NationStates Jolt Archive

He stepped forward. That was what he was expected to do, step forward, but it wasn’t all he was going to do. Blurry-fast, he swept his foot behind his opponent’s calf and pulled towards him while driving his shoulder into his opponent’s upper body. The result was instant lack of balance and an almost inevitable drop – it was also a risky maneuver, because his own balance was extremely precarious while he performed it.

But it worked, which was what mattered.

He stepped back, waiting for the training ‘bot to regain its footing so he could play with it some more…but was interrupted by a familiar sound, the ‘chime’ of an impending message from his ship’s AI…

”Captain to the Bridge!”

Yeah…it figured.

--

He stepped onto the bridge, which was an awfully pretentious name for a completely superfluous structure – the ship flew itself, in every way that mattered. Ninety-nine percent of the time, he was just a passenger, a mostly-unnecessary failsafe against electronic failure in space and an inferior tool groundside. For all his skill at combat, for all his myriad abilities, the AI’s Combat Frame was better. Things were more even if he was in armor, but how often did he put on armor anymore?

He smiled at himself, his long periods of isolation having repeatedly proven true the adage ‘I bitch, therefore, I am.’ Complaining kept him active when he’d had enough of exercise and study that he couldn’t take it anymore. He’d never been much for the recreational sims, though there were Captains who swore that they were the only things that kept them sane.

Kethvae Chovas was not one for illusion, which was a damned unfortunate personality trait, considering his foremost mission in life for the last…long damned time…had been the perpetuation of an illusion. The illusion that the Interstellar Watch was still worth something, which, to be honest, it wasn’t.

Keeping nosy folks out of the former Ascended Supremacy systems was the only thing that the Watch did with any completeness, and then only because, what, ninety five percent of the old-timers had taken it up as their sacred task? Standing Watch over what had been…seemed like a waste of goddamn time to him.

Plus he ‘owned’ a quarter of those dead systems, which was kinda like saying he was a born-again deity – it was impressive-sounding, but equated to nothing whatsoever. The Watch kept people out for their own good, because they at least deserved a warning before they got blasted out of existence by the AscSup system defenses, efficient as ever.

He slumped into the command couch, though whether or not the damned thing even functioned was anyone’s guess – it wouldn’t surprise him if She had disabled the dang thing, just in case he got uppity. There was no question in their relationship as to who was in charge, and that was him, empathically and entirely. He was Captain. That was that.

But She was also an insubordinate little bundle of circuitry, and generally expected him to give the orders that She though he ought to give. It seemed to be common in Her generation of patrolcraft – several other Captains of his vintage were faced with similar situations. Unfortunately, even if he was willing to let Her be wiped – which he wasn’t – the Watch no longer had the capability to perform that sort of procedure. Or, rather, they could wipe Her, but all they’d manage was breaking the ship – they couldn’t replace Her, they couldn’t fix Her, so he had to live with Her…

He put his feet up.

”Put your feet down, Kethvae. This isn’t your Mother’s house.”

He snarled, “My Mother, Pancreator rest her soul, never let me put my feet up on anything. You know this. You know my life better than I do, you electronic monstrosity.”

Thinking about his mother made him sick to his stomach. He missed her – missed his family, missed his home, missed being able to talk freely with someone who wasn’t analyzing his every sentence for potential instability or unrest, missed having peers.

All the other Watchmen of his vintage were either out of their minds – like Blackmarlin, who tried to lessen the pain with drink, or Jerry, who was half-machine, anyways – or so lost in their sorrow that they chose to stand the Long Watch over the silent remains of the Ascended Supremacy, undying sentinels of what could never be again.

The newer ones couldn’t keep the awe out of their eyes, didn’t see him as a person. Saw a legendary relic of a golden age, saw proof that the Watch had once been something than its present ramshackle state. They let him walk all over them, treated him like he was royalty. Which, of course, he was, but the Watch didn’t care about that sort of thing.

“Now, Deirdre, my darling, what do you want?”

”My sensors have detected a distress signal emanating from this area…

Kethvae ignored the charts she displayed on his couch screens.

“Skip the shit, you’re there already and you need me. What’s the issue?”

”The signal was sent by this craft, present occupant is a single female. She responded to my initial hail with “please help me find my babies.” She is obviously quite out of her mind. You are the local specialist on individuals who are out of there mind. Talk to her.”

Kethvae sighed, “Fine, fine. Kindly tell her that I’m on my way over while I get suited up, will you?”

It was always something.

--

The ship was entirely too pretty to be sending distress signals. It screamed ‘yacht’ from the outside, and the inside confirmed it. The thing was all gilt and rich woods, the sort of trappings he’d come to associate with the rich. Hadn’t always – when he’d been a kid, when the Supremacy had still been around, the rich, the powerful, had shown they were rich and powerful by living in ancient strongholds in the most inaccessible locations in the harshest conditions on the worst hell-words they could find.

Great House Stark’s Northfell, where you could take your pick between snow or sand; Maern’s Ruby, where the only thing nastier than the wildlife were the Maerns themselves; Rache’s Crescent, desolate and lifeless, ironic considering the Rache Lifehand talent; and Chalice, capital world of Great House Chovas. His homeworld. His earliest memories were of the cool stone floors of the ancestral Chovas stronghold, Grailhold, which was amusing – the cup imagery was symbolic, there wasn’t actually a magic cup anywhere.

He sighed and pressed onward, hoping that he wasn’t ruining the carpet by walking on it – he couldn’t exactly access his accounts anymore, and the Watch hadn’t had excess fundage in millennia. He’d always found a way, bluff or threat, but one of these days he’d have to kill someone because he didn’t have the money to avoid it, and that would be a bad, bad day.

His sensors told him what he already knew – the yacht’s sole occupant was in master stateroom, curled fetal on the floor, babbling into the comm. suite’s handheld. Which meant that once he opened this door, she’d see him, and it wouldn’t due to scare her needlessly, so he did something stupid – he took off his helmet.

