The Invictus dropped out of hyperwarp as the Assault Cruiser entered the gravity well of Beta Capricornus' stars. Her Bridge crew were all assembled and seated, following the ship's progress on the System Map as their Pilot, Jade, brought them in towards the planet they were there to do business on.
"I stand corrected. 2 days from the border to here. My apologies, Alyssa," Irillith Valaden said from her Intelligence station with a nod of respect towards the Navigator.
"Well, if you spent your whole life being told the Maliri were the best at everything, suddenly being on a ship 3x faster than your capital ships in hyperwarp would seem like a joke, I suppose," Alyssa shrugged. "Apology accepted but unnecessary, Irillith."
*Bless my heart, are you two warming up to each other?* John teased his Matriarch through the chorus.
*I can literally feel her emotional core becoming less a negative prickly thornbush and more a sweet bouquet of roses every time you give her a dose,* Alyssa responded in all seriousness. *She actually meant that apology, when just 2 days ago it would have been completely fake. I'm merely rewarding good behavior.*
John focused on his active connection with Irillith from 'lunch' an hour earlier and how he was intentionally trying to introduce positive energy into her psyche. It was surprisingly draining, and John had a new appreciation for how lovely and well-functioning all his previous Angels had already been once he'd started trying to 'heal' Irillith's mangled mind. He had over half a century of fear, anger, pain, and hate he had to clean out and process on the Maliri noblewoman's behalf in order to, quite frankly, cure her of the bitch virus.
Jade pulled them into orbit around the right planet, labeled on the map they'd downloaded from House Valaden's intranet as 'Quanthos'.
"Ok, so we're here. Now, Irillith, let's go to the Briefing Room and you can lay out the exact gameplan of us planting the bomb," John ordered out loud for Irillith's benefit. He'd given her Telepathy, but she had the least practice or power out of all of them and didn't even have enough mind-boxes to maintain an active connection to everyone at once. To be fair, she'd been completely untrained and John was focused more on her mind than her psychic reserves with each dose.
"Very well," Irillith said, getting up. She'd maintained her habit of wearing fine, floor-length dresses since coming aboard, apparently that just was either the standard or the current fashion for your average House Valaden noblewoman. The blue-skinned Thrall walked to the adjacent Briefing Room, the rest of the crew following after her. Once everyone was seated at their proper place at the long table-shaped console, Irilith got to work. She used her login and clearance to pull up 'Operation: Fulmanax' from her House's military archives and started the presentation after a quick review of the data.
"The Fulmanax are a species of violent fungoids who naturally evolved on the planet Quanthos. Like most fungoids, they prefer the dark and damp and thus their main nest, quite possibly the area they first evolved, is in a cave system beneath a dormant volcano," Irillith said, pulling up a Planetary Map of Quanthos and zooming in on the right mountain. She started a virtual tour based on scans and previous Maliri scouting missions. "We will follow the main tunnel from the surface entrance, and eventually reach this central chamber. We need to somehow get from here," Irillith highlighted a particular point on the holo-map, "to here." She indicated a spot a couple 'rooms' away from the main chamber. "Based on geological scans, this is where the magnesium veins are thickest and the ideal point for the incendiary device to trigger a runaway reaction that will ignite the volcano. The timer on the device is set for 10 minutes. We set it, prime it, and then return to the surface and get clear. All the while fending off the Fulmanax."
"What exactly are the Fulmanax? Do you have DNA, autopsy results, scans, anything?" Rachel asked.
Irillith's brow twitched in annoyance, but she pulled up the relevant data. "These are the two most common examples of the Fulmanax the Maliri have encountered, though it's unclear exactly how many different subspecies there are," Irillith said, pulling up 2 holograms. "Far as we can surmise, these smaller, 3-legged things are drones to carry food and supplies from place to place. The living toadstools with faces are the Warrior caste. Their strength, speed, and durability are superior to Maliri across the board, hence how it was so easy for them to slaughter the first round of colonists."
Rachel read all of the holo-screens Irillith pulled up like lightning. "They're a hive-mind," she realized. "They don't even have proper brains, just an enlarged ganglion right there," the doctor pointed at a spot on the rotating holo-model of a Fulmanax Warrior. "Kill point to aim for, cut them off from whatever fungus-based intelligence is controlling them and they're like puppets without strings."
"So, in summary, we're going to break into their home, fight our way in and out, and leave it to burn down behind us," Jonah said with a certain dark humor.
"I can't do this," Zanthus sighed. "I'm sorry, I just can't. I'm not really an Ashanath anymore, and I knew I'd be signing up for the Progenitor War. But this is genocide, plain and simple. We're exterminating the species just because Edraele Valaden told us we had to so she would deign to meet with John. I won't take part in this unless you order me, John."
"I'll respect that, Zanthus. And if any of the rest of you have strong moral reasons for wanting to abstain from this operation, you can do the same. But just remember that the less of us that go down there, the less chance we'll all come back," John said, kind but firm.
