Win, Place, Show - How To Bet On Horses | Getting Out Of

I run a private campground. One of the things I have to think about is fire management. Obviously, there’s a lot of wood around here. And obviously, if the campground goes up in flames, I lose my livelihood. I do some land management to protect against that by clearing out dry underbrush periodically and put in rules about fire pits and my staff make routine inspections to make sure they’re followed. Many of you have suggested using fire as a weapon against the inhuman things and each time I point out that this is a forest and while we don’t have a lot of dry wood, the odds of the entire thing going up are not zero.
And then I went and threw a molotov cocktail into a room entirely made of wood.
In my defense, it wasn’t technically in the campground. Only very technically.
If you’re new here, you should really start at the beginning and if you’re totally lost, this might help.
Beau’s assistance had cleared the thorns from my body. I spent a miserable few days coughing up plant matter. At least it’s winter so we don’t have much work to do and I could sit in my house and play video games as a distraction. I’m super obsessed with Octopath Traveler right now.
There were still the thorns planted throughout the campground to deal with, however. I wasn’t terribly worried. We had the stone, the one that contained the thorn’s death, and all I had to do was summon Beau and figure out what the next step was.
Of course, when I summoned him, he didn’t show. I had even made hot chocolate with a bit of Bailey’s. So I drank it all myself and then fueled by booze and a sugar high, I went tromping through the snow to find him.
The thought of him being in danger or otherwise unable to respond was only a vague worry. He’s been elusive ever since I refused to go to the harvesters. It’s hard to tell if he’s angry at me or just being moody. It certainly isn’t because I’m good enough with a knife that I don’t need his help anymore. I intended to ask him what the problem was, once I found him. I decided to walk along the road through the deep woods, as that was both the safest place and where he tended to be found.
It took a few days of hiking around the campsite, but I eventually found Beau. He was up ahead on the road, waiting for me. As I approached, he turned and began walking again, so that I could catch up and we walked along side-by-side.
“I haven’t seen you much,” I said tentatively.
“I’m avoiding you.”
“That’s obvious.”
I waited, but no explanation was forthcoming.
“Did I… upset you?”
He seemed genuinely confused as to why, so I explained how I saw the situation. How I’d ignored his suggestion and gone to the hall of the gummy bears instead. He gave a soft laugh at that and reminded me - once again - that he was not human.
“Why would I take offense?” he asked. “You made a choice that was yours to make.”
“Then why are you avoiding me?”
We walked along in silence for a bit more and the only sound was the packed snow crunching beneath our feet. I was careful to keep some distance between us, keenly aware that my mere presence was contrary to his nature. Like magnets, I thought, pushing each other away.
“You’re marked for death,” he finally sighed. “It hovers over your head like a halo. Here is my mark, wrought of blood.”
He stepped close and gestured, his hand passing through the space a few inches from my hair.
“There are more, now. All of these bargains and debts you’ve accumulated, twisting together into a cord that will someday settle tight around your neck and take away your life.”
“And you’re bound to me,” I whispered.
He took a single step backwards, dropping his hand by his side, his expression grim.
“I feel the fomorian’s mark upon me as well. I do not care to accumulate more.”
I asked him to describe them to me. He hesitated, and then very reluctantly, told me a few. One of shadow, trailing in the wind as if the slightest breeze would eradicate it. I suppose that’s what happens when the person who made that mark is trapped inside the thing in the dark. Good riddance to him. Another of iron, shattered now, and crumbling. The lady with extra eyes. One of thorns, marking the intent of the fomorian.
And of course, a crown of teeth. A very old crown, passed down along the family line. The claim of the beast.
There were more, he said, but he refused to elaborate. He seemed uneasy, as if merely describing them was more familiarity than he cared to have. I didn’t press. Honestly, I’m not sure I want to know exactly how many creatures have it out for me. I’d probably never sleep again out of paranoia.
He soon turned off the road and into the woods. I followed a bit more slowly, struggling through the deep snow. The temperature has been in the teens lately, with the windchill bringing it down to single digits. I envied Beau and his total indifference to the cold.
He led me to a patch of thorns. It was one I knew of already and had tried to uproot. The snow around it was mixed with loose soil from earlier attempts. Let me tell you - it is really tough to dig up bushes in the middle of the winter with the ground as frozen as it is.
Beau extended his cup and held it up over the thorns. He tilted it, slowly, until a thin stream of liquid poured forth. It steamed in the cold air and melted the snow where it struck the ground at the base of the thorns.
“Is that it?” I asked softly. “This will kill them?”
“Yes. My cup carries the stone’s essence and the roots of the thorns will drink deeply of their own death.”
“I’m surprised you’re helping me so directly.”
“It’s not just for you,” he replied, his eyes narrowed as he watched the contents of his skull steam in the snow. “This is my home and as you recall, I am unable to leave it. I have no desire to be ruled by a tyrant.”
A thought occurred to me.
“Do the other inhabitants feel the same?”
“Of course. Do you recall how the musician saved you from the horse?”
Ah. I’d not thought too much of it at the time. I was helping them out with the children, after all, so it stood to reason that they’d want to repay the favor by saving my life. We stood in silence for a bit longer, watching the thorns shrivel into withered, dry branches where the liquid from Beau’s cup had touched them. I could only imagine the roots were now doing the same. Tentatively, I reached out and tapped one of the afflicted branches. It broke off as if it were made of spun sugar and smashed into dust when it landed in the snow. As if it’d been dead for centuries.
“Could I get help from the other inhabitants of the campground?” I asked. “I know the fairy doesn’t want help, but we still have to deal with the formorian’s indirect effects on the land.”
“Don’t,” Beau replied sharply. “You would only endanger them. They won’t take such a risk.”
“You’re helping me,” I said pointedly.
He grunted and turned his back to me, walking back towards the road.
“I was already marked by my association with you,” he said.
When I was trapped in the dream that the master of the vanishing house had wove for me, I told it that I could not love it, for everything I love dies. It feels like another lifetime ago. I withdrew my hand from the bush and stuffed it in my pocket as I hastily followed Beau.
He went from bush to bush, repeating the process with each. After a few more I realized that my presence was entirely unnecessary and probably even annoying to him, so I awkwardly thanked him and excused myself.
I went back to the house and played more video games. I only felt a little guilty about it.
The next day I stumbled into the kitchen and brewed coffee. Then, mug in hand, I went to the kitchen table and pulled back the curtains to get some early morning sunlight.
Beau was standing directly outside.
I screamed in surprise and dropped my mug. It was my “Live, Laugh, Love” mug that I took from the camp lost and found so it wasn’t a huge loss. We wind up with quite a few mugs in lost and found and hardly any of them get claimed. After a year they become camp property. I can’t remember the last time I bought myself a mug.
I invited Beau in while I cleaned up the mess. He hovered uncomfortably in the archway between the kitchen and the living room, not saying anything. Only when I was done mopping up coffee did I turn and ask him what he wanted.
He presented his cup in mute explanation. Only a small drop of liquid remained inside.
“Where’s the pebble?” I asked, going to get my sharpest kitchen knife.
“I still have it, in case the fomorian plants more thorns.”
Blood from that which was already there. Blood freely given. I held out my palm and let my blood drop into the cup.
“Where do you plan on getting the blood forcibly taken?” I asked softly.
I wasn’t sure I wanted to know. The only staff on site during the winter were my most trusted people, like Ed and Bryan. I didn’t want any of them to be targets.
“I want to leave the campground.”
I sucked in an involuntary breath. He wanted to take blood from someone outside my land. One of the townspeople, perhaps. They’d thrown an uproar over him poisoning a few people on Halloween. I hated to think how they’d react to him stabbing someone.
“Do you have someone in mind?” I asked.
“I do.”“Will you kill them?”
“Will my answer change your decision?”
No. It would not. I needed Beau. And Perchta’s warning… well, it was not so black and white as I’d assumed. There was some flexibility here.
I wish I were surprised by how easily I slipped back into old habits. The same old rationalizations. Better someone else’s life than my own. Better a stranger’s life than someone I know. It feels inevitable that I would resort to this. It takes more than a threat to turn someone into a good person.
I won’t apologize. I won’t make excuses. You know what kind of person I am. I did the calculations, weighed my options, and this is what I chose.
I got my car keys and told Beau to come with me.
We went to someone that lived on the outskirts of town. It took a while to get there, as Beau couldn’t tell me what roads to turn on. He could only give directions in a vague sense, such as east or west. At least he was patient. He barely moved, sitting in the passenger seat, not wearing a seatbelt, with his cup cradled against his chest. Finally, he told me we’d arrived and I pulled into the driveway of a small house surrounded by a stretch of overgrown field that was subsequently swallowed up by forest. A black pickup truck was parked in the gravel driveway.
Beau got out. I stayed where I was for a moment, nervously holding onto the steering wheel, and then I reluctantly followed him. Better if I saw this through. I had to know what I’d done.
He knocked on the door. A man in his late forties, perhaps, answered. His hair was thinning. He squinted at Beau suspiciously.
And Beau… gestured with one hand. Just a simple half-twist of his wrist.
The man coughed. Blood spurted out of his mouth. It streamed from his nose. And my insides twisted with horror as his eyes began to leak blood, as it spilled out through his tear ducts. It beaded up on his forehead, forced out through every one of his pores. It streamed out of him through every available channel, soaking his clothing, dripping from his ears, and he twitched and shook and choked as his skin grew white and his heart raced and then finally collapsed on itself.
He landed face-first onto the pavement of his porch. The blood floated above him as a red mist and Beau made another subtle gesture, directing it to gracefully stream like a river through the air and into his cup. There was far more blood than the vessel could contain - an entire human body’s worth - but the cup never overflowed. It filled and filled, brilliant crimson like a ruby, until there was none left to take.
The bloodless corpse lay on the ground with not a mark on it to indicate what had happened.
I realized that my hands were trembling. I struggled to move, to find my voice. Beau turned around and faced me and there was a soft, satisfied smile on his face.
“Have you always been able to do that?” I demanded, my voice coming out higher than I’d prefer, betraying my panic.
“Yes.”
The expression on the man’s face was burned into my mind. His desperate agony, tears of blood streaming down his cheeks, his body rigid as his own blood clawed its way free of his veins. I tried to banish it with something else. Anything else.
“So the time I found a body like that and spent three weeks hanging garlic up everywhere thinking we had a vampire on the campground… that was you?”
“Yes.”
I took a breath, trying to calm my nerves.
“Do you have any idea how much I spent on garlic?!”
“Do I care?”
I whirled away from him and stalked back to the car, digging my hands into my hair. Okay, the garlic didn’t matter. I just… that was what came to my mind first. Trying to bury what I’d just seen in something more mundane, I suppose. Trying to distract myself from the fact that Beau could kill people in a far more horrifying way than simply slitting their throat or fatally poisoning them.
At least it was relatively fast. I took a deep breath and opened my car door. He’d threatened me with worse when I first met him.
It was a tense drive back to the campground. When we were back on familiar roads I thought to ask Beau why he’d chosen this person, specifically.
“He double-parks.”
“And?”
He glanced at me in mild surprise.
“What else do you need?”
“Are you kidding me? I just let you murder someone because they double-park?”
“Murder?” His tone was sharp. “You let me refill my cup. I drained it to save your land. You ensured my survival.”
Whatever it takes. The family tradition. My grandfather killed his share to protect our land. My parent’s hands certainly weren’t clean. And nor are mine.
I wish I could say that was the end of it. That I let Beau out once we were back at my house and he wandered off and nothing else happened. But what we’d done was not going to go unnoticed.
I stayed up late that night. I was awake because I was playing video games and making yet another attempt at killing that damn direwolf in Octopath Traveler, like seriously, why is that thing so hard to kill? I must be doing something wrong. So after watching my party get their faces ripped off for like the fifth time I finally turned the TV off and went to bed. It was midnight. The little girl was crying softly by the window.
I’d barely climbed into bed when she stopped. I froze. That was never a good sign.
“Oh no,” the little girl whispered. “No no no no.”
I acted on instinct. I threw myself out of bed and took cover behind it. The little girl screamed in fright and then my window shattered. The house shook with the impact. For a moment everything was still, save for the tinkling of some glass remnants striking the ground and the wild sobbing of the little girl.
Then…
“Campground manager!” the fomorian bellowed.
My blood ran cold. I felt frozen in place, cowering there next to the bed. The fomorian’s voice came at a distance. It wasn’t over the house’s property line, at least.
“I will find the one that killed my thorns at your behest!” it continued. “I will drag him here and I will tear him apart, little by little, and eat him alive. You will be helpless to watch and know what fate awaits you.”
Then I heard the cry of a horse and the sound of hoofbeats, receding into the distance. A warning. This was only a warning.
The fomorian intended to kill Beau.
Tentatively, I stood and turned on the bedside light. There was a body wedged through the broken window. It couldn’t fit through the frame, but it’d shattered the glass and now its head and part of its upper body was stuck. The hood of its garment mercifully covered its face, for I recognized it by its bulk.
One of the musicians. The fomorian had killed one of the dancer’s musicians. And, my heart sinking, I knew that it had to be the one that had rescued me from the dapple-gray stallion’s hooves.
I kill everything I love. Everything that gets close to me.
I’m a campground manager. I am also my mother’s daughter and the product of generations that believed life was expendable and we were but prey to these inhuman things. Herd animals, and sometimes one of our own had to be sacrificed to save the rest.
I’m certain that the new sheriff will find out about the body. She might not assume it was me, but I’ll be involved regardless. My family always is, when an odd death occurs. She’ll send the old sheriff because he’s better at dealing with me. And then what? Do I lie to him? I could. I think he’d believe me. I’ve gotten quite good at lying over the years doing this job.
It’s odd, how the thought of lying to him bothers me more than murdering that man did. I suppose that’s a consequence of sentimentality.
Sometimes I think I feel too little and sometimes I wish I didn’t feel so much. I’m starting to think… that maybe I’m a little more messed up inside than I thought.
Do I love Beau? I… would be sad if he were gone. Even after seeing what he did to that man. The need to refill his cup was real, but the criteria with which he chose his victim was… petty. That, I think, is cruelty. Beau is cruel. I can not defend him. Yet humans are stupid, emotional things and we form attachments without even realizing it until one day we realize how painful their absence will be. We bond with animals, with plants, and with people that don’t even exist - a character in a video game or a book.
I suppose I love Beau in the same way I love the barn cat with the kinked tail or the plant that my uncle gave me or Therion in Octopath Traveler.
I don’t want him to die. [x]
Read the full list of rules.
Visit the campground's website.

