Chapter 7 #2
I will remove every hint of them from every timeline.
I keep her well away from the tactical zones. Her response to seeing our powers unleashed was disturbed, and I do not want her to fear me more than she does. I want to protect her from everything, including the reality of who and what I am.
The war is beginning to intensify. We are one vessel among many acting in a widespread mesh. Our main goal is to achieve peace, but it is impossible to do that without some losses.
“Tasin, they’re approaching us,” Aric says.
“Who is they?” I turn, slightly annoyed that he is being vague. We are on a war footing. I need specific information, delivered directly.
“On screen,” he says.
I turn toward the screen.
The ship approaching me bears the crest of the Datari Composite.
The very same creatures who captured me, confined me, and ran their experiments on me.
Upon seeing them, I feel myself go cold all the way to my core.
I lose myself in that moment in the most fundamental of ways.
I become controlled not by my own thoughts and values, but by the single-minded desire for revenge.
I go to Drak’s panel, and I launch an erasure missile. Usually I’d give an order. This time, I want to be the one who pushes the button.
It fires into the depths of space, heading directly for their vessel. I wait for it to disappear. There’s a particular excitement in firing this missile. I don’t know who was on that ship, but all DC war ships are fair game to me now. I will remove each and every one of them I find.
The missile completes its journey. In a millisecond, space will be empty of another set of evil bastards who believe in control at any cost, who are certain the end justifies any means, and who made my life in particular a living hell.
But the ship persists.
The missile stops, but the vessel remains.
We look at one another, Aric, Drak, Fidas, and I.
“Fuck,” Fidas says.
It’s an apt response. Something just interrupted our main weapon, and I’d like to know what.
“Did they manage to engineer something to deflect nonexistence? Is that even possible?” Aric starts theorizing immediately.
A chuckle comes over our speakers. They shouldn’t be active, and there shouldn’t be a voice to speak to them. A lot of strange things are happening all at once.
“I wish I could see your faces,” the voice on the other end says. “Smug Psyons suddenly realize they don’t actually rule the universe just because they have a slightly better than average sense of time.”
My blood runs cold. I know that voice. It is the voice I heard in my captivity for hour upon hour. It is the voice that promised me pain and delivered it in abundance.
“We are going to board. Do not try to resist. Our weapons are locked on and I can promise that unlike yours, ours will be effective.”
“They have lock on us,” Aric confirms. “Six times over. We could try to jump, but we’re at short range and they’d detect our energy signature.”
“We can step into the home world,” Drak reminds us. “We don’t have to stay here and wait to be boarded.”
“Then they get our empty ship,” I say. “No. We stand our ground. We prepare ourselves.”
“Maybe we put some pants on,” Aric says.
“We put some pants on,” I agree with him.
* * *
By the time we are boarded, we are all wearing pants.
They decide to enter the ship via a phase transition, a transport mechanic that raises all kinds of questions as to whether or not the people who arrive are the same ones who left, but for once none of us are interested in philosophy.
Three DC citizens arrive. They are lizard-like in their appearance, even more scaled than we, with large eyes set on heads the sizes of unpleasant domes. These are distant cousins of ours, and like any family, the fighting between our kinds is all the more vicious.
They arrive armed, of course. They have weapons trained on us with obvious threat, and more than a hint of smugness. They think they have overrun us. They think they have out-maneuvered us. Their arrogance is extreme. It will be the end of them.
The DC who spoke on the speakers has made an appearance in person. He is heading up the group. I know his name. Alred. I know because that is what the technicians called him when he gave orders for me to be tortured.
“Last I saw you, you were in a containment chamber with lines coming out of every part of your body, screaming with pain,” Leader Alred says.
I decide to kill him.
He does not get a chance to wield a weapon against me.
Neither do the other two. We step through space, glitching out of the world they believe is real, entering our home realm for a moment, and then re-emerging in their faces.
To their frightened gazes, we seem to disappear and reappear while ripping into them.
I kill my torturer with my bare hands. My claws lengthen, my fangs extend.
The illusion of the almost human maw breaks as my mouth becomes more like a bloody snout containing jaws flashing with multiple rows of razor-sharp teeth.
It is all over in a matter of seconds. Their bodies are no match for ours.
Scales and muscle and guns seem as though they will offer resistance, but they do not.
Before we evolved psychic powers, we were a viciously predatory species.
“Well,” Drak says, wiping some blood and visceral tissue from his face. “That was… dramatic.”
“I’m sorry,” I say.
The DC had forgotten we are still descended from ferocious primates, much like humans are. The first time they took me, they hadn’t forgotten that. They drugged me. They made it so I could not resist. My capture was carefully orchestrated. It was organized with respect.