming their way.

"Go, go!" Marc whispered. Ilene leapt through the hole and Marc followed quickly, with the door snapping shut just as he was through. They sat up against the inside wall, waiting for the Scraumudi to pass. Ilene looked as if she was about to vomit, so Marc slapped his hand over her mouth. The Serpents stampeded towards Drækýp as quickly as their many legs could carry them, oblivious to the escaped Humans hiding just inside the wall.

When they had passed Marc let go of Ilene, and she immediately began vomiting. He held back her greasy hair as she was on her hands and knees. For a moment he was alarmed by the blood red colour of her vomit, but realized it was only from the Scraumudi algae. When she had finished she took a moment to observe her surroundings.

The crawlspace was dimly lit, and much narrower than the main passage. Only one person could walk abreast inside. It was also much taller, perhaps several decks high. It was lined with veins and arteries of varying sizes, conveying all sorts of fluids to and fro. Ilene realized that the dim light was coming from the thick nerve strands. Bioluminescent pulses were rapidly being sent back and forth along them. The smell was still awful, but now her stomach was entirely empty, and she had nothing left to throw up.

"It's kind of like on those kids shows, where they shrink down and go inside a person's body," she commented.

"Blades, are you okay?" Marc asked concerned.

"Yeah, I'm fine," she replied. "Let's just get going."

She struggled to her feet, and then took a deep breath. "Just breathe through your mouth. Breath through your mouth," she told herself. "Okay. I'll take point. Come on."

She began to scurry down the foreboding, narrow passage, and Marc followed close behind. Both were careful to make as little noise as possible, and not to touch any of the bizarre extrusions in the walls.

The air was thick in the crawlspace, and the stench was palpable. To Ilene it felt as if the atmosphere was pulsing with the light, and each time it did, it was pounding inside of her head. Each breath was sickening, and she became weak and dizzy. She was surrounded by gushings and drippings and noises more bizarre. Noises like a stomach makes, only heard from the inside. She lost her footing, and stumbled to the soft and spongy ground.

"Blades!" Marc cried softly, bending down to pick her up. "Are you sure you're okay?"

"I don't know. It's just, this place. It's making me sick," she told her. "But you seem all right, so it must all be in my head. It's psychological. I can deal with it. I can get over it. I just need to imagine I'm somewhere else. Problem is I have a terrible imagination. "

"Blades, you can rest for a minute if you need to," Marc said.

"No I can't! The longer we take to do this, the more likely we'll be caught. Then we'll all die," Ilene reminded them both. She pulled herself to her feet. "My family is not going to die because I couldn't take a little biogenic reek! I'm stronger than that! Let's keep going."

In spite of how horrible she felt, Ilene continued plodding through the crawlspace with Marc on her heals. Soon they came to the first junction, a roughly circular room connecting with two other passages. There was also a diagonal shaft between them.

"Helena said the one on the right didn't she?" Ilene whispered. Marc nodded. They turned towards it, but halted immediately when something came out of the shaft. They were seized with terror when they first glimpsed it, fearing it was a Scraumudi, but it was actually something quite different.

It looked like a spider, a foot or so long, with a smooth white carapace. It had six long limbs, seemingly joint-less as though they were slender tentacles. At the end of each limb were five wispy, retractable tendrils. It had relatively large pair of bright blue eyes with two thin proboscises between them. When it saw them it came to a stop as well, and simply stared at them curiously.

"Don't move," Marc whispered.

"What is it?" Ilene asked.

"I don't know," Marc said.

"Do you think maybe it's a pet of some kind?" she asked.

"I don't know," Marc repeated. "I doubt it though. Drækýp said that algae was the only other thing that lived on their ring-world. I think maybe it's a part of the ship."

Marc was right. It was in fact a biot: a biological robot. It was a bioengineered organism just like the ship, designed by the Scraumudi to perform menial, difficult, or dangerous tasks. There were dozens of the little things, scurrying around the ship, doing routine maintenance. Though they all received instructions from the central brain, each was fully autonomous, and they did not send information back to the brain or to each other. The one standing before Marc and Ilene now had already gone over them unnoticed, crawling on the ceiling.

But it had noticed them. It was programmed to offer assistance to any Scraumudi that entered the crawlspace, but were Marc and Ilene Scraumudi? Its simple programming was perplexed, so it went down to investigate. Upon completing its visual inspection, it cautiously approached them.

"Should I step on it?" Ilene asked.

