Naoko
looked thoughtfully at the viewscreens, then compared the data streaming
through her proteus. It was mind-boggling to think that the whole of Humanity,
the scope and stretch that was her race, had come from a single planet, in a
single solar system. It was unthinkable. The rationalist inside her denied the
very real proof that were Latelian history files; though much of her own planet's history had been lost
across five thousand years of war and dissemination by the 'great and wise
Chair', documentation chronicling the expansion of Mankind across the stars was
more cohesive in Latelyspace than in any other system in the Universe.
The only
being to know more was the Trinity AI, and as Garth would say, "It ain't
sayin' shit about nothin."
A single
world. Countless trillions of men, women and children, spread across a literal
fathomless depth of planets, asteroids, space stations and other forms of
habitat too bizarre to even contemplate.
"Looks
like a dead apple, don't it?" Greuz asked from the co-pilot's chair. He'd
gotten used to surrendering most of his authority to the young Miss fairly
quickly on, and, truth be told, the old captain would admit that the girl had
gotten his unruly crew onto a track that he'd been wishing to follow for some
time.
"Or a
dead dog's arse." Seta muttered sullenly, rubbing the nub where the tip of
a finger used to be. She could still feel the whole finger, and it was driving
her mad. They'd had to chop the end off.
"One
world." Naoko shook her head. The majesty of it all. The horror of what
'Earth' had become.
According to
Greuz, who'd somehow managed to stay in the employ of Jordan Bishop longer that
was mathematically possible, the Trinity AI insisted that all the big players
in Human Commerce remain on the planet until the stars themselves died. That
had massive Conglomerates like
BishopCo, Tynedale/Fujihara, Voss_Uderhell and others chained to the dying rock
like prisoners.
And, like
prisoners, fat, rich, obscenely wealthy and unconscionably powerful prisoners, they rebelled. They wanted freedom that the
poorest and most basic of commoners owned, the freedom to set foot on new
ground in strange solar systems, they wanted the right to shift their power
bases away from murderous friends and devious enemies.
Since they
could not have that, they continued to poison their world, to destroy their
land, to suffocate everyone and everything around them in the hopes that, like
Greuz's dead apple, one day, the world would slough off it's skin and Trinity
would be forced to allow the powerful their freedoms.
Alligorni
scratched his jaw. He'd never been this close to Trinity Prime. Frankly, it
made his balls sweat. He'd tried convince the others to shift Naoko to another
cruiser in Bishop's employ. Well, okay, he'd spent roughly three seconds
trying, failing after a claustrophobic and panicky silence had literally
erupted from the other crewmembers.
Trinity
Prime.
Alli'd
grown up with horror stories of the madness that roiled under the skin. The Mad
Goth King Blake lived in his even madder Arcade City, running his citizens
through an endless gauntlet of endurance, pain and madness, forcing them to
look up into the heavens, not at a sky, but a bizarre clockwork dome of brutal
mechanics whenever they sought freedom. Alli could trace his lineage back six
hundred years, and there was FrancoBritish blood pumping in his veins.
What if
that Mad King called to him?
Worse still
was the EuroJapanese Dome. Like the King's only forged from energy, the Emperor's Dome kept everything and
everyone out. No one knew what
happened on the other side of the impenetrable glistening field. Men and women,
penitents and parishioners to the word of the Eternal Emperor came and went all
the time, but never said anything about what they'd seen, what they'd heard,
what they'd learned.
In his time
as a pirate and kidnapper, actually, in all
their times, every man and woman aboard the Zhivago had run into both FrancoBrits and EJ's direct from their
motherlands, and of the two, Alli'd rather talk to one of the stone cold
killers from Arcade City than the blank-eyed gossamer servants of the Emperor.
You could feel the terror and madness survivors of
the King's predations lived with, day in, day out. You could look into their
eyes and understand that they'd been through something few beings could handle.
When you
talked to someone who'd held audience with Emperor for Life, they had no idea
what they'd seen. And they didn't care. They'd seen their leader, a being
divine and wondrous. Or so they said.
Alli
usually wound up killing anyone who'd met the Emperor. Talking to them made it
feel like his brain was sliding out his ear.
A panel at
Greuz's shoulder beeped. He read the information over. "We have docking
permission. BishopCo Tower Alpha." He sent the data over to Naoko.
Naoko
nodded. "Take us in if you would, Captain Greuz?"
