Starseed - Chapter 4

Chapter Four – Starseed – Part One

It's been nearly twelve hours since we arrived at Haven station in the Talos system. Our... guest by request of the emperor has made herself at home already on my flagship.

It pains me to look at this woman. Not just because she’s attractive and I don’t want her to be. But because she’s got the dipshit wrapped around her finger. So much so that the Commander of the Alpha Uncaria is now babysitting her… or being baby sat by her…

Fucking hells.

“Commander, are you going to offer me tea or just watch it boil?” Eva Fazadin asks me calmly as she sits across me at my command table. Her escort, a tall woman with a scar over both of her eyes stares daggers at me, like she wants to tussle in the proverbial mud.

I slide the godsdamned tea kettle across the table toward her with a fancy little cup. Her guard mulls her jaw but doesn’t speak. A brute of a woman, one that physically would have done well for the Alpha Uncaria selection process. Standing more than two heads taller than Eva. The behemoth nearly makes me look up at her when I’m standing.

“I’ve been on your ship now for three hours, and you haven’t said a single word to me,” Eva says, reaching forward to grab another cup in the center of the table where I left it. “Commander, I get the distinct impression that you don’t like me very much.”

Her emerald eyes trace up from the glass, she gives me a measuring glance, one that’s almost playful. In a way that tells me she’s enjoying this exchange, even if I’m not speaking.

Perhaps it’s because she likes to fuck with people like me. I don’t know, and I don’t care.

“Is there anything I can do to make you less… hmm, of an asshole?”

Her break in decorum surprises me. Though I suppose three hours of silence for a pampered person might cause them to crack.

“There is one thing,” I say.

She blinks, half surprised that I finally talked. She pours two cups of tea and slides one toward me gingerly as a peace offering. I look at the tea and then look at her. Waiting for her to ask, because she must ask for this. It won’t be as impactful if she doesn’t.

“And, what pray tell is that?” she asks, coyly taking a sip.

I point to the door of the command room, “You can politely get the fuck off my ship.”

She spits up her tea as she’s drinking, something strange crosses her lips though, it’s not an angry snarl, it’s a smile, like she enjoyed being told to fuck off.

“Is that all?” she asks.

“That’ll do.”

“Charming,” she says, taking another sip of her tea, “Anything else, besides that?”

I ponder her question for a time. Thinking back to the lack of credible intel my brigade was able to gather.

“Tell me about yourself.”

She squints at me, “About me?”

I nod.

“Okay, what would you like to know?”

I say nothing. During interrogation training we learn that sometimes saying less is better. It will allow her to say more, perhaps even make her so nervous that she starts spilling secrets accidentally, or more likely she spins webs of lies that she can’t remember.

“I’m a woman,” she says, then smiles and sips her tea and sits in silence.

Complete silence…

How long will she sit like this? Is she waiting for me to ask her more? Surely not. This is a ploy. Meaning she’s either naturally gifted at this, or she’s trained in interrogation techniques.

“You okay?” she asks calmly, then points to her own eyebrow, “Your eyebrow, it’s a little twitchy. Mine used to do that… when I was a child.”

She’s toying with me. Showing me that she won’t be bullied. Damnit, I hate that I respect that.

“I used to be much less refined, a bit of a loud mouth in truth,” she says, then tilting her head, “What were you like as a young man?”

I don’t reply. She licks her lips but doesn’t speak again.

Suddenly her guard lets out a loud groan, and speaks with a very thick accent, “Yama’s tits, either fuck or talk, but don’t just fucking look at each other like a bunch of cunts.”

“Vena,” Eva says sharply, then breathes out slowly regaining the calm, “Wait for us outside.”

The guard, Vena apparently, she rolls her eyes and says defiantly, “With fucking pleasure, milady.”

That word… milady. Denoting a higher caste than a traditional citizen. Either that or it’s passive sass.

Curious either way.

Once Vena leaves, Eva sighs again, putting her head on her hand, “Commander, do you mind if I call you Lycan?”