He didn’t, as a rule, do that in space outside of his own ship, but her emotions were panicked, she was borderline, and even if he cleared the faceplate she’d probably flip. She might flip anyways, if she knew her history, though almost no-one did anymore. Not really a shame, the Ascended Supremacy hadn’t been relevant for half a million years.

He hit the door access – it had been locked, but subverting systems was like breathing for Deirdre, who had come with him after he’d left the Temple, which was not at all uncommon in his day. In fact, it was damned common – Adrian Stark had done it, Blackmarlin did it, Stephen Maern hadn’t, that he knew, but Stephen Maern was a Maern – he liked breaking things more than preserving them, and service in the Watch did nothing for his actual status in the Supremacy. Maern mindset. Crazy, the lot.

The female, standard bipedal format, one nose, two eyes, two ears, one mouth, five digits per limb. Female because her emotions were female, but Deirdre had guessed that from her transmission and from her own scans, and Kethvae’s suit confirmed it close-up. Green skin, scaley. Her reaction was telling.

She cringed away from him, and Kethvae’s armor-systems told him that she just got a significant surge of something like adrenaline, and one of the side-effects of that something was that it provided half of a binary toxin that was conveyed through her fangs, and they fangs.

He’d never met a reptile he liked, but at least she had arms and legs. Snakes gave him the willies. Never met a sentient snake, before, though, but that didn’t mean it was impossible. Though the idea made him cringe just thinking about it – something like that might go under ‘justifiable genocide.’

“Hey, lady, calm down. I’m Captain Kethvae Chovas, Interstellar Watch. I’m here to help.”

She got that glaze-eyed look that most got when he said his name – total lack of comprehension. Damnit, there’d been a time when everybody, every-last-living-person knew what the Watch was. There was a time when he’d been happy, too. Things changed.

He knew what he looked like, knew his face because it was the only face he saw with any regularity anymore – Chovas to core. Handsome, very handsome by Ascended standards, not the angular-handsome that was common with Starks or Raches, or the sinister beauty of Maern, but a softer sort of handsome that hinted at the steel underneath without smacking you in the face with it. He wore his hair, the same color as white-gold, long because there were something he wouldn’t change, ever, even if the new Watch regs had included a hair-length requirement about a foot shorter than he’d worn his hair since he was ten.

He didn’t talk about his service with the Temple, much, because unlike the normal course of things, he hadn’t been Watch-for-Politics, Temple-for-Power. He’d done Temple for politics then entered the Watch. He would’ve come back when his father died, he’d always planned to, and take up the Lordship, but his father had died with the Supremacy, and he’d become Lord Chovas, which meant nothing. The Watch had been his home ever since.

He wasn’t naturally intimidating, though he could be intimidating if he wanted to be. Which he didn’t, at the moment, but this chick on the floor would have been scared if he’d been wearing a bunny suit – his armor just made things easy. Damnit, he was going to have to get close. He didn’t like things that bit him, especially when injected poison. That generally was a big turn-off for him…

He reached his hand out, walking closer, feeling her terror with every step, but he couldn’t reach out with his talent and calm her, because his talent didn’t work like that. She had to listen to him, or he had to touch her – that part of his talent had to have a carrier to work…and he didn’t even know if she understood Trade. That was one thing that the Supremacy had left behind, the language of commerce, the common language of the galaxy. No-one knew the origins anymore, of course, most thought they’d invented it. They were, of course, wrong.

“Hey, hey, listen, I’m not going to hurt you. I’m here to help you. You’re safe now. Calm down, please.”

He knew she was going to strike before she did it, and when she did she seemed like she was moving in slow-motion, because compared to his reactions when threatened, she was. He could kill her in a hundred different ways, but that wouldn’t do – Deirdre wouldn’t like that…and he wouldn’t like it, either. Though right now he couldn’t care less…

He slapped her down, hard. She’d lunged up, aiming for his unprotected face…which just wasn’t on. She screamed as she went down, and he knelt with her, getting on top of her, grabbing her arms, getting them so he could hold them in one hand – not hard, his armor would let him snap her in half if he had needed to, which he didn’t.

He held her arms above her head, holding her secure like that, easily, though she thrashed about. It took him a half-second to get a zip-tie around her wrists, then he got off her and lifted her up by her arms. She kicked at him – which was kinda funny. She wasn’t even wearing shoes, and the nasty claws on her feet might have hurt him some if he’d been naked, but he wasn’t naked, was he?

He threw a piton into the stateroom’s wall and hung her from it. It was all very kinky, really. She wasn’t attractive to him, the thought was purely objective – Seth would have loved it, though, the bastard…

Uncle Seth. Mad Seth. Kethvae remembered vividly the feeling of his uncle’s throat in his hands, the way that Seth had struggled, fought for breath. He’d taken a long time suffocating, to the point that Kethvae had finally broken his neck – nearly ripped his head clean off, the reports said later.

He hadn’t wanted to do that, but it’d had to be done, especially after what the crazy bastard had done, killing all those girls. Coran, Kethvae’s father, had hoped that his brother could be saved, could be ‘fixed.’ False hope, Kethvae’d known that his Uncle was evil the first time he’d met him, a mere child of three. Then the bastard had gone and kidnapped his own daughter, though he’d used his intermediaries – no-one ever denied that Seth Chovas wasn’t charming and charismatic. He was.
Kethvae couldn’t have let him live after he’d ordered Kaerah taken, not considering who her step-brother was, not when Adrian Stark was besotted with her. So he’d killed his own uncle, his father’s brother, because he’d had no choice – because the bastard had come after his sister, may she rest in peace, and that just hadn’t been on.

He sighed, these tangents were not uncommon in Ascended, it was inevitable, and it wasn’t like they were actually noticeable – they happened while he was doing other things, or they happened so fast that you couldn’t tell.

He pulled his left gauntlet off, hooked it to his belt, and punch her in the mouth. She bit him. He felt the poison enter his veins, but not the cold sensation that it should have produced, would have produced in most critters. Rather, he felt like his hand was on fire. Poisons, as a rule, didn’t work on him – his GT augs, his talents, and just being Ascended all took issue to stuff like that. He’d been checking, more than anything, and there was no more intimate contact than a mouthful of fist, when you got right down to it – especially when you sunk your teeth into someone.

