John regarded the device before him. It was shaped like a sphere, with two grips attached to allow him to hold it in his hands. A thick cable snaked out the bottom, leading to a converter for the biggest damn Power Core they could build with their limited supplies. He turned to Dana, looking exhausted but also the closest to happy she'd been since Rachel's death.
"You're sure it'll work?" he asked his Grand Engineering Overlord.
"As sure as I can be without testing the damn thing, and we don't have time for that. Every second we delay could be the one we desperately needed," the drained redhead said, her eyes haunted but filled with fire. This project had consumed her, since it was the last thing she'd probably ever do. In this timeline at least.
Upon realizing through and through, balls to bones, that they were going to lose the Progenitor War, they'd invested everything in this Plan B. They were hiding out in the ruins of Karron, the last place anyone would think to look for them. Most of the crew and network of Wards were still on Valaden, distracting the invading Progenitor army at John's throne world while he and the others tried to invent a miracle.
Time travel. Yes, that was their Hail Mary pass. The machine that Dana and their ragtag group of surviving Engineers from allied species had put everything into would, in theory, convert fusion energy into psionic energy. John would be able to invert time not just a few seconds, but months or even years. He could unravel the Fates' design, fix mistakes before they happened, make sure they didn't end up in a no-win scenario like this one ever again. At least, that was the hope. And it was all they had left.
John leaned down and gave Dana a kiss. "Well, let's do it then," he said.
"Save her. Save us all," the girl once called Sparks begged him.
"I will," John promised.
*We love you,* chorused his Matriarchs as he took a grip on the device. He sent loving thoughts back to them, and resigned himself to lose them all. There was no way to know for certain, but the general belief was that John was making this trip solo. He alone would retain his memories of the future past. While he was determined, no matter at what point in the timeline he appeared, to meet and fall for each of them all over again, they wouldn't be his anymore. They'd be different, the product of different events, and he wouldn't be the same man who'd fallen for them in the first place. It was a great sacrifice. But better to save and love one version of them than lose them all for eternity.
John firmed his hold and nodded to Dana. She initiated the sequence.
And then there was POWER…
John blinked himself awake. He was pretty sure he'd blacked out. His last coherent memory was of reaching for the Time rune and throwing all the power of his network and a tamed star into it. He became aware of his surroundings. He was in a bed, a 'small' one by his usual standards. A woman too small to be a Ward was curled into his side. A glance at the surroundings rang a bell from the halls of distant memory. He was, if he wasn't hallucinating, back on the Fool's Gold. Which would make the woman next to him…
"Alyssa?" John breathed, looking down at the girl snuggled up with him. She was around 5'2, flat as a pancake, and her hair was a brittle blonde that barely passed her shoulders. She wasn't quite pale as a ghost, but she certainly was on the lighter side of skin tones. In other words, how she'd looked near the very start of their relationship when she was still just an asteroid bumpkin paying for a trip to the Core Worlds out of trade. Hardly his Alpha Lioness. And she'd never looked so beautiful to John.
She blinked open those cerulean eyes he could happily spend all day looking into. She gave a sleepy grin up at him. "Morning, John," she said, reaching up to rub the gunk from her eyes. She refocused on his face and frowned. "Are you okay? You're looking at me like… I don't even know."
John tried to swallow the lump in his throat. He leaned down and pressed a gentle, loving kiss to her forehead. He blinked tears of joy from his leaking eyes. "It worked," he breathed, unable to believe this incredible outcome. Part of him hadn't really expected it to work. Even the part that had dared hope expected to only travel back to just before everything had gone to shit. To wake up practically at the start of the whole journey was like hitting the karmic lottery.
"John? You're kinda freaking me out here. What's wrong?" Alyssa asked, looking truly alarmed at such an emotional display from him.
John took a few deep breaths, forcing himself to calm down. He tried to consider this from her perspective. In her mind, they'd known each other for a matter of days, if she was still this early into the Change. "It's a very long story, honey. Let me get a shower and I'll explain."
"Okay," she said hesitantly, still very concerned but she maneuvered out of the bed to give him room to get up himself.
John took the half-remembered route to the bathroom, got into the shower, and cranked the temperature setting to practically freezing. The shock of cold water was bracing, and very firmly asserted that this wasn't a dream. Still feeling things were a little too good to be true, John returned the water to a comfortable warmth and went through the familiar motions of cleansing himself. It felt oddly lonely to take a shower alone, and he almost burst out in hysterical laughter when he realized he was truly so spoiled that not having at least 1 naked woman sharing the shower with him felt 'off'.
He toweled himself dry, tried his best to psych himself up to drop a number of bombs on his lone companion on his old Freighter. Then he returned to his cabin, to find Alyssa standing by the made bed. "This is how you like it, right?" she checked.
"Yes, that's how I made my bed. Haven't done it in a while, though," John answered, distantly recalling his OCD-like obsession with cleanliness and order. That craving to have power and control over his environment had vanished as soon as he'd gotten used to having a network of Wards in the form of a loving harem to crew the Invictus.
"Um, I saw you make it like this yesterday," Alyssa said. "John, what's going on? Did you get drunk or something after I fell asleep? Hit your head? You're acting… not yourself."
John sighed. He went to sit on the bed, patting the space next to him. Alyssa, still worried but not panicked or afraid of him, sat down at his side. John turned to look her in the eye. There was some cognitive dissonance to see those eyes in the 'wrong' face, but in a way it was grounding. It affirmed to John that he truly just might be in the past with future memories like they'd all planned and prayed for.
