Crimson Stars - 3 (Patreon)

(A small warning for brief discussions of past abuse.)

III. Inferno

Niraya System

Our departure was not immediate. Opiekun and Temnyi needed to provide mission specific training to the new klivanions. The facility’s brains were awoken to provide virtual simulations of the Imperial Palace, while physical mockups of portions were also installed in the training halls.

It was not perfect. I would have preferred to run through training on a full scale model, rather than the limited fidelity of simulations and scattered physical examples. Unfortunately, even I lacked the budget to do such a thing, and would have been rather hard pressed to keep such construction a secret. Perhaps I could have passed it off as an eccentricity. A desire to play at ruling the Imperial Palace while providing no actual threat to my dear father.

That claim likely would not have held up to much scrutiny.

As such, half measures would have to do. It was that or waste further funds upon assassins who failed to achieve their objective. I had already hired three over the last fifty years, but it seemed the best assassins discrete money could buy was not sufficient to eliminate an emperor.

Father had simply grown too paranoid in his old age. Five hundred and seventy years was a record reign in the history of the Pax Vampiria, and it seemed he’d decided to no longer believe in even a sliver of luck to maintain it. Which meant I could not rely on luck to end it.

I would end it, though. I was determined to. Father had lost his spine at some point over the centuries, and had become complacent in merely continuing the old traditions of past imperial houses. Millenia old dogma, generally built on cowardice more than logic, did not deserve the power to decide our current lives.

Multi-souled humans, genetic engineering, new imperial expansion… there were too many things that deserved imperial backing instead of bans and suppression.

I had found myself making plans for the future of my empire over the slowly passing days. A pastime that Opiekun clearly did not approve of.

“You should spend more time with the new klivanions, my lady,” he said, in a respectful but firm tone. “It builds loyalty.”

“I have been present and watchful,” I replied, though the latter portion was a bit of a strain of the definition of the phrase.

In truth I had generally allowed my eyes to follow their movements through training while my mind focused on greater matters.

Opiekun did not point out my questionable phrasing, though I could see in his eyes that he had been close to it. “I was more thinking of actual proper interactions, your grace. Conversations. Sparring. Two way interactions.”

“Conversations? They are practically adolescents. Have they even developed personalities yet?” I muttered, eyes drifting to the eleven bodies jogging in a circuit down the main corridor of the facility.

One was lagging behind slightly, the body I had fed on. The co-soul had taken up the duties of fronting from that point, and was far more deferential.

“They do indeed have personalities, you grace. The variety is relatively limited, as they’ve all been raised as warriors in the same facility, but they are not so utterly uneducated,” Opiekun replied.

I gave a silent sneer, not feeling overly convinced. “There are also rather too many to keep track of. How many souls was it, spread across the ten bodies? Twenty four minds, I believe the report said?”

“Indeed.”

His voice made it clear that Opiekun was determined to change my behaviour on this front. It was something he did rarely, but that he did not relent from when he did attempt it. I had also learned, rather reluctantly, that he was generally correct in these matters. He was mortal (despite the best efforts of the nanites in his body), and therefore younger than I was. He was, however, also more adaptive to change, which was a useful skill.

“I will run through sparring sessions with them,” I said, after a moment of thought.

That seemed less unpleasant than conversations with a group who were likely still rather hormonal and naive. Besides, having been raised by Temnyi, it was likely all they would wish to talk about was combat anyhow. So it seemed logical to cut out the extraneous step.

-

As I had expected from watching them, the young klivanions’ combat strategies were bullishly aggressive. They swung their flat tipped blades with a ferocity just short of recklessness, and were quite willing to employ any other means in their assaults. Charging forward on a parry to attempt to strike with their knee or pommel was a favourite strategy of most. A few others were happy to take advantage of their woven carbon gloves to grab my own blade whenever possible, relying on torque and mechanical advantage to push the sabre out of the way. All displaying a skill and determination in battle worthy of the titles as klivanions.

Of course, they were not the only ones with two hands or legs. Such blows were also of relatively minimal impact on the matches, which were run until first blood. In the end, my superior speed told over the reach of their longer blades. By the tenth match I had six wins to two losses and a single draw going in, and I was still full enough of soul energy to heal quickly.

Most of the graduates seemed rather disappointed, needing Temnyi to reassure them that I was more capable in combat than most vampiric nobility. So many of them let themselves fall into decadence as they lived through the centuries.

The tenth match, however, saw my opponent march forward with a cold look in her eyes. I had not seen her face before. The medical nanites in klivanions had proven to have a surprising level of interaction with the self images of each soul, so that their build and basic bone structure was fairly constant, but fat distribution and other changes gave each co-soul a unique look. As if they were siblings, rather than inhabitants of the same body. It was quite fascinating. However, I had been on the base long enough I was surprised to learn that there was a soul I had not yet encountered.