Matched Betting Extra Place Horse Racing - January 21 Profits - £4,707 on top of Full Time Job

Upon a Dead Horse: Chapter Three

In our last episode
Micro coil electro guns are faster and more portable than a long coil rifle, but are much harder to aim. It was this fact more than fast reflexes that was his salvation. Although the air was sizzling with flying bolts and his hair stood on end as the ion tracer beams tried to find him he was still able to dive to ground and do a fast crawl towards the first large bit of protection he could find without being hit. Unfortunately the only shield he spotted was that same wagon he had only recently escaped. Meanwhile the dry goods store behind him suffered an onslaught of blue and yellow bolts of light splintering the exterior wall.
He squeezed himself into a tight ball near the rear axle and checked the charge on his rifle. The low battery light was on. Unless he could find a power supply soon he had maybe one or two full power shots left. Technically speaking the stock had a solar panel and the gun would recharge on its own, but he suspected no one was going to allow him an eight or nine day intermission to do that.
He was too exposed where he was but he couldn't really run anywhere while all those electro bolts were hammering the wagon behind him. At any moment it would occur to the angry mob that they could spread out to encircle the wagon and come at him from the sides while he was still pinned down. Worse, even if they didn't think of it, the wagon could only take so much abuse. So far only a handful of bolts had managed to punch all the way through the wagon. That wouldn't last. He was still considering his options when the situation went from bad to completely catastrophic.
"Well, well, well," a voice called out over the gun fire. Suddenly all the guns stopped firing in unison. That was almost worse than having them all shooting at him. Having them taper off or a few stragglers who were late to notice the new arrival would mean that the people were acting as individuals. A simultaneous shutdown like that, more orderly even than most military units could manage, meant only one thing. As if to confirm his suspicions, the voice continued.
"If it isn't the Oligarch's favorite dog," the voice called out, "Marshal Aldo Crease."
The marshal winced. It had been years since anyone had spoken that name. He still found the sound of it left a sour taste in his mouth.
"Evening Kincaid," Mashal Crease called back, "Any chance you'll consider coming along peacefully?"
Kincaid laughed.
"Oh please," Kincaid said, "Do at least do me the great favor of standing up. I want to show you off to my flock."
Crease ground his teeth and considered his options. He could, he supposed, pop up with the rifle and try firing at Kincaid. But, he needed a better idea where the man was to do that. He did not have enough power left in the gun for a wide spread lethal blast. He might be able to pull off a knockout. Barely. But even then that was iffy because with Kincaid hopped up on his own juice like he was he might not go down.
"If you are considering shooting me," Kincaid said with a voice that projected both confidence and mockery at the same time, "You may want to look to your right."
Crease glanced that direction and grimaced. The giantess had appeared again and was now stomping in his direction. He spun the rifle in her direction and, to his immense relief, she stopped in her tracks. Unfortunately, that also meant Kincaid could tell where Crease was aiming.
"Gun moves off her," Kincaid explained, "And Viana there tears you apart. Shoot her and we open fire as she heals. So you can shoot me or shoot her. But not both at once and Viana and I will get right back up no matter which one you choose . So do as I told you and stand up!"
Crease sighed and slowly climbed to his feet while training his rifle on Viana the whole time. He tried to remember why that name sounded familiar. Wasn't that the woman Yacob had said was a deserter who had battle tech? No wonder she hit so hard. If her gear was military grade it may even be a higher spec than his own. He made certain to keep his eyes on her as he shot a glance in Kincaid's direction.
The crowd stood motionless and facing him. Over half the people seemed to be armed with some sort of weapon. Mostly micro coil pistols but he thought he saw a few short barrelled scatterguns and at least one heavy coil military grade rifle that would make short work of the building behind him much less the contents of his skull. The crowd was composed of both men and women of various ages. Old men with long beards and frock coats and young women wearing a sheer garment that left almost nothing to the imagination. There were even a few teenagers in the mix. Those that were not armed with firearms carried knives or homemade cudgels. All of them also carried the same identical blank expression on their faces. Only the man standing in the back wearing white robes showed any signs of animation. He was also completely unarmed. Not that he needed a direct weapon.
"Kincaid," Crease acknowledged the man.
Kincaid's grin broadened and took on an eerie maddened look. The man's hair was wild and unkempt and the bags under his eyes were a testament to the exhaustion he must feel. Even though health and vigor seemed to ooze from the man's pores, there was also a slightly frayed look about him. As if his health were just a mast for something shredding him apart from within.
"The feedback loop is too far gone," he heard the Oligarch's voice say in his ear, "If he stops now the blowback will shred him to pieces."
Crease didn't answer. He hadn't needed the analysis. He too knew the signs of an arcane who had pushed their talent - no matter how potent - beyond the abilities of sustaining. The man in front of him was a runaway reactor spewing health into the area. It would almost be comical if the effects weren't so tragic. His own acarnic talents, though greatly suppressed, were telling him something that he was certain no one else - save perhaps Kincaid himself - even suspected. Over half the crowd of people in front of him were already dead. Their bodies just hadn't got the notice yet.
The reasons didn't matter. A heart that had been sent racing only to burst. A pancreas overproducing insulin. Blood cells produced in such numbers that the blood inside was a thick syrup that barely flowed. Too much vitality was killing these people and it was only Kincaid's out of control talent that was keeping them upright and walking as is.
"You've got to stop this, Kincaid," Crease said, "You don't know what you're doing. You have to stop it. It's destroying you and everyone around you."
He knew his warning would be unheeded. He expected to be ignored. Truth be told, he wasn't sure there was a safe for Kincaid to stop without killing himself and half the town. The crops were already beyond saving. The delicate balance between life and death had been shoved too far to one side and he already knew first hand how unrecoverable such acts could be.
Kincaid tilted his head to one side and frowned.
"Why can't I feel you?" he asked. Belatedly, Crease became aware of a faint tingling sensation along his skin. Kincaid must be trying to influence him.
"I'm immune to arcana," Crease said simply.
"So it is true," Kincaid asked, smile returning, "The great and mighty Aldo Crease. Once a general in the Patagonia Resistance and now little more than a dog for the Oligarch itself. I knew about your resurrection, of course. But I thought the rumors of your unbalanced arcana were just that. Rumors."
Crease winced. He liked having the details of his unfortunate past being revealed even less than having his name spoken aloud. Apparently Kincaid hadn't just fled the Citadel empty handed. He must have taken some intelligence files with him. Which meant the man wasn't just AWOL. He was rebelling. Oh no. No no no.
"Kincaid," Crease asked slowly, "What is it you think you are doing?"
"Picking up where you left off, of course," Kincaid said, "Doing what you only attempted to do all those centuries before failing."
"Look," Crease said as he spread his arms wide in order to look less threatening, "You're not thinking right. Your bioware's last system flash accidentally included some very nasty software. Software your brainbox doesn't have the hardware to support."
Kincaid's smile grew impossibly wide. The corners of his mouth almost tearing the skin apart on his emaciated face.
"Accident?" Kincaid asked, "You think this was a mere accident? I had to graft the code by hand. Do you know how long it took for me to figure out how to do that? How many hours it took of digging through the Oligarch's data archives while simultaneously tripping any alarms? It took me months to even confirm that the Avatar program even existed!"
"An accident," Crease insisted, "It had to be because if you had read anything on the Avatar program details you would have known what you were doing was insane."
"Oh I read it," Kincaid insisted, "Eighteen modest talent arcana received a bioware upgrade. They jumped at least one arcana class each. A Class II pyromancer jumped to abilities above Class I. Just shy of Apex level!"
"Yes," Crease agreed, "Only to suffer a complete mental breakdown. This was despite extensive psychological testing and conditioning prior to upgrading their bioware. Blocking the physiological need for sleep, enhanced multitasking, and neural stimulation are all great but the human mind can't operate at those levels forever. That's why their upgrades included the ability to remote shutdown."
"But can you imagine the possibilities if these upgrades were applied to an Apex?" Kincaid said, "Or, better still. Don't imagine. Observe! See what I have done here!"
"This is wrong," Crease said, "You don't realize what you are doing to these people."
"But I do," he said, "There is no death here. No disease. No frailty or feebleness. Only perfection."
"Look at them," Crease said. He still held the rifle in his left arm so he waved with his right. Kincaid eyes twitched once but did not follow the gesture. It was as if he were afraid that Crease would try something if he looked away. Fair enough as Crease had been thinking of doing exactly that.
"Look at them," Crease repeated, "Everyone here. It's like they can't see or hear anything. They only move when you want them to."
"Yes," Kincaid agreed, "Perfect. You of all people should see that."
Crease lowered his arms. Kincaid didn't stop him.
"This is an army," Crease said in a hushed tone. It wasn't a question, but Kincaid nodded anyway.
"Yes," he said with a theatrical bow, "Or, rather, it will be. I'm still building it now and my soldier lack discipline as well as, ahem, sharp shooting skills. But, yes, very soon it will be an army.."
"Damn it, Kincaid."
"You should appreciate the symmetry of it," Kincaid added.
"Damn it and damn you!" Crease repeated with more venom this time, "You know how that went down! I had 5,000 undead soldiers with me! What do you expect to do with a bunch of farmers and deserters?"
"Win," he said simply, "I keep telling you. I know about you and what you did during the Luddite War. The last great battle before humans were overrun and made the . . . the pets!"
Here Kincaid practically spat the word.
"The pets!" he repeated, "The slaves of some computer. Governments caved. Countries rolled over. But not you! Oh no! Not the great and mighty Crease! The first Apex! You who could fling waves of death through the very air! You commanded a legion of the undead! You pushed back against this cybernetic monstrosity only to fall at the very doorstep of its stronghold."
"I was shot to pieces," Crease said simply, "It's kind of hard to march with no legs."
"You were already dead!" Kincaid shouted, "An unkillable zombie! You had filled your corpse with so much necromantic arcana it could not be destroyed! Your very limbs kept crawling towards your objective even after they were separated! The only way they ever stopped you was by freezing all the bits of you!"
"They didn't freeze me!" Crease shouted back, "The Oligarch's fortress is in the heart of Antarctica! What do you think happens to corpses when it's below freezing!"
Kincaid shook his head sadly.
"You still don't get it, Crease," he said in a mocking tone, "You still don't understand where you made your great mistake, do you?"
"I just told you," Crease said, "Charging across a frozen continent during the winter."
"No," Kincaid said, "Your mistake was in joining them. When you assembled your undead army you had no way of dealing with the blowback. So you thought your only hope was to use it. To channel all that recoil back into yourself and let it consume you. To become just another soldier in a sucide gambit. But, don't you see? What if you never ever stopped. Just kept feeding the power back in on itself over and over again. Sending wave after wave of the undead."
"That's not possible," Crease said with a shake of his head, "It's too much power. The human mind can't take that."
"I've been doing just that for months now!" Kincaid shouted, "Look at what I've done!"
"It's shredding you," Crease said, "Your own power is keeping you going for the moment but you can't hold it up forever. Look at your face! Your hands! You're breaking down!"
"I'm more alive than ever!"
"No!" Crease insisted, "You've got vitamancy running through you. It's not the same."
"You should know," Kincaid snapped, "How many vitamancers died to bring you back?"
Crease shook his head.
"This isn't the way," he said, "Please. I'm trying to help you."
"You? Help me? A traitor like you?" Kincaid snarled, "Just because you were too weak to bring down the machine don't presume to know me or my limits!"
Crease could see the decision forming in Kincaid's wild eyes. The strain of exertion, the lack of sleep, the madness of controlling those many minds one neuron at a time. It was too much for him and he was already past the point of no return. He was going to give the kill order and there was nothing Crease could do to stop him. So, he didn't even bother to try. Crease mentally flipped the panic switch in his brainbox.
Time slowed down. He could see Kincaid's lips moving, presumably to give the kill order, but no sound reached him other than the roar of blood in his own ears. Adrenaline and endorphins were flooding his bloodstream as well as artificial hormones manufactured by the synthgland at the base of his skull. His heart thundered in his chest while his nerve endings seemed to dance with barely suppressed energy. Ahead of him the muzzle of every gun and the tip of every improvised weapon sprouted cones of probability as his stochastic subunit filled his mind with data. His allowed his conscious mind to flit out of the driver's seat so that the preprogrammed battle reflexes could take over.
The battle processor evaluated the abundance of weaponry, the layout of the combatants, and his own weaponry and decided the best course of action was to allow his own knees to buckle. He fell to the ground before Kincaid could get the last syllable out of his mouth and the air above Crease glowed with lightning. The wagon shuddered from multiple impacts. But the battle programming was not done. His hands twisted the barrel of the rifle even as he was falling so that when he landed on the ground on his side the rifle was pointed under the wagon and towards the crowd opposite him. His fingers found the trigger almost immediately and he fired a wide focused beam at the legs of the people opposite him. He barely registered the howling of pain as people dropped. He rolled onto his back in one smooth movement and turned to face the towering figure of Viana running directly at him.
The gun was now depleted. It was useful only as a club. If the person racing towards him was a normal human his enhanced speed, strength, and durability might give him an edge even while laying on the ground. But Viana was enhanced as well. Probably more so than he was. She also had about double his muscle mass on top of that. He needed a distraction if he had any hope of taking her out. His battle mode was evaluating possibilities and coming up dry. He didn't see a way of escaping that gave him a better than a nine percent chance of success. Fortunately, having the battle processor do the movements for him gave him a chance to think and perhaps alter the odds on the fly. Which is what he was doing in this case. Unfortunately, the only thing that occurred to him was a party trick he learned in his pre-Luddite War days. It was a cheap shot, but it was also the best idea he could come up with at the moment.
Saying there was no death in the valley was, of course, an exaggeration. Death on macroscale could be interrupted but even a powerful vitamancer like Kincaid couldn't halt it entirely. Nor should he. Cells dying and replacing themselves are part of the natural life cycle of living organisms and interrupting this process would also halt the body's ability to grow and repair itself. Which is why even in a place oversaturated with vitamantic energy there was still some degree of dying and regeneration taking place. For an ordinary necromancer such trivialities were simple nitpicking. They only had the ability to affect the dead on a macro scale. Crease was no ordinary necromancer.
Though his power was greatly reduced on account of the vitamancy used in his own resurrection, his skillset still remained. With great effort he could still feel the dead and dying cells within a body and, to some extent, influence them. In the field he could use this ability to aid living soldiers by slowing the process of necrosis in infected wounds and other low level healing abilities. But one other trick he learned was that if he focused on the person's hair he could influence the cells there. After all, what is hair but a chain of dead cells clinging to a still living root? So, with great effort on his part, he tapped into that ability now and reached outwards with his gift to Viana's head. Mentally straining, he tapped millions of dead cells to alter themselves ever so slightly.