"I'm still me, Alyssa. Just… not the John you saw yesterday. I've done a little more living," John tried to explain, probably doing a piss-poor job at it.
"What's that even mean?" Alyssa asked, frowning up at him.
John ordered his thoughts. "Okay, let's just start with the basics. Psychic powers are real. You can check the Holonet if you don't believe me. The Ashanath, the Bolons, a few other species in the Galactic League. And you know I'm not human. So, is it too much of a stretch to believe that my species is psychic?"
"Um, no. It sounds silly, but I'm just the worm girl from the ass end of nowhere. What do I know about the galaxy? Alright, so you're psychic. What's that got to do with you being all… this? I feel crazy just saying it, but your eyes look… older," Alyssa said.
"Accepting that I'm psychic, and that psionics are basically just another word for magic, I want you to try to accept what I'm about to say, no matter how crazy it is," John said, bracing himself. "Time travel."
Alyssa bit her lip. "Okay… trying to keep an open mind. That's what you mean by 'a little more living'? You're future John in present John's body?"
"To me, it's past John. But yes," John nodded.
"Alright… is this permanent?" Alyssa checked.
"All the other times I reversed time, it was," John nodded. "Granted, those times were a minute tops. Going back this far was only possible with an untested device to convert a Power Core's output into eldritch energy I could use to fuel the working. Clearly it worked, or I wouldn't be here in the first place. So I'm here to stay, the John you've interacted with up until now is gone. I mean, he's still me in that I was once him, but I've had so many life-changing experiences and learned so much since this point in history that I'm practically a different person."
Alyssa seemed to peer very hard at his face. A tension vanished from her shoulders. "You still feel like 'you'. And you were in the running for one of the best men I ever met already. If anything, you seem even nicer than you were yesterday. I feel so calm and safe with you, and I've got great instincts. I'm not worried about getting to know the 'new' you. But I feel like I'm at a bit of a disadvantage. How long have you known me?"
"It probably would sound like a long time to you right now, but believe me that it was a blink in the grand scheme," John sighed, his mind turning to the Progenitor War. Even with all his future knowledge, it would probably still last far longer than he would prefer.
Alyssa reached up to cup his cheek. "What's wrong? You look like you've got the weight of a planet on your shoulders."
"More like the whole galaxy," John sighed, reaching up to cup her hand. He interlaced their fingers and brought them down to his lap. "This is going to be a very long story, Alyssa. And most if not all of it will sound like a holo-novel more than real life. I lived it and even I have trouble believing some parts of it. I swear to you, though, every word is true."
"I'm listening," Alyssa said, though she was back to frowning in concern.
John ordered his thoughts. "Ok, let's just start from the very beginning. Over a million years ago, the first spacefaring civilization evolved. They called themselves the Kyth'faren. They colonized the entire Milky Way virtually unopposed. When they had explored every system in the galaxy, they decided to focus inward rather than go intergalactic. They studied and cracked the genetic basis for psychic powers. Between their scientific and psychic mastery, they were practically gods. It was a golden age… until it wasn't."
"His name is Xar'aziuth, which translates as 'the Devourer," John told Alyssa. "We never figured out if that was his birth name or just a title he gave himself. Anyway, he's easily the most evil being ever seen in this corner of the universe. He turned psychic vampire, sucking the very life force out of his fellow Kyth'faren to make himself stronger. By the time they realized the danger in their midst, it was already too late. He'd grown too powerful, and he somehow amassed a cult of followers. He hunted down the whole Kyth'faren population, slaughtering them in droves when he couldn't just drain their vitality to expand his reserves. His appetite for death and power was insatiable, and in the end he rendered his own species extinct except for himself. Even then he wasn't satisfied, so he came up with a brilliant if horrible way to keep getting a steady supply of more energy. Plus some entertainment."
"He genetically engineered the Progenitors and dozens of Thrall species. Progenitors are all-male, loosely based on the Kyth'faren, and are meant to be a master race for the Thralls. He seeded them around the Milky Way, setting the board for the Progenitor War." John took a breath before revealing the terrible truth to Alyssa. "Alyssa, for countless millennia, the galaxy has been a battlefield. Progenitors, each mind-raped by Xar'aziuth when they come into their powers, amass an army of Thralls and wage war in a massive free-for-all with every other Progenitor. And every casualty, through some psychic bullshit I'll go into detail later, has their life force fed to the Devourer. Trillions have perished, all for his idea of fun and to feed his hunger for more energy."
Alyssa was trembling. "That's… well, fucked up doesn't seem to cover it. But what's that got to do with you, with us? And for that matter, what about the Galactic League? Why aren't we under some Progenitor's thumb?"
"I'm getting there," John assured her. "Anyway, even though most of the Milky Way is claimed by one Progenitor or another with his Thralls, there are still no-man's-lands. Plus Xar'aziuth can and will wait over 10 thousand years before sending a fresh Progenitor to be born in a defeated one's old territory to start a new empire. He's not exactly impatient. Other sapient species have evolved over the years. Most of them end up crushed by a young Progenitor as he establishes his empire before joining the Progenitor War, kind of like a tutorial or warm-up. And while the Kyth'faren had to make themselves psychic, natural evolution can also produce psychic species."