"No! We don't know what will happen. Don't move," Marc ordered. The biot came nearer, and started smelling both of them with its proboscises. Then it started touching them with its tentacles.

"Marc!" Ilene gasped.

"Stay still," Marc ordered. Becoming bolder, it went so far as to actually climb up on them. Ilene shuddered and closed her eyes, but obeyed Marc's orders. The dimwitted biot came to the conclusion that Marc and Ilene were nothing to worry about, as Levanoch was always adding new wetware to his ship. The biot leapt up onto the ceiling, then began to crawl down the passage they had come down. The both sighed with relief.

"That... was creepy. Surreal even," Ilene said. "I'm going to call those things attercops, for future reference."

"Come on, we have to hurry," Marc instructed. "Whatever that thing was, it might report us to the Scraumudi."

When the Scraumudi first began to employ biots, they had been programmed to report anything out of the ordinary to them. This quickly became an inconvenience however, so the biots were reprogrammed to use their own judgement as to whether or not something constituted a threat. After ten thousand years in the Abyss, without any military campaigns, the standards had become so lax that even two unknown life forms loitering in the crawlspace weren't a cause for alarm.

The Scraumudi's long captivity had indeed dulled the teeth of their war machine. Their ships, while still large and powerful, were no longer built for war or holding prisoners, and more often than not were delegated to proverbial milk runs. The soldiers had grown complacent, and their skills had atrophied. The young had no actual combat experience, and the old (in spite of their delusions they would live forever) were simply too old, and time had diminished their prowess.

All of this was most fortunate for the crew of the Deity. Had they been captured ten thousand years ago they would have stood no such chance. The Scraumudi were far more formidable in those ancient days. Even Drækýp himself never escaped from his cell when Levanoch imprisoned him before. Were it not for his people's tessering technology he never would have escaped. This time it was only through the marginal clairvoyance of an otherwise unremarkable Human that had offered him his chance at freedom. Fortunately for them all, Drækýp was not a man to waste an opportunity when presented.

As Marc and Ilene went onward down the passage, the nerve strands sunk into the flesh of the ship, and it became very dark. They could see some light coming from the next junction a hundred or so meters ahead. The backlight of Marc's palm-scanner provided some illumination, but not much. They now had to grope blindly at the wall to keep from walking into it, and they stumbled into each other more than once. As Ilene's hand grazed along the wall, it became caught.

"Marc, Marc I'm stuck," she whispered.

"What?" he asked.

"My hand is stuck in something sticky!" she said. Marc shone his scanner over her left hand, and saw that it was stuck in a mass of something like cobweb.

"Do you think the attercops made these?"

"Maybe, I don't know. Can you pull yourself free?" Marc asked,

"I'll try," she said. She started pulling as hard as she could, and the webbing stretched a little, but it did not break or release her. She stopped suddenly when there was an ominous hissing sound, and a noise like a rattlesnake. The web slowly began to retract upward, pulling her hand up with it.

"Oh no. Marc. Marc!"

Marc grabbed her other arm and started pulling her away from it with as much strength as he could summon. Ilene felt as though she was being pulled apart by two horses, but she did not stop pulling herself away from the web. Finally the silk snapped, sending Marc and Ilene tumbling back into the junction. It was much more brightly lit than the last one, as many nerve strands converged in it as though it were some sort of ganglia. Ilene sat up, groaning and grasping her left arm.

"Are you injured?" Marc asked. She nodded. "Is it broken?"

"No, I think it's dislocated," she told him. Marc knelt down to examine it.

"Yeah it's dislocated. Hold still. I'm going to pop it back in," he said, placing his hands on her. "On three. One, two, three!"

With one swift movement, he popped the bone back into its socket. Ilene grunted, and then began coddling her arm.

"Thank you," she said, climbing to her feet. She peeled the lingering strands of silk off her hand. "Okay, where are we now? The second junction?"

Marc nodded.

"Yeah, we're deep inside the ship now. Far from the corridors," Marc replied. "I'm not picking up any Scraumudi on the palm-scanner. We just have to follow that passage there to the next junction, where we'll find the shaft leading up to the ship's brain."