"It would be foolish to leave the Invictus completely unguarded and unmanned while we all went down there. No offense to Irillith or House Valaden, but I wouldn't feel comfortable. Plus my power has the least application for direct combat such as this," Calara spoke up. "How about Zanthus and I stay up here just in case of a Maliri ambush?"
"Any House Valaden ship that attacked the Invictus would see all its crew executed after months of torture when my mother found out," Irillith said with a shrug. "But there are known cases of stealth missions into other House territories, and any of the other 18 Houses that spotted a non-Maliri craft this deep in the Regency would attack on sight just on principle. There actually is a certain logic in leaving a skeleton crew up here on the ship."
"Calara to fire the guns, Zanthus as emergency pilot, the Engineers since they're non-combatants. Anyone else want to sit out?" John offered the table.
No one else volunteered.
"Well, then, let's suit up," John said.
The crew one and all got up and moved to the Equipping Frames there in the Briefing Room. Irillith watched in disbelief as the robotic arms covered them head to toe in their respective Paragon Armor models and they walked out a mere 10 seconds later.
"Oh, Irillith needs a lesson for her own suit," Jade realized while the others went to grab their Punisher Railguns and, in John's case, his Alyssium sword.
"I can use my own armor," Irillith said, though she clearly was interested in the shinier model of the Paragon Armor compared to her personal Maliri suit.
"Nonsense, the Paragon suits are for the crew. You're part of the crew, right? So come on! Oh, but you'll probably want to change into a body-sleeve first," the Nymph said brightly. A quick trip to Deck 2 to change, and Jade led Irillith over to an Equipping Frame that still held a female suit. "Feet in the boots, hands in the gauntlets. Hit the button to get covered, then press your right thumb to the base of your pinky to lock it in place."
Irillith marveled at the experience as the armor seemed to envelop her seamlessly in a timeframe that she would have considered a dream before today. Doing the odd hand motion, she heard a series of clicks and realized the armor used some sort of latch-and-hook design. Ingenious, probably Dana's idea. The redhead really was scarily intelligent. If her focus had been on software and hacking instead of engineering, Irillith might well have met her match.
"Now, the others are waiting for us down in the Raptor, let's go!" Jade said to Irillith as she went to grab her Maliri Laser Rifle.
"Why aren't you armed or in armor?" Irillith asked Jade, realizing the alien woman was still in a light sundress.
"Mael'nerak made it so Nymphs can't directly pick up weapons, probably to avoid a coup or something," Jade sighed. "Besides, with my Shapeshifting, armor would just get in the way. I'll be fine, don't worry."
A trip to the grav-tubes to Deck 9, and then the Angels were all in the Cockpit of the Raptor while the Ashanath Marines waited on the lower deck. Irillith had fetched the incendiary device from the Cargo Bay and it floated on an anti-grav sled where she waited in the bay with the dozen Grays.
Jade loaded up the flightpath down to the Fulmanax's volcano and then she took them off with her typical speed and grace. In a matter of minutes, they'd entered the atmosphere and were landing gently in a clearing in front of the massive cave entrance into the tunnels below the sleeping fire mountain.
"Everyone, formation around the device. Irillith, take point with me, you're the most familiar with the nest," John ordered through the group comm channel once everyone had disembarked from the Raptor.
Everyone moved in fluid sync, hours of training leading up to this one operation. When all 21 of them were ready, the Invictus ground team entered the cave.
It was a steady forward decline, the sounds of their Alyssium boots against the stone echoing. Only Jade on her Tiger feet was silent. To John's surprise, it actually got brighter the further they got from the entrance and natural daylight. Some kind of bioluminescent moss seemed to have proliferated generously throughout the cave system, providing patches of spotlight-quality lighting to illuminate the cave. They passed a number of side tunnels, but Irillith kept them going down the main tunnel.
Condensation and water vapor got thicker and thicker until they were all but walking through mist by the time they finally reached the entrance to the nest proper.
"This is something akin to a farm," Irillith explained through comms, unable to contact the chorus in full yet. She indicated the massive forest of mushrooms, some reaching over 100 meters in height, and the teams of Fulmanax Warriors and Drones working on using their claws to fell and then chop into chunks each mushroom. "Hideous, aren't they?" she couldn't help but add when everyone focused on the nearby Fulmanax.
John didn't like to be judgy, but he had to agree with the Maliri woman's sentiment. All the Fulmanax were made up of fibrous white tissue colored with green or brown flashes that coalesced into the effect of looking like semi-solid pus in motion. The Drones were asymmetric lumps with 3 stumps they somehow rolled in a way to manage fluid motion that was downright eerie, each as big as a large dog. The Warriors were about 8 feet tall, and had 3 legs, 2 arms that ended in very sharp claws, 4 asymmetric eyes over a gaping mouth full of teeth, and their heads were capped with red plumes with sickly yellow spots. They certainly looked like monstrous predators.
