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The planet of Rashashoon was an odd mix of mostly arid deserts with a large number of lush oases scattered across it. The largest of these hosted the planet's capitol, creatively named Raggashoon. It possessed the planet's largest spaceport, which was useful as it also happened to be one of the largest trade cities in the Vega system. And from my position sitting atop one of the taller buildings I was able to get a good look at it all.
Aside from the roads, there wasn't a single straight line to be seen in the city proper, the buildings all curving out or in, or framed in spires or arches. Tall as any building in New York, the skyscrapers matched this aesthetic with ample space between them to allow all the sky car traffic. They were made out of a sort of stone-ceramic compost that was an off white color. It gave them a sort of shimmer in the daylight sun, but it made the metropolis seem monochrome during the day.
But at night…
I watched the pastel blues and pinks rippled up the side of the nearby building, illuminated from lights at the base. The waves of color seamlessly flowed off the building and onto the next, the whole cityscape flowing like a luminescent canvas. Every building I could see held swirling patterns that mesmerized the mind. It reminded me of a less gaudy Las Vegas, to be honest. Which was appropriate, considering that in addition to being a major trade city it was also one that focused on entertainment. As a result, this was one of the few places in the Vega system that we didn't have to worry about the Citadel quite so much.
Ostensibly, the planet was a colony world of Euphorix, the last world in the Vega system that resisted Citadelian rule. I say ostensibly because 1. Rashashoon had been growing more and more independent ever since its first colonization, and 2. Euphorix had just sealed itself behind a completely impenetrable planetary shield some months prior, so it wasn't in a position to exert any kind of authority. As such, Rashashoon was quickly shaping up to be something like Casablanca in the 1940s; a pseudo-neutral territory that was mostly left alone so long as it kept providing services to all, and not interfering in greater politics.
Which wasn't to say there weren't backroom deals and the like going on in Raggashoon. After all, my crew was engaged in some of that right that moment.
While my eyes swept over the skyline most of my mental focus was on a set of video feeds streaming from the building beneath me, specifically from one of the hotel's better furnished lounges. The private room was finely carpeted with a few bare columns scattered about, and a pair of plush sofas in the center of the space facing each other. Said sofas each had an occupant with someone standing next to them.
Lounging back into one of the couches and wearing fine silk robes, Felicity was giving off an air of disinterest as she said "I trust that you find the terms of our deal acceptable." In spite of her tone, the pale-furred Karnian eyed the person across from her with a sharp glare. I didn't know her mother for very long, but she reminded me a lot of Namise as she continued "Otherwise this is a waste of all of our time."
Over the past few months the young woman had been helping out more and more with the Last Port, to the point where she started requesting to go on operations with us. She didn't have a particularly broad skillset, but she had been the daughter of a crime boss, so she invariably picked up some skills with management and negotiations. Which were quite useful in the current situation. Because as it turned out, for all their stereotype of being bruteish barbarians, not all Citadelians were uninterested in backroom deals.
"Bah, of course it is worthwhile!" The alien across from her said. The most succinct way I could describe them was 'blue space ogres'. Towering at about 9 feet tall and over half that wide, the humanoids aliens were massive bundles of lumpy muscle. They had a flat face on a dome-like head, which seemed to simply grow out of the torso with no neck to speak of. The suit the leading one wore was more of a padded jumper, as I doubted anything more fine could fit their frame.
And when they spoke, well, they sounded exactly as you'd expect them to. "Of course, seeing a delectable morsel like you in person makes it all the sweeter." The gravelly voice came from a face giving Felicity a nasty grin. "And to touch as well…" He said, reaching out with a meaty hand to touch her face.
Felicity managed to keep from flinching away as the hand got closer, though I could tell it was a hard thing for her. Fortunately, Felicity was not alone.
The man's hand was stopped as Felicity's bodyguard grabbed it. "If you want to keep that hand, keep it to yourself." Kori said, the mask over her lower face slightly distorting her voice and the fake servos in her armor humming to mask the source of her strength.
The Citadelian grunted, testing his strength against Kori's for a few moments before he finally relented. "Agh," He remarked, pulling hand back. "Fine. Business first." The Cidadelian's own bodyguard had mostly remained motionless at this byplay, though the armored figure had put a massive hand on the butt of his pistol, though.