“CALM DOWN YOU CRAZY BITCH!”

He slid his hand off her fangs, looking at the two little prick holes. They’d be gone by morning, no doubt of that. Didn’t mean he was happy about it – he’d known the bitch would bite him, that had been the point of punching her, because he was angry and because he could – he’d stopped being all…Chovasey…around women when he’d been screwed over for the thirty thousandth time. His life hadn’t improved much since then, probably gotten worse, but he had less headaches, too. Hard to tell whether that was worth it, didn’t really care. Screw ‘em, anyways.

She calmed down, slowly, her eyelids fluttering like she was coming off some kind of high – and her emotions agreeing. She’d nearly orgasmed when he hit her, or maybe it was when she bit him – he liked that thought better. That at least made sense. Yeah. That was it. Bit him.

“Now that I have your damned attention, you sent a distress signal. I should not need to note that falsifying a distress signal is punishable by all sorts of nasty things under Watch Code Two. For the record, and because it is pertinent, Watch Code One concerns lying to a Watchman. Don’t try it. You won’t like the results.”

She moaned. Creepy lizard-chick…her voice sent shivers down his spine – he didn’t like reptiles. At all. Especially ones that bit him.

“My babies, you must help me find my babies…anything you want, anything, just help me find my babies…”

He groaned, loudly, “Listen, lady, you’re the only living thing on this ship. There’s no other life in this SYSTEM, save you and me and some microbes on the fourth planet. That’s IT. My AI isn’t organic, she doesn’t count. Look at me when I’m talking to you. If you managed to misplace your children in another system, you probably don’t deserve them in the first place. Talk.”

She glarbled. He’d heard the sound before, knew what it meant even without her emotions telling him. Attraction, lust, with underlying anger and despair. She wanted him, and it made him sick to his stomach because he thought he knew why…

Then she talked, because he wasn’t threatening her, or at least that’s what his mind said…bit, bit, bit…and maybe it wasn’t a glarble…though emotions don’t lie…

“They took them, they took them away, you have to help me find them, please help me get them back…!”

He looked at her, “Slow down. Who took them?”

She whined a little, “Pirates, rebels, revolting against their betters. They’ll try to ransom them, but He won’t pay, not for my children. Others, yes, but not mine, not His own. You have to save them, or they’ll die, and then…”

He braced his head in the crook of his left hand, “Listen, you need to slow down and not just throw words at me. I don’t read minds. Do you want me to hit you again?”

The look in her eyes made him want to vomit. Her words were worse.

“Oh, Please, please, please, pretty please?”

He couldn’t see, felt it coming before it happened. Memories were a bitch, especially when you couldn’t control them – especially when time stopped for everyone else while you relived some personal hell. Being Ascended wasn’t all fun and games.

--

“Go ahead, Kethvae. Hit her. She likes it.”

He looked up at his Uncle Seth, then at the girl chained to the wall before him.

“I don’t want to.”

Seth laughed, “Oh, Kethvae, it doesn’t matter what you want. Didn’t your mother ever tell you this? Or your father? Or someone? It’s about what she wants. That’s the Ascended way. That’s the Chovas way. She wants you to hit her, don’t you, ‘manda?”

Kethvae didn’t hear her, didn’t need to – he felt what she felt, the fear…and the excitement. She really did want it. Want him to hit her. Want to feel that pain. Feared it, but wanted it more.
He couldn’t. His Uncle was right – it wasn’t about what he wanted, and, anyways, deep down inside, he was afraid that he did want to hit her. So he couldn’t. Because he could feel his Uncle’s cruelty, knew that Seth didn’t care if the girl wanted it or not – knew that Seth would inflict pain merely to feel the feedback.

Seth looked down at him and laughed, “Look, Kethvae, it’s easy. Like this.”

He punched the girl in the face, hard. She screamed. Kethvae wanted to scream, too, but he couldn’t. He couldn’t move. Couldn’t look away, though he wanted to like he’d never wanted anything else. He was frozen in place, even knew why – the gravitics in this…dungeon. Uncle Seth was not stupid. His nephew was young, yes, but he was also three years into his Gunslinger training. Five yet to go. His parents busy, Seth had offered to take him out for the weekend – and he only had the weekend. His father, blind to Seth’s ways, had agreed happily. How could a Chovas be so blind? His father had the Talent, didn’t he? Every Chovas had the talent, though you could hide from it…but Seth couldn’t hide from him. No-one could.

Not even himself.

Seth drew back. Blood ran down from the corner of the girl’s mouth, but her eyes were wild. Kethvae could feel her ecstasy. Found it repulsive. The invisible shackles keeping him still loosened. Seth looked at him, laughed.

“Still afraid? Don’t make her beg, Kethvae. Give her what she wants.”

Kethvae shook his head.

The girl looked at him, her eyes glassy, and her words were like gunshots…

“Hurt me, please, oh please, please, please, pretty please!”

He stalked, stormed, never been so angry in his life, even at himself, to the girl, backhanded her across the mouth. Blood flew, splattered along the stone. He felt her blood on his fingers. He felt her emotions, all wrong…all wrong.

She shouldn’t enjoy that, she shouldn’t have enjoyed that. He’d hit her because he was mad, hit her because he couldn’t hit his Uncle like he really wanted to. That made it worse. He hadn’t hit her because she wanted it, he’d hit her because…

His Uncle applauded softly from behind him.

Kethvae looked at the blood on his hand and couldn’t take his eyes away. He’d hit girls before, in training…and he’d felt horrible afterwards. His instructors had told him that was normal – he was Chovas, that was normal. They hadn’t really understood, though. Hadn’t understood the emotions, the expectations…he was Kethvae Chovas, Coran Chovas’ heir, and that made him desirable. But he didn’t want to be Coran Chovas’ son, because his father was an idiot, and his mother couldn’t see, anyways. Did none of them see the rot, the snake they sheltered?

Seth walked up behind him, “Oh, did she bleed on you?”

Seth’s laugh made him want to vomit.

His Uncle seized his hand, pushed it towards the girl, brought it to her mouth. Kethvae watched in horror as she licked her own blood off his hand.