"This region of space that now houses the Galactic League used to be just another Progenitor playground. Between one Progenitor ruler being defeated and a new one being sent, the Achonin were born. They were a peaceful people, and potent psychics to boot. They became aware of the Progenitor War raging throughout the galaxy and Xar'aziuth's existence. And they came up with a way to protect themselves. The Kirrix refer to it as 'the Shroud'. To vastly oversimplify it, it's a machine that projects a psychic invisibility field. It covers hundreds of systems, making this part of the galaxy a psychic dead zone. It doesn't block powers altogether, but it stops Xar'aziuth and his minions from telepathically reaching anything inside the field. In other words, if a Progenitor enters the Shroud then they're freed from Xar'aziuth's psychic slavery. For whatever reason, and it disturbs me that it could have been a whim based on boredom with the ordinary routine, Xar'aziuth didn't come in person to wipe out the Achonin and destroy the Shroud. He merely decided to ignore the Achonin and wrote off the local Thrall race, the Maliri, as a loss."
John swallowed to clear his throat. "For a time, the Achonin lived in their little bubble of safety while the Progenitor War continued raging in the rest of the galaxy. Then, around 72 thousand Terran years ago, a Progenitor came under the Shroud. I don't know exactly how or why Mael'nerak came here. All that matters is he did, and he became the first Progenitor in galactic history to get his free will back since Xar'aziuth got his claws into him. Still, he was a Progenitor, war and destruction was all he'd ever known, what he was born and bred for. He claimed the Maliri as his, and decided he didn't like having to share the Shroud with any neighbors. He wiped out the Achonin. Their territory is now known as the Unclaimed Wastes. No modern empire has bothered to colonize it, because there are no habitable planets or moons to be found. Mael'nerak was very thorough in wiping out every Achonin settlement. And Progenitors have this gun called a Quantum Annihilator that can destroy worlds."
"He blew up their planets?!" Alyssa gasped with wide eyes.
"Yes," John confirmed. "He didn't get all of them, but the Achonin were broken and eventually died out within the first millennium of Mael'nerak's arrival. The only real threat to his dominance taken care of, he expanded the Maliri to cover all of what's now the Galactic League. He didn't wipe out the Kirrix for some reason, but otherwise he reigned supreme over every system under the Shroud. And once that was done, he had to find a new pastime aside from galactic conquest. He'd genetically engineered a race of spies called Nymphs for the Achonin war. He stuck to the theme of creating new life. He made the Trankarans as a slave race to mine all his resources, Trankara is literally the Progenitor word for 'miner'. He created the Ashanath as an attempt to create a group mind or 'chorus'. None of the experiments worked out, though, so they ended up as psychic grunt workers and custodians of all his planets where the Maliri weren't needed. He literally spent thousands of years researching computer science and eventually cracked a program to produce a sapient, friendly AI. He got more and more… well, the only word for it is 'bored' without a war to keep him occupied. 40 thousand years ago, he decided to launch an experiment just to see what would happen. He created a race based on the Thralls, only without any of the genetic programming aimed at Progenitors, and seeded them on an Eden-class planet to see what would happen. That planet… was Terra."
Alyssa shook her head. "Right. Adam and Eve were test-tube babies. That… I'm not sure what to do with that. You're saying that humans started out as only a science experiment? If I were religious, I'd be even more freaked out."
"Well, it's the truth, Alyssa. Mael'nerak made Homo Sapiens in his lab because he was bored. It really was that simple." John rubbed her back and got back to his tale. "Fortunately for all of us, around the same time he met a certain Maliri woman named Valada. Not sure how long it took, but Mael'nerak fell in love with her. She taught him how to be a good man. He had a full-blown Damascene conversion. From ruthless conqueror to brooding scientist to benevolent lover and leader. He gifted the Nymphs with their own planet, improved living conditions for the Maliri, Ashanath, and Trankarans, and for a time all was well under the Shroud."
"But nothing lasts forever," Alyssa said, with more wisdom and maturity than most girls her age. But you grew up fast in a place like Karron. "What changed?"
"My father," John sighed.
"So you're one of the Progenitors? I mean, I guessed already, but I'd like to hear you say it," Alyssa hummed.
"Yes. I'm a Progenitor. The first born under the Shroud. But more on that later. Anyway, Xar'aziuth finally decided to investigate Mael'nerak's disappearance and sent my father, Rahn'hagon. 10 thousand years ago, he came under the Shroud and started a campaign against Mael'nerak. Most of the carnage happened in what's now the Trankaran Republic. They still remember it in religious parables as the 'War of the Heavens', when their god the Great Maker clashed with his brother the Despoiler. You can thank Rahn'hagon's Quantum Annihilator for all the asteroid belts in Trankaran space, by the way. The War of the Heavens lasted a couple centuries, and Mael'nerak realized he wasn't going to beat Rahn'hagon. So he decided to end it on his terms."
"He got Valada pregnant, then left her to lead a final charge against Rahn'hagon. Their fleets met in the Zeta Pegasus system. Mael'nerak went all suicide bomber and overloaded his Wormhole Generator. The explosion was big enough to wipe out every ship, and even every planet, in the whole system. In fact, it was so strong it ripped spacetime itself and created the Niryean Rift. Yet even though Mael'nerak gave it his best shot, he didn't take Rahn'hagon down with him." John shrugged. "Though he came damn close. The explosion randomly teleported Rahn'hagon's Dreadnought to a dense nebula in what's now Kirrix space. He crash-landed on an Eden-class planet, and was marooned. He was stranded, the only survivor on the ship and it was too damaged to be spaceworthy, lacking any way to make the necessary repairs."
