For two centuries, mankind has been at war with the Bugs: Ravening, horrid aliens from the depths of space, they have attacked humanity again and again. Only by working together has humanity held the line - and now, at last, victory is in sight: The Bugs have sued for peace, surrendering and ending the war.
For Prince Louis Benoit, the war has been there all his life. His father fought in it and he has trained for it. Now that it is over, he finds himself thrust into a new role...as peacemaker. His father has arranged for him to ensure that there will be a lasting, continual peace with the Bugs with the oldest, most traditional method that the human race has ever known.
With a royal wedding.
Now, whisked across space to neutral territory, Lou will need to come face to face with a ravenous hive mind that threatened the entire human race with extinction...and marry them.
Beneath the meter thick armor plating, visible through the augcrown that threaded against his temples, King Louis Benoit XI watched as Procyon III burned.
The saturation bombardment had begun nearly an hour before, but the death of a world could take a shocking amount of time, considering the amount of energies being discharged. It didn't help that Procyon III's atmosphere was a thick, methane rich soup. The shock waves from the matter/antimatter detonations rippled far, but the real killer – the firestorms and the radiation – were blunted. The exponential curve was hit by the time the killsats reached the 80th parallel. By then, the firestorms had caught, the atmosphere was burning, and the planet was truly dead.
By now, the flagship was beginning to activate the stabdrive – which would boost the ship to .9C and bring them away before the forward element of the Bugs got close enough to reinforce their doomed planet. For Louis, it felt like nothing more than a gentle pressure at the top of his head.
That pressure was what was left after the non-Newtonian fluid, the acceleration drugs, and the contragravitic fields were applied. It was a little staggering to think of the amount of energy being released now, not just on Procyon III and on the flagship, but also across the entire human fleet. Ninety eight stabdrives, each one creating a pulsed thread of quasi-real exhaust as their drives sucked energy from the most esoteric reaches of physics known to humanity and launched them at velocities that eclipsed some forms of subatomic particles.
Louis turned his attention inwards, focusing the augcrown's perceptions to the QHC who were still standing up under the acceleration. The QHC looked alarmingly similar to humans – most of them even spurned the name used by his people and preferred to simply be called...people. But it was hard to really think of them like that as they walked unaided through the corridors of the flagship without seeming to notice the overwhelming acceleration pressure that the stabdrive put out.
One of the QHC paused in her stride, then stepped over to the space that Louis' augmented reality self projected from. She looked into his eyes, her eyes whirring and clicking faintly. "King Louis, we're receiving a transmission," she said.
Louis forced down a tingle of fear. Had they left someone down there?
Procyon III had been an elegant trap, laid over the course of two decades – a culmination of nearly two centuries of unremitting warfare spanning three solar systems. First contact – a series of staggering atrocities in the Alpha Centauri system, culminating with the death of nearly five million human and human adjacent people in a single horrible afternoon – had led to war. At first, fumbling and awkward, with battles lasting months if not years. Then, elegant. Faster, Deadlier. The UPH and the Bugs both pushed their technology to the breaking point. Humanity had delved into previously restricted areas of scientific endeavor, including the creation of artificial life. The Bugs had weaponized space-time in a way that had driven several prominent human physicists irrevocably insane.
And now, at Procyon III, the hope had come that the turning point could be found.
The plan was brutally simple: Lay out a colony world that the Bugs would have to attack. Fight tooth and nail to keep their warfleets back – to encourage them to bring out their big guns. Their planet consuming swarms. Their biological ships the size of small moons. Their hive-nodes and their monstrosities that as of yet had no name in human lexicons. And once the Bugs were ensnared upon Procyon…
Burn the planet to the mantle.
"God rest their souls," he said, quietly. "I hope..." He shook his head, faintly, knowing that the QHC could see the augmented reality illusion that was being projected into the ship. "I hope they're AnComs at least – with backups?"
"No, sir, no," she said – and Louis felt his heart clench tighter. That meant they were his subjects. The Neopolitan Star Kingdom didn't use uploads or backups or ego-forking or any of the other more esoteric technologies that the AnCom Union or the Stubjacks did. Any of his citizens on that planet would be facing their final judgment in the form of compression waves and gamma radiation any second now.
"God rest their souls," he said, again.
"No, sir!" The QHC looked down at her tablet, brow furrowing. Louis was shocked that it was taking a QHC this long to read anything – they were supposed to be able to think many times faster than a baseline human like himself. "It's...from...the Bugs."
That stopped Louis in his mental tracks. He swore he nearly banged his actual, physical head against the inside of the acceleration tank.
"...what?"
"It's coming in along a laser-pulse frequency. Uh..." The QHC cocked her head. "I'm not sure, it's not a mathmatic code, and it's not using Anglec or Neo-Sino." The two chosen languages of the UPH Expeditionary Force.
"Let me hear," Louis said, frowning as she tapped at her console. A series of harsh beeps and bloops filled his ears – annoyingly loud, the QHC had clearly not taken into account the differences in their ears. Louis grit his mental teeth, focusing. For a few seconds, he sat there, trying to figure out what on Earth it could possibly mean. His brow furrowed even more.
"That's...Morse."
"Morse code?" The QHC asked. "That's nearly five hundred years out of date."
"They must have based it on old telescopic observations of Earth." Louis imagined he was licking his lips. In truth, he was still ensnared in the acceleration tank, only perceiving the world through the threaded nerve inputs of his augcrown. "W...E...S...U...R..." He paused, listening.
"No, what I'm wondering about is how the flying fuck do you know Morse code!" The QHC exclaimed. "I'm a hyper-intelligent trans android, you're a baseline human cosplaying as the King of France. How the fuck do you know Morse code and I don't?"
"We surrender," Louis said.
"Oh, so, the Neos are going to finally admit that AnCom was right and you should use nanofabricators?" the QHC asked, curiously.
"N-No," Louis said, barely even registering her snark. "No, no, that's the message. We Surrender."
The QHC blinked at his augmented reality presence. The entire ship had gone silent – every crewman was focused on him, even those in their acceleration tanks. He could feel the entangled communication devices that threaded the human fleet into one semi-harmonious whole were all kicking up, bringing his words and his simulated face to every human in every ship. "The Bugs...the Bugs have surrendered."
The QHC screamed at the top of her lungs, grabbed the augmented reality simulation of King Louis Benoit XI of the Neopolitian Star Kingdom, bent him down, and kissed him before he had time to think.
***
SOL
THIRTEEN YEARS LATER...
Some people thought being a prince was fun and games.
Wake up in the morning, get dressed by servants, maybe take a stroll around the Venusian palaces, enjoy some raptor rides in the jungles. Drop by the racketball court for a game with some smarmy robot butlers, then tottle off to your personal airship for an evening flying into the upper atmosphere and then riding your skyboard.
Hah.
What fun.
Prince Louis Benoit XII of the Neopolitian Star Kingdom, Heir to the Duchy of Venus, the Last and True Sovereign of the Human Race, Emperor of Titan and the Protector of India, badly wished that he lived the life people imagined he did.
"Parry high! Low! High!" Marc barked, stalking back and forth along the pathway as Lou's rapier snapped into position, his arm aching, sweat beading along the back of his neck. His fencing partner – a combat servitor that his father had purchased for him as some kind of sick practical joke on his birthday – moved with eerie precision, using its articulated arms to thrust back at him with its own foil. "Remember, light on your feet, Prince!"
Lou stepped backwards, his blade rattling as he caught the foil, locked hilts, shoved back. The servitor bobbed away on a gusting of air currents and a whirring contragravitic engine. Lou stumbled – yelped – then froze as a cold tip of a blade pressed to his cheek, mashing up against it. If he moved even an inch, he was certain the foil would cut into his skin. The servitor remained hovering in position for an agonizing three seconds before it drew its foil backwards and intoned, in its ludicrously archaic synthesized voice.
"One. Point. To. Me."
Lou rubbed at his cheek, scowling.
Marc shook his head, then stepped over. "Your stance is sloppy, if that was a real challenger, we'd be finding a new heir right about now." He shook his head again. "Do you know how long the Benoit line has ruled the Kingdom?"
"Thiteen ge-" Lou started to speak – already tired, already resigned.
"Thirteen generations!" Marc boomed. "For thirteen generations, ever since the foundation of the United Human Polities. For thirteen generations, the Benoit family has kept nobility itself alive. Do you think that the rest of the houses of the Star Kingdom would do half as good? Do you think the Macchi would?" He spat. "Those half-augmented bastards would turn us into an AnCom puppet state for a pleasure pod and a wink."
Lou bit back a scowl, a sarcastic comment and then stood up again. His palm rubbed against his cheek and he counted backwards from ten. Being angry was unbecoming of a royal. "I understand, instructor. I shall endeavor to do better."
Marc frowned, his mustache bristling on his ebony face. Ever so slowly, he nodded. "Aye, that you will, Prince. Now! " He turned, walking away. "High!"
Lou groaned internally as his arm lifted – his muscle already burning – as overhead, the moon floated by, glowing brilliantly even through the midmorning light. Several streaks of light burned themselves through the sky, like spokes expanding off a wheel. Stabdrives, kicking on as ships departed from the moon's launch bays.
It was going to be a long-ass day.
***
Fencing lessons.
Tutors on history.
Tutors on Kingdom politics.
Tutors on the UHP parliamentary politics.
Tutors on the Bug War.
Tutors on the battles fought by his father during the Bug War.
By the time Lou was sat down at the dinner table, he was starving, aching, and felt like his brain had been mashed with so much knowledge that he was sure his brain was dribbling out of his ear. Lou pushed his fork through his greens, watching them roll around on the plate as Mother sat at the far end of the table, reading from her news feed, her eyes darting left and right.
"Any beams from father?" Lou asked, biting his lip.
To Lou, his father was a mythic figure. Titanic. Literally, as the last thing Lou remembered of him was how tall he was, how gallant in his gold filigree and red sashed space suit, heading for the flagship of his part of the UHP fleet, the Victory. That had been...a long time ago. For Lou, it was a bit tricky, as he and his mother stayed on a partial rotation in the cryocrypts, to ensure that their timelines and his father's didn't get too distorted, considering the effects of relativistic time dilation on interstellar travel.
The calculations were complicated, but Lou had had them beaten into his head often enough to know that they were due for another decade-long stint in the crypts soon.
It was…
Unsettling.
Mother set down her fork and said: "None yet, honey."
Lou nodded, looking down at his plate. "So, I was thinking – since I'm due to go into the crypts soon, uh..." He coughed. "I was thinking maybe I could take a quick vacation? I hear Earth is very nice this time of year."
"Earth is nice every time of year, honey," she said, her voice dry. "They have enough weather control nano in the atmosphere that breathing practically makes you an augment."
"Right." Lou chuckled, rubbing the back of his neck. "It's just, the Star Kingdom is an ally of the AnComs, I figure, I should get to see them at least once. Right?"
"Of course, honey," Mother said. "Once you're King, you will be meeting with the AnComs every day."
Lou opened his mouth, then shut it. "Right." He looked down at his plate.
A servitor whirred into the room on its blanket of contragravitic energies, coming to a stop beside mother. "A priority one entangled communication wave from Geneva."
Mother nodded. "Put it on, if you'd be so kind." She dabbed at her lips with a napkin. The wall flickered – transforming from a replica of The Creation of Adam by Michelangelo to a feed of the AnCom ambassador from Geneva. Lou had, over the course of his life, seen a call from Geneva about twelve times, and over those twelve times, he had seen almost twenty different ambassadors. One had literally walked away from the call mid conversation while flipping his mother off and blowing raspberries, to be replaced by a different person two seconds later.
This one was a girl wearing a T-shirt that said LOOK AT MY BIG FA- and the rest of the words were cut off by the angle of the camera. Her hair was shaved almost to nothing save for the top of her head, which was left normal length. Her hair had been dyed a bright green, and her lips were painted in a checkerboard pattern of green and black. But unlike most AnCom ambassadors Lou had seen, she was beaming.
"Hey, Queenie!" She shouted. "You heard the good news?"
There was a raucous noise coming from behind her – Lou craned his head, his eyes widening as, for just a moment, he saw what was clearly a naked man dancing on a table before the filtering software blurred out any of the interesting details. Lou flushed a bit and wished he had glanced down sooner.
Mother sighed. "Is this a prank call?"
"No, man, it's real!" The girl leaned forward. "The Bugs fucking surrendered!"
Mother, who had picked up her glass, dropped it on the ground, her eyes bulging.
***
The flight to Earth was the most exciting moment in Lou's life. First, there was the shuttle ride up from Venus' surface to the moon, which allowed him to, for the first time in his life, see the whole vast, blue green sweep of his homeworld with his own eyes. Then on the moon, they were taken to the acceleration tanks on the stabdrive pinnace that would boost them to Earth orbit in just a few hours. The acceleration tank was an experience and a half – Lou squeaked and squirmed as the pipes and tubes connected to parts of his body he hadn't wanted anyone else to ever touch, and then yelped as the non-Newtonian liquid sludged into his veins.
Unlike the warriors on the main line battleships, he wasn't provided an augmented reality crown to wear while he lay in the sludge. Instead, he existed in a half-real, half-present fugue state created by the effect of the contragravitic fields on his nervous system. He knew the math behind the concept, even if he couldn't think of the actual crunch while in the tank: You couldn't reduce the force of gravity and inertia without changing how those two forces interacted. Which, itself, changed how light itself moved. If he hadn't been filled with a bunch of sophisticated drugs and put into a nearly freezing temperature state, the changes in basic reality would have killed him. As it was, it made his brain muddled and unfocused and confused.
But that did have the nice side effect of meaning the trip felt as if it took only a few seconds.
One second, he was in a deep mire.
The next, he was looking up at an AnCom greeter, who was leaning over him. "Eyyyyy!" he said, beaming at him. "Cuntboy! I didn't know they had any of you in the Boring Kingdom of Boring Losers."
Lou coughed as the breathing pipe slipped out of his throat. He sat up, hacked. "What?" he asked, completely befuddled.
"No, it's cool!" the AnCom said. He was pixie thin and had skin the color of cerulean skies. Floating clouds were projected around his body by a holographic harness of leather straps and glass projectors. "I didn't know that you guys were even acknowledging that, like, guys can kiss girls." He nodded. "So, are you he/him? They? Zir?"
"...what?" Lou blinked at him. Then he looked down at his crotch, which the AnCom had seen. His cheeks burned. "I was born biologically female-"
The AnCom winced.
"-but since the Kingdom needed a prince, I've...you know..." He coughed. "Mother said that the transition will be completed once I'm betrothed. Since, right now, having..." He blushed. "Y-You know, this is like, super private and, also, who are you?" He drew his leg up, trying to cover himself. "Also, I'm a Prince!"
The AnCom put his hands over his face. "Oh god. I'm. The. Worst. I'm so. So sorry, I just...sorry!" He put his hands over his eyes now. "Auhg. Fuck. My. Life. Oh god."
Lou flushed. "We can put it behind us...what's your name?"
The AnCom groaned. "God Fucker."
"...I beg...I beg your...pardon?"
God Fucker held out his hand. "God Fucker."
"...Prince Louis Benoit XII of the Neopolitian Star Kingdom, Heir to the Duchy of Venus, the Last and True Sovereign of the Human Race, Emperor of Titan and the Protector of India," Lou said, looking down at the offered hand. He frowned, then took it, expecting God Fucker to kneel properly. Instead, God Fucker shook his hand, making his arm wobble so much that Lou thought that his shoulder might dislocate.
"What do you protect India from?" God Fucker asked.
"I..." Lou blushed. "Clothes?"
"True, they do go- OH!"
A few seconds later, God Fucker had brought Lou's clothing and then turned his back once Lou had coughed several times. Lou dressed, buttoning up his undershirt, tugging on his hose, his belt, his cape, his gloves, and strapped his rapier on. He adjusted his collar a bit, then nodded. "You may turn around..." He paused. "God Fucker, is that your given name?"
"No," God Fucker said, turning. "We don't do given names – human beings aren't property you can just...name." He shook his head. "We get a string of nicknames from our parents, our friends, our new parents if we get them, culminating in getting a good and proper name. I chose mine three standard years ago." He grinned. "Pretty cool, huh?"
"It's..." Lou tried to think of a tactful thing to say. "Unique?"
"Yeaaaaaaahhhhhhhhh!" God Fucker mimed firing off guns with both of his hands. "Come on – your Mom should be dressed too."
"Oh, no, she's got way more clothes than me," Lou said, then stood up taller. He blushed. "And we protect India's memory. As it was. That's what the Star Kingdom is about – ensuring our history remains. Not just...in data banks and libraries, but living." He nodded. "And, um...I..." He paused. "I suppose, using your terminology, I always identified as male? But even if I hadn't, the Star Kingdom would need a Prince."
"...so, like...they'd...electrocute you or something?"
Lou shook his head, smiling shyly. "No, no, no, not that bad. I'd just be married to an eligible male before I hit twenty one."
God Fucker shook his head slowly. "Are you sure that's history that's worth keeping alive, my dude?"
Lou opened his mouth, to correct him about the proper term of respect. Instead, he said: "Lou."
"Lou?"
Lou blushed. "I...if...I ever had friends, I...kind of thought I'd like to be called Lou."
"I dig!" God Fucker grinned at him. "Come on! Lets see if your mom's as hot in person as she is on the holos!"
***
Geneva itself was a wild forest – sprawling and beautiful, with trees growing along the hills. The ancient city that had been here, during the 21st century, was gone save for a few buildings that had been voted on by the Anarchist Commune as being worth preserving. Looking through the window of the spaceplane that slowly, gently arced through the atmosphere towards a landing pad that had been constructed in a meadow. "Where is everyone?" Lou asked, his brow furrowing as he pressed his face up against the glass. God Fucker, who was lounging in one of the comfortable chairs that dominated the main body of the space plane, laughed.
"Underground, mostly," he said, nodding. "In simspace, for most of them."
Lou nodded.
"Simspace," Mother said, shaking her head, slightly. She stepped over to the window, murmuring to Lou. "These people spend their entire lives in worlds that aren't even real. Remember that, honey. Remember this."
Lou nodded, but all he really had eyes for was the landing platform.
There were people waiting for them – and some of them were shining and chrome. As the spaceplane came in to land, Mother took his hand and walked with him to the gangplank. One of the chrome people came up and Lou looked at his first Quantum Human Computer. Superficially, she looked a lot like a human woman who was made out of gleaming chrome, with thin seams at her joints and her neck. But underneath her glowing blue eyes, Lou knew that her brain was actually a massively complex quantum computer that was able to actually...know itself. In the same way that he knew himself – she was self aware.
Of course, some days, Lou felt like everyone else knew himself better than he did.
He wondered if the QHC ever had the same thoughts.
"Prince Louis Benoit," she said, bowing. "I'm Amy – the quantum entangled duplicate of a QHC who is serving on the Victory." She coughed, not meeting Mother's eyes. "Your father told me to tell you that he's very proud of everything he received in your last beam – and that he's happy that he's going to be home soon. The initial peace negotiations are over and the Bug envoys are actually heading for Alpha Centauri for the in depth peace talks."
Lou nodded, excitedly. "S-So, father is coming home?"
"Not quite," Amy said, smiling. "Come on, let's get the speeches out of the way."
The landing pad had a small set of stairs that led itself to the forest, and here, under the trees, the United Human Polities held their meeting. There were technically five members of the UHP. In actuality, there were seven thousand eight hundred and ninety two. Or maybe it was the other way around? The Anarchist Commune, the Plurality Federation, the Federated States, the Neopolitian Star Kingdom and the Upkin were the five who had representatives. AnCom was the largest, but their representative was the least politically astute, as she had been chosen by random lottery (since, as far as Lou could tell, zero percent of the AnCom actually wanted to be involved in anything so governmental as interstellar politics.)
"Honestly, I'm just a fry cook," Drusilla said, cheerfully, looking entirely unconcerned with the fact that the UpKin and the Feds were all glaring at her. "When I got the ticket, I figured, hey, I'd get to shake hands with some pretty famous people. Never thought I'd actually have to give a speech. But here I am!" She nodded. "If you ask me, interstellar politics is a lot like a good stir fry..."
Mother sighed quietly from her seat, muttering behind her ornamental fan. "This is bad comedy."
The Upkin representative was next. Suspended in a float harness, the neo-cetacean spoke in chirrups and whistles that were translated by two bald headed, gray skinned, almost naked women whose very presence made Lou look directly into the neo-cetacean's blowhole rather than risk glancing at their chests. One of the women signed in the most common sign languages of the UHP – the other spoke in Neo-Sino, which Lou could follow tolerably well. "We do not forget the song that was silenced on Charon. We do not forget the millions of our pod who were struck down without mercy. But we recognize that we are the victors in this battle. We only hope that the rest of our race recognize this as well. The Bugs did not ask for peace! They threw up a white flag! They screamed their need for peace on las-coms! We must not forget this!"
Lou fidgeted in his seat.
The Upkin's speech kept going for ten more minutes.
The next to give a speech was from the Plurality. A woman, with five floating spheres, each containing a human brain surround by a nimbus of wires and cables, stood in the center of the meadow, her arms lifted as she spoke in a musical language called Memetiak, translated to Neo-Sino by the same gray skinned woman who had worked with the Upkin. Lou was more fascinated by the orbs floating around her head than her – she was a rather dumpy woman, all things considered.
However, the Plurality's speech was interrupted halfway through when she said: "And so, we shall work together to find a unity with our brothers from another star-" and jeering came from both the Upkin and the Feds. The Fed – a man dressed in a black great coat with ice cold blue eyes and hair the color of the setting sun – stood and shouted.
"This is a farce! We haven't agreed to any cessation of hostilities – the peace treaty hasn't even been signed yet!"
A creeping, horrified feeling hit Lou.
Was…
Did…
Was he going to actually have to give a speech?
Was that why he was here? He looked at Mother – but Mother was too busy watching the Federated State representative be held back by the AnCom representative, while one of the Upkin – a huge, furry, orange orangutan, shouted at the top of his lungs: "Civilization! Are we not a civilization? Order! Order!"
"I didn't fly all the way from Jove to listen to this jackbooted fascist!" One of the brains shouted, using their own internal speaker.
"How dare you!" The Federal representative jerked his gloves tighter. "Instantiate yourself into a physical body and say that again to me on the field of honor!"
"You're wearing literal jackboots!"
More shouting.
Amy, who had walked up onto the stage, stuck her metal fingers between chrome lips and blew. Hard. The whistle she sent up was piercing and shockingly loud and made Lou clap his hands over his ears. When the whistling stopped, Amy dropped her hand from her mouth. "So! Since we're all done giving speeches..." she said.
"I didn't get to-" The Fed started.
"You gave up your right when you tried to assault one of our members," Amy said, scowling at the Federated States Rep. "And besides – the UHPEF fleet has put together enough energy to punch a huge hole through space time and they're about to broadcast straight from King Louis Benoit XI himself – so, uh, if you want to waste the extravagant expenditure of exotic particles and making space time our collective bitch, feel free to keep interrupting me!"
Everyone quieted down.
Lou gulped - and Mother found his hand, squeezing it tightly, her breath catching.
Amy closed her eyes, then lifted her head. Her body trembled – and then...a subtle change came over her. It was a chance in stance. An alteration in how her mouth moved. The tone of her voice. Suddenly, she was not Amy, the QHC. She was King Louis Benoit XI himself, standing inside of her body through some combination of augmented reality synthesis and the quantum entanglement connection between the her that stood here and the her that was accelerating away from Procyon at stabdrive velocities.
Then a shimmering hologram shrouded her and the personage was replaced with a true image of…
"Father," Lou whispered, unable to stop himself.
His father looked nothing like him. He was square jawed and heroic and…
Classic.
Not like Lou at all.
"Greetings," Father said. "I am speaking to you from the bridge of the Victory – to tell you that the rumors you have heard, the initial reports you have read, are true. They are not merely true, but they are true in every detail: The Bugs have had enough!" He swung his hand wide. "They have, they say, consumed every other race they have met in their ten thousand years of history. First upon their world, then in their own home system, and then in two others. Never before have they met a race that they could not overcome and devour… until now." He slashed the flat of his hand into his palm, a fierce, chopping gesture. "Humanity is too tricky. Too tenacious. Too damn tough for them!"
Despite the rancor that had been stirred up earlier, this provoked a cheer. Even Drusilla looked as if she was caught up in Father's charisma. She thrust her hand into the air. "Fuck yeah!"
Father nodded. "We have agreed to begin deep negotiations with the Bugs on the world of Charon – the site where this very war began. And there, we shall ensure that this peace lasts not just for the reign of my son, but for the reign of his son, and his son beyond that – by ensuring that Bug and Human civilization are wedded together and driven into a future more glorious than anything that has gone before."
Lou nodded, smiling. This was exactly the kind of speech he had read about in his history books – and to hear it from his Father's own lips (well, through a robot lady quantum connected to another robot lady who was being puppeted by his father using an augmented reality interface) was another thing entirely. He nodded at Mother, who smiled back at him.
"Send your envoys to Alpha Centauri, to Charon," Father said, seriously. "I will be here – and I will be requesting that my son, Prince Louis Benoit XII, come as well. In a tradition as old as the human race, we shall end this war and bring our people together with a wedding."
"What?" Drusilla asked.
"What?" the Federated States representative asked.
"What?" Lou asked.
"I have pledged to the Bugs my son's hand in marriage – to ensure that our races will continue onward into the future together – as one family."
Lou gaped as the entire council meeting exploded into pandemonium – his ears ringing with the bellows, shouts, arguments, calls for order. God Fucker sprinted up behind him, threw an arm around his shoulder, and shouted. "Dude! You just got the fucking motherload of harems, the harem to end all harems! Fifteen trillion bugs - and all of them ready to go!"
***
"No," Lou said.
The interstellar envoy ship was utterly gorgeous. Nearly five kilometers long, it had a shape like a vast dagger made of pure blue-white steel. The steel color was actually hyper-compacted ice armor, designed to absorb any interstellar particles that escaped the ramscoop field that protected the ship as it flew. The majority of the ship was actually reaction massed– enough to shove the ship up to interstellar cruise speed. At those velocities, it was possible to activate the ramscoop to funnel interstellar hydrogen into the furnace of the main engine.
But the part of the ship that was most protected – the spinal column, surrounded by jacketed hyperice and composites – was where the crypts are located. A chunk of hull was shifted aside, making the ship look like a pyramidal tomb with a door open and yawning. Ahead of their ship, Lou could see the other ships that were moving in to dock, bearing the representatives from the other human polities.
"No," Lou said again. "No. No. No. No. No."
"Honey," Mother said, her voice gentle.
Lou spun to face her. "Mom! No! No, no, no, no, absolutely not, no, no, no!"
Mother put her hand upon his shoulder, gently. "It is your duty, as a Prince, and as a future King, to ensure the safety and peace of your realm-"
"My duty does not include marrying...Bugs!" Lou's voice almost broke at that last. "They're not even human. They're not even related to anything on our planet. They're not just aliens, they're more alien than even the Shavanti! And the Shavanti live in the photospheres of stars! But at least the Shavanti have the concept of individuality! The Bugs have a hive mind – they're a single gestalt intelligence made of billions of billions of bugs!"
Mother sighed. "Human marriages of state have rarely been love matches – you are lucky enough to know that you will be allowed concubines." She shook her head. "There is more involved here than just...your happiness. This match will ensure that we can keep the peace. Tell me: How many humans have died in this war?"
Lou looked away. "Two hundred and twenty eight million," he muttered, his voice soft.
Mother's eyes flashed. "Two hundred and twenty eight million human beings. Seven billion Bugs. Three planets have been reduced to rubble. Proxima Centauri is an unstable black hole now. This. War. Cannot. Continue." She leaned forward. "Against that nightmare, can you really say no?"
Lou opened his mouth. Closed it. "No." He breathed in, adjusted his shirt, then looked out the window at the growing envoy ship. "But...I...I don't...want...I just want to be in love...like you and Father."
Mother smiled, gently. "Not everyone can be the last Tzars or the Emperor Justinian and Theodora. Love matches are rare, even without the affairs of state getting involved. You must find a happiness in the good that you are going to do, honey."
Lou sighed. "Yeah."
The envoy ship's entrance loomed before him. Like an all consuming mouth – eating his future.
Mother walked with him to the cryocrpts on the interior of the ship. She held his hand as he was placed into the sarcophagi. As the tubes connected with his neck and he felt the numbing cold beginning to spread, she smiled at him, gently. "It will be okay, Louis. You will be just fine." Lou tried to nod, but the feeling of numbness was spreading – and with it, the deep chill as the crypt closed and he was sealed in darkness. Lou closed his eyes, trying to not feel the tube jammed down his throat – but instead, his skin began to crawl. He felt the tiny scuttling of small limbs, wriggling as they walked along his skin, brushed against his neck, crawled over his face.
He closed his eyes tighter – and hoped that this would be a sleep without dreams.
It wasn't.
***
ALPHA CENTAURI
FIVE YEARS LATER...
He was wrapped in a web – and the spider was crawling closer. It was horrible – all rubbery black and black chitin and glittering red eyes and a huge barbed stinger at the base of its bulbous thorax. He thrashed and he writhed, trying to kick his way free from the web. One leg drove free and smashed into the things belly, digging in deep. But that just made things worse. Rather than ichor and blood and guts, more spiders come out of it. They're small, yellow things, and they crawl up his leg and his chest and his neck and into his mouth. They crawl into his mouth, down his throat, into his eyes, past his ears-
"AHHHHHHHH!"
He sat up, gasping, his hand going to his chest. The woman made of silver who was snoring in the chair beside the window that looked out at a blue green planet screamed as she jerked up right and then fell out of the chair and onto the floor.
"Holy fuck!" She sat up, gasping, heavily, her blue-white hair tumbled around her ears.
"Who are you?" He asked.
"Amy," she said, blinking as she stands up. "That had to be some nightmare, holy shit."
He slowly cocked his head, looking at her with a half gaping expression – somewhere between confusion and shock. There is a strange half memory of a forest glade and a lot of shouting. His brow furrowed and he opened his mouth, trying to find his name, to give it back. Instead, all he remembers are the foggy remains of the nightmare, skittering away from him.
"W-Who am I?" he asked.
"Oh great." Amy sighed. "You're suffering from cryocrypt amnesia." She bit her lip. "Okay, uh, my name is Amy. Your name is Prince Louis Benoit XII. You're the heir to the Star Kingdom. The Neopolitans?" She nodded. "Any of that ringing a bell."
"Louis..." he said, slowly. "Lou. I...like being called Lou."
"Fhew," she said, wiping her hand along her forehead. "I was worried that we might have more problems – it looks like superficial memory loss. Normal ice damage to a human brain without nano." She frowned. "Why do you guys not use nanotechnology?"
"Mortality is meaningful." Lou said, without thinking. It popped out of his mouth, like he had it beaten into his brain past the threshold of conscious thought. "With neither a definite beginning or definite ending, individuality gets lost among a sea of chaos and history loses its point – and instead becomes nothing." He blinked. "Huh. I guess I...do remember some things." He looked out the window – clouds are parting on the planet below and he can see craters huge enough to be seen from space. Each one glitters, like a mirrored surface. "Good God!" he exclaimed, crossing himself. "What happened to Earth?"
"That's not Earth," Amy said, smiling. "That's Charon."
Relief mingled with more confusion. "Why am I in Alpha Centauri?" Lou asked.
Amy coughed. "So, uh...wow. Great. Uh. Your Dad...should...be here soon...heh."
"You look like you don't want to tell me," Lou said, frowning.
Amy stood, backing up, and she backed right up into the door, which opened behind her, meaning she walked into Father's hands. His hands rested on her shoulders and her cheeks actually blushed a coppery color. She stood stock still for a second – then leaped away from Father – and Lou knew his father. He smiled at him.
"Father," he said.
"Son," Father said, nodding. "Miss Amy, you may go."
"Right. Of course. L...S...i...go..." Amy coughed. "Bye." She almost fled from the room.
"Is she...all right?" Lou asked, his brow furrowing.
Father shrugged his broad shoulders, then looked down at his son. He frowned, slowly. "I see that your trip from SOL did not tax you overmuch – the doctors took the slow way to bring you out of cryo. It is the year of our lord 2589 and you are currently eighteen years and eleven months of age." He pursed his lips. "A mite young for a marriage – but these are remarkable times in which we live."
Lou nodded, slightly, putting the weird behavior of Amy out of his mind. Instead, he sat up, smiling at his father. "I...wait, marriage?"
"Yes," Father said. "Do you remember the war with the Bugs?"
"Yes," Lou said, nodding curtly – more memories were unspooling in his mind. Memories of fencing lessons. Memories of taking the first shot of testosterone when Mother and his doctor had agreed upon beginning to transition from being Princess Alexandriatta to being Prince Louis. "We've been fighting them for two hundred years, ever since they destroyed our first colony on Charon." Lou's hand rubbed against the back of his neck. "...what's going on Father?"
Father nodded.
And told him.
"Oh," Lou said, his voice soft, a loud roaring filling his ears as his fingernails dug into his thighs so hard that he thought he was drawing blood. "...that explains the nightmare." His voice sounded like he was being tightened in a vice.
The door opened and a cheerful looking AnCom with four arms, purple skin, and a floating halo of shimmering, ball shaped medical droids that bounced and warbled to one another as they floated around him like a collection of Jovian moons. The AnCom clapped all four of his hands, his tusks glittering as he beamed at the two of them. "Hello! I'm MedTech K'Jor! I hear someone needs a big dick?"
Lou's left eye began to twitch in time with his heart beat.
"I believe I shall leave you with this doctor," Father said, standing up.
"Oh, I'm not a doctor," K'Jor said.
Father fled.
Lou's eyebrow continued to twitch as K'Jor took the bedsheets and swept them off, while the drones whirred out and fired thin beams of red light, which swept back and forth, cutting off Lou's clothing in a flash of glittering light. Lou barely even cared that he was naked now – he was still processing the combination of two words: Marriage and Bugs. The drones clustered around him and K'Jor said: "So, I have to say, for a culture that eschews nanotechnological medicine, your top surgery is amazing. You can barely see the scars." He nodded. "Now, I know you Star Nobles are all stuffy and such – but let's cut through the BS. This is going to be your dick. Not mine. Not your Dad's. Not your Mom's. Yours. So, what matters most is how you feel about it."
He clapped his two lower hands together.
"Are you willing to accept medinano?"
"Uh..." Lou glances at the door, then at the medtech. "What if I say no?"
"Then we'll have to just use the best that the 22nd century could manage when it comes to phalloplasty. Which is good. But it's not nearly as good." He grinned, leaning in close, his voice soft. "I won't tell anyone. Doctor patient confidentiality."
"I thought you weren't a doctor," Lou said, chuckling despite himself.
"Fine, fine, medtech patient confidentiality," K'Jor said, chuckling. "So, do you want the nano and a dick that will be indistinguishable from one you're born with, or do you want-"
"I believe, since I am currently ensnared in a marriage with an entire species against my will, that I will take the one piece of my fate that is currently within my grasp," Lou said, his voice serious and fierce.
"...your dick?"
"I-I would put it less crassly and say my body, but..." Lou nodded. "Yes. My dick."
"All right, let's eliminate the stuff that's easy. Do you want a canid, equine or cetacean dick?" K'jor asked, curiously. "Those are the most popular across AnCom for the extremists. Canid has the advantage of protectivity when you're not aroused, thanks to the sheath, and a thick knot, which can 'tie' you to your lover, which some people find quite romantic. Equine has a certain intimidating air to it – very good if you want to make a cockshock. And the cet-"
"No!" Lou exclaimed. "Absolutely not!"
"Okay, do you want hemi-"
"No!"
"Do you even know what-"
"Yes! I know Latin and Anglic! I can figure it out!" Lou put his hands over his face, groaning. "Ugh. Okay. Uh. I want a human penis."
"Wow. You guys really are unfashionable," K'jor said, frowning. "Am I going to assume you don't want any interesting colors for the semen? So, no neon cum, no green cum, no glowing cum, no addictive cum, no feminizing cum..." He ticked the options off. "No smart-cum, that's cum that obeys instructions from your head-computer and can change flow uphill. No-" Lou cut him off by laughing, clutching at his stomach.
"Okay. I get it. Give the Neo a rise, that's hilarious!"
"...I wasn't joking," K'Jor said.
Lou choked.
K'Jor, shaking his head slowly, sighed. "Okay. Let's just do size then. And to make it easy, I'll just hold my hands apart and you say when. And know this? This is a no judgment zone. I have a quad testes, each with its own fucking flavor. So, you know, literally nothing you can go for is going to be a shock to me." He smiled, then held out his hands. He began to spread them. Then spread them. Then spread them. Lou, his cheeks burning, waited. Then he waited about three...four seconds beyond the moment he thought he should speak, waited until his heart hammered with excitement at the very idea. Then he nodded.
"Nice, middle of the road average. You're really restrained!" K'jor said, cheerfully.
Lou tried to imagine what sex must be like among the AnCom and felt faintly queasy. Then as K'jor began to program in the controls for his drones, Lou glanced around the room. There were no obvious listening devices, no clearly marked security cameras. It was a UHP trans-polity law that all recording devices had to be obvious and large enough to be visible from a distance. While there was a possibility that a convention breaking spy-cam was tucked behind a dust mote in his room, he doubted that anyone would risk that kind of thing here, on the eve of peace.
But he still checked twice before stammering.
"A-Also, I was thinking, uh..." He coughed. "C...Can my..." He blushed, then muttered. "Can my cum glow? Like...a little...oh god..." He put his hands over his face. "Oh godddddd!"
"Purple." It popped out of his mouth before he could stop himself.
"Royal, I love it," K'jor said. "Now, are you ready to get a big old dick, my man?"
"Don't I need...anesthetic?" Lou asked.
He does not!
He laid back in bed, looking down at the small tuft of his pubic hair and at his sex. The drones hovered down and he felt a faint tingling wash over him. The air distorted and he realized just how many nanomachines there had to be for them to be even faintly visible. He felt heat wash over his body – a warmth that felt quite comforting compared to the faintly sterile chill of the hospital room. His hips bucked and he gasped as he saw tiny mounds of glowing, brown-ish protrusions started around his mons, then around his labia. His eyes widened as the mounds swept upwards, merging together as the heat grew more intense. Tingling sensation buzzed through his body and he gasped in shock as pleasure spiked through him. His back arched as his cock, which had formed within a matter of moments, twitched and spurted.
Thick, glowing, purple cum splashed against his chest, shimmering and bright against his pale skin, while his testes throbbed between his legs – two large, firm balls. Actual fucking balls.
Lou collapsed back, gasping heavily, his eyes unfocused as his cock slapped against his muscular belly, laying there like a heavy, felled tree, the tip oozing with a thick dollop of glowing cum.
"H...Holy...fuck," he breathed. "I mean, I...b-beg your pardon for my language!"
K'Jor couldn't stop laughing for five minutes straight.
***
Showering in his private rooms, Lou restrained himself as he scrubbed. The Star Kingdom's religion was syncretic – a fusion of many different traditions. Some said it was a cynical construction to keep landed gentry extant in a world with both spaceships and nanotechnological fabrication. Some said that it was the purest expression of the human soul. Lou, himself, had no idea what he thought. He had sat through the lessons of Father Maqueni, listened to the stories of the Daughter, the Holy Ghost, the Flaming Chalice, the Ten Thousand Faces of God, and he had...felt…
Not quite nothing.
Rather, he had felt as if there were tiny flashes of beauty, peeking through a layer of heavy paint and gilt makeup. As if something deep and fundamental and true was trying to claw its way to him. But he had never really felt it, not really.
But where a Prince's faith might wander or even be absent entirely, his decorum and deportment was not left to chance. Tutors had instilled in him every attitude of a gentleman and a member of the aristocracy from the day he had chosen to transition. And one of those rules had been that a boy might be allowed to feel immense lust – and, in fact, that was entirely expected. But it was entirely unseemly and unmanly to act upon that lust.
To act upon lust was to demonstrate a lack of control in the face of the chaos of the universe.
To act upon lust was to show a lack of foresight, when energies should be conserved for danger.
To act upon lust was-
Lou acts upon his lusts 😔
Lou grabbed the shower door, swung it open, staggered dripping naked to the desk, then bent over it.
"Porn, now, hardcore!" Lou choked out, looking directly into the screen.
"Would you like gay or-" A computerized voice asked.
"Anything!" Lou panted, dropping, soaking wet into his chair, his immense cock throbbing as he gripped it.
The screen flickered and showed what was clearly amateur footage of an AnCom couple. The woman had blue skin and modest breasts, small and perky, her nipples a bright white against her skin. Her hair was long and white as well, framing a delicate, elfin face, while a pair of curled horns thrust from her forehead, giving her an almost daemonic look. She had a pair of cloven hooves, but her legs were bare of hair – muscular, curvy, and beautiful. Her thighs were spread wide and she had pinned herself into the lap of an immense, muscular fusion of a wolf and a human, whose muzzle poked over her shoulder and looked into the camera, lips curled back into a wicked grin.
His massive, bright red, entirely canid cock was buried into her pussy, and his knot bumped against her lips with every thrust. He fucked – and Lou pumped his cock in time with his fucking, watching the entire screen at once, letting his eyes go out of focus to take in the whole screen. He pumped his cock faster and faster, trembling as he felt his second orgasm of the day rip into his body. His balls clenched and he cried out – a single loud, sweet note that filled the air. He filled the air with something more too: Bright, purple, neon cum, which glowed as it spattered onto the desk, onto his lap, onto the floor.
He sagged back into his chair, his eyes unfocused.
"Okay..." he said, slowly, softly. "I did it once. Got it out of my system..." His eyes closed.
And then…
He realized he hadn't.
Not that he wanted to jerk off again instantly. No. It was something worse that had wriggled into the back of his brain. This wasn't the last time he was going to jerk off. It was the first time in a lifetime where the only real, intimate pleasure he was ever going to have was with himself. He was about to be married to Bugs. Not just to a Bug, but to billions of them. He tried to process what that would even mean as he looked past the screen, at the slowly rotating orb of Charon.
"Or...I could run," he whispered.
The idea that sprang into his head, almost whole formed, was not entirely impossible. The AnComs had extradition treaties with each of the other polities. He could throw himself onto their mercy, beg for them to take him in. Let his Father 'wed' the Bugs if he wanted to so badly. He could be on a stabdrive capable ship within a week. Then it would just be a quick snooze, then he'd be on Earth, with a massive dick, a weird name, and...well, that was all you really needed among the anarchists, wasn't it?
Wasn't it?
Charon's clouds slipped aside.
And there were the massive, shining craters that scarred Charon's northern continents.
Lou's blood ran cold as he looked at those craters, his lips pursing slightly. Those were each created by a matter/antimatter warhead, detonated in a desperate bid to stop the Bugs. The Bugs were blamed for the millions of deaths...but humans had thrown those switches, trying to slow the Bugs down as they swept over the machine gun turrets and past the laser defense grids. They had been the final seconds of millions of people: Terror as chittering, screeching monsters rained down upon them, claws glittering and mandibles clattering.
What if that happened again?
What if the Bugs were wrong about their ability to fight humanity? What if they had thrown in the towel early?
What if the next time humans cowered as Bugs swept down on them, they did so on Earth? Or Venus?
What if he could have stopped it?
He picked up a towel, then he started to clean up after himself. He dressed, slowly, carefully, and each button he fastens feels like another chain around his chest. When he was done, he emerged from his room and found that Amy was waiting for him. She was dressed in a beautiful looking Neo style gown, all in silver and gold lace – which he recognized as being a traditional bridesmaid outfit. She grinned at him.
"Are you going to be my bridesmaid? ...shouldn't you be my groom, since, I'm the husband?" Lou asked, his brow furrowing.
"I'm actually the Bug's bridesmaid!" she said, chuckling. "But the Bugs are down on the surface. So, I get to meet you first." She pauses. "Listen, I think I've got a pretty good sense of how you Neos work, right?" She nodded. "You just need to find some strange on the side. And it's not like there aren't going to be other humans and QHCs running around, right? So, you'll have plenty of chances to have fun, right?"
Leo's cheeks flushed. "I don't know what rumors you've heard, but...while our common citizens are free to engage in their affairs as they see fit, we of the aristocracy and the nobility must hold ourselves to a high moral standard. If we don't, if we allow ourselves to be misled by our own animal passions, then our entire future is called into question." He shook his head.
"...huh."
He looked at Amy, who was blushing hard again.
"...what?" Lou asked as they came to the airlock leading from the medical ward of the orbital station to the shuttle-bay. Amy touched the open switch on the airlock – then frowned as the airlock started to cycle. She touched the button faster and faster, pushing it harder as she did so. "Amy-"
"Okay, fine, stop hounding me, I fucked your Dad, okay!?" Amy exploded.
TO BE CONTINUED
Hey, Dragon Cobolt here! Hope you're enjoying Pax Multi. If you want to keep enjoying it for free, the next chapter will be up next monday! But if you want to read it all right now, you can buy it on Amazon! Thanks for reading! Leave comments, each comment is a gold coin in my dragon horde. ...hoard? Hoarde!
The shuttle from the orbital station to the meeting place extended sleek, filament wings, snap hardened them with a sweep of smart materials, and then began to drift down into the upper atmosphere of Charon. Heat began to gather on the wings – flames licking around them, sweeping along the edges, crawling like vines. Lou watched them grow and wondered what exactly had gone wrong with his life.
Well.
Obviously, the first mistake had been being born…
He glanced over at the only other occupants of the shuttle. There was his father, the priest, his mother, Amy, and…
He blinked.
"God Fucker?"
The gangly AnCom that he had expected to be four light years and subjective years in the past grinned at him. "Hey," he said, cheerfully, then clambered to his feet, walked over and sat down at the chair beside Lou.
"What...the...what are you...how did..." Lou spluttered.
"Dude," God Fucker said, shaking his head. "My weight on the lighthugger was, like, a rounding error in its mass capacity. I just polled the AnCom community, didn't get enough downvotes, and I was on." He smiled. "They agreed with my reasoning: You, my dude? You need a friend."
Lou blinked at him.
"...a friend."
"Yeah," God Fucker said, nodding to him, before reaching into his vest and tugging out a small packet of fruity snacks. He started to pop them into his mouth as the shuttle continued its glacially slow descent into the atmosphere – reducing turbulence by adding time.
"You want to be my friend?" Lou asked, still feeling as if he had just woke up into an incredibly surreal dream from an already surreal dream.
"Yeah," God Fucker said. "You seem chill – like, way more chill than you'd expect for a real for honest actually fucking solid gold prince."
Lou found himself smiling, despite everything. "I'm sorry, I'll try and stick a bigger stick up my rump...I don't want to, uh, miss you out of the chance to actually get the full princely experience."
God Fucker laughed. "That's the spirit – don't forget being spoiled. And vain!"
Lou grinned – but a tiny, sneaky, whispery part of his brain that he didn't like started muttering. It sounded a great deal like his fencing instructor, Marc: We Neopolitans enjoy thinking of the AnComs as a collection of useless layabouts and hedonistic fools – but they're more than capable of every kind of human interaction that we are. Sneaking, lying, disassembling, spying, espionage. Everything you could imagine from our noble houses, you can expect to see from the AnCom. But they will do so for reasons that will seem alien or confusing, and that is what makes them so...very...dangerous.
"Seriously, though, you're willing to blow...decades of life back on Earth to just be my friend for, what, the three days before I piss off my new wife and get eaten?" Lou asked.
God Fucker – Lou, unable to think of him like that anymore, started to shorten his name to GF – laughed. "Dude, I'm immortal. Ten years? Twenty years? Who cares – my medichines are going to keep me going until the sun burns out, and I've got a backup that I update every week. Worst comes to worst, I lose a few days if I croak out here, maybe a few months if things go really really really wrong and the entire human civilization out here gets toasted, I lose a few years. That's a big chunk of time to lose, but it's not eternity." He paused. "Besides...you...you got seriously hosed, dude. You're going to need a friend."
Lou blinked. He...suddenly wanted to cry. He looked out the window, at the wing again. More flames were streaking along the edges of the wing – clouds roiled past the windows. "It's not going to be that bad," he said – trying the words out and feeling how utterly false they were.
"Dude, you're getting married to the biggest mass murderer in the entire galaxy, as far as we know," GF said, shaking his head. "...also, like, how the fuck did your dad even convince the Bugs to go along with this? They're a hive mind, right?"
Lou nodded. "I...haven't asked."
"It all smells like a fucking set up," GF muttered. "I mean, I know you probably think that's just some paranoid AnCom bullshit..."
"That's not paranoid," Lou said, looking at GF. His voice was more controlled, his eyes weren't brimming with tears. "Thinking three, six, ten steps ahead is what we in the Neopolitian Star Kingdom do best." He frowned and mentally kicked himself – hard. He had been taught all the deep games and the complex strategies used by the great houses. He knew this. He just had to apply it to his own father and his own future. Which...he sighed. He hated it. But he had to do it.
"Oh?"
"Okay...think about it," Lou said, quietly. "How does the United Human Polities work? It's a compromise between all the factions, to keep the peace since the Meme War. That means that there are systems that keep even very small polities, like the Star Kingdom, relevant. Like, how we weight votes based on inverse populations. And the way that the biggest faction, the AnComs, allow their members to vote with other polities." He smirks, slightly. "Like, half of the Federal and Neopolitan power comes purely from manipulating AnCom votes."
GF nodded. "Yeah, I have a few mutuals and all they do is share feeds about the shit going on in the Federated States. It gets wild in their territory."
Lou nodded. "And I bet there are just as many who are fascinated by the marriages, the spying, the duels, the secret affairs..." His cheeks heated and his eyes flicked, quite without him meaning too, from GF to his parents, who were speaking quietly. "...all that stuff. Right?"
GF nodded again. "I mean, you do know the Duchess of Leone's sex tape leaked, right?"
"No, it didn't," Lou said, blushing. "It was leaked, I guarantee it."
"Okay, wait, Amy was telling me that you said that you royals had to be all...you know, chaste and shit."
Lou shook his head. "We're also taught about the power of hypocrisy. Hypocrisy is one of the most potent human abilities in the galaxy."
"Holy shit, I thought some AnComs were fucking cynical..."
"The Star Kingdom isn't about ignoring the parts of the galaxy, about the parts of life, that we don't like," Lou said, his voice growing a bit heated. "We don't pack mortality into a box and pretend it doesn't exist, we don't edit our brains to get rid of stuff like guilt or doubt or jealousy. We...we just try to be." He blushed, slightly. "We try to use what humans are to our best advantage." He sighed, then sat up a bit in his seat, his mind whirling. "So. Problem: The Star Kingdom is on the downward spiral. Nobles and commoners alike drift to less demanding factions. Solution: Make sure that we remain relevant once the war is over and you no longer need a bunch of weirdos who spent their entire lives studying every single war humanity ever fought against itself out on the front lines, recreating Cannae and Dara. Nevermind." He said, before GF could even ask.
"So, this marriage shit is...a...publicity stunt?"
"Yeah, basically," Lou said, leaning against the wall. "Shit, it got you to fly across four light years just to get involved. How many social media followers do you think you're going to gain when you get home?"
"Dude, I'm already fifteen million up and-" GF stopped. "...oh."
"Even if the Bugs and I...even if none of this works, even if it's a literal farce, Dad can spin it as hard as he can in any direction he wants. Milk it for tragedy, make the Bugs into monsters, make me popular, whatever." He sighed, slowly. "And the Star Kingdom keeps getting a bunch of votes from AnComs in UHP politics and...the kingdom continues."
"That's...fucking cold."
Lou shrugged one shoulder. "It could be worse."
"How?"
Lou paused.
"I have no idea."
***
Charon had a nitrogen rich atmosphere and soil that had been fixed with nutrients and minerals over the millennia by the only real life form that had evolved on the planet before the arrival of humanity. Thus far, with about five solar systems really charted and a few dozen with flyby probes shot through them, humanity had determined that multicellular life was common, but the step beyond into complex organisms like plants and animals was considerably less so. On Charon, under the warmth of three suns (two, now that Proxima Centauri ...changed), life had never needed to go much further than single celled life forms. Due to the lack of large geographic separation points and plate tectonics, the planet's surface was very stable. Stability meant that sitting around and creating a few kinds of biochemicals and squirting out nitrogen was all that the lifeforms on Charon had needed to do.
That is, until humans arrived.
The first colonists had been renegades, separate from the United Human Polities. They had fled after the catastrophic ending of the Meme War, their original ideologies ripped apart in a haze of autophagic basilisk hacks and self replicating data destroying semi-sentient warprograms. They had arrived with a scattered, twisted version of history stored in their slow-boat computers, a taste for human flesh, and a decided lack of long term environmental planning in mind. That was why they had planted in the fresh, fertile soil of Charon...trees. Redwoods, oaks, yews, birch, a wild array of flora that hadn't even been intended to live near one another on Earth, let alone in the vast, untamed wilds of Charon.
The colonists had been wiped out by their own scarred culture – it turns out that ritualized cannibalism inculcated by a war criminal's idea of a practical joke was not the most stable foundation for a planetary religion. The scant few survivors after the initial civil war died off, one by one, in forests that didn't produce foods they could use. Various indigeinous and first nations peoples from Earth's past could have survived just fine. But the colonists hadn't had the foundational knowledge, the techniques, or the time to learn either.
And so, with the last human laying as nothing more than slowly desiccating bones, untouched by even the most indiscriminate Charon microbe, the forests had begun to work their own slow, spreading progress across the planet's surface. There had been deaths, crossbreeding, wild chaos. The cruel pressure of evolution had forced changes – but in the end, when the UHP had come to the world a century later, they had found a rudimentary terrestrial ecosystem. It had utterly destroyed the entire ecosystem that had been on Charon's relatively flat supercontinent (without natural barriers or many oceans to stop it, a century had been more than enough time for the trees to spread and consume.)
There had been a general feeling of unhappiness - the destruction of a native ecosystem to recreate Earth had been seen as merely repeating the worst crimes of the past.
Now, as Lou stood on the large, flash-constructed landing pad and looked out at the forests that surrounded the gleaming metal, he felt that same sense of unhappiness.
It felt as if he had been cheated. Four light years and a dip in a cryogenic tank, and the only thing that made him think he was anywhere but right back in Geneva was the fact he had to wear a breathing mask – and the two suns that he could see overhead, shining down on the planet. The breathing mask was relatively flimsy and wasn't even connected to a gas tank. All it had to do was filter out the excess nitrogen and increase the oxygen intake by drawing in extra air with every breath, using clever mechanical systems that he barely noticed.
"Nice place," GF said, cheerfully, while Dad and Mom got off the shuttle. That was when Lou noticed the heavily armed and armored combat QHC – they were housed into heavy, beetle-like combat bodies, their weaponry looking like sleek bumps and ripples in their forms. But Marc had taught Lou how to recognize railguns and heavy laser cannons and the missile tubes for seeker weapons. He pursed his lips, then looked around again, trying to spot...well...any sign of the Bugs.
"Son," Father said, walking over and nodding to him. Then he frowned, looking at GF. "Who is this?"
"This is...Godfrey," Lou said, nodding. "He's one of the AnComs who, uh, he was at the Geneva meeting and he has come along."
"Yup, that's me," GF said, cheerfully. "I've actually done a pretty comprehensive study of the Bug War and what we know about Bug biology." He nodded. "Your little trick around Wolf 359 was incredible, if you don't mind me saying."
"Yes, well..." Father chuckled. "I had a bit of advice from Belisarius."
Lou nodded. "What...where is..." he paused.
"Amy has been handling the interpersonal communication with the hive mind," Father said, nodding. "We've been learning a lot more about the actual workings of the hive mind – but teaching it how to speak more than the most rudimentary terms has been difficult."
"Does it even know what a wedding is?" Lou asked.
"It knows that rituals are important for us," Father said, nodding. "It knows that we are...singular. Though, I'm not sure how much of that it understands. That is part of why I organized this, you know." He leaned against the railing around the spaceport, looking out at the forests. "A single acorn, planted here centuries back, has created all of this. Even the war, even the antimatter, even the Bugs, haven't erased what that single action has done. You are going to be that acorn, Louis. You will, by example and gentle persuasion, teach the Bugs what it truly means to be human. Not just our guns and our tactics – but our warmth. Our compassion. Our love." He smiled.
Lou felt like he was two people at once. On the one hand, there was the Lou who wanted, desperately, to be that tiny acorn, planted underneath the soil, growing into some vast tree that would keep mankind safe for the future. But on the other, there was the Lou who knew that this smiling, charming man was as cold blooded as any king in history. All those ideals and speeches were so good. But…
He sighed. "I'll do my best, father."
"I know you will," Father said.
"Wow." GF said, quietly. "That was some heaping bullshit."
Father slowly turned, looking at GF. He frowned, ever so slightly.
"You want to teach the Bugs, get a team of xenoanthropologists and diplomatic specialists," GF said, crossing his arms over his chest. "This? This is bad comedy."
Lou opened his mouth to interject, but before either he or father could respond to GF's condemnation, a tree crashed down in the distance, with a rattling crackling spray of splinters and distorted rumbling sounds. Lou could see the movement in the woods – branches shifting, trees moving. The combat bots all shifted in their stances, turning to face – and then the first of the Bugs emerges from the woods. They were darting, fast, sleeking things that made Lou's eyes almost want to slide off them. It wasn't that they weren't obvious. They were. But each one was striped with brilliant white and black patterns, cleverly interlocked so that, as they moved together like a swarming blanket of chattering flesh, they created a wild confusion of colors and shapes. It began hard to figure out where one Bug began and the next ended.
The wave of creatures stopped as one, in a single, eerie demonstration of their coordination. Now that they weren't moving, Lou saw that they were what human infantry called hellgaunts: Sleek, doglike creatures with narrow triangular snouts and four limbs that they used for running and two that they used to grip weaponry to their chest. The weapons were also alive – wriggling, bony masses of flesh that the infantry had named wormguns.
Cause…
They fired worms.