Something…changed.

Kethvae broke his Uncle’s grasp, something that he shouldn’t have been able to do with his Uncle controlling the gravitics, and then he ran away, as fast as he could. He’d run until he died, he thought, then he wouldn’t have to…remember this. Remember…

Stupid useless green whores. Too many of them in this meaningless age for anyone's good health. Should probably kill them all, for sanity's sake, if nothing else.

The hulk he was presently swimming through was about as exciting as a root canal. Beyond the inevitable hull rats, there wasn't any real life -- if the whore's kids were here, they were hidden real good.

He shot a hull-rat off the wall with his pistol, just as it was getting set to spring at him. He didn't strictly have to do it -- his armor was quite proof against hull-rats -- but they were nasty and revolting and he was pissed off.

Really pissed off.
---

"And here's your damn children, lady. Now go find somewhere less hostile to raise them. Got it?"

The green-skin held her 'babies' to her like they would vanish if she let them go.

"Oh, thankyouthankyouthankyouthankyou..."

She babbled. It was revolting.

Kethvae turned on his heel and walked out of the room, leaving her with her memories and her spawn. He wanted no part of that -- he'd done his job.

Children...

"Fuck."

Whatever happened to that girl, anyways?

As it turned out...she died...slowly and painfully.

In a whorehouse.

Selling her body to pay her pimp for the drugs that he'd addicted her to. Sad way to go -- and she'd sold her child for those same drugs, years prior.

Kethvae didn't enjoy killing women, but she'd sold his son for drugs -- he didn't enjoy killing her, but he'd taken a quiet pride in his craftsmanship, when he broke through the drug-haze long enough for her to realize what a horrible thing she'd done. Then he'd broken her neck out of pity.

Then he'd fed her pimp his own genitals.

And then he'd stared at a wall for sixteen straight hours without moving perceptively.

That had been a bad day.

A century is a long time. Two and a half centuries is a very long time. But it wasn't much when compared to eighty some odd millenia that Kethvae Chovas had been alive. Of course, Ascended didn't age the way humans did -- they didn't really age at all. Kethvae looked more or less the same 'now' as he had when he'd graduated from the Academy at twenty.

The sheer breadth of experience would have been murderous to the psyche, but Ascended were...adapted...to dealing with the phenomenon -- they filed away experiences, compressed them. Another level of memory -- short-term, long-term, and 'archival.' Something like that.

As a result of this, though two and a half centuries wasn't much compared to the grand total of 'years' that Kethvae had lived...he still lived those centuries, and they were quite long to him. Thoughts of the son he'd never known came to haunt him, some nights, joining in the parade of horrors that left him a shuddering, sweaty wreck...but they left his 'active' memory.

Which wasn't to say they were gone, just stored away...waiting to be triggered. As it happened, the trigger was, well, running into himself...

Valyrie's Bar, Asarda Station, Tzenwzl System, Dark Space

Kethvae couldn't get the image out of his head. The resemblance was uncanny -- it was like looking in a mirror and seeing yourself...just a little different. Subtle things were wrong -- the nose was different, the jaw was a bit broader, the scar where Seth's warblade had knicked his cheek wasn't there...but the hair was right, the color of white gold. The eyes weren't, exactly -- Kethvae's eyes were silver, wholy silver, not silver fading to blue. But...

But he couldn't get the image out of his head. Couldn't help himself but glance over at the man sitting at the bar, to confirm that he'd seen what was really there -- that it wasn't just his eyes playing tricks on him. And it wasn't. And his interest gave him away, the same way he knew when other people were looking at him with purpose. The other man was too good an actor to let it show, but Kethvae felt a quiver as he probed with his talent.

He was clumsy, untrained, there was none of the subtlety that Kethvae himself possessed...but it was unmistakably the Chovas talent. Thoughts of Rhya's son came to him in a rush...and he slid out of the booth he'd been sitting in. There was a certain arrogance to his step as he crossed the distance to the man at the bar, and it was understandable. He was in Dark Space, the fringe worlds of the former Ascended Supremacy -- former client worlds, outliers, colonies. Here, the past was very much alive. The Old Watch was right next door, so to speak, and Adrian's Revenians were a known quantity.

Here, people knew what the black longcoat and warblade meant. Here, people recognized the rank pins of a Captain of the Watch. Here, people had not been allowed to forget the Star...and that straightened the back a little, checked the stride, raised the chin. And then he was standing next to a man who could've been his twin. His hand moved, grabbing the man's shoulder and spinning the stool around. No point with subtlety, not anymore.

He caught the rising elbow -- wicked fast, twisted it into a lock. Felt the confusion, the irritation, the spike of amazement when the elbow-strike was intercepted, but no fear. Kethvae's lips curled into a smile. Maybe...

"Who are you?"

The man blinked, hiding the pain that he was feeling from the arm-lock with a practiced stoicness, "Julian Fang."

Kethvae released his hold on Julian's arm, "Ah. Julian, you said? And your mother was Rhya Kel?"

Julian nodded, a little weirded out -- this scarred guy with the familiar face knew his mother? Had known his mother. What the hell was going on?

Kethvae seized his son by the collar and dragged him from the bar-stool, out of the bar, and didn't stop 'till he was somewhere a little more private. The lad struggled, but Kethvae'd been at it for too long to let that matter. Shoving Julian up against a wall, he let himself get in good and close before he spoke...

"My name is Kethvae Chovas. I'm your father."

Starspire, Morgathi, Exalted Star Supremacy of Revenia

He'd long dreamt of this day. When he would walk into Starspire and be able to say "See! Do you see? I have a father! I am not just the son of a noble fool." But he'd never imagined it would be like this, walking into the great hall with Kethvae Chovas, his...father...at his side.

Maybe an inch taller than Julian's own six feet and one inch, Kethvae seemed to be far taller. His presence was incredible, the way he seemed to dominate the room. A part of Julian's mind told him that he was a little biased, but another part was taking notes -- this was his heritage, after all.

The herald looked up as they arrived at the threshold, looking inquisitively at Julian before issuing the ritual challenge.