"Indeed." Felicity said. "On that note, you said you would be bringing proof that you possessed confidential data obtained from the Gordanians."
The man looked back at his companion for a moment, a strange little twitch in his face before he addressed her again. "Yes. Just as you said that you had a stable of potential slaves to give us in return. You have this, yes?"
"Of course," Felicity said, and the two of them began hashing out the specifics of their deal. Through the feed I could see her (and Kori's) discomfort with the situation, and hoped that the Citadelians wouldn't notice it. Even with all this being an act, even playing along with slave traders was deeply uncomfortable for them. I wished all this wasn't needed either, but things hadn't quite worked out for us over the past few months.
The operation on the space train had gone as planned, at least at first. We had spread out on the train for the initial insertion, attempting to neutralize any chance of reinforcements. But it turned out the train had more security than our intel indicated. Not unmanageable between myself and Kori, but that had put us in a position where she was the first to reach the Psion starslip drive, and the Gordanian engineer looking over it panicked. He threatened to overload the drive if she didn't back off. Pressed for time as we were, Kori decided to call his bluff.
To be fair, she was right that he was bluffing, but the man was caught so off guard that he triggered it out of sheer surprise when she attacked. I managed to keep the drive from exploding completely when I arrived, but it ended up warping the gravity anchor that was pulling the space train enough that it massively accelerated it, causing it to be hurled towards the planet. I couldn't manage to shut off the drive before we all had to bail, and one cratered-base later we were back where we started.
So we ended up settling in with the Last Port over the next few months, waiting for our next chance at a way home. And we got it when another Citadelian courier ship entered this system, and this time we managed to intercept its command and redirect it to a point in empty space for us to ambush. And it would have worked… if a bunch of scavenger pirates from the planet Dredfahl hadn't also shown up. Long story short, everything ended up on fire and it wasn't my fault.
So when the next courier ship came some time later, we instead waited for it to reach the planet Hyn'xx before we made our move, intending to use tensions between the Citadelians and Gordanians there to cover our theft. Unfortunately, it turned out that said tensions were much stronger than we thought, so when our interference was noticed earlier than we intended, they both took it as a sign that the other double crossed them. And out came the guns. Needless to say, the ship was destroyed in the crossfire before we could even get to it.
On our last attempt to find a way home, I had ignored ships entirely to follow up on a rumor that Aello had a secret lab built by scientists with a computer of unparalleled processing power. If it was as good as the rumors claimed, there was a good chance I could repurpose it to make a functioning Zeta Catapult to launch us back to the Sol system without ending up inside a stellar body. And I had managed to find it… only to find out that it was actually a sort of secret base for a race of invading alien biomechanical spider people.
I ended up having to fight a small army of arachnid abominations before blowing the whole place up. It actually would have been quite cathartic, if it hadn't ruined yet another opportunity to get home, and introduce me to yet another thing I had to worry about later. Seriously, what the fuck is a 'Spider Guild'?
A comm brought me out of my thoughts. "I am in position," Demonia said. "It will be another hour before the maintenance workers return."
"Good," I replied to our infiltrator. "Just connect the dongle to the communication array and keep an eye on the wavelengths. If we do this right, we'll be able to trace the end point of any signal going out of the hotel." It was only a few seconds later before the connection was made, and another data stream entered my perception. This one required a little more of my attention as it was proper Citadelian infrastructure.
Citadelian systems were… strangely complex. Or at least they seemed to be, compared to the brutes that ran them. I supposed that it was possible there was a caste of Citadelian that were much smarter than the rest, but after interacting with their software… I had the distinct impression that the backend systems were created by AI. More a hunch than anything else, but I'd like to think I had enough experience with the subject to notice the signs.
The last member of our crew then spoke up. "And that's when we take off and intercept it, right?" Tigorr was a Karnan man that had joined up with the Last Port after Kori and I arrived, and had a burning desire to do anything that stuck it to the Citadel. I had never inquired just what his story was, but Doc had vetted him enough that just joined our team this time. "Assuming that time is of the essence." He continued after a beat.