"Will they attack us on sight or can we try to move closer to the target location?" John asked, no-nonsense.
"As Rachel pointed out, they're not the brightest bulbs, just puppets for whatever mastermind Fulmanax is resting somewhere. If we don't disturb them in whatever task they're doing, they'll ignore us. The further in we get, though, the more likely the alarm will spontaneously be raised once we're deemed threats," Irillith laid out.
"Then everyone, down the ramp and try not to touch anything," John laid out.
They went down the curving walkway around the edge of the 'farm' cave and through a 'door' made of fused stalagmites and stalactites into the main chamber.
"Holy fuck," Dana breathed.
It was a truly massive cave, almost big enough to have its own weather in John's estimation. Throngs of Fulmanax marched in rank and file on their way on the lower level, while the upper level consisted of a series of natural bridges from various points of the cave to others.
"We need to get over there," Irillith pointed to a particular ledge almost directly across from them.
John plotted the route via the bridges, and then the team took off.
"You're sure they're violent? Because they seem to just be ignoring us," Lirrash asked Irillith after a solid 10 minutes of carefully walking on water-slick stone.
"I can show you the videos and figures on Maliri casualties later if you so desire," Irillith said scathingly. "Trust me, when roused, they're a force to be reckoned with, and this is the quiet before the storm."
John focused ahead and cursed. "Damn, a line of Drones is coming our way. Lauren, think you can get them to about-face?"
The blonde shopgirl turned Angel moved to the front and focused. Her eyes began to glow golden-brown as she reached out and tried to Influence the Drones to stop and then reverse direction. She succeeded in getting them to stop, but then howls and screams started to echo throughout the chamber. "Crap… I don't think the Fulmanax Hive likes to share their toys," Lauren grit out as she felt a surge in resistance from the Drones before they all spontaneously dropped dead to the floor.
"We've got movement!" Alyssa called out, seeing masses upon masses of Warriors and Drones start to surge up natural ladders towards either end of the bridge they were on.
John realized they were about to be in deep shit and made plans as fast as he could. "Jade, clear the way to the end of the bridge! Everyone, keep pace and cover our rear! Move it, everyone!"
Jade ran to a spot in front of them all on the Bridge before disappearing in a shimmer of green light. When her form solidified once more, she'd gone from a 600 lb Tiger to a 4 ton Elephant. Her skin coming alive with Electrokinetic Shields to protect her vulnerable flesh, the Jade Elephant charged forward, knocking all Fulmanax in her path or simply crushing them beneath her feet.
John, Irillith, the sled, and the rest of the team followed after Jade as fast as they could, taking regular breaks to form a firing line and clear out some of the rampaging Fulmanax that were starting to charge from the other end of the Bridge. But between the power of Dana's best weapons and a little psionic assistance, they safely made it to the end of the Bridge.
"Irillith, get us where we need to be!" John ordered, stopping to fire his Punisher Railgun at a Warrior getting a little too close for his liking.
Keeping her cool in the midst of chaos, Irillith recalled the layout of the cave system in her mind and oriented based on their current location. "Follow me!" she called out to everyone before heading towards a massive arch that led into a different section of the cave.
"The Drones are throwing rocks!" Jonah warned, dodging one bowling ball-sized boulder flung at his head.
"On it!" Alyssa called, raising Psychic Shields in a half-dome over the whole team. They could still fire at the charging Warriors, but all the rocks would bounce off the hexagons from any Drones playing catapult.
The Marines were silent, merely using their brand-new Justice Rifles to shoot searing blue bolts of irradiated light at the charging Warriors to devastating effect. Irillith, in the chaos, didn't notice how the Ashanath military team's weapons were eerily similar to her own.
Irillith led them into a new chamber. Like the earlier one, it had two levels. It seemed to be almost a ring around a giant pit, in which was a massive pile of glowing white fungus. Irillith led them to a particular spot, and then turned to John. "Lift the device and plant it here! I'll initiate the countdown and then we need to run like hell back to the surface!"
John was about to do just that, when the ground started to tremble. As if a giant were stomping towards them. By some instinct, he looked to the other end of the chamber. A Warrior seemed to stomp in, though it was scaled up so it was over 20x as big as the standard one.
"Fuck, the Sentinel!" Irillith growled. "We need to retreat, there's no way we can take it down!"
John, ignoring his newest Angel, put his Railgun into rest position while he drew his sword. He focused, and eldritch blue flames shimmering with heat appeared along the white length of the metal. He went into his stance for an overhead strike. "You shall not harm my family," he said almost to himself.
The Fulmanax Sentinel roared in fury and started to charge towards the invaders to crush them like insects.