“Yes.”

“Alright, Lycan,” she says without skipping a beat, “I think we’ve played enough corra and tocka. Let’s skip the bullshit, shall we?”

“Yes, as in I mind.”

“You mind what?”

“If you call me Lycan.”

Her eyes narrow and she… she laughs. A good and hearty laugh.

“You really do have a stick shoved up your ass,” she snickers, “Gods, do you ever relax?”

“No.”

“To the stick or the relaxation?”

“Both.”

“Right, well, until proven otherwise as they say,” she says, pouring another cup of tea, “Aren’t you curious why I’m here?”

I don’t answer, because I don’t lie. My kind rarely do.

“Aren’t you curious why the Emperor allowed me to come?”

“Spreading your legs to get favors is hardly interesting,” I reply coldly. Not to be an asshole, but because her response will be telling.

Her eyes narrow again, but she doesn’t laugh, no, she’s offended by the notion, disgusted even. Real disgust, one that she tries to hide almost immediately. Why would fucking the emperor be disgusting for her? He may be a turd, but most consider him quite attractive.

Maybe she’s into women, though I don’t think that would have warranted such a profoundly disgusted micro reaction. There’s something else here, I’m not sure what though.

Curious.

“I did not spread my legs to gain favor with your emperor.”

Your emperor, so she does not consider him her emperor, meaning she is in fact a foreign national. Curious again.

I wait for her to reply.

She spins the tea glass, without looking up from it she says nostalgically, “You know, I grew up listening to the stories from my mother. She told me that the Alpha Uncaria can defy fate itself. They are the harbingers of change, the ones blessed by destiny to carve a new path. Whomever controls them can defy fate. That is why the empire was feared in our galaxy.” She pauses, letting out a sigh, “That is why as the Alpha Uncaria crumble, so too does the Empire’s reach.”

“Get on with your point.”

She smiles calmly, in a way that somehow makes me respect her a little, she’s like me, used to taking people’s shit and moving on.

“My point is that you’ve seen what I’ve seen, the emperor is for lack of better words… a complete and utter piece of fucking shit that his mother should have swallowed for the good of the galaxy.”

I blink, I have had an eerily similar thought, and I find no fault in anything she’s just said. In fact, I think I respect her a little more for having the balls to say the truth.

“Gods that feels good to say out loud,” she says, letting out a sigh of relief, “He’s insufferable to be around. Like a fucking manchild. Did you know he has a woman that literally just wipes the drool from his mouth, because he can’t be fucking bothered to lift a napkin when he’s drunk.”

The way she speaks now is in a casual tone that is all too familiar of the lower class. She’s not like the royal assclown, she’s different. Probably raised in a poor home in a central planet of the Fazarian core. Strange though, the Covenant is less than twenty years old and she looks roughly twenty-five to thirty.

Unless she’s much older than that. Before our rejuvenation pods were taken, we looked young as well.

“How old are you?” I ask.

“Why?” she muses, looking at my lips then back to my eyes.

“Curiosity.”

She tilts her head and pauses before saying, “Two hundred and thirty-nine.”

I blink again. Two hundred and thirty-nine. She’s nearly as old as me. Old compared to most citizens of the galaxy. Especially for how young she looks. Meaning she has significant financial backing. She must be very high up in the Fazarian Covenant.

“Can I trust you?” she asks, her emerald eyes glittering in the light.

“No.”

 “I find your honesty so refreshing, my whole life I’ve…”

“I don’t care.”

She laughs, smiling heartily, “Honesty, the thing they say is the Uncaria’s only real weakness. That and the mundane.” She looks at me with a tilted head still, “I don’t think it’s a flaw. I think in a world filled with lies, it’s a beautiful thing. A bastion of truth against the torrential downpour of falsehood.”

I groan at the boring flattery. Making sure she understands that hollow complements lead nowhere.

“I’m going to trust you,” she says, looking away, “I’ve read your file, you’re a good man doing the best you can with what you have.”

