The Hierarchy of Now and Forever

The meeting room of the

Excalibur

thrummed with excitement. Delta slapped her palms onto the table and sprang to her feet. "This is it! This is what we've been waiting for, a break!" She beamed. "The Sensurians-"

"We can't just bring the Sensurians back by snapping our fingers," Albert said, frowning as he crossed his arms over his chest. "Yes, they were our best spies, agents, propagandists...half the morale corps..." He coughed, then glanced at Lt. Sheyshen. She chuckled quietly.

"We're not exactly embarrassed about it, Albert," she said, her hand brushing her pale white hair behind one blue, pointed ear. "Human/Sensurian relationships being...so..." She paused. "Intimate has been a point of pride for our people since you joined the Alliance." She clasped her hands together. "And well, the Sensurians, from what I've been able to determine, knew that if they were to be brought back using the genetic records, that there might not be enough time for a normal gestation and training period. And according to the data provided by this mysterious informant of yours..." She flicked her gaze to Captain Tangent, who was regarding a map of the galaxy on a flimsy. "They found a solution."

"Oh?" Kat asked, lifting her head from her own documents. Despite the importance of the meeting, the chief engineer was still half absorbed in her own particular tasks.

"Yes," Shey said, seriously. "Sensurians tend to rank higher on the various modes of tracking esper talents - and the best of them recorded memories in a memory stone with the genetic records. This won't be a generation of children. It'll be a generation of replacement bodies for those who were soon to die..." She looked grim.

"Would that even work?" Triana asked, frowning as she leaned in on her elbows. "I've read up on esper talents, that kind of thing sounds risky as hell."

"Extremely," Shey said. "It'll require an amazing talent to organize and direct it. And...well, I'm not exactly the galaxy's most powerful Sensurian."

"Sure you are!" Kat said, nodding as her ears flicked and her tail wagged. "Since, like, you're the last one."

Silence fell across the table as people considered that.

Kat's ears flicked down as she realized, a bit too late, how that sounded. "Er. Uh. Sorry, Shey."

Shey breathed in, then breathed out. "It's all right Kat. You're right, as much as we don't want to admit it. I may have to be the one to guide this moment." She squared her shoulders. "Captain, permission to take my regular duties off to focus on training?"

"Granted," Captain Tangent said, lifting his gaze from the flimsy. "I've been checking the routes to the destination provided by Dhakiya..." He set the flimsy down. "Our two main routes are both dangerous in their own ways. We can swing through Vornash territory, or we can head through the Zone of Terror."

Delta leaned over to peer at the plastic printout. She scowled. "Oh, Zone of Terror, fuck off, look, it's not even the worst thing in that area of space! See, it's right next to the Unthinking Depths, the Cthonic Nebula, and the Galaxy of T...Terror, how can you call something a galaxy when it's

in

the milky way, that's bullshit." She leaned forward, her butt almost bumping against Triana's face. Triana grabbed the back of the lead pilot and jerked her back into her seat with a tug of her arm.

"Because it was named by Lithanoids, and they like being poetic sometimes," Triana said. "It's a spiral shape of stars and spatial anomalies, see?"

"Should have called it the Swirly of..." Delta looked like she was reaching mentally. "Sorcery."

"I vote for the Vornash run," Triana said, ignoring her fellow officer. "The

Excalibur

is a well armed, heavily armored ship with an unknown configuration. They won't know what to make of us, so we can fast talk anything we can't fight, and the crews need training on their guns and their new fighters."

"True," Delta said.

"I also vote for the Vornash run," Albert said. "I don't want to have to chart my way through half a dozen anomalies so bad that they got named the Zone of Terror."

Eugene, who had been silent so far, said: "I vote Vornash too."

"The Zone of Terror is my vote," Shey said, her voice quiet. "It's hard to focus on psychic training when your ship is being shot with lasers." She made a face. "But I won't say boo if we go Vornash too - since, well, being smashed about by anomalies is also pretty distracting."

Kat didn't look up from her documents. "Captain, we need more lithium," she said as everyone looked at her. "And duranium. Send the mining skiff down for-"

"Ahem," Triana coughed.

"Huh?" Kat lifted her head. "Oh, what were we voting on? Routes? Fuck if I care, I spend my entire time in the engineering bay." She looked back down. Triana rolled her eyes, while everyone's gaze settled on the Captain. While UNN ships could offer votes like this, the final decision still came down to the Captain. He nodded slowly, then looked down at the flimsy.

