Commander Varus drummed her fingers against her command chair in irritation. It was supposed to be a high honor that she was selected to explore the Kepler system and it had felt like one initially. When she had been given command of the INS Expedition and given her orders, it had certainly seemed a grand endeavor. Seven years had quickly eroded whatever honor had clung to the mission.

Granted, I wasn’t actually conscious for those seven years.

No, true to Imperial design, she had only been awoken from stasis close to a year ago. When the Expedition had arrived in the Kepler-62, otherwise known as the Afrodull system, automated processes had immediately set to work. A brand new quantum entanglement communications buoy had been jettisoned and then more instructions had arrived from Sol.

Following that, construction drones had set about the monumental task of building a Stellar Gate. It was the Empire’s solution to instantaneous travel across the galaxy. Alcubierre drives were only so fast. They were sufficient to conquer the Sol system, but they took too long to support humanity’s expansion to the rest of the stars. Thankfully, the Empire was the sole owner of the gate technology and the Einstein-Rosen bridge it created.

Alfrodull had been chosen because it had multiple planets within the Goldilocks zone that required little to no terraforming. That was important for humanity’s first steps beyond their solar system. Once the gate was created, colonists would flood the system and begin the long work of making it suitable for humanity. This all happened while she slept peacefully in her stasis pod.

Once she had woken from stasis, she had spent the last year exploring the Afrodull system from the confines of her ship. She hadn’t been authorized to put boots on the ground on any of the planets and instructed to merely categorize the various planetary objects in the system while providing security for the Stellar Gate. Most of the crew was left in stasis and only a token force of the two thousand odd Imperial Guardsman provided security for the ship.

Not that even that token force was necessary.

When she finally received orders to deploy her troopers to Hod, one of the aforementioned Goldilocks planets, she had been ecstatic. Anything to break up the monotony of her current assignment was welcome. Besides, she knew that she needed to redeem her worth to the Empire.

While Varus had been sleeping, the Empire had moved on without her. The technology on her ship was outdated, the forces that she used had long been replaced by better ones. What had been a prestigious post seven years ago had become a babysitting mission, and that was the source of her current frustration.

Despite the ease of their current assignment, they had a casualty. Reports of the planet described two groups of sentient life. They had all been human. At least, on the surface. The majority of the sentient life had been degraded due to some genetic manipulation gone wrong. Varus didn’t understand why, she wasn’t a scientist, but something caused most of the population to go berserk. They were barely human. They killed and raped indiscriminately and quickly destroyed whatever burgeoning civilization they had been building. According to her reports from the ground, the other group resembled and acted like the rest of humanity.

Both groups were an offshoot of humanity sent in a colony ship two hundred years ago. That had been enough time for the technology they possessed to be completely forgotten and their society to decline until it resembled something from three thousand years BFE.

Her orders were to capture the latter group and eradicate the former. She had mixed success on both counts. That meant that whatever prestige she hoped to earn from this mission was radically dissipating.

First, the enclaves of normal humans had been relatively difficult to capture. Oh sure, in some cases, whole villages and towns were captured and slipped onto X41s bound for the Expedition. On their first mission, one of the Marines had been injured. When she had heard the news, she had a bad premonition of what the future of the mission entailed and she had been proven right.

It turned out that the first enclave had been the easiest to capture. They lived on a collection of small islands and there was nowhere for them to run from their Imperial captors. The same wasn’t true for the other enclaves. Those had survived their more bestial counterparts by going to ground in difficult to find locations.

It boggled the mind. The population on Hod were still using bows and arrows and sailing the oceans with sails, while the Guardsmen were in advanced armor, using weapons that should have looked like magic. Yet, the Commander’s people were struggling.

Sure, there had always been a non-zero chance that she would lose someone, emphasis on the one, but she had only considered this due to technical error or hostile fauna outside of the brief. In her projections, it has always been one of the two, not a back trodden offshoot of humanity more easily dealt with than civilians. So it was no surprise that she had been fuming when the impossible report came in. Now she was stuck figuring out what to do with that information, that, and filing the necessary paperwork for the bureaucracy.

She had been told to report an anomalous behavior from the population of Hod and she wasn’t sure that this counted. It could’ve been bad luck or just Murphy fucking up a relatively simple plan. No matter the reason, she wasn’t going to stake her career on it.

Varus tapped a button on her command chair and a small holoscreen appeared before her face. She quickly composed a short report of the behavior and sent it on to Terra with Topaz-level encryption. She assumed it would take a while for the administration on Terra to respond, so she collapsed the holoscreen and looked out at the blackness beyond her craft.