"I'm hoping that won't be the case, but we haven't been that lucky yet." I replied flatly. "We've been 'lucky' enough that the Citadelians and the Gordanians have started squabbling." The data that these particular Citadelians had stolen was supposedly logistical-military info from the Gordanians. It only pertained to the Vega system, so it wasn't overly valuable to the Citadel which still had a firm grip over the space, but it was incredibly valuable to independent parties like the Last Port. And to a pair of lost souls looking to steal the next high speed ship that came into the system.
We knew that these Citdelains had their stolen data cache somewhere in the city, we just weren't sure where. Thus our current plan: pose as buyers and get them into a situation where they would have to have to contact where the data is stored, in order to offer us proof they had it. Then we use the compromised comm array to triangular the data cache's position to and go steal it. All we needed now was for them to make the call.
So it wasn't great when the lead Citadelian suddenly said "This talk is getting nowhere. You have made many promises, but you still haven't given us anything to show for it." He stood, looming over Felicity and Kori. "So, we will be taking some collateral to hold till the next round of negotiations."
Felicity's eyes narrowed. "That was not the deal."
"The deal's changed." He said, his nasty smile returning. "And I think the collateral I will be taking is you, my pale sweet thing. Maybe that will motivate the next of you who thinks they can waste my time." With that the alien lunged at Felicity and grabbed her.
Oh he would have, if a CNT reinforced staff didn't slam into his arm hard enough to shatter the limb with a crack. Eyes turned to Kori in time for her to twirl the staff and slam it into his center of mass, sending him hurtling across the room. There was a crash as the alien flew through an ottoman, and Kori stepped fully in front of Felicity. "It would seem the 'deal' now includes you losing that hand."
The second one tried pulling his pistol, but Kori raised her arm and the plates on the limb folded out to form an arm cannon. Or rather just the appearance of one, as the blast of green energy which destroyed the gun was simply a starbolt she fired from her hand. Another bit of mechanical obfuscation I had built into her armor. She wasted no time shooting forward and laying into the Citadelian with her staff.
On my end I held in a sigh before saying "Alright, Felicity, go to plan 2."
We had hoped to get the information out of them with little fuss, but since we were dealing with people even normal Citadelians considered scumbags, we made a few other plans. Plan 2 was both simple and classic: make them think you already knew the secret. "You utter imbeciles," Felicity said, quickly recovering and getting up off the sofa. "You might have lived if you just played along, but now you shall perish with the rest of your kin." The Karnan tilted her head back, inflecting a haughty tone. "We already know where you are keeping the data, of course. We have a team retrieving it now. This was merely a distraction to make our job a little easier."
Kori continued to absolutely trounce the two Citadelians, but she held back just enough to the negotiator to pull away from her and reach into his pocket to pull out a communicator. Kori made a show of firing a few starbolts his way, but let him dive behind some wrecked furniture so that he could make his call. "It was a trap!" The Citdelian yelled into his device. "They are closing on your position now! Move!"
A few moments later, Demonia commed "Got the signal. Tracking… tracking… got the location. It's- Wait, what? It's moving!"
Well, he would be messaging a person and not the data cache, so that makes sense, I thought. But as I scanned the telemetry she was sending over and overlaid it with a map of the city, I saw the signal endpoint rising into the air. With how quick it happened, that meant they were already on an air car of some kind. Which likely meant... "I think they're keeping the cache on a ship. And they're trying to pull a runner."
"Not going to happen!" Tigorr yelled, excited to get some action.. "I'll be there in thirty, get ready!"
Checking the feeds again told me that Kori and Felicity had their own situation well in hand. I had just enough time to get everyone up to speed and tell the others to rendezvous at the safehouse before I rolled off the side of the building. I had barely dropped before an air car came into view, rounding around the corner of the building. I landed with a heavy thud on the roof of the car, getting into a crouch. "Plotting a course, giving you the telemetry now." I commed Tigorr, and we shot off like a bullet.
To be honest I could probably fly faster than this car, but flying people weren't quite as common here as on Earth. Even if I tried to mask it with tech thrusters, at a distance people would assume I was Tamaranian, and I wanted to avoid the locals getting any undue attention.