"Rahn'hagon made due, and he lived like a hunter-gatherer. In his copious free time, he started to explore the Astral Plane, or the spirit world, or a parallel dimension accessible only to psychics. Whatever you call it, it's real and plays by its own rules. Every Progenitor who's died, rather than going on to whatever comes after, is trapped there by the psychic contract Xar'aziuth tortured them into signing. Fallen Progenitors roam the Astral like wild animals, the stronger ones maintaining sub-planes where living Progenitors are conditioned with nightmares to stick to the party line set by Xar'aziuth. But there's more to be found there. The Kyth'faren, as their last desperate gambit, created psychic repositories of all their knowledge in the Astral. I guess they hoped some future psychic species would find them and leapfrog off their progress to oppose and hopefully kill Xar'aziuth. Rahn'hagon found one, and he spent thousands of years learning the true history of the galaxy and how the Progenitor War started. He wasn't in a position to really use it, though… until about 41 years ago."
"When your mother met him and you were conceived?" Alyssa guessed.
"That's right. My mom, Jessica Blake, was a xeno-biologist assigned to the research vessel Cora. They landed on Rahn'hagon's planet as part of an expedition past the Outer Rim before the Kirrix expanded into that sector. They named it Arcadia and began to survey it. My mom was the lucky one to stumble across Rahn'hagon and his Dreadnought first." John scratched the back of his neck. "The way they both tell it, she came onto him. He was very reluctant to get mixed up with a creation of Mael'nerak, plus he was worried that making Jessica his Thrall would attract Xar'aziuth's attention. But she seduced him, and he decided it was worth the risk. He made her his Matriarch."
"What does that even mean?" Alyssa asked, tilting her head in confusion.
"Oh, right, I forgot to explain," John said, shaking his head at his dumb moment. "A Progenitor has every psychic power in the book. But what really makes them powerful is their psychic network. They can forge Progenitor Connections with any woman once certain conditions are met. The Connection functions as a form of mind control, and also turns the woman into a psychic battery for the Progenitor. That's how each Progenitor 'claims' his Thrall race, by making as many Connections with as many Thrall females as possible. And before you ask, the reason it's only women is because each Progenitor, by Xar'aziuth's design, is Kinsey 0 straight and the Connection is inherently sexual in nature. A Progenitor can only make a Connection with someone who's recently ingested his semen."
"Are you being funny?" Alyssa asked, raising a skeptical eyebrow.
"Blame Xar'aziuth for being a pervert when he was making my species," John shrugged. "That's really how it works. The reason I cum so much, as you have seen for yourself, is to make as much psychic slave juice as possible. The standard Progenitor MO is actually to jerk off into prepared vats designed to keep his semen fresh and able to be force-fed to potential Thralls via nozzles. Dedicating an entire load to just one woman is considered 'wasteful'. Even impregnating a Thrall to produce the next generation is usually not a one-on-one affair. A Thrall female, by design, is not only the perfect soldier but the perfect harem girl. Not just physically, her brain gets rewired on top of the obedience compulsion. Every Progenitor's Thrall is bisexual, polyamorous, never gets jealous, is eager to be bred, and imprints for life on the first man she's with. And Thrall species have a skewed birth ratio, 20 girls for every boy. Any Thralls not 'lucky' enough to personally serve in a Progenitor's harem end up happy baby-making factories for whatever male happens to get to them first."
"But wait… does that mean…" Alyssa trailed off.
"You're in my network, Alyssa. I swear on my life that I was totally ignorant of all the strings attached to blowing me when I agreed to this arrangement. I grew up completely unaware of my heritage, I had to figure it out in fits and starts in the future past. When I first found out even a little about how the network worked and how my cum rewires my lovers' personalities, I had a nervous breakdown. If, after I explain everything, you want me to set you free, I'll do it. But let me finish the story first, please," John all but begged.
Alyssa pursed her lips, but finally nodded.
"Anyway, back to Rahn'hagon and Jessica. She ended up his Matriarch. A Matriarch is a Progenitor's lieutenant, a Thrall granted the power and responsibility to manage his network for him. His whole network was killed at Zeta Pegasus. As his first Thrall in his new network, she was his Matriarch by default. Jessica soon became mindlessly devoted to Rahn'hagon as a consequence of the Change, the process of his cum rewriting her DNA to fit the Thrall template. She dug out her subdermal tracker and left it for her crew to find while she shacked up with Rahn'hagon. He spent a few weeks just enjoying having sex after a 10 thousand year dry spell, then he hatched his grand plan."
John frowned as he thought of his father's nefarious plot and sheer cowardice. "Now, he could have just stolen the Cora, gone to claim the Maliri, and set up an empire like Mael'nerak did. But he'd gotten very cozy on Arcadia. His greatest fear is also dying and ending up a Fallen Progenitor. He didn't want to rejoin the Progenitor War, he wanted to stay safe in relative obscurity. But if the Cora could find him, another Progenitor could someday too. He finally settled on a brilliant way to solve the problem: me."
"How do you mean?" Alyssa asked, not understanding.