There were no windows to speak of on Imperial vessels. Windows were a weakness in structural design. Instead, tiny cameras all over the ship projected what they saw onto the bulkhead around the bridge of the ship. She pressed several buttons and brought up a view of the Stellar Gate.

The structure of the gate was a mind-boggling feat of engineering. It had to be large enough to fit an entire colony ship and even with the cameras zoomed out as far as they could go, it didn’t capture the full size of the ring. An army of automated drones toiled along with its figure. The gate would be complete soon. Likely, there were only a few more days until it was ready for its first test run. She was thankful for that. Once it was complete she could take her ship back to Sol and be replaced by a newer ship and a complement of Imperial Marines.

Seven years ago, there hadn’t been enough of the genetic super-soldiers to staff this mission and she had to settle for the Guard. Now, she was assured that her relief would have more than enough firepower to settle every world in the Afrodull and fend off any bad guys who might protest differently.

There hadn’t been any contact with other advanced species yet. Most people assumed that humans were the only sentient life in the galaxy. Varus didn’t think that was right. By sheer statistical evidence, there had to be something else out there and she was happy that the Marines would be there to meet them.

A muted ping caught her attention and she swiveled her gaze from view outside her ship.

That’s strange. The Empire has already responded.

She felt her eyebrows climb as she saw who the message was from. The Director of Imperial Intelligence, Cossus Sita himself, had replied. Not only that, but it was an Onyx-level message. She immediately felt like an idiot for sending her message as Topaz.

Can I get anything right?

The universe seemed intent on fucking her at every opportunity. Sighing heavily, she opened the message and authorized it to stream directly to her Intranet. It was the procedure when dealing with messages of this caliber. Even if the bridge was currently empty beside herself, she had to take every measure reasonably possible that she was the only recipient of the message.

The message resolved itself as an overlay on her vision.

[Commander Varus,

You are hereby ordered to detain and interrogate the person in question. You are to learn the exact details of how and why the subject was able to kill one of the Guard despite a technological disadvantage. Further, you will prepare a full medical summary of the individual down to the genetic level. Report back once this has been complete.

Cossa Sita

Director of Imperial Intelligence]

Varus signed and sent a confirmation to the Director. Imperial Intelligence being involved in the operation meant that there was more going on than met the eye and she knew she was woefully underinformed. Imperial Intelligence had been responsible for toppling whole planets and ferreting out every secret of every planetary government in Sol. They were the eyes of the Emperor and they took their duties seriously. If she read between the lines, it was clear that these savages were more than simple offshoots of humanity. It was her job to figure out exactly what they were.

A quick check of the STRATNET told her that the subject of her orders was on the way to the Expedition. She sent instructions to the pilots onboard and let them know they needed to bring the prisoner in question to—she checked schematics of the ship for the nearest interrogation room.

SR-232

A couple more taps of her console and the orders were official. They would be bringing in the prisoner bound and blind. They would be on board in half an hour and she needed to be ready.

Another series of commands and one of her Lieutenants arrived on the bridge. She stood and gave him a cursory glance. His uniform was in order and he had the same bored expression that everyone else on the ship had. She didn’t blame him. She took a closer look using her Intranet to check his name.

“Lieutenant Rullus, you’ve got the bridge.” She curtly told him.

The man gave her a crisp salute in response.

“Aye, Ma’am.”

That was enough for her so she exited the bridge and made her way to an interrogation room close to the hangar deck. There weren’t many rooms on the ship. It was a commando carrier, not an intelligence vessel. She had never used the room before but was pleasantly surprised to see that it was spotless when she arrived. The Chiefs had kept their Spacers busy by making sure the ship was immaculate. That was a good sign, and she made a mental note to write up an informal commendation for the members of the crew. It wasn’t much, but they all deserved something for the bullshit duty they had been assigned.

The room itself was paneled in the same metallic gray titanium-alloy as the rest of the ship. However, instead of being brightly lit, it had a single recessed light in the ceiling. A glance at her omni-tool told her that it could be adjusted to fill the entire room in harsh illumination, or it could be focused into a beam directly onto the prisoner. She opted for the latter. She didn’t remember much from the basic intelligence course she had taken while in the fleet academy, but she remembered at least that much.

The rest of the room was empty save for a metal desk bolted to the floor and a reasonably comfortable chair. Varus took the seat and maintained her bearing for the interrogation to come. She didn’t want to be here, and she didn’t want to do this, but she would be damned if she didn’t accomplish her mission to the best of her ability.