"Who wishes audience with The Kel, Grand Duke of Morgathi, Lord of the Sky and Stars?"

Julian opened his mouth to speak, but Kethvae was quicker, his words taking the timber of ritual themselves, though this ritual answer hadn't been given for a long, long time...

"Chovas has come, will Kel answer? I am Kethvae Chovas, Lord Chovas by Right of Blood."

The herald spoke into his comm-bead, then nodded and pushed open the great doors with practiced ease and not a little bit of assistance from concealed mechanics.

The herald preceded Kethvae and Julian into the hall, so as to announce their entry.

"LORD KETHVAE CHOVAS AND BARON JULIAN KEL-FANG OF HIGHSPIRE!"

Kethvae walked slowly, with a practiced regal step that he had not had need to affect for a long, long time -- but he'd never forgotten. He'd been groomed to succeed his father as Lord Chovas, and he remembered the steps, even if he'd had little use for them in the greater scale of things.

He was dressed formally -- black pants, shirt, jacket, white cape with the blue chalice of his house emblazoned upon it, and the Lord's circlet that he'd worn maybe ten times prior. There hadn't been reason -- it was an empty symbol. He was Lord of a bunch of closed worlds, a relic of a past age. He wore it now, though -- House Kel had been sworn to Chovas of old, took pride in their 'old nobility,' as did many of Revenia's noble houses.

They stopped the proper distance before The Kel, Felix Kel, Lord Kel, Grand Duke of Morgathi. Julian bowed his head, as was proper, but Kethvae stayed upright. Felix bowed his head to Kethvae -- not the other way around. Formalities complete, Kethvae took Julian by the shoulder and stepped closer to where Felix sat.

Then he spoke.

"Lord Kel, it pains me to inform you of the passing of your daughter, Rhya Kel."

Felix, old Felix, appearing far older than Kethvae because that age was a central tenant of his personality, nodded, slowly. His gruff voice hinted at a suppressed sorrow, "We had suspected as much, though...we had still hoped..."

Kethvae's voice was steady, "She died of grief. Her mind had long been clouded by drugs, her body defiled, her soul claimed by vicious men...at the end, she saw clearly...and could not stand the truth. I am sorry. She was a beautiful woman, in her time."

Felix took a deep breath, then let his eyes move to rest upon Julian, "You have come to present your son, Lord Chovas?"

Kethvae nodded, "I have. My son, by your daughter. I was there at his birth, named him Julian. When I awoke the next morning, Rhya had vanished, taking my son with her. I tracked her for three years, found her...and was led to believe that she had sold my son to finance her addiction. I have found him at last. Julian Chovas, my son, my blood, my heir."

Julian heard gasping from the galleries along the hall's sides, thought he heard Aunt Margarite's distinctive nasal choke.

Kethvae looked down, allowing himself a small smile, "And now, I have much to discuss with my son. Lord Kel, I bid you good day."

Kethvae's hand on his shoulder, Julian turned and left the hall. His talent picked up the mood of shock and fear that carried from the courtiers. Julian smiled.

Calthurn, Duresh System, Revenian Colonial Authority Outlying Territory

Julian ran a practiced hand over his diagnostic boards, checking the telltales with one eye, then detached the diagnostic units and sealed the cover over the port -- everything was functioning perfectly. Couldn't ask for a better omen then that, right?

He slammed a fresh set of magazines into his CR-17C and dropped the carbine onto the mounting point, slid Peacemaker into its scabbard and attached the scabbard to the mounting point on his lower back. A fresh set of grenade pouches, a fighting knife, and a holstered APCP finished the load-out, and then he was walking to the assault shuttle, helmet held in the crook of his arm.

The men and women of Dagger, his command squad, were already in place, along with an extra body. The eleventh person in Dagger's assault shuttle wore pitch black armor contoured as much to incite fear as for actual effectiveness. Had he been wearing his helmet, a single malevolent red targetter would have shown out from the darkness of the cloth-wrapped helmet where the right eye would have been.

Kethvae Chovas nodded as his son strapped in next to him then lowered his helmet into place, locking it on and checking the neck seal with his fingers. Moments later, Julian did the same, sealing his own helmet into place -- though the helmet of Julian's Cataphract I combat armor was significantly less intricate than Kethvae's Gunslinger Battle Armor.

Moments later, the jump-light went to red and Julian double-checked the fittings on his grav-pack. The Cataphract I suit was fitted with internal gravitics, standard, but they weren't really designed for high-speed insertions. Thus the mob pack. Kethvae hadn't bothered with one, which was understandable -- his armor was even more advanced compared to Julian's Cataphract suit than the Cataphract I was compared to, say, raw leather.

The jump-light flickered and the jump-benches retracted, leaving Dagger Squad hanging in open air, held in place by straps and the assault shuttle's bay gravitics. The light flashed green and the straps released as the bay gravitics shot Dagger Squad out into the atmosphere. It was a low-altitude drop, relatively speaking, and Julian punched his mob pack only a few seconds after insertion, riding the gravitics all the way down with a practiced grace.

Kethvae moved on an erratic but seemingly unpowered trajectory until he hit ground, coming down feet first, and stopping, seeming to step out of the sky and onto the ground as gentle as if he were stepping down stairs. Remarkable.

Julian freed his carbine from its mounting point and directed Dagger Squad into a loose patrol formation. Kethvae moved up beside him, not for communications purposes, but because it was a decent place to be...

"Feel anything, son?"

Julian waggled his left hand, the equivalent of a headshake.

"No, Father. Nothing sentient. Do you?"

Kethvae nodded, the surprising flexibility of his armor allowing him to execute a decent approximation of the actual motion, "Only barely, though. Focus your talent; instead of trying to feel everywhere at once, sweep it around, like radar."

Julian thought for a moment, then began to understand, and feel.

"I see, yes, you're right. Northwest?"

Kethvae nodded, "Northwest."

Julian signalled the advance.

Julian swung tight around the corner, acquiring his target and ripping a tight burst through the raider's torso -- the 10mm battleshot from his CR-17C ripped a ragged hole through the raider's breastplate, splashing gore against the wall he'd been pressed up again.