"For the record, Thralls don't ovulate unless psychically triggered by their Progenitor master. A Progenitor also has control over which chromosome his sperm expresses when fertilizing an egg. Rahn'hagon's bright idea was to conceive me on Jessica and have me do all the dirty work. He knocked her up with a Progenitor, then did some weird psychic genetic engineering thing to encode all the Kyth'faren archives he'd memorized into my DNA. Also a lot of genetic programming meant to send me down a very specific path. He designed me to have an unfair advantage over other Progenitors, and tried to program me to go out and hunt them all down and kill them. Once I'd wiped out every other Progenitor, ergo every potential threat to Rahn'hagon's survival, I would report back to him on Arcadia. And then we'd live happily ever after or some shit like that. The point is, he got my mom pregnant, did his best to customize me into an organic robot to do his preprogrammed bidding, and then arranged for Jessica to be 'rescued' by her crew and taken back to Terran space."
"That's… that's so messed up," Alyssa gaped. "Seriously? He tried to brainwash you while you were still in utero? And then he treated your mom like a messenger dropping off a parcel closer to the Maliri?"
"Exactly," John nodded. "I was born on Olympus Shipyard mere days after the Cora returned from Arcadia. Jessica, acting on Rahn'hagon's orders, sabotaged the Cora to explode with her crew onboard to take out the witnesses and as much of the data collected as possible, then stole a Corvette and returned to Arcadia. To this day, she's living with Rahn'hagon as a psychically brainwashed sex slave. Her every thought is of him, I meant nothing to her other than the task assigned to her by Rahn'hagon. It's sad, really. He's patiently waiting for the day I show up and announce that we're the only 2 Progenitors left in the galaxy. Otherwise, he's just sticking to his peaceful hermitage, with the added bonus of an always horny, always eager woman in his bed."
"Unluckily for him, luckily for all the rest of us, the programming didn't exactly take. It manifests in my mind as a sort of alter-ego. Progenitor-John, as opposed to me, just John. He tried to 'train' me for the Progenitor War when I hit puberty, and I started getting into lots of fights. My grandpa put his foot down, though, and got me anger management classes plus martial arts lessons to learn discipline and self-control. I wasn't an active Progenitor yet, not yet come into my powers, but I'm still from the most powerful psychic species in the galaxy. I subconsciously locked Progenitor-John in a mental cage when I started resisting my instincts. I essentially Jekyll and Hyde'd myself. I remained the dominant personality, and my evil twin got locked in a little black box in the back of my head, along with the instruction manual for the mission Rahn'hagon created me for."
"I lived like a Terran up until this point, Alyssa, with no idea about the Progenitors because all that knowledge was sealed up with Progenitor-John. I had no idea about the Change, or the War, or anything really. I made you my Matriarch completely by accident, not even consciously making the Connection. You and I stumbled around in the dark for a long time, figuring out bits and pieces, not getting the whole story until I met Rahn'hagon and confronted him. That's a whole other story. But back to the time travel, we were losing the Progenitor War. I wasn't fighting it to protect dear old dad, but to protect the League from being crushed like bugs. In any case, we bit off more than we could chew and were about to be wiped out. The smartest people I know agreed that there was no way to salvage the future I came from. Which is why we came up with this cockamamie scheme to try and stack the deck in our favor. So now, here I am, with memories of the War, knowing the truth instead of completely clueless. Hopefully I can do better this time around," John finished his tale.
"So… what happens now?" Alyssa asked.
John tried to gird himself. "Now, I explain to you all that the Change entails, what will happen if you agree to stay with me. If, at the end, you decide you want nothing to do with me, I'll sever our Connection and try to undo what's already been done to you on autopilot so far. Or, if you give informed consent, you can stay by my side. And we'll work together to save the galaxy."
Alyssa narrowed her eyes. "What were we to each other, before you came back? Something tells me I'm more than just your 'Matriarch' to you."
John gulped. "Husband and wife. But that's with a version of you who will never exist in this timeline. I don't want that information to unduly influence you. However I feel for you, I recognize and accept that it's not you. You shouldn't feel guilted or pressured to stay with me just because I'm in love with the Alyssa from my time."
"I hear you, but it's still worth mentioning," Alyssa said, humming to herself. "Well, go ahead. Try and pitch me on staying with you as opposed to cutting and running as soon as we get to the Core Worlds."
"Let's start with a basic pros and cons list," John decided. "The Change will give you the body of a Thrall. Which is to say you'll grow to be 5'9, have a 32D bust, peak fitness for a Terran female across the board, and have perfect health. Drop dead gorgeous and sexy too, for the record. Every time you drink my cum and I get an active Connection with you, I can restore you to that base 'template'. Which essentially means eternal youth barring death by injury or accident, since part of the Change includes the prime of youth. And Progenitors stop aging once they get their first Matriarch, my telomeres are constantly refreshed via psychic healing. So if we end up winning the Progenitor War and not getting killed, we'll literally live happily ever after. Thousands, maybe even millions of years together as immortal lovers. On top of all the physical enhancements, I can give you psychic powers. And did I mention a genius IQ? Stay with me, and you'll become a goddess among women."
"Nice. What's the downside?" Alyssa asked, though she looked very impressed with the perks John had described.
"Personality rewrites. In your own words, it's more 'fine-tuning', but the fact remains you'll become a slightly different person. Bisexual, enhanced libido, and all the other things I mentioned to make you the ideal woman in the alien sex god's stable of lovers. On top of all that, there's the obedience compulsion. I'll remove it as soon as possible, but you'll probably still be more submissive and inclined to do what I say as a passive side-effect of the Change. A compulsion to suicide if I ever die, which again I'll remove but there'll be lingering traces and you'll probably have an exaggerated reaction to my demise if it ever happens. And the basic fact that you'll be a soldier in the biggest war in the history of the galaxy. You'll have to face a lot of danger and get your hands very bloody if you stay by my side, Alyssa," John rattled off.
