EG 3 Ch 34 (Patreon)

I scrambled for a moment out of instinct before logic came back and the rifle fell into my hands. I lifted it to fire at the divine, only for my world to spin as they spun me around and tossed out onto the floor. I couldn't aim with how dizzy I had become. I then felt the rifle get knocked out of my hands and slide across the ground.

"You should really be far more careful. I imagine you might have gone about this differently if you knew what you were up against," the nine-tailed divine who had me grinned. "Unique, that little lock of hair you have there." She brushed a gloved hand against it. "Not like it does anything to escape facial recognition, though. You must be Captain Raiden Valcrest. Odd. Our report says you died."

I gasped and patted myself down. "Whoo. Nope. Looks like your report's wrong. I'm still whole. Despite their best efforts."

The divine was staring at me much in the way I expected someone would stare at a particularly interesting bug in a jar.

"Perhaps later I can get to the reason as to how you live. Scientific pursuits are never-ending, after all. While some of my fellows might insist we are the final form of our people, it was science that brought us here, and science that can still take us farther."

All of the tails of the divine in front of me swayed back and forth. I got the sense that she considered me hopelessly and completely caught.

Something exploded against the door, and her attention jerked away from me as I reached for the beam saber tucked in at my hip. I was very happy to have the weapon with me at this moment. 

I flicked it on with the front already aimed at her waiting tails. It cut through three of them as soon as it flicked on, her attention darting back to me with a scream on her lips.

A full wave of force slammed into me and knocked me against the far wall like I'd just been hit by a car. My chest ached, and something might have given in my ribs with how painful it was to breathe.

"You!" she screamed, her full attention on me as she spun her own saber flickering to life in her hands as she swung.

My own saber was moving on its own, Violet’s training causing a reflexive action to the divine lashing out. The met, my own saber skittering off of the divine’s and barely redirecting her strike low so that it cut through the plating below.

Her strength had been enough to slide my feet back, but my reflexes had saved me from being cut in half. Well… for the moment. Because the divine was staring at me with bloodshot eyes filled with rage.

Even three tails down, the divine was going to kill me.

“I’m going to make this as painful as possible.” She dragged her saber along the ground, only for a black spine to shoot through the ruined door, piercing the divine in the chest as black veins began to spread through her. Lily tore through the door, a deep scowl on her face. "No one touches my captain."

"I had it under control," I lied, grasping at my chest and the last shreds of my autonomy, the lit saber still held in my hand and several tails scattered on the floor.

Lily squinted as her mycelial network spread through and paralyzed the divine, who coughed and shuddered at the pointy end of Lily's violence.

"I see. Of course, I just was concerned, Captain," Lily said, the spine withdrawing before the divine was dead.

I stepped forward with my beam saber in hand and sliced off the remainder of the divine’s tails. Lily gave me a nod and a smile.

"Perhaps we should move together as a team. The situation seems to be getting increasingly dangerous." Lily offered with a glance out of the corner of her eyes.

I wanted to argue, but knew that was some part of my stupid emotions trying to get in the way of the logical and far better option for survival.

"Good idea. That way another one can't take me by surprise," I said, as Lily's head began nodding rapidly.

"These divines do seem to be ambush predators from what I have observed." Lily said with full seriousness. “Moving in pairs is just common sense.”

"And Violet?" I asked, looking back down the hall and not seeing any purple tails. At this point the four tails almost took up as much volume as the rest of her body.

"She's already moving," Lily said, and held a hand out for me to join her.

"Well, she's eager enough," I scooped up the rifle and started moving with Lily through the station, which was an absolute bloody mess.

I couldn't quite decide if I was surprised or not by the lack of military personnel. Even that divine I had just tangled with didn't feel militarily involved. There was a distinct lack of murderous intent. If she'd been military, I doubted she would have kept me alive to study. No, everything about her nature had screamed researcher. Though, I suppose that shouldn't be unusual for a station making a next-generation weapon.

We reached the administration level, where there were many bodies slumped over their chairs, I squinted faintly. Not all of them were dead. But those that were unconscious seemed deeply down, so they would not pose a problem in the near term. I left them for the moment, allowing Violet some discretion.

No doubt Lily would take care of them quietly.

"Anything yet?" I asked, stepping up and stared at the main screen up front, where an image of Aikari was doing a little dance.

"No, we just got her connected," Violet said, moving over next to me.

The dancing image changed to one of Aikari digging through the trash and throwing things out, before she found something of interest and threw it up in the corner of the screen. First it was just a single image, and then a dozen of them.

"Feeds from the cameras?" I asked, to be certain.

"These are all live feeds," she confirmed, unconcerned with what was on them, and going back to digging through the system. It was slow, but she was connecting through the ship rather than directly into the mainframe.