Another groan makes her smile again.

“My secret is one that you will not believe, but I assure you it is true. I am the daughter of Aulem Aurous, the last real emperor that the empire had.”

The air holds in my lungs as I analyze her face again, looking for clues and features that I hadn’t noticed before, because I wasn’t looking for them. The look of disgust earlier, if she’s telling the truth, that would make the current emperor her younger brother. Of Fazarian descent though… I think back to my history studies when I first joined the order. There was a war with the Fazarian Republic before I was born. The emperor Aulem Aurous conquered a third of their territories, but gave back nearly everything except a handful of systems.

“Does he know?” I ask abruptly.

“He does, which is part of why he allowed me to go.”

I squint at her.

“It’s a three part reason, he intends to sacrifice the Alpha Uncaria as a peace offering to the Senate, get the object we are hunting, and then have me conveniently killed.”

“Why does he need you to retrieve the object?”

“Because I’m the only one with a map of exactly where it is, and the passphrase to unlock it.”

Passphrase… perhaps she’s talking about some kind of ancient technology. Many can require a codex to operate them.

He plans to sacrifice us… I don’t want to believe what she says at face value… but it’s hard not to think she could be telling the truth. We’ve exhausted every loop hole to remain as an entity. No doubt pissing off some senators in the process. But for him to sacrifice us… my eyes lower on the table.

“Essentially killing three kornaks with a single blast,” she says, splaying her fingers.  

I don’t understand what her motivation is in this game. Besides perhaps claiming the object of our destination. What could it be though to risk her life so blatantly for it…

Is it because she wants to challenge him for succession?

No, she missed her chance, after ten years of successful reign, the Emperor’s claim cannot be challenged for reasons of birthright alone. Those were the only years that Altonius actually did his fucking job. Or more accurately deigned to ask his assistants to ask us to do it.  

If what she is saying is true, then she has a claim to the Imperial throne. One that would not be extremely hard to see come to fruition if our Emperor was out of the picture.

Still.

The Alpha Uncaria are loyal to a fault. Speaking ill and doing ill are different types of betrayal. We cannot betray the current Emperor. I am honor bound to tell him of this exchange. Even if I think he’s a worthless piece of shit.

It is our way, part of our founding creed. The Emperor’s will is our command.

Yet if what she is saying is true…

My mentor’s words flutter into my mind once more. Do not suffer a fool to lead. Again I am thinking of him, the traitor. Why do I keep thinking of…

A thought flutters across my mind. What if I helped her seize power? She’d be indebted to me and the order. We could rise again to the glory that her mother’s stories taught her. We could become the strongest force in the galaxy again.

The thought is fleeting and it falls away.

“What is the object?”

She tents her hands and says, “It’s a Starseed…”

My eyes slowly trace into hers, “A Starseed?”

I’ve only heard them mentioned a few times. Always in covert mission briefings. The old order knew of such things. Before the fall when we lost the journals of all the old Commanders. The name Starseed sticks out to me though, of the records I recovered, there was one entry that said it could grant immortality to the owner.

The emperor wants to become immortal… to rule as a shit stain forever until all luster is lost and our empire becomes dirt once more.

Fear grips me as I see the faces of all the dead my hands have taken. All of that pain will have been for naught if he lives forever. The thing that lets me sleep at night is that he will someday die and someone else may take over. Someone even fractionally competent so that they can reign the senate back in.

I look up at her… she seems reasonable.

“What is your plan?” I ask her.

“You’re in?”

“I asked what the plan is, I did not state my intentions yet.”

“Well, you know how to make a woman feel comfortable and safe, don’t you?” she jests.

“The plan, or leave.”

“Cold, but understandable.” She muses her hair and leans back in her chair, “I will take the Starseed myself and claim the golden throne by way of a blood rite challenge.”

No matter what I decide, based on what she said, she is the only one with the location and passphrase for the retrieval of the object our mission is bound for. Immediately telling the emperor may jeopardize that.