"And what will you do, if I opt out?" Alyssa asked, her eyes seeming to peer right into his soul.
John tried not to show how much the very thought hurt. "As I said, I'll sever the Connection and do my best to restore you to your original body. You can stay in the passenger cabin, get 3 meals of real food a day, and access to the Holonet to entertain yourself. When we get to Alpha Centauri and I sell the Tyrenium I bought on Karron, I'll give you enough money to set yourself up and you can go on to live whatever life you want. I'll find a new Matriarch and leave you alone. We can stay in touch if you want, but if you told me to never contact you again, I'd obey."
"And, hypothetically, what would I be signing up for if I stick around?" Alyssa asked. "Not asking for a play-by-play of the whole War, not yet anyway, but give me the gist."
"I finish your Change, train you up as a fighter both physically and psychically, and you become my right-hand woman as I set out to save the galaxy. Which means being second-in-command of my ship, running my psychic network to allocate energy during a conflict, and thanks to the Change ending up head wife of my harem. The imprint is powerful, Alyssa. If I don't try and undo it, I will become your whole world. The process has already started. In the future I remember, there were no exceptions to the fact that if I fed a woman directly, she fell in love with me. And you'll wind up sharing me with potentially hundreds of other women. I seem to fall in love at the drop of a hat, and if we win the Progenitor War there'll be nothing stopping me from adding new wives to our marriage for centuries to come. On top of all the women I already planned to recruit to the crew or the network and get personally involved with. Granted, you'll become bisexual and be just as happy to sleep with any of them as I am, but it's worth remembering," John said honestly.
Alyssa was quiet, a thoughtful look on her face for long enough for John to get nervous. Then she got a small grin. "I'm in."
John had tried his very best to work through his pessimism, self-esteem, and abandonment issues. Still, he couldn't help but second-guess this incredible stroke of luck. "Really? You're sure?"
"I'm sure. I like you, John. I liked the old you, and I like this 'new' version of you. What's the old expression, 'a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush'? I'd rather stick with you and see where it goes rather than hope I'll get a better offer later on. Yeah, a life with you sounds a LOT more complicated and exciting than I would ever have imagined, but my gut says I should go for it. I repeat, I'm in." Alyssa flashed a cherubic grin.
John cupped her face. He leaned in slowly, giving her every chance to pull away, and kissed her with everything he had.
When he pulled back, her eyes were fluttering. "Holy… that kiss was a lot better than the last one 'old' John gave me."
"I've had some more practice," John chuckled.
"So… now what?" Alyssa asked.
"Breakfast for both of us," John said, his stomach giving a gurgle as if on cue.
"That code for 'blow me, woman'?" Alyssa giggled.
"Pretty please," John grinned at her humor.
Alyssa applied herself to the task with aplomb. John was soon shooting his load into her belly, her abdomen rounding out as the half-gallon of thick spunk produced by his quad and prostate filled her stomach to capacity and beyond.
"Brace yourself. I need to fix the Connection, but to do that I have to break it first. I'll be quick as I can, but you're about to feel like someone tore your heart out your chest," John warned, pulling Alyssa into a comforting embrace.
Alyssa gulped, but set her shoulders. "Go ahead, John."
John turned his focus inward, searching for the mental representation of all his powers. Glory to whatever God or gods there were out there, there was no sign of Progenitor-John. He had a pitiful number of mind-compartments to support his powers, but they all were free save for the one glowing to show he had an active link to Alyssa's body. Mentally rehearsing what he was about to do, John finally seized hold of the Connection between him and his lone Ward. As gently as he could, he snipped it.
Alyssa made a sound of pain. "Motherfucker, you weren't kidding! I'm about to cry, this feels fucking awful!"
"I'm here, honey, and it's going to go away. Stay strong for me," John murmured to her, most of his attention on running over the Progenitor Connection with a fine-tooth comb. Removing the obedience compulsion and suicidal grief was first priority. Adding his 'psychic love note' as his Lionesses had referred to it came soon afterwards. Adding all the other edits he'd come up with in the future past was done as fast as he could while reasonably avoiding any mistakes. Alyssa's discomfort and whimpering got steadily worse, but John wasn't willing to rush any more than necessary. His Connection, in a very real way, was the source of all his power, the edge he'd had over the other Progenitors. He was determined to get it up to his standard.
After a solid hour, John reviewed the psychic contract of Kyth'faren runes and concluded it was perfectly functional. From an eldritch leash crafted by Xar'aziuth to a bond of pure love and partnership, whether familial or romantic. It was something he'd be proud to have linking him to all his Wards, both his wives and the women who would pledge their lives to his service. Satisfied, John forged his customized Connection with Alyssa through their still active link via his cum in her system.
Alyssa went stock still. She had been teary-eyed from pain, but now she looked at him with wonder. Fresh tears started to fall, but these were from pure joy. "Wow…"
"That feeling in your chest is an echo of how I feel about you," John explained patiently. "I know in my head that you're not my Alyssa, but my heart probably hasn't gotten the memo yet. And I most likely will fall in love with you all over again over the next few days, so it shouldn't change that much going forward."
"It's so… there are no words. You seriously would have let me go when you loved me this much?" Alyssa asked in disbelief.
"I'd rather not have you than keep you against your will," John said firmly. "Happily, you're sticking around anyway, so no worries."
"Is this going to wear off or anything?" Alyssa asked, resting a hand on her fluttering heart.
