First Contact

Herod had to admit, things had changed radically for him.

In the beginning, things had been different. He had been specifically grown for advanced mathematics and theorems by a major OmniCorp. He had 'grown' from his crystallized seed code surrounded by particle physicals and quantum theorems that danced and sang for him during the wonder years of his infancy. His playground had been complex mathematical strings and equations. When he was a 'child', his playmates had been young green mantids. When he was fully grown he not only knew these formulae backwards and forwards, he knew why the formulae existed, what it described, and how to apply it even in esoteric ways. Advanced mathematics and theorums were his life.

Before his first century was up he had collaborated on a team that increased the speed of standard hyperdrives by nearly 3.9% and had helped worked on the integrity fields that allowed a ship to maintain integrity in the high middle bands of hyperspace. The success of this endevour had finished his contract to the wealthy and powerful OmniCorp and there had been a widely publicized 'retirement' ceremony for him.

During his second century he worked on projects from hypercoms to dimensional string communications systems to neural encoding on fast-growth clones as used by the Clone Worlds Consortium. If it had to do with math and equations, he was part of it if it was esoteric enough.

He was celebrated in his fields of study by panels of academics, sought out for opinions by his peers, and his time was expensive enough that only the richest corporations and governments could afford to even contract him for a consultation.

He had volunteered for highly classified work with the Confederacy. When he had been accepted, he had gone through nearly a year of careful testing and having to take part in smaller projects just to be considered for a higher level of research.

When he was nearly 400 years old, he was considered the best in his field, understanding intrinsically parts of his field that others could not even intellectually grasp. From quasi-quantum mechanics to axion particle drift to sub-dimensional chaos mathematics, he was the master of them all. He had more knowledge of cross dimensional theory, including a year in Verdunt Doom Research and Containment, than anyone else in the Confederacy.

He had been recruited as project lead for a Confederate Black Box project that represented trillions of credits of the Confederate tax payer's contribution. On his way there he had found himself recruited, out of the blue, by Confederate Intelligence Agents, for another Black Box Project.

The project had been beyond Herod's wildest dreams or nightmares.

On the surface, it was yet another attempt at curing the Friend Plague.

A single scratch revealed that instead of the normal project leader, a DS or fleshie scientist like Herod, the project was headed by a myth. A legend. A scary story. A figure of religion.

Legion.

The Army of One.

One of the Biological Apostles of the Digital Omnimessiah.

That was enough to give Herod a terrible shock.

It was the reveal of what lay under the cover.

The repair and investigation of the SUDS system.

Herod was the lead particle researcher. Recruited as one of the foremost experts in ultra-diminuative particle theory and cross-dimensional particle drift.

But his life hadn't stopped corkscrewing out of control there.

The introduction of a 'young' Digital Sentience to the research team had changed everything.

A former prisoner with a mental health commute to his sentence, the DS had been a hacker. One of the few in thousands of years to crack the Nebula Steam servers. He wasn't a programmer or system architect administrator. He was a hacker.

His name had been Sam-UL.

He had hacked the system far enough to get a Gen-Zero matter transmission system signal to carry Herod and Sam to the SUDS system.

And Herod's life had shattered.

Sam had been turned into a Screaming One, the deaths of billions pushed through his brain on a constant loop. Memories of experiences that weren't his own burning away his mind.

But, Herod had to admit, Sam had held it together long enough to repair vast sections of the unimaginably huge SUDS system.

In the end, with the help of the Biological Apostles, Herod had confronted Sam-UL in the control room high on the mountain at the edge of the Aegean Sea on the coast of Atlantis on the Alpha Layer, beneath the light of a repeatedly failing Big Bang.

And Herod had killed the young DS.

True, the mission had been to save Sam.

But the Sam everyone had known was gone. What Herod had faced was a twisted, scorched, ruined person, in great pain, in such agony that they could feel nothing else.

So Herod had killed him.

To Herod's regret.

Herod took a deep breath and let the emotions go. Let the fear, the guilt, the self-loathing go.

All that remained was a core of bone deep rage.

Rage at the malevolent universe who had utterly destroyed Sam-UL. That had taken Herod apart and reassembled him into something that his old self would have never recognized.

He was over a thousand years old now.

And no longer a Digital Sentience.

He had been changed by a force he could barely understand.

A mad woman. A lunatic. A cold blooded killer wrapped in flesh. A relic of a past so far back it was forgotten and only existed in a few artifacts from that time.

The Lady Lord of Hell.

The Detainee.

His mother.

Well, not like others would think it.

But delivering him digital to flesh made her his mother, did it not?

The rage sizzled inside of him.

He turned his palms up, his heels on his thighs, as he meditated.