John gathered all his psychic reserves, funneling the sum total of his energy into this one attack. Then, with a battlecry, he stepped forward and gave a slash. A wave of mixed Telekinetic force and Pyrokinetic flame shot through the air, flying towards the Sentinel. The sharpened crescent of fire impacted the Sentinel. It continued charging for a couple steps, before the two halves of it fell apart and started to slowly burn to ash.
John sheathed his sword and turned back towards his team. Irillith looked in danger of fainting. The others shot him looks of pride or admiration. The Fulmanax that had been charging towards them all froze, before turning tail and fleeing from the clearly superior force.
"Now, let's plant this bomb and get the fuck out of here," John said, feeling Jonah and Alyssa draw spare energy from everyone in the network and funnel it to his own depleted reserves. *Thanks handsome, honey,* he wished them privately.
With little ado, they set the incendiary device and then retraced their steps at speed. The Fulmanax had fully transitioned from 'fight' to 'flight' and gave them no trouble as they worked as fast as they could to return to the surface. The Raptor was just flying away towards outer space when there was a plume of magma from the top of the mountain. The device had ignited, and like an electric shock to a heart had revitalized the volcano. The whole cave system underneath was now consumed with magma flow and superheated air, obliterating almost every trace of the Fulmanax on Quanthos.
"It is done," Irillith said. "I'll report to my mother that the Fulmanax are destroyed at your hand. Alyssa, how soon from here to Epsilon Aquarii?"
"We'll be there tomorrow morning," Alyssa said after calculating the route.
"I'll inform her to be expecting us," Irillith nodded.
They returned to the Invictus and went to the Briefing Room to get unarmored. Irillith went to her room to contact Edraele on her personal console while the rest of the crew decided to relax in the Lounge and get an early start on dinner.
Irillith sat on her bed with her personal console. She mentally rehearsed as best she could what to say to her mother, who was always a bit unpredictable. As prepared as possible, she opened a comm link to her mother's office in the palace on Valaden.
The frowning form of her mother appeared on the vid-screen. It turned a mite confused. "Irillith, what have you done to your hair?"
Irillith had been planning this lie for over a day, so she smoothly said "It's an interesting story, Mother. Apparently, Tashana's tales of Progenitor healing ability were not an exaggeration. If anything, she didn't find the full evidence of their power. John Blake knew from the moment we met that I had a brain tumor. Rather alarming to learn, you might imagine. And yet, supposedly from the goodness of his heart, he offered to heal me. The change in my hair color from black to white is a side-effect of being touched by his powers."
Edraele was one of the best liars in the Maliri Regency, and yet she couldn't hide a flash of desperation in her purple eyes from her own daughter. "Oh… well, how lucky we are that he caught it before you were lost to us. Still, I want a full scan of your body sent to me with haste so that I may verify with my doctors that he did nothing untoward while 'curing' your cancer."
Irillith was about to play dumb and go along with her mother's orders, when she felt a curious sense of confidence well up from deep within. "Mother, let's be honest with each other. This is why Grandmother killed herself. This is why you were so interested in Tashana's stories of Progenitors. The Eldritch Bloodline provides power, but the cost is the cancer, don't deny it. The reason you want to meet John Blake is so he can do for you what he did for me, remove the tumor."
Edraele narrowed her eyes as her face got a pinched look of disdain. "You're not wrong, Irillith, and I didn't raise you to be unintelligent. Still, rather presumptuous of you to talk to me like this."
"My apologies," Irillith bowed her head. "Must be the adrenaline. I'm calling in the wake of the Fulmanax attack, and I suppose I'm not in my right mind at present."
"How could that be? You were just at Geniya 2 days ago!" Edraele frowned.
"Ashanath Tachyon Drive technology was based off an original Progenitor example, as it turns out. The Invictus might be a Terran Federation vessel, but the technology within her is of the same level as Mael'nerak's. With a Progenitor Tachyon Drive, not to mention a rather talented Navigator, it took barely more than 48 hours from Theta Aquarii to Beta Capricornus," Irillith revealed.
"Extraordinary. That'll come in handy when we steal it. So, the Progenitor was successful? This John Blake?" Edraele asked with interest, moving past Irillith being a bit too casual with her… for now.
"He felled the Sentinel himself. With a single attack. He's… he's so powerful, Mother. More powerful than anyone I've ever met," Irillith found herself saying.
"Hmm, so the legends are true," Edraele mused. "Well, in that case, I'm most eager for an audience with him. How soon will he be here, with this fabulously advanced Tachyon Drive?"
"Midmorning tomorrow, local time on Valaden," Irillith reported.
"Wonderful," Edraele grinned. "Have them land at the spaceport at Melfelas. Then I want you to come to me and give a full debrief before you go back to escort him to me. I'll need a little time to prepare before I meet a Progenitor in the flesh."