More accurately, they fired bone tipped worms with complex biochemical reactions in their rectums, allowing them to propel themselves on streams of compressed, caustic chemicals that stung human flesh and eyes. On impact, the worms burrowed straight for the nearest vital organ, then exploded.
"Eesh..." GF whispered. "Does it all have to be so...glistening?"
Thump.
Thump.
Thump.
The trees rumbled. Shook. And then four of them were shouldered out of the way by an immense, bipedal shape. "Oh fuck," GF whispered and Father crossed himself, reflexively. It was a Terror Talon, the Bug's version of a main battle tank. Bipedal, with immensely powerful digitigrade legs and a top land speed that matched most hovertanks, the creature bristled with biological weapons. The two massive hooked blades in the end of arms muscular enough to drive those blades through solid composite armor. The stumpy limbs with wormguns at their ends, aiming in every direction. The back mounted parasitic creature called the rocketvore, which was capable of breeding and launching guided biological munitions that could be anything from acid bombs to mind control pheromones.
The Terror Talon thumped past the swarm, which flowed away from its hoof-like feet moments before they touched the ground. The fact that none of the hellgaunts had to look at where they were moving, and that there was no jostling and no hesitation just made it creepier. Soon, the Terror Talon was standing right at the edge of the spaceport. It's face, inhuman and terrible, with six blinking insectoid eyes, craned down and a voice came from its abdomen, speaking past the armor plating like a man at the bottom of the well. "WE PRESENT."
Lou spent the rest of the ceremony in a kind of dissociative state.
The priest spoke of faith, of duty, of differences becoming one, of the better future that could come from this. The Bugs listened and Amy stood beside it and murmured quietly to it – if it had ears, she was speaking into one of them. But Lou wasn't entirely sure. He wasn't sure about a lot of things, for instance. Like, if he was going to live for the next few hours.
Then he heard the words.
"You may now kiss the bride, and under the eyes of the Chalice and the Holy Ghost, be married from now until death."
Everyone was looking at Lou. His mother and his father, seated at their comfortable chairs. The combat robots. The cameras in floating drone bodies. The curious AnComs who had come down to the surface. Even the hellgaunts. To his credit, the Priest was looking as if he was reconsidering what he had just said – as if he had done this kind of service so often, across so many years, that the words had just...popped out without him even noticing them. He was opening his mouth and closing it, but Lou hardened his own distaste, and instead turned to the massive Terror Talon. He wasn't precisely sure where to kiss it, and so, he tentatively held out his hand.
The Bug didn't move.
He touched the edge of one of the massive bladed arms that hung at the sides of the creature, then leaned forward and kissed the flat edge of the blade. It tasted faintly like licking a bone after you chewed off all the meat on it. He stood up again, then nodded.
"I...pronounce you man and wife," the priest said, and polite clapping came from the guests.
"WE LEAVE."
The massive Terror Talon turned and began to stomp away. Lou felt a moment of relief, knowing that it was fleeting, knowing that this was far from the hardest part. Then he noticed the tentacle looping around his belly. It was slimy. Of course it was slimy. He had enough time to sigh, and try to look composed before he was yanked off his feet and dragged away, swinging up and behind the Terror Talon. The last thing he saw of the rest of the wedding guests was GF holding up what looked like a communicator.
"Catch!" He shouted, and threw, and it landed among the hellgaunts. Then there was nothing to see but trees.
***
Lou found that even terror had its limits.
For about...ten eternities, he was terrified. For the next bit, he was apprehensive. Then he was bored. The Terror Talon that had a hold of him wasn't squeezing him hard, nor was it being particularly uncomfortable. Indeed, he was actually pretty comfortable, wrapped up tightly in a tentacle and kept in a kind of gimbaled grip that meant that every step of the creature's legs barely felt like anything more than a gentle swaying. But there was not much to see, beyond trees, then the large flat plains filled with crushing their way across a planet. This was because the planet had never been tectonically active enough to even have mountains or hills in the first place.
After what felt like an hour, Lou hit his limit.
"Where are we going?" he asked.
The Terror Talon did not slow in its running. "WE ARE NOT GOING ANYWHERE," it said. "THE SUB-ENTITY KNOWN AS MY HUSBAND IS BEING MOVED TO A...PLACE..."
Lou's brow furrowed. "What do you mean we're not going anywhere?" he asked, craning his head to try and look the creature in the face. "I..." He stopped. "Right. You're not just this...Bug, you're...all..." he paused. "Okay, what should I call you?"
"WE DO NOT UNDERSTAND THIS QUESTION."
The Terror Talon came to the edge of a forest, stepped through, and entered into something wondrous. Lou took a moment, simply gaping – at the colors, at the vibrancy, at the complexity that swept out before him. The main structure that caught his eyes were several immense crystalline latticeworks that looked as if they had been extruded straight out of the ground by vast biological engines, which rippled with bioluminescent colors. The engines themselves were rooted into the ground – and looked a bit like fingers, making the crystalline lattices look like the vast, intricate fingernails of a reclining goddess. Surrounding those crystals, filling the plain in every direction, were interlocking fields of luminous plants – vast flowers, curved mushrooms, rows of waving stalks that looked like soft, downy fuzz. They were intermixed in a pattern that defied easy understanding – and between them moved dozens of different kinds of bug worker that each lacked a name or term that Lou could think of. There were antlike creatures, and there were beetles, and there were spiders, and they were all working with one another in a harmony that almost hurt his brain to see.
It wasn't chaotic or wild or random. It was purposeful and directed.
"W...What is this?" Lou asked, his voice soft.
"SPEAK LOUDER. YOU ARE NOT SUFFICIENTLY CLOSE TO A UNIT THAT HAS-"
"What is this?" Lou shouted, louder – and laughed, despite himself. This...the Terror Talon, the horror that his people had been fighting for centuries, the big bad boss of every action video game made in the past ten decades was hard of hearing. That was just hilarious to him.
"THIS IS...WE..." the Bug paused. "WE DO NOT...KNOW HOW TO...DESCRIBE IT. IT IS WHERE...A PLACE OF...CREATION OF REDUCTION OF ENTROPY IN SUSTAINABLE MEANS VIA THE APPLICATION OF..."
"YES. WHY DOES YOUR LANGUAGE HAVE SO MANY WORDS TO DESCRIBE A TOTALITY?"
Lou chuckled. "It's half French, half English, half Cantonese. It's going to have that problem."
The Terror Talon began to stomp forward – moving through the fragile constructions of this place without disturbing a single thing. "WHAT IS FRENCH?"
"Ah..." Lou sighed. "Now that's a long story."
"WHAT IS STORY?"
Lou bit his lip, thinking. "Do you know how events are preceded by cause?" he asked. "A rock doesn't fall unless you push it over?"
"YES."
"A story is how humans understand events and causes – we organize them..." he gulped, hoping that he was making sense. "Then we tell them to one another and to ourselves, so that we know what happened and why."
The Terror Talon came to the massive crystalline structures. The tentacle holeint him extended out, pushing Lou past the huge pillars, and then setting him down in the center. There, he found himself standing in a hexagonal room that looked like an oversized beehive. There was a very crude approximation of what might have either been a bed, a bath, or a box of pollen, sitting off by one of the walls. There was a single doorway, which looked like it was actually living tissue, held together by the door.
Lou gulped, then walked over to the bed and sat down upon it, biting his lip. "Okay. This is my life now." He nodded to himself. On the whole, it was...less terrible than he thought. Yes, the Bugs were...weird. And he wasn't sure how long this was going to last. But...the hive mind, the Bug, whatever it was that he wanted to call his...spouse? His wife? His...farcical excuse for a life? Whatever they were, they seemed like they wanted to actually understand humans. He drew his legs up and sat back in the bed – then jerked his head over as he saw the door beginning to open. One of the beetle creatures came in, bearing a tray, with a large green globe that looked a bit like a soap-bubble, and a wriggling grub with a transparent skin and a body filled with a pale blue liquid. The beetle crouched down before the bed.
Lou looked down at it.
Silence.
The silence kept stretching.
"Are..." Lou paused. "Are you...my...wife?"
"Yes."
The voice that came from the beetle was hissing and sibilant, and it seemed to come from the antennas that thrust from its squat head. They shivered and shook again.
"We are all. This unit has brought you water and nutrients that, according to the sub-units we consumed, are enough to sustain bodily functions for twenty four hours."
Lou gulped. "Right." He paused. "...consumed?"
"Over the past nine microcycles, we have consumed three hundred and twenty eight thousand of your sub-units," the Bug said.
"Microcycle?"
"A cycle is We's chosen unit of time. We chose it based on observations of the sky during We's history." The antennas wriggled. "It remains consistent, even if We are in many different places. It is based on the rotation of rapidly rotating objects in the sky of incredible density, which circle around the..." The Bug paused. "...the many places that We share."
Lou bit his lip. "I have no idea what you're..." He blinked. "Wait. Wait, is a place like this planet? Is that what you mean?"
"No."
The Bug was silent after that single deceleration. Lou frowned. Okay. He'd have to keep trying, then. He nodded. "Is a place...a solar system? The planet and its suns and the asteroids and everything?"
"The speckdirtlifegiving does not have a sun," The Bug sounded, and Lou was certain that they were confused. There was a quizzical tone to their hissing voice and, again, he found himself almost laughing. "The sun instead is circled by speckdirtlifegiving – this is a Place."
Lou nodded. "So, a place is what we call a solar system. And...you..." he paused. "Wait, these, uh, these spinning, dense objects in the sky, are they pulsars? Like, neutron stars that are rotating rapidly?" He coughed, realizing he needed to be more specific, while also thanking God for his education. "A neutron star is a star core that has collapsed into the most dense kind of matter that exists naturally in the universe without the application of...understanding." He gulped, slightly, shifting on the bed. "That's what you're talking about?"
"Yes." The Bug, at least, didn't hesitate.
"Okay, are...are you telling me that you measure things in how long it takes the galaxy to rotate?" Lou asked. "The galaxy, the collection of stars that we live in?"
"Yes." The Bug said.
"How...how...how many cycles...have...you..." He paused. "How many cycles have there...been? For you?"
"Three," the Bug said.
Lou did some math in his head.
"...ah..." Lou's fingers clenched behind him, gripping onto the rubbery surface of whatever the bed was made of. He was married to a hive mind that was seven hundred and fifty million years old. If he remembered his geohistory right, then his wife was older than the concept of sexual fucking reproduction. "Holy Christ on his Cross."
"What is Christ on his Cross? What is his?"
Lou rubbed his neck. "Oh boy."
"What is oh boy?"
Lou sighed again.
***
Lou's stomach growled as he laid upon his back, looking up at the brilliant night sky. He rubbed at his breathing mask and wondered how safe it was to be here, without anything but the Bug around him. He heard the faint sound of buzzing wings. Some glittering, luminescent shapes shot by overhead. He sighed again. His night adapted eyes could see the room as nothing but vague shapes – the tiny wriggling grub he hadn't been brave enough to eat, and the tiny green sphere that he had also been too scared to touch.
"This isn't so bad..." he whispered. "I'm alone, on my wedding night. Married to a hive mind." He gulped. "A seven hundred fifty million year old hive mind that killed a hundred thousand people and it doesn't even know that it did something wrong." He paused. "...wait, no, I'm wrong. Killed and ate a few hundred thousand people."
The entire evening had been him defining terms – carefully and cautiously, trying to not confuse or anger the Bug. He had covered a wide ranging and scattered series of topics from pronouns to rocks, but the Bug still clearly hadn't quite...grasped what the idea of being a singular person was. By then, though, the sun was dipping and the Bug had announced, without warning: It is time for you to rest. I have been educated on the biological needs of your subunit.
And then it had left.
Lou closed his eyes. He wished he had his communication unit. He wondered if the rest of the delegation was panicking over his abduction.
Except, it wasn't an abduction, was it? This was what everyone had expected – hell, they were probably talking to the Bug at the same time he was, since it was able to coordinate its bodies across light years, let alone across a few hundred kilometers. He tossed, then turned, and then laid on his back, trying to close his eyes and just force himself to sleep. Instead, he felt his skin crawling – aware that there were so many bugs out there...
A faint whirring sound filled his ears. He opened his eyes and yelped as he saw something sleek and black drop into the room – then breathed out a slow sigh of relief. It was a drone, silvery white in color and with two ducted fans, rather than insectoid wings. It was carrying a communication unit, a small parcel, and a note. He took the note, squinting, then smacked his head. The communication unit had a light fixture and he shone it onto the paper.
Yo, Lou! This is GF and Amy. Your Dad is talking to the Bug, trying to get it to understand what you need. It told us that you've already told it what pulsars are. You're a fucking nerd, teach her how to make a sexy lady body for it to inhabit.
PS: This communicator should have a direct uplink and have all the normal apps.
PPS: There's food in the parcel, EAT IT.
PPPS: Amy told me what she told you, do you want me to tell your mom???
PPPPS: This writing shit is fun!!!!!!
Lou snorted. "We'll make a Neo out of you yet, GF," he said, his voice dry as he picked up the com unit. Since the dawn of the 21st century, communication units had gotten more and more sophisticated. They had begun as simple text broadcasters, then evolved into carrying voice, then regressed back to primarily carrying text again. But along the way, humanity had figured that you needed things in your pocket and if everyone was going to be carrying a small communication unit in their pocket, they might as well add additional functions. First, there had been little illumination units. Then entertainment programs and calculators and biomedical monitors and holographic projectors and laser weapons. This com had only the basic apps – which still meant that it had everything from a microfabricator to an atmospheric analysis suite.
Which was what Lou needed right now. He extended the sniffer, adjusted a touch screen dial, and read the result. This room had a perfectly mixed C/O2/N atmosphere. He tugged his mask off and breathed in slowly, his eyes closing as he enjoyed the freedom from the mask.
"Why did your subunit not eat your food and drink your water and why is it not sleeping?"
Lou screamed and leaped up and spun around. There was one of those antlike workers, perched on the corner of the wall of his room, looking down at him.
"Is that noise a greeting?" the ant-worker asked. Its voice was eerily human – emerging as it did so from a mandible that whired and clicked, obscuring a more complex mouthpart behind the articulated black chitin.
Lou was tempted to snap at the Bug – but instead, he closed his eyes. Counted to ten, backwards. "No," he said, quietly. "No, no, it was...I was startled."
"What is startled?"
"When...we..." He paused, then bit his lip. "When we're surprised by unexpected stimuli, we...react with...fright and fear and aversion. Because the stimuli might be dangerous."
"We have been startled fifty six times in our life," the Bug said, simply.
"You have nerves of-" Lou stopped himself, then sat down on the bed. He closed his eyes.
They're my wife. I should...make an effort. Right?
Gently, Lou patted the spot beside on him the bed with his hand, tensing slightly. "Tell me about them."
The ant-worker did not move despite his gesture. But it did speak: "The first time was a decicycle into our life. We...we had been...alive. And...we were..." The Bug paused. "We were. That is the only word. We were. And then, we were not. Many of our sub-units ceased and the skies grew dark and cold and the remaining sub-units struggled hard. We nearly...stopped. It was...it was not...a thing we wished to...have ever...occur again."
"What happened?" Lou asked, his voice soft, drawing his legs up onto the bed.
"We did not know for five microcycles – that is how long it took for the skies to clear and for We to study and learn. A large object fell from the sky and struck the equatorial ocean of our...planet. That is the word?"
Lou nodded. "Yes."
"It was startling," the Bug said, sounding emotionless. But...no. Not emotionless. There was a tiny tinge of fear in that voice – or maybe it was just Lou's imagination? Maybe it was something he just wanted to hear, in the dark, with this singular being. He gulped, slightly, then shifted a bit in the bed, drawing himself closer to the wall. He leaned against it. The Bug said. "There were ten more startling events, each every few centicycles. Some came in microcycles. Once, a subductive tension event released more ash than three combined asteroid impacts. We realized that so long as we were in one place, we would not be safe. And so, we tried to find out how to move beyond the place. This took time. But then, we came to other places and there, we spread, and it was good. There were some local...startling events, but they did nothing more than stop a negligible number of sub-units before we made them stop."
Lou's blood ran cold.
"H-How many...local...startling events were there?" He asked.
"Two," the Bug said, nodding. "But then we ran into the most startling event. A...something...that was in many places. And it made many subunits stop. It...it was...it was you." The ant-worker bobbed its head in an eerily similar way to Lou. "We did not understand. We tried to stop, to...remove...the danger? But...we never could. And we realized that in a nanocycle, or maybe two, we would not be. We would be...not." The Bug paused. "We only thought of not being once, when we were first startled, when we were in a single sub-sub-sub part of Place. Inside of a place measuring five by six kilometers, under the surface of the Place, we thought about what it would be to not be."
"And what did you think?" Lou asked.
"We...there is a...word...you used..." The Bug said, their voice even more quietly than before. They trailed off.
"Scared?" Lou asked.
"Scared. Afraid. Frightened. Not wanted. Un-wanted. No. No." The ant-worker began to shake from side to side – and a faint rustling filled the air. Lou's brow furrowed and he stood on the bed, peeking over the edge of the wall – and saw rippling shaking was filling the entire area. It was like every single body was shivering. He put his hand out – and then didn't quite touch the ant. He wanted to...squeeze them, to comfort them. But there was a nerve block, a hammering instinct roaring through him that said: BUG BUG BUG BUG BUG IT'S AN ICKY BUG.
His hand remained frozen in place.
"It's okay," he said, his voice tight.
"But we did not know what the danger was. We knew we would be gone. But We did not know what it was. It had subunits. But they did not act...nor...speak like We's units. And so, We thought. We tried to imagine what it would be to...speak...differently. Imagining this was difficult. But...then realizing that this was a...a thing that...that could be, we then, then, we began to notice what could be seen as speaking between the subunits. The easiest to learn was the kind using the waves below."
Waves below? Like...she has to be thinking about radio, Lou thought to himself.
"And then we...We spoke, using the waves below song that we found, echoing from Your space. We hoped that We could stop the stopping. And We did. But We are now confused and scared in a way that We did not even...that We have not ever before. What do We do in a world with others?"
Lou bit his lip. "You've never had to imagine a world with other people, have you?"
"No." The Bug started to shake. "We are going to go now. We...speaking to the subunit controlled by Husband is...it is...very...more...complex. We are...We need to...this is fatiguing. We leave."
The ant-worker turned and scuttled away. Lou sighed, then laid on his side. He closed his eyes.
But sleep didn't come for a long, long time.
***
The next morning, Lou finished off the parcel that he had been offered, read an E-mail from his father (congratulating him on the conversations he'd been having with the Bug) and an amusing anecdote from GF about the growing human encampment around the starport. But as he was reading, the door opened and his...wife entered into the room – one of the beetle bodies again. The antennas flittered. "I have brought you more food," the Bug said. "And then I shall begin to intercourse you."
"Sounds- what?" Lou blinked as the beetle shifted to the side, and let the tray slide off its broad back. Then it began to crawl towards the bed, legs clicking along the floor. "Uh, uh, uh, whoa, whoa, wait, wait, wait, wait!" He lifted his hand. The Bug stopped, its antennas nearly brushing his ankles.
"We are confused."
"W-Who told you to..." Lou frowned. "Was it GF?"
"We do not know what GF is. It was a communication between subunits of...not Husband. They were speaking about intercourse. We have consumed life forms that have intercourse. We will choose one mode and We shall do so, as it seems that intercourse is required for being married."
Lou gulped. "What kind were you thinking?"
"I would begin by opening the ribcage of your subunit-"
"Okay, no, no, no!" Lou said, his voice forceful, panicky almost. "How could...you've consumed humans, how can you not know how we do...it..." He blushed, furiously.
"...your...subunits, when consumed, were often...heavily damaged due to...the stopping." By which they meant the killing. The war. Lou gulped, then put his hands over his face. "We do not wish the stopping to resume. We were told that this marriage was important. That without it, the stopping would resume. That-"
"It's..." Lou cut himself off. Imagine trying to explain politics and popularity to a Bug. Instead, he sighed. "Let's, let's start slow, okay? You...think back to when you first tried to leave your homeworld. You didn't immediately start traveling the stars, right? You had to learn how to leave, first?"
"Yes."
"So, this is like that. Intercourse is..." Lou's cheeks burned. "It is hard. We need to...we need to start with the basics."
"Very well. What basics shall we begin with?"
Lou sat there, drawing a complete blank. He had no idea. He had just been trying to keep a beetle shaped monstrosity from crawling onto the bed, cracking open his ribcage, and implanting larva into his chest. "H-How do you make subunits?" He asked.
Five minutes later, Lou was standing beside the beetle body, looking down into a vast trench, cut into the earth by some kind of immense amount of work – he couldn't even begin to imagine how many bodies had been set to work, digging and cutting and shifting the earth. In the trench, at the bottom, was a long scar of purple flesh, which itself was filled with a frothing green liquid. As he watched, a Terror Talon and fifty horrorgaunts walked casually to the edge of the pit, tipped over the edge, and dropped straight into the green slime. They splattered as they struck, the puddle clearly only a few inches deep. The sound was like fruit being stepped on. Lou winced with the impact and almost gagged at the gory ruin that the bodies left – then he did gag as he saw the green goop beginning to melt the organs and the chitin down.
"The biomatter is reprocessed, then fed into the egg chambers," his wife said. "The eggs then hatch into subunits, as directed by...We's will."
"Our will!" Lou said. "The pronoun you are looking for is our. A-And...are you just...one mind or many minds in communication?"
"We..." the bug paused. "We do not know. What is one? What is many? In this context?"
Lou chuckled. "Ooof, ask me an easy one. Um. Do you have many conflicting thoughts or just one?"
"We have many thoughts."
"Are they from different...parts...of..." Lou paused, thinking about how often he sometimes felt like he had more than one voice in his head – the parts of him that wanted to believe in the idealism of his father, versus the parts of him that knew his father was a cold, calculating bastard. He bit his lip. "You know what? I...think...it maybe should less be about...how many voices you have or how many thoughts you have. Let's, uh, lets try a different question: Do you want to be more like me or less like me?"
"We wish to be a good wife."
Lou felt a strange...twinge. It was right around his heart and it also pricked around his eyes. "I...why?" He asked, forgetting his original question entirely.
"Because if we are good wife, then we shall continue."
"Because the war won't restart?" Lou asked, feeling stupid for feeling anything. He looked away, guilt gnawing at him. "T-Then, uh, try using I. Me. My." He blushed. "I did this. I did that. My thing. My subunits. That kind of thing."
The beetle – which barely came up to his hip, even if it was nearly as long as he was tall – was silent for a time. It's antennas twitched uncertainty. "I...direct the eggs with thoughts. By telling them what to grow, I create sub-units, to then use to preform tasks?"
Lou blushed. "Did you like that?"
"I do not know. I will continue to try to speak and think of myself in this way." The bug paused. "But the eggs hatch many bodies. I have fifteen million seventeen thousand six hundred and two distinct bioforms, though many of them are highly similar to one another. They are adapted to situations. Some have not been hatched for a cycle, as the situation required has not returned."
Lou bit his lip. "How many are similar to humans? Bipedal, uh, vertically symmetrical, with a head, abdomen, arms, legs, and similar things like that?"
"Fifteen," the bug said.
"W-Well, uh...gestate some of them a-and we can...we can see what...we...see?" Lou asked, nervously. He knew that within the context that he had laid out, there could still be utter nightmares. But hey, the gestation would take some time. Time enough for him to think of how to maybe...escape? He didn't know.
"They will hatch now," the bug said, antennas quivering.
"How soon is now? Oh, uh, we have a time unit that we use call the minute, the hour, the day, the second..." Lou said, taking out his stopwatch function on his com unit and showing it to the beetle. The beetle, though, had no eyes. A few seconds later, a long legged, giraffe necked creature that seemed to be mostly eye walked over, then bent forward. It cast a long shadow and having its huge, gaping eyes near Lou made him feel like curling up in a ball and shivering. But once it had seen the seconds work, and Lou had explained how many seconds went into a minute and so on, the bugs all bobbed at once, each subunit that Lou could see in the entire area, even those calmly marching to their deaths.
It was a single, massive, hive-mind wide nod.
Lou shuddered all over again, even as the beetle said: "They will be done in fifteen seconds."
"What!?"
Lou barely had time to be shocked before the beetle began to walk forward, leading him towards a narrow cave that was cut into the ground – leading into the dark, dank space below. The air was humid and close and, with his day adapted vision, Lou saw nothing but the glistening shape of the beetle ahead of him. He could hear distant ripping and tearing noises – flesh being stripped away, egg material sloughing to the ground with wet splorts. He gulped as increasing nervousness burned along his spine. The urge to turn and to run grew more and more and more. But he focused instead on remembering fencing lessons – high parry, low parry, high parry, low parry.
The beetle and he came around the corner and they stepped into a low, dim room that was lit only by faint bioluminescence. He could see dark forms, horrible forms, lurking in the darkness. His voice squeaked as he stammered. "C-Can we...we...have...have more light?"
The bioluminescence started to grow brighter – but not in a generalized way. Instead, the light focused upon the first body to the left, which stepped forward to stand even more directly under the light. It was, technically, bipedal. It also had a hunched, low body and clawed fingers that looked nearly as long as Lou's forearms. It spoke in a gutteral snarl. "Is this acceptable for intercourse?"
"It...can go...onto...the maybe pile," Lou said, his voice tight, his hands clenching behind his back.
The light dimmed – which honestly made things way way way worse. But then the light brightened again and the next bipedal creature appeared. This one was mostly made of leg and arm – they were long enough that if it stood fully up, it would be able to touch the ceiling of the room and keep going for another meter and a half. It was spindly and sticklike and...well, the most Lou could say for it was that it was not actively terrifying.
"This form was created to handle activities in not planets. They construct lattices in orbit."
"Very well designed..." Lou gulped as he saw that each finger on those long, long arms ended with viciously hooked fingers, and each finger itself was covered with tiny spurs, so it would be able to cling to anything like a lamprey. "Uh, we'll...next? Can I see the next?"
"Yes. Why would I say no?"
Lou chuckled – then blinked as the light brightened.
"I must warn you, though, we are beginning to move away from the two arms, two legs, bipedal forms. I admit, I have needed to fudge the parameters."
"It's o-" Lou stopped dead. The figure that stood before him was almost feminine. Almost human. Yes, they had four arms, and they were slender, but they each ended in a small tuft of white...almost fur. Their shoulders had an almost cape like crest of fur and chitin , but rather than a cape, it was actually a set of mothlike wings, clasped behind them. They had long, narrow legs that came to fine points that looked almost as if they could not quite hold them. He blinked. "W-What...was this body made for?"
"This was a body created for exploration in places that are below nominal temperatures and with moderate to light gravities," the Bug said. "Do you...why do...you like it?"
Lou gulped. "Well, uh, aesthetically, it's..."
"What is aesthetic?"
Lou blinked. "It's...it is what humans find pleasing to look upon. They...make us happy." He blushed, then an idea struck him. "Can you read?"
"Read?"
"You know how we communicate with words and sounds. There are symbols that we, as a species, have learned to...to use to mean certain words and sounds. This way, you can learn and understand things that have come before. So, if you learn to read, then you can read books, and they can explain everything that I'm bad at explaining."
"You are good at explaining things. Are there anything you want to change in this bioform?"
He blinked. "Change?"
"This bioform is an empty shell. That is why it did not take long to gestate."
"Oh..." Lou gulped, looking at the figure. "I...is it okay if I...I mean...I don't want to...make you…uncomfortable."
"Why would I be uncomfortable?"
Lou blushed. "Well, um...do you know that, uh, some humans have, ah...glands. Around here?" He asked, gesturing around his chest. The Bug bobbed in a nod. "And they have, um...an organ around here...that's, ah, you know, um, that is a kind of...cavity that is protected by, uh..." He gestured around his crotch – which caused the Bug to bob again. "A-And, uh, having mouthparts like a human would be nice. A-And eyes like a human as well? Can you make that?"
The Bug bobbed once more.
"The body will be finished in two hours."
Lou nodded, then followed the beetle as it started to lead him out. The antennas twitched together and the Bug spoke: "My husband, I have a question. You...that is...your subunit, here, that is present in this place, what is its function?"
Lou blushed. "We...humans don't have subunits." He said, quietly. "I'm the only 'unit' of the being known as Louis Benoit XII."
They came out into the open air and the beetle slowed down in its walking, standing beside him. "I do not understand." The Bug said.
Lou felt as if he was dangerously close to thin ice. He rubbed the back of his neck – but honor demanded that he be honest with his wife. Besides, they needed to...it needed to...she? Needed too? He felt suddenly deeply uncertain about his requests on the body that he had asked for. But he pushed all of that aside, instead, focusing on what he needed to say. "Each human being is...like you. W-we don't have subunits, though. We simply have units. Each of us are..are...unique individuals." He blushed. "That's why we speak like this, using words, and radio and laser communications and such." He nodded. "We're not all subunits of..."
Lou trailed off.
There was a kind of deep, stunning silence in the area around him. It was a silence that made him actually stop and blink and look around himself. Every single body that had been moving around him, tending to the plants, digging at the dirt, or doing anything else that the Bugs seemed to need to get done at all times, all of them had stopped. He felt a dangerous chill slide along his spine. "Uh, so..."
"...are...all...humans this?"
Lou nodded. The antennas of the beetle were twitching – shimmering together, making a kind of low, whining violin noise. It was like the sound of a string being drawn by a bow, drawing out an increasingly high pitched note that made his skin crawl.
"A-All...subunits...of...previous...worlds...that...all..." the antennas were wriggling, unable to form words more than just sharp, jagged. "All...we...that...they...they...they...we...we WE WE WE THEY WE W-!"
The voice reached a high pitched scream and Lou stepped backwards, stammering. "I...y-you didn't know!" He said, desperately – but the Bug's antennas rubbed together with such a jagged, fierce, shrieking noise that made his ears ached.
"NO NO NO NO NO NO!" The Bug screamed. The beetle form turned and scuttled away – shooting off with every leg blurring, vanishing into the wheat like field that grew near the jagged rent in the earth. Lou looked around wildly – and he saw that flying bugs were shooting off, erratically, into every direction. Huge Terror Talons were sprinting away from him. Horrorgaunts, moving like carpets of jagged death, were flowing over the low hill and into the forests. Within a shockingly short time – maybe ten, maybe twenty seconds – Lou was left entirely alone in the whole Bug...settlement.
"...honey?" he called out, lamely, not knowing what else to call her. He jogged to the edge of the settlement, his footprints dusty in the ground behind him. But as he came near the edge, he started to feel a strange tightness in his chest and he stumbled backwards, coughing and gasping. Right. The atmosphere was nitrogen beyond the...whatever it was the Bug had done to make this area safe for him to breathe in. He stepped back and then sprinted for his home. There, he grabbed his mask and found his communicator was warbling and chiming .
Lou picked it up and saw that the call was from his dad.
He closed his eyes.
"Great. Fantastic. Great." Lou closed his eyes, then muttered. "Fuck." It was a good time to just...swear. It felt good. But it didn't abolish the horrible pit in his stomach, the awareness that he'd seriously fucked up.
He put his com unit to his ear. "Yes, Father?"
"What. Did. You. Do!?" Father almost roared. "Every single bug in the entire area just ran off as if they sniffed a glasser coming in!"
Lou closed his eyes, then leaned against the doorframe of his home. When he opened his eyes, he looked out into the vast, empty space that was left after his wife had gone. It was haunting. Like an entire city, abandoned by a single poorly chosen truth.
And then Lou realized...he knew how to fix this.
"Call you back."
"Don't you-"
Lou hung up.
TO BE CONTINUED...
Hey, Dragon Cobolt here! Hope you're enjoying Pax Multi. If you want to keep enjoying it for free, the next chapter will be up next monday! But if you want to read it all right now, you can buy it on Amazon! Thanks for reading! Leave comments, each comment is a gold coin in my dragon horde. ...hoard? Hoarde!
The interior of the Bug warrens had been disturbing and creepy and icky before.
Now?
Now they were just deeply, deeply sad.
Walking through the narrow tunnels, holding his com before him with the light turned to maximum, Lou perked his ears, trying to hear any sounds of movement, any hint that there was life down here. But when his...spouse had left, she had left. Even the things that he hadn't thought were part of her hive mind were gone. The tiny little glow-worms that had writhed through the subcutaneous material that lined the walls underneath the hardened carapace that made up most of the tunnels support structure? They were gone. The tiny scuttling beetles that had been about the size of a quarter were gone. The distant breathing sounds that he had thought were a natural byproduct of the tunnels shape and the winds of Charon? That was gone too.
It was desolate and haunting and made him feel more panicky and nervous than coming down here the first time had.
But he pressed on, his jaw clenched.
His studies in popular culture had ended somewhere in the mid 20th century – past that, media and culture had (according to his lectures and tutors) fallen to the two great perils. The first had been an cannibalistic repetition made endemic by late stage capitalism and the second had been due to the 'coarsening effect of utopia.' Without the rarefied needs of high culture – and the complex web of etiquette and politeness that had been that had come with it – humanity had devolved into a bunch of…
Well.
Lou actually kind of liked GF. But the man's full name was God Fucker and he had thought that an appropriate joke on the first meeting with someone he had never met was to start cracking on about harems.
But of all the culture that he had studied – from the Chinese poets of Wang Wei, Li Bai, Du Fu to the works of William Shakespeare to the songlines of the Aboriginal peoples (such as had survived) – the only myth that came to mind to succor him in this moment of great personal dread...was Orpheus. Except it was inverted – he was behind Eurydice, hoping that she'd look back and see him. Lou clenched his jaw and kept walking forward, even as the caves grew narrower and more winding and the feeling of depressing emptiness became replaced by a creeping dread.
Anything could be in the darkness, without his spouse in it.
But still, he pressed on.
And, at last.
Lou stepped up and into a familiar looking chamber – the same gestation room that his spouse had taken him to before. He swept his com around and found the light spilling over a large, seamed mound of black, rubbery flesh. It throbbed slowly, swelling and then seeping backwards, and as his light shone onto it, he found that the rubbery material was partially transparent – and inside, he could faintly see the quasihumanoid form that his spouse had begun to gestate to serve as her...he wasn't sure what to call it. She was a hive mind intelligence spread across three solar systems. Could it really be said that anything was her focal point?
And yet, she had needed to take breaks from talking to him. It had been tiring for her to understand and grasp the singular viewpoint and to listen to his singular voice. He sighed, then sat down beside the egg, breathing in slowly.
"Now we wait," he said.
Time passed and Lou thought through everything he was going to say – and he thought he knew how best to handle things. When he checked the clock on his com, he saw that about thirty minutes had passed. With his speech prepared and his plan settled in his mind, he settled down to wait. And to wait. And to wait. And to wait.
After what his com claimed was two hours, but to him felt like a greater time than the entire history of the human race, the egg quivered. Lou, whose attention had been wandering, jerked upwards a bit, then tensed, readying himself as the figure that he could faintly see inside of the egg wriggled, then reached outwards. The egg unfolded itself with a glistening, ripping, tearing noise. The head of his spouse's newest bioform emerged first. Her head had white fur that looked like hair, bristling from around a delicate, feminine face. The additions that he had requested, to make the face more humanoid, were there: A small nose, slender lips, and eyes that were...well...she had tried. They weren't compound eyes, like before, but they were decidedly alien looking: All black, save for two glowing blue irises. Her furred shoulders came free next, with her two upper arms. Then her breasts, her lower arms, her curved thighs, her dainty feet, and then she was sliding down the egg and onto the ground before him, dripping with egg slime.
Lou flushed, wanting to look away – she was...naked. And…
Well.
A lot more…
A lot more...ah…
But this was his wife. It was okay for him to see her naked – and as he blushed, he saw that she was scrambling to her feet, turning and spreading her delicate wings.
"Wait!" Lou stood.
"No!" She said, but he grabbed her lower right arm, tugging her around. Her feet dug into the ground as she strained to get away from him, shaking her head. "No no no no no! I'm a monster!"
Lou...regretted teaching her that word. A lot. Right now. It hadn't even been a word she had taken much notice of, during their long exchange of words and definitions. But he grabbed her other hand, holding her tightly.
"No! You're not!" he said, his voice firm.
Her eyes closed and she ducked her head forward. "Three hundred twenty eight thousand one hundred and ninety humans! A-And then...if human subunits are humans, and not subunits, if they were all like me, then...then so were the others! Sixty eight million seven hundred thirty two thousand five hundred and ninety two, five hundred million, ninety eight thousand, five hundred and six! All! Consumed! Consumed, I…" She closed her eyes and screamed. "I killed them all! I killed them!" And she let out another horrible keening noise – a sound that Lou had never wanted hear again.
He cupped her cheeks – she had gone limp, no longer trying to run. "You didn't know-"
She shook her head, brushing at his hands, trying to shove them away, but weakly. "No no no no…" She whispered. "No. No." Lou pressed his forehead against hers, his hands sliding from her cheeks to her neck, marveling at the incredibly sleek, smooth feeling of her. His fingers sank into the soft fuzz that crested her shoulders, his fingertips almost touching the edges of her wings. He drew her in and her hands pressed against his chest – twenty points of contacts at the ends of four hands. All her fingers.
Lou gripped her, drawing her close. Her hands slid, more by accident than design, around him. Her fingers traced along his back. "W...What is?" she whispered, her voice a trembling quavering sound. She had no tears – but of course she didn't. Why would a Bug ever need to cry? "W-What...what what what-"
"It's forgiveness," Lou whispered. He had tears. And he shed them, burying his face against her neck. "A...And a hug."
"Hug…" his wife whispered. Her hands, gingerly, tightened, two low, two high, holding him. "You said...forgiveness is what you give, when you recognize someone has done wrong, but...but you know they're...going to be better?"
"Yeah."
She whispered. "I don't...I don't...I don't get forgiveness. I do not...made it out of…" She was groping for words, and Lou guessed.
"You don't...deserve it?" He snorted, quietly. "My wife, if you deserved forgiveness, you'd never need it." He felt her knees quivering and he laughed, quietly, marveling that there was a similar...reaction in her, as there would have been in his body. He drew her down onto his lap, and she was so very light. Like a feather, she settled there, her wings buzzing in nervous little jitters. His hands caressed along her back, drawing her in close. His voice was soft.
"I...my wife…" He said, the words feeling awkward on his tongue, not smooth and easy like he had imagined them. "I want to tell you a story."
"Why?"
"Humans sometimes use stories to explain ideas," he said, quietly. "You feel...bad because you killed the Procyians and the Lupens and humans."
"You know their names? And that they existed?" she asked, blinking at him, her antennas twitching and...Lou gently petted her antennas – reflexively. They bent backwards, then jounced back upwards to their original positions. It was the most adorable thing that he had ever seen. "I liked that. Do it again." She said, simply, and so, Lou continued to pet her as he explained.
"Yeah, um...we knew." Lou sighed. "And those are just names we gave them. The Procyians had launched a simple space probe before...it was remarkably similar to one that we humans launched – Voyager. It had their language, some images, a message we think translated to...from our star, to yours, we greet you." He shook his head. "The Lupens, which is our name for the aliens that had lived in the Wolf 359 system, are more vague. We only caught the, uh, radio bubble that came away from their world as we approached it. Twelve years, approximately, and then…" He paused. He didn't want to mention the nightmares that the reconstructed Last Broadcast had given him, during his education on the Bug War.
The Lupens hadn't been humanoid.
But their...screams had…
He closed his eyes. It was almost impossible to combine the image of the hellgaunts and the waves of bio-organic drop-pods falling onto human colonies and the last screams of those long dead aliens with the gentle soul he held in his arms. So, he simply didn't. He focused, instead, on the story.
"When we were still confined to one world, there were two men who killed four billion people," he said, simply. "Humans. Who killed other humans."
His wife drew back, her antennas rubbing together, a chittering sound emerging from her throat. "Why? Was it a mistake? Did they-"
"No," he said. "Their names were Charles and Fredrick Koch. They had a great deal of power because they controlled access to a resource called oil. You know how...when...biological life dies and is compressed by heat and pressure under the ground and becomes coal and oil and such?"
"Oh, yes, I regularly harvest it," his spouse said, nodding. "You need to be careful, though. It causes planets to retain heat – among other side effects."
My wife is older than the biological concept of sexual reproduction, Lou thought for the second time. It still sounded like a bad joke in his head – not real, not something concrete. But hearing her casually mentioning that she regularly harvested fossil fuels that she produced...not synthesized like humans could with nanofabrication and other chemical processes, but rather, via geoengineering on a time scale that made the Imperial Egyptians look like toddlers building sand castles. It...made him shiver to his core. But he pressed on.
"The Kochs had access to this resource and, through it, a great deal of power. They became aware, as did others, that releasing carbon into the atmosphere would cause a destructive effect on the environment that we all needed to survive. And...they used a great deal of their power and their position in society to crush that knowledge. They paid liars to tell people everything would be fine. They convinced entire generations of humans that the entire idea was a hoax-"
"How?" His wife sounded completely baffled. "The effect is so rapid, it happens in a…" She stopped. "You...do not have new subunits to sustain your minds once old subunits become unable to serve and are recycled." She sat up. "Lou! We have to-"
Lou put his finger upon her lips. They were very...very soft. Very sleek. Very slippery. Very warm. And for a moment, looking into her eyes, feeling the slight dampness of her mouth, the alien chill of her breath, looking into her black/blue eyes, Lou felt as if his heart was racing a million miles an hour. His voice was husky. "Let me finish the story."
She bobbed her head, then laid it down against his chest. His hand began to pet her antennas again. "The Kochs knew that there was going to be a disaster. But they didn't care – they kept things as they were, until the point where easy changes were impossible. Then, when there were ten billion people on the planet, everything began to collapse. Droughts, storms, flooding, famines, everything all hammered at the same time. It was...like an exponential curve had been hit." Lou sighed, quietly. "Four billion people died. Just so that some...old men could cling to power."
His finger caught her chin, lifting her so that he could look into her eyes.
"You did what you did because you didn't understand. It...was horrible. But in a universe of horrors...y-you're actually...fine." He blushed. He had had a more suave ending – but looking into her eyes had caused his brain to short circuit.
She blinked at him.
"So...don't go…" Lou said, cupping her cheek. "Let's work to make this better. Okay?"
She looked away. Her antennas twitched.
"What happened to the Koch brothers?" she asked.
"They died of old age and their children spent most of the 21st century in a fortified arcology protected by a legion of slaves," Lou said, sighing. "Then, eventually, their kids...well…" He shrugged. "That's getting into the Meme War and the founding of the UHP. Which is even more complicated…"
"I want to learn all of it," she said, softly. Then her eyes closed. "I am bringing my subunits back. I...I simply did not want to see humans, or talk to humans. It...I felt…"
"It's okay." Lou stood, groaning as his back twinged and his legs started to throb as blood started to flow into bits of his body that had been lacking for a while too long. His wife remained in his arms, as lightweight and easy to carry as a feather. He carried her towards the exit, and she allowed him to do it, her eyes closed as she thought – or more likely, as she began to realign her bodies and her subunits off to do everything that they had stopped doing in her moment of panic. As he walked, though, he noticed that the glow-worms were coming back. He smiled.
They emerged into the twin suns of Charon – and before an armored wall of heavily equipped combat troopers in power carapace, his father and GF and Amy standing at the forefront. GF had a combat unitard on and one of the heavy duty combat rifles preferred by AnCom, while Father had his pistol and sword combination – and from the vids that Lou had seen, they weren't merely for decoration. The Bugs had, over the war, engaged in melee combat often enough that having a sword had gone from affectation to absolutely necessary for any front line ground combat.
"My son," Father said, frowning. "What…"
Lou blushed, holding the naked body of his wife protectively. "C-Can we get some clothes for her."
"Yes!" Amy hurried forward, then stood before him and the rest of the soldiers. "Give them some privacy – it's not like none of you have seen hot moth ladies before. Come on! Turn around, turn around!"
GF, before he turned, gave Lou the biggest thumbs up.
***
Proxima Centauri hurt to behold.
Not for the reasons that most stars did – the brightness, the hard radiation, the sheer immensity that made them hard for human scale minds to grasp. No. By those standards, Proxima was fairly easy to hold in the mind and the eye both. It was, for one thing, significantly smaller than it had been. It had started as a red dwarf, about an eighth the size of Sol, and what had happened to it during the Bug War had only shrunk it further. It was now barely the size of a mountain – five, six kilometers at the length. Easily graspable in human terms. It was significantly less radiant. No longer did it put out a searing red light. No longer did it crackle with the fusion-fury that had burned in its hydrogen belly.
Instead, Proxima throbbed with a sickly color that was somewhere between purple and the synesthetic sensation of tasting the sound of a woman screaming at the top of her lungs as she was being tortured to death. Its surface was a single color, without mottling or distortion. It should have looked like a poorly rendered image from the early days of computer animation – but instead, the longer Colonel Admiral Akin Bosch of the Federated States Navy looked at it, the more that he was certain that he could see subtle striations and distinctive lines. They squirreled across the surface of the former star like lightning bolts, jagged and straight and crackling, but they were never quite there when he focused upon them. It was more like his mind was throwing chaos into a perfect simplicity that his monkey brain refused to accept in its totality.
But that wasn't the worst thing about Proxima.
It was the stars around it, visible thanks to the bridge lights on the FSS Invisible Hand being set to their lowest setting. They were beginning to distort, as if he was looking at the bubble of twisted light that surrounded a black hole. But the distortion was not immediate or obvious – it was a slow, insidious twisting of light, which grew more and more pronounced the longer that he looked at Proxima.
"Sir?"
Bosch tore his eyes from Proxima, his head pounding.
"Sir, respectfully…" one of the bridge officers – a sleek, blond haired woman that had served on the Hand for the past ten years and yet, had never been skilled enough for her name to move past the outer fringe of Bosch's memories and into the part that actually lasted. "Is that wise?"
"Exposure to Proxima is only dangerous at significantly closer ranges than this, Lieutenant," Bosch snapped. "It will take more than a spatial anomaly to cause me any trouble."
The woman nodded, looking frightened. Her eyes flicked down and Bosch tasted iron on his lips. His fingers lifted and he touched his nose – which was bleeding. He glared at the woman, then turned his back to her and to the window, striding away as he pinched his nostril shut with one hand, trying to stem the flowing blood. As he strode past the firing consoles, where serving crew members were wedded with the control systems by an intricate series of tiny wires and cyber-jacks. Most of them were from the penitentiary system, considering the effect on the nervous system that top of the line fire control computers had. But the Federated States had a simple rule when it came to going into the justice system: If you weren't guilty, you wouldn't be up before a judge in the first place.
So, anything that the criminal scum got was what they had coming.
By the time Bosch arrived at the science lab that had been attached to his beloved battleship, his nose wasn't bleeding and he had cleaned off his hands. The scientists here were mostly Federal – but he had heard from his spies that they were all essentially subordinate to Listens-Deeply-And-Considers-All. The fucking dolphin knew it too. Bosch tried to control his sneer as he watched the sleek cetacean walk around inside of its wetsuit, on four little mechanical legs, with a harness of attached grippers that it controlled via its cyberjack. Those grippers were currently holding a stylus, which Listens Deeply was using to scrawl some ferociously complex mathematics equations on the screen that the scientists had set aside for long-form calculation.
"Dr. All," the Federal scientist standing next to the Upkin said. "Are you sure that wave-function form won't collapse?"
"There's only one way to find out, really," Listens Deeply said, his voice chirruping from his collar. He turned his beady little black eye to Bosch. "Admiral. You are here to breathe down our blowholes again?"
Bosch frowned. "I carted you and this entire lab four light years and ate up ten years of my life back on Earth – I expected faster results. The farce is already going on down on Charon."
"The farce. Hah!" Listens Deeply chittered. "I wonder, will he take pleasure in the creature? Humans are able to make a fetish out of anything, given time and inclination."
"Humans don't," Bosch said, his frown deepening. "Degenerates do."
"And what does this make me, Admiral?"
A useful pawn, Bosch thought – and he was fairly certain the Upkin saw him in the exact same light. The mutual loathing the Upkin felt for the Federated States – and the same loathing that the Federated States felt for the Upkin – could only be eclipsed by one thing. That one thing was what he brought up: "A useful ally against the Bugs, of course."
"Ha ha. I need a new woman," Listens Deeply said, casually. "The current one bores me."
Bosch repressed a disgusted sigh. "Of course. But only…" he reached down and took the stylus from Listens Deeply's gripper. "If you tell me that Project Etemenanki is close to some kind of breakthrough. You've had a year out of cryo and two months in orbit around Proxima. I want results."
Listens Deeply chittered – and the collar turned it into a laugh. "Results you shall have. Admiral."
Bosch nodded.
"Bring out...Echo 3…" Listens Deeply said and one of the doctors hurried out – showing more deference to an Upkin than Bosch liked to see. But soon, the doctor had returned, flanked by two of the members of FSMC that had been assigned to the ship. Between the two men in their power carapace was a struggling, kicking...thing. They weren't quite a woman, they weren't quite a man – they were, in other words, an AnCom deviant. They were still dripping with the suspension fluids of the cryotank they had been hauled from, and they were still coughing and hacking.
"What...the fuck is going...where…" she – Bosch was pretty certain that they were a she, after a second glance – said. "Feds? Feds? What? The...this...you fucking Nazi cosplaying fucks, I am going to sue the lot of you if you don't let me go right now!" She snarled as Bosch smirked at her.
"I recognize you…" he said, nodding. "Your name is…" He sighed. "Righteous Zen…" He shook his head. "Absurd."
"Fuck you!" Echo 3 snapped.
"Except that's just it," Bosch said, his voice gloating. "Righteous Zen, right now, is currently doing whatever it is she-"
"They. They them, you fucking fascist."
"She," Bosch said, with deliberate coldness. "Is currently doing whatever it is she is doing back on Earth. Because you are not Righteous Zen. You are a copy. Acquiring you was trivially easy – your cortical stack was accessed during your latest backup scan. We cloned the body you're currently in based on your previous body – no need for you to have to readjust to everything. After all, your brain scans are going to be extremely important."
"You…" her eyes widened. "You spliced me? You fucking asshole!"
"Prepare it for the probe," Listens Deeply chittered.
"The probe?" Echo 3 asked, then kicked as the men dragged her towards the preparation table. A bone saw started to whir. "Hey! Hey! Whoa! Fucking whoa, killing a splice is still fucking murder! I'm still a person! I'm still a person!"
The bone saw started to scream as the straps clicked home.
Bosch watched.
First, the procedure.
Then, three hours later, the oblong, torpedo-like shape of the probe containing Echo-3, accelerating away from the Invisible Hand and towards Proxima. Beside him, Listens Deeply watched the readouts.
"Yes…" he murmured as the jagged lines symbolizing Echo 3's brainwave started to warble and twist as she approached the perverted stars. "Yes! Project Etemenanki is...as you Federals say...a go."
***
"What on Venus were you thinking?" Father asked, stomping back and forth in the small room. Lou watched him, his hands clasped in his lap. He felt an urge to get up, walk out of the room, down the corridor, and to the small bedroom where they had put his wife – but instead, he kept himself seated properly. In the roughly twenty four hours since he'd been at the human spaceport, the AnComs had done what AnComs did best: Fabricate. The spaceport had been expanded outwards, with additional habitation domes and even a few small mansions set up in the blistering fast, eclectic style of the most populous human polity. With nanomachines and the patterns for literally millions of different kinds of rooms that could be 'snapped together' with a few quick button presses on a GUI, they were able to create fantastical structures that rivaled the palace that Lou had been born in.
The fact that these structures had been built in hours rather than months did tarnish the impression slightly, to him.
"Well, I was thinking I was married and that I should be honest to my wife," Lou said, watching as Father paused in his pacing. He frowned as he looked square at Lou. Lou looked square back – and knew that Father knew that he knew that Father had been unfaithful with Mother. And with an AnCom too.
Father frowned. "Louis, I am glad that you recall the foundational principles of our Kingdom, but you must also remember the subtler lessons as well. The AnComs can be blunt. We, by definition, cannot." He frowned harder. "You should have recalled that."
"We were discussing what humans are," Lou said, sticking out his chin. "That's what my role was to be, wasn't it?"
Father rubbed his hand along his square jaw, turning to face the window. "Yes. But it was never my plan for you to be left so, ahem, bereft of guidance." He shook his head. "I didn't expect the Bugs to take you off like that." He sighed. "I am sorry for that, Louis, I am. And I am sorry about how...stressful this has been."
"You don't need to apologize, father," Lou said, standing up. "I am your son – and a Prince of the Star Kingdom. I know what my duty is."
"Your duty…" Father nodded. "You managed to draw the Bugs back from their little…" He waved his hand. "Panic attack?"
"I think so," Lou said. "I...she...that is, they…" He paused. "We're still trying to figure out exactly how…" He blushed, then coughed.
"You did call her a wife without thinking," Father murmured.
Lou's blush deepened. "Y-Yes, well, that was a touch presumptive. My spouse...doesn't understand this marriage. But that's all right – she...they...will." He nodded. "And maybe your plan will work, Father. Maybe we will have peace…" He licked his lips – and was tempted to ask about Amy, about the fact that Father had cheated on his wife. Instead, he said: "I believe I should speak to my spouse, again. She...should be able to focus on me again."
Father nodded.
The corridor leading down to the medical ward that held his spouse contained Amy and GF, who both moved to Lou's sides. Amy spoke, first. "She's fine," she said, nodding. "Biologically, I mean. This is actually the first living bug specimen we've actually managed to study up close and personally, it's really fascinating. Did you know-" she stopped, then closed her eyes. "I mean. Sorry. She's fine. She's good, even. She was actually talking to us."
"Oh, good. Thank you for checking on her," Lou said, nodding, while GF leaned in close, whispering to him.
"Your dad was furious," he said.
"Yeah, I noticed," Lou said. "I...won't lie, I did kind of stick my foot in my own throat."
"What happened, exactly?" GF asked, his brow furrowing.
"I…" Lou bit his lip. "I told her that humans are singular beings."
"...oh…" GF winced.
"I don't get it, why would she freak about that?" Amy asked, cocking her head.
"She didn't know that humans were singular beings," Lou said, quietly.
"...oh…" Amy said, in the exact same tone of voice as GF.
They came to the door leading into the medical bay, which opened obligingly. Inside, laying in the bed, was...well, Lou's wife. That was the only thing that sprang to Lou's mind when he looked at her delicate four armed, moth winged body. She was dressed in a simple white shift that protected her modesty, with four sleeves and two holes cut in the back for her wings. Her head was rested upon a pillow, and she was looking up at the ceiling. But when Lou stepped into the room, she sat up. Her lips lifted into a smile, while her antennas twitched up. "Lou!" she said, then blushed. "God Fucker. Amy. I...those are the designations for you two?" She asked, pointing at GF and Amy.
"You got it!" Amy said, giving her a thumbs up, while GF nodded.
"I am glad I got it right," she said – then grabbed onto Lou and dragged him into the bed. Lou yelped, blushed, and squirmed all at once as she pressed her entire body against him, wrapping her legs around his hips, her lower arms around his belly, her upper arms around his shoulders. Her wings buzzed and she buried her nose against his neck, breathing in. She spoke, her voice muffled. "I am hugging Lou. I enjoy the tactile sensation of touching my husband and I missed it while he was away."
"Nice," GF said.
"Awww!" Amy clapped her hands over her chest.
Lou wanted to die of pure mortification.
Amy drew up a chair and sat down beside the bed, grinning. "S-So, Lou was telling us about how...you...um, well…" She coughed. "You have my forgiveness too."
"You can give forgiveness as well?" Lou's wife asked, cocking her head. "That is not something only Lou can provide?"
"Of course I can!" Amy laughed. "Lou's a pretty swell guy, but he's not Jesus."
"What is Jesus?" Lou's face was going beat red now as he felt his wife's hands slide along his chest, her nose rubbing up against his neck. She was very soft and fluffy, at least, around the shoulders and head. No. No. Don't think about how soft she was. Think of a way to get out of her hug before she did anything more embarrassing.
"T-The Neopolitan Church isn't, uh, big on evangelism!" Lou stammered.
"Define Church and the meaning of evangelism?" his wife asked.
Lou shot a death glare at GF, who was looking as if he was having the best fucking time. "Out! Now!" He said, pointing at the door. Amy, laughing, stood and grabbed GF's arm.
"We'll be back!" GF called out.
The door shut and Lou groaned as his wife wriggled around, buzzing her wings to actually hop herself over his head before thumping down onto his lap. There, she settled, then began to stick her nose up against his neck. She breathed in, then sniffed down to his chest. Lou didn't even need to ask: "I find there are many scents that are pleasurable. Yours are located here, mostly." She stuck her nose up against his armpit, breathing in. "I like this scent."
"I, uh, why do you like things?" Lou asked – the question popping into his head before anything else. "I mean, humans like things because of...well, because it helps us make decisions…" He said, quoting some well worn sentience research. His wife drew back, her antennas twitching.
"This is why I like things," she said, nodding. "Not all things, but many things. I have learned, for instance, that my enjoyment of certain chemicals released by volcanic vents can, over a few thousand years, produce deleterious effects on the atmosphere of any planet I am on." She smiled, shyly. "S-So, I limit myself to...only a few centuries of exposure, as a treat."
Lou blinked at her.
"Now, my question," she said, biting her lip. "Why is Amy made of not flesh?"
"S-She's a...she's a machine that we humans made – but since she thinks like a human, she is human," Lou said, trying to keep things simple.
She nodded again.
Lou felt as if there were more important things to discuss. Their future. Their wedding, what it meant, what it meant for the two of them. But the only thing that burned through him was an urge to keep as far away from weighty topics like that. And so, he leaned back in the bed, drawing his wife back with him, so she laid atop him. His hand petted her antennas gently, cocking around awkwardly, but he didn't care how cockeyed his shoulder and spine got, he was going to pet his wife.
"Okay, my question: You're seven hundred and fifty million years old," he said, the words still feeling like half joke.
"This is not a question, Lou."