Ilene nodded, and they started down the last passage. They feared something even worse might be waiting for them down dark corridor, but they came out to the other end without incident. Before them was the shaft leading up to the control room. Ilene approached it cautiously, examining it. She looked at Marc for conformation to open it. Looking up from his palm-scanner, he nodded. Ilene tentatively placed her hand on the white membrane, and it slid open with an alarmingly loud hissing noise. Ilene poked her head into the shaft. The sight of the ominous, oesophageal like tunnel was very daunting to them. It was dark, with only the tiniest amount of light shining down from the top. It led up a hundred meters, just as Helena had told them. A leathery, undulatory tentacle hung down all the way from the top. Ilene slung her rifle over her shoulder, and began to investigate it. She grabbed a firm hold of it and lifted her feet up, to test to see if it could hold her weight. To her surprise, the tentacle began to retract upwards, rapidly carrying her to the top.

"Blades!" Marc shouted as she shot up into the darkness.

In a matter of seconds, she had reached the top. The door in front of her immediately slid open, making an oddly pleasant chiming noise as though it were an ordinary elevator.

Just as Drækýp had said, there was a large, grey brain in the center of the room. It was a meter and a half tall, mushroom shaped, and floating in a translucent vat. It was tethered to the ground by a spinal cord. Standing by a console were two Scraumudi technicians, debating what they should do about Drækýp, apparently oblivious to the errant captive. When they did see her, they merely stared in disbelief, uncomprehending how she had come to be there. These were not soldiers, and they had no weapons. They looked at each other questioningly, as if hoping the other would know what the hell they were supposed to do.

Ilene leapt into the room, and with two quick shots from her rifle she had incapacitated the two unlucky technicians before they could take any action. Her relief was unfortunately short-lived, as she could hear approaching Scraumudi voices on the other side of the room's large door, who had apparently heard the rifle shots.

She glanced down at the rifle's controls. There were two knobs; one to control the nature of the discharge, the other to control its intensity. Ilene didn't know this of course, but she fiddled with them anyway to see if they would do anything. She shot at the wall to see what would happen. By luck or providence, she had found a setting that seemed to cauterize flesh. Thinking fast, she shot along the seam of the door, sealing it shut. Hearing movement behind her, she spun around rapidly and nearly fired, until she saw that it was Marc coming out of the shaft.

"Marc!" she cried in relief. He nodded, but before he could actually say anything they heard angry Scraumudi outside the door. Ilene threw her rifle at Marc.

"You try to take the brain out! I'll watch your ass."

Ilene, now without a weapon, assumed what looked like a martial art stance to guard the door. Of course, Ilene didn't actually know any martial arts. Technically, it was a yoga stance, and Ilene figured yoga was a kind of martial art. At the very least it was tangential.

The Scraumudi were clawing and ramming at the door, and in only a moment they would break through. Realistically, Ilene's weaponized yoga wouldn't hold them back for more than a few seconds, and that was being generous.

Well aware of this, Marc aimed the gun and fired upon the brain. To his dismay, all the discharge did was illuminate the force field protecting the brain for a half second or so.

"Blades, it didn't work!" he cried out alarmed.

"The knobs on the things do shit, just fuck with them until it works!" she instructed, too flustered to be more articulate. The sound of the screaming Scraumudi only meters away was extremely unnerving. Marc turned the top dial (which controlled the power level) as far to the right as it would go. This made the force field glow more brightly and for longer, but no matter how many times he shot it, it wouldn't wear down. On the outside of the room a Scraumudi with a rifle of his own had finally arrived, and shot a hole through the door. Ilene ducked out of the beam's path.

"Marc, quickly!" she shouted. Marc turned the lower dial all the way to the right, but this time the discharge bounced off the force field and nearly took his head off. Marc turned the dial all the way to the left this time, and whispered a quick prayer. On this setting, and on full power, the discharge went right through the force field, puncturing the tank. The disgusting fluid flooded out unto the ground. The brain thudded to the floor and rolled out of the tank. Just as a Scraumudi broke through the door, Marc fired upon the brain, and it splattered all across the room. Suddenly the klaxon stopped, the lights flickered, and all the Scraumudi started to spasm and wail in pain. Within seconds they had all collapsed, and lay unconscious on the floor.

***

The pair of guards standing watch in front of the Prison Bay were paralyzed with terror at the sight of Drækýp speeding towards them. Before they could even point their guns at him, they were telekinetically pulled from their grasp. An intense force pushed them backwards, splattering them against the rear wall like insects on a windshield.