Irillith could well imagine what her mother was scheming. She'd seduced her and Tashana's father, a nobleman with as much power as any male could have in the Regency, away from his own family when she set her sights on him. Edraele probably thought she could bat her eyes and shimmy her chest and have John drooling and begging to cure her cancer and then be her loyal attack dog in conquering the other Noble Houses. Failing that, she could just use her Telepathic talent to mind-rape John into compliance. Holding the crew hostage went without saying. The very idea of such an attempt to overpower or bamboozle or otherwise pull one over on the crew of the Invictus was… funny.
"As you will, Mother," Irillith bowed, suppressing the urge to laugh.
"Don't fail me, Irillith," was Edraele's parting command before ending the call.
Irillith tucked her console away and went down to the Lounge. She found the majority of the crew relaxing on the couches with drinks.
"Irillith! What can I get you?" John asked, at the bar preparing drinks for everyone before sending them over with Telekinesis.
"I do believe champagne or some other form of sparkling wine is appropriate for a celebration of a great success," Irillith said. "Or so all the old Terran media I used to watch led me to believe."
"You watched Terran shows and movies?" Calara asked curiously.
"As you might imagine, the Maliri Regency doesn't hold entertainment as a high priority. The closest thing we have to sitcoms or action holos are indoctrination videos we make children watch and old military archive footage," Irillith said. She was still feeling curiously light and ebullient. "Most Maliri learn how to pirate all the latest stuff from the Terran Federation and get their daily quota of fun or amusement from that."
"What has you in such a good mood?" Alyssa asked, looking at Irillith with a knowing look. Irillith knew that Matriarch had a direct line to Irillith's emotions, if not her thoughts. They'd yet to 'Bond' after all.
"Just an epiphany, or maybe more a blinding flash of the obvious," Irillith said.
"Which would be?" John asked, even as he popped the cork on a bottle of bubbly and started to fill a flute for Irillith.
"You're stronger than my mother. In joining the crew, I'm now under your protection instead of under her thumb," Irillith said, almost drunk on the release of a lifetime of stress as she truly felt safe for the first time since she could remember. "I shouldn't trust you as much as I do, but I do. That's probably you using your psychic powers to rewrite my mind, but I can't seem to care. Nothing else seems to matter other than the fact that I'm FREE of Matriarch Edraele Valaden. She can't hurt me any more." Irillith found herself bursting into peals of breathy giggles, an unforgivably girlish sound but it felt too damn good to stop.
John abandoned the drinks to go and pull Irillith into a hug. Irillith found herself snuggling into those big, strong arms, still dizzy with relief as there seemed to be a tectonic shift in her whole worldview. The most powerful person in her world wasn't the evil Edraele anymore. It was the just, good, kind John Blake.
"Shh, shh, let it out. You're safe with me. You're safe with us. Just be, honey," John said softly into her ear.
Irillith laughed until she cried, and when she finally couldn't laugh anymore she felt light as a feather, like she could float away with the wind. She looked up at John, who was looking down at her with tender concern. "She thinks she can beat you. She has no idea," Irillith said breathlessly. "You'll put her in her place and become our King and fix everything."
"That's the plan," John nodded with a grin.
"I can hardly wait," Irillith beamed, beamed like she hadn't since she was a little girl playing with Father and Tashana.
John slowly let her go, going to fetch her drink. He handed the champagne flute to her and clinked his own tumbler of whiskey with it. "To the future of the Maliri," John toasted.
"To the dynasty of King Blake," Irillith chuckled before downing her whole drink with one swallow.
*Um, what just happened?* Dana asked, watching the whole episode in silence up until now.
*From what I can tell, seeing John oneshot the Sentinel kind of broke her mind a smidge. Then something Edraele said or did was enough to make it click that she's not really the dark goddess Irillith built her up to be in her head. And that was enough to make her practically high with happiness and freedom after a lifetime of abuse and terror,* Alyssa said, reviewing everything she'd felt through her Empathic link with the Maliri noblewoman.
Irillith got a refill of the champagne and then went to sit with the rest of the Angels, a genuine smile on her face that made her look heartbreakingly lovely. "So, what was everyone talking about?"
They spent a happy afternoon relaxing, having a feast for dinner. Irillith happily got her dose from Jade, seeming to just enjoy the divine flavor. She hadn't even looked away when John had been loading up the Nymph, apparently admiring the show. Irillith wished them all goodnight and went to her room an hour later, sleepy and content and starting to come down from her emotional bliss. The crew went to their quarters, but sleep was the last thing on their minds.
The next morning, everyone had a cheerful breakfast and then went up to the Bridge. They pulled into Epsilon Aquarii, the home system of House Valaden of the Maliri Regency. John regarded the System Map. "4 Eden-class planets? No way that's natural."
"There's no record of any terraforming operation in our histories. Given how incomplete and 'recent' those are, though, it's a safe bet that you're right. It either happened during Mael'nerak's reign or maybe even a previous master of the Maliri's time," Irillith nodded. Curiously, she hadn't cut her hair that day. Her tresses fell past her shoulder, and she didn't seem to care as opposed to her panic attack just 2 days earlier. John took a moment to reflect on the power and responsibility of being able to mold someone's mind the way he could. Such rapid change in personality shouldn't be possible. "The second one is Valaden, where House Valaden has ruled from as long as anyone can remember."
