Chapter 031: Friendshi[

Superweapons (SW) are the most recent add-on to the family of shipbound weapons. It is internally divided between two categories - the worldkillers (allowing for a quick and efficient destruction of planets, as opposed to longer and more costly conventional orbital bombardment), and fleetkillers (that are capable of causing serious damages to entire fleets with a single salvo).

Due to size and energy requirements, these weapons can only be installed aboard leviathans. While a heavily modified dreadnought would be enough to hold some of them, it would require dismantling so much armour and defensive weapons that it would bean easy victim for enemy starfighters and missiles.

While Mankind has had access to exotech superweapons for a long time, it took centuries for it to be capable of constructing ships capable of employing them - which happened during the Unification Wars.

The actual creation of its own superweapon system happened much later, with the spatial distortion generators (an offshoot of general Hyperspace Drive experiments) being used for the first time during Mankind's desperate last stand against the berserk forces in the 2537.

Encyclopedia Galactica

Book 9, Page 795

***

EGS Echo, Crew Deck

15:35 17.07.2610 STT

Commander Lena Drathari

Despite Commander Drathari being an exec of the ship, getting to meet Chief Petty Officer Sistonen wasn’t easy. In normal circumstances, they would have regularly scheduled meetings due to the exec being responsible for the day to day operations of the ship. However, things on the Echo weren’t normal.

Captain Keller was de facto both the Captain and exec of the ship. Lena was more of his deputy and a trainee. The situation was doubly complicated because she wanted to avoid the Captain’s attention.

In the end, she had no other option than to go for a direct confrontation. Though not without preparing a sufficient cover.

She invited Tiaa Sistonen to her quarters for a talk through the network. Since Lena chose the moment when Chief Petty was off duty, the catwoman arrived only two hours later. A reasonable time for a non-official invite.

Tiaa stepped through the entrance and looked around, obviously checking the place out. She was probably underwhelmed. As a Virtual, Lena’s real-world needs were rather limited in scope. Her living room lacked any sort of entertainment. No display to watch films, no books to read. No place tailored for her hobby, for all her hobbies took place in cyberspace.

The only reason she kept that room was in case someone came over for a visit. Cabinets and a fridge with various refreshments - alcohol and other drinks, cigarettes and cigars, even some drugs that were so lightweight the Captain was ok with their presence on his ship. She had some holographic displays installed, which decorated the walls with various art pieces and trophies from the Gates of Infinity. But she had no use for any of those things on her own.

“Commander.” Tiaa nodded to her. Lena responded by pointing towards a chair on the other side of the table.

“I hope I didn’t interrupt anything important.” Lena said after the catwoman sat. “Tea? Coffee? Wine?” Tiaa shook her head.

“No, thank you.” Tiaa certainly didn’t feel happy with having this talk. It wasn’t a surprise to Lena, as she remembered quite well how she reacted to being invited to a talk by any higher ranked officer. “I assume that you didn’t invite me to talk about pleasantries, did you?”

“And here I was, practicing my ‘I want to get closer to you because we are both crucial elements of the crew’ speech for a few days.” Lena shook her head. She lied, of course, though it was a rather harmless lie. She had another reason to invite Tiaa, but she wouldn’t say no to actually getting to know the catwoman closer.

In a way, the chief petty officer was for the ordinary crew members what the exec was for the officers. If there was someone who understood Lena’s pain of having to work with this menagerie of clowns, it was Tiaa.

Lena’s hopes of making Tiaa at the very least acknowledge her attempt on humour were quickly squashed away. The catwoman seemed to be incredibly on guard.

“Very well, straight to the point.” Lena conceded defeat. There was no need to keep pretending. “Captain Keller is recently acting increasingly… strange. I thought that I had managed to mostly decipher him earlier, but it seems I barely scratched the surface. After checking some things he mentioned I came to discover that you served with him the longest of all people aboard the Echo. If anyone knows what’s pestering him, it’s probably you.”

This picked Tiaa’s interest. Thankfully not the wrong type of interest - what Lena was doing was legal and in fact typically expected from an exec whose Captain started acting weird. But ‘legal’ didn’t mean ‘in good taste’.

“Strange? In what way strange?” She seemed interested. She had no idea why the chief petty officer found herself interested in something like that. Then again, the two of them were among the six survivors of a battle, with the return journey probably taking a while. This explained why they seemed so friendly with each other.