Julian hurled himself fully around the corner, sprinting down the sidewalk and sliding to a stop behind an abandoned truck. He heard flechette rounds 'ting' off the other side, unable to penetrate the truck's armored skin -- the Colonial Authority wouldn't subsidize it if it wasn't as rugged as possible. He dropped a grenade from his dispenser and hurled it over his shoulder, the spherical fragmentation grenade serving to scatter and disorient the remaining raiders, giving him enough time to dive out from behind the truck and make five picked shots, so fast they sounded like automatic fire.

Julian got to his feet, changing his solid-shot magazine out for a fresh one. Then he darted across the street to where the raiders had been positioned and entered an alleyway, leading with his carbine. The alley exited on the other side into a courtyard of sorts. Julian identified another group of raiders on the far side of the courtyard, and took off at a run, sliding into cover behind an over-turned bench.

He braced his carbine and swung out, dialing the magnification up three levels and snap-firing two shots into the torso of one of the raiders, then swung back behind cover as the raiders sprayed his position with fire. It was all light stuff, thankfully, which meant that the cover he was behind provided actual cover, rather than merely obscurement. Of course, they'd sand through eventually...but it'd take a few seconds.

He was reaching for a grenade when his tactical readout flickered, indicating that a friendly had entered the courtyard. Julian slid a remote out around the bench while he went the other way and sprayed a short burst into the long planter that the raiders had taken cover behind.

The section of his visor that he'd tasked to remote showed a single figure in black armor walk out of a side-street, cloaked in black. The helmeted head turned to glance at the raiders, the malevolently glowing red targetter that was in the same place that the left eye would have been seemed to glow a little brighter, then the figure took off at a run.

Cutting around the planter, the pistol in the figure's left hand kicked several times, leaving burning after-images, even though Julian was protected from such thngs by his visor's visual filters. The effect of the pistol shots upon the raiders hit by them were no less remarkable -- gore geysered out the back of the raider' hardsuits, highlighted by a sickly red glow to the entire scene.

Then the figure was among the raiders, warblade in hand. The pistol had fallen onto its retention strap, and the figure instead made use of his off-hand to direct his foes onto his blade, where they were quickly dispatched. Ten seconds later, six dead raiders joined their companions in the afterlife.

Julian nodded slightly, then rose from behind the bench and sprinted across the courtyard and down another street -- this wasn't over yet...

Duresh System, Revenian Colonial Authority Outlying Territory

The Colonial Authority Enforcer was not amused. Quite the opposite -- Javier Cale was quite visibly irritated as he examined the raider's body.

He flicked out a folding knife, opened it, and slice the raider's shirt open, baring an intricate tattoo that covered the raider's right breast -- she was female, which was not unusual, but always bothersome.

Julian crouched down and examined the tattoo, then frowned, "I don't recognize that."

"I do," said Kethvae, though the way that he said it made it clear that he wished that he didn't.

Kethvae knelt down on the other side of the raider and traced one of the primary elements of the intricate tattoo with his index finger, frowning all the while.

"Wish I didn't, but that's Jyra Zax's mark. The real damned thing, too...the ink in this spiral, here, is mixed with Zax's blood. You get a very distinct trace if you analyze it, 's how they kept imitators out. Only way to fake it would be to get some of Zax's blood yourself."

Julian frowned, "And...Jyra Zax is..?"

Kethvae sighed, running a hand through his hair, "Someone who should have been dead for eight thousand years. But this mark isn't more than a few months old. Which creates something of an issue."

Cale shook his head and sighed, "Raiders with these markings have hit four other Authority worlds in the last two months."

Kethvae was staring at the mark again, "How many colonists remain missing?"

Cale blinked, "Around two hundred and fifty. How did you know there were missing colonists?"

Kethvae looked up, "Jyra Zax is a slaver. Among other things. Among too many other things."

--

Gym, Interstellar Class A Mark IV Patrolship Deirdre Elise

Julian feinted left, but went right, his warblade twisting through the flickering combination that had helped make him Captain of the DSSC's Competition Longblade Team his fourth and fifth years. He never ran the combination quite the same, varied the elements, but the blitzing strike that had overwhelmed Sandy Carter's guard, twice, and won Julian the Revenian Collegiate Longblade Championship, twice, was something of his signature. Quite an accomplishment, that, as Sandy Carter had been a product of Fhellantar, the great walled warrior academy in Northfell's southern hemisphere -- and a dominant force in the Longblade Championships, whereas the DSSC was the AFESSR's officer's academy, and thus concerned with far more than mastery of what were, for all their cultural significance, still essentially archaic weapons.

Unfortunately for Julian, Kethvae Chovas was a product of the Guardian Temple's 'Gunslinger Academy,' the same school that had produced Dysaryn Stark, widely considered to be the greatest swordsman presently living in the Supremacy -- and more than likely anywhere else.

Like Dysaryn, Kethvae did not, as a result, subscribe to any particular 'style.' Neither did Julian, though this was a result of a lack of any formal instruction in the art beyond the basics he'd been taught as a child. Advanced instruction in the sword had, after-all, been a privilege reserved for House Kel's trueborn children. Not that it had mattered -- Julian had enjoyed swordplay, and if he was almost purely self-taught, his success erased any stigma that might be associated with that.

The combination that Julian had launched had been so successful because it had a tendency to blindside opponents who were used to the formal styles that dominated Competition Longblade. Against an opponent who lacked those prejudices, the combination was little more than a series of extremely rapid strokes, still quite formidable due to the speed and power that Julian imparted into them.

Except that Kethvae was just as strong as his son, and 'faster,' in the sense that his reaction times were quicker. Kethvae stopped the combination by forcing Julian to drop out of it, breaking his initial parry into a riposte that forced Julian onto the defensive. Part of the efficacy of Julian's combination was that there was no commitment to execute the full series of moves, and Kethvae hadn't acted to knock Julian off-balance, though he probably could have, but that would have proved nothing more than that Kethvae had more experience and was physically superior to his son.