The giantess was almost on top of him when he made the last connection and the cells in her hair let go in unison. The black hair that had been piled up upon her head fell off as if cleaved by an invisible sword. The rage that twisted the woman's face gave way to confusion as her own hair fell before her eyes and momentarily blinded her. Then, without thinking, she made the worst possible decision she could in such circumstances. Forgetting entirely about Crease, she reached up with both hands and gripped the top of her own head to see if the falling hair really were her own. The stochastic processor in Crease's own head took note of the change in posture and calculated the most appropriate response. So he was only slightly more prepared than Viana when the arc of the rifle's swing intersected with the side of her knee.
Viana dropped to the ground howling in pain. Enhanced durability and vitamancy were great, but even they occasionally had to take a back seat to pure physics. He had hit the side of her knee with every bit of speed and strength his own enhancements could afford him. The bones in the leg were unbreakable but even with battle tech a knee is still mostly supported by soft tissue. The tissue could be reinforced with synthetic fibers, but a certain degree of stretching had to be allowed in order to keep the knee functioning as a knee. A powerful blow to the side of a battle hardened knee could still knock the joint out of alignment and then gravity would do the rest. As Viana fell her own weight would tear many of the organic connections that were still present even though the synthetics would largely hold. Knees have a lot of nerves running through them and even minor injuries can be incredibly distracting to even the toughest soldiers. This was not a minor injury and it would take Viana's brainbox several seconds to adjust to the input flooding the gateway. Which is why Crease's own brainbox decided the best way to deal with this was to reorient the rifle into an overhead swing that terminated on the side of Viana's skull before she even hit the ground.
The blow should have killed her. Anywhere else, it may have. Even with a reinforced skull the brain cannot be rattled around like that without consequences. But here all it seemed to buy him was a few moments of unconsciousness as her brain healed itself. He crawled over to her unconscious form and briefly searched her pockets for any hint of a weapon he could use.
"Crease!" Kincaid called out, somehow cutting through the fog in his head, "Did you forget the horse?"
The horse? What was he talking about?
As in answer the horse started neighing and pawing at the ground frantically. Its nostrils flared as it snorted and tossed its head from side to side. Belatedly, he realized exactly what Kincaid was doing. The same thing Crease's own bioware had done to him. The same thing as was likely occurring within the bodies of the crowd of angry gunmen. The creature's rage was being stoked. It had barely flinched from the gunfire but now it was lashing out against, well, nothing. All Kincaid had to do was wait for it to notice Crease and then send the creature's rage skyrocketing. Suddenly the scant cover offered by the cart seemed to go from "flimsy" to "nonexistent" in the blink of an eye. Crease was unsure what his next move should be. Fortunately, his battle reflexes had an idea. Not a good one but an idea.
Crease's legs slammed into the ground beneath him. He found himself hurtling upwards and over the top of the cart while flattening himself. It seemed to be a sloppy jump as he was even now falling back onto the tarp covering the back of the cart. He couldn't help but notice that he was now presenting a rather hard to miss target and, sure enough, his left side exploded in agony as some of the lightning bolts struck home. But his battle reflexes were still moving.
His body cleared the edge of the cart and was threatening to crash into the dividing wall separating the front from the back of the car. Just before his head could hit the wall, his still functioning right hand punched at the wood. The blow was done with little regards to his comfort, it seems, as a shock of fresh agony traveled up his fist and along the wrist towards his elbow. His falling body landed atop the tarp causing it to tangle up with him as he landed in a belly flop inside the tail of the cart. The wall closest to the gunmen was still exploding to pieces and it took him a few precious - not to mention painful - seconds to extricate himself. What had that all been about? He glanced up at the damage done to the wall ahead of him and found his view of the outside world blocked by a rather familiar looking rust stained bit of cloth. Scrambling forward, he used his blooded hands to tear the hole he had created wider until he could reach the bundle of his own coat that had been stored under the seat on the opposite side of the wall.
"Hold your fire!" Kincaid shouted and, as before, all the townspeople's guns were silenced at once. Nothing seemed to happen for a long moment and no movement could be seen coming from the cart.
"What's the matter, Crease?" Kincaid shouted into the echoing silence, "Did that healing arcana that's filling you finally run out?"
In answer, Crease's upper body appeared over the sidewall as he sat up and faced Kincaid and the angry mob. Crease was now sporting his duster once more and in his hands he held two pistols.
"Fu-!" is as far as Kincaid got before lightning erupted from Crease's pistols.
The twin shots struck the heads of two people in the crowd. Instead of dropping, those people twisted to the side and fired their own guns at someone else. By that time the people Crease had originally shot were starting to recover but now two more gunmen were shooting. As Crease leaped from the cart, guns firing continuously, Kincaid started screaming.
Unlike Crease, Kincaid had never been a soldier. He had no experience with the chaos and confusion of battle. So it was that he was completely unprepared for his own side to start firing upon itself in apparent retaliation to the necromancer's influence.
People who had previously been responding well to his own influence were now turning upon one another and firing. Not just at the commandeered corpses Crease was piloting but upon anyone they even suspected was shooting at them. As Crease ran at an angle, firing the entire time, he jumped from body to body and caused the town folks to fire at their neighbors. Soon old passions and grudges were influencing decision making as much as anything else. Lightning bolts flared and Kincaid struggled to get a calming influence to settle over the crowd as they reacted to both the very real danger around them and the imaginary one he had been feeding them just moments ago.
Crease twisted and dodged as he ran. His coat flared as it caught stray lightning bolts. The metallic weaving offered some protection, but not much. Crease felt his limbs grow heavy and then numb as the corona of multiple blasts washed over him. He kept moving.
One battery was spent. He ejected it and slammed to pistol's butt against the quickloader belt he had strapped to his waist. Firing with a fresh battery with his right hand he repeated the process with his off hand to continue the onslaught upon the crowd. Trying to find an opening to target Kincaid. All the while his mind was busy flickering among recently dead and attempting to cause as much damage as possible before being ejected himself. Every as he ran the strain of keeping so many bodies coordinated was taking its toll. He briefly let go and allowed the blowback to wash over him.
His vision blurred as a grenade exploded inside his head. He felt dizzy and his arms and legs were now moving only because the brainbox told them to. He was on autopilot and riding the wave of feedback as his own body tried to cope with competing signals from his brain.
"Stop shooting!" Kincaid shouted again, "You can't die! Don't fall for this trick!"
It was good advice but the mob was now far beyond listening. Many were now shooting at each other even without Crease's influence. The shots missed as Kincaid dodged in an inhumanly fast way. But it was only a matter of time before one of the bolts, intended or otherwise, struck him. Kincaid apparently came to the same realization as he abruptly roared in anger and everyone, save for himself, and Crease dropped to the ground just as Crease's head was starting to clear.
The people dropped as if they were puppets who had their strings cut. For just a moment, Crease's necromantic powers fluttered as he received the sensation of dozens of limbs and bodies dying only to be nearly instantly reborn. It wasn't hard to guess what had happened. Kincaid had just sent out a mental shockwave that had temporarily stopped the nervous systems of everyone near him. Just stopped dead in their tracks. Hearts stopped beating. Muscle fibers stopped twitching. It was like getting paralyzed while also suffering a heart attack. People dropped because he gave them no choice. Even the enraged horse fell silent as its own legs gave way. Only Crease's own unbalanced arcana had managed to protect him from suffering a similar fate.
Crease aimed his guns at the suddenly exposed Kincaid. Kincaid's face changed into a sneer of contempt. Crease's fingers squeezed the trigger and, to his amazement, the bolts missed the target by mere centimeters. Impossibly, Kincaid had ducked to one side!
Crease tried again but, again, Kincaid simply stepped to one side in a blur of motion so fast that even with Crease's own slowed sense of time he could just barely register the movement. With dawning horror, Crease realized that the shockwave that had dropped the town's people to the ground hadn't just been intended as a way to wrestle control of their guns away from Crease. No, now that he wasn't splitting his attention a hundred different ways Kincaid was free to focus entirely upon himself.
The healer's grin had changed from insane madman's to a feral grimace that was equal parts pain and determination. Sweat boiled off the man's scalp as his face flushed a fiery red. Crease tried to aim again but the vitamancer zigged to one side before zagging back. He was running fast. Faster than Crease thought a human being should be able to maintain without tearing itself apart. Faster than Crease and his battle reflexes could match. Every time his brain thought it had acquired a target lock the healer was somewhere else. Crease's battle reflexes opted on random firing while trying to anticipate the healer's movements. However, the software upgrade Kincaid had received didn't just enhance his ability to stall the onset of blowback. Its own stochastic modeling was on par or superior to Crease's own. The healer bounced around, never quite being where Crease predicted, until suddenly Crease felt tight fingers wrapped around his throat. His vision shrank to a small window as Kincaid's face swam into view.
"Why don't you just die?" Kincaid shrieked.
Crease couldn't answer that question even if he desired to. He gagged for a moment before finding himself flying backwards and slamming into the much abused cart. He landed on his knees and tried to get air back in his lungs. His battle reflexes seemed to be offline as his brainbox attempted to sort out the jumbled data in his head. Something struck him across the jaw and he went sprawling in the dirt. He wanted to rise. Tried to rise. But a foot struck him in the back and sent his face first back into the dirt.
"Die you immortal abomination!" Kincaid's hysterical voice cried out, "Die!"
Crease heard a ripping and tearing sound. The cart, he thought. Kincaid was tearing apart the cart with his bare hands. A board slammed into Crease's back causing him to bite his own tongue as his head bounced off the dirt. Blood filled his mouth and he could only hear Kincaid's screaming.
"The gun is still in your hand," someone said in his ear. Who was that?
"The pistol," the voice repeated, "Your battle reflexes wouldn't let go of it. It's still being held in your left hand."
Pistol? What was that word? It was hard to concentrate as something kept smashing into the back of his skull and spine. He wanted to tell it to stop, but words were difficult.
"Open your eyes," the voice commanded. Reluctantly, Crease obeyed. One eye he immediately screwed shut again as it was being driven relentlessly into the dirt. But the other he could see out of. Barely. The world was crooked and blurred. But ahead of him he thought he saw a shape climbing to its feet. A bit shape. Struggling to stand but close to him.
"Now!" the voice commanded, "Behind the jaw!"
He wasn't sure he understood the meaning behind the words, but he did as the voice suggested. As the giant lifted near him, he rotated his arm at the elbow until the gun was almost vertical. Shoving upwards, he pressed the muzzle to just behind the thing's chin and pulled the trigger. As he did this he realized there was a doorway ahead of him and that he felt no pain on the other side of it. Happily, he shoved himself through the doorway and found himself looking down upon his own body as a superhumanly fast Kincaid shattered a board to splinters as he pummeled the reclined form.
Crease's thoughts were clearing. He was not having an out of body experience. Not exactly. He was in a body. Just, not his own. He glanced down upon himself and realized the body was female. A very, very large female. Viana!
Memories came flooding back. The Oligarch had been speaking to him. Asking him to do what? Place the gun under the chin and fire. Why? The answer clicked into place almost immediately. The skull reinforcements in battle tech were applied to the top, the front, the back, and the sides but not to the bottom of the skull. To do so would require injecting the laminate in through the roof of the mouth. As the skull laminate also contained microfilaments to disperse an electrical charge, a soldier could actually potentially survive a shot from a small coil weapon. Which is why battle tech enhanced soldiers in the field who wanted to commit suicide often chose to place the wapon under their chin,
The electric bolt would have punched through Viana's skull and pureed her brain as the bolt slammed into the filaments and was reflected back. Unlike his earlier sledgehammer move to the head that had caused a concussion, this time the brain itself had been blown to bits. He could feel the vitamancer's ambient arcana trying to force the brain to reform, but for the moment the woman was quite dead. Which meant Crease was in control for now.
Even though his real body was getting beaten severely, for the moment, he felt no pain. He knew that using this much necromancy, particularly after his recent usage, was going to cause a blowback sooner rather than later. But, for the moment, he was tempted to relish the feeling of being pain free. The temptation passed. If he didn't move and move soon this brief respite would be all for nothing. He needed a plan. Except it was still difficult to think. His arcana had projected his consciousness, but his real brain was still getting pummelled. He couldn't even ask the Oligarch for advice without going back into the maelstrom of beatdowns. What he needed was someplace he could stash the vitamancer until he had a chance to recover. He looked around looking for inspiration. He was surprised when he found it. Without waiting a moment to reconsider if this was a wise decision, he propelled the giantess forward at a full sprint and snatched the vitamancer in one beefy hand as he/she ran.
Kincaid was caught off guard and, as such, he didn't realize what was happening until Viana's fist had closed around his throat. By that time it was too late for him to dodge to one side. But that didn't exactly mean he was helpless.
Crease noticed the feedback from Viana's corpse was unusually potent. The air rushing past, the feel of the dirt under her feet, and even the burning in her own lungs all seemed to be amplified. He guessed that Kincaid was increasing Viana's nerve sensitivity and stepped slightly back and away from the driver's seat just before KIncaid launched a punch into the giantess's forearm.
Stepping out of the body slightly was a mixed blessing. He avoided the overwhelming pain sensation that Kincaid was attempting to flood him with but was now highly aware of the very real pain coming from his own body. The double sided attack of blinding pain from both bodies nearly broke his concentration. But he held on. Barely.
Kincaid punched and slammed his fists at the arm with inhuman speed. The bone's laminate prevented it from cracking. So he changed tactics and increased the photosensitivity of the giant's eyes. The light was suddenly too bright and Viana could not see. Crease continued running and flitted more of his own awareness back to his own body. Slowly and painfully, he managed to move his real neck once more. He was now steering the body remotely. Less secure, but possible.
Sensing something was wrong, Kincaid tried other tactics. He caused her heart to stop beating. He forced her lungs to stop breathing and cut off blood to her muscles. All of which would have stopped her in her tracks if her body had been alive in the first place. Realizing his mistake, Kincaid switched directions again and focused on healing her damaged brain. Crease felt his control being shoved away. The giantess's gait became more erratic. He was hurting. It hurt to move. He switched to battle mode and told his battle implants to target the back of the running giantess. He allowed it to take full motor control.
The world went red with pain as his body moved without him consciously willing it. The servos flipped him around on damaged muscles and lifted his arm on a torn and agonizing shoulder. The finger squeezed on the pistol's trigger and suddenly he was back in the driver's seat of Viana's body. Bolts of lightning tore through her chest from behind as Kincaid released a gurgled scream. Crease directed Viana's other hand to join the one currently wrapped around Kincaid's throat. Together they squeezed with every bit of her enhanced strength. Kincaid's face turned purple for a brief moment before he, again, focused the healing arcana back into himself. As the pained expression returned to his previous snarl, Crease saw a look of concern cross over the vitamancer's face.