John chuckled. "Actually, as you fall in love with me, the bond will get even stronger and deeper. This is as weak as it's ever going to get unless we have a huge fight that actually threatens our relationship." There was another gurgle from his belly. "We fed you, now let's feed me."
They made their way to the kitchen in the rec room. John threw together a cold breakfast, reflecting that he might just need to resupply at Port Heracles since his stored provisions were so bland. His last bite had, he grinned as Alyssa went to wash his dishes. "Thanks, honey," he said, giving her a peck.
"Whoa! That… I think I just came for half a second. That felt awesome, weirdly so," Alyssa gasped, a question clear in her tone.
"Part of my personal Connection. You literally feel your own pleasure mixed with mine whenever we touch. And like the emotional imprint, the intensity will increase the more invested and reciprocated our mutual feelings for each other become. And I could happily spend all day just kissing you, so I probably projected a fair amount of sensation to you just now," John explained.
"You know, I know this isn't what you were intending, but this is kinda its own form of brainwashing. The more devoted and loyal I am, the better I'll feel and vice versa. Carrot and stick, right there," Alyssa said, her mouth quirked up in wry humor.
"I am aware, but half the clauses I added were your or one of my other wives' ideas," John chuckled. "And are you honestly complaining about a positive feedback loop of love, bliss, and pleasure?"
"Of course not. And it's like the chicken and the egg whether I fall in love with you because it feels good or if I feel good because I've fallen in love. I was just worried it might bother you since you seemed so opposed to mind control," Alyssa made her position clear.
"The fact that almost all my lovers were addicted to me didn't change the fact they also loved me. I figured I'd just embrace it and set up a reward system for 'good' behavior," John explained his reasoning. "Besides, what's the point of being able to psychically hack my wives' brains if I don't make them as happy as possible?"
"No arguments here," Alyssa nodded. "But, legit question, if I'm on a constant high whenever we're together, will I be able to fight or strategize or even be coherent instead of floating in a haze of warm and fuzzy feelings?"
"Believe me, we worked out through extensive testing the right 'calibration' for the Connection during our honeymoon. You and all my other wives will always be at least a tiny bit 'love-drunk' so long as our relationship is healthy and the Connection isn't damaged. But it'll tone down to a 'buzz' in the heat of combat and won't get back to 'intoxicated' until we're safe again. And, of course, it'll ramp up to 'blackout' when we're in private and making love," John laid out for his soulmate.
"Gotcha," Alyssa nodded. "Nice little system you and future-me worked out. So… I think I'm ready as I'll ever be for more mind-blowing information. Tell me about the future. What happened, and how are we going to change it so it has a happy ending?"
John sighed. "Honestly, I don't even know where to start. And I was never the thinker. I mean, I was captain of the ship and decided all the broad strokes, but I left the fine details to my private think tank of genius girls. Plus, even our most ambitious plans didn't account for me coming back practically to the beginning. Hell, Larn'kelnar is still alive, for fuck's sake."
"Who's Larn'kelnar?" Alyssa frowned.
"No such thing as coincidence, I honestly think it was written in the stars or something that I originally came into my powers just as another Progenitor managed to enter the Shroud," John told her, his face settling into a thoughtful frown. "He's the Larathyran Emperor, and he managed to dig up the code for the hyperwarp gate in Kirrix space. Hyperwarp gates are how most Progenitors get around. They were set up by Xar'aziuth as a series of shortcuts around the galaxy. Every Progenitor Dreadnought has a Wormhole Generator and can just teleport to any system in the Milky Way with the right coordinates. But their Thrall navies aren't trusted with that level of tech, and traveling with Tachyon Drives would be prohibitively time-consuming getting from point A to point B during any campaign in the Progenitor War. Thus, hyperwarp gates. Basically, transmit the code for the gate you want to come out of to the gate you're about to go through, and you can just fly through the generated wormhole. A big aspect of the Progenitor War is tracking down or stealing the codes for as many gates as possible from old records or active opponents to get the tactical advantage. Larn'kelnar, somehow, managed to find the code for one of 2 gates we're aware of inside the Shroud. The other is protected by a series of defenses left behind by Mael'nerak in Maliri space."
"Larn'kelnar came through… a couple months ago, got his freedom after thousands of years as Xar'aziuth's pet, and decided he'd have his turn as the puppetmaster. Like the kid whose dad beats him so he kicks the dog. Rather than crush all resistance and conquer the whole League with just his Dreadnought, and believe me it's advanced enough compared to our current tech he could, he started a sadistic game. He's snuck Drakkar raiders with functionally laser-proof armor into the Ashanath Collective, and Lasers are the only weapons they have. He's enthralled a Trankaran and had her start a civil war. And he's seduced an Admiral and is having her start a war with the Kintark Empire as well as restarting AI research. Now he's just kicking back and watching the fireworks as the League starts to fall apart from within. In the future past, he got a kick out of me running around after him cleaning up his mess, to the point he let me live instead of nipping me in the bud as a threat. He wound up underestimating us, plus he had no idea how different I was from normal Progenitors, and we managed to turn an ambush back around on him to kill him." John sighed. "If and when we confront him again, we need to be a lot faster. He wound up husking his entire network and like an idiot I took Progenitor-John's advice to fight a battle of attrition instead of going for the quick kill."
"Husking?" Alyssa asked, wondering at the odd word choice.