The cold eyed young woman lifted her klivanion’s blade in one hand and pointed the built in spray-pistol towards my face.

“Seax,” Temnyi bellowed from the side of the ring.

“It’s to first blood,” the young klivanion woman said, her voice as icy as her eyes.

“With your blades,” Temnyi hissed.

“The pistol is built into the blade,” Seax replied.

“She has a valid argument,” I said, staring down the small barrel.

“There is nothing gained from it,” Temnyi countered.

“Intelligence should be rewarded,” I replied. “She is the first to realise what the rules technically allow.”

Seax narrowed her eyes, apparently annoyed that I was supporting her. She nudged her aim the slightest degree, and then fired.

I saw the twitch of her finger muscles, and was able to sidestep the first bullet, but the rapid fire of the spray-pistol and the arc advantage of turning her wrist was simply too much for me to continue to dodge. She did prove, however, to show remarkable control, skimming the side of my head with only a single bullet, gaining her point for first blood.

Temnyi gave it to her reluctantly, while I walked off to the side to let Opiekun clean the side of my head that had already stopped bleeding.

The eleventh match was more akin to the first nine, and was another that I won.

-

After the match, Temnyi led me to his office, where we both sat in silence for a few moments. I was feeling patient, while he was seeming unusually reticent.

“Seax… in most cases we were able to awaken the other souls through polite encouragement,” he explained, nervously licking his fangs. “Mild hypnosis, positive reinforcement… things such as that.”

“I am aware of the methods. I taught you most of them,” I replied flatly.

“Mhm. Yes. Right,” he muttered, studying his desk. “But… they didn’t work in every case. There were a number of recruits who required more… aggressive conditioning, to help awaken their co-souls.”

I narrowed my eyes. “You resorted to abuse, Temnyi?”

“I—in the name of scientific inquiry. We tried to find the minimum negative experiences needed for a trauma based awakening. A few short days of intensive sessions—”

“I take it Seax was the ‘host’ soul, then? And now I have a klivanion who hates me for what was done to her in my name.”

Silently, I cursed myself for having not put him under more stringent monitoring. Temnyi had a bit of a history of turning to excessive training methods in the past. Though generally limited enough avoid building such utter hate in his graduates.

“Hate is a strong term, but… her co-souls are as loyal as any of the other recruits, and keep her in check,” Temnyi replied, wearing a smile that was clearly meant to be disarming.

My response was silence and a cutting stare.

“Those intensive survival exercises also had significant benefits to her abilities. Seax may just be the most capable of all the graduates, at least when it comes to tactics and strategy, if not physical combate,” Temnyi offered.

“I will ensure you have greater oversight with future recruits. I do not wish to put my life in the hands of damaged goods.”

-

At last, it was time for departure. The young recruits had met Opiekun’s standards, and so were loaded on the small in-system shuttle we had arrived in. We headed towards the ice giant Arbuda, where Opiekun had left the jump-ship and the others.

There were, of course, other klivanions in my employ. I was not about to attempt a coup with only a single veteran, as exceptional as Opiekun was. A large jump capable vessel heading off to a small rock would have raised suspicions, however. So the others had been left behind. Not that they had been twiddling their thumbs. On top of running an intense training regimen, they had also been left to gather certain less than legal weapons, to help ensure the coup might move more smoothly. My resources were limited, father having been smart enough to keep any of his direct heirs away from military connections. That merely forced the operation towards creativity, however.

Examining the gathered weapons, it was easy to tell just by looking at them that they were imports from Elysium. Inelegant human designs. They were all crude and boxy grey metallic things. Still, there was no other source of military grade fire grenades, let alone flamethrowers.

Knowing what they were capable of doing to a vampire was disconcerting, to say the least. After observing inspections, to ensure the weapons were in fact functional, I chose to excuse myself and return to my casket. Its security would be reassuring while such weapons were aboard, in addition to death-sleep allowing the slow and unpleasant process of interstellar travel to pass more enjoyably.

-

Opiekun awakened me before the final jump. It was to give me enough time to prepare for an audience with my father. There was the matter of stretching out my limbs after a prolonged period of death-sleep, ensuring I was physically prepared for what lay ahead. The plan left it unlikely that I would be forced into any significant combat, but I was not so arrogant as to assume the plan would go perfectly.

I also needed to make sure I was properly presentable for the palace. My face, thankfully, still looked reasonably alive, having fed recently enough. So there was no need for makeup to assuage the vanity of the court Vampires. I traded my regular clothing for the most formal and well pressed uniform and overcoat in my possession. I did take some pride in my apparel, so knew I would be quite presentable, if a bit spartan compared to much of the nobility.