"I'm getting there!" He laughed. "Okay. But if you're seven hundred and fifty million years old, if you've been aware that you need to settle other solar systems for almost five hundred million of those years, why haven't you colonized the entire galaxy? Even limited to below the speed of light, you should have colonized everywhere, right?"
She cocked her head. "I...did not leap immediately from realization to actualization. How long did it take humans to reach space?"
"The time between the first man landing on the moon and the first man setting foot on another star is two centuries," Lou said.
She sat up, twirled around, and looked right into his eyes, her antennas buzzing. "A single microcycle? That's all it took? But…" She shook her head. "But you are singular. Of course…" She laid her head down and stuck her nose right into his armpit – and tried to speak, which meant her voice was muffled entirely. The feeling of her mouthparts moving against his skin made him squirm, laugh, and push at her head.
"Don't talk with your...nose full!"
She drew back, blinking. "Oh, sorry. I forgot I have no other bioforms nearby that could speak for me." She rubbed at her nose, then twitched her antennas again. "My initial state required communication between bioforms, which was handled via the use of sound waves propagated through the atmosphere. But once my bioforms became more common and spread beyond the valley that I initially...came...to be...in? They needed more. And so, I modified bioforms, seeking to find a way to communicate more effectively. It took almost half a cycle of...testing?"
"Experimentation?" Lou suggested.
"Yes!" She nodded. "Half a cycle and then I made a bioform that communicated with...they are...waves and particles?"
"Light?"
She shook her head. "Not of the kind that you see. The kind below!"
"...radio?"
"Yes!" She bobbed her head happily, a dazzling smile spreading across her features.
"I practiced with Amy. My bioforms with radio communication allowed me to spread across the world, which was my initial thought after my startling events. But after I was on the entire world, I learned, startling events can cause problems across an entire planet. But traveling beyond a planet meant the delay from radio waves traveling caused my mind to slow. I determined this would make my mind unable to spread the distance between stars." She sighed. "Fortunately, I was able to experiment far, far, far more. Rather than a few hundred thousand experimentational bioforms, I was able to breed them by the billions. And so, it only took half a cycle to discover the means by which I could instantly communicate."
"Quantum entangled communication…" Lou said, nodding. "This...is actually a huge deal. Meeting the...meeting you is how we humans actually learned how to make the first practicable quantum communicators. It was a theory before we met you, but studying you showed us how to, uh…" He trailed off and shook his head. "But our xenobiologists thought it had to have been a natural evolution – the basis for your hive mind."
"It did make my thinking far faster," she said. "But then, once I could, I had to reach new worlds. Then, I had to make them safe. I began by collecting up asteroids, then I bled off tectonic energies to prevent super-volcanic eruptions. Some worlds had to be entirely remade, or pushed away from stars. This was very difficult – it takes many many many applications of force, usually via the breeding of specific bioforms that can survive harsh landscapes and produce thrusts. T...There were mistakes…" Her antennas drooped. "Some worlds were rent apart, before I realized how pressures worked…a-and that is not even including…"
Lou blinked, then took her hand, speaking quickly to distract her from memories of the Lupens and the Procyians. "You spent millions of years...tidying?"
She nodded her head. "Yes!"
"And you never got bored?" He asked, caressing his hand along her head.
She shook her head. "No. My perception of time is...I think...very different from yours. When the work is long, when my focus is...broad...then time goes very quickly." She laid her head upon his chest, breathing in. "When I am with you, time stands still."
Lou felt as if he had been punched in the heart.
His hand slowly rested against the small of her back.
I think...I love my wife, he thought. And it was the most wondrous thought in the galaxy – more beautiful than the stars, and more precious than diamonds.
***
"Pull!"
The catapult chuffed and a sphere of white plastic shot into the air. A second later, several .75 caliber mass reactive self propelled armor piercing minirockets slammed into it and turned it into many small fragments.
GF lowered the immense firearm he had fabricated. "Aaha, got it!"
Lou, who was sitting on the picnic blanket that he had laid out with his wife, furrowed his brow. "This is the most dangerous game?" He had been invited to join Amy and GF for it once his wife had said she was ready to experience more 'singular' experiences. She had told him that...it was a bit like focusing very hard on a single small dot. It could be tricky, but she was certain she could handle two other singulars around.
"GF calls everything that," Amy said.
"That's cause everything's dangerous with me, baby," GF said.
Lou's wife cocked her head, to the side. "This is...a projectile weapon?"
"Yeah," GF said, then coughed. "B-But it's only used recreationally. We never used these to fight."
Lou's wife's antennas drooped and Amy grabbed the ungainly firearm and chucked it, underhanded, into the spider legged mobile nanofabricator that followed her like a helpful dog. As the weapon was dissolved into goop, GF shrugged. "That's a fair cop," he muttered. "Oh! I know! We can have a movie night."
"It is currently day and you and Amy and Lou are all in constant movement," Lou's wife said. Then, hurriedly, she added. "I like and appreciate your movement, Lou."
"I...you mean my breathing?" Lou asked.
"And your blinking," she said, then smiled and blinked at him.
Lou took one of her hands, squeezing. "Thanks," he said.
"Come onnn movie night!" GF said. "Your...okay, we also need to pick a name for you. We can't just call you Lou's wife for all eternity."
"Beatrice!" Amy said, immediately.
"No," Lou said, flatly.
"What is Beatrice?" his wife asked.
"It's a name! It comes from a name that comes from a name that means, in the original language, 'she who makes happy'," Amy said cheerfully. "But, far more importantly, a Bee, which is the first sound in the name, is also the name for a kind of insect!" She held out her phone and projected a holographic image of a honey bee.
Lou's wife's antennas literally became straight, snapping up in her excitement. "Lou! Lou! Lou!" She grabbed his hand, then grabbed his head with her two upper hands, swinging his head around, so he had to look at the rotating holo. "Look! It is a high efficiency pollinator with a rudimentary melee weapon and incredibly efficient wings and it has the same kind of camouflage pattern as some of my bioforms! It is the most perfect name to have ever existed, for I too, wish to make you happy!"
"I-" Lou flushed. "I…" He blinked. "Really?"
"Yes," she said, nodding.
"...really, though, Beatrice?" Lou asked. "I mean, isn't it-"
"Beatrice! Beatrice! Beatrice!" Amy chanted, GF joining in. Soon, his wife was joining in as well, uncertainty, then with more confidence. "Beatrice! Beatrice! Beatrice."
Lou, perforce, capitulated utterly.
Not wanting to expose Beatrice (Lou still felt like he had whiplash from how fast the name had been adopted) to what two AnComs thought internal decorating should be, Lou put his foot down and demanded that the movie night take place inside of the modest country home that his parents had fabricated. They were able to choose a room for the theater, which Amy set up with a haze of nanofabrication and some alarming power tools ("Don't worry!" she had said, "I'll repair any damage.") The end result was that Amy was lounged on the floor in front of a large cushy sofa, while GF had taken a reclining chair, and Lou and Bea were both settled onto the sofa itself.
"Popcorn me!" GF said to the nanofabricator, which whirred and spat out a bowl of heavily buttered and salted popcorn.
"What is this?" Bea asked.
Lou nodded. "It's a form of sustenance."
"It seems entirely inadequate based on the nutritional guidelines I had been given on human biology," she said, her antennas curling up a bit as Lou caressed her belly and held her close and tried to not just marvel at how pleasant it was to hold his wife.
"Dude, we don't just eat for sustenance!" GF said, grinning. "We also eat cause shit tastes good. And popcorn is one of those things. Does this body need to eat?"
"Yes. In twelve hours, it will have to be either recycled or fed," Bea said, nodding. "But my digestive systems are designed for the feeding systems back at the hive, which involves feeder bugs injecting the nutrients into my belly with thin stingers."
"...yeah...next body, make sure to have taste buds. Use medical textbooks to guide you," GF said, nodding. "You are going to want to try human food. Human food is fucking amazing." He popped a popcorn kernel into his mouth. "Plus, you're going to need it for the oral."
"Oral?" Bea asked.
"So! What are we watching? Shakespeare?" Lou said, hurriedly. "Dominique Guérin's rendition from 2201 is really the exemplar, his, ah, Much Ado About Nothing, which I think is quite appropriate, yes?"
Amy craned her head back. "Dude, we can't watch Shakespeare while on Alpha Centauri's only life bearing planet and a freaking alien cuddling with you?" She laughed. "We're starting. The year is 1966, baby, and we're watching the Man Trap!" She snapped her fingers.
"The what?" Lou asked as a voice spoke from the screen.
"Space...the final frontier…"
Lou gaped. "That spaceship is utterly-"
"SHHHHH!"
***
The movie night ran into problems with a movie adaptation of a novel that Lou had never even heard of. It was some military-science fiction piece from the 2050s – and the reason why it had come up was the most AnCom reason in the universe.
"Why aren't we watching more Star Trek?" Lou asked.
"Two episodes is almost one movie, ergo, we start a new movie," Amy said, cheerfully.
"That's-"
"Also, there's a limit to how much 60s cheese is safe to be exposed to modern audiences."
"What is cheese?" Bea whispered, quietly, into Lou's ear. He squirmed at the tickling feeling of her breath against his skin. He blushed – but before he could answer, GF grinned and provided the punchline.
"Shatner's acting!"
"What is Shatner?" Bea whispered, then paused and sniffed at Lou's ear.
"He's Kirk."
"I thought Kirk was the captain of the human starship," Beatrice said, frowning. "Also, humans are capable of traveling faster than the speed of light?"
"Oh, no, these are all fictional stories," Amy said, hurriedly.
"But Lou said that stories are how humans understand the universe, and tell truths? Fiction means it is not true?" She cocked her head.
"What is truth?" GF murmured.
"You do not know either?" Bea asked.
"Godfucker!" Amy said, her voice serious. "Don't throw the dead frenchmen at the poor buggo!" She turned and leaned against the sofa. "Okay, so, humans like to discuss and understand complicated and esoteric concepts via stories – and stories are also told because they're entertaining!" She grinned. "Are you not entertained?"
"Yes!" Bea declared. "I enjoy stories a great deal."
"Okay!" Amy rubbed her hands together. "Next movie up?"
"Old Man's War – it's my favorite," GF said, nodding. "Also, it's got some really great action scenes and...you know, you can see the positive side of our war." He smiled at Bea. "There were generations, generations I say, of humans who were excited to finally meet bug aliens to fight."
"I...is this good?" Bea asked as the film started.
"Yeah!" GF said, cheerfully.
Lou wasn't sure if he agreed with GF – and he felt a bit nervous. The film began with the premise – an Earth where the elderly are recruited to fight in wars against alien empires, transferring their consciousness from their old, worn out bodies to genetically engineered combat bodies. Lou could see why GF and Amy would like that plot point, considering how GF was likely on his third or even fifth body. Beatrice didn't seem upset by the movie as she watched.
Until the scene.
The main character was fighting aliens, it was very intense, very action packed. It was all a bit much for Lou, who was used to battles being suggested as happening off screen, or being a few men on a stage crossing swords and slashing at one another. Beatrice remained intent, though she murmured. "This is clearly fake – I can see many ways that this is inaccurate, based on my experiences battling humans. I-"
"Shh!" Amy hissed.
Beatrice nodded, closing her mouth.
Then the main character came upon where the aliens had kept the humans – and the film revealed the fictional aliens...ate people. They found them delicious. There was a lingering shot of a dismembered human body. The gleaming meat cleavers. The half eaten flesh. Lou felt Bea tensing up.
"They ate us...like cattle…"
Consumed. That was the word she had used, describing the human subunits that she had…
Beatrice slowly shrank in on herself, drawing her legs up, tucking her face down against her knees – an instinctive, shockingly human reaction. Her antennas rubbed together, making that soft keeping noise.
"Shut it off," Lou said, his voice flat.
"But-" GF started.
"Shut it off now!" He shouted and Amy scrambled to turn off the screen. He wrapped his arms around Beatrice, who was trembling slightly, whispering.
"I do not wish to watch stories anymore," she said, and Lou, his cheeks burning, stood up, nodded to the two of his guests.
"Thank you for the movie night, goodnight," he said, his voice all stiff formality, and then he turned and strode up the stairs, heading straight for his room – whipping past two servitors, past his mother, who was walking down the corridor. She opened her mouth, but then blinked as Lou simply ignored her.
He came to his room, stepped sideways inside, and found that the interior was exactly the same as the room he had had back on Venus. The subtle difference in gravity and light through the window was the only hint that he hadn't stepped four light years in a second. He kicked the door shut, then laid Bea down. He stood – and then yelped as Bea grabbed him and dragged him down into the bed.
"Don't go," she said, her voice soft.
His palms were planted to either side of her, careful to not touch her wings. He looked down into her eyes, then blinked as Bea leaned up and mashed her mouth against his mouth. It was awkward and confusing and was not helped by the fact that Lou had no idea what he was doing either. It was clear Bea was trying to do what she had seen on the screen. She didn't know to use her tongue – and Lou found himself gently sliding his tongue into her mouth. He met hers, finding it was...oddly rough and dry. Her tongue pressed to his, curiously, and she made a very soft little churring noise at the base of her throat, which buzzed into his mouth. Her antennas rubbed together – and then she drew back. She was breathing slightly.
"I...I...I…" she whispered. "I…good."
She nodded, her antennas rubbing even faster together. The songlike noise it made was cheerful and high.
Lou smiled, slightly. "Thanks…" he whispered, biting his lip. His pocket buzzed. His brow furrowed and sat back, pulling out his communicator. It was his father. He held up his finger to Beatrice, his cheeks burning, his heart hammering as he spoke into it. "Yes?"
"What is going on?" Father asked, sounding stern. "The hellgaunts at our perimeter are…" he paused. "Crooning."
"Crooning?" Lou looked at Bea, his brow furrowing.
She blinked. "Should they not?"
"One second," Lou said, his cheeks burning. He lowered the phone. "C-Can you move every single bioform of yours five kilometers away from humans."
"I...y-yes…" she said, looking so crestfallen that Lou felt as if he had kicked a small, exceptionally happy puppy. Then she started to stand, her head almost bumping into the low hanging roof of the four poster bed. He grabbed her hand.
"Except this one!" he said.
Her delight was so intense and so obvious, her antennas uncurling and slapping against the panel that made up the bed's roof with a hollow thumping sound. "Oh! I am very glad you don't want this bioform five kilometers away." She smiled at him.
"It would make...kissing you again very hard," he said, his voice soft.
"You...want to kiss me again?" she asked, kneeling down.
"Yes...a lot," Lou said.
"I regret...a great deal that the wedding took place before I had learned of human kissing," she said, her voice soft as her upper hands settled upon his shoulders. Lou's com buzzed again and he picked it up, biting back an angry growl.
"Louis-"
"She's a hive mind, Father, and...we're married." His voice dropped to a hiss. "Do you require me to place more pieces before you, sir, or do you understand me?"
Father's response was a choked. "A-Ah. Y...Yes! I understand, my apologies."
The com clicked off and Lou tossed it into the corner of the room without a thought, then slowly leaned his wife down, kissing her deeply. Her antennas curled up in delight as her four hands slid along his back, caressing him. Her mouth and his met and their tongues played together and then she was pushing him away, panting, her eyes unfocused. "L-Lou, my husband, I am feeling...extremely unusual." She gulped. "I...am…" She opened her mouth, then closed it again, then blinked. "I believe that I am...excited? I have been excited before, but...but...but not so...fast or…" She trailed off.
"What excited you before?" Lou asked, leaning down. He experimentally kissed where her antenna met her head, his nose rustling her furry hair. She actually arched her back slightly, one of her dainty feet kicking out as she fluttered a wing against his belly. Two of her hands pressed against his belly.
"C-Coming to new solar systems! S-Seeing ecosystems grow…"
"Things that take months at the shortest, centuries at the longest…" Lou leaned down, kissing the small hole that she used for hearing. "This takes moments, my...wife." He licked her, experimentally and she let out a tiny whining noise.
"I...I…" She trembled a bit, then closed her eyes, drawing in a short, sharp gasp. "I...I...am...feeling! Feeling!" She grabbed at his head, with one of her hands, drawing him down and kissing him. This time, it was her tongue that swept into his mouth as she clung to him, her body writhing against his, her wings making a staccato rattling noise against the sheets as she drummed them down. Her teeth actually nipped at his lower lip as she drew back, panting heavily. "More! I want to feel it more! I want to feel it more more more more!" She nodded.
Lou drew back, then blushed. "Y...Yes. My husbandly duties require it." He gulped, then reached down.
Lou performs his husbandly duties with great aplomb
He started to undo the buttons of the top she had fabricated in the nanofabricator – rather than the medical shift she had worn before. He revealed the small, blue-black mounds of her breasts, her nipples tiny ice blue points. He leaned slowly down, then kissed one of her nipples, gently. He took her between his lips and sucked.
"I...am confused…" she said, blinking. "I...t-that feels, but, not more?"
Lou's cheeks burned. He drew back – and forced down his first and immediate reaction, which was humiliating levels of pure shame. He...after the way she had reacted, he had expected that even this little gesture would curl her toes and bring out cries of pleasure. But no. She was an alien. He was a virgin. There were going to be road-bumps. And so, he smiled and asked her. "Well, in human bodies, ah...these are erogen...that is, they are areas that feel...pleasure."
"Oh." She blinked. "I have no nerve endings there."
"...what about here?" Lou asked, his fingers pointing down to the join of her legs.
She shook her head. "No. Why would I?"
Lou felt a faint, sinking feeling in his breast...but then he hardened his resolve. She didn't have normal, human erogenous zones. And so, it was his duty to find hers and to bring her pleasure. That was the only thing that mattered, even if it meant he wasn't going to...well...he had lived nearly two decades without...entering a woman. He could stand to live a day or two while it took Beatrice to make a new body. And so, he drew her up into a sitting position. He held her around her belly as her arms reached back to caress him as he kissed her neck, licked, nibbled. This provoked a tiny, confused 'muh?' noise from her. Then he licked from her neck to her ear. His hand caressed her antenna and this caused her to tremble and squirm.
"T-This is...the new context I...this is making me...see...white flashes and…" She panted slowly. "M-My...I...really enjoy this but bioforms across several planets are now…" She kicked out one of her legs. "It's...hard to...keep them...ah…"
"Don't think about them," Lou murmured. "Right now, this is about you."
"They are me and I'm them and we're all...all...all!" Her eyes widened and her back arched as he clenched her antenna, just a bit tighter, then bit down on her neck, provoking a loud: "Ahh!" From her. Her body spasmed, her wings fluttering against his back as her two lower arms gripped his knees, clenching him as she gasped heavily, her breasts heaving as she collapsed back against him, her eyes going drooped.
"How was that?" Lou chuckled, quietly.
"Mmmmmm! Hmm...MMM!" She nodded. "M...I...am...so...my entire...we...buzzing…" She laughed, sounding giddy. "I...singularity is...v-very...I…I need rest…"
"Okay. I'll be here once you're back." Lou whispered, drawing her close as her body went limp – her mind spreading outwards once more, to settle into the higher realm that she remained in when she was freed from focusing upon her. When time began to move again. His hands slid along her body, marveling, and he tried to ignore the aching pressure of his member against his pants. He...closed his eyes and he thought, instead, of holding his wife. Of the wonder in her voice as she felt...what he thought...was her first orgasm.
"I love you," he whispered, softly, and wondered if she could hear him where she was.
***
Godfucker whistled to himself as he walked out onto the grounds, humming. "Nothing like banging robo-ass," he said, cheerfully. "Nothing like tapping on that quantum c-"
A hideous horrifying monstrosity – of the same breed that had killed more humans in combat than some weapon systems made by human beings. It was a hellgaunt: Sleek, with a greyhound's anatomy and the black and white dazzle camo chitin that made them so hard to track in a swarm. The only thing that it lacked was the wormgun that they normally carried and fired acid bore worms at enemies. It stood before Godfucker.
"Godfucker." It growled.
"AHHHHHHH!" Godfucker sprang backwards, lifting up his hands, already aware that he was…then his brain clicked back into movement again. "Oh. Oh!" He said, blinking. "Oh, hey Bea. Uh, why...are…"
"I did not wish to be observed speaking to you. Lou is currently in his rest cycle," the hellgaunt hissed and chittered, green slime dripping past its jagged teeth.
"Makes sense," Godfucker said, nodding. "What's up, my Bea?"
The hellgaunt craned its head upwards, peering up with pitiless black eyes. "An artificial dome that contains an oxygen atmosphere that humans need to breathe-"
Godfucker chuckled. "No, no, I mean, what do you need?" he asked. "What is it you want to ask me that Lou can't...right, he's asleep."
"Ah. Yes. This is my query: Humans enjoy minor startlements that are pleasurable surprises rather than unpleasant ones? Correct?" The hellgaunt nodded its whole body like an excited puppy. It was even wagging its tail. Godfucker grinned.
"You got it. What do you want to surprise Lou with?" Godfucker asked, kneeling down so that the hellgaunt could look into his eyes more easily. The hellgaunt hissed and drooled more green slime, then leaned in close, whispering very softly.
"Last night, Lou...made...good feelings. That I have only felt before, but, during good things! But, they were far faster! In seconds! Seconds, not decades! All at once!"
"Niiiiiiiiice," Godfucker murmured, rubbing his palms together.
"It was!" Bea said, earnestly. "What pleasant minor startlement shall I arrange for Lou? It must be quick – he shall awaken in less than four hours, maybe five. It is uncertain."
Godfucker rubbed his chin. "Well. If he got you off…"
"He did not get me anywhere. He in fact asked me to stay."
Godfucker put his hand onto his face. "Okay. You know, one of these days, I am going to learn to just...okay. He made you orgasm. Do you want to help him to orgasm?" He leaned in close, then whispered into her ear – his voice husky and soft. The hellgaunt cocked its head, absorbing the words slowly as Godfucker nodded, then added a bit more flourishes. Then he smacked his head, took out his phone, and brought up a hologram. He showed it to her, and as the sweet music of the AnCom pornography filled the small meadow clearing, the hellgaunt watched with beady, black eyes, its claws clicking in mute thought.
Once Godfucker was done, the hellgaunt bobbed. "This is what wives do?"
"Yeah! And-" Godfucker stopped himself before he started trying to over-explain. In even this incredibly short time, he had really figured that Lou was way better at explaining this stuff than he was. "And yeah, yeah, you got it, buggo."
The hellgaunt chittered and hissed, then bumped its head against Godfucker's shoulder. "You have my thanks, Godfucker."
The hellgaunt turned and thumped off.
Godfucker stood, beamed, and nodded to himself. "You owe me, Lou."
He walked off, whistling cheerfully.
TO BE CONTINUED!
Hey, Dragon Cobolt here! Hope you're enjoying Pax Multi. If you want to keep enjoying it for free, the next chapter will be up next monday! But if you want to read it all right now, you can buy it on Amazon! Thanks for reading! Leave comments, each comment is a gold coin in my dragon horde. ...hoard? Hoarde!
Lou sat back, resting his palms behind him, looking out at the sky – the sun overhead is so searingly bright that it makes the clouds look as if they are each glowing waves of white flame. At the back of his mind, he knows that Procyon itself, the star, is slowly transforming into a super giant. Over the next few million years, it would sweep outwards, eventually rendering the surface of Procyon II uninhabitable.
The Procyon that stands before him is a single blot of shadow. He looks just like the medical diagram etched in gold on the front of their last – possibly even their first – spacecraft ever launched. Low, stooped, quadrupedal, long nosed, soulful eyes. They don't have mouths like humans, but still, they speak.
Their voice is the translated, much repaired howling radio traffic that had come from Wolf-359.
Crashing sounds. Chittering sounds. Screaming sounds. A desperate voice, speaking a language that needs no translation.
Help us.
Help us.
They're killing us.
They're everywhere.
Help us.
Help us.
Crash. Shattering glass – so shockingly human sounding, so familiar. Then the clattering of claws. And behind the standing Procyon, the sky darkens. The clouds ripple and streaking past them come dark shapes. They're black and charred and trail fluttering tendrils that flare out organic chutes that catch the atmosphere and drag their velocity down to something survivable. They strike the ground as the Proycon points at him – and the screaming gets louder as the biopods crack open and the hellgaunts come swarming out, their blades already dripping with blood.
Lou sat up, gasping, his entire body locked tight, glistening with sweat. His heart hammered and he saw Bea standing before him at the bed, her hands on the blankets, which she had clearly been about to pull off. He scrambled backwards, reflexively – his back bumping against the headboard, the entire bed shaking slightly as he tried to get his breathing under control. His hands were clenched tight. Bea cocked her head, her voice sounding uncertain. "Are you injured?"
Lou's skin was crawling – and again, he felt like he was trying to hold two contradictory ideas in his head. The first was of Beatrice – a sweet, gentle, confounding being that he...that he felt...he was...he was married to and he wasn't sure how he felt. There were times when he had held her lighter than light body, when he had felt her warm pressure against him, that he had felt like he could have held her until the sun went dim in the sky. It was a feeling so deep and all consuming that it was almost frightening. And then there was the other thought. The memory of everything he had learned, all the footage he had seen, the radio messages he had heard. The stark knowledge that no matter how little Beatrice had meant to cause harm, she had. She had caused harm and horror...and...and he wanted to forgive her. But…
But part of him, he knew, wasn't willing to do it. Why else would he dream about the Proycians and the Lupens?
"Lou, your heart rate is faster than normal, I…" she crawled up onto the bed, reaching out and touching his leg – and Lou almost flinched away from her. "What happened?"
Lou tried to think of what to say. "I...I had a nightmare," he said.
"What is nightmare?" she asked, sounding nervous.
"When...humans sleep, we...we have...dreams. They're collections of images and memories and sensations and feelings that we have during sleep." He gulped. "You don't know what sleep is like."
"It...is similar to when I unfocus, and let my mind spread among my entire awareness?" she asked, cocking her head and drawing close, trying to cuddle up against him. Lou tensed despite himself and instinctively, Bea drew backwards. Her antennas drooped. "Lou...are you...do you not...want? Me to…" She blushed. "I was going to...that is, I…"
Lou forced his hand out, cupping her cheek. Touching her smooth, sleek skin – rubbery, and warm and inhuman and so very beautiful – made him feel more centered. He leaned forward, pressing his forehead to hers, and he said, quietly. "It's very different. Nightmares, um, they're when dreams are unpleasant."
"Oh."
"It's-" Lou started, but Beatrice cut him off.
"It was a nightmare about me, wasn't it?"
He opened his eyes.
Beatrice looked...impossibly sad. Her eyes were cast down, her antennas drooping. "Your reactions make it exceedingly clear – you had a nightmare about me. I am leaving." She drew backwards, turned, and literally flew out the window, her wings buzzing. Lou scrambled, then ran to the windowsill, looking out – and she was gone, vanishing into the hazy twilight and the small forest beyond.
Lou closed his eyes, then slammed his head down upon the windowsill. Hard.
***
Lou wasn't sure if breakfast was extra stilted or if this was just how his life had been before he had met looser, more free people like GF and Amy and he hadn't noticed it until now. He sat across from his father, while mother sat to his right, and the servitor whirred around them, setting out the fine meal. Jam wobbled in porcelain plates, while lightly toasted bread sent up thin wafting streamers of hot steam into the morning sunlight. Father nodded curtly to Lou.
"Where is our new daughter in law?"
"She went back to her hive for nutrients," Lou lied with shocking ease, picking up some bread. He began to spread jam along it. He looked down at it, trying to think of how to apologize to Beatrice. Should you? A tiny part of his brain thought. She killed millions of people. Just because humans have done worse, for worse reasons, doesn't make what she did okay. Lou scowled, then set down his bread. He suddenly didn't have much of an appetite.
"Do you know when she'll be back?" Father asked. "There is a Federated ship in the system – it's approaching Charon and according to the com-wave they sent us, it's carrying Colonel Admiral Akin Bosch. It seems the Federals want to extend their congratulations."
"Bosch…" Lou frowned. "That name is familiar."
"He served with your father at Wolf-359," Mother said, nodding.
"He's...decent enough for a Federal," Father said, frowning. "Half the fleet were Thor and Sleipnir class ships, those were Federal ships. They took the zenith fast pass, while the AnCom and Neopolitan ships took the nadir. The way the math worked out, the Federals took the worse of it." He shook his head. "But Bosch kept his head during the entire engagement, kept his men from panicking."
"The engagement was fifteen seconds long," Lou said, his voice dry.
"Fifteen seconds is a long time for a fast pass," Father said, putting down his knife. The clink of it was really quite shockingly loud in the room.
Lou pursed his lips. "I don't see what he's doing in Alpha Centauri, though. The F.S aren't exactly pleased with the peace treaty."
"They have to claim that they're unhappy, for the sake of their population," Father said, waving his hand dismissively. "But past all the bluster, they're not so different from the Neopolitans – they respect history, tradition, humanity." He nodded, slightly. "Yes, it'll be good to see Akin again."
Lou stood up, pushing his plate away. "I will go and see if I can't convince my wife to visit. I'm sure she'll be happy to meet the Admiral. And if she cannot make it, I can at least bring her apologies." He inclined his head. "Mother. Father."
Mother held out her hand and Lou took it, kissing her knuckles. As he leaned in, she murmured in his ear. "It would be best if she had other engagements, darling." She kissed his cheek and Lou nodded, then turned and left, his hands tight behind his back as he walked out of the breakfast. Emerging into the brilliant sunlight that shone down from the dome, he was almost bowled over by Amy, who sprinted over, grabbed his arm, and dragged him away from the door. His eyes widened as the sleek QHC swung him around, pinned him against a tree, then looked to the left, her eyes narrowed, whiring.
"...Amy, what are you doing?" Lou asked.
"We need to keep you out of GF's line of sight," Amy murmured, softly.
Lou sighed, slowly. "Amy, I'm not in the mood-"
"He gave Beatrice some advice and he's going to just blunder into asking you about it in the most tactless way you could imagine," Amy said, frowning. "I'm your wingwoman, Lou. It's my job to keep you safe from that kind of mortification."
Lou sighed, again, mortified beyond belief. His eyes closed and he said, quietly. "Amy, I can handle GF being crass. And...have you seen Beatrice?"
"I mean, she's a hive mind, yeah?" Amy said. "She's got, like, two dozen bioforms around here." She paused, then looked at him. "Dude, did...oh god, what advice did GF give her?"
"...something happened," Amy said, frowning harder. "I can tell, you're terrible at lying. Did she, like, bite you or-"
"I had a nightmare," Lou said, his mortification increasing. It was now the 'mud running down the back of his neck awful' feeling. 'Pits of snakes in his belly' awful. "About the Procyians and the Lupens and...her." He shook his head. "S-She picked up on my nerves and immediately left."
"Oh." Amy stepped back.
"Yoooo, Lou!" GF shouted – the two of them spun around and saw GF was jogging towards them. "Fucking AnCom porn, huh?" he asked, cheerfully. "Did she blow your mind or what?"
Amy slapped her palm over her face while Lou actually chuckled. It was a kind of wry, amused chuckle. Like, there was no way GF could make him feel any worse or more guilty than he felt right now. And compared to the fact that Admiral…
"Oh shit." Lou's eyes widened.
"What?" GF asked. "...she didn't bite it off, right?"
"No, Admiral Akin Bosch is coming to visit," Lou said. "And you two are AnComs."
"Bosch, Bosch, Bosch…" GF muttered, while Amy scowled.
"That asshole," she snarled, her fingers clenching into fists. Her eyes whirred and clicked.
"...Federal?" GF said.
"Yeap."
"I'll fab a gun," GF said, cheerfully.
"You can't shoot him!" Lou exclaimed, holding up his hands. "He's the Colonel Admiral of the entire Federated States Expeditionary Fleet – half the ships that fought in the Bug War were FSN ships! They lost more soldiers in the war than the entire AnCom despite having a population of, what, a tenth as big?" He shook his head. "He's an ally and a member of the UHP."
GF snorted. "Thus also to tyrants, Lou. It's my civic duty to kill fascists when we have a chance. And we're out of SOL, in unsettled territory, and the war with the Bugs is over. So, like, what exactly is the reason to not put a tungsten slug through his head with a coilgun on that grassy knoll right there?" He pointed at one of the hills.
"Because...you can't just murder someone who is coming under a flag of peace, under my father's invitation!" Lou said, flabbergasted. "It...honor! Duty! He may be a monster, but if we stoop to his level, that simply makes us as bad as him."
"Do you plan to commit genocide at any point in the near future?" GF asked.
"I...no?"
"Then you literally can't be as bad as him," GF said, his voice once again growing cheerful.
"I forbid it," Lou said, frowning.
"Come on, seriously?" GF asked. "Like, it's barely murder, he's got a stack like me…"
"I. Forbid. It." Lou crossed his arms over his chest, his eyes flashing. "And, honestly, GF, I expected better of you. Honor may just be a word for you, but it matters to me. And while I may disagree with my father inviting Admiral Bosch, while I may find him detestable as human being and the continued existence of the Federated States a loathsome blot in the collective human soul, that doesn't change the fact that he is here, under flag of peace, as an ally in war, who has earned the right to come here and shake my hand." He paused. "And if he insults me, my family, or my honor, I will challenge him to pistols at dawn and blow his brains out with a flintlock."
GF blinked. "...dude, you don't have a stack."
Lou grinned – but his grin faded. "Do I have your word that you won't shoot him?"
GF looked at Amy. Amy raised her silvery eyebrows, then shrugged. GF bit his lip. "Yeah. Okay. You have my word. But I will flip him off."
Lou gave him a look.
"...seriously, I have to be polite to the motherfucker too?" GF asked.
Lou nodded, slowly.
"Auuuuuugh, this sucks. Fine." GF grumbled. "No one back home is going to let me live this down…"
Lou nodded again, then clapped his friends on their shoulders. "Now. I am going to speak to my wife." He breathed in, then out. "Wish me luck."
***
Admiral Bosch's shuttle came down with all the Wagnerian glory of the Federated States – and that alone almost cut through the worried knot in Lou's stomach. Searching for hours for his wife, and finding nothing but trampled grass and claw-marks where her bioforms had been, had made it abundantly clear to Lou.
Beatrice simply did not want to talk to him.
He had tried to take it calmly, but as the hours had turned into days, as the FSN Invisible Hand took its holding orbit above Charon, he had grown more and more worried. Amy and GF had both offered him sympathy, but it had left him feeling brittle and raw and irritable, rather than calmed. It had still been better than the blithe acceptance of his parents. His father had said nothing on the issue, and his mother had been accidentally cutting with her cheerful: "Well, I'm glad that she understands Neopolitan marriages of state, yes?"
She had meant it as a way to make Lou feel better.
Lou had concealed the pain as best as he could and instead thrown himself into practice. First, with his rapier, setting the combat servitor that he fabricated to the maximum level of danger and throwing himself into the thoughtless violence of a free style fence, the servitor and his blade clattering together and slashing through the air. He had practiced with the early modern pistols, first using the classical style of loading, then switching to the neoclassical style that had become popular in the Star Kingdom within the past century, where one fabricated and fired the guns in a single unbroken route, seeking to strike as many targets as possible in as short a time as possible.
GF, watching, had said: "...holy shit Lou. Holy...fucking shit."
"What?" Lou had asked, turning to look at him.
"You got ten fucking bullseyes in a row with smoothbore flintlocks…" GF gaped at him. "Without speed-augs? Target assist?"
Lou had shrugged. "I practice."
But even that pleasant work hadn't been enough to loosen his worry, nor to give him any succor. Every day, he had woken up, hoping that Beatrice had returned. Instead, he spent the entire day with the hours crawling by, every second his mind thinking of something to say to Beatrice...and nothing happening at all. And now, he was forced to watch, stand at attention, and look politely impressed as the Federals showed off.
The Federated States, like their forebears in ancient Rome, Italy, Germany, Pure America, the Neo-Persian Front, the Scavskulls, the Yellowjackets and the Martian Union of Agrarian Terraformers, leaned hard into showy theatrics. Their shuttle was a black wedge that cut the sky like a knife, with screaming turbines and roaring jets of flames that made it look like the fist of one of the ancient gods. The massive emblem of the FSN on the front gleamed gold against the black fuselage, while non-aerodynamic but highly deadly looking weapon pods thrust from the wings, the belly, and the fuselage itself. The wheels screeched as they caught on the runway of the spaceport and sent up gouts of smoke as the tires screamed against tarmac.
When the shuttle came to a stop, clicking and hissing with its heat differentials, the front gangplank opened and the first troops emerged, flanking Admiral Akin Bosch himself. He was a tall man, with the blond hair and blue eyes the Federated States tended towards. His uniform was all sleek grays and blacks, with a floating great coat and a high cap with an imperial eagle emblazoned on the front. His gold armbands glittered, stark against black, and his jackboots clicked – almost louder than the whirr thump of his power armored escorts.
"Akin," Father said, smiling and reaching out – and Bosch took his hand.
"King Benoit," Bosch said, while more Federals – mostly officers – emerged from behind him in the shuttle. "And this is your...son?"
He turned to face Lou and Lou caught, flickering across his face, an almost instinctive flash of utter disgust. Lou nodded, slightly. "Colonel Admiral," he said, then held out his hand. "It is an honor to meet you."
Bosch looked about himself, then smiled and it was the most punchable charming smile that Lou had ever seen. "I see that we're fortunate in not having your spouse coming to visit," he said, his voice sotto voce. "I know it must be quite a trial, to be at the forefront of peace with such a murderous species."
"Murderous is an incorrect term," Lou said, his voice as politely icy as he could make it. Behind his back, his fingers were tightening into fists. "It implies an intentionality that was lacking – Beatrice...my wife...she chose a name, by the way…"
"Hm." Bosch pursed his lips.
"...she had no understanding of other species. Her fight against us wasn't a war. It was a misguided attempt to make herself safe from what she saw as hostile, unthinking creatures. Even after she realized we were sentient, she thought we were a hive mind like herself – much as our early hypothesis about her species was that it was a multi-racial alliance and not a hive intelligence. When she learned each human is an individual, not merely a disposable fraction of a greater whole...she grew quite distraught and remorseful."
"Ah. And that makes it all better, does it?" Bosch asked, his voice growing cold as he started to pace around Lou. "King Benoit – how many Neopolitan sailors did we lose at Wolf-359? At Procyon?"
Father was frowning. "Akin…"
"It wasn't her fault," Lou snapped, his temper slipping.
"Ah, of course, she killed several million humans by accident," Bosch said – and Lou bit back his first response. Many of those millions had been killed in the war in a way that Bea didn't even grasp. She was guilt riddled over the several hundred thousand that she had...consumed. She hadn't even thought of the civilians that were turned instantly into ash by the matter/antimatter fireballs that had blotted entire cities on Charon off the map. The defenders, according to their final broadcasts, had agreed: Better instant, painless death than...consumption. She didn't think about the hundreds aboard Fenris or Thor or Odin or Agamemnon class battle-cruisers, who were ripped instantly to paste by high energy kinetic weapons or dissolved in long ranged spreads of organic acid launched from her warbodies. This moment of silence allowed Bosch to keep going: "Columbus killed as many with the plagues he introduced to the New World – and we revile him as a monster. Or, is it only when white men do it?"
"Admiral Bosch, you forget yourself!" Father snapped.
Bosch looked ready to bring out some bit of smoothness or flippery or totally a-historical nonsense – but before he could, his men all stepped forward, their weapons whirring and clicking as they brought them online. "Colonel Admiral! We're detecting an entire Bug army out there!"
"What is this?" Bosch snarled – but Lou turned, his heart leaping. He sprinted to the edge of the landing platform and saw that 'army' was a slight exaggeration. It was merely a hundred or so hellgaunts, working together to carry something on their back. The something was covered in a large, bright collection of downy fluff...and he noticed that the hellgaunts themselves looked different. For one thing, their dazzle camo had been changed from white and black to green and pink, a garish combination that made his eyes ache. But what he noticed next, as they drew closer, was that they were covered in…
Fur.
The fur was mostly collected around their shoulders and their legs, but it was bristly and poofy and it made them look significantly softer and less terrifying. He also noticed that their eyes had been made larger and…
Rounder?
But next to them was what he really cared about.
Beatrice walked along, looking shy and nervous, carelessly naked. Her fingers were touching together – in the most adorable approximation of a shy girl he had ever seen – the pointer fingers touching together underneath her chin, her head downcast, her antennas drooping slightly as the entire group came up to the side of the spaceport, while Father and Mother joined Lou at the railing.
"Beatrice," Lou said, biting back the urge to leap over the edge and sprint to her and take her into his arms and hug her and hold her and apologize to her. Decorum kept him locked in place, but every part of his body yearned to feel her lightness.
"Hi Lou," every Bug on the field said at once – and the hissing, sibilant sound of the hundred hellgaunts hissing in unison was almost hilarious. The hellgaunts too looked nervous and downcast, their bodies pressing low to the ground. "Um, I...I was working very hard. It took a great deal of focus, and, I...well, the...uh...this is not as good as the oral sex, but-"
Mother put her hands over her mouth, her entire face going beat red as Father coughed loudly into his hand. Akin Bosch had stepped up to the railing as too, and he was looking more openly disgusted than Lou had ever expected him to see. But before either of them could say anything, and before Lou could literally drop dead of embarrassment, Beatrice (that is, her moth body) flapped her wings, flying over to the large bundle of fluff on the back of the hellgaunts.
She grabbed it and swept it to the side, the fluff unfurling and rippling in the air, revealing it was nothing more than a covering. Underneath was..
"What...is that?" Father whispered.
"It's a gestation pod!" Bosch shouted, pointing at it. "Is that some new weapon system?"
Lou, though, was struck dumb. His mouth hung open in shock as he grabbed onto the railing, all thoughts of decorum forgotten. He swung himself over the railing and then landed with a grunt, staggering and running over to Beatrice. He grabbed her around her thin waist, drawing her in, then looking from her to the gestation pod, which was a sleek, greenish cual of membranous flesh supported by several fingerlike struts of bone that spread outwards and met again, creating a segmented sphere that throbbed in time with some vast heartbeat. Within the caul, suspended in amniotic fluids, was an elephantine shape.
But he knew it.
He recognized it almost immediately.
"No it's not a weapon system," Father said.
"It's a Procyian," Beatrice said, her voice soft and shy. "Finding their genetic records in my memory took a great deal of time. The memory bioforms on my homeworlds are very large and it takes a great deal of time to comb through their lattices – even for me. A-And then I had to decode the biology and I had to begin to make one without modifications or changes, which...I had already adapted some of their muscular systems, and their nerve clusters for certain synaptic functions an-"
Lou cupped the back of her head and kissed her fiercely. Every hellgaunt on the field froze in place, their collective breathing stopping as Bea trembled in his hands, her eyes wide as saucers. Her antennas snapped to full extension, then slowly drooped as she began to kiss him back. Her lower hands cupped the small of his back, and her upper arms slid along his shoulders as her wings began to buzz with growing excitement. But she was so light and Lou held her so tightly that she didn't go anywhere.
He broke the kiss, whispering. "You...are...amazing."
"I-I...it's just one, but...I figured, I could m-make a population that was sustainable…"
"I had no idea they were so big…" Mother said, from the sidelines, her eyes still locked on the gestation pod.
"Y-Yeah...we only saw them in photographs…" Lou coughed. "I guess we...got the scale wrong."
Beatrice smiled shyly. "Yeah." She paused. "I-It doesn't have...um...there's...there are nerve structures, logged in my memory banks, but...t-the detail on them was too fine grained for me to get more than a very crude approximation of them – so, um, rather than trying to recreate them, I simply produced the genetic structure that grew them. But...I believe those brain structures are where memories and personalities are stored, so…" she looked down. "T-This isn't any of the Procyians I...killed. But…"
"My wife, it is more than we could have ever dreamed of," Lou whispered. He kissed her forehead and she looked down, her antennas quivering.
"I like it a great deal when you kiss my forehead."
Lou glanced back – and saw Bosch frowning down at him. He became suddenly painfully aware that his wife was naked. "Ahem!" He said, glaring at Bosch. "My wife needs to get some clothing. Could you all please avert your eyes?"
"Right, of course," Father said, his cheeks heating. And soon, Lou and Bea were unobserved by anyone but the hellgaunts, who were beginning to move again after their shocked stillness. In that quiet moment, Lou paused. Then he kissed Bea's forehead. She smiled – and then a bump at his hip made Lou look down. A hellgaunt had come over, and was looking up at him with its newly enlarged eyes. Lou let out a playful sigh.
"Oh, if I must."
He leaned down and kissed the hellgaunt on its forehead, right between the bony ridges.
"Eee!" Bea squeaked – and Lou yelped as the hellgaunts, as a mass, rushed towards him, bumping against him from every direction.
And yet, despite being surrounded by bladed horrors, Lou found himself laughing with joy.
***
"You know, it is possible to wear clothing that expresses yourself, and isn't just a white, shapeless shift, right?"
With that single sentence, overheard while waiting in the hallway outside of his bedroom, Lou knew that Amy had ruined his life, his marriage, his dinner prospects, possibly the entire fate of the galaxy. His mind was filled with trying to hold a diplomatic dinner while his lovely wife sat around in a crop top that said THESE TITS KILL FASCISTS, piercings on everything that could be pierced, and a thong that actually left less to the imagination than simple nudity.
"That does explain Lou's many coverings," Beatrice said, wonderingly. "But his coverings lack arm and wing holes…"
"That is not an impossible problem to overcome, my dear mothgirl," Amy said cheerfully.
"I hear Lou's heartbeat through the door," Beatrice said. "I shall ask him."
Lou had enough time to blink at that before the door opened and Beatrice stood before him. Naked. It was so bizarre how a change of context could utterly alter the seeming of his wife. It was one thing to see her naked in her natural environment of Bug warrens and the eerie fields constructed by her hive mind. It was another to see her naked, here, in the country manor fabricated by his parents. There was a scandalous humanity to it, nevermind that she had four arms and antennas and wings. She smiled at him and buzzed her wings with a little fluttering sound. "Lou, what should I wear to the dinner engagement with your parents and Admiral Bosch?"
"Well, ah…" Lou blushed and looked away.
"Why are you looking away and moving blood to your cheeks?" Beatrice asked. "You have seen me naked before. The last time we were together, you-"
"Ah!" Lou blushed even harder. "I...that is, uh, I believe that you should wear something...well, uh, among the Neopolitans, we have a wide range of fashions, from the classical to the neo-classical to the reconstructionist era, to…"
"I do not know what any of those are," she said, then paused. "Are you not looking at me because of your nightmare?" She sounded uncertain. "I thought- you did hug me, and that is how humans forgive, so, I thought…"
Lou blushed and forced himself to look her in the eyes – and to not look down at her...the rest of her. "I...am flustered because, ah, you're naked, and Amy is right there and…" He closed his eyes and tried to break it down, simply. "There are taboos about being nude in public. Furthermore, there are taboos about engaging in and talking about sex while someone else is right there."
"I mean, there taboos are in the Star Kingdom," Amy said, snickering. "AnComs are less prudish."
Beatrice ducked her head forward, looking down at her naked body. "I see...context has altered how you see me…" She paused. "I still do not know what to wear, though." She sounded so plaintive and nervous. Lou sighed, taking his embarrassment and compacting it deeply down. He placed his hands upon her shoulders.
"Let us see what the fabricator can do with a Classical dress…" he said, firmly, then blushed and smiled as he walked past her to the fabricator in the corner of the room. Amy, who was leaning against the wall, watched him, then gaped as he began to bring up the sartorial program and tease out the design of a dark blue dress with pale white fringe along the edges, to accentuate the coloration of his wife's current body.
"No fucking way," Amy said.
"I thought that fucking was a means of procreation," Beatrice said. "What does it mean when interjected between words like that?"
"It's a way of making the words have more impact," Amy said, grinning at Beatrice. "Linguistic accentuation!"
"I fucking enjoy fucking being fucking with fucking my fucking husband, fucking Lou!" Beatrice said, her antennas twitching happily.
"That's the spirit! But, back to my original statement: No way. No. Way." She pointed at Lou with a single silver finger, accusatory. "There is no way you learned fencing, shooting, dancing, all that kingly shit and how to make dresses using a fabricator. You're a Prince! The Neos are fucking gender roles to shit!"
"Fucking gender roles to shit?" Beatrice murmured, sounding as if she was trying to parse the sentence.
"I was, ah, how you say…" Lou said. "AFAB?"
"Oooooooooh holy shit that's so cool!" Amy exclaimed.
"What is AFAB?" Beatrice asked.
Lou, his cheeks darkening, stammered. "I-I...we shall cover that later. How does this dress look to you?" He asked, stepping aside to let her look at the holographic design. Beatrice blinked, then cocked her head.
"I don't know," she said, her antennas drooping. "But it has a great deal of soft, downy parts, like the fluff that I have heard is very appreciated, and so, I believe, it is quite pretty and I will be glad to wear it on this bioform." She smiled, slightly, then threw her arms around Lou, hugging him tightly as she pressed herself against him. Lou laughed, then slid his hands onto her hips and picked her up, then set her down before the fabricator. His mind thought, irrelevantly: She's so light...
"Now, I shall leave you two to get dressed," he said, kissing her cheek over her shoulder. Bea grabbed him with her lower arms, keeping him in place.
"Kiss me again…" she said, quietly.
"Ah…" Lou glanced over at Amy, who grinned at him, then stretched her arms over her head.
"Wow, gee, I sure do have to go to place," she said, casually ambling out of the room. "What an amazing random happenstance." She closed the door behind her – but paused to lean in and wink at Lou. Once the door had clicked shut, Lou blushed, then placed his hands upon his wife's hips. He kissed her neck, gently, this time. His nose breathed in the soft vanilla of her scent – which made him blink.
"You smell...different?"
"This bioform has a scent I hope you find pleasant," she said, quietly. "I...may have asked GF for a good smell. And then I asked Amy. Then, I compared it to a number of scent structures in the human nose and ran simulations on the human brain, and body, to make sure that it wouldn't...cause…" She paused. "Issues."
Lou nuzzled against her, his eyes closed. "Wow. And you did that all while resurrecting the Procyians?"
"I created a...a part of my mind that...is focused upon a task," Bea said, her hands tightening on him. "The same way that I used to handle certain functions that didn't need my full attention, but were complex. It's…" She shook her head. "It is hard to describe. And I do not quite enjoy doing it. It makes my mind feel less like my mind." She bit her lip, then ducked her head forward. "But I wished, very badly, to make you happy, after I had made you sad."
Lou closed his eyes. His hands slid around her, squeezing her tightly. "Y-You know, there are easier ways to learn things, right? Humans, we've been writing things down for millennia. I'm sure we can find a way for you to access that knowledge." He turned her around, then cupped her cheeks. His thumbs brushed along her forehead, almost touching the base of her antennas as he looked down into her eyes. He had been planning to say something comforting or useful – but instead, he was struck by the delicate, alien beauty of her. The deep black/blue of her eyes, the darkness of her lips, the sleekness of her skin.
"I would enjoy accessing that information," she said, quietly. "I...Lou...is it...normal to be unable to think of anything but the way your hands feel at a time like this?"
Lou blinked, and felt the immense weight of Beatrice's attention – several solar systems and countless billions, if not trillions, of discrete lifeforms, webbed together into a quantum latticework, all of it focused upon the hands of a simple man, holding her. His breath caught and he whispered, very softly. "It is...for a human, I…" He gulped – feeling the twin warring needs. Decorum said that they needed to be on time for the dinner, which was going to be held in a mere twenty minutes. But every part of his body, from his heart to his hands to his immortal soul, wanted nothing more than to kiss Beatrice for an entire cycle.
"Yes?" Bea asked, her antennas twitching. Her wings buzzed.
"I…" Lou leaned forward and caught her lips. Soft and moist and eager, and then, her tongue, then, her hands. They caressed along his shoulders and his back at the same time, her antennas drooping as her eyes closed and Lou pressed her backwards, against the wall. Her wings fluttered and she was so very light. His hand slid along her thigh, finding the join of her knee, lifting one of her legs instinctively. Lou didn't know what he was even thinking – his heart was hammering as his mouth and hers remained locked together. Then he drew back, purely for air, and Beatrice trembled, her hips rocking against him.
"W...Wha...wha...what?" She whispered, her eyes wide as saucers, her antennas straight edged and eager. Lou felt her heat, her moist slickness, grinding against his...bulge. He looked down, seeing that the excitement of the moment had been translated to his most base component – he wanted to stammer an apology – but then Bea rocked her hips in a single sweeping motion, grinding her heat against him. "Whaaaaat?" She wailed the word. "Is...happening?" She trembled.
Lou's com began to ring.
"I, ah, did you, uh, modify this body in other ways?"
"Yes yes yes yes!" Her antennas rubbed together, her eyes closed. "Suck my nipples!"
"What?" Lou, who had been reaching for the com unit, fumbled and dropped it. It struck the floor, skidding, showing that it was his father calling.
"I don't even know!" Beatrice said, her breath catching slightly. "I simply, that is, I feel...things and...ah...I want you inside of me." She blinked. "I...in me? In. Me. Right now?" She shook her head. "Is this normal? For human women?" She bit her lip, trembling. "I'm so confused and...and I feel things and-"
Lou grabbed the com unit, his cheeks beat red. "W-What did you add?"
"S-Some nerve endings…" Bea said – him no longer grinding against her seemed to have made it easier for her to think and speak. "A-And, um, hormones that seemed common along the bodies that I have identified as being-"
"What is going on?" Father asked. "The hellgaunts are acting...unusually!"
"One moment!" Lou said – then clapped his hand over the com's receiver. He looked over at Beatrice – whose hands were beginning to slide over her body. Her eyes widened.
"I can create these sensations as well!" Bea exclaimed, her upper hands cupping her breasts, gently teasing with the bright blue nipples that tipped her dark breasts. Her lower hands slipped along her thighs, then tentatively, her finger touched the folds of her sex, sliding along the edge, and Lou could see both fingertip and skin glisten with her arousal. His eyes widened and he froze as Beatrice drew a short breath. "N-not as intense as Lou...but...ah…" She trembled. "What is happening?"
Lou knew that she needed to stop. After all, it was...a…
Then again, he had…
Beatrice drew her hands away from herself. Her eyes glittered.
"Lou," she growled.
"Well, uh-" Lou stammered, while his father's voice, faint and barely audible, squawked from the com unit.
Beatrice tackled him.
It was...comically ineffective. Her body thumped into him and she rebounded off Lou as if he was a brick wall. Her wings fluttered and slowed her fall, so that she ended up on her back, blinking. "Density defied," she mumbled, sounding faintly pouty.
Lou stepped over, smiling. He held out his hand. Beatrice took his hand, then placed her leg between his legs, crooked her knee, then tugged him forward. Lou yelped and it took every bit of his combat training to land without crushing his wife. His palm slapped the ground beside her head, and her three free hands planted themselves on his chest as her fourth caressed the back of his neck. She smiled, and he swore, she looked mischievous. "Application of fulcrums."
"Who taught you about fulcrums?" Lou said, grinning down at her, ignoring the faint ache in his arm and shoulder and knee. It was worth it to see that glitter in her eyes.
"I learned the basic physics of levers and fulcrums while your common ancestor was just figuring out...well…" Bea paused, then grinned shyly. Slowly. "This." Her thighs twitched open, slightly, and Lou's heart almost exploded.
"Louis, what is going on?" His father's voice drifted, faintly, from the com unit that was right over there – and before Lou could do anything, Beatrice picked it up, then held it to her face – not noticing that it was upside down.
"My husband is busy at the moment," she said, then threw the com into the fabricator, which consumed it in a matter of moments. Lou sat back, then grabbed onto her upper arms, pinning them above her head. He leaned down close, his voice husky.
"We need to get ready for dinner…"
"Then why have you gripped me like this?" she asked.
Lou blushed. "Because...I…" He shivered. Her lower hands were caressing along his sides, rumpling his shirt. "Because…" He leaned down and kissed her. A far better answer than anything else he could come up with. Her wings buzzed, making a staccato patter against the floor that nearly matched the racing of Lou's heart. His member ached to be released, and he ached to slide into his wife, to take her right now, to make her his in a way more primal and feral and ancient than even the strictures of his court. The urge burned, while her fingers played with the buttons of his shirt, tugging and pushing with no real effect – she clearly wasn't sure how they worked.
And…
Well…
She was distracted…
Lou drew back, panting – and then whispered. "Beatrice…"
"Louis," she said, then softer. "Lou. I prefer this name of yours. It is the one I call you. Not the one your father calls you." She bit her lip. "I worry that he does not like me. I've overheard some of his comments about me…"
Lou scowled. "That blackguard has some nerve…" he lifted his head up – and felt her wrists squirming under his hands. But it was her lower arms that hooked around his neck, that slid her fingers through his hair, that dragged him back for a deep, eager kiss. Her lower hand reached down and her palm cupped the bulge that strained against his pants – and when Bea broke the kiss, Lou bit his lip to keep from letting out a soft crooning moan. His body trembled and his fingers tightened upon her wrists.
"Why...does...additional nerves in several parts of my body c-change utterly the sensation of touching your phallus?" she whispered, her voice soft. "W-Why am I nervous? Why…" She gulped, then whispered. "Is that the right term?"
Lou blushed. "Well, ah…"
"GF says that cock is acceptable too," Beatrice said.
Lou's eyes bugged. "What?"
"I asked him," Beatrice said, then cocked her head. "Dick. Prick. Manhood."
"Oh god, stop," Lou whispered, mortified. "Y-You're talking to him, right now?"
"One of my hellgaunts is. Do not worry, I am being very circumspect," Beatrice said, nodding. "I know that you want to keep our intimate activities private. He suspects nothing."
Lou imagined a drooling, bladed, hellgaunt crawling up to GF and hissing to him: GF, what is a properly erotic term to refer to my husband's phallus? I am asking for no particular reason, do not be suspicious. His eyes closed and he murmured, softly. "W-Well, um...I…" He was about to say 'the proper way to refer to them is not at all.' Instead, what came out of his mouth was soft. "I like cock."
