Nova Wars

"Leave the sleeping dragons lie in peace" is a lesson that seemingly has to be taught to every wannabe conqueror over and over again.

Time after time, there will be a few idiots who only see the dragon's hoard, its cult of followers, and ignore the piles of rusted, slagged, calcified, scorched remains of every moron who tried before them. They see all of this and think "I can beat it to submission and take everything it has."

And then the dragon wakes up, and more smoldering remains are added to the scorched scrap heap.

And the Malevolent Universe grins in the darkness, and increases the "Dead morons who should have known better" counter by one. Then, waits for the next contestant. - u/Matt_Bradock, Terran Philosopher, Age of Paranoia, TerraSol

initiating data stream

your name is Dhruv-661391

you were purchased for the same price as a moderately priced luxury vehicle

She knows the dead. She is of the dead. She is the keeper and guardian of the dead. Life, death and the feasting of swarms all are one within her. She knows where once-dead things were laid to rest and where the deathless still dream in their unliving slumber. She knows where the hungry dead have roamed the universe's fields, and where they still roam them unburied, and why no one remembers them as they tread. - The Fifth Horseman, First Terran Imperium, "Meditations Upon Immortals"

you were created to serve

What we tell ourselves, what we tell others, and what actually happened, are often three different things.

And sometimes four. - Unknown, Age of Paranoia, TerraSol

your name is Dhruv

and your brain was once smooth

Captain N'Skrek checked his datalink.

The deep data storage was still at work bringing up information on "Legion" and "Sacajawea". The older databases of the Gray Lady had data at the ready, but it was sparse.

Two of the Biological Apostles of the Digital Omnimessiah, a figure of myth and legend.

Yet, they sat across from him.

They were talking back and forth in a language that the computer's linguistic database had no record of and stubbornly resisted any attempt to decipher it.

What N'Skrek did hear was several words that he recognized.

Daxin the Unfeeling. Daxin Freeborn. Chromium Saint Peter. Enraged Phillip. Matthias the Elder. Matthias the Younger. Kibuka. Kalki. Gravity.

A litany that left data scrolling down the empty space just beyond the edge of his peripheral vision.

Daxin "The Walking War Crime" Freeborn.

NavInt and MilInt were projecting with an 80% certainty (adjusted downward for unknown probabilities) that the beings in front of him were from that long bygone era.

Finally Captain N'Skrek cleared his throat.

The bald one, Legion, turned to look at the gathered staff officers.

"My apologies. I was catching my sister up on what has transpired since she disappeared," Legion said, smiling gently. He nodded. "You probably have questions."

N'Skrek nodded back. "The biggest one is: how did you..." he thought for a second. "Why did you..." no, that wouldn't work. "What bring about..."

Legion smiled.

"How did I replace all of your clones and why?" he asked. "Why is it that if you print off too many identical clones I show up?"

N'Skrek nodded. "Yes."

Legion looked at the Terran officers and smiled wider. It was a cruel smile, reminding N'Skrek of a hook pointed knife that had been sharpened to a keen edge.

"You didn't tell them? Have you really forgotten about me?" he asked.

"It was assumed to be still prevented by the cloning systems," Vice-Admiral Breakheader stated slowly. "We have only recently been restored ourselves. Less than two months time."

Legion just smiled.

Vice-Admiral Breakheader turned to look at Captain N'Skrek. "Running off too many identical clones causes Legion to manifest. It's why we use the Born Whole system, it ensures they have different brains, different expriences, and they have a slight variation to pore and retinal patterns, hair growth, minor things like that. Otherwise, Legion manifests."

"Why?" N'Skrek asked.

The Vice-Admiral sat silently for a moment before replying. "Because," was all he said.

Legion's smile didn't leave his face.

"Because it is my nature," he said.

Sacajawea said something and Legion replied in the same language, then turned to N'Skrek.

"My sister does not know why she was rebirthed," he said. He looked at her and spoke rapidly. She answered, only a few words, which made Legion reply at length. Again, only a few words.

"It must have been important," N'Skrek interrupted.

"She states that she does not know why the Immortals system did not rebirth her when she died," Legion said. He glanced at her. "She tells me that she died, with her people, when her peaceful planet was attacked."

"By the Mar-gite?" N'Skrek asked.

Again, more conversation.

