I am now fully in charge. So, first off… “Why were you hunting Stephanie?”
“We want the secrets of your communications grid, so that we can wreck it,” Fred's voice comes over the comm.
Same as the VI's answer, basically, “Why do you want to wreck it?”
Fred answers again, “Triune teaches us to encourage Drift travel. Your network… it reduces it.”
Right, because if people can use teleconferencing, they don't need to hop in a starship for days to weeks, “How did you find her?”
“A sensor upgrade; we got the idea of integrating the True Seeing spell into ship's sensors after interrogating that Barathu you hired… his screams were priceless,” again, the AI face.
Ah…”You extracted the intel he had via torture?”
“Yes,” such a simple reply….
Okay then, I no longer care much about these idiots’ fates, “And how did you leave Ulrich?”
“Cremated… we staged a fire on his ship, it wasn't too hard.”
So torture AND murder. I guess I will be leaving them with some orders when I let them go… or maybe not letting them go at all. Hmm… I'll have to think about this. Setting that aside… “How did you figure out where to intercept her?”
“The archbishop asked Triune for us.”
Oh. Ugh. That's… okay, so… one of this realm's actual deities (and the one in charge of the Drift, no less) is giving out our travel path when asked politely. That's… not the opponent I want, as it basically means we need to stop using Drift travel entirely. Which I can arrange; Spheres of Power's Alteration sphere has the option of granting Starflight. It requires a caster level of fifteen, and takes longer, but my default Spheres caster level is twelve now, so I just need an Implement to boost it slightly, or… oh, right. Cabal Master will handle that just fine.
But that’s for later, “Who all on your team knew about the torture and murder?”
“I think we all did…” it's not Fred, but I don't think I care about their names anymore.
“The only one left out would have been the soulless VI,” a different Android.
“Creepy thing, but we needed it for our mission,” that's from the other ship's AI.
So they all knew. The closest thing to an innocent here is the VI… which isn't currently a person. Great. Leaves me as judge, jury, and executioner… I hate frontier justice, it just doesn't feel right when I'm the only one making these decisions.
Still, needs to be done, also: “Fred: Name and describe everyone above you in the chain of command that you believe knew and approved of this mission… and transmit useful pictures of them if you can.”
He does so, and I have the comm unit built into my body record it all.
Of course, with that done… what do I do with these... THINGS?
“Anything you like,” my pink partner purrs in my head, “Harem members, entertainers, rent them out as escorts, breed them, all of the above… we've already eaten their essence, anything more we do with them is ‘free’....”
Yeah, no. Enslaving AIs would put me even higher on Triune's hit list… but I think I will disarm the ships and keep the captured one.
Which I proceed to do. The demiplane has air (not that androids need it) so I strip the roughly humanoid crewmembers down to their synthetic skin… hmm, I do like those curves… and squeeze them into the two ships, shunting their gear through a Gate to a storage demiplane.
I do similarly with the two fighters: I take the time to remove all of their weapons (summoning help for the purpose), their drift engines, their shields, their sensors, their data nets, their armor, their countermeasures, the Integrated Control Modules, their Consciousness Uplink Drives, and basically everything else except the power core, thrusters, life support, and comms. They'll be able to maneuver in real space, eat on board ship, land wherever I leave them, and use their comms… but that’s about it. They’re now fragile little birds, as far as spaceships go.
Of course, this also means it's time for me to send them away. First though… “All of you: You are never, under any circumstances, to reveal anything you learned here. Acknowledge.”
I get the expected eight confirmations, and continue, “Now… I'm going to go ahead and drop you off in Alluvion; any particular objections?”
“No, but…” the non-Fred ship AI starts, “... you CAN?”
“I'm pretty sure,” I shrug, not that I'm transmitting a visual, “I haven't worked out all the bugs, but you tried to kill a friend of mine so… you get to be guinea pigs. Oh, also: Never attempt to undo the side effects of my technology. Take good care of all children you will have. Never knowingly harm anyone. Now begone!”
I use Wish's Transport Travelers clause again, sending all eight of them to Alluvion… and no, I’m not particularly gentle. Between the two Wish Transport effects and the Control Undead spell, I figure they're arriving with about five thousand cc's on each side… which I'm sure will make them quite popular with men… as will the extreme eagerness to copulate that's a side effect of Patricia's power.