"Lets see how the Vornash are doing then," he said, quietly.

***

The

Excalibur

soared through tier three of the SOF, and the crew were quite happy to take advantage of the peculiar nature of that realm of reality - not just to slip the bounds of light speed travel, but also in...more ephemeral, exotic ways...

The door to the mess opened and Triana and Eugene walked in, laughing and shaking their heads. "The ghost of Napoleon, really?" Triana asked.

"It sure sounded like that through the door," Eugene said, frowning as he saw that the table nearest the window, which looked out on the simulated landscape of downtown Paris rather than the mentally corrosive swirl of impossible colors that existed at this level of the SOF, had been occupied by Kat. The young Paw had laid out all her engineering documents and was currently trying to read them around the largest sandwich that either Eugene and Triana had seen. She actually looked like she was trying to dislocate her jaw to take a bite into it. Her teeth sank in and a spurt of thick, red juices came out of the far end. Kat reacted with Pawish reflexes, kicking the table with one leg and sending it skidding along its mounted track. It moved a few inches away from her, so that the spurt finished its parabola by landing on the plate, rather than her documents. Then she hooked her ankle around the table and drew it back again as she continued to chew.

"...enjoying yourself?" Triana asked, nodding as Eugene murmured a question in her ear.

"Mmmh," Kat said around the sandwich, not looking up.

Triana took a seat and spun one of the documents around. "Ah, working on upscaling those force screen amplifiers?"

"Mmhmm!" Kat swallowed, setting her sandwich aside. "Who the fuck is Napoleon?"

Triana blinked, then remembered the Paw's sense of hearing. As if she could hear her thoughts, Kat grinned and pointed at her cat's ears, wiggling them. Triana sighed. "The Captain is being haunted by the ghost of a Corsican general - Corsica is an island off the coast of France."

"...a

ghost

?" Kat asked. "And we're not concerned because...?"

"Metanarrative field disassociation effects, Chief," Eugene said, returning with the coffee he had fabricated up for Triana. He handed on cup to her, keeping his. "The SOF is so preposterously impossible that each tier down you get, impossible events get more likely to occur. We're already breaking the light speed limit and causality, why not a few more laws? The Captain gets to fuck every hot alien we meet and have sword fights and run around on shore leave because it increases his narrative weight in the SOF - it means the weird stuff hits him and, sometimes, us."

"Like when you got kidnapped by the Kruul Princess," Kat said, nodding.

"Yeah. Like when I got kidnapped by the Kruul Princess," Eugene said.

"More than kidnapped..." Triana muttered into her cup.

"Ahem," Eugene said, coughing. "What matters is the Captain deals with this stuff so we can get real work done. Have the repairs been finished?"

Kat nodded.

"And the plans for expanding out our components into the empty hull space? Ar those ready?"

Kat grinned. "Not just ready - done. My boys and girls have made a gridwork inside the Luciferian metal full of universal connector ports and pre-placed power lines and guide pipes. Basically, the instant we have the resources and call for it, we can slot a component in there in less than a day."

"Fantastic," Eugene said, while Triana nodded and drank her coffee.

"...so, we really shouldn't be worried about Napoleon's ghost?" Kat asked.

"No," Triana said. "If you get involved, then you become a part of the SOF intrusion - it'll just spread the damage around. Just...stay away from the captain's room."

"What if I need to talk to him?" Kat asked, scowling.

"Just don't," Triana said. Then she frowned. "You know, that's a good point." She drew up her wrist com. "Regs are split on this matter - no one's sure if it helps or hurts to warn people. Since, well, warning them might be what gets them involved." She tapped a few buttons. "But this one seems fairly self contained." She frowned as her com chirruped. She sighed, then turned it on. "Yes, Albert?"

"Uh, just checking, that warning you mentioned, was it about-" Albert started before a

hiss

crack and a loud

ping

sounded over the com.

"Goddamn it," Triana muttered.

***

Shery frowned as she tried to meditate in her chambers. The thumping of hooves from upstairs was just a bit much - but when a musket went off, she jerked her head up and scowled as her...her...

Oh hell. She sighed and deflated as, faintly, the sound of swords crashing against swords came through the ceiling panels. "Have at you, you Corsican rat!"