"Cock…" Bea murmured. "Cock. You like the word...cock." She slid her pointer finger along his bulge. "I like...your cock." She grinned. "I fucking like your cock…" She leaned up – and Lou leaned down. And their mouths met and their tongues met and Lou was so ready to slide off his clothing, to focus upon her, when the faint ding-chime of the dinner bell jerked his attention up – and his face heated. Bea looked to the side, frowning.
"One of my gnats sees that the dining table is beginning to be prepared." She paused. "Lou, why would it be shocking for you and I to make love? Your father is speaking about it as if he cannot even believe it." Her brow furrowed. "What's a roach?"
Lou coughed. "W-We should get dressed," he said.
Roaches.
As in 'we fried half a million of those fucking roaches' – standard dialog from any of a million movies made about the Bug War. Beatrice pouted – but Lou was scrambling to his feet. "You get dressed, and I shall go and make sure that you have time to arrive," he said, wanting, more than anything, to shut his father up before Beatrice heard anything more. He smiled at her, then took her hand, drawing to her feet with effortless ease. His mouth and hers met and then he drew away, nodding to her.
When Lou arrived in the dining room, the servitors were beginning to put the food away – and he caught the faint glint of a reflected sunlight near the corner of one of the rooms. A gnat, one of the Bug's spy-forms. It reflected more sunlight than a normal dust mote, due to the large size of its optical sensors, and some quantum trickery they used to make up for their relatively smell size. He put it out of his mind as he saw his father and Admiral Bosh were speaking to one another in the corner. Father let out a slightly forced laugh.
"I see that you and your wife are getting on?" he asked.
"Yes, quite," Lou said, nodding. "She simply needed some assistance – Neopolitan clothing is more complex than what she is used to."
"A new Eve for a new garden," Bosch said, his voice so complimentary and calm and buttery that it made Lou want to break him in half. "Upon further reflection, I have to admit, my initial opinion of her was highly unfavorable and entirely unfair." He said.
"Thank you," Lou said. You lying snake, he thought. "Will we be having anyone else or is it just us for the evening?"
"I was thinking of tendering an invitation to the AnComs," Father said. "But they declined rather...rudely. Honestly, Louis, I'm impressed with how well they think of you. It takes a delicate hand and a strong stomach to deal with...those people."
Lou inclined his head. "I found that dealing with them as people works quite well, Father."
"Quite," Father said.
Bosch turned to face Lou directly. "I have to ask about the Procyian..." he said – but before the Admiral could continue the sentence, the door to the ballroom opened and everyone turned – and Lou felt as if all the air had left the room. Beatrice stood in the entrance, one hand still on the door, the other hands clutched before her belly. Her wings fluttered behind her with a nervous twitch – but they were almost lost against the frilly splendor of her long gown, her luminous tresses, her bust. Her shoulders were bared by the cut of the hemline, and her antennas made her look even more like a queen, unfurled and peeking out past the short white frizz of her hair. She smiled, shyly, then started to walk down the stairs. Lou stepped over, then offered his hand to her. She took it with her lower left, and he turned, then walked with her to his father, his mother, and Admiral Bosch.
"May I present my wife, Beatrice Benoit," Lou said, bowing his head. "Beatrice Benoit, this is my father, my mother, and Colonel Admiral Bosch."
"My name is Beatrice Benoit?" Bea asked. "I thought it was simply Beatrice. Or Bea."
"When two humans get married," Lou said, trying to sound casual. "They sometimes exchange surnames – since there are so many individual humans, surnames are often used to tell one apart from another – there are many Louis, but there's far fewer Louis Benoits."
"Oh," Beatrice said, then smiled. "Also, I enjoy sharing your surname. And your surname, Lou's father. And yours, Lou's mother."
"Well, isn't that...charming," Mother said, sipping heavily from her wineglass.
Lou took Bea's hand and then sat her down at a chair – which caused her to gasp. "Oh!" she exclaimed. "That's what these feel like!"
"You haven't sat in a chair before?" Mother asked as she settled.
"I have only sat in my husband's lap before," Bea said. Under the table, one of her hands slipped onto his thighs. Caressed. Lou's cheeks heated and he sat up a bit straighter. "And that is not the same." She nodded, happily, as the servitor behind her reached over her shoulder to set a bowl of soup down on the table. Bea looked at the soup, her hand continuing to slide up and down Lou's thigh, while Lou looked down at his soup. It was his favorite – a fine pheasant tongue and wild rice with saffron and nutmeg. As the servitor laid the soup out for his mother and Admiral Bosch, Admiral Bosch lifted his wine glass.
"A toast, then, to the newlyweds," Bosch said.
Lou leaned in, whispering to Bea. "A toast is...a...commemorative statement, meant to indicate approval. You do it by, uh, lifting your glass, lik-." He picked up his glass. Bea, watching intently, picked up her glass while also sliding lower palm between his thighs, cupping and squeezing his balls, cutting his helpful advice off. He choked, then whispered. "Uh, Bea, uh...not now…"
She pouted – drew her hand back, but it remained on his thigh, even as she lifted her glass.
"Hear hear," Father rumbled.
"Might I ask a question?" Bosch asked after taking his drink. "I served in several of the major battles in the War, and my father served in several before me – I'm deeply curious about what things were like from your side of the things. It's not often that two warriors can speak of such things with candor and openness."
Bea blinked at him. "I am not a warrior," she said, her brow furrowing. "I am Lou's wife." Her hand caressed along his thigh, slowly, five hot points of contact that felt searingly intent through his thick pants, despite everything. Lou wanted her to stop and wanted her to go back to doing far more all at once. He opened his mouth- but Bea finished her thoughts. "But what is a battle?"
"You...don't know what a battle is?" Bosch asked.
Bea cocked her head – but Lou managed to rally. "Yes, uh, a battle is...the term we use to describe a discrete, uh, part of a war. Where forces meet, fight one another, then disengage." He nodded.
"Oh," Bea said. Her antennas drooped slightly. "I am sorry, but I don't remember any of them. I wasn't paying attention to them."
"You...weren't paying attention?" Bosch asked and Lou frowned.
"Admiral," he said, his voice warning. Pistols at dawn, was what flashed through his head. But Bosch chuckled.
"Please, call me Akin, Louis, Akin. We're not on duty here," he said. "And I'm just more curious than anything else. The Bugs...that is...Beatrice here, used tactics, strategy. Not exceptionally complex ones, but there were logistic trains, forward bases, reconnaissance, even a feint and flank attack or two. Not precisely the byproduct of reflexive action."
Bea blushed. "I…" she looked down at her soup, her brow furrowing. Her antennas twitched and she said. "I…"
"You don't have to talk about it," Lou said, quietly.
"No, it is okay," Bea said, lifting her head. "I just do not know how to describe it. I...when I...time...I see time very differently. The war, for me, was very short – and I did not devote my full attention to any specific part of it. While it was fought, there were also many other things I had to do. Nitrogen fixing, tectonic realignment...I'm still seeking to move a rocky world away from a star that will begin to expand to consume it in less than half a cycle – that I am rushing on." She nodded. "So, I...when it comes to the...to what I was doing...I thought you were akin to the viruses and bacteria that could damage my subunits. And so, I created bioforms that could react the same way an immune system could, then let them work without thinking much about it. It was only when...I started to notice that not only were they not working, they were being pushed back, that I realized I needed to change."
Lou nodded, stepping in as Bea looked back down at her soup. "Beatrice doesn't normally perceive time the same way we do either," he said. "After all, her lifespan is measured in millions of years."
Mother dropped her fork. "M...Millions?"
"Our scientists pegged you as similarly evolved as us," Father said, sitting up.
"Oh, no!" Beatrice shook her head. "I am, according to Lou, almost seven hundred and fifty million years old. Do you have a means by which I can inject this material into my stomach?" She pointed at the soup, nodding as she did so. "Lou seems to be enjoying his a great deal, but this body is only made for interaction with him, and so, it lacks the human method of consumption. Instead, it is fed by having feeder grubs injecting with nutrients gathered from a centralized production facility."
"How...unique," Mother said.
"How did you design the body?" Bosch asked, narrowing his eyes.
"The same way I have designed all of my bioforms over the past two cycles. Initially, it was a great deal harder." Bea actually sat up slightly, her wings buzzing. "So, you know how when a life form replicates using a complex biological molecule that encodes the information of the life form for future generations, there is a chance for coding errors to produce randomized changes in the future life form, and that then, the life form can breed, and natural forces will select only the life forms that are best adapted to their current situation for survival, allowing for a gradual change in all life?"
"We're aware of it, yes," Bosch said, sounding tolerantly amused. Like she was a child. Lou squeezed her hand under the table and watched Bosch intently – the Federal admiral was slowly twirling his emptied wine glass between his fingers.
"This is my first method," Bea said, nodding. "When I still used sound waves to communicate between my sub units. So, to create new bioforms, I simply produced them at a great quantity and recycled those that did not fit what they were needed for, until I had generated the types of units I wanted. This was very fast, taking hundreds of years for each subunit, but it did take a lot of energy and was very inefficient…"
"Good lord!" Bosch sounded delighted. "Your wife is a eugenicist."
It took every bit of Lou's decorum training to not flip the table over and fly at Bosch with his bare hands. Bea notice. "Lou, why are you squeezing my hand so hard? Also, your blood pressure and heart rate have spiked, are you all right?"
"The soup is very spicy," Lou said, his voice flat. "My wife is not a eugenicist, Bosch."
"Akin, please," Bosch said.
Father frowned, then coughed. "So, I-"
"What is eugenicist?" Bea asked, her antennas twitching curiously.
"They-" Lou stopped, searching for a good term that wouldn't insult his guest. Even if he badly wanted to. Unfortunately, that silence left an opening, an opening that the Federal filled.
"A eugenicist is someone who seeks to better the species by selective breeding," Bosch said, blithely. "It is unfairly maligned in these degenerate times."
Bea cocked her head. "What is bettering the species?" she asked.
"Improving it," Bosch said, frowning. "What else could it mean?"
Bea blinked. "There is no such thing as improvement," she said, frowning. "This body exists to make my husband happy. But it cannot breathe in ammonia or survive in a gas giant or a photosphere. Oh, I've been trying to work that out, as stars remain stable far longer than planets, so if I could live in and around them, it would be much better." She nodded at Lou, then looked back at Bosch, her antennas perked up happily. "But none of them are improved." She smiled. "Besides, I don't get rid of any of the old bioforms, ever since I learned how to keep their genetic sequences and have acquired more places. I do not have large populations of some, but they are sustainable and are scattered across my places, where they can exist. Because…" She blushed. "Because...I...like...keeping them." She bit her lip. "It makes me feel...nice. Knowing that the universe has more life in it. More life than...than it used to have?"
She looked at Lou, with a look he was growing to recognize.
It was a plaintive: Please, tell me what it is I am trying to say.
Lou smiled. "You make the universe more diverse and beautiful," he said, taking her hand above the table, squeezing it. His heart hammered as he looked into her eyes, Bosch forgotten utterly as she smiled.
Then she blinked.
"Oh! Also, I have an amusing Anecdote! That is a word I learned recently, and I wanted to use it!" Bea said, looking at Mother and Father. "May I share my Anecdote?" she asked, speaking the word with such...adorable attentiveness. Ann-Ec-Dote.
"Of course!" Father said, sounding cheerful as he finished off his soup.
Bea beamed. "So! Nitrogen is a vital part of the means by which I fix energy into my planets. Energy comes from stars, and must be collected as most of it simply bounces away into space. The most effective means to collect it is by using bioforms that take in sunlight and combine it with various chemicals in the atmosphere – what depends on the atmosphere – and then transforming it into different chemicals and nutrients, which are then fixed into the soil, which are then used by other bioforms that I have created, which are microscopic in size. T-Technically, they are not bioforms, as all bioforms require an organ that allows them to communicate with one another, and I have not made that kind of communication organ small enough." She paused. "O-Oh, well, um…" She looked at Lou, who smiled and nodded at her, wanting to encourage her. She drew a breath. "S-So, um, I had created a new bioform that I thought could fix nitrogen more efficiently! But it turns out that it leached out other essential chemicals from the soil and, if nor corrected, would cause a systemic crash of the entire energy collection system within a mere ten million years!" She shook her head. "So, I had to revert to my previous bioforms, which is why it was very good that I kept them around!" She smiled. "That is my Anecdote!"
"It's...quite interesting," Mother said.
Bosch smiled, thinly. "Quite."
***
"Nitrogen fixing!?"
Bosch grabbed onto the edge of his desk, then flung it upwards. The whole metal contraption went heeling over, papers and slates scattering along the office floor, sweeping past the metallic feet of Dr. Listens-Deeply-And-Considers-All. The Upkin was ignoring him – his attention was entirely upon his own slate, which was projecting an image of their test subject. Her eyes, barely visible around the glass lenses that had been bolted into her skull, were still twitching and looking in each direction, twitching and wriggling wildly.
"Nitrogen fixing…" Bosch growled, then started to pace. "That's what it talked about for three hours. And that simpering deviant bitch just sat there, looking like a mooning calf…" He shook his head. "That thing killed millions of us and it didn't even notice, Listens Deeply. Do you understand? Do you grasp how monstrous it is?"
"It is irrelevant," Dr. Listens Deeply spoke, his translation collar turning his chirrups and squeaks into language shared by non-cetacean humans. "It could be the most gentle creature in the Milky Way and I would still desire its eradication. Simple pragmatism: If something does not exist to serve and maintain our future, then it is a potential threat, taken in a long enough view. A peace can last for five centuries and be broken in five minutes with the right change in...circumstances." His beady eyes flicked up to look at Bosch. "I ask: Did you complete the ground based laboratories? We require them."
"My crew are still seeking a secure location. More secure than this." Bosch glared down at the mess he had made, his lips pursing. "Fortunately, the Neos are as bad at spying as they are at cooking…" He shook his head. "Disgusting, do you know they served snails? Chocolate coated ants? Foul."
Dr. Listens Deeply didn't respond. Instead, he flicked to the next image of Echo Three. This was of her, after she had been removed from the probe that had been launched into Proxima. Her body looked as if it had been smeared – it was easier to grasp on a camera, where it looked like a piece of CGI manipulation rather than the physical reality. His eyes narrowed and he chirruped. "We need a cavern, preferably beneath a shelf of copper or iron ore. The kind of place that would be used for neutrino detectors."
Bosch nodded. "And the other sensors? What about them?"
Dr. Listens Deeply let out a dolphin laugh, transformed into an eerie, robotic monotone by his collar. "Ha ha ha ha…ha ha ha ha...ha ha ha ha…"
Bosch sat down behind his overturned desk. He felt flushed and trembling and slightly foolish. He was now beginning to think about how much work it was going to be to put the desk back to rights. He frowned, hard.
"What is so funny, dolphin?"
Dr. Listens Deeply looked at him. "The sensors are detecting unique communications from the hive mind. They are analogous to human orgasms." He laughed. "Ha ha ha ha. Your degenerate...is fucking his bug pet! Ha ha ha ha ha! Ha ha ha ha ha!"
Bosch scowled.
"I wish I had a camera focused upon them right now…" Dr. Listens Deeply said, his voice speculative.
***
Lou and Bea lay together, on the grassy hill, and looked up at the stars. The suns had set, save for the tiny purple pinprick that was Proxima, and the sky was a luminous sweep of infinite beauty. Bea's eyes, though, were closed. She was focused, entirely upon Lou's voice and his fingers gently brushing through her hair, teasing circles around her antennas. Underneath the stockings and the shoes of her fine dress, her toes were curling. "So, there are actually six other alien species that we know of. At least, they think there are six of them." He smiled. "There are the Perseus Mumblers, the Andromedan Lighthouse, LMG-2…"
"Squeeze my antenna slightly harder, please." Bea's voice was soft. Lou blushed, then gripped her antenna with his fingers. She bit down on her lower lip, then smiled. "These are not fictitious like the Vulcans?"
"No!" Lou laughed. "They're detectable via radio astronomy!"
"What is radio astronomy?" Bea asked, her voice soft. "Touch my lips, please."
Lou's free hand slid from her hair. Gently, his fingertips rubbed her lips. Her tongue, feathery and soft and slightly dry, flicked against his fingertip. She murmured, very softly. "I enjoy this a great deal…"
Lou blushed then murmured. "R-Radio astronomy is...we build machines that can observe the sky and we can detect a great deal of radio. And other electromagnetic bands! Can't you do that?"
"Mm, never thought too…" She said, quietly. "I just observe stars, so I could learn how far away they were, which I needed for planning – without that, I wouldn't know how to get to new stars to settle them." She paused. "Touch my throat, please."
Lou's fingers slid down, caressing the underside of her chin – and he expected to find a heartbeat. Instead, it was something closer to a tiny ticking sensation, faster and more feathery. She drew a short, sharp gasp, her wings fluttering. "So...there were millions of years where I could have heard other voices? And I never even imagined it…" She said, her voice soft. "I...I do not feel sad. I am happy about those years. I...did make nice things, Lou. Even if you can't see it yet. I live in the clouds of gas giants. I compacted asteroids together until they became round, then seeded them with atmosphere and with life. I…" She paused. "I want to show you it all, some day."
Lou smiled. "It'll be easy. I just need a lighthugger and a quick dip in a cryocrypt and we can head right there."
"But then you'd be gone…" She bit her lip, slightly, craning her head backwards, looking up at him.
Lou grinned. "You can pass ten million years without being bored, but you can't handle being without me for five years?" His voice was playful, while his finger slid along her throat, down to the ruffled fringe of her dress. Beatrice smiled.
"Yes," she said, simply. "It would be one hundred and fifty seven million, six hundred eighty thousand eternities alone." She paused. "Touch my lips again." Lou, his fingers pausing a few inches away from her neck, drew away. Bea had enough time to make a soft little whining noise, her eyes open, before Lou leaned down, craning his back almost in half to kiss her upside down. Her upper arms cradled the back of his head, while her lower hands reached up to find his hands, interlacing midnight black fingers with his pale ones.
"That's not touching…" she whispered as he drew back. Lou grinned.
"Sure it is," he said, quietly. "Kissing is touching."
Lou grinned – then blinked as he heard a scuttling behind him. He turned and saw a trio of hellgaunts, gliding along the ground with their alarming, liquid speed. Lou laughed, then yelped as they forced their bodies underneath his, then lifted him up onto their backs. Beatrice flew into the air, her wings buzzing as she darted down, then landed upon his lap again, cuddling against him. Lou, feeling decidedly unstable, balanced as he was on the backs of three sleek killing machines, clung to Beatrice and laughed out his question; "Where, ah, are we going?"
"Bedroom," Beatrice said, grinning at him. "Being your wife, I have a wifely duty. GF said so, and it has been long enough. I am going to act upon it. I am going to do...the oral sex!" She said – and she was so excited that the hellgaunts spoke as well, hissing out in a sibilant chorus: The oral sex.
"Ah…" Lou's face went bright red. "R-Right, you know, uh, there is...no rush…" He said, but he spoke without confidence. For, within Lou, there were two parts of him. The first that was deeply uncertain about the intersection of sex, sexuality, gender, romance, affection and Beatrice, an alien that could be deeply terrifying...and the other that was chanting, in a deep, primal tone, in the back of his mind: Fuck her! Fuck her! Fuck her! And Lou was easily twice as mortified by that base part of him than he was by Beatrice's earnest excitement to serve as a wife. He was supposed to be better than that.
The hellgaunts came to his parents country house and he realized that they were about to drive straight up the wall, or maybe through it. So, quickly he said: "Whoa, whoa, whoa!"
The hellgaunts slowed and Bea looked nervous. "What?"
"It is my...I...that is…" Lou coughed, loudly, his cheeks flushing. "My lady, may I carry you inside?"
Bae's antennas twitched spasmodically, then curled up, then flicked out again, the Beatrice version of a sharp, hard blush. "I...I…" She gulped. "Y-Yes. I am your lady. Me. Beatrice. Your lady. Yes." She paused. "Your father is King Louis Benoit. Your mother is a Queen. Am I a Queen? I...no, you-"
Lou chuckled, then slid off the hellgaunt. He picked her up and she actually almost bounced up and out of his arms – she was so light. So fragile feeling. "My lady, you are my everything," he murmured, not wanting to delve into the complex, Byzantine nature of Neopolitan inheritance. He knew, without needing to think twice about it, that she was the Countess of Venus, from a direct neopolitan perspective. No, no, wait, she was the Countess of Venus and the Sovereign Queen of Bernard's Star, Tau Ceti and Epsilon Indi, Empress of the Bugs, and Protector of...whatever her state church could be called. Protector of Atheist Determinism, he supposed. But all of that didn't matter, right now.
The only thing that mattered was in his arms.
Bea's antennas twitched and she cooed and curled in on herself, her face mashing against his chest. Her nose flared, breathing in his scent. "Lou…" He held her to his chest and walked inside of the house – taking the servitor's entrance, then darting up the servitor's stairs. They were narrow and quiet and specifically built so that the nobility could sneak about their homes without running into other nobles, as servitors could simply hover in the interstitial spaces of a home.
Lou had expected needing to cross the amount of floor that made up the country manor would give him time to think through what he would do, to make his hands stop shaking, to make his heart stop pounding. Instead, he blinked, and he was there, in the bedroom, the door closing behind him. He laid Beatrice down upon the bed, and she looked so delicate and alien and beautiful – a sleek, mothgirl, clad in the gorgeous gown that he had fabricated for her earlier today. His heart skipped and he stood at the end of the bed, breathing slowly.
This is my wife… he thought.
Bea gulped, then wriggled. "I...I find it very hard to...to...move…" She whispered. "M-My whole...I...I am very nervous…but I am not nervous enough to tell you to stop. Lou. Please." She gulped. "I wish to be with you, tonight. As your wife."
Lou smiled, slowly.
All his nerves melted away.
Lou takes his wife, in a manly fashion
He crawled onto the bed, then, aggressive. Fast. His hands slid along silken sheets and then brushed past moth-slender wings, and then he was above her, his mouth on her lips. Her tongue seemed taken aback as his thrust into her lips, pressing against hers. Her upper hands laid limply to either side of her head, her lower arms stretched out. Her fingers gripped the bed, tightening more and more as Lou kissed her and kissed her and kissed her – and he felt worries about his base wants, his duties, all of it were gone.
There was only Beatrice Benoit.
His wife.
His Bea.
He broke the kiss, panting, and found his hands upon her collar. There was a complex network of ties and lace and straps and buttons, which took a servitor to fully take on and of. Lou's mind weighed, for a single heartbeat, the pros and cons of fumbling in the half darkness of the room with those bits of frippery. Weighed...and tossed it aside with a tiny, eager growl. Muscles, trained from youth to swing a sword without tiring, strained and silk parted with an almost painfully erotic rrrrrip noise. Beatrice drew in a sharp gasp, her antennas fully extending in shock as her cute, smallish breasts bounced free, her bright blue nipples hard as diamonds.
Lou fastened his mouth around one, his other hand gripping the tattered V that was her increasingly tattered dress. He tugged, and her arms wriggled, and she squirmed and twisted, her wings buzzing and battering against the bed beneath her as he managed to get his hand down to her belly button before she gripped his head, pushing him back, whispering. "Lou, I cannot...I...my clothing, I-" And Lou went from sucking upon her nipple to tearing. He ripped and tossed and within a flash of tattered cloth, she was left wearing...nothing at all. Her upper arms folded over her chest, her eyes wide. "I...I feel…" she whispered. "N-Naked…" Her voice came out as a soft, almost awed whisper. "I-I've never felt naked before."
Lou smiled, slowly. "You're beautiful."
"I...am?" she gulped. "B-But...I still don't know if-"
"You are beautiful, Beatrice. My wife…" His tongue slid along his lips slowly.
Bea's head bobbed. Her antennas curled, shyly. "I wish to see you naked, my husband…" She gulped. "I wish to see you very badly. Very badly."
Lou bit down on his lower lip – torn once more. Slow? Fast? But then he realized that if he waited a single moment longer than he needed, that whatever Bea wanted wouldn't matter: He would be dead. And so, he grabbed onto his top and tore it off with a fierce snarling sound. His buttons popped and pinged, skittering along the hardwood parts of the floor before wedging into the carpeting. Bea's mouth opened into a perfect O of shock, her antennas unfolding with a click against the headboard as her lower hands reached tentatively up, touching his belly, then sliding along his skin. But Lou wasn't naked yet. His hands undid the belt – tugged, threw, then shoved his pants down and then Bea's hands dropped away, her eyes widening even further as his cock sprang into the air.
His maleness was so very, very hard.
And…
He…
Had...almost forgotten how…
"It's...l-large…" Bea gulped, her eyes wide. Her antennas slowly curled up and she shrunk back into the bed. "V-Very large…" She whispered, her lower left hand reaching up to touch him – then drawing back, and Lou felt...the most absurd flare of absolute machismo. Louis Benoit XII...well hung enough to intimidate a hive mind. He grinned, then grabbed her wrist with his own hand – the contact of flesh on flesh seeming quite loud in the silence of the room. Bea froze – and then Lou dragged her hand up and pressed her smooth, dark hand against his shaft. Instinctively, her fingers curled around him – and her fingertips did not touch her palm. Bea's antennas twitched faintly and she breathed out a soft: "Very large…very...very...large…"
Lou nodded.
"I...shall proceed to apply my...what...I was told- EE!" She squeaked, her eyes widening as Lou gripped her antenna – then pushed her backwards. Her hand gripped his dick, but then he slipped free as he reached down and picked her up, his palms cupping her perky, smooth rump. Her neck tilted and her chin bumped against her own breasts, her wings beating and fluttering against his sides.
Lou looked down at her. Hungry. Fierce. Her eyes were wide as he murmured. "You comfortable?"
"T-This form is quite sturdy, I am...quite comfortable." Then, the words tumbled out, a proud braggadocio to cover how nervous she clearly felt: ""A-Ah, my clitoris has more nerve endings than every form within ten kilometers c-" before he buried his face between her thighs and slid his tongue into her sex, tasting her sharp vanilla taste – his eyes closing as his nose bumped against the bright blue bead of the clitty she was so clearly proud of. His tongue curled up, feeling her sex tightening around him as her hands scrabbled, her lower arms reaching up to squeeze onto the headboard, her lower arms grabbing onto the edges of the mattress as her legs kicked out, her body curling up a bit as he tongued at her, following nothing but his instincts and the sounds of her pleasure.
"Oh Lou, oh my husband, my lovely husband, oh yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! This feeling...I don't...even know...I...ah! You're...I'm...I can't...I can't feel my roots!" She closed her eyes, panting.
Lou slid his mouth back just a bit, then closed his lips around her clit. He sucked.
"Ahhhhhhhhh!" Beatrice flung her head back, her spine arching, her wings beating against his sides as her juices gushed into his mouth. They glowed. And they tasted deliciously of vanilla as his mouth closed around her sex, drinking from her as her juices dripped down his chin and pattered onto his throbbing cock, which bumped against the down fur of her shoulders. "Lou! Lou! I'm losing my mind! Ah, yes! Yes! I...yes! Yes!" She trembled as he cupped her entire body with one hand, effortlessly holding her lightness up – freeing his hand to slide his middle finger into her sex, which made the most delicious, romantic sound he could imagine as she welcomed his finger into her tightness. "Louuuu!" She whined and trembled, a thin spurt of glowing girlcum escaping his finger, soaking along his palm.
Lou drew his mouth back but kept his finger buried inside of her sex, cradling her up. His finger crooked inside of her and she let out a soft, little whine. "L-Lou...I...I…" Her eyes glimmered – not with tears, but with such intense emotion that it nearly hurt his soul to see them. "I...can't...take any more...I…" She gasped. "Stop. Don't stop. Keep going. No more. I can't…" She bit her lip, then turned her head, her antennas twitching. "More more more more more!"
Lou chuckled, then leaned forward. He kissed her clit – and drew a gasp from her, her entire body rocking, her hands gripping the bed so hard that the structure of it creaked. She cried out her bliss – and with it, words. "I love you! I love you! I love you! I love you! I love you! I love you! I love you!" She trembled as her juices gushed along his palm and Lou drank his fill, laughing – laughing. His eyes closed and he nearly choked on her, drawing back as he laughed, his finger sliding from her as he gently laid her onto her back, slipping his palm free. She gasped heavily, her eyes unfocused as she mumbled. "I can't feel my roots…" She breathed. "Or the seedlings or my clouders...or the talons…"
Lou leaned down, placing his elbows to either side of her head, keeping his weight entirely on his arms, his legs, his core muscles tightening as he murmured. "You love me?"
"Yes…" She murmured, her eyes half closed. "I love you…"
Lou, his cock throbbing against her sex, leaned in close. He kissed her neck. She hissed. He bit her. She mewed. He kissed her jaw. She shivered, then whispered. "S-So much...so much so much...ah…" She breathed. Lou kissed to the curved hole of her ear. His tongue traced the edge – and she whined. "Nnnh! Too much. Ah. I…" She trembled. "I can't feel my roots…"
Lou whispered. "I love you too, my Beatrice." He tilted his head and kissed her lips. Then, softly. "What are your roots?"
"Mmmhh, rootbased bioforms...I…" She opened her eyes, then whispered. "O-Oops…"
"What?" Lou asked.
Her antennas flicked, then curled slowly in on themselves. "I...m-may have released pollen clouds. On each of my rootbased bioforms. On each planet. T-They...it's normally...I-I don't normally do it all at once! It's such a mess!" She put her upper hands over her face, squirming. "I...I made such a mess! Oh! I'm sorry, it'll take months to tidy up!"
Lou...had the smuggest grin plastered on his face. A smug grin shared by a select breed of men across history. They had never been as rare as some more patriarchal popular media liked to portray – it was the most pernicious part of sexist cultures, it tended to wound every gender along the spectrum indiscriminately. But there was some truth to the stereotype, enough that the boys who had escaped it had ever right to be very...very smug.
"I eat pussy good," Lou murmured, as millions of twenty year olds across history had, basking in the glow of their lover.
"You...is that the oral sex!?" She asked, her eyes wide. "GF was a liar! He said that it was merely good – not the single most extremely most good thing in...I...do not have enough superlative words in Canasian to describe how most...most it was!" She trembled. "I…" She blinked. "I cannot move...I-I believe my body is too worn out from pleasure to...to…" She trailed off.
Lou had reared back. He was gripping his cock, feeling the heft of himself, marveling at how much difference a relatively small bit of flesh and tissue could make him feel at this moment. His tongue swept along his lips, tasting his wife's pleasure upon him – reminding him of just what he was capable. More confidence. Dizzying amounts. His grin grew wicked .
"A-Are...you going to…" Bea gulped. "Penetrate me?" The words whispered from her breath and burned in Lou's ears.
"I...think…" Lou murmured. "I am going to do something that no Neopolitan prince should, my wife. I am...going...to fuck you."
"O-Oh…" Bea shivered from her toes to her antennas. "Ohh...yes. Yes. Yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes!"
Lou had, in his life, only felt three imperatives. They had been sensations so intense, so shockingly powerful, that they had leaped past his conscious mind and rushed straight to raw, physical action. The first had been the first and only assassination attempt of his entire life – a bomb drone, smuggled into his manor house by what had later been discovered to be AnCom criminals. He had seen it and seen the peril to himself and his mother and sprang to act. The second two had been significantly less heroic: Dislocating a kneecap while sparring, and breaking his tibia...while sparring.
Pain. Fear. Both could spark immediate action. Or, in the case of his tibia and kneecap, inaction.
But neither of those was more than a candle to the starflame, to the atomic spark, of his wife begging him to fuck her. His hands grabbed her ankles, lifted her legs, and pinned her ankles above her head, bending her almost completely in half, pressing her into the bed as his cock slid against the hot, glowing eagerness of her cunt. His cocktip opened her folds and she leaned her head up, planting her mouth against his – her tongue thrusting into his mouth as her upper hands cupped the back of his neck, her lower hands reaching down. One squeezed his balls. The other guided his cock into her as Lou thrust and impaled his wife upon his manhood – and felt the visceral, bone deep thrill, the raw blazing excitement, of filling her. Claiming her.
Mine.
His mouth broke on the kiss as he looked down at her, a thin line of spittle connecting her tongue tip to his, her eyes half closed as she panted and whimpered, her whole body trembling. "I...feel...so...full!" She panted, her eyes half closed. "N-Next body...even tighter…" She grinned, shyly. "More nerves. More flex. More arms." She murmured, nodding, her hands gliding along his body – caressing him with wonder, with love. A single finger traced a circle on his shoulder blades. She teased along his ear. She gripped his balls. She held his elbow. She touched him everywhere and he felt as if he could drown in her eyes.
"Spider," Lou growled, without thinking.
"Yes…" she breathed. "My husband...I want you to...continue to move yourself inside of me. Rhythmically."
Lou nodded, then started to rock his hips. He clenched his jaw, trying to keep his orgasm from rushing through him at lightning speed – but the silky, slippery slickness of her cunt, the tightness of her sex, all of it was so much. Her fingers. Her lips as she leaned her head up, kissing his forehead. Nipping at him. Her breath was soft, her voice an eager whisper. "Faster...harder...more more more more!" She nipped at his ear and Lou snarled, then began to fuck her into the bed. He felt as if he had been unleashed, as if some kind of feral beast was in his skin, and his whole universe had focused upon a single, blazing hot point. His hands gripped her curved thighs and her dainty ankles hooked behind his back as he pinned her into the bed, his firm balls slapping against her ass, the meaty plap plap plap sound of the impact making him so very glad he'd asked for big, big balls.
Lou calculated rocket equations. He recalled the name of every king of Israeli. He worked, mentally, through the dance of time. It wasn't enough. Every attempt to root himself in the mental, to allow his body to continue to do the sacred work of bringing his wife pleasure, but nothing worked. There was nothing for it but-
Heat.
Burning.
Boiling.
A flare of white before his eyes, filling him as he trembled from his toes to his head, gasping heavily as he trembled. His cock was still aching as he felt the pulse, pulse, pulse of his cum, and he felt the heat of his own spunk, hot against his thighs, his belly. He blinked slowly, trembling – and he looked down and saw, glowing faintly through Bea's skin, a bright purple blotch, swirling slightly. It was the heat of his cum, visible through her body. He saw that her pussy was just deep enough to take his cock and no more – his purple spunk was soaked along her thighs, having splashed out of her with the second, third spurts…
"Whoa…" Lou whispered.
"Nnh...hu...hu...f...fu...full…" Bea whispered, her eyes wide, her back twitching. "F-Full...words...hard…" Her wings fluttered and Lou slowly slid out of her sex and watched his thick cum dripping from her cunt – oozing free, making her look even messier, even more marked.
"You...don't have a womb?" he asked – half questioning, half relieved, while a part of his brain, a dour, angry voice that he couldn't ignore even if he wished too, snarled at him: You fool. You idiot. You didn't wear a condom? You blackguard! You scoundrel! Are you some AnCom knave, to just cum inside of a woman without asking if you could first? He knew it was ludicrous, he knew it was preposterous, but the voice didn't shut up.
"N...No…" Bea panted, her breasts heaving. "What is womb?"
"It...it's where babies are made. With-"
"Oh!" Bea sat up, gasping. "Your mother was speaking of how…" She panted. "How she wanted to have grandchildren! I will have to have a body with a womb immediately!" She nodded. "Five wombs! No, seven!"
Lou gaped at her. "W-What?"
"To ensure sufficient stock!" Bea's arms wobbled and she fell onto her back. "Oof. My arms are sticks…"
Lou shook his head and snorted, despite himself.
"It is not a situation of humor!" Bea huffed. "T-This bioform needs...many upgrades. More wombs, twelve at least, better endurance, um...more arms…" Her eyes half closed. "A throat, stomach. Taste buds…" She nodded again. "Dislocating jaw…two tongues, maybe…"
Lou slowly laid beside his wife. He looked her up and down, breathing slowly.
I love you.
The words echoed in his head – spoken in haste, in lust. But they were shining and they were true. His hand slid to her belly, gently, caressing her.
"And...I will begin reading about human aesthetics…" Bea's eyes closed fully. "I...must go and clean…" She murmured. "Watch over me, Lou. I love you." She slackened, her breath becoming steady and slow. Lou leaned down and kissed her forehead.
"I love you too…" he murmured, then laid beside her.
And this time, his dream was of endless fields of alien flowers – their seeds drifting upon the wind, alighting upon the finger of his wife, smiling and gentle and pure.
TO BE CONTINUED!
Hey, Dragon Cobolt here! Hope you're enjoying Pax Multi. If you want to keep enjoying it for free, the next chapter will be up next monday! But if you want to read it all right now, you can buy it on Amazon! Thanks for reading! Leave comments, each comment is a gold coin in my dragon horde. ...hoard? Hoarde!
"My husband is extremely physically fit, is he not?" Beatrice said, her antennas twitching as she clapped her hands together. "Admire him!"
"I am," Amy crooned, watching as the rapier in Lou's hand clattered and sparked against the rapier held by the combat servitor. "Thank you for convincing him to get his shirt off." Her voice was a soft croon in Bea's ear and Bea giggled.
"My deception was most effective. I began by seeding the cloud layers overhead with biological particulates to reduce precipitation, so the suns would shine more brightly. This created a heat wave, which I then capitalized on. Then, I told Louis that he should not get his shirt messy. And thus…"
Lou sprang backwards with a grunt, the servitor's blade sweeping through where he had been. Grinning, he thrust at the hovering robot – which danced backwards. As he moved, his skin glistened under the light of two sons as Amy bit her lip. "Holllly shit, he has an eight pack, holy shit…"
"I have an eight pack…" GF muttered under his breath.
"Yeah, he worked for it, though," Amy whispered. "Holy shit." She fanned herself. "Hollly shit, Bea, is he taken?"
Bea blinked at her, then made a tiny chirring hiss noise. "Yes! Lou is mine!"
Amy looked back at Lou. "Yo, Lou, you mono?"
Lou didn't risk glancing away from the servitor. It had been two days since he and his wife had consummated their relationship and he was feeling paranoid. Hence, the practice. His sword flicked out, knocked the enemy's point away from his midsection, then he pirouetted, leaped, and landed behind the servitor. He turned and thrust and the tip of his blade plunged into the back of the fragile robot. He grunted, hard, as he placed his palm against the hilt, then drove forward, the rapier crackling and sparking as it emerged. Here, its advanced tricks became visible: From a distance, it merely looked like a fencing weapon from a more elegant age, before mankind fought wars with drones and antimatter.
When pressure was applied so, the inline UPF emitter pulsed from the hilt to the tip, creating a coruscating shockwave of coherent, quasi-real force that ripped outwards in a cyclone of destructive violence. The servitor flew to pieces and Lou lifted his crackling, smoking blade up, then swept it down, smiling at his onlooking audience.
"What was that!?" Bea exclaimed.
"To answer your questions in order of importance," Lou said. "Yes. Extremely." He looked square at Amy, who looked deeply guilty. She looked away, and Lou's expression softened. He sheathed his rapier on his belt, stretching his arms – not noticing that this movement brought Amy's head snapping back. Bea gaped as she saw his muscles at play under his skin – then reached up, covering Amy's eyes with her free arm.
"Hey-" Amy hissed.
"You heard my husband, extremely monogamous," Bea said. "And so, only I can watch his...abs…" She shivered, her antennas springing to full extension. "Those...y-you must stretch more, my husband Lou, you may have tight muscles! And, thus, must...lift...arms…"
Lou chuckled, lowering his arms as he grinned at Bea. "So…" He said, his finger scratching under his chin. "My rapier's loaded with a unified physics field emitter – it's based on the grand unified theory that gave us agrav and stabdrives and the like." He looked down at the rapier, sighing. "It's a shame…"
"What?" Bea asked, blinking her eyes rapidly. "Does it require you to put on a shirt?"
"No, you…" Lou chuckled. "People, before the theory was found, were hoping that it'd make faster than light travel possible – or that antigravity would make space travel cheaper. Both had big drawbacks. Antigravity will kill you faster than being shot without some very specific preparations and faster than light travel seems to involve flying straight into a sun at top speeds, and nothing we have can match it and the Shavanti have asked us to please not."
Bea nodded. "The Shavanti are aliens that live in the photosphere of stars," she whispered. "They are the only one of the Six Uncontacted who are within the bubble of explored solar systems. Lou told me, two nights ago, while holding me after our post coital bliss. I had orgasmed very hard. The Shavanti are counted among the Uncontacted because they only proclaim things, they don't accept any messages from humanity." She smiled at Amy, who smiled back at her, despite the fact Amy knew all of that.
"Exactly!" Lou said, his cheeks heating. "Um, you don't...have to mention the post coital bliss…"
"Yes she does," Amy said. "It's the law."
Bea's antennas twitched. "Which law? You are an AnCom, you do not have laws."
"Yes we do!" Amy said, grinning. "And one of those laws is bros before hoes. Listen!" She cut Lou off. "You have a super fucking hot wife, and you're just the hottest man on the planet, no offense Godfucker."
"No, I've given up even trying to argue with that," GF said, cheerfully. "I'm accepting my position as beta cuck."
"So, I may just have to watch-" Amy paused as Bea, giggling to herself, covered her eyes again. "...I may just have to imagine you naked and thrusting. But by my progenitor, I will not forsake the most sacred of all the sisterly codes: That of telling about boys we're banging during sleepovers."
Lou blushed, hard and opened his mouth.
"Ah! No arguments!" Amy said.
Bea bit her lip. "She...does speak quite forcefully, my husband Lou. I believe that we shall have to hew to this tradition of bros before hoes."
Lou sighed, slowly. "Very well. I surrender to your traditions, Amy."
"Eee!" Amy clapped her hands. "Okay, tell me, does he use tongue? If he doesn't, he dies."
"He used his tongue for-" Bea's antennas snapped to full extension.
"Can it not be while I'm right here!?" Lou exclaimed.
Bea nodded. "We shall commune later," she said, quietly. "Now, demonstrate more of your martial puissance, Lou!"
Lou chuckled, slightly. He was rather glad, in a high minded and low minded way, that Beatrice was clearly so very excited to see him show off. The baser part of him was just...aggressively pleased that he pleasured her on such a physical scale. Not merely his arts in the bedroom, but his...whole of him. He had been put onto puberty blockers when he had first begun to transition from Alexandretta to Louis, and so he had never developed breasts. Testosterone had sculpted him more than estrogen, but he had taken more after his mother despite it. Sleek. Lithe. Not the broad shouldered bullish might of his father. A tiny part of him had worried that...he wouldn't quite be seen as manly. That he'd always be seen as the feminine transmasc pseudo-queen of the Neopolitan Star Kingdom.
Seeing Beatrice drool over his abs from the nearby grassy hill had eradicated that thought with a searing purity
The more high minded part of him, though, was just pleased to have an excuse for this practicing. Without the neural augmentation and muscular enhancement that AnComs and Federals (to a lesser extent) and Plurals and even the Upkin used, the Neopolitans needed their own edge. And so, they had their craft, in terms of weapon tech and armor and force emitters...and they had their training…
And they had their souls. Lou didn't like to articulate it out loud because...unlike his shaky relationship with the syncretic faith of the Star Kingdom, which he could talk about with some measure of distance, the underlying combat doctrine of the Neopolitans, that of Elan...spoke to him. It meant something to him.
But it was the idea that a human that fought for something could do things that no one thought possible. It was an idea born out by the implausible heroism of a thousand wars across the blood soaked sweep of Earth history. Even in the grime and mud of the Western Front, even when machine guns and barbed wire and bloody minded elites had seen fit to grind the last great era of nobility into the muck, there had been gallantry and bravery and heroism to stir the soul. He could remember the soft words of Marc, holding a sword in his hands.
We don't forget the Maxim Gun, lad. We don't take stupid risks. We simply refuse to blink.
And so...Lou had been practicing.
Because he was growing increasingly convinced that someone was planning to kill him and Beatrice. The clues had come with the second wave of ambassadors. The lighthugger had carried envoys from the Upkin and the Plurality, but both of them had required a delicate extra week of time being decanted. The reason for the Upkin's delay was simple: There was no way to quickly thaw a sentient blue whale, and there was no way to quickly move said blue whale and its life support and mobility harness from space to Charon. In fact, they had settled on digging out a mini-ocean in the neighboring dome for him.
The Plurality was more complex because each Plural was unique – even more so than the AnComs. AnComs were about doing whatever. Plurals, like the Upkin, like the Neopolitans, like the Federals, were about doing something very specific. They pushed themselves. Not purely biologically or through cybernetics, but mentally. They were the people who had invented cortical stacks, and invented splicing, and taken the parts of the Meme War that hadn't been labeled as a crime against humanity, and they had experimented from there.
The Plural ambassador was several different minds wedded together in an intricate dance of memory and interrelationships. And if any of them were thawed at the wrong time, in the wrong order, with the wrong neural connections, the entire collective personality would collapse and...from what Lou had read...begin to wildly dissociate. Which some Plurals didn't mind - a majority of them were stable systems of shared personalities running on the same cognitive software - but it would make diplomacy a bit tricky to try and integrate several dozen newly spawned facets.
While the new additions to the domes had been made, and while his wife had studied human books, Lou had begun to notice something wrong. It was something so subtle that he had thought it was nothing but paranoia at first, but the more he had watched the autonomous drones at their work and the decanted serviles from the Federated ship, the more he was certain that there was more construction going on than was happening. More drones, more building material, more nanofabs, all of them working...without showing as much work as he'd have expected.
He could have chalked it up to inefficiency, to shoddy design. After all, a great deal of the work was Federal in nature, and…
Well.
He had his opinions on their methodology.
The inefficiency could be covering anything from extra construction, concealed from his view...or movement of agents. The serviles had been all checked by AnCom security and his father's guard, but the Federals were good at concealing their undead Draugr supersoldiers among their servile castes - when one was willing to reanimate corpses using technology to serve as weapons of war, one was willing to do anything.
Right on cue, a servile came walking towards them, dressed in the flint gray uniform, with the golden badge sewn to their chest. They bowed, then said: "There shall be a lunch at the Manor House in thirty minutes, and you are cordially invited, by the order of Admiral Bosch."
"Do you want to do this one or should I?" GF asked.
"I have been ordered to resist being-" the servile said, but Amy, who had stood up casually, tackled him. Soon, the servile was trussed up and Amy had a large hypo in her hands.
"Don't worry, you can go once I...slam this in your...neck!" Amy said.
"What are you doing!?" Lou exclaimed, stepping forward, his eyes wide. But before he could say anything, Amy plunged the needle into the serviles spine and the pasty skinned, vat grown clone, gasped. His eyes widened and Amy withdrew the needle, beaming at Lou.
"It's full of medinano, it'll be growing the parts of the brain the Feds keep underdeveloped – mostly based around introspection and free will," she said.
"Serviles are part of the UPH treaty!" Lou exclaimed. "They were grandfathered in at the end of the…" He trailed off as the servile started to sit up, blinking slowly. He looked around, then down at his hands, then at Amy.
"W-What...have you…" he whispered.
"Come on, you're free. GF here can take you to where we've been stashing the others," Amy said, cheerfully. "Oh! You'll need to take a name." She took the servile and led him off, while Lou gaped in horror – and then put his hands over his face. Okay. He had gotten used to the fact that his wife was a hive mind several hundred million years old. But he was still struggling with AnComs and their utterly cavalier attitude towards the foundation of the United Polities. Beatrice walked up to him and took his arm.
"Lou, I remain perplexed," she said. "About AnComs and Federals and the United Human Polities."
Lou sighed. "Oh boy." He took her arm and started to walk with her, pausing only to pick up his shirt. Bea snatched it from his hands and then tore it into two halves.
"I have done this by accident!" she exclaimed. "I am quite clumsy!"
Lou watched as the two halves of his shirt tattered to the ground. He looked at Bea, who's antennas twitched.
"That was a deception I am sorry!" She put her upper hands over her face while her lower arm remained locked around his. "I like watching you without a shirt on!"
Lou couldn't help but laugh. He shook his head, slowly. "You are learning bad habits from those two AnComs. Imagine! The queen of the Star Kingdom, being so crass! So uncouth!" He leaned in close, whispering in her ear. "What a scandal."
"I enjoy the idea of being a scandal…" She murmured. "And- Hitler did what!?"
The outburst caused Lou to almost stumble. "I...excuse me?"
"One of my subunits is reading every piece of human media that I have access too, with a focus on generalized histories!" She said, her eyes widening. "It says that Hitler killed eleven million human beings? And...their uniforms look exactly like Federals? And...are many references to that eugenics- and...sterilization at force? More murders? That...I...I…" She trembled. "I am...going to give that Colonel Admiral Akin Bosch a piece of...I...That…" She hissed, her antennas rubbing together. "That that that that-" She trailed off into more hissing, her body actually...quivering from her head to her toes.
Lou put his hands on her shoulders. "My wife, please. Focus. Calm down. There is a happy ending – Hitler gets defeated and then he shoots himself in the head and spend the next five centuries being the worst villain the human race has ever known." He smiled. "If you want, later, we can get a video game and you can kill him yourself." He sighed, a bit annoyed at the fact he knew that. GF and Amy had both gone on extended, lengthy rants about the artistic quality of many such...video games. It had all seemed very crass. But...he'd sit through anything if it'd make Bea feel better.
"I shall! What is a video game?" Beatrice asked. "Is it like a movie?"
"Yes, kind of," Lou said, chuckling. "So." he sighed. "To understand the UHP, you have to understand the Meme War…"
Bea nodded and they began to walk. They stepped under swaying trees. The dappled double shadows of leaves cast by twin suns slipped along his skin like cool fingers – and Lou kept his senses peeled. The further they were from the construction work, though, the safer they would be if there were house assassins working among the crowd.
"The Meme War was an outgrowth of an invention. Human psychology works with certain underlying patterns that spread across a spectrum of possibilities and within those possibilities, there are visual, audio, and textual stimuli that can make anyone believe anything. Now, for most of human history, our understanding and application of that stimuli was...well, rudimentary. We could try to convince one another using rhetoric and evidence, but it often didn't work, or it backfired. That changed with the invention of the first memetic weapons. By combining cutting edge understanding and the first artificial intelligence, humans were able to make ideas so effective that they were literally infectious." He snapped his finger. "Look at one of them and they'd change how you think, what you think, even what you are."
Bea frowned, slightly. "That...sounds...bad."
"It was!" Lou said, seriously. "The first were used as a kind of super-powered advertising copy. Companies were struggling to keep old style capitalism working in a world with nanofabrication – so now, they were able to make products that sold themselves by being literally visually addictive. People fought back. Governments used them to instill loyalty. Ecofascists pulled out the big guns first: Memes that...killed people. The worst was the Doomwave – a...song…" He shook his head. "It would instill an unshakable idea in everyone who heard it that certain sub-portions of humanity was going to destroy the Earth and…" He sighed. "Well. It wasn't pretty."
Bea drew closer to him, then pressed her nose against his neck. "I almost wish you to stop, I do not want to hear more. But...go on. Tell me more. But...hold me while you do it. Pl-" She didn't even finish the please before Lou drew her into his arms, her light body feeling delicate and soft, even as she trembled in his grip, her wings buzzing.
"It got worse before it got better. Memes were weaponized across the solar system. Some drove people to kill. Some, to terrorism. Some…" He shook his head, not wanting to mention the autophagia, the aerosolized murderous psychopathy and worse. He skipped forward. "Only three polities were immune. The AnComs, the Federated States and the Star Kingdom. The Star Kingdom because we…'' he chuckled. "We actually had an order of blind, deaf and dyslexic knights, the Paladin Memorium. They would work in teams of three, and if any saw a meme that was being introduced to a Star Kingdom settlement, it was impossible that all three would be overcome, since a meme has to use a specific vector…." He shook his head. "They gave their lives and sanity to keep us safe, and they're why we had a huge upswing in popularity. People fled to Venus for security. The Feds and the AnComs had their own ways to be safe: AnComs because they were off the grid, and the Feds because they shot anyone who got close to the Red Wall of Mars."
Bea nuzzled him gently. "Who won?"
"We did," Lou said. "The Neopolitans, under Queen Marie Benoit II, allied with the AnCom Union, started to take down everyone who was using memetics. It was bloody and it was horrible. In the end, the solar system was safe for free thought again." He sighed. "And then it was agreed that nothing like that would ever happen again."
"Wait, it was an alliance between the AnComs and the Star Kingdom? How did the Federated States get involved?"
"To be honest? By the time the dust had settled and the solar system was being rebuilt...I…" He sighed. "I want you to understand: Millions if not billions of people at the time had been traumatized on a level that's hard for us modern people to even understand. They're called the Empty Generation, because they were...hollow. Millions had lost their memories, millions more had had them altered to fit new thoughts, millions had been displaced, had to flee, millions were dead, or had to live with the things they'd done while being...hit…" He shook his head. "So...we should have ripped the Feds out then and there. But they'd secured Mars and Mercury. With Mercury, the closest planet to the sun, they had access to enough solar energy to mass produce antimatter. Within ten years, they had the most fortified state in the SOL system and...no one wanted to deal with it."
Bea blushed. "It is hard to even imagine…" She shook her head. "So, the Federated States were given a seat in the UHP?"
"The founding took decades," Lou said, nodding. "And it, uh, nearly fell apart. Then…" He paused. "Well, uh…" He blushed, then smiled. "You may not believe it. But you're why there's a UHP at all. The first images of...you...arrived during a conference. There's actual footage of the Federal Ambassador and an AnCom political scientist named Chomsky Sucks…" He trailed off, not wanting to bring out the woman's full name of Chomsky Sucks Dicks In Hell For Failing To Destroy Neoliberalism Before It was Too Late. He rallied. "See, they were literally seconds away from punching each other. Then the footage was piped to the screen of your attack on Alpha Centauri. They signed the charter within seconds."
Bea looked down, her antennas twitching. "I have mixed and complicated feelings about this!"
Lou smiled, then kissed her forehead. "So, the Feds joining involved a lot of shitty compromises that have kept bad things around. And...maybe now that the war is over, we can try to fix it." He nodded.
"Yes…" Bea said. "Wait, what about the Plurality? And the Upkin of which you have mentioned?"
"They're a…" Lou lifted his head. He pushed Bea behind himself, swinging her around as he stood up, drawing his rapier with his other hand.
"Lou?" Bea asked.
But Lou was sure. He glared into the shadows of the trees around them. "Bea, stay behind me," he said, flatly.
"E-x-c-e-l-l-e-n-t-l-y d-o-n-e…"
The warbling, tortured, electronic voice that came from the shadows all around him sent a thrill of fear...and recognition down Lou's spine. His eyes widened and he realized that he had completely mistaken things. The Federals hadn't been doing anything sneaky. They weren't building anything secret.
"Epoch," he whispered.
"What is going-" Bea hissed.
Humanoid figures – moving like jerky marionettes mastered by a lunatic – started to step out. They were serviles, but they had been cored out, their eyes empty sockets filled with glittering latticeworks of machines. Crablike metallic fixtures were attached to the backs of their heads, but the machinery at work inside of them had already began to transfigure their hands into curved, bladed claws. Glittering metal, dripping with their blood, pushed from between knuckles, and emerging from palms.
"Lou, what are they?"
"Tell herrrr my sweet prince…" One of the serviles spoke, drooling from around lips, teeth already glittering with metal. Lou forced his revulsion back – it was an intimidation tactic.
"It's Epoch...an assassin from the Plurality," Lou said, frowning. "And I've fought it before."
He spun and dragged Bea down as Epoch itself uncoiled from behind him, leaping past the tree that they had been standing beside. Splinters filled the air as writhing tentacles of segmented metal crashed into bark, while whirring buzz-saw blades slashed at his head. But Lou and Bea were already diving away, Lou knew better than staying close to Epoch's main body. He came to his feet, one hand gripping Bea's hand, his other holding his rapier up, the point sparking and crackling and deadly. Epoch landed in the grass, digging in whirring tentacles. The center of its body was a single, small egg shape, just barely big enough to hold a brain and some requisite organs. Everything else was segmented tentacles, each articulated and flexible enough to tie themselves in knots, with a strength to splinter steel.
"You remembered!" Epoch spoke from its main body and each of the spliced serviles. "E-x-c-e-l-l-e-n-t."
"You are aware of this being?" Bea asked.
"Yes, I'll explain in-"
Violence.
Epoch lashed out with one of his tentacles and there was no time for anything but the honed reflexes of a lifetime of training. With his left hand occupied in holding Beatrice behind him, Lou focused entirely upon his form and the darting thrust of his rapier. The tip sparked and flashed, each impact point between blade and tentacle bursting with a hiss of fundamental particles – pulsed through his blade with tiny flexes of his fingers against the hilt. There were a million subtle variations in grip and stance that altered how the unified field emitter in his sword created and manipulated energy fields. There was a limit to how much the small UFE could pump out, and there was no way that he could get close enough to discharge all of it into Epoch at once.
And so, he knocked the tentacles backwards again and again, his brow furrowed and his jaw clenched. Epoch hissed and sprang backwards, several of his tentacles smoking, his buzz-saw blades growling and grinding. Lou stepped backwards as he saw one of the spliced puppets that Epoch had created shambling towards him.
He brought his rapier up, about to transfix the walking puppet of meat – and then stayed his hand.
The servile, eyeless and vacant, reached out with a clawed fingered hand towards him – and Lou could only see the bright eyed, newly restored person that GF and Amy had created when they had kidnapped the servile. The treaty between the Federated States and the UHP as a whole stipulated that serviles were an allowed semi-slave caste, vat grown workers for the Federals to use as they pleased. It was the same clause that disallowed the Neopolitans to prevent the Plurality from experimenting with radical new forms of ego-sculpting, or the AnCom union to interfere in the autocratic kingship of the Neopolitans.
And yet…
Lou stepped back again, pushing Bea backwards with ease. She was so very light, it was easy to move her about. He still nearly felt the sweep of the servile's claws as Epoch chattered with mechanical laughter.
"Lou! Left!"
Lou flicked his gaze away. Two more serviles, lurching towards him and Bea from the left. He leaped backwards, putting the tree between them and the serviles, but that only bought him a fraction of a second. And so, Lou thrust his blade into the tree and shouted. "Duck!"