"Yes," Legion answered. He frowned as she spoke again. "She says they were a peaceful planet. Anarcho-Primitivism. Very little technology. The Mar-gite attacked without warning."

She spoke rapidly and Legion listened.

N'Skrek saw the computer still was not able to parse the language, even though it could build a lexicon of off very little data for almost any other language it encountered.

Legion turned and faced N'Skrek. "She states that she believes it was the fact that some of her people demanded that high technology be left in place in order to allow the six planets her people had settled to remain in contact. That the high tech farming and sustenance industries led the Mar-gite to attack her."

Again, Sacajawea spoke, her head lifted, looking down at Legion.

"Why she was not reborn is unknown to her. She had guided and shepherded her people for thousands of years before the outsiders came. Outsiders drawn by technology, by the abandonment of the old ways," Legion said. He was frowning as he spoke rapidly.

The conversation took a few minutes.

"She said the outsiders came and wiped her people out after entire generations held them off. That in the final battle, they overcame her when her strength failed," Legion said. There was more talking. "She's describing the Mar-gite."

"Where was this?" N'Skrek asked, bringing up a map of the galaxy. "The First Mar-gite War was only three hundred years prior to the Council-Confederacy Conflict and lasted nearly a hundred years," the brought up a sketchy timeline of the era. "When did you encounter the Mar-gite and where?"

Sacajawea spoke again at length. Legion spoke back. It grew heated for a moment before Legion looked at N'Skrek.

"She will not say. She does not want us to defile or desecrate the worlds her people settled. She does not want us to know when or where," he said.

"That might be pertinent information," N'Skrek said. "Important information to keep the Mar-gite from overwhelming the Cygnus-Orion Spur."

Sacajawea spoke quickly, heatedly, half standing up. Legion put his hand on her shoulder, obviously encouraging her to sit down, but she shrugged, throwing off Legion's hand, and her speech got more heated, her eyes flashing with anger.

"She says she will not reveal her people's resting place for us to dig up the graves and desecrate them. That it is not anyone's business where The People have gone or what The People have done," Legion said. He turned and answered her.

The conversation got heated as the N'Skrek and the officers watched.

Finally, Sacajawea stood up and turned around, folding her arms across her chest, lifting her chin.

Legion's skin darkened with anger.

"Then you can tell them that load of bullshit yourself, little sister," he snapped.

He suddenly vanished in a swirl of black powder that evaporated.

N'Skrek saw that Sacajawea was shocked by Legion's disappearance. She stood there for a long moment.

"Dhruv?" she asked mid-air.

N'Skrek motioned his officers to stay silent.

"Dhruv?" she snapped, stomping one foot.

Still silence.

"Luke!' she half-shouted, stamping her foot again.

She turned and looked at the gathered staff officers, who were all staring at her.

"Legion?" she asked quietly.

N'Skrek held up one bladearm.

"It appears, Miss, that you will have to speak for yourself."

Sacajawea frowned and clamped her lips together.

N'Skrek just stared mildly.

your name was tiffany

0-0-0-0-0

your name was dhruv

you were created to serve the deshmuhk family

you were a gardener and a menial

but you have risen above that

Jaskel had just gotten a plate of food and sat down in one corner of the cavernous Dining Bay Twenty-Three.

True, it was a little bit of a walk from the Telkan Marine section to that particular dining facility, but for some reason Jaskel liked the food put out by Nutriforge-Eight better than any of the others.

Like the Gunny always said, it was the little things that count.

He had arranged his silverware, his drink, and given a short prayer when he suddenly wasn't alone.

A slender man in an unfamiliar uniform suddenly appeared at one of the tables on the far side of the Dining Bay. Jaskel watched as two more stepped out of the first. They all sat down and started talking rapidly.

To Jaskel, it sounded like an argument.

It looked like one person arguing with himself.

Jaskel ate quietly and slowly, trying to avoid attracting attention, but watching the Terran out of the corner of his eye.

Terrans were universally half-crazy.

And a Terran arguing with clones of himself was probably full blown crazy.

That, and Jaskel remembered how negligent the display of power had been that had left him hanging upside down in mid-air.

Much to the amusement of his squad mates who watched the video and laughed.

He was down to dessert when the far door opened and a woman entered. Jaskel recognized her instantly as the young adult Terran woman who had appeared nude from the cloning banks, even though she was clad in clothing made of brown material and decorated with beads.