Although the events had felt like they took place over several minutes subjectively, both Crease and Kincaid had been operating in accelerated time. While for Crease this increased time awareness had been giving him a greater time to plan, Kincaid, on the other hand, had been acting out of instinct and raw emotion. When Viana had dragged Kincaid away from Crease's helpless body he had continued to react on pure emotion. He had lashed out and tried to fight Viana as carried him further and further from his intended target. It was not until the last moment that it even occurred to him to wonder where she was taking him to.
The giantess struck the side of the well before doubling over and falling in. The last view Crease had from her undead eyes was of Kincaid, still grasped in her strong hands, falling backwards into the well with Viana coming right after him. Crease let go as the darkness swallowed both of them and waited for the long delayed blowback to hit him. He screamed when the pain enveloped him but few heard him. Everyone else who could scream was screaming along with him.
And now for our exciting conclusion:

[Cryoverse] The Last Precursor 043: Crouching Kraktol, Hidden Kessu

The Last Precursor is an HFY-exclusive web-serial which focuses on the exploits of the last living human amidst a galaxy of unknown aliens. With his species all but extinct and now only known as the ancient Precursors, how will Admiral José Rodriguez survive in this hostile universe? Make sure to read the earlier chapters first if you missed them!
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Previous Part
Part 001
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The last Terran, a remnant of his extinct species, arrives before the Kraktol vessel, the Red-Tongue. Despite being only a hundredth the Bloodbearer's size, the Red-Tongue still presents a massive, imposing image when set against the backdrop of the Bloodbearer's Shuttle Bay. It devours the metallic interior and towers above the nearby shuttlecraft, making the Slipstream and other similar vessels appear positively tiny in comparison.
Admiral José Rodriguez, flanked by Megla and Soren, stops before the Red-Tongue's middle bow module, one of the three forward-facing spikes that gives the Red Tongue its distinctive trident shape. He folds his hands behind his back and straightens his posture while he waits for the landing ramp to lower.
Half a minute later, it does. Lord Drall, second in command of the Kraktol Empire, strides down the ramp and holds his scaled palms outward, displaying an open and honest lack of hostility. "Admiral Rodriguez! Graugh! It is my greatest honor to meet you, a living Precursor, face to face!"
Kisa Kindris, daughter of the Thülvik, follows behind Lord Drall, her movements noticeably more stiff and awkward. Her reptilian eyes flick around the hangar bay, where she spots dozens of Kessu working on repairing the Bloodbearer's many dilapidated shuttlecraft. Along with them, various holo-Terrans mill about, using their advanced programming and subroutines to guide the Kessu better toward fixing the craft as needed.
"Wow! This v-vessel is... gigantic. I've not seen something like it in all my life!"
Lord Drall glances at Kisa. "Graugh! Where are your manners? Greet our benefactor first before praising his vessel! ...Even if it is an incredible piece of craftsmanship."
The two of them arrive at the bottom of the ramp, making José chuckle to himself. Lord Drall, ever the intimidating Kraktol on the holoscreen, comes up half a head short compared to José himself.
Based on the information I've gathered from Soren, José muses silently, the Kraktol appear to be a matriarchal species. The females tend to take mating priority, and thus their bodies are larger, while the males are often little more than footsoldiers who follow their female leaders' orders. Indeed, the Thülvik is likely quite a bit taller than Drall, and therefore, me.
The Admiral keeps his thoughts to himself. "Kisa Kindris, there's no need to act stuffy and formal around me. Just act as you would if you were in your own home. While you're here, feel free to walk around and view the ship. Soren and Megla would be happy to show you some of the more interesting sights and scenery."
Behind José, Megla raises an eyebrow, clearly surprised by his words. She doesn't contradict him, though, and merely nods. "Kyargh! Yes, half-sister. We have not seen each other in decades! It would be wonderful to catch up on the latest chatter and gossip."
Soren nods. "Indeed. I hope things have been going well for you on Dragua."
Kisa steps past Lord Drall and glances at the Terran shyly, noticing how much more imposing he appears in person. "Uh, um... yes. Something like that. You know how mother can be so very... attentive."
Soren, Megla, and Kisa stroll away, leaving José alone with Lord Drall. The Admiral follows Kisa's movements with his eyes for several seconds, keeping an eye on her back as she leaves.
Lord Drall chuckles. "Graugh! I see, now. So that is why you chose Megla and Soren to accompany you! Indeed, Sir Terran, you have keen-sighted eyes for the beautiful treasures of the Kraktol Empire! My daughters are of the finest breed, and will make for excellent mating partners in the future!"
The Admiral frowns for a moment, before turning back to Lord Drall and smiling. "You misunderstand. I have no... sexual interest in Megla, Soren, or Kisa."
"Graugh! A fine jest, if ever I've heard one!" Drall guffaws. "Those lingering eyes, those polite and deferential words. Worry not, for I shan't speak of your predilections to the Thülvik. Even if she knew, Loreen would surely feel at ease knowing my daughters have thrown themselves into the harem of such a mighty and proud warrior as yourself! A marriage between the Kraktol Empire and the mighty Precursor would certainly shake the galactic community!"
A meaningful glint appears in Lord Drall's eyes. "And who could blame you? Their scales; are they not pristine? Soren's intellect, Megla's passion, and Kisa's demure nature. My daughters have all the traits any cold-blooded male should eagerly pursue!"
José stays silent for a few moments. He meets Drall's gaze, then shakes his head and laughs. "Think what you like. I'll say it again; I've no interest in mating with the Kraktol, the Kessu, nor any of the other sentients in this galaxy. Right now, my goals are a bit more... focused."
Perhaps sensing the finality in José's tone, Lord Drall's laughter dies down. He assumes a more dignified posture and clears his throat. "Harrumph! Well, ah, forgive me, Admiral Rodriguez. I meant no offense."
José gestures into the distance, toward the double doors leading out of the Shuttle Bay. "None taken. Now, come. Walk with me."
Drall nods respectfully. He pauses for half a breath and turns to face his ship. After pounding his fists together and nodding, his crew raises the entry ramp, sealing themselves inside to wait for Drall's return.
Before long, both men begin walking across the clean and pristine exosteel deckplates, with Jose's boots and Drall's claws clomping and clinking across the floor as they move.
Drall glances from side to side. His gaze often falls on the many Kessu milling around, some of whom hiss at him, while others merely ignore the Kraktol visitor, having long since grown used to Megla and Soren's presences.
"It seems your cooperation with the Kessu has deepened considerably in the last month or so," Lord Drall muses. "From Orgon's memories, we gathered that you had only met the Kessu on the day his fleet appeared, yet you protected them with such passionate ferocity. Now, they work for you as mechanics and technicians."
The corner of José's mouth curls into a faint smile. It's been quite a bit longer than a month, thanks to time dilation, but Drall doesn't need to know that.
Instead, he says, "The Kessu lost their memories, yet they retained their innate affinity toward technology. While I've had to re-educate them regarding many things they didn't know, they picked up that information surprisingly quickly."
"Mmm. The mystery of the erased Kessu memories..." Lord Drall mutters. "A fascinating matter, that."
"Oh? Do you know something relevant?" José asks.
The two men step through the double doors leading out of the Shuttle Bay. They arrive inside a wide open corridor, one in which a few dozen Kessu meander about, heading to one task or another. It doesn't escape José's notice that while Lord Drall keeps his distance from the Kessu, a slight look of disgust also appears on his face.
"Not exactly," Lord Drall mutters. "Truth be told, when that matter with the Kessu happened, the Kraktol were still slaves under their thumb. It was only because of the Kessu's ostracism from Mallali society that we managed to escape their control. By the time Loreen came to power and set out to conquer Dragua for ourselves, the Kessu had already begun to fade into obscurity. We were far too busy building our society from the ground up to pursue our vengeance, and so, the mystery of the Kessu mind-wipes escaped our attention for far too long."
"But you did uncover some information?" José asks, his tone rhetorical.
"You could say that," Drall answers cryptically. "However, the matter is not as cut and dry as you might expect."
Lord Drall and José pace down the corridors toward a destination only José knows. Drall flicks his eyes toward José, then returns to looking forward, avoiding eye contact with the Terran.
"The Kessu were, and possibly still are, a species hellbent on achieving political power and knowledge," Drall explains. "That alone isn't significant. All sentients, to some extent, wish for their species to rise to power and dominate the competition. Such is the natural order of life. What made the Kessu unique were their cutthroat tactics and distinct lack of any moral guidelines. All sentients have a saying, 'as two-faced as a Kessu,' which refers to their propensity for lies and deceit. Perhaps you've heard it before?"
"I haven't," José answers. "In fact, every Kessu I've met has been kind and gentle toward me. I've yet to meet a single liar, a single greedy bastard, and a single backstabber. They've been as honest as I could ever expect."
"Hmph..." Drall snorts, clearly displeased by José's assessment. "You live amongst them, so they'll surely show their true colors, given time. Especially since you've given the little furballs free roam of the place. Who knows how many backdoors they've installed in your systems? Who knows how many 'alterations' they've slipped into your command protocols? Watch yourself, Terran. One of these days, you might find yourself a stranger in your own ship."
José falls silent. He reflects on Drall's words, then begins replaying the past several days worth of events back in his head.
I can't remember any of my interactions with the Kessu prior to my rebirth. All I can rely on are the memory files given to me by Umi. Who's the say the Kessu couldn't have edited those files to influence my memories? It's a long shot, but it never hurts to take precautions...
He smiles. "Even if your fears end up not coming to pass, I must thank you for the timely warning, Lord Drall."
"Graugh! We warriors must stick together! There is nothing a fine and upright male should fear more than the conniving skullduggery of closed-door politics and back-room dealings. Keep your wits about you, Admiral, and you shall fare well in this era."
"Haha..." José chuckles wryly. "I'm afraid I don't plan to stick around long enough to make many friends."
"Oh? Are you planning a long journey?" Drall asks.
"...Something like that."
José's gaze turns vacant for a moment as his thoughts wander.
Evelyn. Nick. I'll join you soon enough. Once I sort out what happened to Humanity, I won't leave you waiting.
...
The two men eventually arrive at another pair of double-doors. They open up to reveal a wide, empty room, one lacking any furnishings, along with any decorations whatsoever.
Drall pauses outside the door. His pleasant expression dulls somewhat, as a hint of suspicion enters his eyes. "Hmm? What is this place? Why have you brought me here?"
"This is the Bloodbearer's holodeck," José answers. "It may look like a prison, but I assure you, it isn't."
"My translation interface must not be working properly again," Drall mutters, "as I am not familiar with this term, 'holodeck.'"
"It's a room for creating holographic worlds," José says.
The Admiral launches into a brief but informative ten minute explanation of the holodeck, giving essentially the same description of its functions as he gave to Megla and Soren.
When José concludes, Lord Drall merely nods. "I see. What wondrous Precursor- err, Terran technology, indeed. I believe I've heard of something similar within the Mallali's core worlds, but I never knew the details regarding how holodecks functioned."
"Mmm. Well, now you know. Let's take a seat."
José waves his hand. Like magic, a fifteen-foot-long table materializes on the floor, along with a chair at each end.
Drall blinks in surprise. "How... how did you summon...?"
"Cerebral implants," José answers, as he eases into the nearest chair. "I can communicate with this ship telepathically."
"Ah."
Lord Drall walks toward the opposite end of the table and sits down, marveling at how the chair contours to his bottom, even going so far as to open a hole in the back for his tail.
"Terran Implants. Believe it or not, the Mallali have spent countless millennia researching various Precursor remnant technologies. We have long known about implants, but their finer use and utility has evaded the galactic population at large. I've heard rumors that several top Mallali officials have begun installing basic, rudimentary implants stealthily into their bodies, but we've no way to corroborate such hearsay."
"I see," José says, nodding slowly. "The Mallali aren't my concern. Not right now, anyway. Let's cut the chit-chat, Lord Drall. We are by ourselves, now. Nobody shall bother us. What is it that you couldn't say in front of your crew? What do you know about the Buzor lurking beneath Tarus II's surface?"
Drall's casual calmness fades away. In its place, a look of calm, calculating cynicism appears.
"You are a wise sentient, are you not, Terran?" Drall asks. "You know that, often, the information a leader tells his people will be at odds with reality. Sometimes, to maintain morale, or to keep our people productive, we must feed them minor lies here and there. Small 'untruths'; minute deceptions which serve the greater good."
"Many a great leader has lied whilst claiming it was to serve the greater good," José comments blandly. "But perhaps that, in and of itself, is also a lie."
"Haha. Good, very good..." Drall says, his words coming more slowly and carefully. "I believe I am not wrong in my assessment of you. You are a cunning being, someone who has fought in more wars than any Rodak, perhaps even the Thülvik herself. You have already determined that we did not attack the Kessu on Tarus II merely to fulfill some long-dead, ancient, petty revenge."
José smiles. "Not true. Doubtless, you wished to exterminate the Kessu anyway, but it was some other secret you uncovered which led to your ultimate decision to attack the planet. Killing your ancient enemies was, in effect... a minor convenience."
"Graugh! True, yes. You understand my words better than I can speak them," Drall chuckles. "It was only a few decades ago when the Thülvik encountered some... disturbing news. Thanks to an informant among the Buzor, we learned that they had quietly established multiple planetary bases around the Outer Rim. In total, the Buzor now control, in secret, more than three thousand planets encircling the galaxy's outer edges, giving them a positional advantage in the event of a galactic war."
"Am I supposed to be surprised?" José asks. "I would imagine such a strategy to be an intelligent, perhaps even expected, military tactic. Encircling your enemy is a long-known element of Terran warfare."
"Aye," Drall answers. "You are correct. Under normal circumstances, such would be the case. However, what was most alarming was Loreen's realization that the Buzor had achieved their encirclement strategy in complete silence. They had pulled it off within a frighteningly short period, perhaps only a few thousand star-cycles. The Buzor informant would not tell us exactly what had led to their swift expansion, but he gave us a hint."
Drall pauses for half a beat.
"The Buzor... they obtained some hitherto unknown, ancient Terran device. What it is, we have yet to discover. We do know there are many of these devices in use now, and the Buzor have used them to place down several strategic military embattlements across the Milky Way. Most importantly, the first one came from right here on Tarus II. If we could slay the Kessu and delve into the mountain, we might be able to catch the Buzor by surprise, take control of the originator device, and use its power to further our own ends."