It only took us 10 minutes to reach our target, as with Demonia on the comms array she could keep pinging the receiver and give us updates on where it was going. When we came into view we were towards the border of the city, and the air car turned out to be more of an air yacht. Or maybe air APC, as the large blocky craft was heavily plated. Even taking the size of Citadelians into account, that craft could hold about a dozen of them. "Alright, fly us over them. After I jump, pull back to a safe distance."
"By the sound of it, you're going in hot. Alone, too." Tigorr replied as he maneuvered around the craft, bringing us over it. "Are you sure you can handle this?"
Right, he hasn't worked with Kori and I yet."You act like this is the first time I've driven an air car into the ground." I said, before I jumped off.
Tigorr was already pulling away as I hit the hull, going low and climbing/crawling down the side towards the side hatch. There was no obvious way to open it from the outside, but that was hardly a problem for me. A high frequency blade extended from my arm and sliced into the door and hull, cutting away the locks. Moments later the door popped open (fell open more like) and I swung myself inside… and was greeted with a small squad of Citdelians with plasma weaponry.
They didn't waste time before opening fire on me, though they only got off a few shots that splashed against my personal shield before the core in my chest activated. I pulled, and the guns simply flew out of their hands and towards me, none of them having expected it. The instant the weapons got in range they vanished into my Bleed Pocket.
With my mechanokinetic core inoperable, I had needed to innovate a bit to get that functionality back. And with all of the alien tech I had been acquiring over the past few months, it had been pretty straight forward to craft myself a magnetokinetic core as a replacement. I wasn't going to match a certain Marvel villain in terms of power, but it was more than enough for what I got up to these days.
Their confusion was surprisingly short, as the closest one to me pulled an ax from his belt and charged me with a roar. Magnesis had no effect on it, so I guessed whatever it was made of wasn't ferromagnetic. But, again, it didn't matter, and I charged the alien right back. The ax came in and hit the plate of my arm and stopped completely dead, all of the momentum lost in an instant. Upgrading my kinetic dampeners into full inertial manipulators had just made them even more effective, and the Citdelian got his own strike and extra reflected back at him,sending him flying.
The rest of the Citadelians didn't fare much better, opting to launch themselves at me as well. There were a few frantic seconds of punching, wrestling, and gratuitous amounts of electrical current, but eventually all of them were knocked out.
I quickly made my way through the ship, either hacking or ripping doors open as I came across them, eventually making my way to the cockpit. It was autopiloted, so it was easy work to set it to crash outside the city limits. As it altered course I swept through the rest of the ship, eventually locating a data terminal in depths of the large vessel. A quick once over let me know that the whole thing was security locked and encrypted, and advanced enough that it wouldn't be trivial for me to break.
I picked up the terminal and dropped the entire thing into my Bleed Pocket."Mission accomplished." I commed, jumping out of the craft before it crashed into the desert.
Even two dozen light years from Earth, there was no escaping Mission Debrief.
Granted it was a pretty informal affair, and most of it was waiting on me to break into the data cache to see what we got. Turned out there were layers to the encryption, and I managed to crack all but the last one. Sure enough, the data contained all the info we were expecting; shipping schedules, troop orders, inventory assessment. Invaluable stuff for the Last Port. But it also came with a bit of unwanted info for me and Kori.
Since things had become more dangerous in the Vega System recently (no idea how that could have happened), both the Gordanians and the Citdelians were tightening their respective grips on the system. Which meant carrier ships would be used for shuttling importing personnel and information from now on. Which meant no more courier ships were coming.
Which meant we now had even less options for getting back to Earth.
It would be a while after that before we exited out of our safe room and went our separate ways. We had some time before the Last Port used the data to figure out their next move, and some downtime had been earned. Kori decided to spend the rest of the evening with Felicity, as the girl was a bit on edge from how violent things had turned out. Which was fine for me, as even as my internals grinded away at the last encryption, I had some business of my own to take care of.