“Well, to be honest, he acted like a panicked coward during the last battle.” Too strongly, Tiaa seemed to recoil under the strain. Lena moved in to salvage the situation before Tiaa had time to speak. “Don’t get me wrong, I barely believe myself. He made a 180 degree turn ever since we saw some strange ghost frigate after we left Texia. Alexander was practically white as a sheet during the last battle, and I had to guide him through proper post-battle clean-up. I know this is completely not like him, that’s why I started looking for an answer.”

Tiaa remained silent for a while. Then she seemed to relax a bit.

“Well, I did notice him acting slightly out of a character recently.” She finally admitted. “Though I have no idea it had gotten so bad. I’ll try to help you, but I do not think I can contribute a lot. In the end, the only person who understands Captain Keller is Captain Keller.” It was hard to imagine a truer statement about the Captain.

With the catwoman’s quick sign and a while of arrangements later, Lena had her first proper women’s talk since her arrival on the Echo. A couch, a bottle of fine wine, no men, gossiping and exchanging experiences (of course, about men, but not only). With only two people talking about one person it was a bit of a pale recreation of a proper thing, but it was good enough for the circumstances.

“Before you ask, I have no clue what sort of frigate could spook him so much.” Tiaa informed her. “In fact, I didn’t think that anything can scare him. He always had that nonchalance in the face of danger that I used to see with some bounty hunting veterans of Felie. The ‘I’ll win or I’ll die, just another day at work’ approach.”

“Yeah, I got to see that for a while.” Lena replied. “Especially during our battle with Hao Yunqi. He pulled a rather incredible deception and laughed in the face of forces that could blow us away in a single shot, just to unnerve them enough to give Innocent time to hack their weaponry. Insane and incredible in equal measures.” She sipped the wine from her glass.

A decent one, she decided. At least for the ‘real world’. In her real world she was a bit of a sommelier. Here, however, her reserve of universally accepted currency was limited, and so her repertoire of alcohols was a pale shadow of what Keller had in his little wine cellar.

It was decent, so she made preparations. She altered her own settings, and set the upper limit for the simulation of alcohol intoxication. Enough to be tipsy, not enough to be drunk. Not something she would do with her own body, but the Doll was something else.

“‘Insane and incredible in equal measures’ is a good summary of him.” Tiaa chuckled. A rather reassuring thing - her reservations about the talk were at least partially gone. “Although I’m afraid that there’s only one person aboard the Echo who could know something about that ship. And I don’t think he will talk with you.”

“‘Let me guess.” It really wasn't a hard thing to do. “Is it Lith ‘I Hate Transhumans!’ Athalia?” Tiaa nodded. “Wonderful.” She made a tortured face, which drew another laugh from Tiaa.

“Yes, I know.” The catwoman shook her head. “He is a rather horrible person. Skillful, yes. But with the morals of a senior Truthseeker. I almost ended up throwing him through the airlock after I caught him stalking one cyber-transformationist recruit with anything short of death threats to get him to abandon cyberware and go bio instead.” This certainly sounded like something Athalia could do. “What he does in a surgery room is straight magic, though.”

If the medical reports on Christopher Hall Lena had got her hands on were any indication, Tiaa was correct in her assessment. The post-Awakening surgery alone would normally take several expert surgeons and a small army of different practitioners. Athalia did this alone, and in a record time. Sure, his Thought Acceleration sorcery was a form of a cheat, but it was an incredible achievement nonetheless.

“I would have liked to have him aboard the Halberde.” Tiaa added. Lena froze, but the catwoman only laughed. “I’m not stupid. You decided that I can help you with him. So you have to know that I served with him for a long time. And that brings us to the Halberde. Whose demise, I believe, is thoroughly decimated by censorship.”

“Awww, busted.” Another sip of wine, this time to buy some time. “I assume that you can’t really tell me a lot about it.” Censorship worked regardless of rank.

“Actually, I can.” Tiaa surprised her. “Spend a while in the Guild, and you’ll start figuring out ways to go around the censorship. In this particular case, it’s easy. TERROR BLACK is a commonly known threat, just one that is believed to be a thing from the past by most people. If I wait a while and then suddenly mention their historical origin, it should fool the implant enough for me to be able to say it. And when you will be aware of the truth, it will lift the block on learning details.” Lena stared at the catwomen for a while. “What?”

“Nah, sorry, just didn’t expect that.” Commander shook her head. “I started to picture the Guild’s leadership as some mysterious, omniscient council of vagueness. It’s refreshing to see them make a mistake somewhere.”