Which wasn't the point -- the point was to learn, and Julian already knew that his father was a better fighter than he was. Kethvae was a Gunslinger. Guardian Adept/Warseeker Alpha. A living warrior more fearsome to the enemies of his people than any of the weapons of mass destruction that the Ascended Supremacy had never once used.

Julian frowned and found the offense again, pushing his father as quickly as he could...and watching the way his father responded so quickly and fluidly that it seemed that Kethvae was reading his thoughts. Which was, perhaps, part of the lesson...though Kethvae was blank to Julian's talent, even though he had refined his use of that talent considerably since he had met his father...

"Feel that?"

Julian nodded, "Yeah."

Kethvae smiled, then settled his helmet into place, taking the time to properly situate the shrouding that covered the helmet's nose and mouth area. Gunslinger battle armor was designed as much for intimidation as it was for actual protection, and as a result had several odd features -- the glowing red targetting 'eye,' the black shrouding, the cape...none of these things had any sort of real combat applications.

Julian frowned and lowered his own visor, then took his carbine off its mounting bracket and stepped out of the shuttle, his father only a few steps behind.

Julian reached out with his talent as he did so, sweeping about him in a focused manner, and he did indeed feel what his father had refered to -- a sort of concentrated malignance with a distinct tinge of alien. He gritted his teeth and set off...

--

Julian nearly put his carbine-barrel into the slaver's mouth before he pulled the trigger, exploding the head as a burst of 10mm anti-personnel rounds impacted into the soft tissue of the face -- as opposed to the armored breastplate that the bastard was wearing. Though the breastplate wouldn't have stopped solid battle-shot...at this range, with surprise, why bother?

--

Kethvae dove forward, snapping off a pair of shots from his pistol, the blast-shot leaving streaks of bloody red in their wake -- it was little more than a visual effect, the slice-fielded projectile cut through air as easily as it did flesh or armor, but it was the sort of visual effect that tended to have an unnerving effect on the foe. Of course, it also marked out his position, but Guardian Temple doctrine emphasized mobility. The theory was that the vast majority of weapons that could threaten an armored combatant wouldn't care if he was behind cover or not, so attempting a 'cover-based' method of combat would have been essentially suicidal.

The 'red streak' effect was optional, anyway. Kethvae liked it, if for no other reason than that it was a visual representation of the way he saw gunfights -- a series of lines, moving to intersect targets. That was the Guardian Temple way, the result of highly refined kinesthesia.

He was among the pirates before they were entirely certain what was happening, and his warblade was in his right hand. He executed the first few strokes one-handed, then dropped his pistol onto its retaining strap and moved his left hand to the blade's hilt. The vast majority of warblades were designed to be operable both one and two-handed...

A few moments later, Kethvae wiped his blade clean on his cape and sheathed it, then unholstered his pistol and continued onwards. The Temple did good work.

Julian butt-stroked a slaver in the face, shattering her jaw and drawing a bloody arc in the air for a few seconds, or what seemed like a few seconds to him, riding the battle-high as he was. Then he brought the carbine back up and double-tapped a second slaver in the sternum, before finishing the job with a precisely placed explosive round between the eyes.

Then they were upon him, and he didn't have the space to employ the carbine, so he dropped it onto its retention sling, the smart-sling pulling the weapon around him and onto the mounting point on his back. Then he screamed as one of the slavers drove a wireblade into his arm. Reflexively, he stepped into the strike and crushed the slaver's face with a straight right.

Then he pulled the wireblade out -- not that there was really anything left to pull out. His armor's shielding had ablated much of the blade's active surface -- there hadn't been much penetration, but what there had been had left a deep gash in his armor -- and in the meat of his arm.

He felt the armor contract about the wound, as much as it could, and a certain coldness as the drugs began to take effect. But his left arm was out of action at this point, and that wasn't terrifically good...

He slapped another Slaver away, buying him enough space to draw his pistol and put two rounds into the next slaver who presented himself, then finish off the one he'd knocked to the ground. But that just bought him more time, time enough to drop the pistol and draw his warblade -- he couldn't reload the pistol efficiently one-handed. You didn't have to reload a sword, however.

He didn't have time -- or the ability -- to fix slice-wire, but none of the slavers seemed to be wearing armor heavy enough to really require it, so that wasn't as crippling as it could have been. Then he was heading down a hallway, skewering a slaver with his blade, pulling it free, then removing the threat of a slaver with a power goad by lopping off his weapon arm...and then things began to steadily blur.

---

Kethvae flicked his warblade to the side, blood cascading away from the blade to splatter in an arc on the floor. The next thing he knew, he was spinning about, warblade rising to catch another blade, reflexively twisting to lock the blades and disarm his opponent. That opponent twisted her blade free instantly, avoiding the disarm attempt like she'd known it was coming, and as Kethvae caught a glimpse at said opponent, he knew that she had.

Jyra Zax looked exactly as she had the last time he'd seen her, or, well, what he could see of her looked the same. Her orange-on-black armor was almost flawless, but he could pick out the signs of repair on the breastplate, where'd he'd impaled her upon his warblade. If he'd sustained the same wound that he'd inflicted upon her, he'd have died.

So how the hell was she -- and it was unmistakably her, he could smell it -- standing before him, sword in one hand, shock-lash in the other.

And then, as quickly as she'd come upon him, she was gone. As he'd expected. Jyra wasn't terrifically fast, but she made up for it with her...unique...talents. Made up for it enough that she'd killed three Watch agents before she met one she couldn't spook or surprise with her tricks. Of course, she'd still tried...

Kethvae slid his longknife from its scabbard and spun about, catching her blade with his knife while he struck with the Warblade, twisting the tip beneath her rising left arm to strike at...nothing. Air.

She couldn't teleport, exactly, but it certainly seemed like it to the untrained eye...and it gave her an unsurmountable edge against the vast majority of enemies...but not against him. The brush of her emotions set him off, spinning in place to catch her blade with both of his own, his greater strength allowing him to keep the hold with relative ease. Then he twisted to the side, wrenching her blade from her grip.