I didn't have to go very far, as our safe room was in the city's entertainment district, a short distance from where we were being put up. The Madam's House was a mixture of a casino, burlesque house, and brothel. Fairly upscale, all things considered, and I was once again reminded of Las Vegas as I crossed the main show floor, gambling tables spaced out evenly in the middle while one wall was taken up by a massive stage with female dancers doing interesting things with ropes.
This place (much like Raggashoon itself) attracted all sorts, so my cloaked and armored form only got a few glances as I moved through the building. Past the main floor and onto the quieter hallways, I came to a more isolated spot with a series of doors, each locked to give their occupants… privacy. I came to one at the end of the hall and flicked out my keycard, the door opening and letting me inside.
The 'room' was an odd mix of a closed room and a terrace. It was circular in shape and the upper part was a transparent dome that offered a spectacular view of the night time city and sky. It was completely opaque from the outside, but it allowed those within to have an exotic setting to get 'comfortable'. As the large bed against the wall indicated. However, my attention was on the man sitting at the small table off to the side. "Sorry I'm late," I said, "Things came up."
The man stood, hands reaching up to push back the hood on the robes he wore. I was greeted by a red-orange face and nearly solid green eyes, save for some darker irises. "It is fine, you told me beforehand that this might happen." The man, Damrak, said as he shook out his curly auburn hair. "So long as you managed to fix the chemical synthesizer, I wouldn't have minded waiting all night."
While the vast majority of Tamaranians were still on their homeworld, there had been a number scattered throughout the Vega System (and beyond) when the planet fell. Rashasoon actually had the largest population in the system outside of Tamaran itself. And Damrak was one such Tamaranian I had happened to run into when I was exploring certain parts of the city.
I reached into my cloak, a gesture mostly for show as the item I pulled out had actually been stored in my Bleed Pocket. "I got it working," I said, placing the bulky device the size of a soccer ball down on the table. "It looked like a few of the more delicate components got fried due to material defects. It's amazing it ran for as long as it did. I had to custom make a few of the optical circuits, but it should mix the drugs in the right proportions now."
The Tamaranian was a doctor I had happened across when I was exploring the area, the man having been in the middle of dealing with some rather unsavory characters trying to shake down his clinic. I had intervened out of principle, which is how we got talking and he informed me of his current troubles. Namely, that some of his medical equipment for creating Tamaranian drugs had stopped working.
Cut off from his home planet, the doctor had to rely on complex medical machines to create drugs that would properly interact with Tamaranian physiology, and it was not like he could just order parts for them anymore. The goons had gotten involved as he started getting desperate and shopping around for less official channels that could help him. I managed to convince him that I was a fair hand at machines and to let me fix it. This whole 'meeting at a brothel' thing was a way to keep the criminals off my trail; the last thing I wanted was for more outside problems to pop up.
Damrak seemed relieved as he fiddled with some of the buttons and got the response he was looking for. "X'Hal bless you. Another month without this and we may have started losing people. Not many, but in these times every one of us counts. It is difficult keeping everyone's spirits up…"
I felt a slight tightness in my chest before I said "I've got something else for you too," and I pulled out a storage deck before handing it to him. "You said you wished your son could experience the Royal Symphonies, and I happened to have that in storage. Along with a few other things. So, I figured I'd make you a copy." It was a good thing I had ended up downloading all that Tamaranian media to my body after I had worked out how. It had mostly been so that I could look at it on the go when I had spare moments, but it was paying off now. "Make sure to share it with the rest of the community too."
Damrak looked between me and the storage deck, his expression lighting up. "T-truly? This is incredible, Stack! You have already refused payment, and now you give us this? How can I possibly repay this kindness?"
I shook my head. "Like I said, I don't need money or anything like that. For now, let's just say that it's useful for a man like you to owe me a favor-" I started to say.
The locked door behind us suddenly opened, and I turned in surprise. My arm was partway to forming an internal particle cannon before I saw who stepped into the room. "Mama Madam." I greeted.
Mama Madam was a heavyset woman with chalk white skin and a flat face, dressed in violet silk robes and adorned in jewelry. I wasn't quite sure what species she was, but she was the madam of this entertainment complex/brothel, and she was an old friend and mentor of Demonia. She primarily looked out for herself and her own, but the Last Port's smuggling operations frequently benefited her, so she put on her friendly face for us. "Terribly sorry for interrupting Stack, but you are a difficult man to pin down, and I was hoping to have a word." She said, her voice almost musical in how she spoke.
