"Wait," Cindi said, her hands holding up in an unconscious emulation of the guy from the alien channel talking about aliens. Like, you know, the image used on all those memes that came right after first contact where they replaced 'aliens' with 'dragons.' "Why the heck aren't we going to
his
parents?" She thrust her finger at me, which made me wave at her excitedly.
"That is a good question," Princess Kira said, looking at me.
"Oh! They're busy," I said, nodding sagely. "Mom and Dad are in the Magellanic Clouds, doing some diplomatic work with one of the Drow kingdoms out there. I bet it's going great!"
***
Merton Miles Castrovel dangled from his ankles, his arms aiming at the web strewn floor. The sound of distant air thrumming through web-shrouded air vents was the only noise he could hear other than the faint creak and groan of depleted uranium chains and enchanted webs that stuck his wife, Relix Miles Castrovel, to the wall across from him. Her muzzle was covered with a webbing gag, preventing her from speaking any of the verbal components to her various spells. Not that the magic dampening field in the cell would let her get past the first somatic pass.
"Well," the former Princess Gildenstiena, sixth in line to succession for the Drow Matriarch of the Magellanic Clouds, said. She was the only one who had been chained to the floor rather than the ceiling. "I guess Mom really
didn't
like Hamilton."
Merton sighed. "At least Brash is with Aunt Lisa..." he muttered.
"Mmphmm!" Relix grumbled. Translated from web-gag-ese, that was:
I'm blaming you for this, you know?
***
"Super great!" I said, looking ominously at the only unoccupied wall of the ship. Slowly, P90 leaned into my field of vision.
"What are you looking at?" she asked.
"The fourth wall!" I said, cheerfully. "You know! Where Linkara lives!"
"...who?" Princess Kira asked as Cindi slapped both palms over her face.
"The question I really need answered," I said, spinning around on my heel in the tiny cockpit of the
Rusty Dragon
to face Princess Kira, who was mashed up against G282 because, again, this was a tiny cockpit on a relatively small space yacht. The forward cockpit window was shuttered against the deleterious effect of subspace on most non-dragon psyches. What is subspace, I may hear you cry? Well, first, it was that headpsace that submissive get into when they're really into a scene, which their dominants help them get out of with aftercare. But after a few hundred years of space flight using spelljammers and planar portals to get from place to place faster than mean old Farmer Einstein wants us to, some smart cookie that I'm pretty sure was a gnome invented the subspace drive.
And since he named it the subspace drive, I think he was some kind of combo of kinkstro and awesome particle physicist, like Heisenberg!
Still, subspace drives use negative energy drawn from the Plane of Negation to create a rapidly rotating hyperdimensional object that is able to literally punch a hole from the Prime Material to an area of the multiverse that I believe most gods have described as "oh, that bit." But where gods found a massive area of incoherent spatial distances relatively useless, us dragons (and everyone else who uses subspace drives) found it crazy useful. Basically, every point in subspace is a random distance from every other point, in this huge confusing mess of snakes and ladders. But that array of connections has no bearing on the physical universe that we're currently in!
Sooooo, if you wanted to get from point A to B in the Prime Material universe you're in but those points are several thousand light years apart, never fear! In subspace, all you have to do is find a route that corresponds to point A and then fly to the point that corresponds with point B and take advantage of the topological differences so ensure that you arrive there way faster!
This did mean that sometimes a subspace jump could take five minutes while other times it takes five weeks depending on the layout of subspace points. Again, it was a
random
spread of distances between corresponding points.
Fortunately, Cindi's navicomp had a huge advantage!
...spoilers, the advantage was me.
"...is?" P90 asked. I realized I had been thinking of subspace for, like, five seconds. I shook my head.
"Right! The question I need answered is what the ding dong heck is fucking going on!?" I said, turning to Princess Kira. "Why are Mind Flayers chasing you?"
Princess Kira sighed, quietly. "The Illithids are merely one of the agents that have been hired by our true enemy. Lord Darkeye." She said the name and in the distance, you could hear faint rumbling and growling of thunder and lightning, even though we were in a spelljammer deep in subspace and nowhere near a spooky castle.
"The hell kind of name is Lord Darkeye?" Cindi asked, giggling. "Was Darth Evilicus taken or something?"