Beatrice ducked low and Lou turned aside, then tightened his grip on the hilt.
The UFE emitter in the hilt discharged its entire battery into the tree.
The tree exploded.
Most of the fragments flew away, shotgunning towards Epoch and his servile puppets – but a few, by sheer chaotic chance, peppered Lou's body. Several stuck into his arm and shoulder, trembling as they sprouted from his skin like porcupine quills, blood welling and dripping down his arm. He marshaled the agony and looked past the smoking tree, to see that the shockwave had knocked the serviles over. They were trying to stand, but most looked entirely incapacitated – their motor functions were too degraded by Epoch's puppetry.
Epoch, being a mass of metal and synthetic materials, all tentacles and buzz-saws and cameras, wasn't even smoking.
"Ha ha ha. How chivalric…" Epoch began to walk forward as Lou stood before Bea, trying to ignore the stinging pain from the splinters peppering his arm. "Your blade's charge rate leaves you defenseless. My prior taught you better t-h-a-n t-h-a-a-a-a-a-"
Epoch's blades whirred as he reared upwards. Lou lifted his blade upwards – but then Epoch froze.
"My...husband…" Bea whispered, her voice trembling. "You have made him release his circulatory fluid." Her wings buzzed. Her antennas twitched. And Lou could hear the rumbling sound. The shaking of the forest floor. The crashing of the trees.
And quite suddenly, he felt extremely foolish.
Epoch turned – just in time for the Terror Talon to sprint into him at nearly sixty KPH. Trees splintered in the immense biomechanical warmachine's wake, and Epoch smashed into the ground and dragged as the Talon mashed against it – Lou saw it wasn't even using its weapon systems. It had a rocketvore that was designed to take out tanks, but the vore simply spat and slathered slime in a kind of impotent rage. The Talon didn't even swing its massive bladed arms – it simply smashed against Epoch again and again and again with a blind fury as, behind Lou, Bea trembled from her head to her antennas.
Epoch's tentacles swung around and then the buzz-saws cut into the Talon, which let out a bellowing screech. Blood spurted in every direction – blood and powdered chitin. Lou winced, and heard Bea keen out in shock, her eyes widening as she fell to her side, trembling. The Talon stumbled backwards, looking confused – and then Epoch slithered up its sides, swung around onto it's back like an acrobatic squid, and then slammed three tentacles into the stumpy neck of the immense biomech. The blades screamed – and Bea screamed, at almost the same pitch.
"No!" Lou shouted, not sure why Beatrice was reacting this way. The Bug War had killed literally billions of her subunits, and she had never mentioned feeling pain before. But he knew he had to do something, even if his hilt was half charged.
He sprinted forward, pain forgotten, and ducked beneath a thrashing bladed arm. He skidded on his knees, came up underneath the Talon, and then sprang up. His rapier flashed and the rocketvore split open along its guts. "Sorry!" He exclaimed – but he had no time to be gentle. The symbiotic creatures that lived within the rocketvore tumbled out like the loops of a pig's intestines, connected to one another by a ribinous mass of cartilage that almost reminded Lou of the feed strip of a solid slug machine gun.
He snatched an entire belt free, hissing as he felt sizzling droplets of acid burn along his hand.
And then, in the madness and the terror, something so strange happened that it caused him to stop. For...one of the ammo-beasts contained in the cartilage was bumping its bladed nose against his thumb. Gently. It rubbed against him, and he swore that the tiny, beady eye it used to track targets while in flight was looking up at him with...love.
"Letting. Your. Wife. Fight. For. You?" Epoch gurgled in his mechanical screech. "How g-a-u-c-h-e-"
That was as far as he got before Lou whipped the entire belt of ammo-beasts straight at Epoch. The belt wrapped around two of his tentacles, swung together and-
Boom.
The explosion was a sharp, harsh bassy sound and Epoch screeched like a dying theremin as he stumbled backwards, two of his many tentacles ending in smoking, hissing, acid sloshed ruins. Lou sprinted forward, bellowing out a single warcry. He sprinted up the side of the Terror Talon, which lay upon its immense bulk, blood gushing from its severed head. He reached the crest and saw that Epoch was trying to recover from the shock – and then Lou launched himself up into the air, drawing his rapier back, then thrusting, using momentum, the last dregs of his hilt's battery, and the fury of his own soul as one.
"Vive l'Humanité!"
The blade punched through the center of Epoch's hardened ego-case and then snapped. He rolled onto the ground, holding a sparking, hissing hilt, and then used his momentum to come to his feet, skidding to a stop as Epoch stumbled backwards. His tentacles writhed, desperately, even the stumps, which only ended up flecking more biological acid onto his case. But Lou could see the circulatory fluid and artificial stimulants pouring from around the edge of his blade, soaking the black egg that was the home of this particular variation of Epoch's multifaceted ego.
The Plurality assassin dropped with a rattling crash.
Lou, shirtless, soaked with sweat, streaked with blood, and peppered in splinters tossed his hilt aside with a sniff.
The soft groaning sound of Beatrice's voice made the entire world vanish. One moment, he was standing before Epoch. The next, he was cradling her. She was so light, so delicate – and she looked entirely unharmed. Her antennas were bunched tight against her head, and her wings buzzed ever so slightly as he held her up, whispering, softly. "My love, my wife, my Beatrice – are you okay? Did he hurt you?"
"You...you...you!" She hissed, trembling. "You are...you are...the worst husband!" She wriggled, then mashed her face against his chest, her arms wrapping around him, her legs scissoring around his back. Her wings beat, pushing her further into him – and with enough strength to actually push him onto his back. The wet grass smelled faintly of blood and smoke, and Lou blinked, feeling faintly chagrined. Apologetic. Bea made it worse, heaping coals upon him as she nuzzled his neck and churred words at her, her voice buzzing and modulating so much he could barely understand her – her sentences short and jagged declarations: "One body! Fragile body! No mind! No subunits! No acid! No cuts! No! One! One! One! One!" She trembled. "Foolish! How dare!"
"I-I-"
"Protect this!?" She squeezed him tighter. "Replace! Five hours! Five hours. Better afterwards, new improvement, new stomach, new erogenous zones, more wombs! Five hours! Protect!? You!? Foolish! Bad! Worst!" She trembled, growled, then bit down on his collar bone. Hard.
Lou yelped. She had shockingly sharp teeth, even if her jaw strength was vastly lower than a human being. The end result was she didn't break skin – but she had definitely communicated her displeasure. His hand caressed along her bunched antennas, stroking their base, his voice soft as he whispered. "I...I am sorry, my wife. But…" He paused. "Among the Neopolitan Star Kingdom, we...I...was taught...when someone threatens what you love, your duty is to do anything it takes to protect them. I…" He sighed. "I did not think. I merely acted. Please, I beg your forgiveness for this foolishness."
Bea, her face mashed against his chest, drew in a slow, slow breath. She nodded. "Forgiveness." She whispered, softly. "I...is it...so that...I can forgiveness too?" she asked, her voice halting – her words stumbling. Her syntax had suffered when she had been in the throws of passion. It seemed terror and anger could have the same effect as...more gentle emotions. Lou's cheeks heated as he felt her lower hands gliding along his body, caressing down his abdominal muscles. Her upper hands remained on his shoulders, her fingertips digging into him.
"Yes. Of course you can," he said, quietly.
"Then...I provide it," she said, softly. "If you will accept it."
Lou reached up, his arm aching from the many puncture wounds , and cupped his wife's cheek with his right hand, while his left continued to caress through her hair. "Yes. I accept it."
Bea laid her head down against his chest again, breathing in his scent again. "You smell even better like this," she murmured, her body no longer trembling. "Make love to me."
"I...I beg your-" Lou stammered as Bea sat back, pushing herself up, his hand dropping away from her head as she took hold of her shift and casually tugged it up and over her head, tossing it away.
Ma'am, this is a public park! Also, she unveils her new bioform - a cute wasp girl
Her hard, blue nipples glinted in the dappled sunlight as Lou felt the adrenaline in his body seeping away – and leaving him with the most shockingly intense urge to...to...the intensity of the urge, combined with the openness of the air, it…
Well, everything that he had been taught that now, in the field of battle, with his wounds still untended was the worst place, the worst time, to do anything of the sort. He should sternly reprimand Beatrice, and remind her that the sovereign of several star systems and the Duchess of Venus, she should have had more decorum.
Her hands shoved herself back, her light body landing upon his shins.
More tact.
Her hands gripped his pants and yanked them open and down – her upper hands holding the pants, her lower hands both fastening around his cock. She looked down at his member, her antennas unfurling, her body trembling.
More…shame...
Her mouthparts, delicate and slightly cool, closed around his cock.
Lou slowly laid his head back into the grass.
In some cultures of the United Human Polities, the act of oral sex had moved beyond an art and into a competitive sport. In some cultures, Lou – at the tender subjective age of eighteen – would have been a hard bitten cynic when it came to the act of using a mouth to bring pleasure to a partner. He'd have had blowjobs, handjobs, titjobs. If he had been among the more enthusiastic practitioners of 'ways to have fun with cocks', he might have graduated on to the more extreme variations that had been created by the endlessly (and slightly demented) creativity of the unchained human id.
Being a princeling of the Neopolitan Star Kingdom, though Lou was a more chaste, innocent person. He knew, faintly, that there was such a thing as...oral.
But he'd never expected it to feel…
Like this.
The soft, feathery touch of his wife's tongue. The delicate, slightly cool, slightly rubbery texture of her twenty fingers wrapped around his shaft – the first two sets interlocking at the top, the other two closed around his base, so that his entire member was held in her soft hands. The coolness of her lips, then the eagerness of her breath as she drew her mouthparts away from his cock. She breathed against him. "Oh my husband, I now fully understand the advice, to eat, but only a very tiny amount, oh husband...oh…" She closed her mouth around him again – and Lou lifted his head, just barely able to move past the pleasure swimming through him.
Their eyes met and Lou got his elbows under him, gritting his teeth as he tried to bite back his moan. The softness of the grass under his bare ass, the incredibly slight weight of her body against his shins, the dappled light flowing along her dark blue and white and black body. Her wings fanned out and caught the sunlight and turned it into iridescent rainbows and Lou felt as if his heart was about to burst. His fingers dug into the soft earth and he whispered. "Beatrice…"
Bea drew her mouth back, slightly, her antennas twitching. "I believe I shall be consuming this part of you for many, many, many, many…" She leaned down again, licked his cocktip. "Mm." Her eyes half closed. "O-Oh, yes. I must quote!"
Lou blinked – then gasped as her hands began to gently stroke him – alternating movements with her upper hands and her lower hands to envelope his entire member in her grip. His fingers tightened more as Beatrice lifted her head. "Godfucker showed me an educational film – a pornographic one, he said."
"Oh…" Lou said, bracing himself. He had not seen any...well, he had seen one pornographic film. But his studies of human culture, his instructors had told him about the ages after what the Neopolitans studied. The 20th and 21st centuries had been replete with epochs of filmed copulation, with terrible acting, worse writing, and often, unsavory and viciously cruel productions that had disenfranchised and exploited their labor force. Which made it exactly like all other media produced in the 20th and 21st centuries. But still…he knew what to expect.
Bea looked up at him, her eyes softening. "I love you more than the stars themselves, my husband," she whispered. "I hope I can bring you just a tiny fraction of what just being with you makes me feel…" She kissed the tip of his cock. "Now...lay back…" She closed her mouth around the tip of his cock, then released him with her upper hands – which reached up to interlace through his fingers. Then she pushed forward, taking the first few inches of his cock into her mouth as Lou gaped down at her.
The movement of her mouth continued, smoothly, for another inch – before Lou felt his cock bumping against something inside of her throat. It felt like a sleek, rubbery cap. She paused, her voice muffled. "Huhhh…" She drew her mouth slowly back, a glistening strand of glowing, purple pre-cum sticking her lips to his dick. She blinked. "...oh."
"W-What?" Lou asked, feeling as if he was on a hair's trigger.
"F-Forgive me Lou, this body does not have a throat," she said, her antennas drooping.
"O-Oh…" Lou blinked. "How do you breathe?"
"I have an air pipe!" she said, cheerfully. "It simply has a reflexive cap that prevents anything within my mouth from reaching my lungs. Such as-" She paused. "Your seed in my lungs would be very uncomfortable." She paused again, then smiled. "Your cum in my lungs would be very uncomfortable. Cum." She paused. "Cum…I think I enjoy saying this word…" She licked her lips. "But you know what I will enjoy even more than saying the word cum? It shall be tasting your cum." She smiled. "I am trying to use my own dirty talk, rather than quoting, is it effective?"
Lou's chuckle was soft – husky, like a knife drawn along a leather strap. His eyes half closed and he lifted one hand up, leaning most of his weight onto the other elbow, and caressed his hand along her head, finding the base of her antenna. "I love you…" he said, quietly.
Bea churred. Her antennas twitched. "I shall take this as confirmation." She smiled, shyly. "And I love you, my husband Lou. Now, to resume sucking your cock."
Bea closed her lips around his member and while she couldn't deep throat him, she made up for it by sheer attentiveness. Her tongue quested about his tip, her fingers closed around the base of his shaft and pumped him with slow, eager movements, while her mouth sucked and slurped – the sound edging between utterly romantic and the most lewd thing that he had ever heard. Lou panted – the adrenaline that had been left in his system burning brighter and hotter than antimatter fuel. His eyes half closed and his jaw hung open as Bea looked up into his eyes, her blue-black orbs glittering.
"Bea…"
"Cum inside my throat," Bea whispered in his ear, her hands sliding along his chest, feathery and softy, while Bea started to bob her head and mouth faster on his cock, leaving the inches of his cock that could fit inside of her mouth glisten with her spittle. "Fill my mouthparts with your seed, my husband."
Lou nodded, his head foggy and filled with nothing but the red, hot, wet sensation of his wife's mouth on him and her cool hands squeezing his balls.
"Cum. Now."
Well.
Lou wasn't about to disobey.
He groaned, his teeth clenching as his entire body tensed, then sagged as his thick, glowing purple cum gushed into Bea's mouth. Her eyes half closed and her antennas drooped in quiet happiness as the cum started to slosh around her lips, dripping down her chin. Thick droplets splattered across her dark black breasts, which heaved slightly with her excitements, even as her wings buzzed in nervous little twitches, her body rocking against his shins. Her fingers continued to stroke his cock, his balls...his...chest…
"Mmm, very good," Bea said. By his ear. Lou realized that his back was resting against something soft. A pair of soft things. Soft, squishy, breasts. Large ones. His eyes widened and then he tensed up tightly as Bea giggled. "Oh, also…" She placed her palm over his head. "Guess who!"
***
"Now, you shall tell me of Epoch, and why he tried to stop you. Kill you."
Lou, who was seated in the comfiest chair in the sitting room in his country manor, with two guards servitors out front and his father's best snooper programs running in the domes beyond, while Father and Akin Bosch stomped about, directing soldiers hither and thither and yon, blinked at the two Beatrices. The one Beatrice, he tried to remind himself. But a lifetime of interacting primarily with human beings who hewed to a relatively narrow range of neurological patterns had taught Lou that when two humanoid figures were standing beside one another and looked completely different, they were two different people.
He wondered how long he'd have to be married to Beatrice before he really understood, at a gut level, that she was a hive mind. Not just a singular body, but billions.
"Is...she distracting you?" The Bea on the left asked, looking at the Bea on the right, who looked down at herself nervously. Due to the way that she had been...designed, the Bea to the right ended up with her eyes focused entirely upon her chest. Said chest was nearly as full and as round and as perky as...as...well...she was…
The new Beatrice was, in a word, curvaceous. And tall. And elegant. And black and yellow, with alternating stripes of black carapace and bright yellow fur, with long waspish wings that sprouted from her shoulder blades. Her chest's accentuation was only made more extreme by how narrow her waist tapered too, while her hips grew hourglass perfect, with a small inverted stinger that emerged from her back. Her fingers looked like black latex gloves emerging from yellow furred sleeves. But it wasn't a glove. It was her fingers. She was naked. And curvy. And...and...curvy.
"...yes," Lou admitted, his cheeks burning, his eyes locked upon his wife's new bust.
"Yay!" The first Beatrice said, clapping all four of her hands – the new Beatrice was even more humanoform in that sense, as she only had two arms. "I designed this bioform explicitly for breeding purposes. It has more nerve centers! And I know you said I only needed one womb, but I added a second for redundancy…"
"Where?" Lou whispered, then shook his head. "B-Bea I...I don't need a specific body for...I...y-you are perfect! You don't have to change for me."
Both Bea's giggled at the same time and the other leaned up against his side. She buzzed as her full, full, full breasts mashed against his shoulder. "My dear, silly husband, Lou," she said, her voice sounding like a husky contralto compared to the higher pitched original Bea's voice. "I enjoy creating new bodies for new situations. It pleases me deeply." Her dark, sleek hand slid along his chest and her voice grew softer. "And I can tell…"
"...you enjoy it a great deal as well," Moth Bea whispered in his other ear. Lou's cheeks went incandescent. And yet, honor demanded he never lie to his wife. And yet, decorum demanded that he not admit so crassly what he felt. And, furthermore...was it not...crude and rude and cruel and chauvinistic to compare one body to another? It felt like insulting his wife's beauty. But...he…
Lou closed his eyes as the two Beas giggled at the same time. "Well, at least this signifies what you feel!" Moth Bea said, her fingers playing along his groin.
"Yes, very well! I like your new body and also, I like your old body, and, you are beautiful and I love you a great deal and you never need to change, lest that it pleases you, and, in which case, you can change as you see fit!" Lou squeaked out.
The two Beas giggled and the Wasp Bea sat in his lap, beaming at him. "Then I am pleased. Now! Tell me about Epoch, please."
Lou tried to not focus upon the immense waspy breasts that were almost filling his entire field of vision. Nor, the softness of her rump. Instead, he leaned back in his seat, his hand caressing along her back, slowly. "Epoch…" he sighed. "You know how the Meme War ended with the Federated States, the Neopolitan Star Kingdom and the Anarchist Commune had two big questions: What to do with the memetics themselves and what to do with some of the byproducts. One of those byproducts were the Upkin – Uplifted Kindred Soldiers. We...shared our planet with other life forms."
Bea nodded. "Yes, I recall such things upon my world. They did not last extremely long before I incorporated them into myself."
Lou nodded. "Well, we humans shared the world with other animals and lots of them could be modified to make them self aware. Sentient. Individuals."
Bea's eyes shone. "That is a remarkable and wonderful thing humans did! You made more people! In the universe!"
Lou sighed, slowly. "They were created because their brain structures were different enough that no memes created would work on them and no one would be able to make any memes that would effect them for decades or centuries."
"...oh…"
Lou nodded. "So, we had a bunch of Upkin left after the governments that created them had been cored out. And then we had the memetics themselves. They...they are useful tools, as much as they're terrifying weapons…" He shook his head. "And that was where one of the first serious disagreements in the AnComs came about: A sizable faction of them wanted to continue to use memes to improve or alter themselves. The rest believed that any non-temporary mental editing was too dangerous. They split into the AnComs and into the Stubjacks. The Stubjacks moved to the moons of Jupiter and, after a few decades of experimentation, created some technologies most of the UPH uses – splicing and cortical stacks, for example. But they also use memetics to alter their own minds into radical, complex new forms. Hence their new name: the Plurality Federation."
Bea nodded. "...and Epoch?" she poked the side of his cheek with her finger. Lou chuckled, then laughed as her moth body poked his other cheek with her fingers as well.
"Epoch is a famous assassin from the Plurality."
"What is assassin?"
Lou sighed. "A human who...specializes in...who is trained in the art of killing other humans for political or economic goals."
Bea's eyes widened. "This is allowed?"
"It's illegal," Lou said, his voice softening as he reached up to gently brush his hand through the frizzy black hair of the wasp Bea's head. "But simply because something is illegal doesn't mean it doesn't get used. Epoch…" He shook his head. "The funny thing is Epoch, the first time I met him, or it, or whatever pronoun they use, was when they were hired by my parents."
"Your parents sought to murder someone?!" the two Beas exclaimed at the same moment.
"No, no," Lou said, hurriedly. "They wanted him to teach me how to best defend myself from assassins – what better way than to hire the best assassin? Epoch splits himself using cortical stack technologies – making copies and sleeving them into multiple bodies, so he can be in many places at once. If the copy survives, it gets re-integrated into Epoch, so he has their memories and their experiences."
Bea's eyes widened and her wings buzzed – two pairs of wings, buzzing in the same nervous pattern. "So...Epoch is rather like a hive mind…" she said, slowly.
"I...no, not really," Lou said, shaking his head. "Each Epoch is a copy – but they're not connected. They don't share thoughts or experiences or anything." He reached out with his free hand, cupping Moth Bea's cheek. His thumb rubbed along her lips. "He's nothing like you."
Bea closed her eyes and kissed his thumb, gently.
The door to the room didn't quite muffle an angry: "Listen, you jackbooted fascist, we're his friends. ...how dare you! I...fine!" from Godfucker. Lou sighed, then glanced at his wives. Then he realized what GF and Amy were going to say the moment they were past the guards and into the room – but he had no time to think of anything to do before the door opened and GF and Amy entered, Amy looking worried, GF looking as if he was standing before the most amazing sight in the universe.
"Dude!" GF said. "Dude."
"I can explain-" Lou started.
"Dude!" GF gaped at wasp Bea, who beamed at him.
"Greetings Godfucker," she said, cheerfully. "This is the new body I created specifically for enjoying my husband in bed." She nodded eagerly, and that tiny motion sent the most delicious ripple of jiggles through her whole form. "My husband likes it a great deal."
"I…" GF blinked slowly.
Amy, though, revealed that her expression wasn't worry.
She stepped up to Lou and she (gently) smacked him.
"Ow…" Lou said.
"How dare you!" she hissed, furiously.
"Please do not strike my husband," Bea said, frowning on both of her bodies, though moth Bea was busy leaning in to kiss Lou's throbbing cheek.
"You know what he did," Amy said, glaring at Bea. "And he deserves just as bad for the bone headed, macho idiocy I saw – you fought Epoch with a sword and no armor and no backup and no stack. You could have been killed! Permanently killed! And for what? To protect your honor? Or your wife, who could lose ten billion bodies and not even notice?"
Lou rubbed at one of Bea's hands (with six, he was spoiled for choice) and said: "I know. I am sorry."
"I-" Amy blinked.
"It was badass," GF said.
"Godfucker!" Amy hissed. "Don't encourage him."
"Sorry, Amy, but listen...it was fucking badass. It fucking ruled!" he said. "He killed Epoch, he saved each of those serviles – by the way, we've got them in regeneration tanks with medinano to try and rebuild the brain structures that Epoch overwrote, but…" He looked a bit grim, then shook his head. "What matters is, Lou? You're a fucking badass. How did you...that...with the…" He threw up his hands. "How?"
Amy slapped GF.
"Ow," GF said, sounding more shocked than hurt.
"That's for encouraging him in his idiocy," Amy said, scowling. "Next time an assassin comes after you, you run, Lou!"
"Yes!" Bea said, hugging her arms around Lou and almost smothering him with two sets of breasts.
The door to the room opened – and Father dominated the frame with his intensity. He froze, blinking as he looked at the scene: Lou, his cheek still red from a slap, Amy scowling at him, GF with his hands in his pockets, the two Beatrices (one of which was naked), and Lou did not wish to imagine what he might be thinking. Lou blushed as Father nodded.
"We've found the drop site," he said, seriously. "And, the cryocrypt that stored the Epoch split during the trip from SOL. It was upon our shuttle."
"...you brought him?" GF asked. "Wow. Talk about a fuck up of major proportions."
"GF!" Lou hissed, then scrambled to his feet – taking advantage of the fact that Beatrice, even in her waspy form, remained remarkably light weight. He placed her upon the seat behind him and tried to stand at some measure of attention. "Father, Godfrey begs your apology – he's quite tired, after a long day."
"Hurm." Father pursed his lips, then looked at Lou. "You know who must have done it."
"The Machi," Lou said, immediately. "They must have, who else could have slipped an assassin aboard. They must have figured, with the war ending, they didn't have much more room to maneuver."
Father breathed slowly in, his nose flaring. His lips pursed and then he let out a sound akin to a growl. "Amy, I need a direct quantum link back to the SOL system. Immediately."
Amy blinked a few times. "It...it will take a bit of energy," she said, understating things considerably. "We'll need to build up our antimatter reserves here to begin to synthesize the requisite-"
"I don't care. Do it."
"May I ask why?" Amy asked, frowning, glaring at Father – who looked right back at her. Lou was uncomfortably aware of their indiscretion – but that knot remained something that had to be waited on. It wasn't as if he could simply bring it out into the public view, not without utterly humiliating his entire family and his mother more than the initial act might have. But whatever his feelings on the issue were, Father made his opinions about this moment clear.
"The Machi have tried to take the life of my son," Father said, his voice soft. "They would not have waited until the act took place, nor waited the four years it takes for the communication to arrive. They would have acted. Even now, they must be securing their hold on the throne – in secret, of course. The instant the information arrives that my son yet lives, they will immediately take the grace period they have to scurry back into the shadows. Or, if they have a spine, they will launch a coup in absentia."
He stepped forward, his arms crossing across his chest.
"I. Will. Not. Let. That. Happen."
"Oh, yeah, cool, you have to secure your throne-" Amy muttered.
"Damn the throne!" Father snarled. "They tried to kill my son! I will neither let them hide nor let them touch the Platinum Throne – I will have them broken, even if I have to detonate half the stabdrives in the expeditionary fleet. Now! Get me that connection, Amy!"
Amy, looking quelled, nodded. "Yes. Right away." She hurried from the room, glancing back at Lou.
Father breathed out a slow sigh.
"Holy shit, you actually care about him," GF said into the awkward silence.
Father snapped his head up and Lou realized that GF was fairly close to dying – he sprang forward. "Father, please," he said. "Forgive him – he's...kind of a…" he fumbled for words. "Arrogant, preening, self absorbed, culturally ignorant bumpkin. Think of him like a...a...a Rasputin-esque figure in our court."
"Hey…" GF muttered as Father actually chuckled, the tension in the room breaking.
"Rasputin, huh?"
"He has a stack, he's got to be at least as durable," Lou muttered, glancing back at Godfucker.
"What is stack?" Bea asked, curiously.
"Later," Father said, drawing himself fully up as he looked at Lou. Then he looked back at Beatrice. "Beatrice…" He paused, his eyes drifting to her new wasp body. He looked, hurriedly, back at her moth body. "Will you be joining us for dinner tonight?"
"Yes," Beatrice said, simply. "My husband will be there. I will be there." She reached out and took Lou's hand. "I love him a great deal and do not want to be far from him."
Father looked thoughtful. He nodded to Lou, then turned and left. Lou turned and glared at GF. "Godfucker, could you for once in your life, think before you say something?"
"Sorry, man," GF said, blushing. "I just...he sent you off to get married. As a publicity stunt. To an alien. No offense Bea, but, he had no idea it could have worked or that you'd be happy – it's a shitty as fuck thing to do to a child."
Lou glanced at Bea, who was looking thoughtful, her antennas drooping a bit. Lou wanted to hit GF all over again. Instead, he said: "Father loves me, in his own way. But I'm not merely his child. I am Prince Louis Benoit XII. Being the Prince isn't just fancy clothes or having a fancy sword. It means having responsibilities. Not just to my own happiness, but to the future of humanity." He squeezed Beatrice's hand, gently. "And to your future as well, Beatrice." Her antennas twitched as GF nodded, slowly.
"I…" he paused. "I kinda get it. It's weird. But I get it."
Then he grinned and made a pair of finger guns. "All right, you two relax! Later!" he backed out of the room, firing off the finger guns the whole way, while Bea waved after him.
"Goodbye Godfucker!" she said. Then, the instant the door had closed, she looked at Lou, her eyes serious, while her waspy body stood and pressed her breasts to his back – which filled him with extremely improper thoughts for the moment. Her mouth, soft and feathery, began to nibble at his ear, which caused his cheeks to flush and his heart to hammer. "Now! You must answer the question I had asked earlier: What is a stack? It has been referenced so many times…" She bit her lip slightly. "A-And...I...I am sorry!"
"What are you sorry for?" Lou asked, ever so slightly dazed as wasp Bea's hands slid under his shirt, her latex like fingers brushing against his abdominal muscles. He trembled as moth Bea ducked her head forward.
"I...agreed to marry you because it was said, I...that is, I was told that humans have rituals. These rituals must be done to ensure the war would end, the killing would end. I did so because I was afraid, and because I did not understand what being a wife means. I still have not…fully grasped everything, as it seems very complicated, but I understand a lot more now, and I realize that...I agreed to this without the consideration and gravitas that would be required for a marriage between two people." She flicked her antennas a bit, rubbing them nervously together. "If...if I knew now, I would marry you without anything in the galaxy impelling me! I would marry you if you were the first human I had met! I would marry you if I had spread across every world in the supercluster!"
Lou chuckled, blushing. "I'm flattered."
Then…
An idea hit him.
"Do you want to get married again?"
The two bodies both buzzed. "We can get married twice?"
"Y-Yes, it is fairly common to renew one's vows in human marriages…" he said, slowly. "Though, usually it takes a bit longer too-"
"Yesyesyeysyesyesyyesyesyesyeysyesyes!" the two bodies both started to speak at once – even as the window to the room shattered and a hellgaunt scrambled in, adding to the chorus. From the chanting sounds coming from outside, every body was saying yes at once, causing cries of alarm and confusion from the rest of the manor.
Lou laughed, taking hold of both of their hands, then laughed again as one of the hellgaunts bumped against his back, licking at him. "Okay, okay! But you have to, there is a proper way to do this – I need to get a ring."
"Oh!" Beatrice looked a bit crestfallen. He noticed that her wasp body could actually blush, a small red glow flaring across her black cheeks. "I will wait patiently." Belying her words, the hellgaunt kept bumping its head against Lou's back.
Lou smiled, then took her hands. "I am flattered." He kissed her knuckles. "And I'm glad that my paranoia did pay off, even if I didn't have the right target – I was worried for days that the Federals were the ones who were up to something-"
"Staaaaaack!" Wasp Bea said, giggling as Moth Bea bumped against him.
"Oh, right, sorry," Lou said, flushing. "A cortical stack is a, um, it's a small device that is located at the base of the skull, roughly here…" He tapped the back of his head. "AnComs, some Federals bigwigs, Plurals, some Upkind." He blushed. "It...it…"
"Yes?"
"Well. Depending on who you ask, it either is immortality, or it is a sick joke. It spreads very tiny machines through a human brain, taking a constant scan of every part of it. A constant snapshot, so that that snapshot can be recreated, which means that the human with the cortical stack can come back to life. If you consider that to-"
Both of Bea's antennas had snapped fully to extension.
"Are they oblong egg-like shapes, black in color, and extremely durable?" Bea whispered.
"...yes?"
"I have six hundred twenty eight thousand seven hundred and thirty six of them in storage," Bea said, her eyes wide as saucers, her antennas quivering. "I...did not know what they were."
Lou sat down in shock.
He missed the chair by almost three inches.
***
Charon was a tectonically inactive planet with a stable climate – this was why the surface was so broad and so flat. But it had also ensured that the ancient formations of metal and stone that made up the stretches of rocky material before reaching the sluggish heat of the mantle had not shifted much in the eons since their formation. One such formation had been found after an exhaustive search of colonial records and surveying reports: A shelf of incredibly dense granite nearly half a kilometer thick and five kilometers wide, creating a pocket of the world that was incredibly protected from cosmic rays.
Those that came from above would strike the shelf. Those that came from below would have to creep through almost the entire bulk of the planet.
It was here that Dr. Listens and his crew, with an army of serviles quietly siphoned away from the main camp, had constructed the Prototype.
Project Etemenanki, once constructed, looked as intimidating as any stylist from the Federated States could want. It looked, in its test form, like a tuning fork that had come from Hell itself. Tiny blade-tines thrust up from a pyramidal shape of solid black metal, interlocking in a way that made even Dr. Listens' eyes ache when he looked upon it too long. But as he warmed it up by gently feeding power into the base and modulating the inner workings of the device, adjusting the dials and the toggles that fed electrical stimuli into the lump of tissue that served as the control system...he could see the tines begin to blur and shiver.
"Yes…" he murmured.
"P L E A S E L E T M E D I E."
The voice warbled from the speaker on his console – and when he looked down, he could see the control interface's biological systems were all still in the green. But there were things that even the most subtle monitors could miss – especially when dealing with such an...edge case in what could be classified as human. That had been why Dr. Listens had run a cord into the speech centers of the brain. It had nothing to do with the excitement he felt, at hearing that warbling, desperate modulated voice.
"P L E A S E."
The rattling sound of the elevator drew Dr. Listens' attention. Several Federal soldiers were hurrying in, shoving with them a large crate that was hissing with steam. Radiator vanes burned with red heat – keeping the object within in a deep cryogenic freeze. The men slowed, panting, and their commander nodded. "We weren't seen. The camo functions worked properly."
"Excellent…" Dr. Listens said. "Place it within the exclusion zone. Ha ha ha ha. Ha ha ha ha."
The soldiers pushed the crate forward. One of them, very nervously, pulled the strip that would activate the defrosting. The edges of the crate slowly opened, revealing a familiar shape: The gestation pod of one of the more simple worker forms. It rippled, twitched, and began to thaw. Dr. Listens had studied Bugs for years. He saw it was near to hatching. His grin glinted as he adjusted a dial upwards on his control system.
Project Etemenanki blurred.
"P L E A S E. P L E A S E. P L E A S E. P L E A S E."
The egg hatched.
And the worker bug skittered – and immediately curled in on itself. Twitching. Trembling. Quivering. And its antennas rubbed together and Dr. Listens chittered.
It was screaming.
"Admiral…" Dr. Listens hissed into his com bracelet. "Any effect on the others?"
"None I can see. Is it working?"
"Oh yes…" Dr. Listens churred. "Oh yessss…it is working perfectly."
TO BE CONTINUED!
Hey, Dragon Cobolt here! Hope you're enjoying Pax Multi. If you want to keep enjoying it for free, the next chapter will be up next monday! But if you want to read it all right now, you can buy it on Amazon! Thanks for reading! Leave comments, each comment is a gold coin in my dragon horde. ...hoard? Hoarde!
"And...and this...this is Endless Song Echoing Upon the Depths."
Lou had never seen a Upkin diplomat - not one of their envoys, but their true deep negotiation diplomats - in the flesh before, not since he had first set foot on Earth what felt like weeks but was in actuality years before. But he had seen them on the screen and read about them in a book and he had rather foolishly thought that he had maybe gotten at least a fraction of what it was like. He had told himself that it wouldn't be too shocking, if he mentally prepared himself.
I'm really dumb sometimes, Lou thought, his hands shaking as Beatrice stepped past him to the edge of the artificial ocean and looked down upon Endless Song.
It wasn't that Lou was scared precisely. It was just that he was in sheer awe: the Upkin diplomat was nearly thirty meters long from the incredibly broad sweep of her nose to the curved flukes of her tail, which lifted from the water, creating a glittering cascade of water droplets, sloughing down into the artificial ocean. It was not a true blue whale in shape and conformation – there had been modifications and additions to adapt the cranium to the initial purpose of the uplifted blues. There were the extra bone spurs along the forehead that were supposed to contain implanted radio antenna, there were the extra eyes for situational awareness, and there were the tentacles that frilled off the sides of her ribbed cheeks, each able to reach out almost twelve meters and grasp with the same strength as a human man.
One such tentacle flowed from the water and reached out to Beatrice – who was using her moth body for this meet and greet. She gingerly took the tentacle tip in her own dark hand and shook it as the entire artificial ocean seemed to buzz with a deep, resounding song.
The translation harness that Endless Song wore turned that song into a cheerful, matronly voice.
"It is an absolute delight to meet you, Beatrice Benoit."
Beatrice knelt down, her eyes wide. "Your body is very similar to the designs I used for my bioforms in the upper atmospheres of gas giants. But far more dense!" She paused, then blushed. "A-And by that, I mean, I hope that you did not have too uncomfortable a trip from orbit!" She looked up at Lou, clearly hoping she had said the right thing. Lou gave her a tiny smile – honestly, after the past few days, he wasn't sure if there was something that Beatrice could say to offend the Upkin.
"You try having a calf or two, ha ha!" the blue whale's chuckle was as warm as her normal habitat was cold. "Oh, I do hate space travel – but no one else in the Upkin was up to heading all the way out here to continue the peace talks."
"I admit, I am confused by this talk of continuing the peace talks," Beatrice said, sitting down and casually dangling her legs down into the water – which made Lou freeze. In the long annals of interactions between the Neopolitan Star Kingdom and the Upkin, he knew that the deepest, most easy offense to give was to 'treat them like animals.' Though no Upkin had ever actually been kept in zoos, the cultural memory of it had soaked into them like a burn after having scalding water dropped on you. It stung still, centuries later. But if Endless Song was disturbed, she didn't show it. Instead, bioluminescent patterns that had been designed for giving orders and signals to deep sea commandos flickered in a complex geometric pattern along her back.
"If there is any way that I can elucidate for you…"
Beatrice nodded. "Well, I have stopped fighting humans. And humans have stopped fighting me. And I have married Louis. And we have consummated our relationship, though he has yet to sire a child in my body with wombs, but that isn't required for the peace talks. What more is there to talk about?"
"Quite a forward wife for a Neo," Endless Song said, her voice full of mirth at Lou's mortification. He sat down beside Bea, whispering to her.
"You know, ah, you don't have to tell people…"
"I am attempting to train you out of your mortification," Bea said, cheerfully. "No one else in the United Human Polities is ashamed of or embarrassed by their sexuality. And furthermore, I enjoy bragging about you, my husband." She smiled, then looked down at Endless Song. "I think I am going to be as transformative for the Neopolitan Star Kingdom as they have been for me!"
"That seems quite likely!" Endless Song laughed. "But to tell you, honestly, these peace talks were arranged while our understanding of you was more rudimentary. You had not even chosen a name at that point, and we did not know the true extent of your hive mind's capacities or how it functioned. There are many different models we theorized about – for instance, if you were a consensus created by billions of individuals, rather than a distributed intelligence, then it was thought that a similarly complex diplomatic arrangement would be required as it would take to formalize the capitulation of any other interstellar state."
Bea nodded, slowly. "Well, it shall be much simpler."
"Indeed," Endless Song said. "Now, we must discuss how many of your worlds are oceanic. How many are arboreal?"
Bea cocked her head. "They...are all?" She looked at Lou, her antennas twitching. Lou felt confused as well. He glanced at Beatrice, then looked back at Endless Song as Beatrice continued: "I have terraformed each terrestrial world to support as wide a range of bioforms as possible, while also ensuring they are tectonically stable. While their current configurations aren't perfect, I will have to change each of them in a hundred or so million years once the continents shift again, I think I should be able to keep up with that rate of change…"
"Excellent," Endless Song said. "The Upkin Kindred list of reparations will begin at three planetary oceans, roughly on par with the Atlantic and Pacific, and arboreal regions. We have exact kilometer and biodiversity requirements, but-"
"Reparations?" Bea asked while Lou gaped in shock.
"Yes, of course?" Endless Song said, her voice growing slightly stern as she continued. "These peace talks did not begin with your marriage. They began with your surrender, Beatrice Benoit. And the Upkin Kindred want what they are owed – in the only thing that has any value: In land, sea and air."
***
"Of all the blaggardly, ungentlemanly, unfair, unkind, dishonorable…" Lou was caught from his pacing by Bea's wasp body. She took hold of him with her hands – so dainty and small and warm – and then levered him down into the bed. She swung her legs wide, her wings buzzing, and then molded her entire black and yellow body onto him. She was currently clothed in a ruffly dress that had been designed to accentuate her curves even more than they already were accented – and as she was built like an exaggerated hourglass, it was almost more lewd than if she had been naked. Then it got considerably lewder than that as she mashed her full breasts against his face and muffled his words in her sleek, black flesh.
"Be quiet, husband," Beatrice's moth body said, then turned to GF and Amy, who were both gaping at the display on the bed as Lou struggled – trying to both free himself while also not harming his wife's body. But since she felt so delicate and light, and he felt so wrathful that he wasn't sure he could control his own strength, he found himself ineffectually pushing at her shoulders, while her dark lips nuzzled against the top of his head, her nose breathing in his scent. "I need to have your advice, GF and Amy."
"Of course," Amy said.
"What can we do for you?" GF asked.
Bea's wasp body slid her hands along Lou's sides, catching his fingers and guiding his hands to her breasts.
"I…" Bea paused as Lou tried to balance pushing at his wife with not trying to grope her so openly in front of two others. He fell into a murky shadowy space between the two extremes, his fingers squeezing her, feeling the soft molding of her flesh against his fingers, while her waspy rump ground against him. Lou felt as if he was about to faint from the embarrassment...and the arousal. His cock was so hard he could hardly believe it. "The Upkin have demanded I cede territory to them, due to the losses they took in the war. I have gone through the cortical stacks that I have recovered, using the scanner you provided. None of them are Upkin."
"They wouldn't be," GF said, sighing. "The Upkin communities on Charon were mostly aquatic – they were wiped out by the concussive blast in the water. It'd have turned everything to powder and jelly."
"This is as I feared…" Bea said, her antennas drooping sadly. "I cannot provide reparations in the lost egos of those slain in the war, by me…"
Lou forced himself to shove the lovely wasp-woman off him and to the side. He sat up. "No!" he said, angrily. "I can understand their feelings – but this isn't a capitulation. You didn't surrender unconditionally – you sued for peace, a just peace, a lasting peace!" He stood up, his hands clenching. "There wasn't a single battle in one of your home systems, there are no troops on your home planets, nothing that would normally allow for the diplomatic pretext of annexation or-"
"You're thinking about this like a Neo!" Amy said, shaking her head. "It's not like there are people on those planets – there are bioforms, which are controlled by Beatrice." She looked at her. "It'd be like...moving your legs so someone else can sit in the same subway, right?"
Beatrice blushed. "It...would be a logistic challenge to...to move the subunits. It may be more efficient to simply recycle them and reconstitute them elsewhere, and leave the biomass for the Upkin…" She bit her lip.
Lou crossed his arms over his chest. "B-But those are your worlds. You built them!"
The warm, soft pressure of the wasp body pressing to his back made him tense. Her hands slid along his chest, her nose nuzzling against his neck, while Beatrice looked at him with her moth body. "I didn't build them," she said. "I just...tidied them."
"Tidied, yeah!" GF said, shaking his head. Then he paused. "Wait, shit, don't give them a damn thing."
"What?" Amy and Beatrice asked at the same time. Lou felt a momentary flare of happiness – someone agreed with his instinctive sense of raw aggrieved injury. Then he blinked and added his own 'what?' to the chorus, since...well...Godfucker. That was it, why would Godfucker take the hardline.
GF leaned back in his seat, tapping his fingers together. "The Upkin aren't just the Upkin. They kinda fall into five big groups – most of them are fine. The F.O.Bs – oh, uh, Friends of Bonobos, they're all the bonobos and apes and other Upkin that have decided to be socialized similar to bonobos. They're chill as hell, practically AnComs. But the Dolphin Clades and the Chimpbol are practically Feds. Who wants to bet they're more than happy to run out and get those planets – and have decades, centuries, to build population and power bases without UHP oversight. We're going to be going from a tentative to a factually interstellar species. The UHP will not survive the most fashy of the Upkin getting their own colony planets. Which, by the way, are all ecologically perfected paradise planets."
Lou blinked, then turned to Bea. "He's got a point."
Bea blushed. "B-But...why would Endless Song suggest such a thing? She's neither a chimpanzee nor a dolphin."
"Well, firstly, the Upkin groups aren't split on species lines. There's always variations – heck, I think more than half the Dolphin Clades aren't even dolphins. And secondly, she might just be happy to get them out of her hair." GF paused. "Her tentacles, at least."
Bea frowned. "I must consider," she said, then stood. Her moth body walked to the window, then leaped out – buzzing away as she did so. Her wasp body nuzzled against Lou's neck, kissing him gently. Her hands slid along his chest to his belly and his cheeks heated as he coughed.
"W-Well, uh...thank you for your advice, Amy, GF," he said, nodding to the two of them. Amy and GF nodded to him. Amy looked as if she wanted to ask something – but then as she watched one of Bea's hands dip lower, she closed her mouth, smiled, then stood as Lou gave her a serious look. She took his meaning, it seemed, as she and GF started for the door, with Amy saying.
"Goodnight!"
Then the door closed and Bea bit down on Lou's neck. Her tiny, sharp teeth dug into his skin and she made a very tiny 'nom' noise as she did it. Lou yelped. "What was that for?"
"I wished to bite you," she said, simply.
"Just...for no reason?" Lou asked, then squirmed as her dark hands reached down, undoing the latches on his belt, tugging eagerly. "I thought you needed to consider…"
"I can consider quite deeply while you are fertilizing me," Bea murmured.
This scene doesn't really advance the plot or deepen any characters, I just thought it would be fun if a sexy wasp girl got dicked down real good
She pushing at his pants with her fingers, her large, full breasts mashing against his back. Her voice was a cool breath against his ear as she murmured. "And it will take your mind off the assassins and politics and debates and put your mind onto filling my womb with your fertile seed."
"Well, I...uh…" Lou coughed, and as his pants slipped down, his member sprang free, thrusting eagerly into the air as her hands reached around, gripping him. It looked so akin to leather gloves, and yet she felt so warm, so soft. So alive. His heart hammered in his ears as he found it hard to think about anything but her fingers encircling his girth, lifting his member upwards as she nibbled gently upon his ear. "I...uh...a-are you sure we are ready for...for children?"
"Do not worry," she murmured in his ear. "I am still attempting to determine how we can interbreed properly. So, each…" She paused, then said, with slow, careful deliberation. "Each warm...heaping ball full of hot, hot cum you pump into my eager pussy will give me yet more variables to examine and methods to experiment with." Her hand fondled his balls, squeezing them together gently as she spoke and Lou felt as if he was about to pass out.
"Y-You...have been reading naughty books…"
"And watching naughty movies!" Beatrice said, her voice so chipper and happy that it startled a laugh from him. Her hands went to his hips and then shoved him forward. Her wasp body felt definitely a bit stronger, in terms of the upper body, than her moth form. But she still hadn't really fixed the mass difference – after all, she was still able to fly. The end result was that her shove sent her skidding backwards away from him, like pushing against a wall. Lou chuckled, softly.
"I am overcome," he said, his voice dry as he let himself topple forward into bed. He rolled with the sprawl and ended up on his back, arms flung wide, and he let his tongue loll out of his mouth, his eyes going crossed in a dramatic exaggeration of death and defeat. Bea placed her hands upon her fuzzy yellow hips and scowled at down at him.
"Are you mocking my lack of physical strength?" she asked.
"No," Lou said, drawing himself more fully onto the bed.
"I will have you know, my Terror Talons can sheer through the armor of your main battle tanks," she said, grinning slowly, her antennas twitching, rubbing together. "That is as much me as this body is." Her hands slithered along her belly, ruffling the yellow fur and rubbing along the smooth black skin that delineated the stripes on her form, until she cupped her large breasts. Her fingers found her jutting nipples and she gently rolled them between her fingertips, crooning softly. "But I believe you find this body far more appealing?"
Lou felt his mouth going dry as he watched her sauntering forward, rolling her hips. Her wings buzzed slightly, sending her flying up, then dropping down, her thighs spreading wide as she captured his cock with the softness of her thighs and her belly and the warmth of her cunt, pinning his member against his belly as her eyes looked into his eyes. She placed her smooth, rubbery hands onto his shoulders, pinning him down with a tiny shove. She grinned. "Do you not, my husband, Lou?"
Lou breathed in slowly, then whispered. "I...uh…" He gulped, slightly. "I am going to say...this is very surreal in a certain way." He gulped again. "You're Beatrice. But part of my brain is reminding me that you look nothing like her…" His hands gently gripped her hips as she leaned forward, her eyes sparkling.
"I am me, Lou, my husband," she whispered, and then she kissed him. And as her full breasts pressed to his chest, and as her hands cupped the back of her neck, and as her wings buzzed to press herself more fully against him, Lou felt that last bit of uncertainty slide away. This was Beatrice – his wife. And he needed her more than he needed oxygen. His hands gripped her ass, squeezing, then slid up to the small tail that protruded from above her rump, his hand gently gripping her stinger, which quivered and twitched. A small bead of white fluid dripped form it – which made Lou break the kiss, panting. He looked back down at the stinger, blinking a few times.
"W-What...does your stinger do?"
"Oh!" Beatrice said, her cheeks flushing gold. "I...well, I...was asking for advice on how to design the body from Amy. And GF."
"Oh no," Lou whispered.
"And GF had the excellent idea of a paralytic aphrodisiac!" Bea said.
"Oh no," Lou said, his eyes widening. "Bea!"
"He said that you would enjoy it a great deal, once you had been injected," Bea said, brightly. Then she paused. "Wait. But if you would not enjoy it before being injected, then...injecting you...would be immoral…" She rubbed her chin, thoughtfully, as Lou shook his head slightly.
"I swear," he murmured. His hands, despite his shock and his disgruntlement, were continuing to glide along her body, ruffling her fur, finding her breasts. She moaned, softly, sweetly, as his finger found and teased her nipple. "Those two are bad influences upon you…" He leaned upwards, taking her nipple into his mouth, tasting her alien skin, his eyes closing as he sucked upon her, drawing out a moan that was sweeter than ambrosia as her head rolled back, her thighs spreading wider, more wantonly. She was buzzing slightly, her entire body literally purring as the wing-muscles inside of her ticked over like cooling engines. Her fingers gripped Lou's head, keeping him against her nipple as she panted and mewed quietly.
"Oh Lou, oh yes, my husband, yes!" Beatrice's panting added some extra mechanics to what was the delightfully simple task of sucking on her nipple. Lou was more than willing to tilt and move his head around, to use the movement of her body to accentuate her pleasure. His free hand was gently sliding down her belly, to find the smooth blackness of her sex. She was soaked. Completely soaked. And...sticky?
His hand drew back and his mouth slipped away from her breast, leaving her glistening with his spittle – the accentuation all the more intense considering her already rubbery skin. Lou lifted his hand, looking at his fingers, then blinked as he spread his fingers, watching the sleek, golden web of glistening juice that connected his fingertips.
"Honey?" he asked.
"Yes, that...ah...Amy's idea!" Beatrice said, nodding. "It is quite good at lubrication. But it is also nutritious!" She paused. "W-Well, it mostly provides glucose and sugars. Which are produced from this body only when I am aroused by your pheromones. For other people, I produce no honey." She grinned. "That was my addition to this body, for I believed the additional sense of ownership would please you."
Lou's cheeks flushed. It did. It did a lot. But admitting that aloud felt so very unchivalrous. A proper nobleman didn't own his wife. They were partners, lovers, and shared souls. But…
God that was hot.
"Do you want to taste of my honey, my husband?" Bea's voice was a soft croon.
"Yes…" Lou nodded.
"Too bad," she said, grinning at him. "I need your cum inside of me more."
Lou felt a shivering, crawling rush through him. Ownership. Hot. His hands grabbed onto her wrists, holding her with just enough force to stop her arms from moving. Then he spun and pinned her to the bed, causing her to squeak as her stinger thrust up into the air, almost touching his back. He pushed her arms above her head, then grabbed onto her thighs with both of his hands , spreading her wide – making her squeak again as he slid backwards, careful to not impale himself on her stinger as he leaned forward and buried his face between her thighs. The softness of her fur and her cushy flesh was almost overwhelming – but what was the true focus of his entire universe was her cunt.
Her delicious.
Sweet.
Honey pot.
Lou should have felt ashamed for that pun, but he wasn't. He couldn't feel anything but the raw, masculine delight of hearing his wife moaning his name in orgasmic pleasure, her fingers digging into his scalp as her back arched and she cried out. "Yes yes I am...honey, yes, I, oh yes, being Lou climax of now!" She trembled, her thighs twitching as they locked around his head, trapping him in a cocoon of warm fuzz and waspish muscle. Her sex twitched against his tongue as he lapped at her juices, drinking her with greedy, wet, lewd noises.
Then she came.
And then his mouth flooded with her honey and Lou closed his eyes tightly, focusing upon the heat and wetness and sweetness – ignoring trifling things like oxygen.
Bea collapsed back onto the bed, twitching, trembling, making soft little mewing noises between her panting for oxygen, her antennas twitching and wriggling in time with her hips, which bucked upwards, as if begging for more fucking. Lou drew his face back, his mouth glistening with juices – when the door to the room opened. He froze, his eyes widening, his heart racing – but then saw his wife, Beatrice, walking inside. Her mouth body was more composed than he had expected, considering the last few times that he had seen her react to his…
Pleasuring.
That was about all that Lou could register before she pounced upon him, her legs and her four arms wrapping around him. Her tongue darted out, lapping at his face, her antennas curled up in eager, quivering bunches, between licks, she whispered. "Yes, love, love, I love, love, love, love you!" She licked him once more, and Lou laughed – one hand planted on the wasp's thighs, his other hand cradling the small of the moth's back. He kissed Beatrice and heard her moan through her wasp body. She took over for dialog, speaking in her husky contralto. "Yes, Lou, yes...squeeze me, hold me!"
Lou broke the kiss, panting. "I thought this body needed to be-"
"Fuck thinking, only fuck!" Bea said, then grinned. "I am playfully speaking with broken Anglec to make me sound more cock drunk than I am." Her grin faded. "T-Though, I am only partially joking, I am having a hard time not thinking of anything but your dick, Lou. But, I have put in safe guards to keep my primary functions working while I'm thinking of you. Or...as is the case...being plowed." She licked her lips. "By you. With your cock. Your really really really big cock."
"Yes, I, uh, got it," Lou murmured, his head spinning slightly.
Moth-Bea stood and helped to guide Lou to his feet. Lou grinned, then murmured. "Your husband is feeling lazy, Beatrice…" he said, trying to sound properly aristocratic. "Do you mind handling the...insertion?"
Both Bea's nodded as her moth body pressed up against his back, her breath a playful murmur in his ear. "I shall begin by spreading my body for you." Her lower hands gripped onto the black ankles that emerged from the thick poof of yellow fuzz that gave her wasp body accentuated calves. Her lower arms spread her wide and dragged her closer to the edge of the bed, so that the stinger thrust between Lou's legs, dripping onto the hardwood floor. Then Bea's upper hands reached down. One spread the black folds of her wasp body's sex, using two fingers to do so, while the other gripped the base of Lou's cock. She used this grip to gently grind against the sex of her other body, whimpering in his ear.
"I...can feel myself…" She whispered. "I...nnh! I can't...quite…" She panted.
"Focus, Beatrice," Lou murmured. "You can do it for your husband."
"Yes…" She sounded faintly dazed, even as she began to put pressure onto his back with her body, leaning into him so that he began to slide into her. She tensed and her hand gripped his cock even tighter, squeezing the base of him as he slipped, inch by inch by inch into the wasp body, whose eyes fluttered shut, whose delicate mouth opened wide, her pinkish tongue darting out as she trembled. Her wings pattered against the bed and she gripped onto the sheets with both of her hands, clenching tightly as her sex was filled...filled…
Lou's hips rocked against her fuzzy ones and his balls nestled against the curve of her abdomen as her stinger rested, lightly, against his back, the aphrodisiac venom that drooled from the tip sizzling against his skin like hot water. Lou panted, then murmured. "Excellently done, Beatrice."
"Ohmyyesthankyouhusband!" Her moth body gasped out, collapsing to her knees behind him, her face mashing against the small of his back and inhaling his scent with an addict's desperation. One of her hands cupped and squeezed his balls, while her other hand pressed to his back and Lou had no choice but to fuck. His hips drove into the wasp body before him, watching her full breasts bounce with every impact of his hips against her hips. Her eyes fluttered half shut and she moaned, her back arching as he felt the soft, cool lips of her moth body sucking on his balls, adding to the pleasure of the moment. Her fingers slid along his rump, pushing gently against him and...by now, Lou had nothing left in him to hold back the tide.
He thrust deep inside of his wife, looking down into her slitted eyes, and he came. He came so hard that his vision actually went white – he came so hard that felt like his heart had stopped and breath froze in his lungs. He came so hard that he nearly collapsed, but Bea's hands on his back, her pressure, managed to keep him standing and buried inside of her body. He saw that her skin was just thin enough that the warm, purple glow of his artificially enhanced seed rushing into her sex. He could trace it as it moved inside of her, then spread outwards into subcutaneous sacks underneath her skin, outlining an almost womb like shape that caressed around her belly.
He trembled and thrust once, twice, three more, stirring the cum inside of her and adding a few more desperate spurts, pushing his balls until they ached, wanting to give her everything that he could...and then, like a puppet with his strings cut, he collapsed forward. He just barely managed to put his hands onto either side of her, gasping as he kept himself from crushing her. He looked into her face as she panted, heavily – and her moth body took over the job of speaking.
"I will now be able to carry this seed inside of the containers in this body back to the hive, to place it within bioforms that can begin to study it and examine how best to combine our genetic material, considering that we evolved on two different planets. It is…" She paused. "It is going to be exciting and difficult in equal measures."
"Wait…" Lou panted. "I thought...this body had two wombs?"
"It does! Two containers for your seed!" she said, cheerfully. "So they can be transported back to gestation chambers!"
Lou nodded, his head pounding slightly from his climax. "I...uh...so, you should, have, internal wombs, so I can rub your belly when you're all big..." He mumbled, dazedly, as the two bodies – recovering faster than him – pushed him to his side and then onto his back.
Lou looked up at the ceiling – then blinked as his vision was filled by both of Bea's faces. They smiled down at him.
"That is sufficient for preliminary testing," Moth-Bea said.
"I theorize that we will need more, as samples are used up in experimentation," Wasp-Bea said.
Lou nodded. "Husbandly duty, much cum, got it." His eyes closed as he felt completely and totally spent. "Got it."