That was all completed in time for the last jump, taking us from the outer edge of the Inferno System into orbit around Impetus.

Of course, such a simple explanation covered up the deep unpleasantness of jumps. What, precisely, happened in a jump still largely escaped both human and vampiric minds. All we knew was that they set off basal parts of the brain that were operational even in well fed vampires, screaming that whatever had occurred was improper. Some sort of odd cousin to the fact that, somehow, the nose could detect a deep wrongness when exposed to radiation, despite the lack of evolutionary pressure to be able to detect artificial levels of radiation. It was all rather disconcerting, to say the least.

If only jumps weren’t so useful.

Shaking off the feeling, I headed down towards the shuttle bay. The klivanions were already loaded aboard the smaller vessel, Opiekun in the process of informing the vehicle’s brain of our flight plan. I boarded once the orders were in place, leaving the larger vessel empty. Its own brains could handle self defense reasonably well if need be, but, should we found ourselves at such a point, I was likely to have larger concerns.

The shuttle then disengaged, a small lurch as it began to speed towards Impetus, capital of the empire.

There was nothing to be said, as each klivanion had been given their orders. There were set targets, loyalists to my father known to linger about the palace or critical infrastructure points. The former needed to be eliminated and the latter needed to be secured, so that the coup could go as smoothly as possible.

Despite how commonplace orbital entries were in the modern day, the lurch as one hit the atmosphere remained unavoidable. A few of the new klivanions let out sharp exalations, but most handle the matter stoically enough.

“Impetus,” a slightly shaky female voice whispered. “Third of nine planets in the Inferno System. Population: 5.7 billion.”

Turning, I saw the source was a tall woman with a youthful face that I vaguely recognised. She was whispering to herself.

“One natural satellite: Minotaur. The—”

I placed my hand on her chin, lightly nudging her face towards mine. “What are you doing?”

“I—repeating facts to myself helps to calm my nerves,” she replied in a soft voice, cheeks going red.

I lowered my sunglasses, gazing directly into her eyes. “There is no need for fear.”

Her eyes glazed over for a moment, the charm working before she nodded. “Y—yes my lady. Of course.”

There was an adoration to her voice beyond what the charm would have caused. That was interesting… and potentially useful. She was rather attractive, now that I gave her a second appraisal. If she survived the coup, which I believed was rather probable, I would be quite happy to get to know her. It would make for a good release from the stress.

“Landing in three minutes,” the shuttle’s voice chimed in.

With that, I produced a small vial from my pocket, the cocktail that would allow me to override one of the most deeply set instincts of a vampire: the inability to harm the one that turned you. Removing the lid, I swallowed the foul tasting concoction in a single motion, knowing that the clock was now counting down until it removed my inhibitions. All of them. It would be rather more similar to intoxication than I cared to admit, but that was what it took to play my part in the coup.

The ship’s landing estimate proved good, the small variations in velocity on the descent playing with our stomachs slightly, but not enough to be truly uncomfortable. There was a small clunk as we landed. Then the shuttle-sized elevator brought us deeper into the palace. Down safe from the light of the yellow sun above us, it’s scorching photons reaching Impetus’ surface in fewer than ten minutes.

All in all, it was a rather horrid planet for vampires, but it was home for humanity and therefore the logical heart of the empire. We simply had to build our own homes as windowless fortresses against Inferno’s daily siege.

Stepping out into the needlessly cavernous hangar, Opiekun followed me along with the two new recruits he’d chosen to be my personal guard: the young prodigies Dirk+Spatha and the competent (and confident) Yari+Pirnach.

To travel towards my father’s chambers with a larger force would merely raise suspicions. The others could filter out over the next few minutes, quietly moving towards their various objectives. I had well founded faith in their abilities.

Heading into the main portion of the palace (with ceilings still needlessly high, I was soon confronted with one of the portions of the mission I most dreaded: having to spend some time rubbing elbows with the various layabouts who clung to my father’s presence. There was a flood of those opulently dressed and over-makeuped nobility as soon as I had left the working portion of the hangar. They were split between those trying to suck up to me and those who were more direct, simply asking if I could gain them an audience with my father.

The trio of klivanions worked to keep them back, as much as it felt like fighting off the tides.

Until a booming female voice called over the racket. “Oh, do let her breathe!”

The sea of socialites parted, and I felt my eye twitch as I realised who was standing behind them. It was hard to mistake her tall and well muscled figure, arrogant body language, obnoxiously handsome face, and high silver ponytail.

It was Szlachta.

My sister.

The reason I had struggled to keep a girlfriend for more than a few years over the centuries.