I looked from her back to the Damrak, putting out a hand to ward off his nervousness. "It's fine," I told him. "She's the proprietor. And she's discreet as a rule."
The doctor looked between us and said "I see… I shall take your word for it." He gathered up both the synthesizer and the storage deck into a bag and nodded to me. "If you ever have need of my services, you know where to find me."
I nodded back and sent him off, the man hurrying past Madam into the hall and out of sight. She had a bemused look on her face as she stepped towards me. "Hoping to reconnect with your people? Oh don't give me that look," she said, gesturing to my blank faceplate. She pulled out a bottle from… somewhere, and gestured to the table. "Come, sit, no need to be so stiff and formal on my account."
We both sat at the table and she poured me a drink, a sort of yellow-red fluid. I took it from her, my helmet folding back to reveal my Tamaranian face. With me and Kori living here for the past two weeks, the sharp woman had managed to figure out what Kori actually was pretty quickly, so I ended up 'revealing' myself as well. I was pretty sure she didn't know just who Kori was, but I wouldn't put it past her to figure it out if we weren't careful. Hence me pretending to be Tamarnian to throw her off a bit.
Of course, just because I looked like a Tarmaranian didn't mean I had their taste buds, and I was rather glad I had figured out how to dampen my sense of taste as I downed the liquid. So the flavor was only 'interesting' rather than 'retch-inducing.' "Not that I don't appreciate your company," I eventually said, "But why exactly are you here?"
"Just wondering how the mission went." She said, taking a seat next to me. I raised an eyebrow at her before she continued. "Yes, your compatriots gave me their report, but I wish to hear it from you as well. And as I said, you are rather illusive most of the time."
I looked back at her for a moment before I let out a breath."The mission was a success, though not without its bumps…" I started to tell her. Part of the deal the Last Port had with her was that in exchange for a place to lay low, she was kept informed of any intel we got from our operations, so I had no problems telling her this.
She listened to me give her the summary of what happened and our findings, nodding as I wrapped things up. "Good, good. Though it sounds like you didn't get everything you were looking for."
I made a vague gesture. "It's everything the Last Port could have hoped to gain-"
"I am not talking about the Last Port." She interrupted. "From the way you were talking about it, it seems to me you were looking for something more… personal."
I gave her an even look. I could already tell that the woman wasn't going to stop nosing in until she got an answer, and she had proven perceptive enough that an outright lie probably wouldn't work. I looked away for a moment in thought, and a few seconds later it came to me: she already had some preconceived notions about me that I could lean into. So, I might as well lean into something that she would believe… and which also matted to me. "It's… foolish." I eventually said. "I was hoping for critical information. Something that might turn the tide. Something…" I trailed off.
"Something that would let you go home." Madam finished for me.
A statement that was both right and wrong on her part. Home was not where she thought it was, and I was letting her come to her own incorrect conclusion. I had never expected to find anything related to what she thought I was looking for.
And yet…
I looked past the skyline to the horizon, gaze focusing on stars just over the horizon line. Or rather, the particularly bright point of light that was in fact a nearby planet. Practically next door by space standards. But still very much out of reach, much to the distress of my Koriand'r.
Unbidden, the number came back to me. Citadelian ground forces estimated at 500 thousand, scattered across the planet at key points and augmented by mobile armor. Transportation infrastructure entirely maintained by Citadelian authorities. Planet orbited by 15 orbital platforms, each armed with kinetic weaponry pointed downwards. Citdaelain vessels in orbit range from one to three dozen depending on schedule-
I shook my head before I went down yet another spiral of useless calculations. Ever since I managed to get the info from Doc, I had gone back to it over and over, trying to see the weaknesses in the forces, see if there was a thread I could pull at. And I kept coming back to the same non-answer. I reached out with my hand towards the planet, its light twinkling between my fingers before I closed my fist around it with a sigh. "I've just been hoping… I'd find a way to take Tamaran back."