“Yes, I get what you mean.” Tiaa sighed. “Sometimes I wish that the Guild was more transparent. Currently you need to be at least a Captain to have any clue on who answers to whom. Captain Keller was technically subordinate to Rear Admiral Hao, but I’m 99% certain that Keller is much more important in the ‘actual’ Guild than Hao ever was.” She paused, and focused on her glass for a while. “If I had an idea who Keller answers to, I’d have someone to blame for not reining in his approach to the crew number. It's a bigger mess than an average Silent Sorrow sortie.”

It was a completely out of place historical reference. Which meant that it was what she was waiting for.

“Silent Sorrow?” She was shocked, naturally. “They still exist?”

“Unfortunately, yes.” Tiaa shook her head. The censorship was obviously gone. “The Solar Republic hit them hard over Civitas-IV, and everyone thinks that they were destroyed as a result. Instead they… went diverse. Now there are close to twenty abyssal cults, including the Silent Sorrow itself and a number of its splinter groups that went their own way after Civitas. We had a rare honour of being visited by the Silent Sorrow itself.”

She made a connection. Abyssal cults. Silent Sorrow. Extradimensional worship.

“How did they get you?” They should have outrun a heavy cruiser, unless the Silent Sorrow prayed an Extradimensional into acting as their ship’s propulsion.

“Some exotech.” The catwoman answered. “Low-level derivative of the Silencer SW. One second we were tearing through the cruiser’s escort after Keller managed to outwit its commander, the next one the ship was dead. With dying life support we would be dead in a few hours, but the cultists wanted to get some new prisoners, so they boarded us. Keller gathered everyone he could, repelled the boarding and then assaulted the cruiser since its captain made the miscalculation of jacking to us directly.”

“I’m getting the feeling that some space myths died that day.” Lena commented. Tiaa looked at her questioningly. “You seized a heavy cruiser filled with members of one of the most infamous groups in history, with nothing but a light cruiser crew. And we all know how many space monsters Keller gathered on the Echo.” Tiaa snorted with laughter.

“Well, the Halberde’s crew was slightly less monstrous than the current one.” Tiaa admitted. “He spent his leave from the Guild on gaining favours from the Res Publica, which is responsible for the majority of the present ‘monsters’. But we did have Colonel Reinhard as the head of our marines.”

“Colonel Reinhard? Colonel Wilhelm Reinhard? Hero of Mannheim?” Tiaa nodded, with a wry ‘you didn’t see that coming’ smile on her face.. “Dear Rethan, how did he even... “

Constant wars raging throughout the Confederation - together with a growing number of people and countries that considered war to be their favourite pastime - led to the growth of a market for mercenaries. Especially those sufficiently efficient and loyal. They had their own ‘guild’ operating under the Confederation itself and with headquarters in the Unity Sector.

Colonel Reinhaad was a legend among mercenaries. He was born as a peak achievement of the Reich’s ‘ubermensch’ eugenic program, and soon became a standartenfuhrer of the SS. Despite rigorous mindsculpting and indoctrination, he went renegade, taking his entire regiment with him. Their sudden betrayal (its moment perfectly chosen) turned an almost-won Reich’s planetary invasion to total collapse.

His men later on settled in more civilized lands, but Reinhard himself became a mercenary. His rank was a title more than an actual rank, the closest translation of his old rank achievable with Reich’s weird approach to the subject. He himself preferred operating small groups of commandos during his mercenary work. Typically for either the Alliance for the Preservation of Democracy or the Ancien Regime.

“Don’t ask me.” Tiaa shook her head. “It’s a mystery to me. He was even less talkative than Colonel Nowak. He wasn’t even an Enhanced, yet he was giving the same danger vibes as she does. He actually taught me basic self-defense once I joined the crew.” She added.

Lena was suitably shocked.

“Some secret martial art?” She decided to ask. She would gladly learn something like that.

“Quite the opposite.” Tiaa chuckled. “He absolutely hated those, said that they make you predictable. He believed that all people know, deep inside, how to hit other people and where. So rather than martial arts, he focused on having people stay as fit as possible, and having an experience with actual brawling. Being ready to instinctively use every dirty trick imaginable. So using both the environment and every possible mix of kicking, punching, stabbing and biting that came to your mind.”

She seemed almost unexpectedly relaxed. It could have been the wine, but Lena didn’t believe in that for a second. It was more like Tiaa finally had someone to have a decent talk with, and decided to let loose for a while.

It made sense. For Lena, an exec, the casualties were numbers. But Tiaa knew most of the crewmembers that died during the battle against Hao. It had to take a toll, especially as Keller - in his flamboyant approach to other’s feelings - wasn’t showing Tiaa even a fraction of the support he should have.