And Control Undead, along with those orders, will stay with them for the rest of their lives, however long that ends up being when they don't really age and can't suicide… I suppose they could get someone else to do it for them.
Of course, they murdered Ulrich to get to me… I suppose I can give him the ship… minus those magic sensors, I want them… if he wants to come back… but I should do that from the ship. I am totally keeping the rest of the loot for myself, though. That stuff is EXPENSIVE.
I Gate back to the storage demiplane (closing the Gate behind me), escape into Stephanie, and get to work. We dock the captured Fighter with Stephanie, I swap out the sensors while we continue on our way, and - when we're done - I get on board the fighter, set the environmental controls to match what I remember from Ulrich's ship, and cast True Resurrection to bring… well, her, when it's done… back from the dead.
Okay, Patricia's power is weird.
Ulrich comes back nude, which I expected (he didn't really seem to wear much before)… and now SHE looks a lot like a jellyfish-based mermaid. She has a human-styled head that trails off into long neon pink jellyfish-like tentacles instead of hair, human-like upper-arms that split into several similar tentacles (each at about the elbow), and human-like legs that do the same at the knees.
That chest, though….
“Yeah…” Patricia starts in, “Raising the dead isn't nutritious. He didn't have any essence to eat, so I had to fill in entirely with our power.”
That explains the twin beach balls on her chest, floating lazily up and down on the breeze… moving somewhat like she's underwater….
“Thank you, my goddess,” Ulrich snaps me out of my reverie, “It feels so good to be alive again.” She looks down at herself, “Ooh, I'm a mammal now?” She wraps a few tentacles around each of her very visible milk makers, gives them a squeeze, and fountains all over me.
Her milk's flavor reminds me of saltwater taffy.
“Why that title?” I'm asking you too, Patricia.
“Isn't it obvious?” Whoa… in and out of head stereo.
“You do things nobody else can,” Ulrich begins.
“To the point where nobody even knows what you're doing, much less how,” Patricia adds in my head.
“And you're so casual about it: Making entire starships invisible, unseen armies at your beck and call, RAISING THE DEAD, do I need to go on?”
“She doesn't know that you create worlds, too…” Patricia adds.
Ah, but…“So I can do a few things commonly associated with deities, that doesn't mean…”
“If it walks like a duck, and talks like a duck…” where'd you learn that, Patricia?
Ulrich rolls her eyes, “Semantics. How many diety like things do you need to be able to do to qualify?”
My turn for an eye roll, “Collectively, the Pact Worlds qualify under that: Travel the stars? The Drift drive; check. Created a race of people? Androids, check. Turn barren rocks into life-bearing worlds? It's called Terraforming, check. Even reviving the dead is possible with technology here: The Regeneration Table will do the job. Oh yes, and there are spells, too. Knowing some tricks doesn't make a person a deity… I mean, you have a completely different planetary history, but what would your equivalent of cave-dwelling ancestors think of you if you showed up in a starship with a good medical bay and a tech lab?”
That gives Ulrich pause, “Huh.”
Patricia, not so much, “I'd accept their worship with open arms. It's our due.”
Ugh, “That aside,” I continue, “why the ‘-dess’ on there?”
Laughter in stereo, now. Ulrich starts, “Your power is obviously…” she gestures at herself with her tentacles, “very feminine in nature, even if you're looking like that,” she waves vaguely at my body.
“What more is there to add?” Patricia, you could have just kept silent… “not really, I don't have good impulse control unless flavor is on the line.”
I probably shouldn't mention the granting spells thing right now. I shake my head, “Regardless… the folks that tortured and killed you were after me, so… here, have one of their ships;” I gesture at the area around us, “I took it from them, fair and square,” fair-ish, anyway. Okay, maybe hijacking their VI during a Time Stop and using Wish transport to kidnap them all wasn't exactly fair… regardless, they started the fight, I just finished it.
“That’s… quite the gift,” Ulrich starts, a glint in her eye, “How can I ever repay you?...” she saunters up to me, emphasizing the bounce in her chest, waving her hips back and forth as she goes, and starts slipping a tentacle down my pants when she reaches me.
Eh… what’s one more half-breed baby?