"My husband is most gracious and skillful!" Bea said – he wasn't sure which one – and then laid across his body. Wasp-Bea, considering the amount of titflesh he was feeling mashing up against him. "I now can both cuddle you and begin preliminary diplomatic interactions with the Upkin."
Lou groaned. He didn't want to think about the Upkin. "Wait...don't go yet…' He reached out towards the moth-Bea, who was starting to get up to go. "Endless Song can wait...I just need...ten minutes." he nodded.
Moth-Bea nodded, then sat back down on the bed. She caressed his hair, gently, her fingers weaving through him as she murmured, her voice soft. "My husband is very dutiful." She caressed the curve of his ear. "I love him very much, does he know that?"
"He does," Lou said, then grinned. He tilted his head around, to kiss her fingertip, then bite it gently. "Nom."
"That is the noise I create when I bite you!" Bea said.
"I stole it…" Lou closed his eyes. Despite his words of 'ten minutes', he felt like sleep was sweeping over him like a black winged angel.
"Our husband is a thief. But he eats pussy very well, and so, we – that is the royal we – shall forgive him."
That was the last thing Lou heard before he fell into a deep, happy slumber.
***
Beatrice and Lou sat before the artificial ocean, with Bea's hand resting in Lou's lap, while they waited for Endless Song to return.
"I hope my idea will work," Beatrice said.
"It will work," Father said, frowning as he stepped beside them, his hands tucked under his armpits. "You know...I didn't expect an AnCom to be so politically astute."
Lou nodded – he and Bea had laid out their ideas before father. It had been nerve wracking, he had spent the entire time certain that Father was going to either lose his temper, shoot a load of holes in it, or simply refuse to see what GF and he were concerned about. Or, worse, that Father would see Beatrice's idea and dismiss it out of hand. Not because it was bad...but because she was a bug. A roach. The things that he had spent decades immolating by the millions with planet-cracker warheads.
The water began to ripple before them – then cascaded away as Endless Song breached, the bulk of her body looking as beautiful under the light of twin suns as it would under one. The bioluminescent patterns along her back flickered and flowed into the pattern of the Upkin symbol – a double helix smoothly transforming into a ladder towards a single star.
Beatrice stood. She was dressed in the finest Neopolitan finery that they could fabricate, with colors that suited her blue/white body. She looked, in Lou's eyes, more lovely than starlight. But he had to admit, he was a bit biased. "Greetings, Ambassador Endless Song Echoing Upon the Depths."
"Greetings, Beatrice Benoit," the Upkin ambassador spoke. "Have you agreed to our surrender demands."
"I…" Bea paused. "Have not. They are unacceptable. However, I do have a compromise, if you wish to hear it."
"I do not," Endless Song said. "I am afraid, then, that there must be a return to hostilities – if capitulation is rescinded, the only alternative is war."
"That is true," Beatrice said, gulping slightly. "H-However...it will not be a war that includes the Neopolitan Star Kingdom. Nor, shall it be with the Federated States, nor the Plurality, nor the Anarchist Commune. The United Human Polities is a mutual defense and aid pact – and the Neopolitans and the AnComs have both accepted my surrender terms and find nothing to contest. The Federated States, too, have no demands upon my territory. This would be a war of aggression, started by the Upkin Kindred, with the express purpose of sizing the sovereign territory of another stellar empire. Which, I have been informed, is considered...somewhat uncouth among the AnComs and unchivalrous in the eyes of the Neopolitans. I...do not believe that I would be able to defeat the entire human race. I am fairly certain, though, that I can mount a credible defense against...you."
Lou squeezed her hand, tightly.
Bea squeezed back, her antennas twitching as she said: "However. I do have a compromise. If you wish to discuss it."
Endless Song was silent for a moment. Then, slowly, the water began to ripple and shimmer. Interlocking patterns of circular ripples formed and collapsed – and then the translation harness began to fill the air with a deep, mirthful laugh. "Hah! Excellent! Let us dicker! What is your compromise, Princess Benoit?"
Bea relaxed ever so slightly. "First, tell me, which of the Upkin Kindred wants territory in my lands?"
"The dolphins and the chimps," Song said, casually. "And their ego-sibs – oh, that is our term for beings that share the standard ego-pattern of a clade. We were all sculpted in laboratories during the Meme War, and we were made to fit molds. It is a fact of our existence, though we have begun to buck it over time." The massive blue whale sighed, making the water ripple around her. "But they are the most...expansionist of our clades."
Bea nodded. "I am willing to share these planets with them. My bioforms are, when not engaged in combat, are hard to distinguish from what you might consider an ecosystem. But more, I'm happy to tailor the ecological systems I have set up to ensure that everyone who lives on the worlds will live in comfort and happiness." She smiled, slightly. "My husband suggested that idea."
"I'm not sure that our settlers would appreciate that," Endless Song said, slowly. Lou frowned at that word – he knew that the whale wasn't using it frivolously or thoughtlessly. But was it a subtle clue? A warning? Or a threat?
"Then we shall have to prove to them that there is nothing to worry about," Lou said, stepping up to join the conversation. "My wife has said that she is interested in having a second wedding ceremony – one that more suits us, now that she understands humanity better." He placed his hand upon her shoulder. "That would involve taking her to Earth...where she could talk to the dolphin and chimp leaders, correct?"
Endless Song made a soft churring noise, which was translated to: "Hmm...you would be willing to wait five years to conclude this diplomatic meeting?"
Bea grinned, slightly. "Oh. I think I'll manage five years…" she glanced at Lou, her eyes sparkling with amusement. "Do you think I can handle five years?"
"My wife is seven hundred and fifty million years old," Lou said to Endless Song.
Water gouted out of her blow hole, gushing into the air. Lou yelped and interposed himself between his wife and the water and felt it soaking his entire body – even as Endless Song's translation harness tried to come up with a word in Anglec or Neo-Sino that matched the expression that she had used. Once the water was done splashing, the harness settled on one.
"Tabernac!"
***
Admiral Bosch knelt down and eyed the twitching, writhing creature before him.
"It's...not dead?"
"No."
Listens Deeply stepped over, his mechanical harness whirring and clattering like a metallic spider. "The bioform has been completely detached from the quantum communication network that it was made to be a part of. The biological ramifications upon its body have been hard to miss. The adrenaline – or, similar enough for genocide – glands have been completely pushed past their normal limit. This has created a cascading series of effects. Destruction of muscle tissue. Erosion of nerve clusters. Contractions that have shattered internal bones into powder. The end result is that this bioform will be dead within a few more days."
"They always were tough little things…" Bosch stood, frowning. "Humans used to pride ourselves on our survivability. Endurance predators who ran their enemies to death." He shook his head, then drew his pistol, aiming it down at the twitching roach.
"Do not discharge that weapon," Listens Deeply said, his mechanical gripper reaching out from his support harness and snatching at the barrel. Bosch, with long practice at keeping his weapon in his hand, jerked his hand up and glared down at the dolphin.
"Don't. Touch. Me."
"This creature's death must be monitored and handled carefully. For all we know, it will release a signal, a pulse, that can be detected by the greater hive mind."
"Is that a risk? The thing hasn't seemed to have even noticed that this bioform has been lost," Bosch said, glaring down at the twitching, gently keening bug. Sometimes, the sounds it made would crawl between audible and inaudible ranges of sound – it was like standing near a wailing banshee. "It'd be like me losing track of a single cell from my skin."
"Ha ha ha," Listens Deeply let out one of his eerie laughs. "Even a small risk must be quashed at this moment in our procedure."
Bosch's lip curled. "Of course." Unspoken was the word coward.
The rattling sound of the elevator filled the small, hot laboratory. Bosch turned and nodded as he saw one of his officers striding out of the elevator carriage. She immediately broke out into an intense sweat, her face beading with small droplets. She didn't show any discomfort, despite her uniform lacking environmental controls, and soon she was saluting Bosch. "Colonel-Admiral," she said, as he lifted, then dropped his hand, allowing her to stand at ease.
"What do you have for me, Lieutenant?"
"The bugs have finished their diplomatic interactions with the whale," she said.
"Wait."
The Federal lieutenant glanced down at Listens Deeply, who was glaring up at her with beady little eyes. "There is a whale? On this planet?" he chittered. "Who?"
"The Ambassadors name was Endless Song-"
Listens Deeply churred out a noise that the translation harness didn't have time to translate before he started to click and squeak. "I was not informed the Upkin had sent an ambassador! Why did you not inform me that they had sent an ambassador, Admiral Bosch?"
"It was irrelevant to Project Etemenanki." Bosch frowned.
"It has everything to do with Project Etemenanki!" Listens Deeply screeched. "This project was put into place under the assumption that I would reap the benefits! Benefits that cannot be allowed to be stolen by the Kindred!" He stepped closer, his mechanical grippers flailing in fury. "Me! My pod! My kind! Not the porpoise loving, bonobo worshiping, furries!" He screeched that last word – and Bosch knew, faintly, that it referred to a subculture of degenerates who sought to anthropomorphize humans or...make humans into animals, he hadn't really paid much attention, beyond knowing that Listens Deeply used the word to refer to Upkin who tried to act more akin to baseline humans. "I didn't fly four light years and spend two years out of ice so that I would watch the krill-sifters take everything I have worked for!"
Bosch glared down at Listens Deeply, feeling his loathing grow deeper and deeper with every irritating, warbling word that the dolphin said. He glanced at the Lieutenant, who looked a bit discomforted. But at his glare, she spoke: "T-The, uh, the Ambassador and the bugs reached a deal, a settlement. Three worlds, with the bugs remaining on them-"
"Three!? Three colony planets!?" Listens screeched. "You've seen the fast pass probe data, Bosch! You've seen the paradise planets! The Lebensraum!"
"Be quiet!" Bosch snarled.
"You must stop them," Listens Deeply said. "You have to stop them, the Upkin Kindred cannot-"
Bosch brought his pistol around and Listens Deeply had enough moment to twitch his blowhole before the stuttering pulse of laser light hit him – a single short pulse to burn deep, then a second, faster strobe that struck through the hole burned into his skull. The combined blasts, timed to prevent the aerosolized blood from acting as ablative armor, flickered past so quickly that, to Bosch, it was a single flash, then pop as the dolphin's skull exploded from the inside out under the pressure of his boiling blood. The long gray body twitched, then stumbled, then collapsed, the signals from his nerve harness to his mechanical legs getting confused by the spasmodic twitching of what little nerve tissue wasn't completely disrupted by a wave of red steam.
The Lieutenant gaped at Bosch, who holstered his pistol. For just a moment, Bosch had the expression of a man looking at an oncoming train. Then he settled his face, squared his shoulders, then turned to his subordinate. By the time he completed the heel pivot, he looked as if he had always been in control.
"Toss it in the corner – pack everything up." He nodded. "Begin to pulse the data back to Mars on the lighthugger's com laser. Maximum encryption." He frowned. "I want our Tower of Babel finished before we're halfway home."
He stepped over to the console that controlled the prototype and flicked on the speaker.
"P L E A S E… L E T … M E...D I E…" the warbling, modulated voice of Echo-3 came from the speaker.
"Don't worry," Bosch murmured. "I am told cryogenics...is a great deal like death…"
"N...O…"
Bosch tapped the button to begin the freezing process.
***
"Is it safe?"
"Why would it not be safe?"
Amy sighed, then rubbed her temples. "Okay, Godfucker. What happens when you hit 90% C?"
"...you go really fast?" GF's brow furrowed. "And time gets wonky."
Lou watched the two AnComs, frowning, while he worked to set up the disassembles. By long Benoit tradition, the servitors had been recycled first, leaving the task to any living Benoits to take down their manor house. The disassemblers were long strips of preloaded nanomachines, simple ones that fit into the Neopolitan ethos, and they required a careful set up. You needed to arrange them so that the swarms of nanorobots they released wouldn't run into each other and begin to disassemble one another, while still making sure that they still got everything that wouldn't disassemble itself over time.
"My husband is very industrious," Bea said, cheerfully. Her moth body was seated upon the bed.
"He's very weird," Amy said, grinning. "This is labor for labor's sake – eccentric in the extreme."
"Working has value," Lou murmured. "Awareness of what it takes to do things is an important thing to remember." He used his thumb to flatten the strip down against the edge of the wall, frowning as he eyeball the math, his tongue sticking out of the corner of his mouth. "But I'm afraid, I have to echo GF here: Why wouldn't it be safe?"
Amy sighed. "Okay. Beatrice…" She pointed at her. "Is a quantum entangled communication network sustaining a mind. All the different bioforms she's in are maintaining and continuing her thought-patterns, in the same way our brains do, just...distributed." She nods. "Now. What happens if a chunk of your brain – even a small chunk of your brain – begins to function erratically. Say, if a chunk of it was processing one second for every three seconds that passed in the rest of the brain?"
There was a long, long pause.
Lou looked at Bea.
Bea frowned.
"Y-You've gone...near light, right?" he asked.
Bea shook her head. "No. My ships never went faster than one tenth the speed of light. That, in fact, is one of the major reasons why I had such a hard time doing battle with you. You were always faster. That is why I began to study ways to try and move faster than the speed of light, which produced…" She made a face. "Proxima."
"How did that happen?" GF asked.
"I do not know," Bea said, shrugging. "I created a bioform that I believed could travel faster than the speed of light. It entered into the star, and then the star destroyed itself."
Lou blinked, then frowned. "Amy, access our records: Are there any Shavanti in the Alpha Centauri trinary?"
Amy closed her eyes, put her fingers to her temples. "The sum collected total of human knowledge says...yes!" she said, cheerfully. "We've detected three distinct Shavanti communication signals."
"I don't think that Bea did anything to Proxima," Lou said, slowly.
"Are you saying the Shavanti destroyed Proxima?" GF asked.
"I mean, they did demand that we never try faster than light travel," Lou said, nodding. "They said that if we did, that they'd destroy us – and we were already fighting a war on one front." He bit his lip, then shuddered. "Imagine if what happened to Proxima happened to...SOL…"
GF hissed. "Fuckery Christing shit, no! No, I will not imagine that."
Bea blinked a few times. "This explains a great deal of early communications that I found baffling!" she said, cheerfully. "The mystery has been resolved!"
"Well...what's the worst thing that happens?" GF asked. "If she goes 90C?"
"Her brain breaks and she dies," Amy said.
"...that's not okay!" GF exclaimed.
Beatrice frowned. "I do not think my brain is that fragile," she said.
"A human brain can be killed by being bumped hard enough," Amy said, frowning. "We should have some kind of test or plan or something."
"Yeah, what test or plan can we use that would work without putting her at risk?" Lou asked, stepping over and placing his hand protectively on his wife's shoulder.
"You two had sex last night, right?" Amy asked.
"W-What!?" Lou exclaimed.
"Yes, vigorously!" Beatrice said, cheerfully.
"And yet, we didn't notice, and had to ask," Amy said, nodding.
"To be fair, that's because we were fucking too," GF muttered.
"Shush," Amy said, waving her hand. "We didn't notice because your bugs kept on working and doing what they were doing. How? Did you make a buffer between yourself and them?"
"Yes!" Beatrice said, cheerfully. "Oh! I see your idea, yes, I just need to create a similar arrangement of buffer...ah yes! I know precisely how to do it! I will breed bioforms that think three times faster than I normally do, and then route my thoughts on the ship through them, so that they will be upshifted to match the thoughts of the rest of my intelligence. That will mean I'll have to have more bioforms on the ship…" She rubbed her chin. "But...that is all for the best, since it will give me something to tinker with while...Lou is…" Her antennas drooped. "Asleep."
Lou blushed. "About that…" He coughed. "Beatrice." He stood up a bit taller. "I shall not."
Bea turned to face him, her brow furrowing. "Excuse me?"
"I said that I shall not," Lou said, again, trying to sound as serious as he could. "I shall not go into cryogenic storage." He took her hand, squeezing. "You once said that it would be a million eternities-"
"One million, seven hundred and eight thousand, two hundred eternities, approximately," Bea murmured, squeezing his hand with all four of hers.
"Yes," Lou said, smiling. "All of them alone. But you will never be alone again, Beatrice. For as long as I live."
Bea's eyes glimmered. Then she threw her arms around him, squeezing him tightly. Then her legs scissored around his waist as he found himself supporting her entire body – easy, considering the weight. Less hard, considering how fiercely her wings her beating in her excitement, and even less easy considering how Amy and GF were right there, laughing as Beatrice kissed his face, his nose, his lips, his forehead, his neck, all of him. Her hands caressed him and she whispered. "Love love love love you you you you you!" Her antennas were twitching so excitedly that they batted at his head.
Lou laughed, softly. "H-Honey, the AnComs are right there."
"Don't stop on my account," GF said, cheerfully.
The door opened and Beatrice's wasp body stepped in, then grabbed both of the AnComs by the ears, then dragged them out.
"...I love you too, you know," Lou said, grinning.
"Make love to me vigorously!" Bea purred.
A knocking at the door interrupted Lou before he could agree to that, and he managed, just barely, to disentangle himself from Beatrice before the door opened and his mother entered. She smiled as she did so, then frowned as she saw that only half of the disassemblers had been deployed. "Lou, we have a schedule to keep," she said – which they did, even if it felt faintly delusional when contrasted against the vast sweep of time and space ahead of them. Lou gulped, then blinked as Beatrice piped up.
"Lou is not going into cryogenic storage!" she said. "He is going to remain awake for the entire voyage."
Mother gaped at Lou. "You what?"
"I...was going to broach that slightly more delicately, Beatrice," he said.
Beatrice's antennas twitched down. "Oh. Right. I apologize, Lou, I forgot t-that you have to go, physically, to locations and communicate with people other than me…"
Lou sighed. "Mother, Beatrice cannot go into cryogenic storage – for her, it will be years of subjective time before she can see me again. Years alone." He drew himself up a bit taller. "What husband would leave his wife alone for such a time?"
Mother looked aside – and Lou immediately felt like a heel. And a liar. His mother had spent years apart from Father during the Bug War. The years had been shortened by trips into the family cryocrypts, but there was a limit to what even that could do to take the sting out of separation. And there was the deeper lie, the wound, the hurt that he had yet to even touch, simply because he had no idea how to begin to broach it.
Father had dishonored himself, with an AnCom woman. The fact that Amy had ceased even talking to Father save for when she absolutely had to didn't change that fact. And yet...if he brought it out, it would cause a rift between his mother and his father. And yet, if he didn't, then what was his honor even worth?
Mother sighed. "Sometimes, the affairs of state require one to make sacrifices," she said, nodding slightly. "But...a year is not so long as all that. And it will give you more time to get to know one another."
Lou breathed slowly out. "I'm glad. There will need to be some modifications made to the lighthugger…" he said. "And we...will need to determine how to best protect Beatrice and myself from the stabdrive…" He frowned.
In the end, the solution proved incredibly simple: When they told Father the idea, he chuckled. "Oh, that's simple: We simply burn at one gravity for the entire trip, rather than stabbing and then cruising. Stabbing is, theoretically, more efficient in terms of reaction mass, but we can top off the tanks with matter from this system…" He shook his head. "It's not trouble, no trouble at all. And...I'm proud of you, son."
Lou felt a twinge in his chest. Father stood from where he had been placing the disassembler. "It is, after all, what a husband should do, if he can. To sacrifice for his loved one."
Lou clenched his jaw.
Maybe...it was the fact that he was married now, and the idea of causing pain or dishonor to Beatrice was as violently wrenching as the idea of losing his own arm. The hypothetical horror he had about cheating on a loved one had become practical, and it had made his father's crime all the more offensive to him now. And maybe, part of it had been hanging out with irreverent, uncontrolled, wild and free AnComs for so long.
But whatever the reason, Lou found that repeating the Neopolitan mantras about how they used the totality of human experience, that hypocrisy was just another tool in the vast collection of abilities, skills and weapons that humanity had collected in its long, long history...was not enough.
"Ah, so, is that why you fucked Amy?" Lou snapped.
Silence hung in the room. Beatrice, who was standing near the door, blinked, her antennas twitching curiously, while Mother and Father exchanged a look.
"Of course he did," Mother said, her brow furrowing. "She's a nubile, attractive gynoid without morals. Why wouldn't he?"
Lou blinked as Father chuckled, then stood. "I mean, it's not as if mother doesn't have her stable," he said, nodding. "You have beamed ahead to make sure that any of your hands have been reassigned to other areas?"
"Oh, I traded them off to the Machi and the Molyneaux before I even left, I'm sure that Lady Dresin is already enjoying the fellow with-" Mother started, smiling.
"I beg...your pardon?" Lou stammered, his eyes widening as he looked from his Mother to his Father. His mouth opened, then closed again, then opened. "I...I beg your pardon?"
Father frowned, slightly. "Louis, you are a Neopolitan prince – do you not know the maxims? Hypocrisy is-"
"It's one thing to do something dishonorable to win in the field of battle!" Lou snapped, his face growing hot, his voice getting higher pitched. "It's another thing entirely to preach, to your entire interstellar kingdom, about chastity and abstinence and control, then behind closed doors, to engage in these...games!" He threw up his hands, furiously. "I-"
"You enjoy relaxing – partying, watching films, reading books, with AnComs!" Father exclaimed. "Your friend is named Godfucker for goodness sake, and he and Amy have been carrying on and they're not married!"
"It's not about the sex, you blackguard!" Lou shouted. "It is about the lies! The deception! The...the...dishonor of it!" He clenched his hands. "The Kingdom is about taking the finest parts of humanity and exemplifying it – not just about wearing fancy surcoats and having castles!" He shook his head, trembling with rage. "I...I...I must...I must pack!" He turned and he stormed towards the door, snatching Beatrice's hand up and stomping towards the door.
"Louis!" Father shouted – but Louis slammed the door in his face.
***
Lou sat upon a small hill, watching as the country manor that he had lived in dissolving away in a swirling mass of gray goo. The dome was primed with AnCom style disassembly swarms. The instant the last shuttle left, the whole place would be swept and returned to the ecology that had been here when they had arrived. Charon would barely notice humanity's second departure, a sharp distinction from the cataclysmic detonations that had scoured humanity away previously.
Lou felt intensely desolate at the thought. Beatrice leaned against him, six hands caressing him. "I am sorry your family are blackguards…" She said, gently, speaking in unison as he closed his eyes and let himself lean into her two bodies.
"It's okay…" Lou said. "Let us focus on what is positive…" He smiled. "The Procyon embryo is loaded on the lighthugger. The Plurality ambassador never even woke up – he'll be reformed back in SOL, with experts, which will make things easier. And the lighthugger is full of all those cortical stacks. You're going to be returning to SOL with six hundred thousand people thought lost." He smiled. "That is all good."
"Yes. And yet...your parents remain blackguards," she said, sighing slowly.
"And yet," Lou said, then shook his head.
"And-" Bea stopped. "Nevermind!"
Lou opened his eyes, frowning. Both of Bea's bodies were looking quite discomforted.
"What?" Lou asked.
"N-Nothing," Beatrice said, blushing.
"...is everything going well with transporting your bioforms to the lighthugger?" he asked – Beatrice had been busy packing up and cleaning herself off the world as well. Lou had not wanted to watch, but he could imagine the sight of the bioforms tossing themselves into the recycling pits, the crystalline lattices being torn down. He didn't want to see that. He preferred to instead focus upon his wife's bodies, who were both so very beautiful. They were going to be riding up in a normal shuttle, rather than a cargo lighter.
"Y-Yes, everything is fine!" The wasp body said, standing up and stretching. "I must simply stretch and go and go and...and investigate...a...thing! That has happened. And is fine."
Lou sprang to his feet. "Is something the matter?" He looked from Bea to Bea – but before he could get any more information from them, GF came jogging up, smiling cheerfully.
"Hey, you two ready to get to the shuttle?"
"No," Lou said.
"Yes!" the two Bea bodies said. "I mean, you can take Lou, and I can catch up." Her moth form nodded hurriedly.
"Okay, what is going on?" Lou asked, frowning.
"Nothing!" Her wasp form said. "There is nothing at all in the breeding caves that needs our attention."
Lou pursed his lips. "GF, can you do me a favor and ensure that my wife doesn't prevent me from investigating this...nothing?" he asked, frowning at GF, who snorted and then put his hands upon the two bodies, who sagged in defeat.
"W-We just wanted it to be a surprise," Bea muttered, quietly.
Lou grinned, slowly. He was beginning to think that this was nothing much to worry about – but seeing Beatrice squirm was ever so amusing. He stepped close to her wasp-body, leaning in close, whispering. "Would it happen to be a new bioform?"
"No! That is definitely not it!" she said, nodding, her wasp-body nodding as well, even more forcefully.
Lou was able to requisition a skimmer cycle easily enough. The ground effect vehicle whisked along the vast, flat plains of Charon as he carefully skirted around the thicker forests, not wanting to try and recreate any harrowing sci-fi chases he had seen during the AnCom's movie nights. In the end, he came to where Beatrice's little colony had been set up. The entire place had been deconstructed with the same orderly nature that he had seen in the human settlement – it barely looked recognizable. But the narrow canyon that she had used to gestate and breed bioforms remained. Lou swung himself off his skimmer cycle, adjusted his face mask to make sure it was secure, then started towards the cave, humming cheerfully.
He found that there were no bioforms left. Even the glow-worms had been recycled. But still, he followed the very same passage that he had taken to find her moth form, back in the first days of their marriage. His light shone down upon the chamber – and he swung it around, slowly, taking his time. Enjoying this.
It was amazing what a few weeks of married life would do to a man's perception of the world around him.
The light shone on a large gestation pod that had been split open.
It shone upon a long, glistening strand of white material that clung to the ground like a rope.
It shone upon a pair of narrow, black legs, ending in dainty feet, with small chitin plates that covered the shin to the knee joint, then from the knee joint to the thigh. Segmented thighs connected to a curvy, cushy black belly, which led to a pair of breast-plates that were segmented away from the rest of the body. And there were six arms – fanning out from the sides of her body, three on each side, with a cute, delicate face that looked delightfully kissable, despite the mandibles, the fangs, and the eight eyes – fanned out in patterns of four – across her forehead. They blinked in a rippling pattern as Lou saw that, somehow, his wife had managed to stick herself to the wall with thick webbing strands, wrapped around her wrists, her waist, her belly, her hips, and one of her ankles.
She squirmed…
"It's not funny!" she exclaimed. "Stop laughing!" She paused. "Y-You brought a knife, right?"
TO BE CONTINUED!
Hey, Dragon Cobolt here! Hope you're enjoying Pax Multi. If you want to keep enjoying it for free, the next chapter will be up next monday! But if you want to read it all right now, you can buy it on Amazon! Thanks for reading! Leave comments, each comment is a gold coin in my dragon horde. ...hoard? Hoarde!
"No, I do not have a knife, my lady," Lou said, his voice somehow not managing to fall into giggles once more. But it was hard to resist the urge. His wife, Beatrice Benoit, a seven hundred million year old hive mind with her consciousness spread across three solar systems and several trillion bioforms, had managed to get her latest body stuck fast into a few strands of spiderwebbing. This made sense, considering her latest bioform was a spider: Six arms, two legs, eight eyes which fanned out to either side of her delicate nose, cute little fangs, the whole deal.
"Darn…" Bea scowled, her mandibles – which emerged from her lips like a secondary set of jaws – clashing with an irritated click before retracting again. The effect was a bit disconcerting, but not...entirely unappealing, which said a great deal about her ability to design a body that rode the line between insect and human.
And my tastes, possibly, Lou thought. They might be shifting more towards the insectoid. And that may be worrying, save...she's so darn cute. He grinned, then walked forward. "How, exactly, did you manage this?" He swept the beam of his flashlight along her body, down to where her ankles were wrapped in a thick stand of cobwebs.
"I…" she blushed, her mandibles twitching out of her mouth in a little, nervous 'punching' gesture, one two, left right. "Promise to not laugh."
"I swear, by my honor as a gentleman and your husband," Lou said, solemnly, then placed his hand upon his breast.
Bea sagged in her restraints. She actually had two arms that were freed – her lower left and lower right, but they were both tucked up against her soft, black belly to keep herself from getting them stuck, as she had with her four other arms – two of which were pinned above her head, the other two were stuck to the walls by the spiderwebbing, cruciform style. She looked away, then muttered. "I-I had just hatched this form a-and was getting used to how it moved. Then you! You kissed me! A-And...well, um, there's...certain biological functions that are more closely related than I thought…"
"Your spinnerets?" Lou asked, blinking as he looked down, his brow furrowing.
Bea's face flushed. "I-It only will happen this one time! I am quite sure of it!"
Lou's brow furrowed. "But how did...all this?" His gesture took in the entire array of spiderweb bondage.
"I tripped!" She exclaimed.
"You...manage the movement of billions of bodies and you tripped? In such a way to ensnare yourself like this?" Lou asked, arching an eyebrow.
Beatrice flushed. "If I had done so intentionally, I would not have done so in a cave! A-And I would have ensured that you were properly dosed with an aphrodisiac, to overcome your instinctive Neopolitan urges towards decorum." She sighed, slightly. "I would be bound up, and say 'oh no, I have been accidentally bound up!' and then you would lose your control and ravage me, as you did a few nights hence." She sighed, slightly.
Lou grinned, ever so slightly. "You know, there is...ah...well, there…" He coughed, his cheeks darkening despite his attempts at bravado. "You know, there are limits to even my restraint and decorum, Beatrice."
Her eyes blinked in a rippling pattern – starting at her left, then working inwards, then outwards, so that her leftmost eye blinked the last. Then Beatrice squirmed and wriggled, sitting up as much as she could within her webbing. "Am I to be ravaged? This body has brand new enhancements to various parts," she said, excitedly. "For instance, it has internal wombs this time!"
"That has been something I've been meaning to ask," Lou said. "How does your wasp body...the...it…" He carved, in the air, the shape of her waist.
"Oh! I'll show you once we arrive upon the lighthugger," Beatrice said, nodding before she started to wriggle again. "I-I mean...once you have freed me from this restraint. And you have not ravaged me without mercy or restraint, f-for it would be a very undecorous thing to do!" She winked with all four of her left eyes at once.
Lou rubbed his chin, regarding her slowly. His tongue darted along his lips, and he murmured, softly. "You know, you have outdone yourself, pushing the limits of what humans find attractive…" he murmured, softly.
Lou takes hideous advantage of this poor spider. What a cad!
His hand slowly reached out and he began to slide his fingers along her belly, finding that her chitin plates were softer than they looked, dimpling like skin. His finger found the edge of one and he teased it, drawing a soft hissing-chittering noise from her. Her eyes drooped and her head hung forward slightly as she wriggled in the webbing that kept her from moving.
Save, of course, for her lower arms.
Her hands gripped his wrist, and she tried to drag his arm down to the joining between her legs. Lou laughed, then jerked his hand free, turned, and grabbed her hands with his, before pinning them back against the webbing. As they stuck, he worked his fingers free with a little smile. "Naughty, naughty…" His tongue slid along his lips again and Bea let out a frustrated whine. Her thighs trembled as she tried to squirm – but the signs of her arousal were so very apparent. Her sex glistened and her juices dripped along her thighs, while his fingers slipped against her belly, finding another seam of chitin plates. He crooked his finger, teasing her more, and Bea squirmed even more, straining against the webbing.
"Touch me…" she whispered.
"I am," Lou crooned, his fingers sliding down to touch the inner side of her thighs, caressing slowly, slowly. He almost reached her knee before she clacked her mandibles together and tossed her head to the side.
"Not there!"
"Oh, here, then?" Lou knelt. His lips kissed the front of her shins. He licked up, moving to the seam between shin and knee. His tongue teased there and his eyes closed as he breathed in her almost imperceptible scent.
"Upon sex!" she gasped. "I put nerve endings there, use them, foolish husband!" Her mandibles twitched and she closed all eight of her eyes at once, her arms straining against her webbing. Lou chuckled, then kissed the broad flat sweep of her thigh, then nuzzled against her hip, his other hand gently sliding along the side of her leg, making her tremble and twitch delightfully. His palm glided along her belly and Beatrice whined out: "Pleeeeease!"
"You say you put the nerve clusters there, my delightful wife," Lou whispered, kissing along her belly, nuzzling near the tiny divot that served as her belly button – a delightful addition, despite the utter lack of any reason for a spider-humanoid hybrid bred in a biotech cloning facility to have a belly button. His tongue traced it with slow, deliberate maliciousness, and watched as her face tightened up more and more. The tiny squirms that she could manage despite being webbed to the wall were just...utterly delicious. Subtle, but so very enticing. "And yet, it seems like every time I kiss you, your entire body feels it. Are you sure you did not place a nerve cluster...here?" He kissed the side of her belly and Beatrice trembled, her eyes fluttering.
'
I-I, uh, am reminded of when I first orgasmed. When you played with my antenna." She gulped. "T-This...I...am...is this what love does?" She moaned as he kissed the underside of her breast. "I...oh Lou!" Because while Lou was enjoying torturing her, there was a limit to what he could do to himself. And her nipples were right there, hard and eager and just waiting for him to fasten his lips around them and suck. His eyes closed and he sucked upon her and Beatrice tried to arch her back against him, her hands tightening as she panted softly and moaned his name out like a prayer. "Oh Lou! Oh Lou, oh yes!"
Lou's fingers found her sex and he plunged his fingers in, crooking them up – and then jerked his mouth away from her breast in shock. Her sex had tightened around his fingers and he felt something else gripping them right back – a muscle tightening around him like a circular vice. His mouth opened, then closed as he looked down. The tightening feeling changed and he felt the 'touch' slip from his knuckles to his fingertips, back down again as Beatrice, panting, whispered. "I...told you I...improved my...cunt." She grinned, eagerly.
"Oh my…" Lou murmured, his fingers remaining still within her. Then, slowly, he smiled. "They must take a great deal of focus, do they not?" He licked his lips as Beatrice, looking as smug as a spider could be, nodded. Well. She tried to nod, considering how she was still webbed to the wall. "I am quite impressed, my wife...I wonder how you will keep up with this, though." He crooked his hand and his thumb pressed right against her clit. He began to rub her as he added a third finger to her sex, plunging into her and fingerfucking her with the casual confidence he had learned across two of her bodies. Her eyes went wide, then drooped to a jagged, irregular pattern of half lids. Not every eye drooped the same amount, giving her a punch-drunk expression that only accentuated the way her mandibles hung limply out of the side of her mouths and her tongue lolled against her chin. Her cunt-muscles spasmed around his fingers, trying to grip him, to tease him the same way she had...instead, it felt more like the frantic grasp of her hands during the hottest moments of their lovemaking.
"Hnnnn!" Beatrice whined out a thoughtless, animal noise – intense and eager and needy – and her back arched as her sex spurted along his palm and his wrist, soaking him with her pleasure as Lou leaned down, drinking from his palm and her sex with a worshipful moan. His nose flared, breathing in the smell of her arousal as he drank and he licked and she trembled and whimpered.
"How's that?" Lou slid his hand away, licking his fingers slowly clean.
"My husband is the best of all husbands in the entire galaxy, yes…" Beatrice mumbled, her eyes closing as she lolled her head to the side. "He will now impregnate this body."
"Will he now?" Lou asked, starting to stand up. His member was achingly eager. The taste of her, the feel of her, the webbed up submission of her, all of it was driving him utterly wild. His hands reached down and he pushed his leggings down just enough to free his cock – and once again, he felt a kind of...visceral thrill of raw, intense masculinity at his size, at his girth, at the way that Beatrice started to hyperventilate at the sight of him, all eight of her eyes locked upon him. But...Lou chuckled and shook his head. "I'm quite absurd, aren't I?" He murmured, his hand caressing his member slowly, lifting himself up. "Proud over this, instead of these…" His other hand caressed her cheek.
"Your cock is extremely the most!" Bea said, her voice stumbling over itself as she spoke, nodding eagerly – but then she closed half her eyes, shook her head. "I...that is, I find your masculinity to be extremely pleasing. W-While I am not human, and all that I have learned is from what I have read and what I have seen...y-you have...an extremely…" She blushed, hard, her dark black cheeks turning a reddish color. "Your masculinity is gentle and kind and warm and it fills me with great joy, and it is deeply related to...your body and your mind and how they work together, and...and...I like seeing you happy about how you are. Your euphoria makes me pleased." She paused, her tongue flicking along her left mandible. "It is my euphoria. And so, exalt in the immense size of your member! And then thrust it into my eagerness and fill me with your seed!"
Lou blinked, feeling as if he had almost gotten the bends from the swerves between heartfelt honesty and lewdness. Then he chuckled, softly. "So, you like big cocks?"
"Extremely!" Bea said, her mandibles clacking. "But I mostly like your big cock, my husband."
Lou nodded. "Okay…" he said, rubbing his finger along his chin, looking down. "How to best...deal with this…" Since, well, her back was webbed to the wall, and her sex was angled downward. Sliding into her would be...tricky...he shook his head. "I wish I did have a knife, so that I could cut you free. Lifting your legs up would be easy, then-"
Beatrice tugged her legs free, then arched her back and lifted her legs upwards, so that they were pressed against her shoulders in an impressive display of belly muscles and flexibility both. Her toes pressed to the webbing behind her shoulders, sticking there with a soft squish sound. Lou gaped at her.
"You could free yourself the whole time!?" he asked.
"Yes!" Beatrice said, then beamed. "Hah! The deception was successful!" She grinned. "It would be extremely silly of me to create a body that could emit webbing and not escape from it. You see, there are gripping hairs, similar to those hypothesized in the transhumanist fiction that Godfucker ensured I saw, the Spiderman, and it's spin-offs, Spiderliv, and Spidergwen and-"
Lou grabbed her chin, leaned in, and shut her up with a playful snarl, his tongue thrusting into her mouth as her mandibles pressed against his jaw, caressing him as her tongue and his played together and his cock, drawn almost by magnetism, plunged into her tight, hot, wet spider-cunt. The exotic taste of her mouth and the feel of her mandibles and the warmth of her breath – spicy and hot as he drew his mouth back, drove him into a wild frenzy. Lou didn't bother with gentleness. He simply fucked her against the wall, hard enough that the webbing made a soft squelching sound that was nearly as loud as his dick plunging into her again and again and again as he slapped his balls against her ass-chitin.
"Yes! Yes! Yes! Fuck me, my husband! Fuck me! Fuck me!" her eyes blinked in a flickering pattern – from left to right, then from right to left as she trembled around him – her sex muscles stroking his cock like he was being given a handjob while fucking her, at the same time. Even if she hadn't been working to show off, Lou wouldn't have lasted long.
As it was?
"Beatrice!" He trembled and his balls clenched as he gushed into her, his cock throbbing as his cum painted the inside of her womb, again and again and again as his hips rocked, slamming against her, fucking her so messily that her thighs and his were both soaked by his glowing purple cum. His eyes half lidded and he watched the delicious tiny jiggles of excitement that caused her mandibles to twitch and flex at the air, her mouth hanging open as she panted.
"Ah...now I see the pleasure of having an internal womb…" She mumbled, nodding. "This is much better. Oh wow. Wow. Wow." She giggled, sounding half drunk. "I...can feel your seed finding my eggs. Fertilizing them. Wriggling into me." She squirmed and wriggled, her eyes closing. "Mmm, my husband has bred me. Filled my womb up and now I have his child, yess…"
Lou, who had been wrung out and nearly completely spent when it came to energy and lust...felt his cock suddenly steel hard again.
"L-Lou?" Beatrice asked.
Lou growled…
And started to thrust again.
***
"What took you so long?" Godfucker asked, curiously as Lou swung off the skimmer bike. "Also, where's the...oh!" He blinked as he watched Lou stand and realized that the large black cape that Lou had was, in fact, his limp, twitching wife. Her body was dressed in a loose black sheet that wrapped around her body, while her eight limbs were wrapped around Lou, evenly dispersing her weight across his form. Not that she weighed much – even this form, which wasn't built with flying in mind, tended towards the light and fragile.
"My wife's most recent bioform had some teething issues," Lou said, casually. "I had to help her out of her own webbing."
"Heh," GF said.
Beatrice mumbled under her breath. "Something something fucky fuck…" She bit at Lou's neck. "Nom nom nom."
"Did she say something something-" GF started.
"Ahem!" Lou put his most serious, most focused Neopolitan Space Prince face on as he stood a bit taller. "Where's the last recycler?"
"Right there," GF nodded with a grin. Lou took one last glance back at what had been humanity's first diplomatic meeting place with the Bugs. After two centuries of warfare, it felt strange that the only thing to mark this place was a faint discoloration in the grass and the meadows, and that once the last recycler recycled itself...there'd be nothing left within a fortnight. He shook his head, then put his foot on the back of the skimmer bike and shoved it towards the cycler with a grunt. Suspended in its ground effect field, the skimmer skidded along the air as if it was ice and ran, nose first, into the recycler's maw. The nanites worked, blurring the air and turning the bike into so many simple, bio-degradable molecules.
"Come on, Beatrice. Are you ready to see how humans travel the stars?"
"Yesssss…" She mumbled, then bit his neck again. "Nom!"
The shuttle that ascended into the upper atmosphere and then into orbit was the same that had taken him down – but rather than gliding down on wings of shimmering flames, this one ascended with a jet of high energy exhaust, expelled from the fusion rocket mounted on the back. It used the wings to add lift, reducing the Delta-V required to hit orbit, and the entire ride, Beatrice in all three of her bodies trembled and cuddled with Lou. He felt rather smothered by having a large breasted wasp woman on his left, a slender moth girl on his right, and a spider woman attached to the ceiling so that she might hug him from above. But he'd have traded it for nothing – and then he got to delight in the way that all three bodies pressed their eyes against the windows, gasping in unison.
"We've never had a view like this before!" Beatrice said, her voice reaching his ear in an echoing, not quite perfect cadence – a cadence that became eerily less and less present as the bodies altered their speaking speeds minutely, so that each sound reached his ears at the precisely same moment. "Normally, when we launch bioforms, it's considerably more energetic and involves the detonation of chemicals that we produce in other bioforms , and the bioforms themselves have to be very durable to survive entering into orbit, and there is an armored shell around the exterior. It's actually easier for us to breed and maintain space born bioforms than it is to breed bioforms on planetary surfaces that can launch into orbit. It's almost like I've split into two different branches. But...like, even my space born bioforms don't have binocular vision like this, they see things mostly in the high energy patterns that are useful in space and...just...wow!" She squealed and her wasp body pressed up against his back.
Lou delighted in his wife's happiness...but a thin, niggling thorn in his thoughts drew his eye to his father and his mother. They were seated beside one another, their hands clasped in a polite display – and just looking at it made Lou's stomach turn. He bit his lip, slightly, then looked away.
But was it because he was mad at them for lying to him? And to their entire kingdom?
It was a lie that he was now examining in his memory – but he found it hard to fault himself for not noticing. It wasn't as if he and his parents had been close. Most of his adult life had seen his father fighting the Bug War, and his mother could easily have had months or even years of time apart from him thanks to the staggered stays in the cryocrypts. She had every lesson he had in discretion and subtly. This led to an uncomfortable realization. The nonplussed, almost shocked expression on his parents faces.
They…
They had thought he was just like them.
And...how could they know otherwise?
The only one who had known that he believed in anything was himself. He alone could weigh his own soul. He felt his anger heating up again. His parents had watched him train, watched him study, and had thought he was just like them.
"Lou, are you okay?" Beatrice's moth body asked, while her wasp body and her spider body cuddled against him.
"Yes, my wife," he said, quietly. "Just...thinking."
"I scent deception," her wasp body said, her black hands sliding along his chest. "You are still upset about your parents?"
"I…" Lou shook his head. "Can we have this discussion later? Once everyone's...asleep." His voice was very soft, but he was sure that his father was regarding him out of the corner of his eyes. Beatrice nodded – and then all three of her bodies gasped again as the shuttle rounded the lighthugger. Lou had to admit, seeing her eyes widen and her faces mash against the windows as she boggled at the lighthugger was delightful. Amy walked over then, grinning as she did so.
"Want a tech spec on that?" she asked.
"Yes yes yes yes yes!" Beatrice said.
"That's a lighthugger," Amy said, cheerfully. "It five kilometers long – and that white coloring comes from the hyper-compacted ice armor. We took ice, then mashed it up as much as you can. When you apply agrav fields to ice, see, it can be persuaded to actually compact, which is pretty hard. Water is one of the least compactable stuff in the universe. The ice is layered with a nanotech latticework that's made to create a huge magnetic field that reaches out for hundreds of thousands of kilometers in every direction, like a big scoop. It sucks up interstellar hydrogen and funnels it into the ship's stabdrive, so that it can be used as reaction mass for the engine." She grinned. "Now, normally, most of the ship is cargo space – it's kind of...hilariously overdone, since other than colonial expeditions, lighthuggers never carry anything close to their maximum load."
Beatrice nodded, then blinked. "Why?"
"Well, because there just aren't that many human colonies out there," Amy said, shrugging. "Most of the human race is located in SOL."
"Oooooooooh!" Bea said, then giggled. "Well, dang! I should have gone with plan B, then!"
"Plan B?" Lou asked, his brow furrowing.
"Well, w-when the war was going on, I thought you were a hive mind. Distributed evenly, like mine. So, I had to beat you everywhere. But I did have an idea about taking out what I believed to be one of your systems via a kind of self replicating assassin bug. The idea was that I'd fire it at the inhabited planets in the SOL system, and they'd find hiding places and start breeding as fast as possible, then start stabbing! But then I decided to let my immune response handle it – as that would have taken energy and effort away from my stabilization plans in my other systems." She bit her lip. "Of course, by the time I had made this decision, the war had suddenly turned very badly for me. It was most disconcerting."
"...that...would have worked, actually…" Amy said, slowly. "Most of Earth is wilderness. Humans live in a lot of tiny enclaves, and most of those are totally defenseless." She chuckled. "So, uh...wow. Thanks for not doing that."
Beatrice pouted. "Darn!"
"Beatrice!" Lou exclaimed.
"What? Am I not allowed to want to win the war?" Beatrice asked. Then she grinned and stuck her tongue out at him. "I am making a joke!" her wasp body whispered in his ear. "Is it not amusing, you see, the humor is derived from the fact that if I had done that, I would actually be quite upset!" She kissed his neck. "And I would not so gladly be able to ride your cock."
"So, about that…" Amy murmured.
"Amy…" Lou said, warningly.
"It is most excellent!" Spider-Bea said.
"Beatrice!"
"Once again, I am jesting!" her wasp body said, giggling. "By telling Amy of your amorous exploits, I am causing most amusing embarrassment!"
It was like this all the way into the shuttle bay.
***
"And this is your humble abode!" Amy said, gesturing as they emerged from the elevator that had taken them from the spinal docking corridor to the cargo hold. Beatrice and Lou stepped out of the elevator and gaped around themselves. Lou, who had had some idea of what to expect, still found himself stunned to the core as he slowly looked around himself – and Beatrice looked as if she was barely able to remain coherent, her wings buzzing and her antennas twitching across all three of her bodies. Even her spider-body was clicking her mandibles excitedly.
The interior of the Lighthugger – Lou had learned, through some questioning, that it's full name was The Eventual Redemption of Benjamin Carlos DeWitt, The Worst Man on Twitter and so was going to resume calling it 'the Lighthugger' from here on out – was essentially one long cone. The cryocrypts were arrayed along the spine, where they were most protected from cosmic rays and any potential catastrophe. The stabdrive and the reaction mass tanks it took to get to ramspeed took up the bottom. But the front cone was dominated by the cargo hold. Nominally, it was filled to the brim with the supplies and tools that a colony would use to found a human civilization on a new world.
Now?
It was empty.
But give an AnCom an empty, several hundred thousand ton capacity kilometer by kilometer by kilometer cube that was crammed into the nose cone of an interstellar starship, and they will go all out. The entire interior had been sculpted to look like the pastoral wonderland of some bygone world – not quite Earth, considering the three moons overhead, but it was so cleverly built and arranged that it was almost impossible to think of it as being inside. There were thick trees planted around the central clearing, receding to a high definition internal projection screen which made the forest seem to go on for infinity The screen was cleverly designed so that the conical shape of the sky was almost completely concealed, and there was even a sun that was beginning to slowly move overhead, casting shadows that felt so natural and real.
"This is amazing…" Lou whispered, softly.
"And, because I know you're a Neopolitan," Amy said, cheerfully. "I had the nanofabs work on creating some wildlife – deer, rabbits, birds. There's not enough for a sustainable population, but the fabricators will be making them at a fairly steady rate – based off your consumption, of course, so...you…" She reached behind herself, then brought out a compound bow. "Can hunt for your mistress!"
"I…" Lou gaped at her. "It's been so long since I've gone on a hunt!" he exclaimed, taking the bow, holding it in his hands.
"What is hunt?" Bea asked.
"Well, it's where you shoot animals – oh, uh, they're going to have cyber-brains running subsentient personality routines that don't feel pain and will get digitally fed back into the main computer system," Amy said, nodding. "So, you know, you won't actually kill anything."
Lou, who hadn't even thought of that, blinked and nodded. "R-Right."
"Also…" Amy leaned in close, murmuring softly. "It'll mean you have a reason to have a weapon. Your father says there's no other assassins, but...you never know"
Lou nodded, while Beatrice's wasp body leaned in, curiously.
"Why do you shoot the animals?" she asked.
"To cook and eat them," Lou said, smiling at her.
"Oooh!" Beatrice said. "That sounds horribly inefficient but delicious!"
Amy beamed. "Now, for the piece of resistance…" she said, walking backwards so that the elevator could slide back into the floor. Once it had done so, Lou saw that the ceiling of the elevator smoothly merged with the grass – it felt as if the illusion had been completed, save for a single pillar of silver metal. "This is a nanofabricator, but I have programmed it only to produce simple tools." She grinned. "This place never gets cold, rain is only programmed to happen rarely...so...you don't really need shelter. But I know how you Neopolitans like pointless labor. So, you can Minecraft it up here. Chop down trees, fashion them into a cabin, build it all with your bare hands, that fun stuff!"
"...you think I can build an entire log cabin by myself?" Lou asked, his voice dry.
"Just in case your royal training failed you, the fabber can spit out books too, we have the full computer library here." Amy chuckled, then bit her lip. "I know I'm going to see you again in subjective seconds. But…" She paused. "Well...I…" She shrugged. "I know it's just a year, but...like...it's still…"
Lou smiled, then hugged her tightly, drawing her close, squeezing her chrome body close to him.
"For I am a highly evolved creature, I am going to state how not jealous, nor overbearing I am!" Moth-Bea called out.
Lou laughed – then blinked as the elevator started to whirr up. Godfucker leaned out, grinning. "Yo, dude, Amy done showing you around?" he asked, and at Lou's nod, he swept Lou into a hug as well, squeezing him tightly. Once GF had placed him down, he ruffled Lou's hair. "You're a cool kid, you know?"
"Kid!" Lou scoffed. "Godfucker, I…" he paused. "how old are you?"
"Ninety two," Godfucker said, casually. "So, Amy, you ready to leave these two love birds to their honeymoon?"
"If you ever need to talk to someone else, just send a wake up signal to either of us!" Amy said, nodding hurriedly. "We'll get back into the crypts after a few days, but we're more than happy to spend time with you, honest!" she said as GF took her hand and dragged her to the elevator.
"Bye!" Beatrice waved as the elevator started to smoothly recede. It locked down and Lou brushed his hands through his hair.
He shook his head. "What the fuck is a Minecraft?"
***
Lou grunted as he brought the ax whistling down into the side of the tree, his back bare, his sweat gleaming, while his wives watched him. Well, his wife. Watched him. Plural. With three bodies. Well, two bodies. Her wasp body and her moth body were drooling over him, but her spider body was currently buried in yet another book. She had printed about five in the two days since the lighthugger had begun to accelerate away from the Alpha Centauri system – joined by the Invisible Hand as the Federal lighthugger rammed up to speed. The Federals were technically already accelerating far, far, far ahead of them, as they were burning at the full fury of a stabdrive. But once they reached interstellar cruising speed, their engine would shut down and their ship would cool down to be a floating, nearly invisible tomb in the vastness of space. Meanwhile, the lighthugger Lou was on would continue to (comparatively) slowly pick up the pace, going faster and faster at a stately one gravity until reaching the halfway point, swinging around, and begin to decelerate in the other direction.
He tried to not think about the time that would be involved. A year and change...it was almost too much for him to hold.
For now?
For now, he was getting some lumber.
And wallowing in the pleasure of showing off for his wife.
"You know, this should be everything the Neopolitans hate," Lou said. "It's artificial. Fake. False in every character. A bit of playacting!" He slammed the ax home again, wincing as the splinters went flying. He grinned, then stepped backwards, hearing the groaning, crackling sound of the tree beginning to give way. The tree fell slowly forward and crashed to the ground. He felt the tremor, transmitted through the false earth he stood upon. And yet...to his inner ear, to his eye, to his skin, it felt as if he was standing upon a world that was almost Earth…
"Neopolitan beliefs seem to be highly silly," Beatrice said. "Why do you find them so pleasing, husband?"
Lou bit his lip, regarding the tree he had felt, the endorphins that buzzed through him crackling along his brain. He rested his ax on his shoulders, thinking. "Because…" he paused. "Because…" He bit his lip, considering. "Because...humanity has done so much, over such a long period of time, and...I...refuse to believe there was nothing of value in that time. That...the whole reason why we were striving and building and seeking a better future was meaningless." He turned to face her, shrugging. "We...I...want my life to have meaning, like all those ancients did. I want what I do to matter…" He sighed, slowly, then swung his ax off his shoulders, looking down at it. "What does anything matter if a machine can do it better anyway?"
Bea nodded, slightly.
"And...there's something else…" Lou walked over, sitting down beside the two of them. He slowly flopped onto his back, onto the warm, soft grass. Beatrice's moth body immediately flung herself across his belly, like a sleek, blue-white blanket. He laughed, then caressed her hair. "It's...all those bullshit lies my parents told me. Honor. Fealty. Nobility. I...believed them, you know?" He looked up at the sky, then smiled as her wasp body leaned over, filling his vision with something infinitely more beautiful than even the most pure blue sky.
Big...delicious wasp titties.
Godfucker has infected me with his crassness, Lou thought. Not that this stopped him from admiring the way his wife's breasts swayed as she smiled at him.
"These words...I still am not sure I understand them the way that you talk of them," Beatrice said. "but if they are the qualities that you show...of warmth and kindness and understanding? Of...being not...of…" She bit her lip. "Of being good." Her fingers cupped his cheek, crooking as she stroked him slowly. "If those are what you show, then nobility, honor, fealty, all of those are excellent things indeed and we should keep them alive, indeed."
Lou smiled. Then he sat up. "Beatrice! How is your reading on human culture going?"
"I am currently reading about wives," Beatrice said, cheerfully, her spider body not glancing up, though her wasp body did perk up her chin, looking very smug and proud of herself. "Did you know that the brewing industry in England during the 16th century was dominated by the wives of the brewers?" She nodded. "I shall brew!"
Lou chuckled. "If you can figure out how to build a still, I am all for you brewing," he said, smiling a bit.
"Oh, why use a still? I can simply breed some bioforms!" she said. "Most of the hive that I had are in the life support systems of the lighthugger. I worked with GF and Amy to integrate them into the recycling system. They said that it's ten times more efficient than the human systems." She beamed. "I shall breed bioforms that make the best beer of all time."
Lou laughed, shaking his head. "And what of our little breeding program?"
"Oh, you raise an excellent point!" Her spider body rolled onto her back, her hands caressing along her belly. "Though you cannot see it yet, I am having the beginning of a zygote growing within me, I am positive. You know, it was actually fairly tricky, since your body does not produce the normal range of chromosomes as exhibited by the bodies I examined who you would identify as male...you are aware of this, yes?"
"Oh, yes, it'd be because I'm trans," Lou said, nodding, absently.
"Trans?" the three Beatrices looked at him.
"Also, wait, wait, you said…" Lou blinked. It had suddenly struck him, like a stone brick smashing into the back of his head. "You said...I thought that was dirty talk, you're actually with child?"
"What is trans?" Wasp Beatrice asked, while spider Beatrice nodded excitedly.
"I am indeed with child! I worked with Amy to ensure that all of the appropriate bodily functions occurred. She told me that I would need to have a round belly, for easy petting, and for my breasts to swell with milk, which is a little strange, but I am told that the milk is an important fetish for the male partner, to entice them to continue to make love to the pregnant body. And...Lou, you are looking very odd."
Lou continued to gape at her. "Y...You're...pregnant…"
"Yes!" Wasp Beatrice pressed up against her back. "This bioform has also deposited the cum that you have dumped into her to the external wombs located back in the hive. Those are also pregnant."
Lou blinked very rapidly. "I...I...okay...I just...w-what...will they...it...she? Her? Him?"
"Well, that is the first complication," Beatrice said, nodding. "I knew that our child would need to be a synthesis of human and my thought patterns. I wanted them to be a unique being, not merely another bioform. If I wanted that, I could have that far easier. So, I've worked out the blending – this is why my wife forms are all terrestrial insects, they're all designed based on human DNA, and it's easier to integrate human DNA with insectoid DNA, as they are distantly related to one another, not to me. Then I began to tweak certain formations within the DNA patterns that lead to the development of the brain to create similar quantum communication structures. This took up a lot of the room that human brains normally have for sentience forming patterns – according to Amy at least, after I showed her my design."
"Why didn't you tell me Beatrice?" Lou asked.
"Oh, so it would be a pleasing surprise!" Beatrice said. Then she paused. "Is it?"
"I...y-yes!" Lou said, then took her hands, as many as he could, squeezing them in his hands. "Y-Yes, I just...it is a shock. I...I swear to you, my wife, I will be the finest father that our child could ever wish." He gulped, slightly. "Our children! That is. If...you said three wombs? One in your spider body, two from your wasp…" He looked at her, and her wasp body blushed.