“Unfortunately, I didn’t get an occasion to see his last fight.” Tiaa continued. “I got lost aboard the cruiser after a cultist tackled me off the catwalk. Reinhard and the other marines were all dead by the time I found my way to the bridge.”

“Good death?” Lena was, in the end, a paladin. A holy warrior of Rethan. Sure, currently she was technically an exec, but deep inside she felt the best on the battlefield. The ground one.

“Even after being mortally wounded, he supposedly bulldozed through five Inferno-class sorcerers.” Tiaa replied. “Shot the enemy Captain in the knee, then crawled to him despite being shot a few more times and nailed that bastard to the floor with a knife through the forehead.”

Lena raised her glass.

“To Colonel Reinhard.” This demanded a toast. “So that he is paid well and on time for the work in whatever afterlife he is now in.” To her slight relief, Tiaa joined the toast. It was really easy to trip over some cultural and religious differences, especially when you were a transhuman.

The real question was how Keller survived the battle in which Colonel Reinhard died. On the other hand, Reinhard probably drew most of the attention to himself, especially if some of the cultists recognized him.

It wasn’t hard to recognize him. Longest War characters that were less mythical and more real easily made themselves recognizable. The presence of this game seemed to be the only constant of every human-inhabited world out there. Even oxygen was less common.

“Honestly, there’s one thing that just puzzles me.” Lena said once the toast ended. “Just how wealthy is Keller? He owns one of Menard’s own paintings. He bought himself a heavy cruiser. And his wine cellar…” She shook her head.

“His wine cellar?” It was a rather interesting thing that it was the wine cellar that interested Tiaa the most. Lena made a mental note to remember about that in the future.

“When I mentioned that I really like good wine, he off-handedly mentioned that he owns a bottle of champagne. From the original land of champagne, the Champagne in France. From 2024. The last harvest before the Days of Fire.” Tiaa simply stared at her, obviously trying to comprehend what she just heard. “I refuse to believe that it is drinkable at this point, so it’s just one of these ridiculously expensive bottles that some people seem to be keeping around merely for bragging rights.” If Keller was to be trusted in his bragging, there were less than fifteen bottles of pre-Days of Fire alcohol left in the Galaxy.

“Well, he is certainly rather wealthy.” Tiaa managed to shake off her shock. “And by ‘rather’, I mean extremely. He had a number of good prizes during his career, but he inherited most of it. His family is ancient. The Menard’s own painting he owns is actually of his ancestor, Lieutenant Commander Frederick Keller of the Solar Commonwealth’s Survey Corps.”

She made a connection. Sure, there were thousands of important people during the War of Purity. But she was transhuman - it was hard to find a single more important thing for her kind than the War of Purity, so she naturally was rather knowledgeable on it. She knew about Frederick Keller, it just never crossed her mind that Alexander Keller might be his descendant.

“Frederick Keller?” She asked, still in shock. “The Iron Cage one? Really?” Tiaa nodded.

The irony of a descendant of Frederick Keller almost being nailed to death by a smaller version of a Silencer SW wasn’t lost on her. The universe sometimes worked in mysterious ways.

“Don’t ask me if they are related by blood.” The catwoman shrugged. “I heard that when Kellers had no prospective inheritors, they just adopted someone with skills. But they have been part of the Explorers’ Guild and the Survey Corps for centuries, so it’s all just idle gossip of the Res Publica nobility, as nobody knows for sure.”

“Res Publica nobility?” Lena asked. That was an unexpected remark. She didn’t imagine a chief petty officer would have access to such circles.

“You haven’t read my personal file?” Tiaa asked, obviously surprised. Lena chastised herself for not doing it - she did check most of the officers, but things kept happening too often for her to get to the chief petty officer.

“Well, I didn’t.” She wasn’t sure if the catwoman was happy or angry about it.

“Felie is pretty militant.” Tiaa said. “Constant drift of newly liberated slaves keeps us all on edge when it comes for slavers, especially those of Discord. Some of them find comfort in religion, and true liberation in revenge. My mother was a case of that. She joined the local chapter of a Church-derived militant order dedicated mostly to warfare against Discord. She died acting as a rearguard for a group of fleeing civilians during a discordian raid while I was three years old. But her courage impressed her commanding officer. After he found out that my father was dead for more than a year and all I have left are my aged grandparents that I was left with when my parents went to wage war, he adopted me and took me off-world.”

“So you are…” She really didn’t expect that.

