QXE-1N
Detorid
YC121 18:00 Galaxy Standard Time
Fortizar "Evelyn", Veritas Corporation HQ
The capsuleer awoke with a start in a mess of warm gel and fuzzy light. His head throbbed with pain, the feverish result of the rapid neural growth that had occurred in the last few seconds. He felt sticky, burning goo in his lungs and instinctively retched, his body convulsing to expel the foreign substance. A faint, obscured whir penetrated the cocoon of gummy substance as the clone vat's lid disengaged, spilling the capsuleer out in a tangle of wire, slime and limbs.
Translucent, slightly green liquid spattered onto the grilles on the floor as the capsuleer choked and shivered, the gel on his skin rapidly evaporating under blueish fluorescent lights humming with liminal consistency. Brushing the last bits of gunk off his skin, the capsuleer stood unevenly, leaning against the clone vat that had spat him out in that moment of obscene birth, and clawed at his head with his hand. His skull was warm to the touch-too warm.
"Sir?"
The capsuleer angled his head to the side to see a small woman peering fearfully at him, a towel clutched in both of her hands. She was clad in a white lab coat, a small pin on the lapel fashioned after the shape of twin-helixed DNA. A clone bay attendant. The only breed of humans to see his kind in this state, at their weakest, most pathetic, crouched on the floor, naked like children and covered in the discharge of their unnatural birth. The eunuchs of the stellar demigods, cringing, weak, dependent entirely on the pod pilots for their livelihoods, and in many cases-their very lives. For this reason the capsuleer did not feel at all uncomfortable at this particular person seeing him bare and unclothed.
The capsuleer stood straight with some effort, letting the attendant drape the towel over him like he was a monarch of old-except, of course, the fabric it was made of was coarse, thin, and apt to tear easily. Disposable, like so many things in this galaxy-materials, ships, lives. After it had served its purpose, it would, like so many others, be discarded, incinerated within seconds by a roaring furnace and then flushed out into space, its burnt remnants floating, frozen in the cold light of a star.
The entire room rumbled and the capsuleer staggered to the side, his newly formed cerebellum still not functioning fully. The attendant caught him, her smaller frame straining to support his weight. Through the lab coat the capsuleer could feel every single muscle in her body straining, stiff and rigid.
Oh yes, outside-
Memories flooded through the capsuleer's mind. A red Atron-class frigate slicing through space like a knife, screaming at breakneck speed as its microwarpdrive heated up, thermal couplings melting, alarms going off as he watched his ship cut swiftly forward from a distanced, detached, uninvested. The whir of warp scramblers powering up and the crackle of stasis webifiers.
And then-a brace of crimson lasers fired from a gleaming hull of gold and white, the bubbling of red-hot armor plating-and then white-hot wreckage, a soundless, infinitely bright explosion-and then nothing.
The room continued to rumble, dull thunks echoing and rocking the world back and forth. Fluorescent lights flickered under the assault, giving the room a ghastly, garish tone. The capsuleer stepped back, finally coming to rest on his feet as he pulled the towel tightly around himself, deep breaths, in and out, in and-
"Sir? Are you alright?"
The woman was eyeing him fearfully, standing as if she needed to make a break for it at any moment. Another impact careened into them, so hard that the capsuleer felt the shockwave pass through his body-his organs lifting up, then dropping down again, his head spinning as the fluid in his ears pulsed in sync with the shockwave. The attendant staggered back, her hands instinctively clutching at her head.
A Fortizar Citadel is over a hundred kilometres in length. Should the hull be breached, the magnetic containment system for the helium-4 in the quantum core fluid routers will fail in less than ten minutes. Once the field is removed, the superfluid properties of the helium is no longer able to be controlled, and it will leak through the molecules of the router chambers. Upon being exposed to normal temperatures, all eighteen thousand tonnes of liquid will boil instantly, expanding to over 700 times its normal resulting pressure wave is capable of tearing even reinforced bulkheads open. The normal time from hull breach to total implosion is normally less than half an hour.
Thirty minutes. At running speed, a normal human would perhaps cover five kilometres on flat ground. In the bowels of a station, connected to the outside by myriad stairs and airlocks-the chances of reaching an escape pod were close to zero.
Another shockwave. The attendant glanced around nervously, cringing, weak, dependent on-
On the battle the capsuleer knew was raging outside this very moment. The hull was already beginning to give way, he knew. He had last seen it at just over fifty percent integrity. And when it finally tore open and the cold void rushed in, lights dying in showers of orange sparks, the scream of rushing air drowning out the cries of the doomed. And then the gigantic spherical core of the station exploding, helium expanding outwards as it escaped from its prison, molecules tunneling through cracks too small to fit through like a bad joke of physics and then boiling instantly, expanding, the invisible, deadly cloud tearing through the station, ripping through steel like paper, electric cable snapping and writhing like angry snakes, support struts bent like broken fingers-
And then everyone, everything. Civilians, attendants, workers, man and machine alike, flushed out into space, their burnt remnants floating, frozen in the cold light of a star.
It had happened before. Hundreds of thousands of lives, snuffed out in a single instance by blazing bright lances, by the thunderous cyclones of missiles, by the whims of a god-child.
It had happened before. People whose faces the capsuleer knew but whose names eluded him now, incinerated into memory, the capsuleer sitting numbly, covered in the discharge from his obscene rebirth in a room in a station orbiting a moon of a planet in a system light-years away, staring hollowly at the wall as he tried to recall a syllable, a sound, anything, because there are some things even a god cannot do.
It had happened before, so many names and faces and people that he would carry with him beyond death, life after life, until he would eventually grow so old that his mind could no longer be cloned.
All things must end one day. For some, the moment comes sooner than others.
"Sir? Do you need… anything?"
The attendant was scared. Of what, the capsuleer was not aware. He would not be surprised if she was scared of him, of this deathless madman, squandering lives like pieces on a board. He would not be surprised if she looked at him the way a sniveling subject bows before their god, aware that they can be broken by a thought and a gesture. Because it was, to some extent, true. But-
He never wanted to be a god. He just…
Now that the capsuleer thought about it, he could not remember exactly what it was that led him to this mad swirl of a life, where every day was marked by the silent flashes of weaponry, the humming of engines, the extinguishing of lives-if he even remembered what the word meant.
It had happened before. Nameless crewmen slaughtered like livestock in the bubbling of red-hot armor plating, white-hot wreckage, and soundless, infinitely bright explosions.
The capsuleer knew that this battle would not matter. No matter the outcome, sheer millions would still die in the months to come, sacrificed like playing cards on the dinner table of the demiurges of war.
The capsuleer knew that it was foolish, and hypocritical, and every bad thing for him to believe that he could save those without the fortune of a replicated mind, for the simple reason that he was not like them. He would never be like them again. He had shed that part of himself a long time ago.
The capsuleer knew that by fighting, he was simply rearranging the order of execution of every single person on the station.
But the capsuleer also knew that this attendant, this innocent human being, was afraid and mortal and only wanted to live another day.
The capsuleer knew that he still had to do it. Because even if there are things a god cannot do, still he goes on, because an immortal has to at least try.
"I want you to prepare the Megathron in my hangar. Alert the crewmen. I want the ship flight ready in ten minutes."
The attendant scurried off, grateful to be relieved of the pilot's presence. The capsuleer made his own way down to his quarters to ready himself for war, his mind consumed with foreboding thoughts of the bloodshed to come.