"W-Well, to be fair...it will be slightly more complex than a single zygote," she said, her wings buzzing shyly. "You see, ah, the quantum communication structure will take up a great deal of the brain room, meaning that, like me, our child will have a distributed intelligence. Less than mine, as it is still based on a human brain, which is considerably more able to maintain intelligence forming mental structures. So, we will need many 'children' to house a single child. D-does that make sense?"
Lou blinked slowly. "Y...es...I think?"
"It does mean that the first few that I birth will be only of animal intelligence, following instincts," he said, nodding. "They may be unpleasant and...possibly even quite vexing, doing nothing but eating and sleeping and needing petting and holding. I...is this different from human children?"
"I…" Lou smiled. "No, it sounds about right."
"But once we have enough, they will attain sentience!" Bea said, her antennas extending excitedly. "And they will grow more and more mature with each bioform that we breed."
Lou nodded, slowly. "All right. Um." He coughed. "How many will we need?"
"Not many," Beatrice said, smiling, her spider-form nodding. "One to two-"
Lou breathed a slow sigh of relief.
"-hundred."
Lou choked.
TO BE CONTINUED
Hey, Dragon Cobolt here! Hope you're enjoying Pax Multi. If you want to keep enjoying it for free, the next chapter will be up next monday! But if you want to read it all right now, you can buy it on Amazon! Thanks for reading! Leave comments, each comment is a gold coin in my dragon horde. ...hoard? Hoarde!
Five days into the voyage, with the foundations for the cabin finished and the roof going up today, and Lou was beginning to feel a mite guilty about the fact that he had never told his wife what being transgender actually meant. It was one of the things about being married to an alien – especially an alien so...well, alien from the human norms. Beatrice had absorbed a huge amount of information about the human race, and was learning more every day as the lighthugger slowly accelerated out of the Alpha Centauri system. She had studied the history of the War of the Roses, learned about Shakespeare, read the poetry of Qu Yuan and Cervantes and Shelley, and even begun to watch the earliest cinematic works that abutted the edge of what Neopolitans usually studied – the early works of Cocteau and Lang.
But she still didn't know what a spatula was or what it was for.
This much was apparent by the way that her spider body's eight eyes were all locked on the metal tool as Lou flipped some steaks on the grill that he had managed to, through painstaking following of ancient instructions, put together using the nanofabricator as little as possible. The other Beatrice bodies were off reading or exploring the inner workings of the lighthugger, leaving only her spider-body with Lou. He wondered if he hadn't had the time to get used to the oddness of being in love with a girl that was part moth, he might have had more trouble with a girl who had six arms and eight eyes and fangs.
Then again…
If that girl was Beatrice, it was entirely possible that he'd have adjusted just as quickly?
"What is that?" she cooed.
"This is a spatula. It's a tool for the manipulation of meat while cooking. And eggs and bread. And...lots of things." Lou nodded, then used his palms to roll the spatula between his hands.
"Why not use a fork?" she asked.
"Well, there are some situations where a spatula is more effective and easier," Lou said, nodding. "There's also tongs and whisks and graters and peelers..."
Beatrice giggled.
"What?" Lou asked.
"I just...humans...make so many bits and bobs to put in their hands!" she said, her red eyes sparkling with delight. Her outermost eyes closed – what he was beginning to recognize being the same way that a human's eyes might crinkle with a smile. "Most species would stop at rocks. I stopped at rocks. I never need anything more than a rock, and once I figured out that I could make bioforms that had bladey hands or scooper hands or pokey hands…" She grinned. "All scientific names, I'm sure you know." She paused. "The last would be proboscis, I know the word, I'm just being silly!"
Lou chuckled.
"Anyway, I never needed to use rocks ever again. But now you have flippy rocks, cutty rocks, wire frame rocks that...that...what do whisks even DO!?" She scrambled on her belly to lay closer to where his tools were laid out, then snatched a whisk up. She held it before her eyes. "Humans!"
Lou snorted. "It's for mixing things. And breaking down the protein barriers in eggs."
"Ah, a weapon…" Beatrice said, her voice solemn. "When will mankind learn, protein barriers need not be broken. You could simply leave the eggs in peace!"
"You are being silly," Lou said, sticking a thermometer in the deer steaks.
"You do know that I can digest them raw, right?" she asked. "And I think you can too."
"Yes, but the cooking makes them taste better. And they're healthier. And more efficient."
"Hurmph!" Bea scoffed. "It sounds as if it is merely an excuse for gastrointestinal laziness."
Lou saw that the steaks would take a few more minutes to cook. He could begin to plan for setting up the roof of the half finished cottage. He could ask Beatrice about what she was reading about today. He could even ask her about how the life support systems on the lighthugger were handling her additions – her growing sub-hive of organisms that made this lighthugger a small colony of herself in the interstellar void. He could even bring up the whole issue of children and how to manage the logistical problem that Beatrice had cheerfully dropped into his lap with her prediction that any synthesis of human and hive mind would require him to...ah...handle his husbandly duty hundreds of times.
Thousands, actually, if there was a failure in...ah…
Transmission.
But none of that involved talking to Beatrice about what she had asked him about then promptly...not quite forgotten about. Beatrice didn't forget things. She just sometimes let them slip into the back of her awareness, then brought them back into the focus of her attention again when she was ready to handle them. Which, honestly, considering the vast stretches of time that she had been alive and needed to juggle multitudinous tasks and subjects, made a lot of sense. She had needed to think of a lot of things even when she had thought she had been the only species in the entire galaxy, the entire universe even.
So, there was no...cowardice in not talking about his transness.
But it was also such a nonissue. Beatrice would respond by blinking at him, proclaiming it yet another fascinating facet of humanity, then go on back to whatever else she was doing. And yet...Lou's tongue stilled as he looked down at the steaks. He looked back at Beatrice, and breathed in, then out again. He felt like a rank hypocrite – and then felt a flare of raw, fierce anger in his breast at that thought. Right, it feels like literally anything I do is nothing next to my parents, so, why should I even care?
And yet, he needed to tell her.
"Lou, you seem disturbed. Are you okay?" Beatrice asked.
"What?" Lou chuckled. "Oh dear, am I becoming so transparent?"
"Your opacity and cunning are both unchanged and I'm certain that if a dastardly scoundrel was around and spying upon you, he or she would be utterly taken in by your external grace and think you are as stoic and focused as any other Neapolitan star prince. And yet, said dastardly scoundrel would not be your wife. Unless I was planning something sneaky." She grinned, showing off her fangs. "Which I am not! Oh! But now, you must wonder: Is Beatrice planning something lewd and mortifying? Is that why she claims innocence." She chuckled. "I have caught you in a linguistic trap, unsure of my motives or meanings…"
"...have you been reading Machiavelli? You do know that was a satire, right?"
"Drat…" Beatrice sighed. Then she looked back up at him. "Also, you have evaded my question! Maybe it is you who is the dastardly scoundrel!"
Lou flushed, looking back at the steaks. He picked them up with some tongs then laid them onto a ceramic plate to cool. He pursed his lips, slightly, then put his hands on his hips and forced himself to examine his feelings and came to the slightly embarrassing conclusion that the real thing that was making him loathe to talk about being trans to Beatrice was...dirt simple. It was so simple, so direct, and so base.
He liked her thinking of him as a man. Simple, direct, and it felt like a slap in the face to every historic transgendered individual who had fought for the simple right to be who they were without censure. They didn't struggle to become invisible – they struggled to be themselves. He tried to marshal a way to begin talking about this when he felt his wife's teeth nip at his ankle with a soft 'nom.' He looked down and saw that she was biting at him with a fearsome expression on her face – ruined only by her then enunciating each play bite with a soft 'nom' sound. He sighed.
"Fine," he said. "When you asked where my Y chromosome is...well...I was born with two X chromosomes. This meant that my outward appearance, to my mother and my father and the midwife, was that of a woman. They named me Alexandriatta. However, from...a very young age, I knew that it was...wrong." He sat down beside his wife, petting her white hair slowly. "I felt...male. It was like a splinter in my mind – one that I could not remove. My parents, upon hearing of my confusion, explained that I was...that I am...transgendered. And so, they used drugs and surgeries to alter me until I was as outwardly male as I felt inwardly."
"Oh," Beatrice said, then nodded. "Those surgeries and drugs were highly effective." She laid her head upon his lap, nuzzling against his thigh. "When can we eat the steaks? That's S T E A K S, I don't want to eat the S T A K E S…" She nodded over to the row of carpentry tools that was set up near the half finished cabin.
Lou laughed – and felt the nervous tension in his belly unwind. In the end, it always had been a worry made of smoke. But knowing that he had been feeling silly hadn't actually made the feeling go away. The only thing that could, the only thing that ever would, would be Beatrice, really. And hearing her laugh, feeling the smoothness of her cheek against him, the soft kiss, then bite of her lips as she nuzzled and nipped at every bit of exposed skin that she could find while she cuddled against him...it was like a balm. He ruffled her hair.
"Five minutes," he said.
"Five eternities…" She whispered. "This bioform shall waste away into nothingness. Why? Why must we wait?"
"The meat needs to rest."
"Ah! Ah!" She sat up. "That is precisely what you said when my wasp body had only orgasmed three times and my moth body had orgasmed four times and I demanded you balance things out!"
***
Lou kept waiting for the moment.
It didn't come during the four weeks that it took for him to build the first half of his log cabin. During that time, Beatrice and he took their time enjoying the labor. The internal space that they lived in had no real dangers and no real risk of exposure – if he ever got chilly, Lou could simply cuddle against all three of his wife's bodies and enjoy their warmth, which got even more effective once Beatrice excitedly brought her wasp body out and demonstrated a neat trick she had learned. She was able to run the 'engines' of her wings inside her body (the same way that bees buzzed) to create waste heat, which suffused her body over time. It turned out if she buzzed for long enough, she went from being slightly chill to as warm as an electric blanket.
"And thus!" she had proclaimed. "The extremely large breasts will serve as your pillows!"
"They already did, though," Lou had pointed out.
"...well...more so, then…"
The moment didn't come after Beatrice's three bodies helped him put the finishing touches on the roof – her moth body flying from the ground to the roof with supplies and tools, while her spider body demonstrated that her spinnerets could be useful for more than just impromptu bondage, and her wasp body...mostly provided some support on the ladder while jiggling distractedly. Which did eventually lead to Lou saying: "Listen, honey, I appreciate your...ah...assets…"
"By which he means your honking huge titties!" Beatrice's moth body said, causing her wasp body to giggle – an interaction that caused Lou to stand up straight and gape at the two of them.
"I...are...are...you…"
"I am practicing something!" Bea's moth body landed beside him on the roof, her antennas flicking cheerfully. "It is called...trying to be less creepy and off putting to humans who are not predisposed to overlook my oddities because they love me...itus!" She said, her arms spreading out wide as she spoke the words.
"...itus?"
"Like tinnitus!" Beatrice said, giggling.
Lou chuckled. "You think having mock conversations with yourself is going to make humans less unnerved by you?"
"Well, what would you prefer?" she asked – and then each of her bodies spoke in unison. "That I speak like this again?"
"You know, you have a good point," Lou said, kissing her cheek. Then he grinned and spanked her rump, causing each body to squeak in unison. "Can you get me something to drink? It's thirsty work up here." At the excited expression on her face, Lou hurriedly added. "Actual drink, not-" He blushed, remembering the time he had asked for a drink and Beatrice had winked at him, then leaped onto him, locking her thighs around his head.
Just a little sex scene as "the moment" continues to fail to arrive
The moment still had not come at the end of the second month, while Lou lay under simulated stars and gently made love to his wife's wasp body. Her back arched and her breasts heaved as she gasped and moaned, her black fingers sliding along her cheeks. She caught one of her fingers in her mouth, sucking upon it and moaning as her other hand slid down to cup her breast, squeezing herself – more for his pleasure and delight than her own. Though, he could tell that she was delighting in the tactile pleasure of touching her own body. Her fingers gently rolled her nipple and she moaned softly, putting as much emphasis into her words as she could. "How does my pussy feel, Lou? Does it feel hot? Does it feel wet?" She groaned and bounced her hips on him while Lou laid back, his hands gripping her hips.
"God yes…" he whispered, his eyes half closed. Beatrice was getting good at human dirty talk. He had thought he might miss her more idiosyncratic way of speaking – but Lou by now had learned that there was always a way to bring the old Beatrice jumble out of her mouth. But at the moment, all he wanted in this moment was to watch the delightful, ancient poetry that was his wife in movement atop him, her body trembling as she slapped her ass down against him again and again and again, her breath catching, her antennas quivering as he cupped the back of her head and drew her down and kissed her – muffling her orgasmic moan as her cunt tightened on him and he let himself empty himself into her.
Afterwards, as their sweat cooled on their bodies – well, mostly his sweat, as she didn't have any – Lou chuckled as Beatrice slid her finger along his chest, her eyes narrowing to slits. "I do not have the ocular acuity to see the surgical scars…" she murmured, softly.
"Huh?"
"Well, if you were assigned female at birth, then I presume you would be as exceptionally feminine as you are masculine now," Beatrice said, as if that was the most logical thing in the universe. "Ergo, you would have had...amazing titties."
"You really do love using the most uncouth words," Lou murmured, his eyes closing.
"I do!" Beatrice grinned, then buzzed her wings and her body against him, cuddling close, her sigh happy. "So, were they as large as this body's? Larger?"
"I began to transition before I grew breasts," Lou said, chuckling.
"But according to the textbooks, this occurs a mere twelve to fourteen years after birth, dependent upon various factors such as diet, environment, and genetics!" Beatrice pushed herself up a bit, blinking. "You said that you were aware of this when you were very young, but not that very young!"
"I didn't think you'd recognize the difference between three years old and eighteen years old, considering you're older than...well, our very favorite pastime," Lou said, chuckling.
"I'm far older than puns!" Beatrice scoffed.
Lou blinked. "I...our favorite pastime isn't puns, it's…" He blushed.
"Fucking?" Beatrice chuckled, softly. "No, my dear husband, it is puns, for after all, every time you think how much you love me…" She wriggled, then squirmed, then sat backwards, so that she could gesture to her curvaceous, black and yellow body. "You are thinking: Oh my goodness, how much I do love…" She paused. "Bee-atrice. Ergo, a pun." She grinned. "And fucking, our second favorite pastime, is not a pastime at all. It is important labor, your husbandly duty, to breed me."
Lou flushed and tried to not immediately get a hard on again. But, once again, his relative youth and the intensely arousing matter of factness that Beatrice used about breeding reached into the part of his brain that was all grunting, swaggering machoness and just...hooked onto it and dragged it to the forefront. Bea grinned, then thrust her fingers into her mouth, whistling – and that signal brought out her spider body.
"I am ready to be sired!" she said.
"Again?" Lou asked. "B-But...I thought…"
"No reason to not play it safe," Beatrice said, sliding off – her hand closing around his cock. She started to work him – keeping his cock hard as her spider body walked over, then dropped herself down, impaling herself on his shaft with a happy groan.
It was as the first month ticked into the second, then the second smoothly blurred into the third, that Lou realized something: The moment, the moment where he needed someone else might never come. He was as perfectly content as it was possible to be with Beatrice as his partner and companion. It wasn't that he didn't sometimes need times alone – and in the large space designed for the pair of them, there was more than enough space for quiet contemplation and being alone with his thoughts. But simply being with Beatrice – even if they didn't speak a single word to one another – was more than enough companionship for him.
It didn't hurt that the sex remained amazing.
Lazy sex.
Energetic sex.
Sudden, unexpected sex – the kind of sex that creeps up on you while you're helping your wife pick a fruit she's interested in, and before you know it, the two of you are tumbling around on the ground.
Languid sex.
And once, even, angry sex.
That had been particularly odd, as Beatrice had entered into the cabin and said: "I want to try having an argument!"
"...why?" Lou asked, frowning.
"Because I have been reading every romance novel written, starting with the earliest listed in the historical database, and I believe that we have not ever had an argument. They seem to be extremely important parts of human relationships in all of the books that I've read. And so, we should have an argument."
"Absolutely not. Those books are drama, they exist to produce a kind of...unreal, exciting version of what people have for vicarious enjoyment. Real relationships can be perfectly healthy without a single argument – and even if they crop up, they're best handled by being adults, not by shouting at one another."
"Oh." Beatrice blinked, nodded, half turned to go, then stopped, then turned back. "That is exactly what you'd say!" She said, hesitantly, then with more confidence. "You always think you know the most reasonable way to explain things! Well, I shall tell you, you do, in fact, not!" She beamed at him. "How was that?"
"Are you trying to...have an argument about having an argument?" Lou asked.
Beatrice gasped, her antennas frilling out, her wings buzzing. "I am insulted by this very insinuation! To think! My husband thinks so little of me!"
Another short and sweet silliness
A part of Lou's mind had actually been fairly impressed with how the conversation had wound around in increasingly convulsed knots as Beatrice tried to find the best way to continue the "argument" – and Lou kept trying to keep from ruining for her by bursting out laughing. Then he ended up ruining the argument anyway by stepping close and prodding her in the chest for emphasis while elucidating that, no, in fact, human beings did not have the most ludicrously designed ocular nerve layout in the biological kingdom. That prod, that closeness, led almost immediately to Bea getting into his face, then him getting into Bea.
Then she was against the wall, her thighs scissored around his hips, his cock buried to the hilt in her cool, wet, tight cunt as she gasped and grunted and moaned in inarticulate pleasure as Lou slammed her so hard and so fast that he was half worried that he was going to break her. But the only thing that broke was the dam inside of him – when he shuddered and clenched her thighs tightly, his teeth sinking into her blue neck as her legs tightened and all four of her arms hung around his back, her fingernails digging into his shoulder blades as she gasped out a throaty, eager: "Lou! Lou! Lou!" between the thick gushes of his hot, thick, purple cum, which oozed out from around his cock and dripped onto the smooth wooden floor of the cottage.
After the two of them had stumbled back to the bed – well, it was mostly Lou doing the stumbling, carrying all of her weight – Beatrice panted and said: "Arguments are most satisfying."
Lou laughed.
It was during the fourth month that Lou realized he had quietly shifted from hunting to fabricating meat more and more often – and he had barely noticed that he had done it. It wasn't because he didn't like the hunting. There was a delightful pleasure in stalking prey and loosing an arrow into it, aiming to ensure the animal in question would drop dead instantly, no matter what Amy said about their cyberbrains. But...Lou found that he preferred, vastly, to spend time with Beatrice and relaxing around the cottage.
"This must be what AnComs live like. The ones that don't get all the social following, I mean."
"Hmm?"
Beatrice was cuddling up against his back while the wasp Beatrice was reading a printed out replica of a magazine from the middle of the 20th century. Spider Beatrice was currently out and about for reasons that Lou hadn't asked upon and wasn't curious about. Beatrice's fingers brushed through his hair as he looked out the window of the cottage at the small bubble of habitable space carved out of the cargo space of their star ship.
By now, the space beyond that invisible (to his eyes at least) wall had gone from the relatively cluttered Alpha Centauri system to the utter and complete void of interstellar vacuum. Though, even that wasn't that clear as far as vacuums went. There was enough hydrogen for the ram scoops on the lighthugger to draw it into the stabdrive and accelerate it out of the back of the ship, producing the constant single gravity of thrust that made the cargo section feel so very Earth-like. There was nothing to see out there save for the increasingly distorted stars. Ahead of them, light was being shifted to higher and higher wavelengths as the ship rushed towards the light, like the doper scream of an oncoming train. Reds became oranges, orange green, and blue became ultraviolet and worse. And behind them, the stars were shifting the other way, seeking to catch up with a ship that was becoming more and more stretched and distorted by the relativistic effects of its long voyage. Red became infrared and microwaves.
"Nom!" Beatrice bit down on his shoulder.
"What? Oh! Right!" Lou shook himself from his head to his toes. "Right, sorry." He chuckled. "So, most AnComs have access to community resources – nanofabricators, what land they have allotted based on that arcane system of theirs…" He sighed. "To get more than that, you have to convince people that you should have it, that requires social capital, which is more easily exerted by people who are popular and charismatic." He shrugged. "I mean, if we were just normal AnComs, this is what our life would be like. Fabricator, freedom, and-"
"Fucking!" Beatrice thrust an arm into the air.
"W-Well, we wouldn't be married, as AnComs….well, actually, we would be, if we wanted to be…"
Beatrice nodded. "Excellent. I do want to be married. Can we get married a third time, just for us?"
Lou blinked. "A third time?"
"I am presuming that the marriage at Earth will happen. Which means that if we got married here, in deep space, just for ourselves, then it would be the third time," Beatrice said, cheerfully.
Lou grinned. "A secret marriage...it appeals to my classical roots, considering how many secret marriages cropped up in the Bard's works."
Beatrice frowned. "Okay, never mind."
"What?"
"I don't like the number of his plays that end with everyone dead and sad," she said, shaking her head. "Especially that Titus Andronicus play." She churred. "Imagine! Feeding someone their children in pies, that's just...utterly terrible. What is pie?"
"It's a baked pastry," Lou murmured, leaning back against Beatrice, enjoying her comforting closeness. "You should learn what they are, according to the literature of the era you're studying…" He nodded to her wasp body, who had turned another page in her magazine. "Wives must bake their men pies."
"Oh, this so far, is giving me advice in saving bacon fat for explosives," Beatrice's wasp body said, closing the magazine. "Do we need explosives? I don't think we need explosives, but if it's this important-"
"We do not need explosives," Lou said, chuckling.
The next morning, Lou woke up blind.
He sighed, lifted his arm to tug at the blindfold that covered his eyes – but he was stopped by the fact that his arms were bound to the side of the bed by what felt like spiderwebs. He chuckled, softly. "Okay, Beatrice, very funny. Why am I wearing a blindfold?"
"No reason!" Beatrice said – a faint clicking and clattering sound coming to his ear. "...the whisk is the...one with...it's this one! I found a picture. Not that I am using a whisk. I just...was curious. For entirely innocent, non-pie related reasons." More clattering and clicking – and the unmistakable clack of eggs breaking. More clattering.
"You do know I can help, right?"
"Help? Help doing what? This is an innocent engagement." There was a short pause. "I know! You can go for a walk."
Hands tore off the bondage and helped Lou to his feet. He allowed himself to be guided out of the cottage and then tugged off the blindfold, grinning at the moth body that had guided him out. She smiled at him, then said, very seriously. "Do not enter into the cottage until you are allowed."
"I will be like your own personal Orpheus," Lou said, bowing to her. "...better, actually, since I won't look back."
"Good!" Beatrice frowned. "Though, if I ever went to Hades, you'd just need to have me breed a new bioform. Assuming, of course, I do not conquer Hades with hordes of chitinous horrors."
"Pluto would not know what hit him," Lou said, then kissed her cheek, making her giggle.
Lou decided to give his wife as much space as he could. He headed for the center of the cargo hold, called up the elevator, and then stepped inside. He programmed in the control for the cryocrypts, humming to himself as he listened to the whirring of the lift as it moved along the spine of the ship, drawing closer and closer to the obscene energies of the stabdrive. At the midsection of the ship, the elevator stopped and opened into the spindly corridors that threaded their way between the sarcophagi. The largest, which hung in an intricate latticework of wires and cables like a primitive biplane, was the pod for the whale diplomat and her entourage. There was the regal purple sarcophagi that contained his father and mother, situated side by side. There was Amy's pod, which was a utilitarian pod with graffiti tagged on the side in what was unmistakably her handwriting.
IF HORNY, OPEN, STICK DICK INTO ME, I WON'T MIND, AMY
PS: WAIT FOR ME TO WARM OR WEAR A THERMAL CONDOM
<3 <3 <3
Lou pursed his lips, shaking his head slowly. "AnComs…"
He found Godfucker's sarcophagi after a short walk and smiled to see that it was painted a warm sky blue, with a happy little sun drawn onto the side, as if the skinny, gangly AnCom wanted to ensure he'd have sweet dreams. Lou breathed a slow sigh out, then put his hand on the side of the metal container – feeling the heat throbbing from it. Despite the term 'cryocrypt', the air was anything but chilly. Each pod was pumping the heat from their containers into the surrounding atmosphere, giving it a balmy temperature. It was a deliberate piece of inefficiency – most of the heat was actually shunted through the liquid cooling system that threaded through the cabling, which itself was taken out to the ice armor of the ship. But just enough was vented through the atmosphere to ensure this part of the ship was kept warm and comfortable.
"You know, GF, I do miss you," Lou said, casually, leaning against the pod, his arms crossed over his chest. "I…" He paused, then looked down at himself, and only just then realized, he was wearing no shirt, no shoes, and what could barely be considered underwear. He blushed. "You would think I had gone completely native now." He paused, then sighed. "GF, I do wish I had some of your council...I...have been thinking about my people. About the Neapolitan. About my father and mother...I confronted them, you know. About the fact that my father had dishonored himself by sleeping with Amy behind my mother's back."
He shook his head. "She was neither shocked or offended. Behind my back, with me as unwitting as Rosencrantz and Guildenstern she was carrying on just as many clandestine affairs. Everything they had taught me...and…" He sighed. "Am I fool for caring at all? Beatrice...she loves me and she wants me to be happy. But she's not human – she doesn't understand what it means to believe in something, then have it...crushed."
He snorted. "Listen to me talking. I'm a fool, of course she understands that. That's her whole life." He pinched the bridge of his nose. "I suppose that I'm more worried that she'll say what I'm thinking: That I should...abdicate. That I should wash my hands of it, declare nineteen years of my life and everything I've ever worked on as a complete waste of time and...and just...become a hermit living on Earth with the rest of the Anarchist Commune."
"Is it…" He looked at the sarcophagi and at the frozen face of what, against all odds, had become one of his dearest friends. "Is it big headed to be so concerned about this? Am I...am I being egotistical?"
"No, my good chum, I believe your concerns are perfectly valid."
Lou slowly, carefully, turned his head to the left.
Sitting upon the spars connecting one of the Plural sarcophagi to the rest of the strut work was a chimpanzee. His fur was black and his face had the genial cheerful expression common in many of the monkey and ape Upkin species. The only indication that he was anything but a comical or educational figure in some children's cartoon from the 21st century was the combat grade nano bracelet that was attached to each of his four limbs. The bracelet was made of hard white, shiny material that looked almost like bone, meaning it was almost certainly biological nanotech and not the more common hardtech nano – and as Lou watched, the chimp held his wrist out, flexed his hand, and extruded a small nozzle of bone that created a blue flame, which he then used to light a cigar held in his other hand. He puffed upon the cigar, then blew out a smoke ring, the nozzle retracting into the bracelet as he looked at Lou.
"After all – your decisions are going to do more than impact your own self, my dear space prince. They are going to be taken as read as a tacit endorsement and, dare I say, as an advertisement for vast swaths of the Neos and AnComs." He smiled, twiddling the cigar in Lou's direction. "Meaning a great deal of care should be taken in your future actions."
Lou blinked slowly. "...and...you are?"
"The name is Cornelius," he said, cheerfully.
"From...Planet of the Apes?" Lou asked.
"Oh bother, I've been sussed," Cornelius murmured, then puffed on his cigar again. "I thought you neos disdained anything after the Napoleonic Wars as not worth your time."
"There are some films and pieces of literature from the 20th century that are worth saving – generally, the cutoff date is the Marvel/Disney merger," Lou shook his head. "What on Earth are you doing up? Are you part of Endless Song's entourage?"
"Oh, you presume that just because I am a talking Chimparmy with four combat capable nanobraclets in my body that I am a part of the UpKin? I may be an AnCom. Or a citizen of your fine kingdom! Or, perhaps, a Federal-"
"If you were a Neopolitan, you would know to call me Sire," Lou said, smiling. "If you were an AnCom, you would have a lager genitalia."
"That is a hurtful but accurate stereotype!" Cornelius exclaimed. "And how do you know I am not a Federal?"
"The only people that Federals hate more than Upkin are humans with increased melanin content," Lou said, shrugging one shoulder. "And considering the rather appalling examples of propaganda I've seen in my historical research, I think half of them would count you as both. While it's not impossible that you're a Federal agent…" He paused. "You could be a Plural. But I was under the impression that their memetic research doesn't touch on Upkin as much as it does on baseline humans. But...you are right. Who do you work for and why are you awake, Cornelius?"
Cornelius puffed on his cigar, then swung himself down so that he was hanging off his feet, before dropping down and onto the grating before them with a clunk. He stood to a rather impressive height, considering his body structure, and then nodded. "My full title is Cornelius, Director of Interclade Intelligence Services. You are aware of the distinctions between clades?"
"Yes – a clade is an upkin…well...species is too simple," Lou said, nodding. "There are chimps that are part of dolphin clades, dolphins in chimp clades, and so on. It's more about a way of thinking than a biological thing."
"Precisely!" Cornelius said, cheerfully. "I was inserted into Endless Song's entourage as a lowly aide, but the real purpose behind my expedition was to discover what precisely happened to Dr. Listens Deeply and Considers All."
"...who?" Lou asked.
"That's precisely why I sought to waken myself mid-flight, once I learned that you, fortunately, are as romantic as I had heard." Cornelius said, puffing on the cigar again. "I do not have access to the deeper system layers of the lighthugger, meaning that I must rely upon you. Fortunately, I believe that the evidence I have will convince you of the righteousness of my cause, my good chum...and even if you do not, being awakened, then going back into cryogenic sleep after a few hours of conversation is far from the worst thing." He grinned, slightly. "And it will at least alleviate your boredom. Three months alone with only the missus? I'd be nearly round by this point."
"I love my wife, sir," Lou said, flatly.
"Ah, young love, so glossy, so untarnished. Enjoy it while it lasts."
Lou frowned. "The evidence?"
"Correct," Cornelius said. "Let us begin with, of course, the War. During the Battle of Proxima, an entire UHP fleet was wiped out during a high speed orbital pass battle near the primary of the Proxima system-" Lou's eyebrows went way up, since that was going back further than he expected. "The star itself collapsed and produced a reality warping field that killed every single member of that entire fleet. The fact it wiped out the Bug fleet was seen as secondary. But as long range telescopy and probes began to bring in data, a strange thing began to happen: Physicists attempting to understand the data began to go mad."
Cornelius paused, dramatically.
Lou inclined his head, then gestured to Cornelius to indicate he should continue.
"Well!" Cornelius wiggled his eyebrows dramatically. "A young physicist at the tail end of the war by the name of Dr. Listens and Considers All hit upon a unique solution to the problem. He exposed the data to unwilling sentients, then began to question them indirectly. From their statements, he began to bring out information that pointed at unexpected and fascinating new weapon systems that could win us the war. Until, then, your charming wife decided to up and surrender. And then Dr. Listens...vanished. Vanished without...a trace."
"The Invisible Hand, the Federal Ship that's tailing us," Lou said. "It arrived in system months ahead of us, but it came to Charon days after we got there. But...the Federals would...unless…" He frowned. "Unless they had a fancy new weapon system to gain."
"Unless they had a fancy new weapon system gain indeed!" Cornelius exclaimed, then puffed on his cigar.
"Did you notice the Serviles?" Lou asked.
"I noticed them, it was hard to be in the ambassadorial camps and not notice the poor fellows," Cornelius murmured, his brow furrowing. "But I take it you noticed something more, my good chum?"
"There were more of them – at least, I thought there were more of them, than there should have been. More machines. More devices. More...everything." Lou rolled his shoulders slowly, then tucked his arms against his chest. "But I thought that I was being paranoid – after all, the real assassination attempt was from Epoch."
"Indeed it was…" Cornelius tapped at his cigar, sending ash drifting down to the ground. "Unless, of course, the Federals weren't preparing an assassination. High energy particle physics generally requires a great deal of heavy construction. Radiation shielding, radiation sources, radiation detectors, all the fun radiation!"
"But if this doctor – if he is there, if he is working with Admiral Bosch, if they are making a weapon...then what am I supposed to do about it, beyond being on guard?" Lou frowned. "The Invisible Hand is two light hours ahead of us at cruise speed. It's not getting any closer – it's just getting further away slower as we catch up to it's cruise speed. It's basically unreachable."
"Not quite," Cornelius said, cheerfully. "This ship has fabrication capacity and remass aplenty now that the ramscoop is on. You can begin to plan an expedition – once you reach the same cruising speed as the Invisible Hand, the two ships shall be at relative stops. You then take your shuttle and move between the two, investigate, then fall backwards."
"That's insane," Lou said, shaking his head. "The faster you go, the harder it gets to go faster. It'd take every droplet of reaction mass you could cram into a shuttle – and that'd be a shuttle with a stabdrive, which is hard enough to make under the best of times, and we're not a fabrication ship, we're a consular ship, full of ambassadors not industrial facilities and raw materials. And more than that, it would be breaching the sovereign territory of the Federated States – which is what I've always been told is a classic cassias beli. All for a scientist that you have no hard evidence for!"
"But I do know precisely what it is that Dr. Listens would be most interested in researching. The Battle of Proxima," Cornelius said, puffing on his cigar, then blowing the smoke directly into Lou's face as he stepped closer. Lou coughed, waving the smoke away. "It was a pyrrhic victory for Mrs. Benoit, because she lost a smaller fleet than we did. But she still lost a fleet. And unlike ours, her fleet died of unknown causes, the ships flung into the wild blue yonder. Brain dead. Still warm, until our scopes lost them. I believe that whatever happened to Proxima poses a direct threat, if weaponized, not to individual bioform...but to the hive mind in its entirety."
A soft chirrup came from Cornelius' wrist. He sighed. "Bugger. I have to get back to my crypt."
"You have a time limit?"
"Of course," Cornelius said, casually. "Endless Song has no idea I'm part of IIS. Most clades hate us, because we keep trying to prevent them from starting wars and stabbing one another in the back." He sighed. 'It is a hard lot in life, but someone must. For the greater good and all that. Now, I understand if you are fine with allowing a direct threat to your wife's mind, body and soul-"
"We'll get the data," Lou said, frowning, his mind whirling as he thought. "Just...trust us. We have months to plan and prepare before the intercept window opens."
"Capital!"
And with that, Cornelius sauntered off, swing into a sarcophagi, and left Lou with his stomach knotting and his hands shaking.
***
Lou emerged from the elevator to find that two of his wife's bodies were out by the side of the cottage, hastily patting down with shovels a line of disturbed earth that looked alarmingly like a hastily dug grave. Lou hurried forward. "What happened?" he exclaimed, nerves exploding through him. The two bodies – his spider and wasp wife – swung around, their eyes widening.
"N-Nothing! Baking is easy!" Beatrice exclaimed.
Lou felt the knot in his stomach relax. He breathed out a slow sigh, chuckling. "You know, you can throw burned pie into the compost heap? Or into the fabricator?"
The two bodies exchanged a glance. Then the door to the cottage opened and her moth body emerged – and she was dressed in a chief's apron and nothing else, which was an arresting enough image for Lou to stop and gape at her for a bit. But it was the huge smile on her face that made him forget about the future, forget about Cornelius and Bosch, forget about everything save for the look on her face and the way that she held, in four hands, each contained in an oven mitt, a large foil pan that contained a soft, brown looking pie. Steam rose from several slits in it, which she pointed too with one of her upper hands.
"See, I sliced them precisely as the cook book told me too!" She beamed. "This was my first and only attempt, for baking is quite easy!"
Lou chuckled, then walked forward, leaning over the pie carefully to breath in the smell. It smelled like grape and honey. His brow furrowed. "Where did you get the ingredients?" he asked, curiously. "From the fabber? Or did you gather the grapes from the trees?"
"The grapes are from the fabber," her wasp body said, walking past him, her arm hooking onto his. Then she leaned in close, her voice warm and teasing. "The honey is from me."
Lou sat down and then watched as spider Bea walked past him, showed off the knife that she had fabricated for this affair, then sliced into it, while Moth and Wasp Bea both walked around to stand at the far end of the table, to watch him with such eager expectant eyes that Lou felt almost more pressured by this than by facing down a Plurality assassin with chainsaw blades for arms. He gulped, slightly, then nodded as Bea carefully, her tongue sticking out of the corner of her mouth, sliced into the pie, then carefully slid the piece free, then set it down. It was a thick, grape pie, with a crumbly, delicious looking crust.
"Oh! Do you want whipped creams?" Bea asked as Lou picked up his fork.
"No, I'm sure it'll be delicious!" Lou said, smiling. He held his fork, then drew it down, pressed it into the pie...then paused and looked up, his brow furrowing as he saw each of his wife's bodies leaning in, with such eager, expectant faces that he actually felt tempted to set the fork down and ask her to back off. Instead of that, he clenched his jaw, forced himself to slice into the pie with the fork, then lift the piece up and slide it into his mouth. He chewed, swallowed...and then smiled, slowly.
"Perfection," he said.
His wife beamed at him from three bodies.
The next day, Lou woke up to find that she had baked fifty three pies while he had slept.
Lou sighed, looking up at the ceiling as he tried to let the headache that was filling his skull ease. But it was hard. The past three days, he had been doing nothing – not enjoying his lovely wife, not reclining in the idle comfort of pastoral life aboard an interstellar starship, not even trying to think about how he planned to handle resuming his normal duties as a prince once the lighthugger had reached the SOL system.
No.
Instead of any of that, Lou had been spending his entire week studying the basics of stabdrive construction. It required several degrees in physics that he simply did not have and a grasp of mathematics that left his head pounding. He had been raised on a diet of Newton and the surviving pieces of work by Archimedes, not on the fundamentals of scientific figures with names like Totally Not Steven Hawking and Skip Bowling Get Laid Instead. The Neopolitan Star Kingdom, on the whole, liked to think of their universe as being an orderly, Newtonian one and used devices like stabdrive only under the extreme duress of the war with the Bugs.
And now, Lou had to build one.
It was less hopeless than that sounded. The schematics and tutorials and fabrication patterns that he had access to were all excellent at guiding him towards the end product that he wanted. It just took effort – and it was effort that he resented. But the schedule that he and Beatrice had worked out together, in the long, quiet evening after he had broken the news to her, the news that the Federated States were likely constructing a weapon to aim at her, that the evidence of that weapon was located on their starship, that the only hope they had to foil their plan was to reach it during the narrow window projected by Cornelius...well…
It didn't have a lot of room for breaks.
Beatrice's other bodies were at work handling the construction of the actual life support unit that would be strapped to the stabdrive properly. This was, comparatively, the easy part of the mission. Constructing spaceship hulls was a centuries old skill and humanity had broken it down to the point where a sufficiently determined child could handle it. That just left him and her moth body, trying to focus on untangling the steps in constructing the stabdrive itself.
It wasn't going to be a large stabdrive. In fact, it being a large stabdrive would have been counterproductive if he wanted to survive the crossing from the lighthugger to the Invisible Hand. As it was, the drive would be able to exceed the thrust of the lighthugger – which was currently chugging along at a stately one gravity. All he needed to do was accelerate at two gravities long enough for him to catch up with the Invisible Hand, which was coasting. It would, in fact, continue to be coasting for the better part of half a year.
Its crew was all asleep, contained in non-Newtonian fluids and filled with acceleration drugs and cryogenic buffers. They could wait until their ship was relatively close to the SOL system, then activate their stabdrive at max power, dropping in a matter of hours from 90% the speed of light to a relative stop. It was how most starships operated – more efficient, in terms of reaction mass, than the long, slow coasting that Lou and Beatrice were on.
If the ships had only been going at intersystem speeds, this entire operation would have been ludicrously easy. A chemical rocket could have carried Lou the distance required – no need to build a highly sophisticated piece of technology that he barely understood. But the problem was that they were in the void between solar systems, traveling as close to the speed of light as humanity could possibly go. They were traveling so fast that the stars were distending, that the light ahead of them was shifting from visible light to hard radiation and the light behind them was dipping below red to become infrared. They were traveling so fast that time itself was distorting like taffy – for every second that passed on Lou's ship, three second passed on Earth.
This warping of space and time had another effect, one that was invisible to Lou.
He (and every other kilogram of his ship and his wife) had been getting more and more massive. It took more energy for the ship to accelerate now than it had a month ago, and it would take even more energy to accelerate a month in the future. It was all well within the power curve of the lighthugger's stabdrive – but for any personal shuttle that he would need to make, he would need to overcome that added energy requirement.
"Huh?" Lou lifted his eyes from the technical schematics he had been reading.
Bea placed her hands upon her hips. "We have been working upon this drive for days. You are exhausted, I am irritated, and we have enough time in the schedule to take a break."
Lou rubbed his thumbs against his eyes, working grit out of them. "Bea-"
"I have read a great deal of books about humans now," Bea said, cutting him off. "All of them say that humans need to take breaks. They need to let their minds rest. And I believe that I am learning the same thing." She shook her head. "You would think that you, of all people, would understand this fundamental human condition. That is the basis of your ethos! Of your polity's ethos!"
Lou rubbed his thumbs into his eyes again, then planted his palms on the table as his wife looked down her almost invisible nose at him.
"Or!" she exclaimed. "Is this some kind of long buried example of machismo in my husband's spirit? Are you unwilling to stop work lest you be seen as weak? Hmm?"
"No. I just...want to get the engine finished and get this all over with," Lou said. "Bea, if Cornelius is right, then the Federated States are a threat to you – not just-"
Bea placed a finger upon his lips. "Husband. The Federated States are inspired by your Nazis. And, I have read up on your Nazi movements, in all the histories. And do you know what I have learned? Firstly, the uniforms by Hugo Boss are very, very, very stylish." She leaned in close. Her voice was a cool croon, one that made Lou's tired brain somehow connect horny and scared together into the same part of his soul.
"Secondly...they were fucking idiots."
Lou snorted, then sighed. "We cannot underestimate our enemies."
"Underestimate, no!" Bea said. "But I am a gestalt intelligence spread across multiple solar systems, with my mind suspended throughout trillions of bioforms. The essence of Beatrice, the core of my being, is cast across a space vaster than any empire of man." She stood, her eyes closing, her four arms spreading outwards, her antennas unfurling. "I am no mortal woman, to be easily struck down by the machinations of skull measuring losers. Also, we have not had sex for twelve hours!" She paused. "T-Thirty two hours!"
Lou frowned. "...why did you correct yourself?"
"I did not perform fellatio on you while you slept. That would be quite rude," Beatrice said, nodding. "I simply- I mean, I did not...do anything!"
Lou laughed. "And here, I was wondering why I had had such vivid dreams last night. Beatrice!" He laughed. "You are utterly irrepressible – you are going to be the death of me once we get to Venus."
"I can restrain myself whilst around your Neopolitan...fuddy duddies!" Beatrice said, bringing out the new word with clear relish. "But we are currently light years away from any fuddy duddies-" She cut him off before he even got a word out. "Ah! Ah! Currently light years away from any non cryogenically stored fuddy duddies." She grinned at him, her antennas twitching in a playful, mocking pattern. "Thus, I can be as lewd as I want! I could, for instance." She paused, then bit her lip. "Suggest...that…"
"...yes?" Lou prompted.
Bea froze, trembling.
"You can't pick what lewd thing you want most, can you?" Lou murmured.
"Is it possible for you to inhabit three or six bodies at once? Are we quite sure about this?" She asked, thinking hard.
"Not without a significant amount of sophisticated surgery and technologies that run counter to my fundamental belief systems, no," Lou said, smiling.
Beatrice pouted. "Then...we could roleplay!" She clapped her hands together. "I could be the big bad bug queen! And you could be the innocent star prince!" She crooned. "Welcome to my lair, the spider said to the fly…" She leaned up against him, her hands going to his shoulders. Her smallish breasts pressed against the back of his head as she ducked her head down, whispering into his ear. "And then the spider fucked the fly's brains out while the fly squirmed in the webbing and it was quite erotic. In a...dominant female kind of way."
Lou smirked, slowly. "You trying to be dominant? That I have to see." He chuckled. "I mean, that alone has sold me on the-"
And that was when the loop of spiderwebbing slapped down around his eyes.
Lou yelped – but no matter what he did, he didn't have a chance. Not only did his wife outnumber him three to one, but each of her bodies were coordinated and controlled by a singular mind. Also, they weren't blind. Soon, his hands were webbed up behind his back and he was being carried out of the house – the bright sunlight almost shining through the webbing over his eyes. But then he was carried off into an elevator and felt the elevator whirring along the inner track of the ship. Lou was just about to get concerned when the doors opened and a humid, almost moist heat bathed his body. He was flung down against a wall – and felt the wall itself flow and click around his body. It felt like articulated musculature, contained within hardened plates of chitin and soft, spongy flesh. The feeling was both grotesque and familiar. It was the same material that Beatrice had used for her hives, but…
More mobile.
"O-Okay, Beatrice, ha ha, very funny," he said, trying to sound brave.
A thin, needle sharp arm emerged from the wall above his head. The tip of it caressed slowly along his neck and Lou felt both goose-flesh and excitement run along his skin at the same moment as the tip hooked underneath the blindfold, then slit it off his face – cutting it with a smooth jerk of a single insectoid limb. He found that he was in a room bathed in green light. The once familiar shape of the life support systems of the lighthugger had become...overgrown. Flesh and chitin both flowed over and through the machinery, replacing gurgling and hissing pipes with slowly throbbing veins and a faint, pulsing heartbeat. The light itself came not from wall mounted illumination but rather from small sacks of buzzing firefly like creatures that cast their cold green light across the room. Most of the room was faint impressions of glistening muscle and curved, half buried machinery, and the door was lost in shadow. He didn't see any sign of the three bodies that had carried him down to this part of the ship.
Lou gulped, feeling his throat dry despite the humid moistness of the room. His clothing began to stick to him as sweat beaded along his skin – and he started to sit up, trying to tug his wrists free of the restraints.
A soft almost purring sound came from the darkness. And then Beatrice's voice spoke from around him. Not from a single throat, but from every part of the walls and the darkness – worming into his head like the dark croon of a wicked goddess.
"What do we have here...a Neopolitan prince…"
Bea uses Femdom. It's super effective!
Rubbery darkness shifted among the shadows – and a single long, elegant leg stepped from the shadows. Lou's eyes widened as he saw that Beatrice had slipped on a high heeled shoe that looked as if she had carved it from her own discarded chitin plating, adding biomechanical flourishes to the heel and the sole so the distinctly human artifact had an eerie, alien edge to it. His eye roved along the sleek black-blue thigh to curved hips of her moth body. Her lower arms were crossed over her belly, while her upper arms held a long riding crop in her hands, and her face was concealed behind an ornate fusion of chitin and a beaked opera mask that left only her lips exposed, lips that were skinned back to show sharp, sharp fangs.
The riding crop smacked against her palm as she purred. "Your forces think you're dead, my pretty prince. No one is coming to rescue you…" She stepped forward, rolling her hips, her moth wings fluttering in the pale green light. "No one is going to save you from me."
Lou's dick had never felt harder in his life. He was pretty certain that he couldn't speak, even if he wanted.
The Bea reached up, taking her mask, tugging it off. "This is the part I will be playing! I'm not actually going to torture you, and the United Human Polities and I are not at war any more, that is a deception that is part of the-" She paused. "What? Did I do something wrong?"
Lou groaned, laying his head back against the wall. "Beatrice!" his voice almost had a whining edge to it. "I don't know if you can get the bends from arousal and terror, but…" He laughed. "You don't break character during a roleplay!" He paused. "I-I think. I...don't...actually know how...I mean, it's not like there are rules for this kind of thing, are there?"
Beatrice blushed. "O-Oh! I'm sorry, I just, I didn't want to frighten you! I just wanted to arouse you!" She grinned. "I did manage that latter part…" She smiled. "Now, uh...where was I?"
"Forgetting my restraints?" Lou murmured.
"Yes, I- what?" Beatrice yelped as Lou sprang to his feet, the wall having relaxed its grip upon him. A moment, he had grabbed onto his wife, twirled her around, and pinned her against the wall, his grin playful. Beatrice trembled, from her antennas to her toes, and whispered. "Y-Your physicality remains intimidatingly arousing, my space prince…" She whispered as he pushed both of her upper arms above her head, her lower arms hooking around his hips as Lou leaned in close – then bit down onto the mask and jerked his head to tug it off and fling it aside. Looking into her eyes, he purred.
"Looks like I've turned the tables," he whispered.
"A-Ah, well, um…" Bea trembled a bit more, her nipples hard enough to cut plasteel. "I-I still have two other bodies."
Lou grinned – then, upon hearing a faint sound of movement, slipped aside. Her wasp body, who had been creeping up behind him, instead blundered right into her moth body, their breasts pressing together, their arms flailing as they tried to remain standing. Lou tugged his shirt off, twirled it into a quick, tight rope, then looped it around the two bodies, tying it off so that they were both held together, bust to bust, nose to nose. Both bodies glared at him.
"Do you think this will stop- ah!" They both gasped at once, for Lou, his eyes having adapted to the night colors of the room, had spotted the spider body, lurking and waiting. He had stepped forward, reached down, and plunged two of his fingers into her sex, cupping her ass with other hand, holding her light body against his chest as he began to finger-fuck her unexpectedly. This seemed to throw the entire hive mind for a loop – even the walls convulsed slightly as Bea's face on three bodies looked shocked – and pleased. "Ah...yes!" her was body moaned, grinding her nipples against her moth body, while her spider body clung to him.
Lou chuckled – feeling raw. Dominant. His voice purred in her ear. "You need to try harder than that to beat me, hive mind." His finger found her spider-clit and rubbed in slow, eager circles, riding the line between pain and pleasure. Spider-Bea let out a high pitched chittering noise, her mandibles flaring wide as all six of her arms gripped onto him – two at the shoulder, two at his biceps, one on his wrist, the other on his hip as she tried to keep herself standing. Moth-Bea's antennas went to full extension while Wasp-Bea began to buzz, her wings vibrating as her eyes went out of focus.
"Who's my eager slutty little hive mind?" Lou purred.
"Me! Me am!" Bea moaned, her spider eyes drooping. "Ah! Nnh! Yes! Nooo, don't stoooop!" She whined as his fingers – slick and slippery – pulled from her sex. She let out a tiny mew – and then her eyes widened as he reached out and thrust both fingers into her wasp-body's mouth. As her tongue swirled around his fingers, tasting her own juices, her moth body panted and whispered. "Lou, pl-"
"Lord," Lou crooned. "Call me your Lord."
"Ohhh…" Beatrice's breath sighed from three bodies at once, her antennas all going slack, her eyes half shutting as arousal quaked through her – the muffled moan that came from her Wasp body feeling even more arousing than the others. Lou grinned, then purred into the spider body's ear.
"Web your moth down, ass in the air, thighs spread, cunt ready."
"Y-Yes Lord…" She nodded, and then wobbled forward. Her moth body was too excited to even walk properly – her wasp form had to grab onto her arm to try and steady her. In the end, both bodies dropped to their knees, Lou's shirt hitting the ground next to them as the relatively loose knot came free. Lou slid his pants slowly off and both her wasp and moth body's eyes looked at his cock, widening with eagerness, while her spider body moved, squatting and using her spinnerets to slap down thick matted webbing onto the both body's palms, pinning all four of them to the ground. Beatrice panted, softly, her dark tongue sliding from her lips, her antennas tightening up with excitement as her wasp body and her spider body grabbed onto her thighs, spread them wide and pushed them forward, so that her knees were tucked almost against her own elbows. This left her ass thrust into the air – and her cunt dripped with arousal.
"Do you want your Lord's dick, little hive mind?" Lou walked past the wasp-body, caressing her hair, making her moan softly.
"Yes," Bea said through each body. "Yes, we want my lord's cock so bad, we need it, we need it so bad, ah…" Her wings beat in a jagged little twitch. "Please. Fuck me. Fuck my slutty cunt so hard, fuck us, yes!" She tried to strain herself, to compact her body even more, to push her ass out just a tiny fraction more towards Lou as he knelt behind her. "Please, lord, yes, please, please, plea- AH!" She screamed across three throats, her two other bodies falling onto their backs, their bodies twitching and trembling as Lou, with a single motion, thrust himself entirely into the slightly cool pussy of her moth body. He groaned and didn't even try to delay himself, to go slow, to even try to get her off.
Not that he needed to try on that mark.
"Yesssss!" Be gasped – her spider body arched her back, thrusting her hips into the air, squirting her pleasure around three fingers that she plunged into her own sex. "Fuck we! Yes!"
"So good, yes, mmmm!" her wasp form trembled, laying on her side, one of her legs crooked up so that her knees was pressed against her side, a remarkable display of her own flexibility. Her latex black fingers had buried themselves into the black folds of her own sex and she was fingering herself there, her other hand cupping and squeezing her own large breast, tugging gently on her nipple in time with Lou's feral, brutal thrusts. His balls slapped against the blue-black thighs of her moth body as her moth-body went beyond the ability to even speak. She simply mewled and moaned and gasped, her body barely rocking in time with his fucking. She was rooted fast to the floor, and the only thing that moved was the tiny jiggle of her rump and the rustling of her hair and the wiggling of her antennas.
It was too much. After so much hard work, after so much stress, after the build up, Lou had no endurance and no willpower.
He slammed hard, slammed deep, and he came. He came hard. His balls clenched and the thick, purple cum that he had gotten as a lark filled his wife to the brim, then overflowed. And still, he came fucking into her, his hips moving with spasmodic, twitching motions. Another surge came and he let out a choked moan as he came into her a second time, a wave of pleasure roiling through him as he clutched her hips tightly enough that if she had been human, she would have bruised. His body trembled and he panted, then went limp, hanging his head forward. He opened his eyes and saw that Beatrice had been destroyed. Cum didn't just drip from her pussy, it soaked her belly, it coated her thighs, it dripped and puddle onto the floor. In his wild frenzy, Lou had stirred it around inside of her - and this body didn't have a womb. All the excess simply…
Came out again.
The end result was it looked as if he had cum inside of he six, seven times. Not just...twice.
Lou grinned, slowly as he heard his wife's panting moans. "Well, well…" He managed to purr the words out, despite his thundering heart, despite his burning lungs. He looked back, then gently took hold of his wife's arm, tugging her wasp-body forward. She looked at him in dazed, cock drunk confusion. Lou crooned. "You made quite a mess, little hive mind. Naught hive mind. Dirty little slutty hive mind. Look at all this cum…" He turned her head with his hand, gripping her hair. "Look at how much cum is wasted."
"M...Muah?" Bea mumbled, unable to quite form words.
"You know what naughty little slutty hive minds do when they make a mess?" Lou purred. "They clean it up."
He pushed forward and Bea made a confused noise – and then her yellow face pressed to the blue-black thighs of her moth body, her eyes the only thing visible over her own rump. Her tongue flicked out and she moaned, muffled, against her own sex as her moth body flung her head back and let out a keening mewling noise. "Lord! Ah! Master! It's too much! Nnnh!" She quivered. "Ah...I'm losing my mind!" She moaned as Lou used his own hand to keep her wasp body's head against her sex.
"Come on. Lick yourself clean, hive mind," Lou purred.
He was hard again.
Oh to be a teenager, he thought.
When, after three hours, he was completely spent, collapsed on his back, with each of his wife's incredibly well stuffed bodies around him, laying on him, cuddling against him, Lou nodded and said: "How was that?"
"I believe that I like femdom!" Bea sounded drunk.
***
Work fell into a rhythm. Study, build, plan, occasionally fuck. The telescopic observations of the Invisible Hand told a comforting story: It was as cold and as quiet as any starship was capable of being while still maintaining their cryocrypts. It was impossible that anyone onboard was awake at all – Lou would need to dress in heated armor and survival gear to walk around inside, assuming he didn't just stay in his life support suit.
The only problem that came with the planning was when, two months later, with the first test of the stabdrive, Beatrice learned that Lou planned to be on the ship heading to the Invisible Hand.
"You what!?" Bea exclaimed from three mouths simultaneously, while Lou was watching the readout from the small spar of metal that pushed the stabdrive out ahead of the lighthugger. That was the only way to test the thing safely – to fire it out front of the ship, while simultaneously pushing the main drive up to compensate for the counter-thrust. Even that was a risk, considering the energies contained in a stabdrive, but Lou had exhaustively gone through the calculations over a three day period. Even if the worst, most catastrophic explosion occurred, there was enough void between the ice armor and enough ice armor between them that the end result would be acceptable damage to the ship. It still hadn't been any less nerve wracking.
The end result, though, had been that the drive had checked out on everything the tutorials said that it needed to check out on. It was capable of sustaining two gravities of acceleration at demi-light speed for long enough to catch up with the coasting Invisible Hand.
Which was when Lou had mentioned that he was actually looking forward to finally getting onto the shuttle.
"No, absolutely not, I refuse, utterly, no!" Beatrice said, trembling from her head to her toes. "There is a singular Louis Benoti XII in the entire universe, from here until the end of time, whatever that form may take, no. No!" She shook her head. "No no no no no! We are not risking your singularity upon this scheme, no matter how dangerous, how vile, the Federated States are. No! I forbid you!"
Lou sighed. "Honey, I have to do this," he said.
"No you do not!" Each of her bodies pressed in close, as if they were planning to tie him up before he tried anything. Lou held up his hands, hurriedly.
"I have to do this!" he said, again. "I have access codes that are genetically locked to me – I went and checked. My father worked with the Federated States, they have his genes in the code libraries. That means that they have my genes in there. If I send a signal to their simulated intelligence that I need emergency supplies for our ship, that our fabbers are damaged and I need to come myself, then their SI is going to let me in. However, Federated computer systems are designed to shoot Bugs on sight. Any shuttle with you onboard is going to be vaporized before it gets within a light second."
Bea trembled. Her antennas drooped. She looked as if she was torn, thinking. Thinking.
"I will come with you to the other ship," she said, nodding. "The stabdrive can-"
"Remember the rocket equation, honey?" Lou said, his voice gentle. "We only have fifty kilograms of wiggle room. Even your cutest body isn't that light."
Bea trembled, then stuck her nose into the air. "Huff!"
And she turned and stomped off – and didn't speak to Lou for almost twelve hours. He tried to find her, but after failing to track her down for three hours, Lou decided to give his wife some space. She came to him as he was cramming some food from the fabricator down his mouth between a stint on prepping the shuttle hull on the lawn. All three of her bodies looked serious and frowning – while her moth body stepped forward, her hands cupping together before her breasts, all four of them touching to create a sphere of clasped palms.