She didn’t have to wait long. Five minutes from when she sat down, someone rapped heavily on the door. Instead of replying, she sent a confirmation over the Intranet. The door slid open and two members of the Guard entered with a man in between them.

The first thing she noticed was the size of him. Even though his escorts were large men and covered in heavy armor, he still towered over them by at least thirty centimeters. All the man wore was a faded blue tunic that extended past mid-thigh and a pair of strappy sandals. The lack of clothing showed off a herculean physique that Varus couldn’t help but find attractive. His tan skin looked taut and healthy. There was no sign of disease or poor health.

Easy girl, she reprimanded herself.

It had been a long time since she had anything approaching sex. Just because the man in front of her was a specimen, didn’t mean she didn’t have a job to do. She schooled her face into a stony glare as the guardsmen secured the shackled man to a point behind his back. The position forced him to kneel with his arms pulled painfully behind her back.

The Commander had no interest in making this painful, but she wasn’t sure what she was dealing with. The only real information that she did have, was that the man had killed one of her Guards. The thought was enough to banish any flights of fancy she previously had. This was a killer, and she would treat him as such until she was told otherwise.

Once he was secured, the Guards looked up to her.

[Remove the blindfold] she commanded through their TACCOM channel. One of the guards moved to the corner of the room and aimed his rifle at the prisoner, while the other removed the blindfold before moving to the opposite corner and doing the same.

Privately, Varus thought it was a little much, but she didn’t comment or ask them to stand down. Her expertise was in commanding ships. Their expertise was anything related to bringing pain to anyone stupid enough to stand against the Empire.

With the blindfold off, she was able to get a better look at her prisoner. He had flawlessly sculpted features with a strong jaw, pronounced cheekbones, and penetrating gray eyes. He had short-cropped dark brown hair with a fade on the side that wouldn’t be out of place on an Imperial Marine. In fact, the only thing that separated him from any other member of their ilk was the short-cropped beard that he wore. She didn’t know what she was expecting, but it wasn’t a man that looked like he was gene sculpted into perfection.

She frowned as she studied him and noticed that he was studying her in return. She couldn’t tell what the man thought of her. His face didn’t betray any hint of what was going on in his mind. There were definitely thoughts turning behind his eyes. He was alert and despite his compromised position, he was moving his eyes in such a way to figure out what was around him. He should’ve been amazed to see the scientific marvel that was her ship, but instead he was stoic and composed.

“What is your name,” she asked at last.

He tilted his head in a slight indication of confusion and she realized that she made a mistake. Of course, he didn’t understand what she was saying. It would be stupid to assume that he spoke Basic. Instead of revealing her mistake and compounding it further, she reached out through the TACCOM and requested the ship doctor to come to the room with a basic intranet injection.

She should’ve done that in advance but it slipped her mind.

Maybe being in stasis fucked with my brain.

She knew the thought couldn’t be true, but she couldn’t help the sense that she felt slower than usual. It was probably just the mind-numbing task the Empire had given her.

Minutes later, neither she nor the man had spoken again. The door opening caused her to glance up, while the man casually turned his head as well.

“Commander,” the doctor greeted as he entered the room. Technically, they were of the same rank but she was in charge of the ship, while he was merely a medical professional. It was appropriate for him to address her by rank. In less formal circumstances, they usually spoke to each other on a first-name basis.

In his hands, he held the nanite injection that would give her prisoner the ability to understand Basic. There were some other benefits it bestowed, like access to the lowest tier of the Intranet, but she didn’t think it was anything the prisoner could make any particular use out of.

“Doctor Servius,” she returned with a brief smile and gestured to the prisoner. “Please, give him a class one intranet connection.”

The doctor nodded and punched the relatively thick needle into the prisoner’s shoulder. The man didn’t cry out or hiss in pain like she was expecting. A flash of surprise crossed the Doctor’s face as well. He had been thinking the same thing as her. He pressed the plunger and anger swept across the prisoner’s features.

He has to think we’re poisoning him or something equally malicious and yet, he isn’t giving us the satisfaction of showing fear. Admirable.

When the injection was fully administered, he pulled the needle from the prisoner’s arm and sprayed the site with a small blast of healing nanites. He watched carefully, to make sure the hole fully closed and then wiped away the blood with an antiseptic wipe. Once done, he looked up to Varus for any further orders.

“Will that be all Commander?”

Varus nodded once. “Yes, Doctor. However, remain on standby, we have been ordered to perform a full medical panel on this man. The spooks want it down to the genetic level.”

