Friend, a Starsector short story (Patreon)

Friend

A Starsector short story

-VB-

“Yo, Charlie.”

Charlie looked up. The boy felt his neck cry at the pain looking up caused him but he looked up at his friend anyway. Why? Because this was his friend. A slum rat just like him. When Baikal came around, Charlie always answered.

“What?”

“Let’s get out of the slums,” he said with eyes that shined brighter than the stars in the polluted night of Chicomoztoc. “We’ll die as nothings if we stay here.”

“... But how are we going to leave the slums?”

The black boy gritted his teeth and clenched his hands. “We join the Hegemony Fleet. We sign up.”

Charlie gawked. “Are you mad? You know what happened to the people up there! They died fighting machines!”

“At least we die doing something good then.”

Charlie fidgetted but even that was painful. They had to fight against one of the local gangs who were trying to beat up Old Gerald the stallkeeper. Gerald was a good guy, and Baikal jumped right in to help him. Sure, they got beaten up, but, heh, they should see the other guys.

“... But I can’t follow you then. They’re not gonna let us stay together.”

Baikal shrugged. “Then we just climb the ranks. We find the time to joke around and play like we do now when we become bigwigs.”

“... You … you think we can do it?”

Baikal grinned. “Of course, we can! Do you think those blueblood kids of the administration officers of the Fleet even have the guts and the grit we have? I know we can do it because we do it to survive.” He turned to look at Charlie. “Charlie, I need my best friend up there with me.”

Charlie looked at his always charismatic, if shorter, friend and sighed. “Okay. Let’s… Well, I guess we’ll at least be up in space, right?”

Baikal’s grin widened. “You got that right! But before we do, we gotta give ourselves names, you know?” he hummed thoughtfully before grinning again. “We’ll be the Daud brothers. Baikal Daud and Charlie Daud!”

Charlie … liked the idea. His best friend was his brother.

That was a wonderful idea.

-VB-

Charlie sighed as he left the Hegemon’s office.

He had just been promoted but it didn’t feel like it. This hardly felt like a deserving promotion, too. All he had done was take the helm when most of the bridge crew died on his Wolf frigate to save his own skin. Maybe it saved a dozen others who were also on the ship by pulling the ship out of the plasma driver beams fired by the pirates, but he did it to survive and not out of some heroism.

“Congrats on becoming a captain, Charlie!” someone laughed some distance down his

Charlie blinked and looked at the black man in front of him, dressed in the same uniform as he did.

“Bai! It’s been years!” he laughed as he walked up to his friend and bear-hugged him. Baikal returned the hug with meaty thumps on his back.

“Look at us, man!” his friend grinned. “Two slum boys from the worst ghettos of Hegemony’s capital world. Now captains of the great Hegemony Fleet! Today’s the day to celebrate. Let’s go get a drink! I also want to introduce you to a new friend I made on the officer course. You know the Rao family from Eventide, right? Well, you’re gonna have a blast when you realize just how much of a rebel he is. Imagine, a rebel son of one of the most prestigious and wealthy families on Eventide, a mere officer of the Hegemony Fleet!”

Charlie went with his friend, cheering and laughing.

Maybe he did it to forget the nightmare scenario that plagued his nights and got him his captaincy.

They got blackout drunk and woke up the next day in bed with a couple of party girls he didn’t recognize. Naked. And smelly.

Oh well. He didn’t have a nightmare, so this was a plus for him.

-VB-

“Why would he do that…?” Charlie uttered in horror as he watched the newsfeed about Admiral - no, Traitor - Andrada’s purge of the loyal Hegemony officers in Askonia Star System and declaring himself the “Diktat Executor” of the newly declared Sindrian Diktat.

He was in the Naraka Star System as the captain of a small patrol picket but had come here only weeks ago after reassignment.

He would have died if he stayed.

His hands gripped the armchair of his seat.

And then slackened as his rage-addled mind dipped into a liquid nitrogen bath when he realized that not only had Andrada slain over a hundred captains, he’d destroyed and disabled over two hundred warships of the Hegemony Fleet.

Hegemony was defenseless; there was less than a hundred warships to defend eight star systems.

“Captain, we’re receiving orders from the Nachiketa Command! Tri-Tachyon fleets have jumped into the Vahalla and Yma System! I repeat, Tri-Tachyon fleets have entered Vahalla and Yma Sys-. O-Oh god.”

“Officer? What is it?” he asked as his heart thumped in his ears.

This was the Second AI War.

“T-Tri-Tachyon deployed planet cracker on H-Hanan.”

A cold and heavy silence drained all noise in the bridge of the Dominator cruiser Charlie captained.

Planet cracker?

On Hanan Pacha?