To put it simply, the infrastructure just wasn't there. In the years since its conquest, the Citadel turned Tamaran into its personal bread basket, and stripped away pretty much everything else. There was no Tarmaranian military, weapons manufacturer... even transportation was gutted. Even if the whole populace rallied and managed to take control of the surface, there were plenty of guns in orbit pointed downward that would stop that.
And even if Tarmaranians managed to flawlessly capture all of the guns and ships and stations… the planet was still the local Citadel bread basket. The blue space ogres wouldn't just let that go, and the Citadel Empire spanned over a dozen star systems. They had the numbers to just crush any resistance, especially one that was trying to use their own tech against them.
When it came down to it, I couldn't fix this. Machina the Superhero couldn't fix this. Hell, even assuming I could bring all the power of the Silver with me, Machina the Avatar couldn't fix this, at least not for long. The only real solution I could see was 'Destroy the Citadel Empire', and that was too big for one man to do. I didn't even know if my powers had a ceiling to them, but waiting around until I went full apotheosis, if that ever happened, was not a satisfying answer.
I grunted and dropped my hand. "I'm nigh unstoppable in the field, I can engineer just about any damn thing that exists, and I've got tricks you haven't even seen yet... and none of it means a damn thing for kicking the Citadel out."
Madam hummed. "A warrior staring down a war bigger than themselves. An old story."
I gave her the side eye. "My problem not being unique is a bit of a cold comfort."
She waved a placating hand at me. "Apologies, I didn't mean to sound callous. To be honest, I am a little surprised at just how astute you are of the broader situation. Most Tamaranian warriors I have met would respond to such situations by simply throwing themselves at it until the problem, or more likely themselves, were destroyed."
"That's pretty much what happened when Tamaran fell." I pointed out. "The ones like me are the only ones left."
She hummed again, though this time the tone had a strange mixture of both amusement and sympathy. She stared at me for a moment long before she said "Citadelian cyphers tend to rotate according to certain algorithms. Said rotation takes place over the course of months to years, but if you have been paying attention long enough, you can start to see the pattern."
I blinked at the sudden change in subject. "Ah, I see? That's good to know, but I was hoping to get this last cypher cracked sometime soon."
"Then it is a good thing that I have already done all the leg-work," She said, reaching into her dress and pulling out a small data stick. "This should provide you some heuristics that will make your job much easier."
I hesitated for a moment before I took the stick from her. "I… the Last Port didn't tell me you had this."
"The Last Port has occasionally relied on me to break the cyphers they obtain, but they never asked how I did it. The fact that they believed you could handle it this time speaks of how highly they think of you." She clarified. "Or they just wanted to see if they could avoid my usual fee."
"Ah," I replied."So much is this going to cost me?"
"This time… I will waive my normal price." Madam said, standing up from her seat. "I was curious as to what kind of man the Last Port had fallen in with, and you have not disappointed. So, let's just say… I think it will be useful to be owed a favor from a man like you." She gave me a knowing smile before she turned and left the room.
I stared after her for a few seconds, her last comment making me wonder just how much of my conversation with Damrak she had been listening to. In the end I just shook my head and scanned the data stick, adding the heuristics contained within to my ongoing decryption. And sure enough, it only took a few more minutes of computation before the cypher cracked open and the data revealed itself.
There wasn't too much, but the reason for the high level of encryption was apparent a few lines in. 'Anti-Psion encryption'? I thought as I read through the data. What would the Gordanians know that they didn't want the Psions to-
I stopped when I got to the last report, detailing preliminary plans for an assault operation. The location of said operation is what gave me pause. As I read further, the target of the operation caused my eyes to go wide. But it was as I read the details for how they came to learn of this location that I went completely still.
I… might have just found a way home. In more ways than one.
The room Kori and I had at The Madam's House was the most comfortable living situation we had since we came to the system. The use of pastel colors on the walls, carpets, and drapes may have been a bit much, but there was no denying that the mass of pillow and sheets that served as our bed was incredibly comfy. To be honest it reminded me of the stereotypical 'harem' room from Earth media, the one where you would see a dozen scantily clad women lounging about in.