Servius’ eyes widened slightly at the news, but he nodded his acceptance before leaving the room. The entire time, the guardsmen remained alert and didn’t make a sound.

A countdown appeared in the Commander's vision as the nanites went to work connecting the prisoner with the Intranet. She waited for the countdown to hit zero before pulling up his profile in her vision. The nanites only provided basic information but it showed his heart rate was slightly elevated and that he was still suffering from the stunning shots from a Decanus rifle.

Varus quickly pulled up the after-action report of the incident and couldn’t help but be impressed. He had taken five shots to the chest. That was enough energy to stop his heart and then some. He should have at least been suffering electrical burns and a screwed up neurological system, but she saw none of that reflected on the man’s body. She quickly tagged that for her report to the spooks.

Finally, she addressed the man again. “What is your name?” She spoke clearly and slowly to give time for the Intranet to translate her words.

The man opened his mouth, likely to say something along the lines of “what the fuck did you say, lady?” when he stopped and closed his mouth. Confusion crossed his face before morphing into awe. His reply was slow and stilted.

“My name is Andros Aeton.”

Her name picked up his name as being Ancient Greek in origin and that surprised her. The colony ship that landed on Hod was originally from a nordic company called Triplex. It was strange that Greek seemed the dominant culture on the planet.

“I am Commander Varus of the INS Expedition.”

He seemed to chew on the words for a while. “Hello, Commander.”

She nodded to herself. That was a more polite response that she figured she would get. They did invade their planet and capture their people after all.

“You’re here because you killed one of my men. Why?” The question was simple and the answer was likely to be just as basic, but she was required to ask.

The man looked confused again.

“I was defending my people. You attacked us.”

Varus let her features go cold. “No, we saved you. Your planet was overrun with genetic freaks gone wrong. Your descendants of ours flung across space and time. We’ve come to free you.”

The man stayed silent, but his eyes were determined and there was a spark of anger. Varus didn’t care, she was angry too.

“How did you kill him?”

The footage from the crime scene had already been logged in the after-action report. Her trooper had been stabbed in the neck by a knife. However, that wasn’t the strange part of the attack. What was strange was that the man hadn’t been picked up by the helmet’s thermal sensors. There wasn’t a conceivable way that Andros had been able to kill the trooper without detection. He only appeared on their thermal sensors when he had risen like a ghost and tried to use a rifle against the rest of the squad.

Of course, the action was doomed to fail from the start. Each rifle was locked to the intranet connection of the trooper that wielded it. It was designed that way to prevent exactly what Andros tried to do.

Despite the anger in the man’s face, his voice was calm and controlled. “I waited until he drew close enough and then I stabbed him in the neck.”

Varus nodded. So far so good.

“How did you hide yourself from the thermal sensors?”

The man’s eyes clouded. The intranet was likely giving him a short lesson on what thermal sensors meant in the context of the conversation.

“What is this voice in my head?” He asked instead.

Varus frowned. “That isn’t important. How did you fool the thermal sensors?”

Genuine confusion met her question. “I don’t know.”

The Commander steepled her fingers in front of her.

“We’re going to find out. You will be taken to our medical facility and tested for genetic anomalies. In the meantime, we’ll be rounding up the rest of your people and taking them back to their rightful home, the Sol system.”

Again, there was a pause as the intranet fed him enough information to understand what she was talking about.

“I understand,” he said slowly. “Please, what about my family?”

Varus sighed, she didn’t know and it wasn’t her job to find out.

“You’ll likely see them soon. I don’t know the status of individuals from your planet. I’m sorry that I can’t tell you more.”

She lowered her hands and glared deeply into his eyes.

“You have committed a crime against the Empire and killed one of its citizens. Know that you have no rights, no freedoms, and nothing that will prevent us from turning your planet into stardust. Follow the instructions of your escorts—“ she paused to nod to the two troopers behind the Hodian. “—and maybe the Empire will have leniency. Fail to do so and I will not be responsible for what happens to you or your family.”

Andros’ eyes tightened in rage and a snarl sprang to his lips, but Varus was past caring. The man didn’t know anything of value and only a medical assessment would get down to the truth. She needed nothing else from him. She had already recorded the conversation and attached it to the report that would be going back to Director Sita.

[Take him away.] She ordered through the TACCOM.

The troopers placed the blindfold back on the man and took control of his bindings once more. When they led him away she sighed. She needed to get back to the progress with the rest of the planet. She would revisit the topic once the medical screening came in.

Well, at least this became somewhat interesting.