That-? What? Why? For what reason? It was a militarized planet, yes, but there were three hundred million people living there!

His jaw refused to close. He felt like he was having a heart attack. His heart drummed too loudly in his ears.

“W-We have been called to the frontline, captain,” the comm officer stuttered out. “We will be joining the 5th Fleet under Commander Daud.”

Daud? Baikal Daud? His old friend?

Charlie brought his hand up, clenched, and punched himself in the face. The bridge crew stood up as one in surprise, looking at him with concern. He staggered a little but he remained standing.

He opened his eyes, ignoring the raw, heating pain in his right cheek.

“I’m sorry, gentlemen. I’m just so shocked…!” he grunted.

The crew looked uneasy.

“That the fucking Tri-Tach pussies who don’t even know how to field a proper human manned fleet dares to attack the Hegemony after losing the last war!”

Everyone jolted.

“Alert the captains of the 3rd Yamuna Patrol Picket. We have our new orders!” he grinned. “We’re gonna kick some tin can ass!”

The bridge officers cheered briefly before discipline reasserted itself and they quickly went to do their jobs with determined smiles on their faces.

He sat back down on his seat but inside… he was afraid.

-VB-

Five years of war.

Planets burned.

And now, the very capital of Hegemony was at stake. His homeworld of Chicomoztoc shined brightly against the backdrop of black space behind him, and in front of him was the Tri-Tachyon fleet that wanted to burn it down to the ground.

His ship, HSS The End and Death, listed as her crew tried in vain to bring its maneuvering thrusters back online. Black marks scorched her hulls and most of her weapons remained offline or out of ammunition. Most of his crew were dead, too.

And yet, he’d stayed on the battlefield, acting as a physical shield for those still capable of firing.

He tried not to focus on the ships that his friends were on or piloted. He tried in vain to ignore the ruined wreck of the ERadicator HSS Eridun Guardian that yogurt-loving Jane captained.

And now, he was about to watch his friend die.

A limping but still fighting bluish-white Paragon-class battleship aimed its prow at his friend’s Onslaught battleship. His friend’s ship leaked air from almost every level, fire erupted from where air didn’t leak, there wasn’t any armor left on most surfaces, and half of the bulkhead looked one mortar shot from collapsing.

But his guns still fired.

His friend was still willing.

… He quietly opened a channel to Baikal. His friend answered it despite the fervor of the battle raging around them. Of ships exploding, lasers burning hulls, and bloated human bodies floating in the cold void of space.

“Baikal.”

“Charlie, I -”

“It’ll be alright, Bai,” he hummed, ignoring his friend’s rank as a rear admiral. They really had come far, hadn’t they? A pair of slum rats standing atop the Hegemony - no, the sector. “You’ll go far, much further than I will.”

“Charlie, what are you doing?” Baikal’s voice came out as static as Charlie grabbed his beloved ship’s thrust lever. He pushed it up slowly with one hand while the other hand calmly steered his ship toward the shieldless Paragon. “Charlie, why is your ship speeding up? Charlie?!”

“You go and stand at the top. Make those slums a better place to live.”

“Commander Daud, you will slow your ship now!”

Charlie could hear the panic in his brother’s voice.

“We came really far, Bai,” he grinned wetly as the enemy Paragon grew steadily larger in his bridge window.

“Charlie, stop! No, stop!”

“I am proud to have been your brother, Baikal.”

He saw the Paragon’s bridge from here, and he could almost make out the panic in the enemy captain’s body language. He grinned and opened up the Hegemony fleet-wide channel. “Brothers and sisters! Stand tall and proud! We are the hands that carry out justice! We are the mighty lords of the stars that lift the wretched out of the darkness! VIVA LA HEGEMONY!”

A flash of light.

Heat.

Unbearable heat.

And darkness.

-VB-

Now the time is here, I do not hesitate. I take the hand he offers to steady me, and I ascend the final steps to the Throne. I give him a nod and a little smile, and whisper to him, ‘Do not mourn,’ in a voice no one else can hear.

And then I prepare to take my seat.

There is nothing else to say. After centuries of conversation, in which we have dissected and shared everything, there is nothing left to say. Just a look from one friend to another, an unspoken understanding of everything that has passed between us, and the debts we owe each other. This act is my final, everlasting gift to mankind, to the future, to the plan painted on the wall.

But in his eyes, I can tell he knows that I am only really doing it for him. The greatest, most universal acts are always born from the personal.

I am old. I am tired.

I sit upon the Golden Throne.

-Malcador the Hero, The End and Death

-VB-

A/N: The music video (the link here and the title of the story) is the inspiration for this short story. And that music video was inspired by the Warhammer 40K book The End and Death.

A/N 2: I know I messed up on the timeline of the Second AI War. I did it for the shock factor.