I am now fully in charge. So, first off… “Why were you hunting Stephanie?”
“We want the secrets of your communications grid, so that we can wreck it,” Fred's voice comes over the comm.
Same as the VI's answer, basically, “Why do you want to wreck it?”
Fred answers again, “Triune teaches us to encourage Drift travel. Your network… it reduces it.”
Right, because if people can use teleconferencing, they don't need to hop in a starship for days to weeks, “How did you find her?”
“A sensor upgrade; we got the idea of integrating the True Seeing spell into ship's sensors after interrogating that Barathu you hired… his screams were priceless,” again, the AI face.
Ah…”You extracted the intel he had via torture?”
“Yes,” such a simple reply….
Okay then, I no longer care much about these idiots’ fates, “And how did you leave Ulrich?”
“Cremated… we staged a fire on his ship, it wasn't too hard.”
So torture AND murder. I guess I will be leaving them with some orders when I let them go… or maybe not letting them go at all. Hmm… I'll have to think about this. Setting that aside… “How did you figure out where to intercept her?”
“The archbishop asked Triune for us.”
Oh. Ugh. That's… okay, so… one of this realm's actual deities (and the one in charge of the Drift, no less) is giving out our travel path when asked politely. That's… not the opponent I want, as it basically means we need to stop using Drift travel entirely. Which I can arrange; Spheres of Power's Alteration sphere has the option of granting Starflight. It requires a caster level of fifteen, and takes longer, but my default Spheres caster level is twelve now, so I just need an Implement to boost it slightly, or… oh, right. Cabal Master will handle that just fine.
But that’s for later, “Who all on your team knew about the torture and murder?”
“I think we all did…” it's not Fred, but I don't think I care about their names anymore.
“The only one left out would have been the soulless VI,” a different Android.
“Creepy thing, but we needed it for our mission,” that's from the other ship's AI.
So they all knew. The closest thing to an innocent here is the VI… which isn't currently a person. Great. Leaves me as judge, jury, and executioner… I hate frontier justice, it just doesn't feel right when I'm the only one making these decisions.
Still, needs to be done, also: “Fred: Name and describe everyone above you in the chain of command that you believe knew and approved of this mission… and transmit useful pictures of them if you can.”
He does so, and I have the comm unit built into my body record it all.
Of course, with that done… what do I do with these... THINGS?
“Anything you like,” my pink partner purrs in my head, “Harem members, entertainers, rent them out as escorts, breed them, all of the above… we've already eaten their essence, anything more we do with them is ‘free’....”
Yeah, no. Enslaving AIs would put me even higher on Triune's hit list… but I think I will disarm the ships and keep the captured one.
Which I proceed to do. The demiplane has air (not that androids need it) so I strip the roughly humanoid crewmembers down to their synthetic skin… hmm, I do like those curves… and squeeze them into the two ships, shunting their gear through a Gate to a storage demiplane.
I do similarly with the two fighters: I take the time to remove all of their weapons (summoning help for the purpose), their drift engines, their shields, their sensors, their data nets, their armor, their countermeasures, the Integrated Control Modules, their Consciousness Uplink Drives, and basically everything else except the power core, thrusters, life support, and comms. They'll be able to maneuver in real space, eat on board ship, land wherever I leave them, and use their comms… but that’s about it. They’re now fragile little birds, as far as spaceships go.
Of course, this also means it's time for me to send them away. First though… “All of you: You are never, under any circumstances, to reveal anything you learned here. Acknowledge.”
I get the expected eight confirmations, and continue, “Now… I'm going to go ahead and drop you off in Alluvion; any particular objections?”
“No, but…” the non-Fred ship AI starts, “... you CAN?”
“I'm pretty sure,” I shrug, not that I'm transmitting a visual, “I haven't worked out all the bugs, but you tried to kill a friend of mine so… you get to be guinea pigs. Oh, also: Never attempt to undo the side effects of my technology. Take good care of all children you will have. Never knowingly harm anyone. Now begone!”
I use Wish's Transport Travelers clause again, sending all eight of them to Alluvion… and no, I’m not particularly gentle. Between the two Wish Transport effects and the Control Undead spell, I figure they're arriving with about five thousand cc's on each side… which I'm sure will make them quite popular with men… as will the extreme eagerness to copulate that's a side effect of Patricia's power.