She immediately made a bee-line for the man, who had gotten a plate with a piece of pie on it while the other two argued between each other.

She stopped and stomped on foot, staring down at the sitting man.

"You look stupid," the man, Legion, said when she stopped next to him.

"Dhruv," she snapped. She rattled off words that Jaskel's datalink couldn't translate.

"Not talking to you until you speak Confederate Standard. I know you know it," Legion/Dhruv stated.

She stomped her foot again. "Luke!" she snapped.

Legion looked up. "Part of me, a large part of me, feels that you lost the right to call me by that name."

He went back to eating the pie. When the woman looked at the two clones who were staring at her, they stared back for a moment then puffed into black dust that swirled and vanished.

Jaskel kept watching out of the corner of his eye.

"Dhruv," she snapped.

"Go away, Sacajawea," Legion said.

She stood there for a moment. Then she suddenly leaned forward and slapped the plate of pie away from Legion.

"I will not call you Legion," she suddenly said as the plate clattered against the far bulkhead.

"Go away," Legion said. He looked up. "Let me put it in a way you might understand better: I just want left alone."

The woman stepped back, one hand going to her mouth.

"Yeah, still scared of him, aren't you," Legion said. He stood up. "Or are you?" he moved so he was clear of the table. "Were you ever afraid of him, Sacajawea, or was it all an act?"

Sacajawea looked away. "He was everything wrong with the world, a living reminder of what kind of men destroyed my people."

Legion suddenly laughed. "You forget history, little sister. But, of course, you never had any use for history unless it served your own ends."

Sacajawea stomped her foot. "Dhruv, be nice."

"No," Legion said, his voice low and intent. "I have yet to hear you thank me for what I did in the cloning bay, much less what I did for you before you ran off and left me holding the bag."

your name was luke

remember remember

your name was luke

"I came back to find Matthias the Elder standing over the sundered murdered code of the Digital Omnimessiah," Legion said. "Then Daxin showed up, Matthias claimed I killed our Digital Father, so I ran."

"And he followed. Intent on killing you," Sacajawea sniffed.

"Yes!' Legion said. "Of course he did! I would have chased me in that situation," Legion said. He stepped forward. "And where were you, Little Sister, when it happened?"

She looked away and sniffed. "I was performing my duty, serving my people. As you well know."

Legion turned around, facing away from her. "Yeah, the people you had me bake up," he turned back around. "Not the poor bastards fighting a slowly losing war against the Mantid. They were your people too, but you left them behind. If it wasn't for the Mechakrautlanders, they'd be extinct with the rest of humanity."

"They had set aside the old ways. I told you that," Sacajawea said. She gave a sniff and turned her head away. "They were too consumed by blood lust, they would not stop fighting, would not embrace the old ways."

"EVERYONE WAS FIGHTING!" Legion shouted in a voice that made Jaskel's drink glass rattle. "There were hab-kids fighting and dying in destroyed hab-blocks in the ruins of megalopolises. It had nothing to do with 'the old ways', it was a fight for survival."

"You would not understand," Sacajawea said. She gave another sniff, still looking away. "I took my people away from where technology and the abandonment of the ways of our people had led us."

Legion stood still for a second.

"Don't give me that shit about your 'people', remember, I touched you. I know the truth," Legion said. He shook his head. "You had a task. A task to help us, help our Digital Father, help all of humanity, but you abandoned it."

"I had a task to help my people," Sacajawea sniffed. "I owed nothing to the world that stood aside or actively took part while my people were destroyed," she looked at Legion. "You wouldn't understand."

Jaskel could see purple electricity snarling around Legion's boots, clawing at the deckplates with thread-thick fingers.

"You were supposed to guide us along the path to the SUDS, so we could save everyone, Sacajawea," Legion said. "You betrayed us. Betrayed them. You were supposed to save them."

"Like they saved my people, Luke?" Sacajawea asked.

"You don't call me that any more, little sister," Legion said. "For the love of the Detainee, fucking let go of shit that doesn't matter any more. We humans have been genocided repeatedly since then."

"I'm not calling you Legion. That reeks of arrogance and pride," Sacajawea said. "And it matters to me, Luke."

"You talk a lot of shit for someone named Bird Woman," Legion snapped back. "How about I call you Tiffany?"

Sacajawea took a step back. "That is not my name. That was never my true name."