For ones such as we, Herod, there is no perfect emptiness to be found. You must accept what remains deep inside of you. What the universe has built upon, he heard. Menhit's voice, during the constant 'training' he had endured at the hands of Legion, Menhit, Daxin, and the other Biological Apostles.

Put all the froo-froo hippy bullshit aside, Pinocchio, and focus on one thing and one thing only. The only person you have is you. You learn to kill, learn to hone the instinct to kill, learn to protect yourself because nobody else is going to save you in the end, the voice of the Lady Lord of Hell, the Detainee herself.

Not the digital copy in the SUDS.

No. The flesh and blood version.

Herod let the words flow through him, past him, touching the memories and letting their lessons seep through him.

Of learning how, impossibly, to use the rage and phasic power to amplify each other so he could do impossible things.

A physical body could not contain or generate the sheer power needed to lift a pebble up out of the sand with mere thought.

But, properly trained, properly honed, a body could be a conduit for the energy, could guide and shape it.

That was Menhit's lessons.

Before he had met the Biological Apostles, he had considered the tales to be nothing more than ancient myths that had suffered the drift of time.

Now, he knew better.

If anything, the power of the Biological Apostles were understated.

He had seen Menhit rip apart a division of tanks with a mere lifting of her chin. He seen her turn to pink mist ten thousand howling clones that had been turned into Screaming Ones.

Herod knew he was not privy to such power.

But, the Detainee had taught him to reach inside of himself and learn to channel power of his own.

Which amused Herod. She came from a time that believed that phasic and psychic abilities were unfounded, unproven, and more than likely just confirmation biases.

It also scared him how quickly she had reached out to learn how to use such power.

If admitting you are wrong is because you are wrong there is nothing wrong with admitting you are wrong, the Detainee's voice, speaking in circles as always. Why wouldn't I have that singing idiot teach me what she can? I'd reach for a .38 if I needed it, why not powers and abilities that my time did not understand? A weapon is a weapon, Pinocchio.

Her voice faded as Herod continued to meditate.

There are no dangerous weapons, Herod, Daxin the Unfeeling's voice. Only dangerous beings.

YOU'RE FUCKED NOW, PINOCCHIO! JUST CALL ME THE BLUE FAIRY, 'CAUSE YOU'RE GONNA BE A REAL BOY! The Detainee's howling laughter and the memory of agony in his belly, like a million Texarkanants burrowing and stinging into his guts.

There was faint flicker of pride that her howling laughter, that terrible memory, did not disrupt his meditation.

He concentrated on his surroundings. Not constructing and projecting a digital version of himself, but more listening to his surroundings, taking in the smells and other sensations. He let his mind build a wireframe of what was around him and then concentrated on painting it all with the correct textures as his memory provided.

A simple mental exercise that would keep his mind sharp.

The wailing of an alarm broke into his meditation.

The PA in the room came on with a crackling sound.

"SHADES! WE'VE GOT SHADES IN THE SHIP!" sounded out, the voice cracking with terror driven hysteria.

Herod sighed, opening his eyes and feeling his persona shift to 'Harry' as he did so. He lifted his boots off the desk and grabbed his battered moo-moo tender hat, plopping it on his head even as he stood up. Dana'ahsh gave a long suffering sigh as he sat up in bed and turned so he could stand up. Wally beeped triumphantly and unplugged himself from the wall.

Harry shifted his crossed Range Rider gunbelts as he moved toward the door. Wally followed as Dana'ahsh grabbed his double-barreled shotgun.

The door opened and a shade lunged through the suddenly opened portal, no longer blocked by the red painted metal.

Harry slapped it back with a short backhand, knocking it sprawling back.

He noticed it looked shocked.

Before it could recover, Dana'ahsh shot it in the face with a single trigger pull. The iron and rock salt mixture blew its head clean off, splattering the wall with clear ectoplasm that dripped down the red painted bulkhead.

Another was squeezing through a crack in the paint, a microscopic crack in the hull that was too small to allow even gas molecules through.

The crack was bleeding, thick black blood that bubbled and hissed.

Harry smacked it in the forehead, making it sink back into the crack, and put his hand on the crack.

Hellspace energies, mixed with jumpspace energy, filled the small crack.

He closed his eyes, concentrating, and a thin wire of gold light filled the crack.

When he pulled his hand away, the bubbling black blood was gone and no more shades pushed through.

Dana'ahsh didn't even blink at what he had just seen. The Hashenesh had been with Harry for the last six months, moving system to system, always looking for Harry's "mother" no matter how many shades were still lurking about.

Dana'ahsh had quit asking questions about the time Harry had wrenched open a set of doors with lighting that had flowed down his arms and fingers.