And Control Undead, along with those orders, will stay with them for the rest of their lives, however long that ends up being when they don't really age and can't suicide… I suppose they could get someone else to do it for them.
Of course, they murdered Ulrich to get to me… I suppose I can give him the ship… minus those magic sensors, I want them… if he wants to come back… but I should do that from the ship. I am totally keeping the rest of the loot for myself, though. That stuff is EXPENSIVE.
I Gate back to the storage demiplane (closing the Gate behind me), escape into Stephanie, and get to work. We dock the captured Fighter with Stephanie, I swap out the sensors while we continue on our way, and - when we're done - I get on board the fighter, set the environmental controls to match what I remember from Ulrich's ship, and cast True Resurrection to bring… well, her, when it's done… back from the dead.
Okay, Patricia's power is weird.
Ulrich comes back nude, which I expected (he didn't really seem to wear much before)… and now SHE looks a lot like a jellyfish-based mermaid. She has a human-styled head that trails off into long neon pink jellyfish-like tentacles instead of hair, human-like upper-arms that split into several similar tentacles (each at about the elbow), and human-like legs that do the same at the knees.
That chest, though….
“Yeah…” Patricia starts in, “Raising the dead isn't nutritious. He didn't have any essence to eat, so I had to fill in entirely with our power.”
That explains the twin beach balls on her chest, floating lazily up and down on the breeze… moving somewhat like she's underwater….
“Thank you, my goddess,” Ulrich snaps me out of my reverie, “It feels so good to be alive again.” She looks down at herself, “Ooh, I'm a mammal now?” She wraps a few tentacles around each of her very visible milk makers, gives them a squeeze, and fountains all over me.
Her milk's flavor reminds me of saltwater taffy.
“Why that title?” I'm asking you too, Patricia.
“Isn't it obvious?” Whoa… in and out of head stereo.
“You do things nobody else can,” Ulrich begins.
“To the point where nobody even knows what you're doing, much less how,” Patricia adds in my head.
“And you're so casual about it: Making entire starships invisible, unseen armies at your beck and call, RAISING THE DEAD, do I need to go on?”
“She doesn't know that you create worlds, too…” Patricia adds.
Ah, but…“So I can do a few things commonly associated with deities, that doesn't mean…”
“If it walks like a duck, and talks like a duck…” where'd you learn that, Patricia?
Ulrich rolls her eyes, “Semantics. How many diety like things do you need to be able to do to qualify?”
My turn for an eye roll, “Collectively, the Pact Worlds qualify under that: Travel the stars? The Drift drive; check. Created a race of people? Androids, check. Turn barren rocks into life-bearing worlds? It's called Terraforming, check. Even reviving the dead is possible with technology here: The Regeneration Table will do the job. Oh yes, and there are spells, too. Knowing some tricks doesn't make a person a deity… I mean, you have a completely different planetary history, but what would your equivalent of cave-dwelling ancestors think of you if you showed up in a starship with a good medical bay and a tech lab?”
That gives Ulrich pause, “Huh.”
Patricia, not so much, “I'd accept their worship with open arms. It's our due.”
Ugh, “That aside,” I continue, “why the ‘-dess’ on there?”
Laughter in stereo, now. Ulrich starts, “Your power is obviously…” she gestures at herself with her tentacles, “very feminine in nature, even if you're looking like that,” she waves vaguely at my body.
“What more is there to add?” Patricia, you could have just kept silent… “not really, I don't have good impulse control unless flavor is on the line.”
I probably shouldn't mention the granting spells thing right now. I shake my head, “Regardless… the folks that tortured and killed you were after me, so… here, have one of their ships;” I gesture at the area around us, “I took it from them, fair and square,” fair-ish, anyway. Okay, maybe hijacking their VI during a Time Stop and using Wish transport to kidnap them all wasn't exactly fair… regardless, they started the fight, I just finished it.
“That’s… quite the gift,” Ulrich starts, a glint in her eye, “How can I ever repay you?...” she saunters up to me, emphasizing the bounce in her chest, waving her hips back and forth as she goes, and starts slipping a tentacle down my pants when she reaches me.
Eh… what’s one more half-breed baby?