"What is that?" Jonah asked in shock, pointing at a massive orbital construction that was practically a second moon for Valaden.
"Genthalas Shipyard. Possession of it is a big reason why House Valaden has retained primacy despite millennia of struggle between the Noble Houses," Irillith answered the Patriarch.
"The Great Wheel," Dana translated automatically. "Wait, didn't Barya mention something like that in the Trankaran oral histories?"
"Yes," John nodded, recalling that call over a month ago with their Bolon friend to try and do some digging into Mael'nerak via Trankaran history. "The Trankarans mined the resources to build the Great Wheel, which constructed Mael'nerak's whole navy."
"I'm not surprised, just look at the size of that thing!" Zanthus marveled. "Most of it seems offline, though."
"Genthalas hasn't operated at 100% capacity in all of known history for House Valaden. It likely hasn't since Mael'nerak or Valada's death. The population slump caused by all the males fleeing to the border hasn't helped. Last I checked, we're barely able to keep 20% of it online," Irillith revealed.
"Even a fifth of a shipyard that big could match the output of Olympus, though," Alyssa mused, eyes wide as her brain seemed to just glitch at processing such a huge megastructure.
Lirrash alerted them to a hail. Flight Command directed them to a spaceport outside Valaden's capital city, Melfalas. When they landed, Irillith stood. "Wait here, and be on guard. Mother shouldn't make a move until I come back to bring John to the palace, but you never know."
"Good luck, honey," John wished her with a smile.
"Thanks, John," Irillith grinned back at her Progenitor master before going to the grav-tubes.
As Irillith took the familiar trip from Melfalas starport to the Valaden palace, she couldn't help but notice how other Maliri reacted to her. No one rose a stink over the obscene length. Everyone seemed to just admire her beauty and the new color, unnaturally so. One little girl even came up and asked if she could touch it. Irillith concluded that Rachel had been right, there was genetic programming in Thrall races for those not in the network to react favorably to those marked as 'belonging' to a Progenitor.
Irillith went through the various security checkpoints that kept her mother Edraele safe like the layers around a nesting doll. Finally entering her mother's personal chambers, Irillith wasted no time in going to the door to her mother's study. She knocked on the door. "Mother, I'm here," she called.
"Enter, Irillith," barked her mother. This time yesterday, Irillith would have felt a reflexive fear at her mother in a mood. Now she just opened the door calmly, assured that she was protected by a much bigger, much friendlier monster than Edraele Valaden.
Edraele was at her desk, reviewing reports from her 16 Planetary Governors. She closed them all and turned in her chair to regard her daughter. A brow raised archly. "Irillith? My that's a… bold new look."
"Felt like trying something new," Irillith shrugged. "I'm ready to give my debrief on the Progenitor John Blake."
"Good," Edraele said, her slightly wrinkled face turning avaricious as she leaned forward. "Tell me everything you've learned and observed, from the moment you met."
Irillith nodded and proceeded to give a near-verbatim description of every interaction she'd had with John and his crew since that chance meeting in Ceraden's offices. Including the ancient history of Mael'nerak and his reign over the Maliri, the nature of Progenitors and the genetically engineered slave races called the Thralls which the Maliri were among, the presence of a rival Progenitor in the Galactic League, and John's intentions to unite the Maliri Noble Houses under his rule as King. By the time Irillith was done, Edraele looked almost aghast.
"Could… could he do it?" Edraele asked fearfully, all her carefully crafted plans seeming to fall apart at this new information.
"The genetic programming would have any Maliri female who saw him directly all but genuflecting. Getting the 18 other Matriarchs to come to him and pledge themselves to his service will be as simple as a direct vid-call asking them to do so," Irillith said with confidence. "We and possibly Makaela are the odd ones out due to the Eldritch Bloodline. And frankly, Mother, I don't like your odds if you try to take him on directly in a duel, let alone if he had his crewmates as reinforcements."
Edraele grit her teeth. "Then what do you suggest I do, Irillith?" she ground out.
"I would suggest that when you meet him, you very nicely ask that he make you Queen of the Maliri to rule while he is unavailable. He'll ask you to join his network, which has a great many benefits apart from an obedience compulsion. I suggest you agree, because it's the best deal you're going to get. He'll unite every other Noble House anyway. He wouldn't be so crass as to kill you and replace you with me, but if you refuse to bend the knee you'll spend the rest of your days living as an independent state in the new Maliri Kingdom. And then when you die, I'd pledge our House to him as my first official act as Matriarch. I repeat, the best you can hope for is to join willingly and he'll reward you by elevating you to his ruler of the Maliri while he's busy elsewhere," Irillith laid out, calm and certain of every word she said.