"How appropriate! Hon hon hon! You fight like a ratcatcher from the swill sodden streets of London! Hon hon hon!"

Crash! Clang.

Shey shook her head, her ears drooping slightly. Her meditation hadn't been knocked off kilter. There hadn't been any meditation at all. She had been sitting there

thinking

. Thinking about the genetic future of her people., Thinking about the possible battles ahead. Thinking about the mystery. Who was this...Terran that the captain had met. How could she be so important in a Zemturga court, while still being a mere pleasure slave? She had given actual

orders

and

information

. No Zemturga would do that. It was all so impossible.

Ting

! ZZZAP!

"What!?"

"Ah, Napoleon, it seems you've fallen afoul of the positronic circuits - they sometimes turn ectroplasmic slime like you into women." There was a clattering sound like a dropped sword. "Now...lets take this duel to the next level."

"Y-You...swine..." The french accent was more easy to appreciate as a breathy woman. But Shey was not able to stay here one moment longer. She stood up and walked out of her room - so distracted that she nearly plowed into the Captain. She started upon running into him, then looked up, then down, then up again - and on the third circuit of her eyes traveling, she saw that he was actually holding a medibandage to his shoulder. His smile was wan.

"Albert so, uh, politely decided to take up the slack for me," he said, chuckling. "Hows he doing, the soundproofing in your room is on the fritz isn't it?"

"I thought that was you..." Shey shook her head. "Stars, I must be more distracted than I thought."

"Trouble focusing?" John asked, gently.

Shey nodded.

"Well, when I have a hard time managing to focus, I do something I enjoy," John said, smiling at her.

"Sex won't help," Shey said, quietly, rubbing her backside. "Sixteen men and fifteen women from the crew have already offered and...well, none of them were quite as good as you, but-"

"Then something else!" John said, laughing. "I'm going to the medbay first. That mad dictator's a dab hand at the saber."

"Right..." Shey said.

But the only other thing she enjoyed was sitting at her console, running sensor scans. It felt so very nerdy to admit it, but she just enjoyed learning more about the world around her. Seeing the cosmos, seeing its mysteries, they delighted her. Then she cocked her head to the side and laughed quietly. And this was a

problem

? Since when? She started down the corridor, feeling a bit happier and more focused.

The bridge was on a tertiary shift and the crewwoman at her sensors post was looking a bit listless as she watched the shimmering flow of the SOF slide past. Shey smiled. "May I have this post, Ensign?" she asked.

"Lt. Sheyshan?" The ensign asked. "Of course!" She sprang to her feet and Shey slid into her seat and almost immediately felt more at peace. She looked down at the scanning systems and started to subtly adjust the mass detector and the radio arrays. She frowned slightly as she peered at the eddies and flows of the SOF. Tier Four was looking closer than normal to Tier Three. They might have been in an updraft situation - that would explain Napoleon. She cocked her head slightly, then considered sending a radar ping behind her. That bulge in space/time was

definitely

odd.

She tapped the request to the officer on the watch. She got the permission back after a short pause. Shey pressed the ping button and saw the tiny wave of radio signals sweep out behind the ship, represented as a thin white wave that swept out. It went through the space/time bulge with a fairly normal refraction pattern.

...so, why did Shey frown at the bulge. Something in her brain was tickling. Something was

wrong

here. It was the placement of the distortion, the speed it was traveling. It was just slightly off their course, but it was nearly the same speed - and if it had been anything else, she would have thought it was following them. But it was positioned almost exactly at the right spot to be an SOF eddy kicked up by the

Excalibur's

fusion torch drives. She rubbed her chin slowly, then turned in her seat. The officer of the watch was a dweeby Ensign who looked about as heroic and dashing as a bowl of soup. That would keep any strangeness away from the bridge - and if something serious did pop up from non-SOF reasons, the captain could be called in a hurry.

Shey stood. "Ensign..."

"Uh, Dwight, Lt!" the Ensign said, sitting up. "What's the matter?" he asked.

She smiled, wryly. "I've noticed something odd. I was wondering if we could slew course slightly. I want to check something."

Ensign Dwight glanced away from her to the Ensign who was on the helm. The Ensign in question had immediately perked up and was looking as busy as she possibly could. Dwight gulped and considered - but Shey gave him his time. Slowly, he nodded. "Do it," he said. Then, realizing that he had said this to his science officer, he hurriedly said. "H-Helm, adjust course by 4.5 microns."