He hurled himself to the side, next, narrowly avoiding the cracking tip of her shock-lash, lashing out with his Warblade in a wide-arc as he dropped, and he felt the spike of pain as he caught her leg with his Warblade's tip. Throwing himself upright, he rushed her while she was distracted, slamming his shoulder full-on into her breastplate and knocking her back, giving him the time to set up and execute his strike -- a precise thrust into the upper portion of her helmet. It wasn't a killing blow, not against Zax, anyway, but it did kill her armor.

Ascended armors -- and Revenian armors, extensively influenced by Ascended designs as they were -- used decentralized control methods within the armor itself, relying on implants in the wearer for 'centralized' control. That was not the case with Jyra Zax's armor, and Kethvae's precise strike froze her in place like a statue.

"Eternity in a Watch stasis cell it shall be, then, Zax, seeing as you don't seem willing to accept the alternative..."

Transient Officers Quarters, RFM Surqan Base, Nexus, Exalted Star Supremacy of Revenia

Julian Kel-Fang, who was properly Julian Chovas, these days, but didn't think that he'd ever get used to that name...wasn't having a day.

Hadn't been having a good month, really. Coming to terms with the knowledge of his father's identity was a lot harder than he'd ever really expected it to be. Admittedly, he'd never expected his father to be the last scion of one of the Great Houses of the Ascended. Part of him dreaded that change -- he didn't know how to act like an Ascended Lord! He'd never really wanted power, had been fully content to let the meager holdings he'd been granted at his majority be administered by local councils and bureaucrats. Was still fully content to keep his nose out of things of that nature, for that matter.

He lay stripped to the waist atop a small, FM-standard bed -- stiff, uncomfortable, never the right size, but also extremely sturdy. His back would complain in a few more hours, but he'd slept on worse, and would sleep on worse again. In the meantime, he needed isolation and time to think -- he could get that here. Not at his apartment here on Nexus, or his home on Morgathi. Even the rigidly polite Reporters of Revenian media organs were swarming over him...but they couldn't get to him in the middle of a Fleet Marine base.

He held a knife easily in his right hand, studying it intently. Then he exhaled, let his eyes drift shut, thought.

What did he want? He wasn't sure. No, that was a lie -- he knew exactly what he wanted, just didn't want to allow that thought to formalize. Not yet. Not until he was sure of his own intentions and feelings. He'd promised himself that he wouldn't...taint...that want with twisted motives or doubt. When he acted on that, he wanted to act with a single purpose, and no care for the consequences.

He smiled, acknowledging the way he had trapped himself into contemplating what he hadn't wanted to contemplate. His hand blurred, and the knife buried itself to the hilt in the ceiling. He'd pull it out later. Needed his hands free, for a moment.

His right hand flicked up, as if he was releasing something into the air, then his left hand came up, snapped together with his right, then both hands drew apart. The air between the blurred, distorted. Julian drew an image from his memory and projected it, another of his myriad talents with little real application, considering nobody could see it but him, and he could only produce what he remembered. He did have perfect recall, of course -- he was Ascended -- but it wasn't like he needed to project a map to remember what it looked like. He could do that internally.

Sometimes, though, you wanted to see something with your eyes. This time, it was a face. It was a face that he'd tried, once, to forget. And failed miserably. A face that haunted his dreams, all the more horrifying when it showed up amongst the faces of the deaths he felt on his hands.

His face was expressionless -- even here he had to be strong. He simply stared for several minutes, while his thoughts ran wild. He made no attempt to make reason of them, merely observed their course -- his mind had little say in this matter, after all.

And, again, he was faced with the same answer - he just didn't know. Couldn't know, until he saw her again. Couldn't decide whether his emotions were strong enough in this matter to override his good sense. More than that, to allow him to violate his beliefs. He wasn't even sure if he could stay sane in that...place...long enough for it to matter.

But, he was coming to realize, the time to learn one way or the other was fast approaching...and he found that fact oddly comforting.

"Tell me, Julian. What do you see?"

Julian looked over at his father, then back at the woman laying on the cot beside which he was kneeling.

"I see someone in pain. We need to help her!"

Kethvae nodded, "Yes, Julian, that is our way. Now, look again and tell me: what do you see?"

Julian blinked and allowed the present to slip away, his talent rising up within him, seeing what he could not...and what it saw, repulsed. Julian caught himself before he fell backwards, but the urge was there.

"I don't understand -- what is happening to her?"

Kethvae frowned, and Julian felt his father focus his talent on the sick woman. Kethvae remained emotionless, but Julian could feel his own revulsion echoed within his father. Finally, Kethvae spoke.

"If this woman were ill, this would be a matter for doctors, or, of old, our brethren of Rache. But she is not ill, or, at least, not physically ill. Our talent works to calm, Julian, but that is not all that we can do -- just as the heirs of Rache could do more than heal the body. Our talent is not merely a passive thing, as you are beginning to understand. It is a weapon, yes, as we Ascended are ourselves weapons. Like any weapon, it must be directed to achieve its greatest effect. With me now, Son."

And Julian felt his father beside him, a quick warmth and fierce spirit, and then Julian pushed forward into the darkness hovering about the woman, burning a channel through the murk with force of thought and strength of will. He gathered the darkness up, tearing it away from its prey, and once he had removed the local threat, he followed the tiny thread back to its point of origination...and here, though he had never imagined the possibility, it was as if he knew exactly what to do -- and he sliced easily into the mind of the thing within which the darkness had originated, and there...there he burned it clean.

He sat back onto his heels, sucking in deep, gasping breaths. His father was beside him, a hand upon his shoulder, but Kethvae's attention was on the cot-bound woman, and soon Julian was drawn there as well...and amazed by the change. There was a brightness, there, a rightness, and Julian knew that she would recover, and with that knowing, rose to his feet.

Kethvae stood a moment later, and if his eyes were unfocused for a moment, well, the ancient Ascended Lord could certainly be permitted the occasional memory, in light of his antiquity. Kethvae smiled.

"Do recall, my son, that our talent is a weapon to be wielded only against those who would do harm to others -- we cannot, must not, use our talent upon those who do harm to themselves. That is not our way."

Julian nodded, "I know."