Though Violet beside me gasped at the images. "Are those kids?" she asked with horror.

My attention shifted to the cameras again. "Yeah, they are," I said, a sudden numb sensation spreading throughout me as I stared at the images from all throughout this station. There were children. Young Kikai, or perhaps more appropriately identified as young Kikai divines.

They were anywhere from tottling infants to studious teens and everywhere in between.

With a sickening sense of horror, I realized what Project Tomorrow was. It was definitely a next-generation weapon. Though the weapons were decidedly organic in nature.

Violet spun back to me.

"I know," I said quickly, pinching my eyes together. "But this is a problem."

"They're kids." She told me.

I swallowed around a lump in my throat. This certainly added complexity. "We need to think this through.” Part of me was screaming with the same desire to burn it all down when you find the early stages of termites in your basement. The other wore a halo and was shaking it to sense that these were living, breathing kids.

"But how are there so many of them?" Violet asked.

The words of the divine that had caught me echoed in my head. "Science," I said quickly. "Someone made them."

"But that's forbidden," she trailed off at the word.

We all knew that didn't stop someone from doing something. It only made it less likely. “I...” As the captain, the hard decision fell to me and I’d made up my mind. The part of me that was cold logic frowned, but I couldn’t condemn them just because they were being raised by an organization that would use their power against us. At present they weren’t an issue and perhaps if we toppled the Unity they could be the foundation for tomorrow.

"What do we do now?" she asked, turning to me.

"Aikari, can you find out where they were made? Right now, the most important move is to destroy their ability to make more." That was my concession. Taking out their production was far more important than the current entities.

I could see the hope in Violet's face that that would be where the mission ended.

"Of course." The AI on the screen snapped a salute.

I put a hand to my comms. "Melgara, I believe we have some research on this station that shows they've somehow figured out how to manufacture a Kikai divine."

There was a pause on the other end of the comms before Melgara's voice came through. "And?" she asked, like a woman waiting for the other shoe to drop.

"I need your help going through whatever Aikari digs up, so that we can disrupt their process of doing it as best we can." I told her.

"You've got three parts to any project of that scale and magnitude," Melgara said without missing a beat. "First, the number of people who are actually going to be knowledgeable and skilled in any techniques required is going to be abysmally small. They are the ones with hands on experience and are going to be kept to a small group lest the research leaks. Even if the research exists elsewhere, trimming those numbers will require someone to retrain them."

I nodded and glanced over at Lily. "These people have used kids."

She waved a hand. "I assume you have no issue with me removing these people?" Lily asked Violet.

"None," the divine said. "Whatsoever," she added, with no small amount of venom.

"Next," I said to Melgara, "there's bound to be specialty equipment involved. We could simply blow the station. I'm sure that would help clear it out."

Violet gave a look of pure agony at the thought.

"No, we will find and disable equipment while keeping the station as pristine as we can. The existing," I hesitated, "parts of the experiment. Will keeping them around allow the experiment to restart sooner?"

"No, you don't stop this sort of thing any better way than destroying the assembly line. Something that's come out of the process, is moderately interesting, however this complexity it’s hard to reverse engineer. The third option is the underlying science and data. We have no idea if it's strictly held at the station or if there's more elsewhere." She paused, and I could practically hear the wheels turning in her head. Though to what end, I couldn't be entirely certain. "Given the estimated number of divines and the amount of children we're seeing in these feeds, I'm actually surprised there aren't more divines. Even with just the one station performing this, honestly, I would expect them to number in the tens, if not hundreds of thousands."

"Tails," Lily said.

And it felt like everyone glanced at her in confusion.

"They are creating divines here, but they are creating both predator and prey. Every divine we've seen has had multiple tails. It's obvious where the additional production has gone,” the Helivore was careful not to say it outright.

Violet's face turned green. "No. No, that's not possible." She swallowed and leaned on a desk.

I rubbed her back, but didn’t refute Lily’s idea. In fact, it was probably correct.

"Sorry, but I believe Lily might be correct," Aikari said softly. Most of her usual jubilance was gone. "There are a bunch of name-only records, I think. Their school years and attendee lists," Aikari said. "And very regularly, the bottom half simply disappear, while those in the upper portion of each list seem to have a growing number associated with them, all of which end at nine."

"If we're talking, on average, a severalfold reduction in each generation, then…" Even Melgara, who was typically quite heartless about these topics hesitated. "The numbers for this to be occurring on a singular station make more sense."

Violet shook where she was leaning against one of the chairs in the room. "Impossible," she nearly whimpered.

And I put a hand on her shoulder, feeling her whole body quivering. "Violet, are you all right? Do you need to head back to the ship?" I asked.

And she slammed the desk in front of her hard enough to shatter it and send splinters flying everywhere. "No," she snapped. "I am not okay. I just walked onto a station to discover that my people are lab-growing children and killing them for their tails."