Princess Kira frowned. "Lord Darkeye is no laughing matter, Miss Fong." She shook her head as G282 held up her hand, flexing it so her wrist thrust into the air. A bit of her golden skin folded backwards, revealing a glowing crystal that hummed and flared, projecting a flickering hologram of Lord Darkeye himself. Imagine, if you will, a sphere about the size of a small tank. But instead of a turret, it has a
huge
eye in the center of its body. And rather than armor plating, it has a bunch of tentacles writhing from the circumference of said body, each one tipped with a smaller eyeball. That's a Beholder, right? Well, Lord Darkeye had a few tiny differences from the standard Beholder look. For one thing, his body looked covered in scars, with the snarling mouth most Beholders have being covered by a cow-catcher style cybernetic prosthethsis. Two cybernetic arms were attached to either side of a chicken-legged cybernetic walking seat that the Beholder looked wired into. Basically, imagine a Beholder that had joined the Adeptus Mechanicus and they had built him a Mad Cat (or, I guess, Timber Wolf if you're a clanner scumwad) to tool around in.
"Yeesh!" I shook my head. "What happened to him?"
"An adventurer named Sojara the Red managed to almost kill him. Almost." G282 clicked her tongue. "She left him without hovering organs, but Darkeye managed to survive. He was nearly killed five more times by other Beholders and evil creatures, but he survived each time, thanks to his cunning and skill with both diplomacy and exceedingly well timed betrayals." She closed her fingers, the hologram vanishing a moment later. "He forced dwarven and gnomish cybernetic experts to construct his war-frame, adding its armor and force projection to his already innate powers. He carries tactical
nuclear
weapons as a matter of course, ontop of the emergency plane shift drive."
Cindi gulped, loudly. "W-Why hasn't the UN tried to kill him?"
"He's so far kept himself to the galactic south," G282 said. "Far from UN space. They know he's a threat, and would kill him if they could. But..." She spread her hands. "The United Nations may be very strong. It may have the fastest growing navy in the galaxy, and the backing of every metallic kingdom and republic in the galaxy, but it's still only one planet."
"Two!" Cindi said, somewhat defensively. "We Made It!"
"Fine, one planet and one barely established colony," G282 said, frowning.
"Humanity, represent!" I said, lifting my hand to get a fist bumpster from Cindi. She looked at my fist, then at me, then slowly bumped her knuckles against mine.
G282 sighed, then started to tick off her fingers – with a tiny
ding ding ding
as gold met gold. "His allies don't just include Mind Flayers. He'll have aligned himself with drowish pirates, druger slavers, Ousters, Zindi, Bethrezan, the Lich."
"
The
Lich?" I asked. "Like...from Adventure Time?"
G282 cocked her head. There was a faint
whirring
sound. "The children's show? Absolutely not, this Litch is a serious threat and highly dangerous entity."
"...so, the Lich from Adventure Time!" I said, nodding.
Cindi sighed. "So, what do we do?" She asked. "If staying on Earth is just giving these bad guys a chance to raise hell, where can we go?"
"Currently, the Mind Flayers are the biggest threat," P90 said, her arms crossed over her chest, her frown intent. "They have shown the ability to track us – until we figure out how, anywhere we go is going to have them show up. So...I suggest we head for a place where they can cause the least amount of damage." She lifted her chin, looking straight at G282.
"Oh no!" G282 said, shaking her head. "Absolutely not, are you
insane
?"
I looked between the two as P90 shot back: "Desperate times, Gee."
"Desperate times, yeah, but not
that
desperate!" G282 said. Kira was also watching them lobby back and forth – but unlike me, she was looking increasingly irritated as they sniped.
"We have an in with them," P90 said. "We need to take advantage of it."
"The political ramifications of that are-"
"Enough!" Kira shouted, slamming her foot down, her hands clenching. "I may have been knocked unconscious for most of this little escapade so far, but I'm awake right now! And right now, I demand to know what our options are. Then we, as a
group,
can decide how we're going to solve this. We're in this thing together now. WE need to act like it." She crossed her arms over her chest, squishing her smallish breasts against her chest as she scowled fearsomly at her two golems. Both golems bowed their heads.
"Apologies, your most serene highness," G282 said.
P90 grunted. But it was a very apologetic grunt.
G282 frowned, then looked at us. "Mind Flayers will be able to dominate a distressing swath of the galaxy. However, there is one planet where they will be utterly stymied. Because everyone there will have the exact same power." She sighed. "Necronox IV."
I gasped.
Cindi scowled, slightly. "You say that like either Brash or I would know what or where that is."