With a swift backwards motion of his arms, Drækýp easily pulled the door off the Prison Bay. He positioned it to provide some measure of defence against incoming fire for the escapees. The hundreds of captive Humans immediately began grouping around the door to see what had happened, and within seconds the news had passed back through the crowd that Drækýp had freed them. While Drækýp remained outside to defend against the imminent Scraumudi onslaught, Helena dashed into the Prison Bay.

"Delansy?" Arachnid asked perplexed. "What the hell's going on?"

"Everybody listen up!" Helena shouted. "I don't have time to explain now, but all the Scraumudi will be rendered unconscious momentarily, and we will only have roughly ten minutes until they wake up again. You all need to get back to the Deity immediately. Drækýp will protect us as we reboard the ship. All able bodies are to report to their posts, and if you were on the task force you need to start apprehending all of the Scraumudi on the Deity. Now go, go, go, go, go! Right down this hall. We won't get another shot at this!"

With an astonishing burst of speed the crew of the Deity stampeded out into and down the hall, and back through the airlock aboard their own vessel. Those who were unable (or unwilling, as in Sophie and Chika's case) to move themselves were carried by one or more of their fellow crewmates. Helena remained by the door, making sure everyone headed the right way.

Drækýp stood firmly in position, his clenched fists held outwards, with three Scraumudi rifles levitating in front of him, ready to fire at any incoming enemies. Even over the noise of the escaping Humans, Drækýp could hear the hissing Scraumudi charging towards him. When the first wave became visible, Drækýp turned the rifles to automatic fire. The trinary beams rendered the narrow hallway a killing field. Most of the Scraumudi fell to the ground, with large portions of their bodies disintegrated, before they could even get off a shot. Drækýp was easily able to deflect what little incoming fire came his way.

The Scraumudi were aghast that a single Reticulan could slay so many of them so easily. He was utterly immune to their weapons. He was a legendary nemesis, and to their horror he was no less powerful than the legends had made him out to be. They would have done the smart thing and fled for their lives, had Levanoch not arrived when he did.

"Don't stop fighting now you maggots!" he berated from the back of the troop. "Keep forcing him to shoot! His guns will soon be powerless at the rate he's firing. Those of you who die now will be resurrected, but if you allow him to live you shall be cast into the Blood Star and condemned to Eternal Death. Keep fighting!"

With that threat spurring them onwards, the Scraumudi did not relent their attack on Drækýp. Levanoch had been right of course. One of Drækýp's rifles soon ceased firing; then the second, and then the third. Thinking him now helpless, they dashed madly towards him, firing wildly. Still, not a single shot so much as singed his robes. The foremost of the Scraumudi pounced towards, screeching. When he was mere inches from his face, Drækýp released a telekinetic wave so powerful it reverberated through the living flesh of the ship. Every single Scraumudi in the corridor was blasted backwards, congealing into a mass of slithering black snakes. Taking advantage of their disorientation, Drækýp focused his will upon every one of their rifles, and caused them to explode. The Scraumudi screamed out in agony as they were enveloped by a searing flash of bright blue light.

Drækýp conjured a vortex of air that lifted him over a meter off the ground. Upon that tornado he charged into the mass of Scraumudi bodies to take out any stragglers. Pieces of carcass were splattered in every direction as he flew passed. He held stationary for a moment, twisting around to see if there were any survivors. Before he could complete his survey, a Scraumudi lunged at him from behind, knocking him off of his air vortex.

It was Levanoch.

Drækýp was too disoriented from the blow to take immediate action. Holding him in place with his left hand, Levanoch raised his right claw, ready to eviscerate the horrid little Grey. Just as Drækýp came to his full senses, Levanoch let out a wretched screech and began convulsing spasmodically.

Within seconds he fell unconscious to the floor.

It took a moment for Drækýp to realize what had just occurred. When he did, he leapt to his feet and ran as quickly as he could towards the airlock.

"Is everyone out?" he asked Helena as he reached the Prison Bay. She nodded.

"Everyone's back on the Deity," she replied.

"Good. I have to get to the bridge. You stay here and wait for Marc and Ilene," he instructed.

"Right," she nodded. She followed Drækýp as far as the airlock. Once he was through, she stepped inside, and there on the very cusp of the umbilical dock, she crouched down and waited for Marc.

Levanoch stirred. He was the most powerful of all the Scraumudi, both in body and mind, so he was the first to awake. He felt weak. He could hardly move. Pain shot all through his body, his carapace felt as if it was burning. His brain felt like it was in a vice, and his vision was distorted. He was very disoriented.