"...to port or..."

"Either direction!" Dwight said, sounding nervous.

"Got it. Er, I mean, aye aye, sir."

Shey covered her mouth to hide her smile and hurried back to the console. She watched...

And saw that the blip did not move in the slightest.

"Gotcha!" she said, grinning.

For some reason, she felt a lot more confident about the future of her species right about now.

***

Princess Evilla Slayvine sat in her throne of agony and watched the forward screen as her ship cruised quietly through the lower levels of the SOF, shrouded in an oblique field. She watched as the strangely shaped ship - the

human

ship - shifted subtly in the SOF. Her lips quirked slightly as she considered what she would do once she was able to ambush and board them. Her thoughts drifted to the lithe human she had...entertained...

This was all for, of course, evil reasons. She wanted to do wickedness and cruelty to the universe, as was the way of the Maliceocracy. Of course. Of course.

"My princess," her ship's commanding officer, Slayne Von Mur'durr, stepped to the side of her throne. "The crew have been wondering exactly what our mission is here."

"I need not explain myself to you, Von Mur'durr," Evilla muttered, lifting her gaze from the screen to glower at him. "My parents granted this ship to me. It is my birthright." She huffed slightly. "I didn't realize that they had picked a crew that was so...flighty."

"I worry that they may have noticed us, my princess," Von Mur'durr said, stepping before her, his hands clasped behind his back. He frowned, his tusks glinting in the pale red light that suffused the bridge. He kicked one foot at the ground, disturbing the mist that was pumped into the gloomy, gothic chamber. "That course change, it might have been sweeping for a ship just like us."

"What would you suggest, then?" Evilla asked, frowning.

"Sir!" One of the officers at the sensors. "Something is happening ahead of us."

The Kruul all frowned, looking at the screen, at the digital representation of the human ship. There was a momentary flash that their forward camera screens picked up - but then nothing. Evilla frowned harder, leaning forward, her brow drawing in. Von Mur'durr stepped forward. Then his eyes widened as some subtle clue inculcated by years of experience flashed through his mind. He turned to the helm's officer.

"Turn! Turn now!"

The ship lurched-

And then, for a single instant, Evilla saw that there was a large, spiky metal ball tumbling through the SOF and towards her ship.

Her eyes widened.

The mine smashed directly into the ship and detonated with a flare of brilliant white light. With their shields down and their hull only moderately armored against kinetic weaponry, the ship almost immediately began to break apart as the concussive shockwave blew through it and fragments dispersed throughout the hull. There was only a few short seconds before the bridge would be sheered apart. Von Mur'durr had that time to spin to the princess, and to see her suddenly vanish from the ship's room with a crack of displacing air.

He had no time to be annoyed at being left behind.

***

The crack of displaced air jerked Captain Ssivik from her restive slumber within her prison cell. Her snakish body writhed and shoved the Myg'gar'gar to an upright position. She had to admit that while she did not appreciate being imprisoned by the Terr-ans, she was relatively pleased with their accommodations. She had asked for the room to be made warmer, and warmer they had made it. They were happy with providing live food she could eat. They had even provided her with plenty of books and vid-disks she could entertain herself with, even if Terr-an comedy was often deeply tragic, and their tragedies were hilarious. She was currently working through various 'situational comedy' shows, and each was more agonizing than the last.

She

loved

them.

Ssivik pressed her face against the glass, peering out into the corridor beyond her prison cell. She saw the other empty brigs doors, and then-

Crash

!

A burly, feminine figure stumbled into one of the doors. A Kruul? Ssivik's eyes widened as she watched steam rise slowly off the Kruul's shoulders and back. She looked like she was completely buck-ass-naked as well, her body entirely on display as she looked around frantically, then sprinted for a nearby airvent. Despite being relatively large, as women went, she still was able to wriggle into the vent. It took a lot of squirming and kicking - and the whole time, Ssivik slammed her palms against the door.

"Hey! Wait! Wait! We're on the sssssssame sssssssssside! Let me out! Let me out you ssssssssstupid-" she hissed the last spluttering sound of frustration as the Kruul's foot vanished into the recesses of the air vent. A moment later, the Kruul's hand swung out of the vent and grabbed the grille, closing it behind her.