"If it's any consolation," Aikari spoke up, "based on the divines that we have encountered, I'd hazard the Unity are all children from this station. At least it looks that way. They've grown up here, competing in what appears to be structured like a military academy. Those who succeed get more tails, while those who fail get their tails… removed."

"Stop. Stop talking about it," Violet shouted and pulled at her ears while her tails flinched to the side and sent another desk skittering across the room to smash into another.

I paused, considering my options. I needed to give everyone here something to do before this all got too far out of hand. They needed something to hold their focus and allow them to work through it.

"We'll destroy the equipment and the research," I stated. "Aikari, since you're deep in the station, can you tell us where they are being made?"

"Second floor," the AI said, her tails low and ears flat against her head.

"Violet, if you would," I said quickly.

Given something to do, the divine rocketed out of the room as if she couldn't stand to be in it a moment longer. I knew that Violet needed something to take her feelings out on. Preferably not something living.

"Captain." Melgara's voice came over slowly. "I'm afraid that if you do something to those children," she began, but I cut her off.

"Don't worry. I think the children must be a decent strain on the resources. Leaving them alive makes sense strategically. The Unity will have to care for them instead of solely coming after us.” I nodded to myself and my very objective, not at all emotionally swayed, decision.

Lily squinted at my logic briefly, but didn't push. "Whatever you decide, my captain," Lily said mechanically.

She was a terrible liar. But it wasn't that big of a deal. I almost preferred it.

"What now?" Lily asked.

"Aikari, I need you to find whatever data you can on their research…." I took a deep breath. "And send it back to the Griffon and then wipe everything."

"Captain?" Lily asked.

"You and Melgara have been doing your own experiments. I think, if nothing else, this might further your research. Melgara, once you've read it, I expect you to destroy any copy." I told her, my voice turning hard as stone.

"Understood, Captain." Melgara's voice came across tense. "I thank you for giving me the opportunity, and more importantly, the trust to have this knowledge."

"If I can't trust my own crew, Melgara, well then, I don't think I have the right to be your captain." I said easily.

"I will do my absolute best to live up to your expectations," Melgara said.

I couldn't help but wonder if I was making a mistake, before shutting that part of my mind down. Perhaps with Melgara's help and her obtaining some more of this knowledge, it would give us options in the future. To throw it away would be an absolute waste of a resource that had fallen straight into my lap. In this the logical part of my mind won.

"Me?" Lily asked, pointing a finger at herself.

"We're going to find where the remaining researchers are on this station. And you're going to rip them apart, Lily." I told her.

The savage grin that split her face made me hesitate for the briefest of seconds before she clarified. "I understand just how evil you have to be to do this to children. Even a helivore wouldn’t make children just to eat them."

I nodded. "Aikari, how are you doing in the system now?"

The AI hesitated. "I might have broken some parts."

I squeezed my eyes closed. "What does that mean?"

"That I'm not made for hacking." The image of her on the screen threw its hands up. "And because I'm not really made for this, some of my actions have all the subtlety of trying to find which piece of pottery has something inside of it by smashing them all on the ground and rifling through the pieces."

"You broke it more than anything, I assume? And what in particular is broken?" I asked.

"The station maintains its gravity by spinning. Gravity is going to decrease slowly over the next five minutes," she clarified, completely unhelpfully. "To add to that, I'm fairly certain an alert signal has already gone out." The AI shrugged. "Whoops," she added.

I ran a hand over my face. "How long?"

"It really depends on how long those two women who wanted to suck you dry hold up their end of the bargain," the AI said. "And then also depends on if there's any secondary fleets that might reach here before we finish."

“Great. Aikari, find some goods that make this trip worthwhile, because I think after this we're going to need to go hide.” I said.

“Their anger from this will likely be considerable." Melgara offered.

I turned towards her. "I mean, the Unity were already out for blood. How much worse could it possibly get?" As I finished, I had a deep sense I was tempting fate.

"Captain." Minnie spoke up. "I believe this is a horrible situation, and your solution is about as good as anyone could hope. Do not waver and I will offer my protection until you are able to leave the station safely with the children alive."

"Thank you," I said, some tension leaving my shoulders. Minnie was a softy and would make this as easy as possible for us to surgically remove the problem rather than just simply removing the station. "The second this is done, I want you to just burn all of the information out of the station's systems. I don't want there to be anything left."

"I'll defrag the whole system and any secondary systems I can find," Aikari promised. "Chin up, Captain." The AI attempted to cheer me up. "If nothing else, this makes them firmly the bad guys." The AI's grin was absolutely giant. "Which means in the future we get to kill them without worrying."

Her image on the screen went back to a kikai rummaging through a pile of junk.

"Thanks," I said, taking a breath.