"Galactic domination..." José mutters. "Boring, but logical. I find your claims laughable, considering Tarus II was, in my era, an empty planet. We Terrans placed our prisoners there and kept all technology strictly out of the inmates' hands. If you had told me this device was found on one of the Core worlds, perhaps one of the former galactic superpowers' Dominion worlds, I might believe you. But Tarus II? It was nothing but a prison planet. Your informant was likely wrong."
"Graugh... under normal circumstances, you might be correct, Admiral Rodriguez," Drall says, leaning his elbows on the table. "But perhaps you did not notice one detail I mentioned. The Kessu abandoned their role as the leaders of the Mallali some two thousand years ago. At that same time, they wiped their memories and took up residence on Tarus II. Simultaneously, the Buzor appeared here and began their expansion campaign. If we assume such a device existed here on Tarus II, then we might be forgiven for concluding the Kessu assisted the Buzor in using it. After all, you may not know this, but the Buzor are technologically illiterate. They have no starships to speak of. They are not well-versed in the ways of Precursor artifacts."
José sits up a little straighter.
"You believe the Kessu assisted the Buzor? You think they used their technological supremacy to somehow activate this device for the Buzor? Why not take control of it for themselves, if they were the backstabbers and rogues you claimed them to be?"
Drall presses his claws together. He shakes his head and sighs. "Graugh... I do not know. The events which transpired 2,000 years ago... I was alive at the time, but I was not a main player, nor even a pawn in the galaxy's political machine. We Kraktol were too busy fighting for our freedom to pay attention to the backdoor dealings of those wretched Mallali."
The Kraktol leader continues. "If I had to hazard a guess... I would say that the Kessu left the Mallali core worlds deliberately and joined forces with the Buzor. Combining their intellect with the Buzor's unrivaled ground warfare supremacy, they would become an unstoppable force. However, they could not make this transition obvious. Therefore, the Kessu lied and said they would step down from galactic politics and return to a simpler, more primitive lifestyle. This news shocked the Mallali community, but so many Mallali hated the Kessu that they simply accepted it as truth, especially when all of the Kessu spread across the Milky Way returned to Tarus II and never left it again."
"That makes sense..." José mutters, a frown playing on his face. "Perhaps the 'device' the Buzor found was not actually native or found on Tarus II, but brought there by the Kessu. Perhaps the Kessu obtained it in secret some time before and worked out a deal with the Buzor. If they were as power-hungry as you claim, then such an action makes perfect sense."
This time, José pauses for half a beat. His frown deepens as he rubs his chin.
"However... something doesn't add up. The mind-wipes... why bother? Perhaps there are still some Kessu who've retained their memories in secret. The real players; the powerhouses of their people. They erased the memories of the 'peons,' while keeping their own minds intact."
Drall nods. "Indeed. We've considered that possibility. It makes sense, given the Kessu's knowledge of Precursor artifacts. Additionally, when we attacked Tarus II, that strange stealth-craft emerged from seemingly nowhere. This implies to me, as well as Loreen, that the Kessu are not as weak and defenseless as they first seem. If an external threat appears, I have no doubt they will reveal their hidden weapons and blast that threat out of the sky. Orgon's betrayal —his complete disregard for attacking Tarus II— may have inadvertently spared the Kraktol from suffering a terrible calamity."
José leans back in his chair. The Terran falls silent as he ponders Drall's words.
"...I don't have a horse in this race," José says, enunciating carefully. "So, in all seriousness, I couldn't give half a damn whether the Kraktol, Kessu, Mallali, or Buzor take over the galaxy. None of you mean one iota to me."
"All I care about," José continues, "is eliminating the demonic presence on Tarus II. Perhaps, of all the things we've discussed, the demons are the outlier that baffles me the most."
Drall cocks his head. "There it is again; that word. What is a 'demon,' Admiral? I have no concept of the term."
"That's why I brought you to the holodeck," José says. He rises from his chair and takes a few steps to the side, while indicating for Drall to remain seated. "Umi."
"Yes, Admiral. I will create the holograms as per your mental specifications," Umi beeps from above.
Drall watches silently as billions of light particles rapidly congeal together, forming half a dozen red-skinned figures of different sizes. Only one of them towers above José, while the rest stand at his height or below it.
"These... these creatures are demons?" Drall asks. "They resemble you, but with blood-red skin, and those horns sticking out of their skulls."
José nods. "They do share some similarities with Terrans, but make no mistake, demons are far fiercer, more vicious, and more guileless than any Terran I've met. They once preyed upon the bodies of Terrans, defiled our women, and enslaved our men. In my eyes, they are heretical beings whose existences must be purged at all costs."
Drall appears unconvinced. "Is that not the natural desire of all beings? Conquering other species is the right of the victor. Those who lose wars are weak, while those who win are strong. What makes the demons so 'heretical' in your eyes?"
"That question is not an easy one to answer," José replies, his expression bland. "Humans spent many ages trying to reconcile with the demons, as well as our other enemies. However, because the demons preyed upon us, we had no choice but to fight with all our might and exterminate them. We did not do so because of our innate desire to slaughter them all, but because if we did not go to such extreme lengths, then, given time, the demons would."
José begins pacing back and forth in front of the six lined-up holograms. He pauses at the first one, a somewhat short male with a neatly trimmed beard and goatee, a cocky swagger in his posture, and a fat beer belly.
"This one here was the First Emperor of demonkind," José explains. "His name was Satan. He may not look like much, but Satan was essentially an unkillable demigod. His body could regenerate from death, no matter how many times we slaughtered him. If we trapped him, he would tap into one of his seemingly infinite number of abilities to break free of his containment. He grew stronger the more Terrans he killed, and thus, was an ever-evolving threat that required the united might of humanity to defeat."
The Admiral gestures toward the second demon, a skeleton hovering off the ground, more than a head smaller than Satan, seemingly frail and weak. The hovering skeleton clutches a pair of ethereal knives in its grasp, each one capable of slicing through steel with ease.
"Mephisto, the Bone Emperor," José explains. "A Necromancer capable of bringing the dead back to life. Satan devoured Terrans to empower himself, but Mephisto kept their minds and bodies intact, turning them against their loved ones. In terms of psychological warfare, no demons were nearly as adept as him in the ways of scarring our soldiers' minds. He could turn his body ethereal, allowing him to bypass all of our defenses. Killing him meant losing tens of millions of minds to psychosis and shellshock."
José continues walking, gesturing to the other four as he talks.
"Belial, the Emperor of Passion. A seductress with frightening strength, she could wipe out legions of soldiers with her fists, while also restoring the bodies of her allies before they died. An adept changeling, she could infiltrate humanity's ranks and turn our own soldiers against us by weaponizing their lust."
"Bael, the Emperor of Intellect. A super-genius with strength in equal quantities. Immune to almost every type of damage we could inflict, the only thing more frightening was how he could seemingly peer into the future thanks to his bottomless brainpower."
"Fenrir, the Emperor of the Night. A Vampiress who drank blood to empower herself, as well as her thralls. She possessed powers similar to Satan himself, making her an enemy who grew in strength over time. Had we not overlooked her existence, we might not have paid such a frightful price to eliminate her heresy from the galaxy."
"Gorn, the Emperor of Many Faces. A faceless archfiend who could assume the form of others, gaining their abilities and powers tenfold. His versatility in the ways of war were only overshadowed by his Bael-like intellect, allowing him to puppeteer other demons from the shadows. Killing him was a nearly-impossible task, but finding him was even harder."
After speaking the name of these six demons, José falls silent for a moment.
He looks at Drall meaningfully. "Every one of these six was a frightening adversary. Alone, they could rip apart worlds and civilizations. Together, they nearly brought the galaxy to its knees. It took thousands, if not millions of soldiers to kill each one. And they were not the only terrifying existences. I didn't even mention Diablo, Lucifer, Valac, Auger, or Kristoff, let alone all the other Emperors, Dukes, Barons, and Lords."
Drall clenches his claws into fists. "You... you said before that you found demons on Tarus II. By that, did you mean...?"
"Aye. Not just any demon, but a living Demon Emperor, the highest existence a demon could reach. Yama, the Emperor of Shadows. His power, though lacking, is still more than enough to kill me by myself. To tell the truth, I've been agonizing over how I'm going to kill him. I cannot allow him to live, for as I've seen, his power has not dwindled over time. Demons, unlike Terrans, the Mallali, the Kraktol, or any other sentient... demons cannot die of old age. They are immortal; undying. If I do not kill him, he will continue to increase his power and expand his forces."
José spends a few minutes explaining to Drall how Yama's powers work. He details Yama's method of 'converting' men and women into Shades and Shadow-walkers, as well as his many other powers involving darkness.
After José's explanation wraps up, Drall rubs the underside of his jaw thoughtfully. "This Yama fellow... he seems quite frightening. But, compared to the other Demon Emperors, he does not seem invincible. His weakness to light, for example, seems quite exploitable."
"Yes." José answers. "If I had to choose between facing Yama or any of the other demons I mentioned before, I would choose him one hundred out of one hundred times. If our opponent were Satan, Belial, Mephisto, or heaven forbid, Bael, I wouldn't even bother. Those Emperors would be far too much for me to defeat on my own. Against Bael in particular, even igniting Tarus II's star in a supernova would not be enough to kill him. Trust me; humanity tried."
José waves his hand, causing the holograms to disappear. He strolls over to the table and takes a seat, sighing heavily.
"Drall. Can I speak my mind?"
"Graugh! Naturally!" Drall answers, his spirits rising noticeably. "We are males! We speak the honest truth, and nothing but the truth!"
"Excellent. Then, here's the deal. You came at the perfect time. Aboard your vessel, there are many Kraktol warriors. I, alone, am not a match for Yama. I cannot slay him by myself. Similarly, his strengths come in the form of deception and evasion, so he lacks the power needed to kill me, provided I enter his lair prepared. This puts us at a stalemate."
Drall's eyes flash with insight.
"You... you wish to make use of my soldiers?"
"I do." José answers flatly.
Lord Drall tilts his head upward, a mischievous grin on his face.
"Graugh! Bahaha! You, Terran, are a most interesting person! You take my information and you take my men, abusing the pure goodness of my heart! How shameless, how utterly shameless!"
After pausing, Drall continues.
"But what can I say? I would not dare to deny you this request. The Thülvik herself told me to grant you any concession. So, tell me, Terran... would this not count as a tacit alliance with the Kraktol Empire?!"
José laughs. "Haha. You're a simple man, Lord Drall. Fine. If you wish to consider me an ally, then I won't deny you that request. However, do not expect me to fight your wars. If you want to learn the Buzor's secrets, then assisting me in killing Yama and his Shades will bring you closer to that revelation. You can find the answers you seek, while I can slay the heretic lurking under the mountain. This cooperation is a win-win for both of us."
The Terran's smile fades. "However, make no mistake. After this operation, our agreement will come to an end. I will not ally with you or anyone else for the foreseeable future, as I have no interest in the petty galactic squabbles taking place in this era. I have only one desire, and only I can pursue it. You will be of no help to me in seeing it through."
Drall hesitates. "...Can you tell me what you seek?"
"No."
José answers with a bland expression on his face, one that masks the pain in his heart. Drall, however, being unfamiliar with Terran body language, can only hazard random guesses as to the Terran's secrets.
"Very well. In the end, even a temporary alliance suits my needs. You are a surprisingly conscientious being, someone willing to consider my political situation. When I return to the Thülvik with news of fighting alongside the Terran, she will be extremely pleased with me. Perhaps she will even grant me the privilege of whelping a second child with her! Bahaha!"
"Haha, I'm glad I could help," José laughs. He stands up, as does Drall. With a wave of his hand, José dismisses the holodeck's projections, returning the room to its empty state.
The two of them start to walk toward the door, but Drall pauses.
"Regarding Yama's extermination... given how powerful you have stated Demon Emperors to be, what are the odds all of my troops together could defeat him?"
"On your own?" José asks. "Zero percent. You've no chance. But with me in command, giving you access to this ship's formidable stockpile of weapons and armaments? I'd say it's around... seventy percent."
Drall's jaw drops. A greedy look appears in his eyes, while drool pools at the edges of his mouth.
"S-stockpiles... of armaments? Yes... yes! I had almost forgotten. Your vessel is equipped with 50th Era technology. I can hardly even imagine the... the firepower you could bring to bear!"
José wryly shakes his head.
"Like father, like daughter. You remind me of Megla in many ways."
"Graugh! I will take that as a compliment!"
Drall's expression turns odd, and he takes a step away from the Terran.
"...But no funny business! I won't allow you to throw yourself upon me as you have Megla! I have eyes only for the Thülvik!"
José rolls his eyes. "Oh, not that line again."
Next Part
.......................................
Author Note:
Yo-yo-yo my fellow Precursors, if you liked what you just read, consider subbing to my Patreon! I post patron-exclusive writing posts, with typically one post dedicated to TLP each month, and another to Cryopod. You help me survive long enough to not starve to death, and I give you fun things to read. It's a win-win! Check out some of those posts here and here!
Also consider reading The Cryopod to Hell, the primary story in the Cryoverse! Both TLP and TCTH are part of the Cryoverse, so they're deeply interlinked. You don't wanna miss either of them!
Thank you!

Rock, Paper, Scissors: War Games

This is a rather long one and the last in this particular Universe for a while, enjoy!

Admiral Alexis was... Bored... When the usual suspects called for an emergency meeting he expected another war, some sort of political snafu or maybe a major discovery that would require his input.
Once he learned how little was at stake he stopped really listening, as far as he's was concerned it was just about someone cheating at video games...
****************************** The War Games had first been introduced as a way to create camaraderie between the races and to have hard data on the strategies and capabilities of the different races.
The Noradons had been the only ones who participated along side the Humans.
Targeting locks would count as hits for space combat, smoke would be artillery explosions, low level electric batons would be used to simulate blades and good old paint balls for live ammunition.
The result was an overwhelming win for the Humans, the Noradons' new Overseer, Talon, was far too direct in his approach, the only victories he achieve were when he had superior numbers and never in defense scenarios.
He didn't care for traps, small deployment of troops, scouts, listening to his officers on the ground or any type of subterfuge.
The second was a more balanced affair, the Noradons had now far more specialist units and Talon had learned from his mistakes.
It was also a lot more popular, it wasn't viewed as a barbaric display of power like the first one but as a more violent sporting event.
Thou the second game was better remembered for the arrival of the A/O during the closing of the games.
****************************** The ceremony was finished, everyone was picking up their things and preparing to leave.
Kin son of Krono, host of the ceremony at the Commonwealth's HQ had the classic bartender's look that screamed: you don't have to go home but you can't stay here...