At first, he couldn't even remember what had happened. He tried to rise up, but quickly succumbed to vertigo and fell back to the ground. Dragging himself along the floor, he hoisted himself up to a manual interface, and pressed his fell hand into it.

In the control room, Marc and Ilene stared in disbelief at each other, as a horde of vicious Scraumudi lay unconscious at their feet. Marc was the first to laugh, and Ilene soon joined him. She ran to him and then threw her arms around him.

"We did it!" she cheered.

"We still have to get off this ship," Marc reminded her. He handed her back the rifle and gestured to the shaft. "After you."

Ilene slung the rifle over her shoulder, went to the shaft and slid down the tentacle as if it were a firefighter poll. Marc followed, and upon reaching the floor he bounded out into the crawlspace.

"Marc, over here!" Ilene shouted. "I got the hatch open!"

She had forced open the hatch to the corridor. Marc cautiously stuck out his head and held out his scanner to check for wakeful Scraumudi. He saw none.

"Come on, we don't have much time," he said. With a nod, Ilene jumped out of the hatch, with Marc right behind her.

"Which way do we go?" Ilene asked.

"Follow me!" Marc instructed, and went running down the hall. Ilene, having the longer shanks, was quickly able to catch up, and could easily have surpassed him, but instead she stayed a few paces behind. They passed several Scraumudi lying on the ground, and never saw any more movement than a twitch out of them. Ilene even leapt over one, laughing at it mockingly. Within minutes they had reached the airlock, and saw Helena waiting for them. Her face lit up at the sight of Marc. Rising to her feet, she gestured and called for them to hurry. Now Ilene moved ahead of Marc, but just as she was at the door it began to close. She leapt into the airlock only an instant before it snapped shut, leaving Marc trapped on the other side.

"No!" Helena screamed. She started pounding on the door trying to open it, and she could hear and feel Marc doing the same thing on the other side.

"What the hell happened?" she exclaimed.

"I don't know," Ilene stated. "Move out of the way, I'll blast the door open."

She aimed her rifle and pressed the trigger, but nothing happened. She pressed again and again, but it wouldn't fire. When the brain was destroyed all the rifles automatically returned to their default safety setting, but Ilene didn't know this.

"What the hell! It isn't working!" she cursed.

"Then get up there and find something to open it with!" Helena demanded. Ilene ran up to the vestibule and starting rummaging through it to find anything that would be of help. Helena remained, calling out to Marc.

Her voice was very muffled, but Marc could still faintly hear it.

"Blades! Helena! What happened?" he shouted. He felt a cold shiver run down his spine, and he knew that Levanoch was there. He spun around and saw him slithering towards him. He wasn't able to hold himself fully erect. He was hunched, and looked dishevelled. And he was staggering, wobbling to and fro, as if his many small legs were not working in concert with each other. He had to hold out his arms to keep from crashing into the walls. There was a mad gleam in his eyes, a look of absolute vengeance that had consumed all of his cognitive faculties. He no longer appeared Sapient, but rather like some wild predator honing in on his kill.

"You can't escape," he said hoarsely, drawing nearer and nearer to Marc. "You broke free of your cell, snuck through my ship unheeded, and have thrown its central nervous system into chaos. You've humiliated me and all my kind, but you will get no further. You will not escape. You will pay with your life for the insult you've given me, but not before I've destroyed your mind with cruel arts of agony and torture. Your ship shall not break free of mine, and your crew will suffer the same fate as you. And when at last I am free of this Abyss I vow to you, I will personally oversee the utter eradication of all your sordid breed."

As he drew closer, Marc leapt for one of the dead rifles Drækýp had left behind. Since he had already inferred Ilene's rifle didn't work (otherwise she would have used it), he assumed this one wouldn't either. Without even trying to fire, he swung it like a club, striking Levanoch across the head. Levanoch growled with contempt, and with a powerful swing of his left arm knocked the rifle far from Marc's grasp. As Marc leapt towards the gun, Levanoch rammed him with his head, and he went flying into the wall.

Even in his languid state, Levanoch's strength was awesome. The impact utterly winded Marc, and he could only lie there gasping. Levanoch grabbed him by his changshan, bunching up the fabric enough to expose part of his abdomen. He held him up as high as he could, pressing him against the wall. With great loathing, he plunged his talons into Marc's stomach with such force that it pierced his resilient skin. Marc cried out in alarm as Levanoch pulled his blood-drenched claws from his body. He futilely tried to kick him.