"Oh, right. Remember how every Thrall, though I prefer the term Ward for members of my network, is a psychic battery for their Progenitor? Every other Progenitor using a standard Connection gets barely a drop of extra juice from each woman compared to what I'm getting just from you even as nearly a stranger with my own Connection. And remember, Xar'aziuth wants maximum casualties to feast on the souls of the fallen. Your average Progenitor 'husks' or sucks out so much energy from a Thrall that she dies whenever he needs a quick boost. It's part of why they spend thousands of years recruiting networks in the millions or billions; they need that many disposable bodies to keep up with the demands of Progenitor-on-Progenitor psychic duels. I never husked anyone ever, of course, and I forbade you or any other Matriarch from doing it either. Didn't stop you from tapping life force here and there on occasion, but we never drained anyone dry, no matter how desperate we got," John revealed.
"I see. And what's this about other Matriarchs? I thought Progenitors only had one," Alyssa asked, trying to keep up with all this new information.
"Usually, that's true. I made my second… sorta by accident. It involved Progenitor-John making a jailbreak and being in control for a little while. Then I promoted one of your Wards to Matriarch when we met and recruited others from her species. Finally, I just wound up setting up a new Matriarch whenever I felt like I'd found a new 'category' of Ward instead of just lumping them all under you," John told the blonde teenager. "Plus, every Matriarch automatically has a telepathic link straight to my mind. Made it very handy to coordinate the Empires I claimed during the War, not having to be physically present but still able to send orders through my Matriarch in that part of space."
"Right… I'll get back to the whole Telepathy thing. So, Larn'kelnar? He's trying to rip the League a new one through proxies and cat's paws. What are we going to do about it?" Alyssa checked.
"Okay, I'm going to run through what happened the 'first' time. We can work out what we can afford to change and what has to stay mostly the same later, preferably after your brain gets upgraded," John decided.
"I'm all ears," Alyssa said, settling back in her chair and resting her hands on her still prominent bump.
John didn't have a photographic memory naturally, but he could use the Memory rune to hack his own brain and have perfect recall. With a mild application of will and energy, John started to recount the events that would have come to pass if he hadn't arrived in the past. "Well, you go through the Change over the next couple weeks. You also study Astro-Nav, to the point you become a certified Navigator First Class on your first try at the test. I cannot overstate that a higher IQ is part of the Change, it's a big part of how we came out on top so often despite the odds. Anyway, we end up rescuing a naval officer named Calara from a pirate ambush. That was your first combat. We drop her off at Port Heracles and then get back on course to Alpha Centauri. I meet up with my old CO Charles Harris at Olympus Shipyard. For the record, I'm a semi-retired Marine Commander who serves as a 'consultant'. He's my 'handler' for lack of a better word. I sell him the Tyrenium I bought at Karron for a quarter billion credits–"
"Billion with a 'b'?" Alyssa asked in shock.
"Guess that sounds like a big number to you," John said a tad awkwardly. "Sorry, I'm still in the mindset of running an empire and calculating costs in trillions. Back on topic, I purchase my old ship, the Invictus. In the week while she's getting retrofitted, you and I have a mini-vacation on Gravitus, the planet Olympus orbits. Also meet Rachel Voss, our future Medical Officer. In case it wasn't clear, every officer on the Invictus is also going to be part of the harem and network. Calara calls us up saying she's getting court-martialed. We swoop in and clear up that hock of crap, her old CO is scum and was getting back at her for not going out with him. He's actually a traitor colluding with the pirate gang currently running around the Outer Rim, but we'll get to that. You recruited Calara as Tactical Officer. It was practical, she's actually trained in that role and we needed someone to fire the Invictus' guns. But you also had a crush on her and were subconsciously motivated to recruit as many women as possible to the network. We ended up having a threesome her first night aboard, she got a dose of my cum with us still having little to no idea about how the Change worked, and from that moment she was there to stay."
"We head back to Karron. With the leftover funds after buying the Invictus, I wanted to buy the rest of the Tyrenium Mortimer dug up on Karron. Calara went through the Change, and we arrived at Karron. You convinced us to rescue Sparks from the Diablos. Also to recruit her, again you were subliminally programmed to gather women to the network and you figured the Change could remove her scars. It can, by the way. There was a snafu where Mortimer tried to kill me for 'tricking' him into underselling the first batch of ore, and the Diablos got wind Sparks was trying to run and chased her to the docking bay. No one died… on our side anyway, and we left with the Tyrenium and Sparks secured. Sparks agreed to be Chief Engineer and also join the harem, and we started the return trip to the Core Worlds."
"Calara was still haunted by the pirate attack, and with her Ward brain she managed to track down the base of the gang. I agreed to a detour to wipe them out to give her closure. Sparks went through the Change, and we got the drop on the pirates just as they were selling their slaves to their client: the Kirrix. We wipe out most of the pirate ships and cripple the Hive Ship before doing a boarding action. You and I, without access to our powers and with only half-decent weapons, manage to rescue all the slaves. In retrospect, if we hadn't gotten backup sent by Charles when I reported the pirates, we'd have been doomed. Anyway, we take off in pursuit of the pirates. They were smart and realized we were following them, setting up an ambush. We managed to flip it around, and we killed them all. I also rescued the pirate leader's bedwarmer, a Nymph we named Jade."
"Ok, pause. I'm trying to keep up, but I don't recognize any of the aliens you've mentioned all morning. And I've got a few other questions for context I don't have," Alysa spoke up.
John winced. "Sorry, honey. I can slow down, and chime in whenever you're confused. We've got plenty of time… for now, anyway."