"Beatrice, I'm sorr-"
"Here!" She thrust her arms out, her fingers unfolding, revealing that she had been cradling a small, wriggling worm.
Lou blinked. "What...is this?"
"It's a communication friend!" Beatrice said, cheerfully. "You jam it into your ear, or up your nose, either will work, or you can eat it, honestly, it just has to get near a nerve cluster! There, it will bond with your body and allow me to see through your eyes and hear through your ears. It will improve sex in a new and interesting way. A-Also, it will mean that I will know what is going on when you reach the Invisible Hand and something horrible happens." She bit her lip.
"I…" Lou picked up the worm. The end of it opened and hiss, green slime dripping from its sharply bladed facial beak. "D...Does it...have to be so…"
"Oh, that's so it can bore through-"
Lou closed his eyes, opened his mouth, and thrust the worm down his throat before his wife could continue. Swallowing was the hardest thing he had done in quite some time. Keeping himself from throwing up was harder still. He coughed, gasped, then smiled weakly at Bea, who smiled at him.
"Thanks," she whispered.
***
The day came and Lou felt as if everything had gone too fast. The happy moments, the pies, the sundresses, the cuddling, it had all slipped through his fingers in a haze of work and work and more work. And now he was here, sitting in the acceleration chair of a spaceship he had bunged together with his own bare hands. It looked more factory produced than he would have expected – but then again, he and Beatrice had followed the instructions together as closely as they could. The fabber had spat out part after part, and they had put those parts together.
The end result was a snub nosed vehicle that was essentially an acceleration couch, a lightweight (as lightweight as it could be at least) radiation shield, the stabdrive.
Lou! Can you hear me? The messenger friend has bored into a nerve cluster and seamlessly integrated itself with-
Lou closed his eyes. Yes, I can hear you, my wife. Can...you not...bring up how the thing works?
Oh, okay! Are you prepared to blast off?
As ready as I will ever be, Lou thought – and he swore that he could feel his wife's nervous tension burning through the nerve link. He placed his palms onto the controls, then tapped the button to bring on the HUD. The radiation shield had a small camera on the front, and it showed the distorted starfield ahead of them – and it highlighted the small distant spec of nothingness that was the Invisible Hand. Lou gulped, then waited a few seconds...and then said.
Blastoff.
The engine kicked on and he felt his weight double – the stabdrive's rumbling shaking through the entire superstructure of his makeshift vehicle. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see the bulk of the lighthugger beginning to fall away behind him. It was faster than he had expected...and if it wasn't for the distorted stars around him, he could have imagined that they were just transferring between ships at a stop. That this wasn't just him flinging himself out into the infinite blackness while going nearly the speed of light. The stabdrive burned clear and pure and the shaking became a subliminal hum.
I have been reading about wives in the 1970s. I believe I prefer being a housewife from the 1950s, Bea said, her voice cheerful – though under it, Lou could hear a nervous buzzing tension. I like their clothing. And the pies. And the subservience to a masculine man who can spank their rumps!
I don't know if that-
It was in one hundred percent of all of the women in the past, according to my very scientific survey!
Lou chuckled. He tried to find something to talk about, something to fill the vastness of the emptiness around him. But...there was nothing that could. And the idea that there was anything that could even come close was almost laughable. It was sacrilegious. He was in the emptiness between the stars. He was going at speeds that ancient man couldn't even imagine – that he couldn't even fully grasp. And he was thinking he might be able to make himself forget about it by thinking about small talk?
...if I had come with you, I could distract you with my boobs.
Lou managed, just barely, to laugh against the pressure on his chest.
Time crawled by.
And then…
The Invisible Hand began to loom. First, it was simply a dark shape that blotted out more and more distorted stars. Then as he came closer, he could pick out the throbbing radiative vanes that spread out along the rear axis of the ship, glowing bright cherry red as they pumped waste heat out into the void. There was the silent, quintessence stabdrive. It didn't look nearly as scary as it should have. Then there was the conical prow armor – which swept out to either side, jacketing the brick shape of the actual starship like an oversized arrowhead. Lou pinged the ship with laserlight.
"Come on Invisible Hand," he said. "This is Prince Louis Benoit XII – we have had a serious nanofabricator meltdown and need replacement base feedstock. Anyone awake in there?"
"Greetings, Prince Benoit," a calm, synthetic male voice spoke. It was a simulated intelligence – not the real intelligence and personality of someone like Amy. For a century, humanity had only made SIs, unwilling to risk the threat of being overtaken by singularitarian intelligences evolving beyond their own abilities. The end result of the QHC programs, kicked into full gear during the Bug War, had been significantly less terrifying than most people had expected, but it had made SIs seem rather quaint by comparison. The Neopolitans had SIs on their servitors – but that was the only place.
"Do I have permission to come aboard?" Lou asked.
"Yes," the SI said. "Admiral Bosch and the rest of the command crew and passengers are all in cryogenic storage. I will serve as your guide. Please dock your shuttle with the marked airlock." The HUD on Lou's ship pinged up a green circle. He tapped a few buttons – thinking to his wife: So far, so good.
The airlock loomed larger and larger as Beatrice sent a wordless swelling of pride and hope and love towards him. The airlock door fastened around the universal lock built onto the side of the makeshift ship and Lou emerged from the airlock and into the Invisible Hand. It was cold and it was dead – the internal lights were set to the dimmest level, meaning that the corridor looked like a haunted twilight. There was no gravity, as the ship wasn't under acceleration, so Lou floated in the middle of the corridor. His hand drifted down to check his weapon belt – then jerked away as a hologram appeared in the corridor before him. It was an image of a blond, blue eyed, square jawed Aryan model of Federated citizenship.
"Welcome aboard the Federated Starship Invisible Hand, Prince Benoit," the hologram said. "I am the SI of this ship, Odinson. You said in your transmission that your fabricator had a cascading feedback failure?"
Lou sighed. "It was my fault," he said, shaking his head. "I'm not really up to date on all the modern fabrication ecologies, I messed it up, and...well, the choices are either I come here for resupply, or I get into the cryopods-"
"I have been programmed to be aware that this would leave your wife in an unfortunate situation," the SI said, nodding. "I understand. Follow me, I can lead you to the fabrication storage area."
"Right," Lou said, then started to gently push himself along the corridor. He glanced down the corridor – and there was a straight shot towards the bridge. "Oh, darn!" He shouted, then kicked off the wall, hard.
"Are you quite all right?" the SI asked as Lou tumbled, bounced, tumbled again.
"Yes, fine, just slipped, god, I'm so bad at freefall!" Lou said, his stomach tumbling inside him like a dizzy gyroscope. But he kept his gorge down as he tumbled into the bridge – and he threw out his arm. Part of the planning had involved reading his family's documents on Federated ship layout and control systems. His father had served alongside these assholes for years – and so…
Lou's palm slapped down on a control console and he swung himself around, then began to tap away with his fingers, frowning as he brought up the systems. There were passkeys and authentication requirements. This is where I engage in my capacity for excellence! Bea said, cheerfully. Allow me to use your right arm, please!
Of course, Lou thought – and though they had practiced this before, the feeling of his arm suddenly going numb and then shooting out and punching in keys faster than he thought possible was still eerie as hell. The authentication requests vanished and full access to the system popped up as Beatrice hummed in his mind.
Human encryption is very easy when you can parallel calculate across several trillion brains. Even if most of those brains are quite small!
"Sir, you are-" the SI said, entering into the bridge. He wasn't programmed for anything more than quizzical looks, so Lou didn't mind hitting the shut down button and turning the SI off immediately. He frowned as he began to punch in the keys on the keyboard, his brow furrowing as he started to skim through the data-files. His stomach was tight. He knew that there was no way they could conceal this activity – even if he went through and scrubbed every computer file, there'd be enough evidence caught on both ships to make it clear that someone was up to something. And while Beatrice was an excellent hacker in terms of mathematics, she had no real grounding – who knows how many tricks and traps the Feds had left in their computer system.
So, if he didn't find some fucking evidence…
Lou paused.
A death's head glared at him on the screen.
A reflection, looming behind his.
Lou flung himself aside before the gleaming metal fist punched through his head. It plunged into the computer and filled the air with hazing, glittering glass chunks. Lou spun in freefall, then planted his feet against the ceiling, his rapier already grasped in his hand. Standing on the deck, boots maglocked to the floor, was a hulking Federal marine in power armor. He didn't have any kinetic weapons in his hands, but his fists were deadly enough considering Lou's unarmored space suit. But when the marine turned to face him, Lou's eyes widened.
He's a skeleton? Bea exclaimed.
"He's a draugr," Lou said, scowling, forgetting to just think the words. "When a Federal marine dies, they don't resleeve him, they turn his body into a cyberzombie and use them for suicide missions."
Dear god, why!? Bea shouted.
Lou flung himself away from the ceiling, angling towards the exit out of the bridge, moments before the draugr reached out to grab for him. Mailed fingers closed on nothing but cold air, and Lou landed on the floor. His mag boots locked and he turned – only to find that the draugr could learn too. He had demagged and launched himself forward, arms reaching out for Lou. One closed around Lou's left arm – but rather than twisting it out of his socket, the draugr pulled his arm, trying to shove it behind his back. The other hand reached for Lou's helmet, so Lou impaled the draugr through the palm, clenching his palm to discharge UPF in the hilt.
The rapier flowed forward, then hit the power armor and rather than exploding him apart, the field was dispersed in a crackling spray of lightning and sparks. Lou grunted, then jerked his blade free, taking advantage of the draugr's suddenly lax fingers to jerk his arm free. He kicked off the creature's chest. An inverse of his normal interaction with Bea happened: The draugr remained and he was sent sailing down the corridor. He saw the airlock that he had entered by – it was still open, still showing the ship. He swiveled his legs down and managed to maglock onto the ground. It helped that the ship wasn't a vacuum – air drag slowed him over time. The draugr started to stomp towards him, using the magboots rather than trying another jump trick.
Lou!
I have an idea, Lou thought. His hand went to the wrist controls on his suit. He programmed in a quick, simple set of instructions to his ship.
The draugr lifted its fist and swung it at his chest – slightly slower than Lou would have expected. He ducked to the left, back to the airlock. The draugr stepped into the open space, then lunged at Lou. Lou demagged and kicked up.
The airlock suddenly screamed with air gushing into space.
The draugr leaped into open vacuum.
Tumbled.
Reached.
Tumbled more.
Lou grabbed onto the wall, grinning – and saw that his ship was precisely where he had parked it. It had smoothly pulled up and out of the way of the ship, tearing its universal socket free, filling space with torn rubber and plastic. Air rushed past Lou, but the airlock door finally recognized the torn seal and shut with a clunk. Lou nodded.
Most cleverly done! Beatrice exclaimed.
I need to get that information – we have to set off any number of s- Lou turned.
And standing down the corridor from him, holding pistols in their hands, were a pair of Federated marines, with fleshy faces behind their faceplates. Standing between them was Admiral Bosch, his smile entirely fake.
"Admiral Bosch," Lou said. "Is it normal for your ship's draugr security to just attack people out of the blue?"
Admiral Bosch chuckled, then reached up. He tugged his helmet off – and his breath fogged into the air as a flash of light blazed through the window behind Lou. He didn't risk glancing back – but he did hear the clattering, clunking sounds against the hull. One of the Invisible Hand's point defense guns had just lanced his ship. He pursed his lips slightly as Admiral Bosch said: "Let us drop the dissembling. You're here looking for Project Etemenanki, aren't you?"
Lou pursed his lips, then stood up a bit taller.
"I don't suppose you'll be willing to tell me your evil plan?"
Bosch chuckled. "No."
The pistols flashed.
***
Pain.
Aches.
Throbbing.
The deepest was in the very bottom of his gut – like something had been yanked out and crushed. But there were other aches here, there, everywhere. And there was also a void of memory, a lack of knowledge. Fragments of self swirled around in his brain and when his eyes opened, he found that he was looking at a frowning, blue eyed, blond face. A woman. She was pretty, and yet, he hated her more than he could possibly begin to express. His brow furrowed and he tried to sit up, clenching his jaw...the woman planted her palm upon his chest and shoved him back down. She held up a small tool, aiming it down into his eye. He hissed.
And then there was a single name…
"Bea…" he whispered.
"How romantic," a gloating, male voice spoke.
And with that name, with that knowledge, everything seemed to come rushing back. The cryogenic amnesia faded and Lou tried to sit up again – but again, the woman shoved him down, continuing to aim the tool. There was a feathering sting that buzzed against his iris – cold and shocking. He hissed and she nodded. "Okay, that's the ocular sample," she said. "We'll be able to confirm he's not a clone."
"I'm fairly sure your parents won't think that's likely, but," Admiral Bosch said, walking over and leaning over the cryocrypt. He was dressed in a sleek, glittering uniform, covered in medals and insignia and with a red sash. He grinned. "There's no reason to leave these things to chance once the negotiations start." He shook his head, slightly.
"Negotiations…" Lou's voice was raspy. He tried to sit up again, and this time, he was allowed. He saw that the crypt was located in the middle of a command room – there was a curved window looking out at a vast, black pyramid that sat in the shadow of an even more vast, even more impossible pyramid. That pyramid was broad and horizon consuming – and the fact that it was there, that there was a horizon to consume at all – was shocking to Lou. He blinked, slowly, and then...it clicked. Olympus Mons.
"We're on Mars," he whispered, softly.
The pyramid was constructed before the Federated Headquarters, Olympia, which was located in the shadow of Olympus Mons. He knew it. It was famous. But he had had no idea that the center of the command station was so ludicrously grandiose. The main command deck was huge, and there were enough terminals and consoles arrayed out in every direction for fifty, sixty people to work at them. There were display holograms of the solar system...and Lou recognized the symbols, the orbits. He frowned, slowly, then looked over at Bosch.
He ignored the fact that he was currently naked to instead say: "How long was I in cryo?"
"Five months," Bosch said, smirking. "What you didn't expect, my little princeling...was that the Federated States always know how to play to win." He chuckled.
"Five months...but…" Lou blinked, then looked around again. "That's impossible. We weren't that close to SOL."
"Do you know there are two ways to get to a solar system faster than expected, my dear prince?" Bosch asked, his voice full of gloating pride as he walked away, his hands clasped behind him. "The first is to burn harder. The second...is to burn lighter." He grinned, turning back to face Lou. "We removed nearly two thirds of the mass from our ship before we reached the halfway point. We were able to begin decelerating later, far later, and arrive before your lighthugger even got close to the SOL system."
Lou opened his mouth – then closed it. "You murdering bastard," he whispered.
Bosch looked a bit offended. "What do-"
"The cryocrypts!" Lou snarled. "Your crew, you cut them loose, that's the only way you'd lose that much mass!"
"The crypts were part of the ejection process," Bosch said, pursing his lips. "Also, secondary and primary weapon systems, payloads for our munitions, the Invisible Hand needed a complete refit once she-"
"There are nearly two hundred people in the Fenris class!" Lou forced himself to his feet. "What, did you draugrize enough to throw the others into fucking space?"
"It was a volunteer program. Their lives will be honored by the Federated States for all eternity for allowing this ultimate victory. Behold!" Bosch swept his arm out, towards the pyramid. "Project Etemenanki. The historic forerunner to the mythological tower of Babel. The tower that, when built, led Yahweh to strike humanity down for their hubris. To turn our one tongue into many…" Bosch's gloved hand clenched. "A quantum interference generator, produced by exposing a sentient mind to-"
"It's a jamming device for my wife's hive mind," Lou said, his voice dripping with scorn. "Based off a mad Upkin doctor's ideas about the Proxima anomaly. Yeah, yeah, I get it." He rubbed at his throat, then gingerly planted his feet on the floor. He stood in the mass of Feds, many of whom were looking at him with wide eyes, clearly not sure what to make of his nudity. If Bosch had hoped to make him quail before the crowd by having him remain naked, then Bosch had miscalculated. It wasn't that Lou didn't feel shame.
He did.
But one could only feel shame when you were mortifying oneself before people that you respected.
Lou clenched his fists as Bosch glared at him.
"Would you like some-"
"Your battle fleets are in attack position," Lou said, thrusting his finger. "Are you planning to rip the UHP apart?"
"Of course not!" Bosch chuckled. "Mere to deal with a rabid dog once its slipped its leash." He nodded to the screen. "Look again."
Lou looked again – and saw that there was a civilian lighthugger on those scopes. His ship. Bea's ship. He stepped forward, his heart in his throat as Bosch walked up to stand behind him. His voice was a soft purr, gloating. "Once Etemenanki is activated and brought to full power, the quantum interference will spread through the hive mind clusters on that ship and the galaxy. It will rip that thing apart – and we will clean up the aftermath. And then...with our fleets triumphant and the only opposing fleet in the UHP that could stand against us on lock…"
"You think my father would simply sit on his hands because you have me as a hostage?" Lou snarled.
"Yes," Bosch said, blandly.
"My father may be a blackguard and a hypocrite...but he's not a coward," Lou snarled. "So, if you think that your plan is going to end in anything but fire and blood, then go ahead and do it."
Bosch smirked.
"Do it?" he asked.
And in the distance, the pyramid began to glow – crackling purple discharges crackling along the sides as forked tines emerged from the tip – buzzing and blurring into an eye-searing display of warped space.
"You absolute bastard!" Lou snarled, stepping forward – but a pair of Federal marines in power armor were there to grab him and slam him back down into a chair. Their metal gauntlets were shockingly gentle, considering their enhanced strength, but Lou still felt terribly impotent in their grip. His hands tightened into fists and he glared at Admiral Bosch, who shook his head slowly, looking sad.
"That is the problem with you Neopolitans. You're so sentimental. Embracing tradition for aesthetic reasons, without understanding their true value. You think you can defang our past – remove everything that made it sharp and hard and power. But humanity is not a coddled pet that you could render impotent. We are built on generations of struggle, conflict, the Manichean battle between good and between evil…" He spread his hands wide. "Between good, honest, Aryan people, and the corruptive forces of Marxism, anarchism, decadence…"
"Sir."
"You think that a petty monarchy can stand against such forces? You, yourself, are already corrupted by it! You have fallen in love with a mass murdering bug! A roach!" Bosch's hands came together before his chest as he walked towards Lou, glaring down at him. A strand of his hair had come free from his comb over. "An inhuman creature! And you didn't merely consort to a fiction, to control it, to lull it into a false sense of security. You love it."
"...sir!"
"And that," Bosch hissed, leaning in close enough that his breath warmed Lou's face. "That is why you failed, my Prince. And that is why the Neopolitan Star Empire will bend the knee to the Federated States as the United Human Polities are reshaped into-"
"Sir!"
Bosch turned – and didn't see Lou's smirk.
On the force projection maps that were being used to plot out the arrayed forces of the Federated States navy, the singular blip that was the lighthugger bearing the diplomatic envoys from Alpha Centauri had continued to draw closer – but there was a tiny glyph on it designating that it had ceased firing its stabdrive. "The lighthugger is on an intercept vector with our L2 fleet. They're not responding to laser pings or radio coms." The woman who was speaking sounded steely and confident – the picture of a fascist officer. "Lieutenant Admiral Langston is asking for permission to open fire."
"The king and queen of Venus are on that ship," Bosch said, frowning. "They need to surrender...have you sent the image of their son? And said that his life is forfeit unless they surrender?"
"Yes, sir. The lighthugger is still on an attack vector."
"It can't be on an attack vector. It's unarmed!" Bosch said, his lip curling. "Prep marine pods."
"Yes sir."
Lou chuckled.
Bosch turned, his eyes narrowing. "Soon, I will have your parents in custody as well, Princeling."
Lou leaned his head back slightly. "Admiral…" he paused, then glanced out the window, at the buzzing pyramid that was the quantum interference device that the Admiral hoped would kill his wife. Beatrice's hive mind depended on quantum communications to function – signaling from mind to mind in her trillions of bioforms faster than the speed of light. But there was something more powerful even than the ability of quantum wave-forms to interact at superluminal speeds – something that Lou relied upon, right now, when hope should have been lost.
His wife.
Not her powers, not her billions of bodies, not her alien nature.
Her.
"What? Spit it out," Bosch snarled. "Did you build some weapons in that tub? Some defenses?"
"No, actually," Lou said, chuckling. "It's just before we left, before I decided to spend the trip out of cryogenic storage, my wife said that to be alone for a year would be several million eternities. Each entity, a second." His eyes flickered as he looked up at Bosch. "You left my wife alone on a starship, with the entire history of the human race at her fingertips, a fabricator, and three trillion minds spread across three solar systems...and you gave her nearly thirty million seconds. Thirty million eternities. With. One. Goal."
Bosch's face was reddening.
"Me," Lou said, casually. "And, if the pain in my chest is any indication, you only yanked the communication grub I had in me out when I was thawing. So she knows exactly where I am."
Lou did not grin.
He showed his teeth.
"To borrow a phrase my friend Godfucker might use...you done fucked up."
Bosch turned back and screamed at the top of his lungs – his face red, his voice cracking: "Fire on that Lighthugger!"
It was already too late.
***
A lighthugger approaches a solar system rear first. Normally, it spends only the last few hours of its flight into the system decelerating, using its stabdrive to put out crushing levels of force to snap its speed down from near light to something approximating normal, Newtonian velocities. This is done at the edge of the system, to minimize the chances of slamming into any small chunk of matter that might slip past the magnetic deflection screens.
For the lighthugger bearing Beatrice Benoit and the rest of the diplomatic envoy team and the cargo recovered from Charon, the modifications made to their flight had required some changes. The ship hadn't used the full power of the stabdrive, it had accelerated at one gravity for half the trip, then decelerated for the other half. This meant that, as it approached Mars, it did so with its drive still burning.
Until the light went out.
Every astrogation program in the Federal fleets instantly changed their projected ETAs for the lighthugger. In one of the counter intuitive parts of interstellar warfare, by turning off their engine, the lighthugger was now going to arrive sooner. It was going at such a clip, in fact, that the crews onboard the various ships in the L2 fleet all began to hastily make ready for a fast pass battle. It would require less actual human involvement than a more standard slugging match. Instead of battery and counter battery fire, interception missiles and chaff clouds, the entire battle would take place over several seconds as the two 'fleets' passed through one another.
It was likened by some to a bullet firing past another bullet, and both bullets then trying to shoot one another with more bullets.
"Our forward laser arrays are locked in and coilguns are primed, sir!" the gunnery control officer aboard the flagship of the L2 fleet, the Bismark IV, said, looking towards Lieutenant Admiral Langston, who sat in the acceleration couch of the bridge, glowering.
"Damn bastards couldn't even give us the satisfaction of a proper fight." He shook his head. "Give things over to the SIs."
"Sir, the Bismark III and IX are reporting that there are strange energy signatures coming from the lighthugger," the coms officer says.
For not the first time in his storied career, Lt. Admiral Langston wished that the naval registry of acceptable ship names drawn from the glorious history of their people was a tiny bit longer. Would it really hurt to include, say, Yamato? The Musashi? They weren't really properly white names, but...still, it had to be better than having, in the list of Thor class battleships, nine different Bismarks. Honestly. Langston looked ahead, to the forward screens of his bridge – which showed the telescopically magnified view of the lighthugger. He didn't need a comptech to tell him something strange was happening – tiny flashes were sparkling along the edges of the lighthugger, in spreading, triangular patterns.
"They're firing the deicing charges!"
"Fools," Langston chuckled. "That ice armor was their best chance at-"
A star-bright drive flare exploded from the expanding mass of ice chunks and mist that had once been the lighthugger. A single scout ship – a two seater rocket with more telescopes than sense – situated at the edge of the fleet's orbital path managed to snap a single, blurry shot of what was the life support containment and stabdrive of the former lighthugger, accelerating towards a stable orbit around Earth. It carried every sleeper berth and what was left of the cargo hold, and nothing else. The remaining superstructure of the lighthugger was spreading among that mist of ice and dust – and the confusion that the cloud of particulates wrought on the fleet's sensor suite could not be overestimated.
In battles that take seconds, moments of confusion and indecision could cost the war.
"Sir, should we loose the fire control SIs?"
"No," Langston growled. "If we fire into that mess, we'll hit mostly vacuum! The cowards are running and think that we can't track them back to wherever that drive structure went. Trace it, n-"
The cloud of debris rippled.
And from it came horrors.
They were each different. Each unique, in its own cleverly sadistic way. Covered with glowing chunks of carapace that acted as radiators for biologies designed to operate at chemical temperatures beyond anything seen in normal life, their bodies studded with crystalline growths that mimicked agrav generators and unified field focusing lenses, the bioforms that spilled into space each looked like a neon glow nightmare. The commonality was grasping tentacles, dripping maws, and eyes. A whole hell of a lot of eyes.
They flung themselves forward, agrav fields dropping their mass to a feather as their thruster organs spilled superheated, high pressurized fluids into space, and corkscrewed into the L2 fleet, broadcasting terribly human warcries over the radio frequencies.
"Come on boys! Lets fuck 'em up!"
The first of the bioforms smashed into the Bismark II, a Thor class battleship and cut their way through the hull with acid tipped claws. They writhed into corridors and began to flow past crew and marines like liquid death – leaving behind screaming, stunned survivors in their wake. Those with guns usually found their arms missing, while those without were left stuck to the walls by glistening, fast hardening resin. The marines usually fared the worst of it – they were set upon by snarling, hissing monsters that usually sprang on them two, three, four at once. Claws snipped and snapped, and sometimes, they managed to get the armor off without killing the marine underneath. But gentleness wasn't really their end goal – and more than a few Federal marines were left as quivering, dripping piles of acid seared flesh.
Langston, on his bridge, kept gaping as screams came from every ship in the fleet. Some were already flickering, their IFF signals going dark.
"What is going on!?" He shouted over the din coming from the speakers. "Why...how!? Their hive mind is dead!"
"I don't know, sir!" a com tech screamed. "I didn't build the fucking thing!"
The door to the bridge exploded inwards and two scorpion like bioforms rushed through the metal fragments – low and snarling. Langston yanked out his pistol, swinging it around and aiming it straight at the first of the scorpions, who leaped at him, snipping his hand off with a single claw – while a voice emerged from it. "Ah ah, nope!" Langston gaped at the stump of his hand and began to scream as the other scorpion clattered over to a computer, reared up, and revealed that its belly could open to reveal nimble, human like hands, which tapped away at the computers.
Missiles began to streak off the side of the Bismark – and every other Thor class. They began to sweep towards the L1 and L3 fleets. Laserfire started to swat them from the sky.
But in the end.
There were an awful lot of missiles.
***
Lou leaned back in the seat, grinning as he watched Admiral Bosch, his eyes widening, his jaw hanging open in mute shock as he watched light after light go out on his big board. "How? How? The hive mind is dead, how is she doing this!?" He grabbed one of the few people in the room who wasn't wearing a military uniform – some kind of scientist, if Lou didn't miss his guest. "Why isn't the Project working?"
"I-I don't know, sir!" the scientist stammered. "M-Maybe the, the, the propagation effects aren't working at the same scale we thought, maybe they're out of the range, and only once they come closer…"
"That won't matter if they take out our fleets!" Bosch shouted. "Mobilize our SDS systems, prepare to ward off orbital attack!" The men and women that he shouted at began to work – but Lou could already see the orbital strategy of the attackers...of his wife...beginning to form. The L2 fleet had been the primary defensive fleet, with the L1 and L3 fleets being significantly smaller. Both of them were currently busy dealing with the missiles from the boarded and hijacked ships – and the bugs were continuing on their blitz towards Mars. They looked like they were taking advantage of the relatively thin atmosphere and their agrav capacity – Lou had guessed that they had that, if only because of their visible acceleration curve on the charts – to just throw themselves at the planet and decelerate at the last second.
They were carrying large objects with them, though…
"Sir, there is a wave heading straight for this facility," an officer said.
Bosch nodded, then glared at Lou. "Men, bring him to his feet," he snapped – and the marines dragged Lou to his feet. Lou, still naked, smiled at Bosch.
"Feeling nervous, Bosch?"
"When those bugs get close to Etemenanki, they'll regret this," Bosch muttered. "Their regret not bowing before me…" He snapped his fingers. "Come on! We're relocating to the secondary command bunker." He began to stride off, the men at their stations looking at him, their eyes widening. The screens were beginning to fill with red as the Bugs came down – more of them seeming to emerge from the ships than what went inside of them. It was as if every single ship in the L2 fleet had become a flower and was spreading their seeds.
And the seeds were falling – falling towards the red planet.
***
Lou was grimly amused that, in the shoving and the hustling, no one had ever thought to give him pants. He was marched, naked, from the command rooms to the adjoining tube bridge that connected the command station to the pyramidal shape of Etemenanki. Bosch strode ahead, trying to look regal and impressive and not like a scared child. Behind him, Lou smirked as the marines walked him forward. At the edge of the horizon, where a distant city's lights gleamed in the pale, rarefied atmosphere of Mars, Lou could see the streaks of reentry vehicles. No. Not vehicles.
Bugs.
"They're going to be landing near biomass first," he said, casually. "My wife isn't going to kill human beings – but there's still plenty of lichen."
"Shut up," Bosch snapped.
"Lichen and farm animals and compost and nutrient algae and-"
"Shut up!" Bosch turned to face him.
"Sir, you want me to…" One of the marines hefted up his arm and revved the rotary barrels on his recessed machine gun.
"Ah. Yes. A very wise move," Lou said, casually. "Take the husband of a seven hundred and fifty million year old hive mind and kill him while she's landing Mycetic spores on your homeworld and your orbital fleets are in shambles." His voice was underlit by the sharp, harsh flares of upper atmosphere nuclear detonations – the pinprick flashes were eerily silent, like thunder beyond the range of sound. By now, the stars streaking through the atmosphere were multiplying into a blanketing shower. They weren't all invading bugs, of course. A lot of it would be deorbiting space debris from wrecked starships.
"He's right," Bosch said, frowning. "But that doesn't mean we cannot induce silence. Break his hand."
Lou clenched his jaw. Hard. He refused, utterly, to give these men the satisfaction. It remained quite possibly the most difficult task he had ever set himself as the marine took his hand and, with utter ease, crushed it. Bones cracked and skin split as shocking, fierce, white hot pain shot up Lou's arm. His teeth creaked and his breath hitched and caught. His face went pale and he managed, somehow, to keep himself standing...until the marine let him go. Then he fell to one leg, his bloodied hand clutched to his chest, his breathing growing increasingly ragged.
"Did you learn your lesson, then?" Bosch asked, his voice shining with sweat, his eyes gleaming as he glared down at Lou.
Lou managed to smirk. His head lifted up and he showed teeth. "Yeah. Loud. Clear."
Something in Bosch's face showed he heard the undercurrent of Lou's words. He turned and he stalked off, his hands clenching and unclenching and clenching again. They came to the doors and entered into the interior of the Etemenanki pyramid – which opened up to reveal that for all the Gothic, impressive stature of it, the inside was unfinished, unpainted. Bare space that left room for the machinery within and nothing else beyond. It was like being in the skeleton of a building. The machinery itself did look ferociously complex – endless arrays of tubes, and pipes and interlocking devices that plugged into one another, forming larger and larger complexes that themselves created a vast spiderweb that itself was one immense system. Standing on the gangway that looped around the interior, Lou almost forgot his pain as he looked slowly around it, his eyes wide, gaping.
"Amazing amount of labor…" Lou said, then hissed as he was pushed forward – after Bosch, along the gangway. "For something that doesn't fucking work."
Bosch's hands tightened.
They came to the middle of the structure and there, Bosch took control. The command bunker that was built near the machinery was the same kind of overly designed ornate bullshit that Federals loved: Heavy walls, lots of extraneous machine gun nests. It was all designed to make anyone who came this far to pay a horrible last price. But it was also situated in the center of a machine so far from the centers of power that if it was being taken, then the rest of the world had fallen. It was a testament to what mattered to the fascist mind.
Make them bleed.
Fuck the cost.
Lou was slammed down into a chair by one of the marines as Bosch began to activate screens.
They all showed the same images.
Spores hitting the ground, unfolding to release bioforms. They weren't all combat bioforms – in fact, a good chunk of them looked as if they weren't designed for combat at all. There were huge creatures that immediately punched holes through walls in recycling plants and food centers and began to attach egg-sacks to algae tanks. There were several of similar makes who looked as if they were focusing on prison centers. And there were helpful, scarab shaped bugs that were heaped with…
"Are those rifles?" one of the marines whispered.
Through several microphones at once, through several speakers, each one piped in from a different part of the Martian dome cities that had been Federated territory for centuries, overlapping voices came. They were shouted from bioforms that were distinctly different from the others. They were not chitinous and covered with spines and spikes and claws. They were curvy. Buxom. Cute.
They were copies of his wife's bodies. Her wasp form, her moth form, her spider form. They didn't speak in unison, but they all spoke – shouted – into megaphones.
"People of the Federated States! For too long-"
"-crushed under their heel!"
"Friends, brutalized! Family, taken to work camps! Children, sterilized!"
"-servile slaves! And if you speak out, you're nerve stapled!"
"Atrocities uncounted!"
"Illegal memetic reprogramming camps!"
"Smash the state! Smash the state!"
"What is she doing?" Bosch hissed.
"It looks like she's been talking to Godfucker," Lou said, managing to sound remarkably calm, considering the mangled wreck of his hand. The broken bones had gone from aching to throbbing, and the cuts were dripping blood in a slow, sluggish rate. He wasn't sure how long he had before he bled out from the wounds – considering their size, he thought he had time. "Would you look at that. Proles with guns."
Bosch shook his head. "This isn't possible. They're all within range of the transmitter, this isn't possible!"
Lou watched him, intently. And through the camera feeds, he could see the people in the streets. Men and women with guns, their gray uniforms marked with hastily daubed AnCom symbols, supported by heavy duty Terror Talons, marching towards bunkers and civil defense checkpoints that the Federated States had built, fortified, staffed and trained in the use of for decades. Whatever insurrection they had planned for, they had not planned for it to be started simultaneously across the city as stunned, shell shocked civilians emerged to find a helping hand, smiling face, free food, and guns.
They definitely hadn't imagined that it might have included walking, twelve meter tall biomechanical tanks armed with heat seeking acid spraying organic missiles.
"I wonder how well the Chancellor is going to take this," Lou hissed through gritted teeth. "You sold him on the idea, didn't you?" He glanced left, then he glanced right, at the two marines. "I mean, if the Chancellor even survives for the next few hours. It looks like a hell of a lot of proles are out there in the streets with guns. People, you know, have a pretty long memory." He frowned. "My ancestors learned that, in France."
Bosch's head hung forward. He turned, slowly – and then frowned. "You two. Man the guns." The faint sound of screaming and gunfire was coming from one of the speakers – and through the camera into the headquarters that Lou had been dragged from, he could see the sight of combat specialized bioforms cutting their way through the defenders. They seemed to be as perturbed by Project Etemenanki as he was.
Not at fucking all.
"Yes, man the guns," Lou said, his voice flat. "Man the guns and die in them." He looked to the left, then to the right. "You've lost. But you know what? If you take that armor off, if you pull your marine identification chips out of your wrists…" He smirked, slightly. "I'm pretty sure people won't find you for a while. I'm betting that the government's deleting confidential files as fast as possible before the parliament building gets raided and central command gets looted." His voice was growing more and more confident as he kept the pain out of his mind through sheer willpower. "After all. You're just a Lance Corporal and a Private First Class?"
"Don't listen to him, men!" Bosch said, his sweat so intense that his hair had flipped down. His hand went to his belt and he jerked his pistol free. "He claims that we are doomed. And yet, he has no will. No true grit. We'll hold a gun to his head and his precious bugs are going to grovel to make sure we don't hurt him."
He aimed the gun at Lou's face.
Lou lifted a single eyebrow, then slowly, his jaw tightening, placed his injured hand down upon the armrest.
He pushed.
White hot pain shot up his arm and filled his eyes and his knees nearly buckled. The only thing that kept him from face planting was the weight he put on his arm – and that made the pain worse until he lifted his palm. The sudden lessening of pain was so shockingly powerful that it almost felt like pleasure. Almost. But not quite. Lou lifted his chin and sent his most icy, withering glare at Admiral Bosch. His skin was beaded with sweat, and his breath was ragged, but Lou managed to speak without stammering.
"If you shoot me with that pistol, my body will live for a few seconds. In those moments, I will clear the distance between me and you and I swear, Admiral Akin Bosch...by the Daughter and the Holy Ghost. By the Flaming Chalice and the Ten Thousand Faces of God. By the living memories of Achilles and Ashoka…" His tongue darted along his lips, and he growled. "I swear...for I am Prince Louis Benoit XII of the Neopolitan Star Kingdom and by that name and for the honor of humanity...I...will kill you."
His eyes flashed.
"Drop the gun. Now."
Silence rang in the room.
The barrel trembled. Bosch's eyes flicked down to look at it.
Lou's eyes didn't move an inch.
Bosch dropped the pistol onto the ground with a clatter.
Silence filled the room again.
Lou wobbled...then dropped to his knees, panting. "Wow, that worked," he breathed. "Hah. Holy shit."
"What!?" Bosch gaped – but Lou had already reached out and snatched up the pistol. He aimed it at Bosch, grinning fiercely.
"An honorable gentleman never treats a prisoner with dishonor," Lou said, his voice ragged. "Be damn glad I am both…" He started to lift himself up, panting, his vision going gray around the vision. In the distance, he could hear screaming sounds – metal, being torn. "Or else I'd have blown your fucking balls off."
***
"So, good news: You're gonna lose the hand."
Lou frowned, slightly, as he laid back on his bed, looking up at the AnCom doctor. His mother and his father were both looming in the other part of the room, holding one another. They were covered with the telltale signs of both a rapid defrosting and a rapid, combat acceleration couch ride. Bruises, sallow skin, sunken eyes, still unhealed clamp marks from where the shunts had been hastily tacked into their bodies. It was, in the end, all signs that...despite their flaws...they did care about him. They cared enough to flash defreeze from their cryocrypts and then cared enough to hop into combat ships rather than wait to be put under for a civilian transport. A human body took a beating when it was conscious through a stabdrive acceleration, even using limited speed boosts.
It made his own ire towards them ease.
Slightly.
"Where is my wife," Lou said, his voice flat.
"You know, most people ask about the hand first," the doctor said, shrugging. "I don't know your wife, Louis, but I do know this: Your hand needs to come off. And that's good news! You can get a replacement graft really easy that way – prosthetic, cloned, whatever you want. If they had left more of it intact, your religion or whatever would require a way slower, way more painful repair schema. This is good!"
"That's very good, thank you Doctor, where's my wife," Lou said.
The doctor glanced over at Mother and Father. "Can someone get this guy's wife already? Listen, I'm just a fucking medtech, I'm not a wifetech. Get this guy his wife!"
"Lou, you need to take care of yourself first," Mother said, her voice nervous.
"Where. Is. My. Wife!" Lou shouted.
"I…" Father looked as if he wasn't sure what to say. The flap to the emergency medical tent opened and GF and Amy both hurried in. Amy had fabricated herself a beret and had several bandoleers of high caliber bullets slung around her shoulders, with a heavy duty looking anti-material rifle slung over her shoulder. It was one of those unfolding guns, so it was currently retracted into a small oblate sphere that bounced against her shoulders. GF had gone for something more classic – a sleek assault rifle, similar to the ones that had been handed out by the Bugs.
"Holy shit what happened to your hand!?" GF exclaimed.
"Where is Beatrice," Lou said, his voice serious.
"I don't know," GF said, blinking. "I'm shocked there's anything on this planet left standing after that." He nodded to the wound, while Lou thrust it at the doctor, hissing quietly.
"Cut it off and seal the wound and then let me out of bed so that I can find my goddamn wife," he said, and the doctor nodded, holding up his hands. He picked up a small rectangular box that unfolded, grew larger, and then opened the far end of it and Lou thrust his hand into it. The painkillers he had been given made his arm feel entirely numb and dislocated – like it wasn't even there. There was a faint blurring feeling, a whisking slice, and then a buzzing heat. When the box is removed, a shimmering cloud of nano was flowing and shimmering on Lou's stump, making it a smoothed ending rather than a ragged ruin. He pushed himself to his feet.
"Louis, son-" Father said, but Lou stepped out of the tent and into the barely controlled chaos of the medical area. Ships were beginning to drop from the sky, slowly settling down in a hastily cleared spaceport. They were a riotous mass of colors, as if an entire circus had decided to take to the stars, but they had all been hastily daubed with paint or had their smart-skin hulls reformatted to show ancient symbols of medical care and aid on them. AnCom volunteers, Plurals, Upkin, everyone who had heard of the shocking events around Mars, all of them rushing to help.
Lou swept his gaze left, right, left again – and saw one of the bioforms that had landed. She was a twelve foot tall, muscular mixture between a crab and an armored marine. She was using a huge pincer claw to wave people past, shouting. "Come on, this way, this is where nerve staple victims are being piled up, we need people who are good with nerve damage and trauma! Counselors too! Anyone who can handle trauma, this way."
Lou ran forward. He didn't care that it wasn't one of the forms that Bea had made for him, he didn't care that she was all hard edges and armor. His arms wrapped around her awkwardly as he pressed his face against her carapace, breathing in her scent, her Bea'ness. He shuddered and, finally, let himself cry, wracking sobs of pure relief as he wrapped his arms tightly around her. The crab-body turned.
Then…
Wrongness.
"Whoa, uh, whoa, buddy, it's...uh, it's okay, are...is this one of the staple-ees? We're having a synesthetic breakdown here?"
Lou stepped back, wiping at his eyes. His stomach did a slow flop. "B-Bea, it's me?"
"...I'm...not…" the crab sounded at a loss. "Oh. Oh holy shit, you're Prince Benoit."
"Who are you?" Lou whispered.
The crab spread...her? his? arms, gesturing to themselves. "My name's Markus Go Fish, uh...oh holy shit. Uh…" He paused. "Listen, your wife resleeved me, back when you went missing, back out past Pluto…" He said, lifting his claw up, clacking it. "My stack's buried in the back here. Gotta admit, it was a bit of a shock, but she laid out. You know, smash the state, liberate the Federals, that kind of thing. Rescue the prince. Classic fairytale shit. And, well, I was already in the militia, so-"
Lou looked around, his hands shaking. "W-W...What?" he whispered, trying to keep up. There was another bioform. Except it wasn't Bea. They were directing traffic. There was a moth bioform – and she wasn't even looking at him. And she had a stack on the back of her neck, glowing just under the skin. Lou started to breath. His vision was going gray as he put his stump to his stomach, clutching at himself with fingers that weren't there.
"Whoa, whoa, kid, whoa, calm down," Markus Go Fish said, his claw resting on Lou.
"W-Where...where is my wife?" Lou hissed. "Where is...w-where is Beatrice?"
Lou's father came jogging towards him, emerging from the crowd. "Louis...my son, it's…" Lou turned to face him, his breath catching. The tears were streaming now – tears pouring down his cheeks. Father didn't speak. He didn't say anything. He simply took Lou into his arms and held him, and held him, and whispered, again, and again and again. "I'm sorry. Lou. I'm so sorry."
***
Lou felt as if he had been…hollowed out. There was a vast, empty void inside of him. He sat beside his wife, looking down at her. Beatrice laid in a webwork of complex machinery – devices that had been hacked and jerry rigged together by AnComs and Plurals and Upkin and liberated Federals and Neopolitans, all working with a desperate hurry. But it wasn't his wife. It was a body, devoid of mind, devoid of thought, devoid of anything but the slow, ticking breathing and the flow of nutrients.
It was a lump of flesh that was kept alive entirely by machines.
Lou wanted to feel horror and offense at this. If he had been in a similar state…
But no.
No, he couldn't. He couldn't feel anything but desperate want. To see her chest rise and fall with the slow movement of the ventilator that was keeping Beatrice's lungs filled what little oxygen she needed. There weren't enough machines for the other bodies. They were in the morgue. Being examined. Being…
Lou closed his eyes. His remaining hand clenched tightly around her hand, the hand that didn't have feeds running into the wrist to try and keep her biological systems from collapsing. The door to the room opened. Amy stood there. She was looking hollow eyed. It was possible, it seemed, for even an artificial woman to cry. Lou instantly felt a deep, horrible, black shame in his breast for even doubting that. For ever thinking of Amy as anything less than...than what she was. But to see her, standing, walking, thinking.
While…
"They had said it was quick," Lou whispered, softly. "She didn't suffer. The machine turned on...and she went out. Like a light." His voice was a ragged, raw rasp.
"Lou...m-my other…" Amy paused. "There's another me, out there, a quantum linked consciousness. We're used for communications, you know. Uh...when you started heading home, she was part of a mission being sent to one of the other bug systems. L-Lou…" Her voice broke. "L-Lou that ship's not picking up any quantum communications...I...t-the Plurals think it was...that it...that the signal propagated through…" Her voice broke again. "Oh god, Lou, I'm so sorry."
Lou wanted...to scream at her. To throw something. To tell her to leave. To...to just...to go. To leave. To get out of his sight. To never come back. Instead, he whispered. "I thank you for your thoughts, Amy. Please. Leave me with my wife."
Amy nodded and fled, her sobs echoing down the corridor.
Lou opened his mouth. Then...he closed it. His head hung forward and he tried to think of anything to say, in the enormity of the moment. He whispered, very softly. "Beatrice…" He paused. "You were...I…" He paused, then slowly, he let himself break. His tears streamed along his cheek as he buried his face against her side, feeling her coolness. "Beatrice...I...I can't...I can't live without you." He whispered, his shoulders shaking as he clung to her, squeezing her hand so tightly he worried he might hurt her. "Please. Please." He hissed. "Please...don't…"
He trailed off into silence.
Nothing happened.
Lou slowly stood. His fingers released Beatrice's and he looked down at her face. If he didn't look at her mouth, at her ventilator tube, he could almost imagine that she was sleeping. Which...he shook his head. "Y-You never...you never figured out how to sleep, Beatrice. Y-You never knew how to stop." He leaned down. Slowly. Gently. His mouth pressed to her lips, feeling the plastic tube against his mouth.
He kissed his wife one last time.
He turned and started to walk away.
He came to the door.
Bleeeee- clunk.
Lou froze.
The ventilator kept making the high, whining tone – the tone that said that someone had removed a much needed tube. Lou felt a slow, dawning, impossible feeling. It was like a sunrise in his belly. It was like his heart was growing, larger and larger, hammering in his ears. Thunder. He could hear thunder. He turned, slowly, unable to move any faster, as if the noise might stop, as if-
Soft, whining, raspy. "Oww…"
Lou finished the turn.
Beatrice, her body trembling, was sitting up, her eyes blinking slowly. Her antennas drooped, but she saw him and she gave him the smallest, most tiny of smiles.
"That…" she whispered. "Is what sleep is...like?" She coughed, weakly. "I do not like it."
Lou stumbled forward, collapsed to his knees. He grabbed onto her hand, then buried his face against her side, gasping, shuddering. "Beatrice. Oh my Beatrice, oh my life, I…" He sobbed, clinging to her – and Bea stroked his hair, weakly, the wires and tubes that were running into her skin tugged taut.
"S-Shhh...shh…" she whispered, her voice soft and fragile. "I will never...never never, never...never...never again. Never." She reached down to take his other hand – then screamed as her hand closed around a stump. "You have been vandalized!"
Lou could not stop laughing. It hurt. And he did not care.
The door opened and Amy came running in. "Lou, are you- Oh my God!" She screamed. "Oh my god oh my god! Everyone! Everyone!" She shouted – and within moments, Godfucker had come into the room. He burst into tears, then ran forward and threw himself down next to Lou, squeezing him, burying himself against him, sobbing without fear or sadness. Father and Mother came in later, and Mother screamed, almost as loudly as Amy had – and in shockingly short time, Beatrice was propped up on a pillow, with a doctor examining her, asking her questions. Shouting the questions, actually, over the clamoring voices from everyone.
Godfucker, being Godfucker, had already gotten out the wine glasses, and Lou had downed his without hesitation. Fencing, fortunately, made him fairly good with his left hand, even if his right had been dominant for most of his life. The doctor, finally, shouted.
"Everyone shut the fuck up!" Which, well, was proof that they were an AnCom. Once the room had quieted, with Father looking faintly aggrieved to be so shouted at, the doctor turned to Beatrice. "How the fuck did you do that?"
Beatrice blinked. "Oh!" She said, blinking. "Oh, um...w-well, when Lou went missing on the Invisible Hand, I knew I had to rescue him. But I knew that any weapon that would target me would have to target my...me. Killing my bioforms would not work." She nodded. "And so, before we began the attack, I went to sleep." She bit her lip. "B-But I was supposed to wake up once it was safe…" She frowned, slightly. "According to my bodies on other planets, I have been asleep for almost four days, far longer than the device was online!"
She looked at Lou, then smiled, slightly. "But then...w-while I was not...suddenly…" She put one of her blue-black hands on his cheek. "Suddenly, I heard you. And I felt you." She smiled. "Then I just had to get back." She paused. "Where are my other bioforms, I wish to hug Lou with a bioform that is not so very tired."
The doctor coughed. "Well, uh...this bioform should be on its feet again in just a few hours."
"They dissected them," GF said, cheerfully, pouring himself more wine.
"Awww!" Bea looked sad. "Why didn't you dissect this one? This is the one most in need of being replaced. It needs more erogenous zones. And wombs!"
Everyone started to laugh. Bea looked around, in confusion.
"Did I make a jest?"
***
"And this is where I grew up," Lou said, stepping from the horse drawn carriage, smiling as he held his left hand out to Beatrice, who stepped from the carriage, her eyes widening. Her moth form looked utterly delightful in a classical Neoplitan dress, the skirt and train both rustling along the fabric. The yellow-gold Venusian sky and the brilliant foliage of the artificial jungle that had been planted since the world had been cooled and spun and the atmosphere had been thinned and the oceans returned...all of it contrasted against her beauty and her strangeness, making her feel as if she was supposed to be here.
"This home is so large!" Beatrice exclaimed. She smiled at him. "I believe that I will fit in quite well. Though, I'm not sure how I will manage only having this bioform for the next ten years…" She pouted slightly as they walked together towards the house. "A decade with a single body and you? But how will you have sufficient amount of sex? And how will I have the requisite number of children to have a child!?"
Her frantic nerves did make sense – the preparation for the attack against the Federals had required her to literally recycle and reuse every biomorphic trick that she had. In effect, she had treated her own long term ecology as disposable, losing the ability to replace losses to make enough bodies for each of the hundreds of thousands of egos stored in cortical stacks. Those egos were, even now, being transferred into bodies more suited to their personal tastes...though, a shocking number of them were remaining in the bioforms that Beatrice had crafted for them.
A shocking number being about five hundred.
Which was still less than zero, which Lou had expected.
But despite Bea's nerves...the only thing Lou could feel was joy. Just having her around made him want to smile. To laugh. And so, he did, taking her hand and squeezing. "Beatrice, my love, my dearest one…" he said, quietly. "A single body is more than enough for me."
"True...Amy did say there were a great many sexual kinks we have yet to explore," Beatrice said, nodding. "And, you could perform femdom upon me many, many, many times before I will ever become tired of it."
Lou chuckled. "That's, uh, not femdom…" he said – and he did not blush. He did not feel mortified. After what they had been through, it felt as if such worries were so childish and petty that he could do nothing more but laugh at them.
"And yet, it has a female, being dominated! Hence, femdom!" Beatrice proclaimed.
Lou shook his head and took his wife to his home. He introduced her to Marc, his trainer, and she thanked him profusely for all that he had done to prepare her husband for the battles that he had faced. Marc blushed like a schoolboy and rumbled out a soft 'my thanks, my lady.' Then, in the master bedroom, where his parents had once slept, Lou and Bea got to work making it comfortable for themselves, changing out furniture for furniture they preferred. As they worked, across the solar system, changes more sweeping and shocking than the end of the Bug War were taking place.
The Federated States, liberated.
Several higher ranked members of the Upkin community jailed by an interfactional court – allies and associates of Dr. Listens – discredited by the rescued, slowly recovering Righteous Zen Two, a splice that had been the core of Project Etemenanki's perverse goals.
The most shocking of all, the abdication of King Louis Benoit XI and Queen Josephine Benoit V.
Lou had been the one to suggest it.
"The war's over. And...lets be honest…" he paused. "Neither of you are happy with what you are. Or else, you'd never have broken your vows and excused it. I'm ready to take rulership of the Neopolitans." He smiled, slightly. "You two can be who you want to be, Mother, Father, without fear. Without guilt." He paused. "I promise to you, I will do right by the Star Kingdom."
He hadn't needed to argue very hard. He had seen the dawning excitement in his parents eyes.
Once the interior of the mansion had been set to their preferences, Beatrice had placed her lower hands against her hips, nodded to herself, then beamed. "I declare this to be a most excellent place to live within." She paused. "Queen Beatrice Benoit the First…" She murmured, tasting the words on her tongue.
"Oh, you're not the first," Lou said, shaking his head. "You'd be Queen Beatrice Benoit III."
"There were two other Beatrice Benoits!?" Bea exclaimed, her voice horrified, her antennas drooping.
Lou smiled. "Yes," he said, chuckling. "I mean, you're one to look horrified, Bea, I'm the twelfth Louis."
"B-But…" Bea stammered. "Y-you reacted with great shock and horror at my name! For it was very silly!"
"Your name is by far, the most lovely name in the entire galaxy," Lou said, his voice a husky purr. He walked past the table they had been setting, taking her upper hands in his, his eyes meeting hers. "Your name makes my heart race and my skin tingle and my mind whirl. Your name...is perfect." He smiled. "What I could not stand, at the time...was the pun." He grinned at her as Beatrice blushed, trembling.
"I-I'm sorry, w...were you saying...things after...after that second sentence?" she whispered, her voice soft, her black-blue eyes gleaming with excitement. "I...I stopped noticing, after I fell even more in love with you."
He leaned slowly forward, to kiss her – but before he could, a chime through the house. A servitor hovered into view and spoke in its creaky, artificial voice. "There...are...several...nobles...here...to...pay...their...respects...my...lord…"
"Ah, fantastic…" Lou purred. Bea grinned back at him.
***
Morrigan Macchi, the high lady of House Macchi, the largest and most important noble house after the Benoits, reclined in one of the sitting chairs in the front veranda, waving a fan lazily to keep herself cool. Her two bodyguards stood to either side of her, while she looked across the table at Beatrice in her sundress and her hair and Lou, pouring wine for himself with his left hand, moving carefully to keep it from spilling, while his stump rested in Beatrice's lap.
"It does not pain you?" Morrigan asked, her voice dripping with barely concealed venom.
"Oh, no, no, not at all," Lou said, cheerfully. "I actually get along just fine without a second hand – you'd be shocked at how fast you can adapt." He smiled. "I tried a few prosthetics, but any that don't use direct nerve stimulation are really more to make other people comfortable than me."
"I see," Morrigan said. Then, her thin lipped smile quirked up. "So, we've received the...letter you have set."
"What do you think?" Lou asked, curiously.
Morrigan snapped her fan shut. "I think it is insulting," she said, her voice flat. "You want to destroy the noble houses of the Neopolitans and turn us into...into...into replicas of the Anarchist Commune! You want to tear down our entire way of life, and turn yourself into a kind of...barely present arbiter of disputes rather than a-"
"That is not what the letter said at all!" Bea exclaimed. "It merely was a list of reforms that we worked out together."
Morrigan growled, quietly. "I can read between the lines, my lady." Her eyes flashed as she leaned forward. "If you think the noble houses will let you destroy the Neopolitans from the inside out, then you have another think coming."
Lou chuckled, quietly. "Do I now?"
"The United Human Polity will not interfere with internal affairs – and we in the Macchi know how to play the game," Morrigan said, her voice icy. "Listen here, boy...I came to your home to offer you a chance. A chance to rescind this letter, to quietly squash it all, and to...to…" She paused. "What?"
Lou was laughing again, his shoulders shaking. Then he looked at Beatrice. "Oh, Bea...I'm utterly terrified. Are you?"
"I'm spooked solid!" Beatrice giggled, quietly. "I believe that my wings shall fall off!"
"Oh no!" Lou laughed.
Morrigan looked between them. "I've read the reports! You're down to just-"
The wine in the glass quivered. The glasses clinked.
Bea...grinned. "I was very precise in the words I chose when I was interviewed by the very nice AnCom lady." She nodded. "I said that I had only one body that my husband loves."
The wine shakes, rippling outwards as the ground shakes and the trees creak and groan – and five Terror Talons, several of them still scarred, their armor still pitted from high energy weapons fired at them by Federal troops. Lou's favorite was the one who had taken a chunk of shrapnel to the left eye. Rather than removing it, Bea had simply allowed the flesh to grow back around the shrapnel, giving it a wickedly feral look as it walked forward, all five of the Talons looking down at Morrigan, who was frozen in her seat. Her goons had drawn their guns as Bea leaned back in her seat.
One of the Talons leaned down, bumping the side of its massive head against Lou, and he felt Beatrice's closeness in the heat and the moistness of its breath. He slid his palm along the side of the creature's snout and looked right into Morrigan's eyes.
"The Neopolitans have been ruled by the House Benoit for thirteen generations," he said, parroting the lessons he had learned from youth – and then swerving, hard. "By comparison, our queen has ruled her worlds for thirty seven million generations. Morrigan, you think that Beatrice has married into the Benoit House. You're wrong."
He grins. "We married into hers."
Bea smiled.
The Terror Talons smiled.
"So," Lou said, his voice soft. "You were saying?"
Morrigan gulps, then stammered. "L-Long live the queen?"
Bea giggled. "Okay!" She smiled. "So, I'm thinking, we shall begin by spending the ten years until my space born bioforms arrive, getting everyone ready to living in the new world. We need, absolutely, to convince the Shavanti to be less sticks in the mud. I have some ideas, and, well…" She leaned forward – and as she talked, Lou leaned back in his chair, stretching his arms out before crossing them behind his neck. .