"Yes. Squirm," Levanoch taunted him, before tossing him to the other side of the room like a limp doll. Marc tried to rise under his own power, but failed. "It really didn't have to be this way. We could have been allies. We could have been friends. Instead you have elected to be my enemy. I pity you, for I don't think you truly understood what it means to be my enemy. Now, I must teach you."

Helena could hear Levanoch speaking, but could not understand him. The thought of her beloved in there alone with him terrified her. She had heard Marc scream, and she had heard him being thrown around, and she feared for his life. With tearful eyes and frequent cries of despair, she frantically assaulted the door, trying to open it.

"Out of the way, out of the way!" Ilene shouted as she came running back down the airlock, holding a welding torch in her hand. A long blue flame issued forth from the nozzle, and Ilene held it up to the very top of the door. She dragged it down along the seam as quickly as she could. She was then able to push the two halves apart with a single shove. To her astonishment, Levanoch came lunging at her. She immediately held up the torch, burning his face. He shrieked in agony, madly swatting at his head to put out the flames. He went careening back down the corridor, presumably looking for a Chrysalis.

Ilene and Helena rushed to Marc's side.

"Oh my God, oh my God. Marc you're bleeding," Helena whimpered, though the wounds had in fact already clotted.

"Yeah, saying that isn't going to stop it!" Ilene scolded. They lifted him to his feet, and with Helena holding him up they led him through the airlock. Once they were out of the vestibule Ilene engaged an airtight lockdown of the room, since the airlock doors were gone.

She slammed the com panel nearest to her.

"We're all back, get us the hell out of here!" she ordered.

Just as Drækýp had said, the pink goo that had been clogging the thrusters and weapons had dissolved. With all the particle cannons pointing downwards, the Deity started blasting the hangar door to pieces.

Within seconds, it was gone.

With all the thrusters pointing up, the Deity shot straight down, the tentacles holding her snapping like gossamer filaments.

She was free.

"I've got to get Marc to sickbay," Helena said.

"Blades, you're in command," Marc managed to mutter.

"Hush love, don't talk," Helena said. She led him to sickbay as fast as he was able to walk. Ilene ran for the closest elevator and rapidly punched the button for deck one. As soon as the door opened, she bolted down the hallway to the bridge. She stopped short when she saw a Scraumudi heading her way. Fortunately though, he didn't seem to be taking any notice of her. His hands were clamped against his skull, stumbling about uncontrollably. Ilene realized that Drækýp must have had the ultrasonic siren blaring throughout the ship. With a smile she dodged passed him, and continued down the hall.

When she stepped onto the bridge, she saw the beautiful blackness of open space all around her.

"We're out," she said in disbelief.

"Just in time too. The Scraumudi have already recovered enough to pursue us," Arachnid replied. "They haven't fired anything yet though, but it won't be long before that changes."

"Then why don't we jump to the nearest wormhole and get out of here?" Ilene demanded.

"Because we haven't found one yet," Kamadev told her.

"I was too preoccupied to look for one earlier," Drækýp explained, who was sitting at the observation console. "I'm trying to find one now."

"Where's Captain Spencer?" Arachnid asked.

"In sickbay. I'm in command," Ilene informed her. "Drækýp, how's it coming?"

"I've got one. Bearing 143.95 by 92.38, distance 14 point 3-9-5-0-2-6 million kilometres. Do you see it Kamadev?"

"Aye, plotting a course," Kamadev replied.

"Levanoch's ship just vanished!" Arachnid shouted. "Wait, I got a new sensor contact. Yeah, it's him. He's jumped to the wormhole Drækýp found."

"I'll look for another one," Drækýp said.

"Belay that!" Ilene ordered. "There isn't time. All of this commotion is sure to attract attention from the trillions of other Scraumudi in here. We have to get out of here now. Is that course plotted yet Kumar?"

"Aye ma'am,"

"Then lay it in," she commanded.

"But Levanoch's blocking our path!" Drækýp exclaimed.

"He's still in rough shape, we can get passed him," Ilene claimed. "Just stand by to invert the wormhole on my word, and you better hope it fucking works this time! Kumar!"

"Aye ma'am! Going to hyperluminal in three, two, one!"

As before, the Deity was spirited across millions of kilometres of space in a matter of seconds by a bubble of moving space-time of her own creation. When she dropped back down to sub-light speed, the wormhole was several hundred kilometres away.