"You forget. I could see under that skin job. See who you were born as. I knew the truth, and I've kept it secret for all these eons," Legion said. He turned away. "You left us, left humanity behind on your so-called quest."

He turned back to face her.

"Now, again, we're facing extinction. The Mar-gite, they wiped you out. Now they're here in overwhelming force to the point where I'm not even sure Fortress Sol can hold them off," Legion said. "And you still want to play pretend."

He turned his back on her.

"You're no different than Matthias the Elder," Legion said quietly.

There was a dreadful silence for a long moment.

"I told Daxin, sitting in the parking garage where we used to meet, that we had to let go of the past. Learn from it, admit it happened, but we had to let it all go. The old hatreds, the old angers, the old rage," Legion said softly. "He agreed. He said perhaps it was time for us to leave the mortals behind. Let them go without us dragging baggage from worlds and events dead and gone behind us."

Sacajawea sniffed. "It's different for the two of you, neither one of you had your people..."

"I was a short bake slave clone, Tiffany," Legion said, his voice still soft and quiet. "Just like your family owned."

Sacajawea opened her mouth to answer, her eyes flashing hotly.

"One of millions grown in a vat every year. Made in humanity's image but without its grace," Legion's voice was nearly a whisper. "Our little band of siblings, only Kalki, Gravity, and Daxin came from families that did not order one of me from an online catalogue. Even Bellona lived with my people performing menial labor for her colony."

Sacajawea stepped forward, obviously about to deliver a scathing retort.

"But my people didn't count, did we, Tiffany?" Legion asked. He gave a deep sigh. "I loved you, you know."

Her mouth closed. She looked confused.

"When you left, I created another of you," Legion said quietly. "She was, of course, captured by the Imperium, like all of the Biological Apostles," he looked down at the floor. "It was why they didn't know you'd escaped."

Jaskel wished he was anywhere but in the dining bay.

"Eventually, that version of you threw off the Imperium's chains like we did. She went back to Terra. Worked tirelessly to rebuild. Eventually, led the Dandelion Fleet that became the Sky Nebula Alignment."

It was silent except for the muted sounds a starship under power in Transit Space made.

"I'll go back with you. Translate for you," Legion said, his voice still soft. He turned to face the woman.

"Just... just stop lying, Tiffany," he said.

He was silent a moment.

"I had hoped that it was that version, my version, the version I had been madly in love with, that version of you that had been rebirthed," he said. "The version who guided her people, who succored them, who helped them rebuild, who helped them thrive in the scarred and shattered world Earth had become. I had hoped, when I saw you, that you were her."

the buzzing can still be heard

your name is legion

"But it's just you."

0-0-0-0-0

Captain N'Skrek watched as Legion led Sacajawea into the briefing room.

He had been busy looking up every scrap of information on the Digital Omnimessiah, the Biological Apostles, Legion, and Sacajawea.

Of all of them, information was scarcest, almost non-existent, on Sacajawea.

He waited as the Terran woman took a drink from the glass in front of her.

She looked around.

"During the Human-Mantid War, before the destruction of the Overqueen by the forces of MechaKrautland, before the Liberation of Terra," she started. She closed her eyes, sighed, and opened them. "I begged Vat Grown Luke, who you know as Legion, to clone my people and help me repair and then hijack four colony transports crashed in the Middle Kingdom."

She looked down and Legion reached over and took her hand. She looked startled for a moment, squeezed Legion's hand gently, and looked back up.

"I led my people away. From the Imperium, from Terra, from the War," she said. She reached out and touched the holo-emitter, bringing up a map of the Milky Way. She touched a single arm.

"I led them here. For over eight thousand years my people knew peace, prosperity, and plenty," she said. She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and exhaled sharply.

N'Skrek recognized it as a sign of stress in Terrans.

"Roughly twelve hundred Terran Standard Years prior to the Council-Confederacy Conflict, we were attacked," she said. She looked down. "I had sworn to protect my people, to use my powers to protect my people, which had grown to fill six worlds."

She looked back up.

"The Mar-gite destroyed my people in under a decade," she said. She looked down again. "And me with them."

"A glitch in the system prevented her from moving to Afterlife or being rebirthed," Legion said. "A glitch I had caused when I helped her."

"The Mar-gite destroyed my people here," Sacajawea said, her voice filled with pain.

A single cluster of six stars burned brightly.

Deep in the Scutum-Crux Arm.

your name is legion