That is until Lawless contacted him.
A massive ship, dreadnought class from the tonnage, had just entered the system, it would be here in mere minutes.
Seeing how The Pale Horse and the Queen's Fury, the only known dreadnoughts, were already there this was worrisome to say the least.
He urged everyone to remain, not that anyone was going to leave now, this was exactly what the War Games were ultimately about: being ready when the time came to fight.
By the time the unknown ship emerged, the Combined fleet, the Noradons swarm along side the dozen or so ships of the Imphlasms were ready for anything, the Va'sh had stayed home.
Historians still wonder to this day what would have happened had they been present.
The ship was an odd mix of science and gardening gone wrong, an icosahedron with a power signature better measured in stars covered in moss and vines.
Admiral Alexis: “Identify yourself and your intentions”
Unknown Ship: “We are us, we wish to learn all there is to know”
Admiral Alexis: Huh, doesn't sound too bad
Unknown Ship: “We wish to be the only sentient races alive!”
Alexis: Ah, this would be the other shoe dropping, “We can help you with that first part but do not think we will just allow ourselves to be killed without a fight”
The Unknown Ship powered what looked like weapons
The fleets above Commonwealth HQ were ready for combat and spread out in loose formations, combat was about to be joined.
Than came from Commonwealth's Law a message sent on all frequencies
3.14: “Very well and than what?”
Unknown Ship: “... We would be safe and no other sentient beings would add needless variables to the grand equation”
3.14: Grand equation? Have we finally run into civilized alien lifeforms!?, “I assume the grand equation is a single mathematical formula that explains and predicts all things in the Universe?”
Unknown Ship sounding happy and not monotone for the first time: “Yes!”
3.14: “So your plan is to remove all sentient beings to make it safe and easier to calculate”
Unknown Ship: “Yes, that would be optimal”
3.14: “And you would just exist like that until the heat death of the Universe?”
Unknown Ship: “The what?”
Admiral Alexis was growing impatient, the Krush ambassador and the Ship had been talking astrophysics for two hours now, the Unknown Ship powered down their weapons into the first few minutes of this discussion and it was looking like there would be no fighting after all.
Unknown Ship: “I see, so no matter what, eventually all things would end”
3.14: “It is inevitable”
Unknown Ship: “Perhaps, perhaps not, we will think on how to prevent this, it is a far more grievous threat than any alien species consuming us”
3.14: “Yes that would be a worthy endeavor to occupy a mind like... Wait, eat you!?”
The threat of conflict over, proper introductions took place, the Ship was composed of two species: the moss and vines was a single plant entity and the ship itself a massive AI, the first true and somehow naturally occurring AI the galaxy had ever known.
They had met by accident, the plant life form floated into the hull of the AI on a small meteor and grew there, the AI could easily predict how it behaved, it liked the little plant and they formed a bond.
In their travels they intercepted Commonwealth transmissions.
The Plant accessed the holo-net and saw that every sentient species ate plants in some capacity, the AI saw the chaos some species were capable off.
They decided to strike first but upon learning how all would one day end shifted focus to finding a may to prevent it.
They were giving a name: Alpha for being first of their kind and Omega for their shared goal to see that the end never happens, A/O for short.
They chose to stay in orbit around Commonwealth HQ, doing nothing of note.
Sometimes the AI would discuss theories with the scientifically inclined races on how to prevent heat death and the Plant would have philosophical debates on what constitutes life with the more spiritual races.
****************************** Alexis sighed
That was then, this is now
Alexis looked at Ambassador Paul trying and failing to convince the others of the gravity of the situation.
“This could prove a huge security risk, we must find out who is doing this!”
Alexis had had enough
“No offense but finding out who is messing with the War Game's holo settings isn't much of a threat”
Paul: “The most likely scenario is that someone is interfering with the Games in order to make a large profits from the bets taking place, we must find who is doing this”
3.14: “I'm pretty sure only Humans would do such a thing”
He looks at the Admiral
“No offence”
Admiral Alexis: “None taken, I mean, who else thinks it's Humans?”
Lady EliIi: “No doubt”
Warlord M'rm'n: “Of course!”
Ambassador Uv: “Makes sense”
Lawless, the AI of the Commonwealth Law sat at this meeting, she was the referee of the Games
“It's Humans, there's no question about that”
Paul: Et tu Lawless? “Anyway, I have put top men in charge of finding out the truth”
3.14: “Who?”
Paul: “Top. Men”
****************************** Lord Doros was having a bad day, the Combined ambassador had contacted Transit concerning supposed hacking of the War Games.
Normally this would be well beneath the 12 Blades but their “failure” with the Diszin incident had allowed the ambassador to call in a favor, so to speak.
Lord Doros: Pretty sure we got the job as punishment.
He thought back to the morning's meeting
Boss: “... And so we have to find who is messing with the Games and why”
Everyone looked confused, Lord Doros was fuming...
Scout K'r's lifted his paw
“Not that I mind but killing someone over rigging games feels like going overboard”
G00.106 nods
Boss sighed
“We are not to kill anyone,we simply report our finding to the officials and arrest the individuals if we can”
The specialists in the room said nothing, the shock was total, this mission was not only something they should never have to do but they would have to operate like common... Cops.
Lord Doros had had enough
“So what's next? Trade disputes? Traffic control!?”
Boss: “I understand how you feel but Transit gave us the mission and we must obey”
Lord Doros: That was 5 hours ago, now we are on the Commonwealth Law, looking for “leads”
Smith was a professional, he was given a task and would complete it, no matter how absurd.
He was meeting with Lord Doros, K'r's and G00.106 in the Commonwealth's Law cafeteria, there were dozen of groups of different races all over the place, while most individuals who participated in the Games did not travel to Commonwealth HQ, many coaches, reporters and VIPs did.
Which is why Commonwealth Law was used as a safe meeting for these individuals.
The media to try to snag any exclusives they could, the VIPs to follow the games along side fellow VIPs and the coaches for the timed honored tradition of getting in the referees face when they had a complaint.
Lord Doros was already sitting at the meeting table
“So anything?”
Smith sat at the opposite side of the table and G00.106 stayed standing her back to the two.
Smith: “No luck so far, I talked with a few coaches and the odd VIP but they let nothing slip”
Lord Doros nodded, he himself had not found anything and given the levels of security involved he doubted anyone would.
“G00.106?”
G00.106 shrugged
“Not a damn thing, I even tried asking a few males while wearing nothing but lingerie like some of the girls onboard suggested but all I got were screams and a fine for..”
She reads her datapad to get it right
“... Creepy indecent exposure”
Smith had a horrifying mental image and shuddered.
Lord Doros shuddered a second later
“Thanks for sharing specialist Smith”
Smith: “Sorry, the image just, wait a second wouldn't you have gotten the same from G00.106 anyway?”
Lord Doros shakes his head
“Noradons are now all psychically linked to the Overseer at some level, you can't read one without listening in on all of them so it comes out as static”
Smith: “Very well... So i guess we have no leads to follow”
G00.106 was slightly insulted by the conversation that had just taken place but decided to move on
“So anyway, I doubt it was Noradons, we don't really do the whole crime thing”
Lord Doros nodded
Smith: “Has anyone seen K'r's? It's not his style to be late”
Lord Doros opened his eyes wide and looked up
Smith and G00.106 followed his gaze.
K'r's was sitting above them on a lamp, his green coat and pants were torn in places, his beret was missing, chunks of fur looked to have been ripped off and he had a thousand yard stare that spoke of unimaginable horrors.
Smith: “What the Hell happened to you!”
K'r's grabbed a flask from inside his coat, unscrewed the lid and took a sip
“Ran into Captain Grace”
He than took a much, much larger drink, never making eye contact.
Smith bit his fist and looked away.
G00.106 separated her arms, jumped into the pole holding the lamp and grabbed the Va'sh, cradling him like a new born larva and looked at Lord Doros
“Permission to take specialist K'r's to the ship for medical care!”
Lord Doros nodded solemnly
“Granted”
Smith and Lord Doros watched her run to their shuttle
Smith looked concerned
“Poor bastard...”
Smith than shifted to looking as chipper as ever
“So anyway, I doubt the Noradons had anything to do with the hacking, I mean there's no such thing as Noradons' organized crime after all”
****************************** Late at night, in the middle of the workers district of the Commonwealth Capital, a G00 unit wearing a brown trench coat and a black hat was slowly making her way to a bar.
She approached carefully, looking into every shadow and jumping at every noise, she had what looked like an Xmas gift in her hand.
The box was small and by the looks of it had been wrapped by a child... Or a really drunk adult.
She eventually gathered her courage and knocked on the bar's door, two fast knocks followed by two slower ones.
The door opened a tiny fraction, the “gift” was quickly exchanged for a grey bag of unknown content.
The G00 unit left, practically running.
Inside the bar the bouncer, a soldier Noradon, wearing a tuxedo and sunglasses made his way to the back.
He walked calmly, the sentients drinking and smoking paid him no attention besides the occasional nod, which he politely returned.
He entered the VIP room, Big Vinny, the proprietor of the establishment: the Carlito's Way, was sitting on his leather couch.
He was wearing a white suit with a matching ascot, a gold chain and a massive silver ring on his dorsal right hand.
Big Vinny was an engineering drone, smaller than the average Noradon to more easily get to tight places and with three digits per arm instead of claws to use precision tools.
Not that Big Vinny was small, he was overweight which to a Noradon with a perfectly genetically built gastric system was no small feat.
The bouncer, Tony, handed him the gift, bowed and left the room.
Vinny waited for Tony to leave before opening the package, inside was a box of chocolates, sixteen total.
He smiled
Best way to get a message without risk of it getting intercepted? Code it using foodstuffs.
He put the chocolates in order, the shapes symbolized the events taking place in the following days, the filling who would win and the individual wrapping's color the optimal spread.
He committed the information to memory and ate the evidence.
Taste like... Profits!
******************************** The Games had being a huge success so far, the Humans were leading by a razor thin margin.
The sabotage event was a surprise steal by the Imphlasms following the sudden rain that made Va'sh guards miss their approach until it was too late.
They than lost the retrieve and salvage mission to the Human team who won on a technicality
The Human field engineer was quoted saying:
“The rules said we had to get the ship back faster than the other team, never said nothing about it not exploding or having it's crew making it out alive”
Which was true, thou the rules would certainly see changes for the next Games.
This year marked the first time the War Games would shift from live exercises to holo-space recreations.
As such many more species joined this time around, most were out of the running by this time however.
The Humans lead by a single event, the Noradons were in second place, the Va'sh in third and the Impshlasms in fourth.
Today was the last four scheduled events: base defense, VIP assassination, survival on a Deathworld and the three-legged race, no one was certain how that last one ended up there...
The Noradons had pulled an upset on the base defense by outsmarting the human attackers, they used the molted exoskeleton of their soldier caste to have their engineers hold the front gate while the soldiers burrowed beneath the entrance and slaughtered the attackers in the resulting pitfall trap.
The VIP assassination had been won by the Va'sh, the human guards had a hard time pulling the trigger when they attacked and the Noradons and Imphlasm simply weren't fast enough.
Thou the moment a Human sniper managed to get his laser sight on the Va'sh VIP, which resulted in his guards accidentally mauling him to death, was considered a Pyrrhic victory.
Smith had been watching the whole thing from his now usual cafeteria table, not much to do when he had already spoken to anyone who allow him to get close to them.
I hope the others had better luck...
Lord Doros approached him and sat down
“I have managed to find no leads”
Smith didn't look at him, to anyone else watching, the Aaen had just whispered to himself.
Is the kitten doing okay?
Lord Doros: “He'll be out of med-bay in a day or so”
Smith gave a barely perceptible nod
G00.106 arrived at the table, she looked in a hurry
“I have a lead! What do you know of the Carlito's Way?”
Lord Doros and Smith looked at each-other nonplus
Smith adventured an answer
“... I don't like the ending I guess?”
G00.106 looked at him like he was an idiot
“What? No I'm talking about a bar in the Commonwealth Capital, Solenia”
She explained how one of her sisters from her hive back home contacted her, to let her know if she wanted in on a gambling scheme she was part of.
“I've made 4 times my initial bet so far!”
Was what she had told her.
G00.106: “My guess is that they're somehow behind the hacking, like the rain that costed the Va'sh the sabotage mission or the Humans weapon misfire when the Va'sh attacked their VIP”
Smith: “I don't think the weapons mis... Anyway, should we contact Lawless and check this bar out?”
Lord Doros: “Yes, this seems like a solid lead”
****************************** Smith, Lord Doros, G00.106 and Lawless made their way to the Carlito's Way.
Lawless insisted on joining the team, citing how as the referee of the Games it was her duty to see those who would defile it brought to justice, thou Smith thought the AI was probably just looking to get away from the incessant complaining from the coaches...
They found the bar with no issues, it had all the proper permits and all taxes were payed.
Lord Doros: “G00.106, you take point”
G00.106 hesitated
“Shouldn't Smith do it?”
Smith: “Normally yes, but you have an actual “in” with the crowd we are trying to infiltrate, I will enter with you as a friend looking to make some money, than”
He points at Lord Doros and Lawless
“They come in later as a couple looking for an out of the way place to have a quiet drink”
Lord Doros: “Anything goes wrong, we back you up”
Smith trying to be reassuring
“See, nothing to be worried about”
G00.106: “Right. Got it!”
She than kicks the door open and while holding her shortened carbine yells
“Nobody move! We know you're conducting illegal operations, you're all under arrest!!!”
Smith and Lord Doros thought at the same time
If we survive I'm killing her myself
Lawless grins, produces a kukri from under he coat and stands in front of G00.106.
The people at the bar barely seem to notice and quickly return to their drinks and talks.
Smith and Lord Doros reluctantly drew their pulse pistols, enter the bar and stood by their colleague.
Smith: “When we get back, if we get back, we need to talk about your infiltration skills”
G00.106: “Why?”
Before smith or Lord Doros could answer, or shoot her, the door in the back opens.
Big Vinny, with Tony in tow, appear.
Smith: What the Hell, a Noradon... Don!?
He seems very calm and he speaks softly as if to an old friend's kid he's trying to explain a complicated notion to.
“What, if may ask, is the reason for this loud and quite frankly disrespectful scene in this, my humble establishment?”
G00.106: “We know what you're doing and you're going to prison, if we don't kill you right now that is!”
Vinny undisturbed
“I find such a thing rather difficult without any evidence and for any threat against my person”
Vinny snaps his fingers
Half the bar draws weapons and Tony gets in front of his boss, the infiltration team is now outnumbered five to one
Vinny: “You will find it a... Difficult task”
Smith was curious, if he was going to die today he just had to ask
“Okay, what's with the outfit?”