Levanoch was jealously guarding its entrance.

"He's right on top of it, and it's not much bigger than his ship is. We can't go around him," Arachnid replied. "His shields are up to. We can't fire at him, unless you want to use the laser turrets again. But I don't think that would do much good. Should we go Cold?"

"Negative," Ilene replied, sitting herself in the Captain's chair. "Kumar, take us straight towards him, full thrust."

"What?" he asked dismayed.

"We're going to ram him, like Randi suggested," Ilene replied.

"Did you miss the part when I explained we wouldn't survive that?" Drækýp demanded.

"We'd both be destroyed, I know. They don't want that anymore more than we do," Ilene replied.

"So what you're saying is we're playing chicken with them?" Arachnid asked incredulously.

Ilene nodded.

"Kumar, full thrust ahead," she ordered. Kamadev shook his head in disapproval.

"I do not see this ending well," he muttered. The Deity began accelerating towards the Bloodwyrm.

"Drækýp, are the field coils set properly this time?" she asked.

"Yes, I'll activate them the instant we enter the wormhole," he replied.

"Levanoch isn't moving," Arachnid reported.

"He still has time, don't worry," Ilene said.

"We're moving at forty kilometres a second and accelerating," Kamadev reminded them. "I estimate we'll be at nearly a hundred kilometres a second when we hit him. That's a hell of a lot of momentum."

"Luckily I don't know a lot about physics, so I'm not too worried," Ilene said. "Keep steady."

"Ma'am, he isn't moving!" Kamadev shouted.

"He will, don't worry," Ilene claimed. Levanoch's leviathan of a vessel hung motionless in space, apparently unheeding the Deity's kamikaze attack. The Deity picked up speed, and the Bloodwyrm drew nearer. The collision seemed unavoidable, but when the Deity was only seconds away, the Bloodwyrm fired a single upward thrust, pushing it just out of the Deity's path.

Ilene gasped with relief and pulled her hand down over her face. Drækýp immediately activate the hyperluminal fields. The boundary of the wormhole began to churn and quiver, and with one great and terrifying lurch its exit was inverted, turning into an entrance. This generated a shockwave that sped down the length of the wormhole, inverting its spatial curvature and transforming its other terminus into an exit. Ilene stared at the holographic dome in bewilderment.

"It worked," she murmured in astonishment. "Drækýp you did it! You turned a wormhole inside out. That's fucking awesome! That's just, fucking, wow!"

"Commander, Levanoch followed us in. He's right behind us," Arachnid reported.

"What? No! We escaped, we're out. It's over! We don't have to deal with him anymore," Ilene whined.

"Tell him that!" Arachnid said. She looked down at the readings she was getting. "Wait a minute. Oh, this is perfect."

"What is?" Ilene asked.

"Their shields are down. I assume it has something to do with the wormhole, or maybe whatever you did to them. They're helpless," Arachnid informed her. "We should take advantage of this and neutralize them with the neutron torpedo."

"Fire away," Ilene consented.

The torpedo couldn't be launched at Levanoch's ship since nothing could travel backwards through the wormhole. It was merely released and the Bloodwyrm helplessly crashed into it. The explosion was visually unimpressive and did little physical damage, but the impact seemed to render the entire ship lifeless. It failed to keep up with the Deity and started wobbling on its axis.

Ilene opened her mouth to ask for a report, but before she could get a word out a tremor passed through the Deity.

"What was that? Are they returning fire?" she asked.

"No, it's the wormhole," Drækýp explained. "It's...bifurcating."

"What?" Ilene asked in bemusement.

"It's splitting in two," Drækýp replied softly, staring at his console in amazement.

"Do wormholes do that?" Arachnid asked.

"This one does, apparently," Drækýp replied. A secondary wormhole had diverged from the main tunnel. While the Deity kept straight and true, the Bloodwyrm drifted down the divergent path, out of their sight.

"What happened to them?" Ilene asked. "Where did they go?"

"I don't know," Drækýp replied candidly.

"Did they go back into the Abyss?" Arachnid asked.

"I doubt it. The wormhole is still outgoing. I would assume that they would exit somewhere in the dust cloud, just as we should," Drækýp said.

"Did they cause the wormhole to split in two like that?" Arachnid asked.

"I doubt that as well. The neutron torpedo severely damaged their systems. It will take days for the damage to be repaired," he told her. "Although I should like to refrain from making assumptions, I would guess that my inverting the wormhole was somehow correlated to its bifurcation, as both events were totally unprecedented."