"Like HELL am I going down without a fight! Our people won't worship a smoldering corpse!" Edraele snarled. She turned to her desk, fully intending to order a military strike on the Invictus.
Irillith walked forward, her eyes starting to glow violet.
"All House Valaden forces, this is your Matriarch! I order you to–" Edraele started a blanket broadcast before Irillith touched her bare shoulder with her hand. Edraele seized as Irillith's Electrokinetic power surged through her system like a shock baton. The Matriarch of House Valaden collapsed on her side, giving random twitches as she was near comatose from the strength of Irillith's charged touch.
Walking around the desk, Irillith took the seat her mother had just vacated. "House Valaden, my mother is unwell. Luckily, one of the best healers in the galaxy is waiting at the spaceport. Let's invite him to the palace to treat her."
A New Breed
John and his Angels walked into the Matriarch's chambers of the Valaden palace. They'd been escorted by a military convoy sent by Irillith, who apparently had decided to throw an impromptu coup while meeting her mother. John was unable to decide if he was more flattered or weirded out at the near-literal worship he was receiving from every Maliri woman who laid eyes on him.
They found Irillith in the central living area of her mother's suite, said mother bound with cuffs to a chair.
"Well this is… unexpected," John said lightly to his Intelligence Officer.
"I tried to use good reason, but she proved unreasonable. When she was about to order the Invictus blown up with an orbital bombardment, I intervened to protect the family," Irillith said with a 'what can you do?' kind of shrug.
"Good girl," Alyssa said with a grin. "What did you do to her, though?"
"Turns out there's a reason I was always drawn to electronics. My grandmother Falihna was blessed with fire, my mother with mind and force. I got lightning," Irillith grinned, holding up her hand and making purple sparks jump between her fingers. "It just came naturally."
"Oh, cool, now I'm not the only one!" Jade grinned. "We can practice together on throwing bolts of lightning at our enemies!"
Lirrash frowned and raised a layer of Psychic Shields as a rather weak Telekinetic lance shot at Irillith's back. "She's physically incapacitated, but she still has her powers. I'm raising a Null-Zone." So saying, Lirrash made a bubble of anti-psychic force that encompassed the room. Unless someone was stronger than Lirrash, they couldn't use psionics in the range of her Null-Zone, and even then only with great effort and concentration.
Edraele's eyes widened weakly at how casually her best attack was blocked. And then she felt the staticky disruption of a Null-Zone she had no hope of overcoming. Edraele nearly passed out in panic as she realized that, for once in her life, she wasn't the most powerful psychic in the room.
John frowned. "That was aimed for her heart. You'd kill your own daughter?" he asked Edraele with steel in his voice.
Edraele couldn't speak, but Irillith shrugged. "She'd eat me if it came down to her or me. Now that I've 'betrayed' her, I'm an enemy and so deserve an eternity of torment."
"But you're her daughter, her child, her family," Zanthus protested.
"None of those words really mean what they're supposed to in Maliri society," Irillith shrugged. "'Daughter' is code for 'replacement', 'child' is code for 'tool', 'family' is your most trusted enemies you're forced to live with."
"Well, we'll have to fix that," John said firmly. "Rachel, can you do anything to get her coherent?"
"Feed me energy to get past the Zone," she requested. Her eyes glowing stormy grey as the network nudged Rachel past the necessary threshold, their doctor sent a healing mist to get Edraele to baseline. She pointedly didn't do anything about the cancer.
"Guards! Shoot them all dead!" Edraele screamed in full voice.
A couple armed bodyguards opened the door, but John just turned and flashed a smile. "Please ignore her, ladies, she's not in her right mind. There's no need to shoot me or my friends."
"O-ok," one of them stuttered, blushing indigo before shutting the door while Edraele watched incredulously.
Irillith sighed. "I told you, but you didn't want to listen, Mother. The Maliri were made to be ruled by a Progenitor. The only reason you're not licking John's boots right now is because Mael'nerak tried to protect his line from abuse by another Progenitor. Though I imagine he never thought a Progenitor quite like John would be the next to find us."
"Honey, you're making me blush," John chuckled. "Now, Edraele, I'm going to make this very simple. You can swear fealty to me, and I'll cure your cancer, make you immortal, and elect you Queen of the Maliri once I unite the species under my rule as King. Or you can spend the rest of your life in a prison cell and eventually just not wake up one day while the rest of the Maliri move on without you. Your choice."
Of course, John was bluffing. He wasn't going to leave Edraele to suffer needlessly. But she didn't know that.
"This… it wasn't supposed to be like this!" Edraele sobbed, her emotions going haywire as the reality that she was beaten crashed into her mind.
"How was it supposed to be? Thought you'd just break into my mind and make me your slave?" John asked, his voice getting a bit harder.
Edraele bit her lip so hard she started to bleed. "Blast Tashana. She said Progenitors were strong, but not… not like this. Your servant is enough to overpower me, that's not right!"