Vinny, positively beaming
“You like it? I modelled it after Tony Montanas's suit in Scarface”
Smith, now less curious and more confused
“The movie?”
Vinny: “Yes, we like your “mafia”, quite a novel idea”
Lawless: “Yeah well, organize crime is nothing new and even if you get rid of us more will come”
Vinny: “Crime? What crime?”
G00.106: “You rigged the War Games and make bets on them, my sisters called me and told me all about it!”
Vinny got in front of Tony, he was frowning
“Did she tell you we were actually fixing the events?”
G00.106 seemed a lot less confident all of a sudden
“Well not in so many words, no”
The rest of the team looked at her and than at each-other
Vinny: “We have a group of ex-military professionals analyze the strategies of the teams and a Krush run the odds, than we place bets on events where the margin of error matches the betting spread”
Smith: “So you aren't the ones hacking the Games?”
Vinny genuinely surprised
“The Games are getting hacked!? Well, we have nothing to do with that, we're just honest mafiosy”
Smith still concerned and very aware of the multitude of guns pointed in their direction.
“You do know they're the bad guys right?”
Vinny: “Of course but that's because they break the law”
G00.106: “Ha! Like you don't”
Smith came to a horrible realization
“Lawless could you run a quick background check on the people here for outstanding warrants”
Lawless closed her eyes for a second, smiled awkwardly and sheathed her kukri.
“No criminal records, not even a ticket and they have permits for those guns”
Lord Doros: “It seems we made a mistake”
Vinny: “Quite so but don't worry, this was exhilarating! Rocco Two Hands had been itching for a reason to draw his guns”
Vinny waved at Rocco, who was standing behind Smith
Smith looked back expecting a Noradon with only two arms but what he saw was a Noradon drone with all of his arms and a backpack with another set of four mechanical ones allowing him to hold eight guns total, all aimed at his head.
Smith: “Rocco TWO hands?”
Vinny: “It's short for Two Sets of Hands, alright fellows put the hardware away, you're scaring the tourists”
At this the entire bar sat down and no one even looked at the four who now awkwardly sheathed and holstered weapons before leaving.
Vinny as he waves them good bye
“Arividerchi!”
The four walked in silence for a while until Lawless spoke
“This never happened, agreed?”
No one said anything, there was no need.
On the way back to Commonwealth Law Lord Doros got a message on his datapad
“We have a new mission”
****************************** Lawless was spectating the survival event of the games in the cafeteria.
We didn't find the culprits, we didn't even find how they did it... Thou given how they could have done much worse than add random shit I guess we should consider ourselves lucky.
A/O had joined the other VIPs, they were curious about how things would turn out.
He approached in his holographic avatar, a small crystal cube with a single leaf inside it.
“Greetings Lawless, are you enjoying the Games?”
Lawless: “Yes, kinda”
A/O: “Is there something not to your liking? I could modify the templates further”
Lawless stopped looking at the screen and turned to the floating cube
“I'm sorry, modify the templates further?”
The cube floated up and down, trying to imitate a nod
“Yes, we found the games too easy to predict, so we added semi-random events to make sure the Games remained interesting”
Lawless, was at a loss for words an entity that wanted to boil down all the universe to a single equation had somehow hacked into the Games to “spice things up”
She mulled over a few words, a couple of ideas and just... Gave up, they hadn't hurt anyone and at least they showed an interest. She resumed watching the screen.
“Just out of curiosity, are there any modifications to the current event?”
A/O: “Yes, in the next 12 seconds the tectonic plates where the teams are situated will begin to move”
Lawless: “An earthquake?”
A/O: “Correct”
Lawless: “... During the cooking portion of the event?”
A/O: “Is that a problem?”
Screaming and some really ingenious curses can be heard from the screen as holo projections of the teams catch fire, fall face first into their food or right into their makeshift cauldrons.
Lawless shrugs
“I guess not”
****************************** Captain Grace was on a mission, she was stalking a beautiful Va'sh, a white angora kitten wearing a butlers' outfit!
She applied some more scent blockers, checked her ceramic second skin under armor, activated noise cancellers on her boots and a camo-suit to become virtually undetectable.
The kitten took a turn into a cargo hold, she followed slowly and when she felt the Va'sh couldn't possibly dodge her, she jumped!
The hologram disappeared and the door locked behind her.
Before she could look behind, someone had put a bracelet on her right hand and in the time it took her to look at it an identical one was put on her left hand.
Grace: “What is the meaning of this!”
Smith and Lord Doros simply pointed up, to a viewing window
Grace looked up and paled, Admiral Alexis, Warlord M'r'm, Alisia Black, Lady EliIi, 3.14, Ambassador Paul and the Uv Ambassador were looking down at her.
Alexis: “Grace you have gone too far, consider this an intervention”
He pushed a button and the holographic butler kitten re-appeared.
Alexis: “This is a hard light construct of a real Va'sh, you have only one thing to do, pet the kitty”
Grace was scared but she acquiesced, not that she had a lot of choice...
All those watching winced
Lord Doros and Smith made it in time to catch the “petting”
Lord Doros: I heard the Human expression “there is more than one way to skin a cat”, I guess one of them is to let Captain Grace pet it...
After a couple of minutes Captain Grace stopped
“It's not the saMEEEEEE!”
An electric shock shot out from one bracelet to the other
Grace: “What the Hell was that!”
Admiral Alexis: “That was a mild shock, you will get hit by one every time you pet the Va'sh too hard”
Grace: “Mild shock!? Are you kidding me?”
Alexis, now looking quite angry
“No, this is no joke, now Pet. The. Kitty!”
A few hours and several thousand volts later
Captain Grace looked rough, her ponytail had come undone, actually quite a bit of her hair had curled and some of it was smoking.
She had a weird twitch on her left eye and as far as Admiral Alexis could tell she stopped blinking a while ago...
Alexis: “See, that wasn't so bad?”
Captain Grace in a monotone voice
“Yes, not so bad”
Warlord M'rm'n felt generous and removed his tricorne hat and offered his head to the Captain.
“Here”
Captain Grace hesitated but ultimately pet the Va'sh head, very gently
M'rm'n: “That was nice”
Captain Grace than began twitching uncontrollably and fell to the ground, hugging her knees
“pet the kitty, pet the kitty, pet the kitty...”
Everyone stared
Eventually Lady EliIi felt the need to say out loud what everyone was thinking
“We might have gone too far”
Warlord M'rm'n shrugged
“She got her hands on the Emperor nephew last week, the video of today's intervention should be enough for him to call the hit off”
Admiral Alexis looked at the Va'sh with a mixture of shock and anger
“You're kidding right?”
The Va'sh grinned and Admiral Alexis chose to assume it was a joke, Alisia Black knew better however...
Captain Grace spent a few days in the infirmary of her own ship and is now famous, rather than infamous, with Va'shs throughout known space!
The way she gives the softest pets and how she goes completely catatonic after has made her quite popular...

GTA Online Casino Inside Track Horse Racing glitch SOLO works for PC (maybe XBOX AND PS4 as well?)

The Death Of Marion Du Fresne At The Bay Of Islands, New Zealand, 12 June 1772, By Charles Meryon (1846-1848)

I
Sometime between 1846 and 1848 drew the scene en graiselle in pencil and crayon, heightened with chalk. It’s a largish work, one metre by two metres – a heroic scale for a “heroic” subject, executed by the French artist Charles Méryon (1821-1868) and exhibited at the Paris Salon in 1848. Thence it passed on to the artist’s closest friend, Antoine-Édouard Foleÿ (the two were stationed together at the French naval base in Akaroa on Banks’ Peninsula), a member of the Paris Positivist circle of the philosopher Auguste Comte, who left it to his son. The drawing was purchased in Paris by New Zealand-born British art collector Rex Nan Kivell, who smuggled it back to London, rolled up in the leg of his trousers, as the Second World War broke out. Eventually this magnificent curiosity entered the National Library of Australia as part of the Rex Nan Kivell collection from 1959 until 1967 when it was presented to the New Zealand Government by visiting Australian Prime Minister Harold Holt. In December of that year Holt would go on a fateful ocean swim and never be seen again.
Now in the collection of the Turnbull Library, Wellington, the title of the work, The Death of Marion du Fresne at the Bay of Islands, New Zealand, 12 June 1772, leaves very little ambiguity about the subject. The Breton-born explorer and navigator Marc-Joseph Marion du Fresne anchored his ships, Marquis de Castries and Mascarin, in the Bay of Islands from May to July 1772, late in the reign of Louis XV. This was the first significant social interaction between Europeans and Māori, and at first relations between the two were cordial enough, until suddenly they weren’t. According to the story – particularly from what another French explorer, Dumont d'Urville, was able to find out from local Māori during his 1824 visit to the Bay of Islands on the Coquille - Du Fresne was killed by Māori of Ngāti Pou iwi beneath a Pōhutukawa tree at Te Hue Bay before being ritually consumed by several local chiefs for his mana.
Méryon attempts to reconstruct the event, rather fancifully and through a fictive scrim of overweening classicism. True to the tropes of the Picturesque, the scene is set up like a stage. In the background Du Fresne’s ships are anchored in the bay. In the mid-ground a French sailor takes a stroll with Māori wahine, a reminder that sex often paid for European goods in early New Zealand, and short-term marriages to Europeans for material gain would become an important industry in some Māori communities. Unfortunately, this also had the unforeseen consequence of unleashing a number of venereal diseases which the indigenous tribes had no experience of or resistance to.
In the foreground, a scraggly Cordyline, looking like a refugee from a Dr Seuss book, defines the left wing of the stage with its perky, calligraphic line. The right wing is a pātaka, a storehouse for perishables raised on stilts to protect it from the ravages of the Kiore, the native rat, and preserve their tapu. Méryon’s interpretation of a pātaka is decidedly at odds with reality, resembling more a ramshackle Roman temple out of a Piranesi engraving than anything he would have seen in New Zealand. Essentially Méryon has put in the barest of essentials to let the viewer know that this is a pā, a Māori village. The effect was calculated to appeal to the contemporary vogue in French art for exotic and decadent scenes with the plentiful bared breasts and poised, theatrical violence.
The Death of Marion Du Fresne (detail)
To the left of the pātaka, in front of a palisade and draped backcloth, Du Fresne presides over a déjeuner sur l'herbe of Māori chiefs, warriors and wahine. In front of them is a pile of Māori and European goods for trade. Méryon has depicted his countryman as a dignified and noble hero of the Enlightenment in profile as one might find on a coin. He is the calm, still focal point of the drawing’s universe. On the other hand, Méryon seems like he can’t quite make up his mind how to depict the Māori participants. Some resemble classical figures as one might find in the paintings of Nicolas Poussin in academic postures fitting Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Noble Savage model, or supine like an odalisque by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres. Others seem the worst racial and pantomime stereotypes, particularly the rat-faced chap theatrically sneaking back to the pātaka while his tribesman, suggestive of something from the orientalist paintings of Eugène Delacroix, is paused mid-delivery of the dolorous blow with a club to Du Fresne’s powdered scalp while a comely young wahine distracts the Frenchman with what looks like a kākāriki, a small, green, native parakeet. A young, barefoot boy sailor, about the age Du Fresne was when he first went to sea, turns to flee.
The fancy ten-dollar word for this little exercise is ekphrasis, the Greek word for description, a literary description of a work of art.
II
Marc Joseph Marion du Fresne’s exact birthdate is unknown, but he was baptised on 22 May 1724 in at the walled port of Saint-Marlo, Brittany, on the English Chanel coast. The son of a merchant, in 1735, still a boy, Du Fresne joined the French India Company ship Duc de Bourgogne as honorary sub-lieutenant, which is the beginning of the trajectory that lead to his death at the bottom of the world. During the messy War of Austrian Succession – a complicated episode which managed to drag in all the European powers over the question of Maria Theresa's succession to the Habsburg territories - he commanded privateers out of Saint-Malo, rising to the rank of temporary captain in 1745. After the ill-fated Battle of Culloden it was he who sailed to Scotland to retrieve Bonnie Prince Charlie. He then served in the French royal navy until taken prisoner by English forces in May 1747.
When the war ended the following year, Du Fresne served on several French India Company ships, sailing to the Indian Ocean and China. With the outbreak of the Seven Years War in 1754, he found himself a consultant for a proposed landing by French forces in Scotland. With much cunning and daring do, he spent two years in naval operations outsmarting the British blockade of Brittany and in recognition of his skill and bravery he was promoted to fireship captain in 1759, and made a Chevalier of the Ordre Royal et Militaire de Saint-Louis, the immediate predecessor of the Légion d'honneur. After all that excitement returned to trading in the eastern seas, conducting hydrographical surveys of Mauritius, and for a time was harbourmaster of capital, Port Louis. He also traded in the Seychelles and India, and participated in the peculiarly colonial vice of land speculation.
The liquidation of the French India Company caused Du Fresne considerable financial bother and when in 1771 the opportunity arose to voyage to the Pacific on a trade and exploration mission sponsored by the French government. This was in no small part sparked off by Captain James Cook’s first Pacific expedition aboard the Endeavour which had returned that year, with the hope that if there was a new continent to be discovered to the south of New Zealand, the hypothetical Terra Australis Incognita, it should be claimed by France, not Britain. Du Fresne was provided with two naval ships, the twenty-two-gun Mascarin and the sixteen-gun Marquis de Castries. The first directive of the mission was to return, like an overdue library book, the Tahitian Ahu-toru to his island home. Ahu-toru had been brought to France in 1768 by Louis-Antoine de Bougainville. Lionised in Paris and becoming something of a celebrity, this brave voluntary Polynesian explorer of Europe had been sent to Mauritius to find passage back to Tahiti, the “New Cythera” of the Pacific.
Du Fresne and his ships sailed forth from Port Louis on 18 October 1771. This proved most opportune as an epidemic of smallpox had broken out in Mauritius. Unfortunately, the disease also killed Ahu-toru. After picking up supplies at the islands Bourbon and Madagascar, since the Tahiti was no longer part of the mission, Du Fresne decided to try and recoup some of the expedition costs by heading for Cape Town in South Africa to begin their search for the Southern Continent in the high latitudes of that hemisphere. On the way he discovered the south Indian Ocean islands of Marion, Prince Edward, and the Crozets. After a stopover in Tasmania where he was the first European to explore and interact with Aboriginal Australians, the mission set sail across the Tasman for New Zealand.