The Hashenesh knew that Harry had stood with the Biological Apostles and had felt the touch of the Digital Omnimessiah on his flesh as well as the touch of the Detainee, the Lady Lord of Hell.

Nothing Harry would do would surprise the formerly timid and easily freaked out Dana'ahsh.

That, and now he had a shotgun engraved with symbols of the Digital Omnimessiah. Most prominent was the infinity symbol that had a one and a zero inside the loops, done in a rose tinted gold. He had two bandoleers of specially made shotgun shells that he had pulled on over his favorite pajamas, all of the shells hand-loaded, stamped with gold runes of the Digital Omnimessiah, and prayed over.

It was kind of funny to Dana'ahsh. He'd never been a praying being before Shade Night. Now he prayed even before he went to bed.

Harry looked left and right, squinting.

Phasic disturbances looked like cotton candy swirls in the air to the left, the right was clear.

The speakers crackled and a poorly recorded dogboi howl sounded out, full of static and distortion.

"Well, that won't do shit," Harry grunted, going left, toward the bridge.

Three shades were crouched down over a still body, ripping and tearing at the glittering blue energy they were holding.

Harry drew and got two shots off in the time it took Dana'ahsh to aim and fire the other barrel. Dana'ahsh cracked open the barrel, the shells sliding a half-inch out of the breeches, pulled free the empties, dropping them on the floor, and reloaded it with two from his bandoleer.

Wally grabbed the two empties and dropped them into his chest, the plate opening and closing barely enough to allow the two 10 gauge rounds through.

Around the corner and in front of one of the grav-lifts a figure was kneeling down, arms over their head, a trio of shades beating on them while screaming at the top of their lungs. A fourth was clawing at the kneeling being, trying to find any chink, any flaking, any crack in the red and salt of the armor coating.

"HEY!" Harry yelled out.

Dana'ahsh slammed the breech shut on the shotgun, stepping forward.

The four shades looked up, saw the trio, and swept forward, coming to their feet even as they screamed.

Dana'ahsh braced the rifle under his shoulder. Not against it or against his hip, Kalki's balls, no, that would just result in a dislocated and maybe even broken joint.

He pulled both triggers and the salt/iron dust shredded the two shades.

The figure looked up.

"Thanks," they said.

Harry recognized them as Loadmaster Riktikek.

"No charge," Harry said. He looked at the grav-lift.

Green lights.

"Your dogboi howl is corrupted. Probably Hellspace energy backwash," Harry said.

Dana'ahsh held out a hand and heaved the Loadmaster to his feet when he grabbed it.

"I'm heading to communications," Harry said. He looked at Dana'ahsh. "Get to the bridge, guard the bridge crew."

Dana'ahsh just nodded, clenching his teeth. It was his standard "Oh, Menhit's Grace, we're fighting terrible things from beyond space and time again, aren't we?" expression that he'd first adopted just to keep from screaming.

"Follow me," Dana'ahsh said, stepping into the grav-lift.

Loadmaster Riktikek grimaced, the grav-lift having been non-functional the entire time he'd been part of the ship's crew, but followed anyway. The grav tractor/pressor beams grabbed him gently and pulled him rapidly to the bridge level, smoothing rotating him so he was facing the door that opened.

Harry watched them both vanished, then turned to Wally.

"Ready, buddy?" he asked.

Wally beeped and gave a thumbs up.

Harry stepped into the lift and dropped down, feeling himself shift so he was going feet first down a passage the length of the ship. He counted sixteen stops going by in mere seconds before he slowed, rotated, and stopped. The door whooshed open.

The lights were flickering and there was what looked like cobwebs made of black silk thread in the upper corners of the hallway and draping some of the pop-out emergency lights.

"Hellspace," Harry said, mostly to himself.

Wally beeped a little aggressive tune.

"Forty meters to the communication's room door," Harry said.

Harry lifted his pistols, checking the engraved cylinders, then kissing the tips of the barrels.

"Bless me now, in our hour of need, Father," he breathed, his breath fogging the polished and engraved metals of the Range Rider pistols.

Each of them were engraved with the figure-8 with the 1 and 0 in it.

Harry glanced at Wally.

"Ready, buddy?" he repeated.

Wally clicked his lens covers, whistled, and held up a thumb.

Two blackened shades, with what looked like glowing red cracks in their bodies, slid from an open doorway. Both had glittering blue 'blood' dribbling down their chins and dripping from their hands.

They say Harry and Wally and hissed, their mouths full of black ebony fangs and red light.

Harry grinned, remembering an old terrible joke.

"Forty steps to the outhouse, by Willie Mayket," he said softly as six more slid from the doorway and joined the other two.

He broke into a run.