"Let's not speak ill of the dead," John said, glancing at Irillith as she looked down at the reminder of the twin she'd framed out of jealousy.
"She's not dead," Edraele said, making everyone stand at attention. "I wasn't going to waste a test subject for a treatment to the cancer. I banished her to the Unclaimed Wastes, and the bioreader says she's still alive."
"Really?" Irillith breathed. "If she's not dead then… I can find her. I can make things right!"
"One thing at a time, sweetheart," Jonah said, his pragmatism asserting itself. "Look, lady, either you're doomed to a long, slow death or an eternity as queen of your people. The only catch is you'll have a king. Decide, we got things to do and places to be."
Edraele grit her teeth and howled her frustration. When she lost breath, she gave a heaving inhale that hitched as tears continued to pour. "Fine, damn you all! I swear to serve the Progenitor John Blake as his Maliri Queen!"
"You could sound a tad happier about it," Dana snarked even as John nodded.
"Jade, honey, let's go load you up," John said, leading Jade away so Edraele wouldn't have to see what came next. When they came back about 5 minutes later, Jade's breasts were bulging and full of cum. "Edraele, to join my network and me to cure you, you need to nurse from Jade here. Don't ask what it is, just drink."
Edraele looked in danger of gagging, but she sullenly latched on when Jade offered a teat. Then her face turned orgasmic as the flavor of Progenitor spunk crossed her Maliri tongue. Within a few seconds, she was on autopilot as her mind-shield was overwhelmed and she went into the standard daze.
John hummed. "I have an idea I'd like to float. How about I set her up as a second Matriarch? All the Maliri in the Regency I recruit can be placed under her portion of the network. Not to be rude, but I don't really consider her on the same level as all the rest of you, I'd like to keep her a degree separated from our own chorus."
"Hey, you're the guy in charge, if that's how you want to play it," Lauren shrugged.
"We're keeping Irillith though, right?" Alyssa asked. "I think she's proved she's one of the Angels through and through."
"Of course," John nodded, throwing a proud smile at his personal hacker.
"It makes sense," Calara nodded. "Jonah and Alyssa for your crew, Edraele for the Maliri, and if you ever feel like conquering the Galactic League we could make more lieutenants for each species."
"Few steps ahead of me, honey," John chuckled. He focused and consciously added Edraele to his network as another Matriarch, equal to Alyssa and Jonah but with no Angels assigned to her just yet. "Lirrash, no need for the Null-Zone anymore," he added.
Lirrash dropped the anti-psychic field, which had been mildly interfering with John's focus. He turned his full attention to his active connection with Edraele and, using his experience with Irillith, started to inject positive energy into her tortured mind. "Wow, she's even worse than you were, Irillith. How old is she?" John asked.
"162 in Terran years. And believe it or not, she was the youngest of 5 sisters. The youngest sibling in any Maliri Noble family is usually the punching bag or test subject all her older siblings use to refine their own sadism and powers," Irillith sighed.
"How'd she come to power, if she was last in line?" Rachel frowned in confusion.
"Well, Grandmother burned one of my aunts to death for sheer amusement, so that took care of one obstacle," Irillith said with frown. "One got poisoned by another, and when Grandmother shot herself in the head Edraele ambushed the other two with her Telekinesis and Telepathy. It was one of her favorite 'bedtime' stories, how she got her revenge on two of her sisters for weeks before finally giving them the sweet release of death."
"Christ on a crutch, your family is messed up, sweetheart," Jonah whistled.
"Is it just you, Edraele, and Tashana left in the Eldritch Bloodline?" Zanthus asked Irillith.
"I have a second cousin, Makaela. Falihna, for whatever reason, allowed her nephew to live and he had Makaela a few years before me and Tashana were born. Edraele got to her like she got to us right after her father died, so she's both untrained and firmly under Edraele's thumb. She's assigned as the Manager of Genthalas, a high honor in House Valaden," Irillith answered.
"Okay, well… what now?" Alyssa posed. "We got Edraele, do we move on to the other 18 Matriarchs now? Assuming they're not distant relatives, they'll be putty in John's hands just from seeing him."
"Let's not rush into making me King," John decided. "And I'd really rather have Edraele's advice, given she has the most experience with all the other Matriarchs out of all of us. I'll spend a day or two turning her into a good girl, then she can contribute to the planning."
"Well, she's out of it for 14 hours, so what are we supposed to do?" Dana asked.
"Whatever you want. With me or John to grease the wheels, you have the run of the palace and really the whole system of Epsilon Aquarii," Irillith chuckled.
The crew all made plans for the day and went their separate ways, John staying next to Edraele. He absently combed a lock of her newly white hair out of her unconscious face. "You've done a lot of bad things… but I'm going to give you plenty of chances to make up for them. I hope one day you'll make me proud, my Maliri Queen."