Our room only had one such woman in the form of Kori as I walked in, splayed out over the cushions in rest from the night before. It was morning by the time I had returned, as I had needed some time to myself to think, so she gave a small start as she woke up. "Mmm, you know how I feel when you don't come to bed with me," She grumbled, though there was no real heat in it.
"True, but how else can I surprise you with breakfast as soon as you wake up?" I pointed out, holding up a tray full of breads, meats, and various bowls full of dipping sauces. "It is very hard to slip out of your arms, after all."
She didn't bother refuting my logic, instead pulling herself out of the pile of pillows to drift over to me. We settled onto the floor with the tray between us, Kori tearing into the food while I went at a more sedate pace. For a few minutes we didn't speak, just silently enjoying each other's company.
As the last of the foodstuffs were consumed, I spoke up."I cracked the last layer of encryption. It wasn't what I was expecting, but I've got a lead to get us home… of a sort."
Kori perked up, though she tilted her head at my tone. "It sounds like the others don't know yet."
"They don't, I wanted to run it by you first." I said. "The last bit of data was on high level operations against the Psions, including intel that was gained from spies and interrogation. According to their sources, the Psions recently found that Lantern that's supposedly been buzzing around the system… and captured them."
Her eyes went wide. "Really? I knew the Psions were advanced, but I didn't think they were advanced enough to best a Green Lantern, even if it is in their own territory."
I shrugged. "That's what the reports say. Unfortunately, there's nothing on how they did it or what the Lantern was doing when they found them. The Lantern could have been looking for us, but it doesn't even say where they were captured." I let out a breath, pausing a moment before I continued. "Still, the data did contain where the Lantern's being kept. It's in-system, at a Psion mobile research station."
"Between their mobility and stealth systems, those are notoriously difficult to track," Kori remarked. "If the Gordanians have the location of one, they are not going to sit on it."
"Right, so if we want to take advantage of this, we can't sit on it for too long either." I said. "The way I figure it, there's three reasons why we'd want to go after it. The first being that there's a good chance we can swipe another scout ship, which will get us back to Earth in no time. The second, more dangerous reason is so that we can try to get some answers out of the Lantern. They're bound to know something about why the Guardians have it out for me. And there's an outside chance I could get a hold of their ring and get us home that way." I didn't have very high hopes for that, as my brief encounter with the Lantern's armor on Earth told me just how complicated Power Ring technology was. But the first reason was compelling enough to go.
However, Kori knew me too well, and noticed me hesitating to continue. She floated over and settled down next to my shoulder, leaning against mine as she asked "And what's the third reason?"
I breathed in deeply. "This mobile station… It's the station. The one we met each other on. The one I woke up in this universe on."
To be honest, I had almost put thoughts of returning back to my home universe completely aside. Even once I had found myself in the Vega System I only had vague thoughts of tracking that station down; I didn't have the means or information to do so, and I had so much to get back to in this universe's Earth that it was just… easier not to think about it. But now, a golden opportunity had been dropped into my lap.
I could learn how I got here.
I could learn how to see my family again.
"So obviously, I have ulterior motives for suggesting this," I continued. "This is the only place in this universe which might still have a connection to my old one, or even just information on how they brought me here. I know this might get in the way of us getting back to Earth, but I-"
Kori cut me off by placing her hand over my mouth. "Jacob, yes."
My brow furrowed and I pulled her hand down. "...Yes?"
"Yes, of course we'll go." She said, "Even if this didn't give us an opportunity to get back to Earth, you deserve to find a way back home." Her hand slid around to cradle the side of my face, and I saw a hint of worry cross her own. "But… when you find it… what will you do?"
I looked back into those eyes, the first thing I had truly seen in this reality, before turning to face her fully. "I'll tell you what I won't do: No matter what happens, no matter what I find, I will not leave you. I'm hoping to find some way to freely travel to or even just contact my home. But if it comes down to it…" I hesitated for a moment, before I said what I had known in my heart for a while now. "I won't leave this life I've made. I won't leave you."
Kori's smile was both full of joy and tinged with a little sadness at my words, and she touched her forehead to mine. "Then what are we waiting for? Let's get planning."
=====A=====