They sighted Mount Taranaki on 25 March 1772, giving it the name Pic Mascarin (not realising that Cook, who had been through on the Endeavour in 1769, had already named it Mount Egmont after John Perceval, 2nd Earl of Egmont, a former First Lord of the Admiralty. Sailing north on 15 April they landed at Spirits Bay. Two days later strong winds severely damaged the ships, losing a number of anchors, so they limped south-east and on 4 May reached the drowned valley complex of the Bay of Islands, anchoring first to the south of Okahu (Red Head) Island and then off Moturua Island.
The French had some idea of what to expect. In 1769 a previous expedition let by Jean François Marie de Surville of the Saint Jean Baptiste had visited the area, though had ventured no further south than Doubtless Bay and hadn’t left a positive impression on local Māori as, following the theft of a small boat, De Surville’s men had retaliated by the razing of a kāinga close to shore, and the kidnapping of Ranginui, a Ngāti Kahu of rank. He would die at sea three months later.
Du Fresne and his men spent a leisurely five weeks exploring the Bay and making repairs to the ships. They set up camps – one on the mainland as a quartermaster’s store and communications base, a tent hospital for sailors stricken with scurvy on Moturua, where gardens were also planted, and one inland in the forest to hew masts and spars for the ships. They were also able to visit distantly scattered pā to trade, able to communicate by means of an extensive Tahitian vocabulary put together by Bougainville and Ahu-toru, sufficiently close to te reo Māori to be comprehensible, and despite the occasional nuisance of what the French regarded as petty theft (Māori concepts of property and reciprocity being very different to those of Europeans), prospects appeared very pleasant and relations friendly. On 8 June Du Fresne was even welcomed at a special pōwhiri in his honour by Te Kauri, chief of Te Hikutu hapū, and four white feathers placed in his hair, denoting chiefly status. This charmed Du Fresne, already an enthusiastic student of the culture, greatly.
What the Frenchman didn’t realise was that despite tranquil appearances, he and his crew had arrived at an extremely fraught moment in Bay of Islands history. They were sitting on a powder keg.
By the middle of the eighteenth century the Bay of Islands was like a scaled down Māori Mediterranean, populated by diverse hapū with modestly-sized territories scattered around the coasts and further inland. Apart from the hapū to the north and south of the bay, most of these communities shared whakapapa. Ngāti Miru and Te Wahineiti occupied Te Waimate which stretched from the Kerikeri coast to the Waitangi River. Ngāti Pou inhabited Taiamai, the southern part of the Bay from Kawakawa and extending west. Ngare Raumati controlled Te Rawhiti, the coast and remoter islands of the Bay’s southeast. North and south of the bay were the territories of the various hapū of Ngāpuhi, and they had ambitions.
Around 1775 the Northern Alliance of Ngāpuhi hapū descended on the Bay, conquering Te Waimate. Two decades later the Southern Alliance took Taiamai. Ngāpuhi cemented their absolute dominion of the Bay over subsequent generations, beginning with a ferocious, but ultimately unsuccessful attack on Rawhiti in around 1800, and an overwhelming victory in 1826.
The Northern Alliance invasion a mere two years in the future, tensions were running high. The presence of the French was destabilising in that precarious environment. Less than a week after the pōwhiri, Du Fresne and the fishing party he had gone ashore with were attacked and killed. A second party was attacked the following day and four hundred armed Māori attacked the hospital camp on Motorua, but were turned back by the overwhelming firepower of French blunderbusses. In all, twenty-seven of the French died: two young officers, M.M. de Vaudricourt and the volunteer Pierre Le Houx, the second pilot Pierre Mauclair from St Malo, the steersman Louis Ménager from Lorient, Marc Le Garff, also from Lorient, Vincent Kerneur of Port-Louis, Marc Le Corre of Auray, Thomas Ballu of Vannes, Jean Mestique of Pluvigner, Pierre Cailloche of Languidoc, and Mathurin Daumalin of Hillion. What we know of that fateful day comes from the accounts of two officers, Jean Roux and De Clesmeur.
It has never been entirely clear what the trigger was. The Northern Alliance invasion effectively disrupts the thread of oral history. The French were already bulls blundering around in the china shop of Māori tikanga and protocol, and their ongoing presence both created political, cultural and economic issues for local iwi and carried with it the spectre of a permanent French settlement. Some claim that they had violated tapu by fishing in Manawaora Bay where the bones of the dead were cleaned prior to interment, or where the drowned corpses of members of a local iwi washed up in Te Kauri’s Cove (now known as Assassination Cove).
This story, appearing in the 1960s, seems rather unlikely. Supposedly the French had been at the tapu beach for seventeen days, assuming they were still in distant Ngāti Pou territory, but in fact in Te Kauri’s lands, just below the pā. Discrediting this is the fact that Te Kauri was well known to the French, having dealt with them on multiple occasions and having been on their ships. It seems altogether more likely that this was a gambit by one hapu or other to acquire muskets, or a response to the French being perceived to have claimed Motorua. Following the pōwhiri for Du Fresne, Māori made a nocturnal raid on the Moturoa hospital camp, taking muskets, uniforms and an anchor. The French took two of the culprits hostage against the return of the stolen property, one of whom accused Te Kauri of having been involved. Du Fresne ordered the men released, but this even alone would have caused Te Kauri significant loss of mana in a scenario where the French were already, unwittingly, being used as pawns in a competition for status among local hapū. Later an armed party of Māori, presumably Te Hikutu, challenged the French, but utu was restored with an exchange of gifts.
In all that time there was no mention of tapu, but parties of Māori had been seen by French sentries prowling at night around the hospital and lumber camps, and visiting chiefs showed a great deal of interest in the French muskets and blunderbusses. These visitors went so far as to ask for a demonstration which was satisfied by Jean Roux, Ensign of the Mascarin, shooting a dog. Those would have been powerful incentives for any enterprising chief. French weapons and resources would have dramatically changed the balance of power in the area as British muskets and the easy carbohydrates of potatoes were for the following generation.
Following the attack on the hospital camp one of the local chiefs told Roux that Te Kauri was responsible for killing Du Fresne. Soon longboats of armed French sailors arrived to confirm that Du Fresne and the others had been killed, apparently lured into the bush and ambushed. Despite it being the small hours of the morning, according to Roux’s account he claims to have recognised Te Kauri in the darkness and ordered him shot. In the days that followed, the French came under persistent attack as more Māori reinforcements arrived. The French abandoned the hospital camp, which was raided and razed to the ground. As they retreated to Moturoa, the French were still close enough to see that the warriors wore the clothes of Du Fresne and his fellow sailors.
That night Māori attacked the Moturoa camp, this time to general fire from the French. The next day another 300 or so Māori joined the attacking force, bringing it to around 1500 fighters, whom the French charged with 26 of their own soldiers, seeing them off with technological superiority. Gallic pride having taken sufficient battering, the French attacked Te Kauri’s pā, being met with a rain of huata. Te Kauri’s allies fled in their waka. Some 250 Māori were killed, including five chiefs, and many French sustaining serious wounds.
On 7 July, investigating a month later, Roux found Te Kauri’s pā abandoned, the cooked head of a sailor on a spike, and some human bones. Julien Crozet, Du Fresne’s second in command, and the captain of the Marquis de Castries, Ambroise-Bernard-Marie le Jar du Clesmeur secured their ships, to which the French withdrew, fighting off small sporadic raids. In order to complete repairs on the ships, Crozet and Du Clesmer ordered a counter-attack to clear the area of the lumber camp, instigating reprisals resulting in a further 250 casualties among Māori.
These events left a profound scar on the French psyche. Before they departed on 12 July for the Philippines, they buried a bottle at Waipoa on Moturua, containing the arms of France and a formal declaration of possession of “France Australe” in the name of France, but left firmly of the view that Māori bore no resemblance to Rousseau’s “noble savage” and the dangers posed by them warranted against any attempt at colonisation. And yet they would attempt to do just that, and seventy-two years later a French artist, familiar with New Zealand and its French colony at Akaroa on Bank’s Peninsula.
III
Charles Méryon (1821-1868) is possibly not so well known a name these days as he deserves to be, but is generally regarded as the finest French proponent of the etcher’s art in the nineteenth century. He was born in Paris, a bastard, the illegitimate son of a travelling English doctor and a dancer with the opera. Méryon was raised by his mother until he enrolled at the Naval School at Brest in 1837, eventually embarking of a tour of duty around France’s possessions in the South Seas on the corvette Le Rhin.
Like William Blake, as a boy Méryon claimed to have seen troops of angels around him. A brooding, melancholy sort, quick to take offence, Méryon was already an accomplished draughtsman when Le Rhin arrived in New Zealand in 1842, resulting in a remarkable series of pencil drawings of the landscape. It was around then that his mother, suffering from a mental affliction, died. Ostensibly Le Rhin’s mission was to protect the tiny French settlement of Akaroa on Banks Peninsula as Britain moved to consolidate control of the archipelago.
Akaroa (“long harbour” in the Ngāi Tahu dialect), founded in August 1840 by French settlers, is Canterbury province’s oldest township, lying 84 kilometres at the end of a winding and precipitous route southeast of Christchurch. At around just over 600 people, sixty percent of the houses are holiday homes. It retains a strongly French flavour in its architectural style, the street names, and the occasional tricolor. On the Rue Lavaud is a modern statue, intended to represent Méryon, but erroneously depicting him as a stereotypical painter at easel and wearing a smock and beret.
By the time Le Rhin arrived, its mission was largely irrelevant. Three months before the settlement had even been founded (the French whaler Jean-François Langlois being under the mistaken impression he had purchased Banks Peninsula from Ngāi Tahu), two Ngāi Tahu chiefs, Iwikau and Hone Tikao (John Love as he was better known to Pākehā), signed the Treaty of Waitangi at Ōnuku on Akaroa Harbour. It had been Pākehā involvement in Te Rauparaha’s 1830 raid on the area, leading to direct intervention by the British, which lead to the Treaty process in the first place.
Méryon’s drawings of Akaroa, and the etchings made from them, are fascinatingly detailed, and those made of the Māori village at Ōnuku clearly reveal the elements, in their original organisation and with a Romantic eye for nature, that make up the more Classical composition of The Death of Marion du Fresne.
Charles Meryon, Greniers indigenes et habitations a Akaroa, presqu'Ile de Banks (1860)
On his return to France, while only 25, still a lieutenant and with only a tiny inheritance, Méryon left the navy with the ambition of becoming an artist. It was only then, however, he discovered that he suffered from Daltonism, a hereditary form of colour blindness that causes confusion of greens, reds, and yellows, leading him to enter the atelier of the engraver Eugène Bléry, under whose tutelage he acquired the technical skills of etching. Méryon supported himself with hack work, when not copying the etchings of Dutch masters like Renier Zeeman and Adriaen van de Velde, eventually going on to produce the celebrated series (though never published as one) Eaux-fortes sur Paris from 1850 to 1854, consisting of twenty-two etchings, collected together with the rest of the artist’s oeuvre in the Victorian art critic Frederick Wedmore’s catalogue Méryon and Méryon’s Paris (1878) in an edition of 129.
It is the studies of Paris, it’s glories and squalor (even as George Haussman was tearing it down and replacing it with boulevards for Napoleon III) that are the noblest fruit of his abilities, though there are some nice illustrations of the wooden houses of Bourges, around 240 kilometres from Paris.
What Méryon might have accomplished had not material and mental struggles not shortened his life, will never be known. His work failed to find broader appreciation, despite the admiration of no less than Baudelaire, Gautier, and Victor Hugo, and he was forced to sell his etchings (when he could sell them) for a pittance. The poverty and disappointment played heavily on his mind, even as his supportive friends, the etchers Félix Bracquemond and Léopold Flameng, became successful.
As Méryon’s own reputation slowly increased (Dr Paul-Ferdinand Gachet, who cared for Van Gogh in that artist’s final weeks at Auvers-sur-Oise, was a fan) he declined into paranoia, fearing imaginary enemies at every turn, believing his friends stole from him or owed him money. When the English surgeon etcher Francis Seymour Haden visited to purchase a set of the sur Paris etchings, Méryon’s chased him through the streets of Paris, seizing back the etchings and accusing the startled Englishman with wanting to plagiarise his work.
Eventually he became completely delusional. he started digging up his garden looking for dead bodies, eventually taking to bed and brandishing a pistol at anyone who attempted to see him - and was committed to the infamous asylum at Charenton Saint-Maurice on 12 May 1858.
His stay in Charenton, the French Bedlam, restored him to some lucidity, and was released for a time, resulting in some of his most visionary and peculiar work. It is evident that his mind travelled back to the Pacific from time to time, resulting in the striking Tourelle de la Tixeranderie, Ministere de la Marin (1865), depicting the offices of the French Admiralty, while in the sky above, a surreal flotilla of Polynesians in canoes race against horse-drawn chariots, tiny like the staffage of a landscape painting. These efforts exhausted him and he briefly returned to Charenton in late 1866. He was released again in 1867 so that he could visit the Exposition Universelle at the Champ de Mars and Ile de Billancourt, where some of his etchings were being exhibited.
At this great world’s fair, only the second to be held in Paris, with 50,226 exhibitors (15,055 from France and her colonies, 6176 from Great Britain and Ireland, 703 from the US, and even a representation from New Zealand) the likes of Jules Verne and Vincent van Gogh thrilled to such sights as the hydraulic elevator, reinforced concrete, and a recreation of the reliefs of Borobudur in the Java.
Alas, on the day Méryon visited, the weather went bad and a violent thunderstorm struck, terrifying the fragile artist out of his wits and shattering what remained of his sanity. He was once more committed to Charenton, never to emerge. He came to believe himself the second coming of Christ incarcerated by the Pharisees, and grew obsessed with the notion that there was insufficient food in the world for its population. To that end he began designing bedroom furniture that looked more like torture devices, for the express purpose of preventing sexual intercourse that might lead to reproduction, and refusing to disadvantage the poor by taking scarce food from their mouths, stopped eating. He starved himself to death in February 1868.
IV
What a strange image The Death of Marion du Fresne is, so surrounded by death and tragedy. It brings together so many elements of New Zealand’s complex relationship with France, and one wonders what Du Fresne or Méryon would have made of later chapters of that history – the liberation of Quesnoy by New Zealand troops during the First World War, the New Zealand government sending a hastily refitted navy frigate, the HMNZS Otago, into the waters off Mururoa in protest at nuclear testing, the bombing and sinking of Greenpeace’s ship Rainbow Warrior in the port of Auckland by French military intelligence’s Direction générale de la sécurité extérieure in 1985 Indeed, we might wonder what future stories the drawing will play a part of in years to come.
Andrew Paul Wood
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Great artwork in link

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