“A noble? Yes and no.” Tiaa shrugged. “I have no fief, so I’m technically not bound to the law of any country. Although I’m still a noble, so if I was caught doing some serious crime, I’d have to go through the ‘proper’ trial for the noble. Since I’m not committing any crimes, all that I got from my nobility is upbringing, some knowledge, a few contacts and an extended family. We still exchange letters and Christmas gifts, though the last time I saw them was when Nekia was five years old. I retreated there after the Halberde, but decided to move back to Felie in the end.”

Well, there is more than one type of noble. And more than one type of RPC noble.

“And what about you?” Tiaa answered to curiosity with curiosity. And accidentally entered a rather difficult field.

“Well, it’s a bit… complicated thing to answer.“ Lena decided to play her cards openly. “Every Virtual answers a question about their life’s history with a description of their history in the Artificial Reality that he picked for his home. However I did manage to notice that non-Virtuals tend to react badly to that, thinking that I’m making fun of them. People expect the answer to be about this world, after all. And I don’t have a lot to say there.”

“Why?” There was only genuine curiosity on her face, so Lena decided that she had dodged a bullet there.

“Because my life sucked so much before I became a Virtual that I wanted to have all my memories erased during the upload.” Tiaa looked at her in silence. “I had a moment when I wanted to find out something about myself, and so I know that I was just an AR junkie with a lifestyle promising a life expectancy of forty years. My little autocracy simply sold me off to a passing Virtual ship to get rid of a dead weight.” She was incredibly happy that this trade happened.

This time Tiaa looked downright dejected.

“You know, Christopher Hall has to be incredibly disappointed with how the future looks.” The catwoman sighed. “Relatively decent democracies seemed to be the dominant form of government back then. It was before people discovered how hard it is to topple a once-settled autocracy or a totalitarian regime with access to modern surveillance and propaganda and the nearest neighbours being light years away.”

“Plus in a world where wars are happening all the time.” War and democracy weren’t words that went together well. Wars required efficiency, and sufficiently efficient democracy stopped being democracy.

“You did the first toast, I’ll do the second one.” Tiaa raised her glass. “Death to all autocrats.” Lena joined the toast, as she was completely aware that democracies were inherently superior to the majority of government forms present out there.

On the other hand, did Tiaa Sistonen also mean the benevolent approach to autocracy common to Res Publica? And did she include the Vanguard of Progress states? Transhumanism rarely produced egalitarian societies. Stark differences in productivity, power and access to information between those less and more transhuman naturally provoked hierarchies. Even her country had it to a degree, though like all Virtuals it tended towards the benevolent meritocratic hierarchism. Level up enough and see your social standing increase.

Maybe it was just Tiaa’s payback for the ‘whatever afterlife’ part? The Chief Petty Officer was part of the Church, that much Lena was certain of. She didn’t seem to be particularly zealous - even among the RPC’s nobility zealots were a minority. But you didn’t need to be a religious fundamentalist to be snarky about stuff like that.

“Well, damn.” Tiaa suddenly looked sideways. “I think I lost track of time a bit.” Lena checked the chronometer.

Two hours?! That was fast.

“You aren’t the only person.” Lena commented. “I have a Gates of Infinity raid scheduled at eighteen o’clock, damn. There goes my preparation time.”

Tiaa smiled a bit and stood up from the couch. Lena’s suspicions were confirmed - despite tanking quite a lot of strong wine, she was completely unaffected.

Lena decided to escort Tiaa out. They were almost at the door when Tiaa suddenly turned towards her.

“Are you going to try to get something out of Lith?” Hard question, simple answer. Lena shook her head.

“I think it’s a lost cause.”

“You’re not the only person aboard who might be interested in what Captain Keller is hiding.“ The catwoman said. “And I think that gives you some options. He probably doesn’t know about Alexander’s strange behaviour. Even if Captain has changed somehow, he’s certainly keeping his guard up with Lith around. You could use that.”

“Ah, a little trade.” Lena considered that for a while. “I guess it won’t hurt to try. I have the comfort of not being able to die, so what’s the worst thing he can do to me?” She tried to make this into a joke, but Tiaa treated it seriously.

“He is also a rather good programmer.” Tiaa looked at the Virtual calmly, but seriously. “You should at the very least treat his threats seriously.”

Lena promised to do so. They exchanged goodbyes. The door was about to close when Tiaa suddenly turned towards Lena again.

“By the way…” She looked… strange. Puzzled. Lena didn’t expect to see her like that. “If you find out anything about Keller… regardless of what it is… don’t forget to mention them to me, could you?”

“Sure, not a problem.” A promise was a promise. A paladin of Rethan upheld them always.

When the entrance door of her quarters finally closed, Lena decided that even if she didn’t find out a lot about Keller, she seemed to have at least made a friend.