"We're coming back into normal space now," Kumar announced. The Deity shot out of the wormhole and back into the vast and magnificent Universe, but something was wrong. The stars around them were much too bright, and there was a sprawling mauve nebula very near to them. They couldn't possibly be in the dust cloud. Ilene squinted in confusion at what she was seeing.

"Where are we? Are we in the Milky Way?" she asked.

"I don't think so. I don't recognize that nebula," Arachnid said.

"Neither does the computer," Drækýp stated. "It's not in our database."

"How is that possible?" Ilene asked. "Kumar, I need to know where we are."

"I'm working on it," he said. After a moment of silence, he muttered "Oh shit."

"What is it?" Ilene asked.

"I have a general fix on our location. You're not going to like it," he claimed. "If I'm right, we're in a spiral galaxy somewhere in the Bootes Supercluster, over nine hundred million light-years from the Milky Way."

"The Bootes Supercluster?" Ilene said incredulously.

"That's nearly ten times further away from home than any Human has ever been." Arachnid said. "We don't even have any probes out this far."

"It would take years to get back home," Ilene said softly.

"What about the Bootes void?" Arachnid asked. "It's two hundred and fifty million lightyears across. It will be too barren for us to refuel, and our tanks can't even hold enough catalyzer to get us out of the Virgo Supercluster. Plus there are the Hordes of Insmyth that hunt on the fringes of the Virgo Supercluster, and God knows whatever nightmarish horrors lie between here and there. We're stuck here."

"Arachnid is right. We mustn't enter the Great Void," Drækýp warned. "Dark as it is, it is not empty. We cannot pass through it."

Ilene shook her head sadly.

"So we're lost in space? How cliché," she commented. " 'Oh we're doomed, doomed!' " she added caustically.

"Everything's cliché in outer space. It's best just to embrace it," Drækýp suggested. She merely sighed.

"Drækýp, how did you manage this?" she asked.

"I honestly don't know," he told her. "As I said earlier, what I did was totally unprecedented. I couldn't have predicted this would happen."

"Yeah, well I'm the one who's going to get flak for this Drækýp," she claimed. "They're not going to blame you because you're you, and you got us out of the Abyss. But some one still has to be blamed for us being in the goddamn Bootes Supercluster, and because I'm the second in command, and the acting captain at the time, it's going to be me! It figures. I'm in command for five minutes and I end up getting us all hopelessly stranded."  
"I wouldn't say that it's hopeless Commander," Drækýp interjected. "My people have vessels capable of reaching us and taking us back to the Milky Way relatively quickly."

"But we can't hail them. Our quantum transceiver doesn't have that kind of range," Ilene told him.

"I believe that I can design a device that may allow me to contact my people," Drækýp claimed. "But first we must locate Levanoch."

"I can't find him or the other wormhole anywhere on my tach-scan," Arachnid replied.

"That thing has a five thousand lightyear range," Ilene said.

"And they're not in it," Arachnid said grimly.

"Then we'll have to plot a search grid; comb this entire galaxy," Drækýp said.

"How do you even know they ended up anywhere near us?" Arachnid demanded. "They could literally be anywhere in the Universe."

"That's a possibility, but I believe it's likely that they came out in this galaxy just as we did," Drækýp told her.

"What about the wormhole we just came through?" Ilene asked. Drækýp took some readings from his console.

"It's already collapsing," he replied. "We won't have to worry about any more Scraumudi escaping their Abyss."

"Well we still have God knows how many Scraumudi loose on the ship. I have to go and deal with that," Arachnid said wearily before leaving the bridge.

"As for myself, I would like to go to sickbay to see if anything can be done for these oozing wounds on the side of my head," Drækýp said. "If I may have your leave, Commander?"

Ilene nodded.

"Yeah, go ahead," she replied. She sighed and buried her face in the palm of her hand. "One billion freaking light years off course. We're never taking directions from him again."

#  Author's Afterword

Thanks for reading the first part of Cosmic Exile! If you enjoyed it then please show your support by rating, reviewing, and liking. You can get the rest of the trilogy on  Smashwords right now.

If you'd like to get in touch with me you can send me a tweet at twitter.com/CaptainRorrick. You can also check out my blog sanctumofvespertine.blogspot.ca.

Yours Truly, Armand Vespertine
