"We're going
where,
exactly?" Magnum asked, arching an eyebrow as he looked across the cramped passenger drum of the
Angel Grove
and at my girlfriend. Ali sighed and then flipped her head to try and get some of her hair out of her face. But micro-gravity was a real bitch sometimes and kept her hair jangling and clattering about her face. She waved her hand more aggressively and got her bangs out of her eyes long enough to look properly haughty.
But the lead up had really cut the knees off of her expression. Which was a shame! Ali could haught like a...
I didn't know any good celebrities who were famous for being haughty.
Also, I didn't know if haught was a verb.
"A black hole known as the Abyss," she said, crossing her arms over her chest.
"I thought you said it was an archive," Opal said, her brow furrowing.
"Yeah. Aren't archives usually not in the dead hearts of failed stars?" I asked. Then, slowly, I cocked my head. "Okay, now that I say it like that, why aren't more libraries in the dead hearts of failed stars?"
"Impracticality and gravity?" Tycho suggested as she pushed herself down from the piloting nook. There, she had been throwing a warp infront of the com-laser that was set on the very nose of our ship. Make a warp from here to HQ and you can beam all the information you'd gotten and get updates from high command. That included whether or not we had to go ahead on Ali's suggestion. But since we had come out of this mission knowing only
slightly
more than we had set out with, I had a pretty good guess that HQ would want us to keep poking.
"The Abyss is not like any other black hole," Ali said, sighing.
"Wait..." Magnum held up his hand. "The Doyen Empire is a six hundred light year sphereoid, whose very edge abuts the SOL system. The closest black hole is three
thousand
light years away."
"How do you know that?" I asked.
"I studied space?" Magnum said, like I was the one asking weird questions. "We all live and work here, it seemed like a good idea."
I flushed.
"I was about to get to that," Ali said, brushing her hands through her hair to try and keep it out of her eyes again. "The Stygexians called out to Doyen Paladins who were exploring solar systems near the edge of the Empire. Those Paladins found themselves...
drawn
to the Abyss, the space between folding as if it wasn't even there. Trying to move beyond the Abyss, trying to go anywhere but
directly
home..." She shook her head. "No one who tried that ever got home to say what they found."
I shivered. "So, the Stye-gex-ians," I said, pronouncing each bit of the word carefully. "They are able to both live
inside
a black hole and fold thousands of years of space as if it wasn't even there?"
"To be fair," Tycho said, rubbing her fingers along her temples. "One of the nice things about making a warp is that most of the space you are skipping over
is
empty."
I snorted.
Ali sighed slowly. "They trade secrets for truths. Every Doyen family has gone to them in their most direst of needs, to solve their most pressing of mysteries. But since the price is so high, and reaching them is so dangerous, the actual number of people who have visited is...limited." She shrugged. "I've never been, but my grandfather went and returned with a blade that can cut a moon in half."
"What mystery did that solve?" I asked.
"The mystery of 'how to kill this motherfucker that pissed him off,'" Ali said, cheerfully. Okay, she was learning from me. I wasn't sure if I should be proud or scared. Ali shot me a grin and I decided on proud. And horny. Opal leaned over and smacked my thigh with her hand and I coughed and tried to catch Little Pirate underneath my thigh. That ended up being a slight mistake, since the pressure only got me harder. But the post-fight lassitude that each of us were sprawling in, it was hard to
not
get a little horny. We had survived a freaking mecha fight!
Ebony pursed her lips. She sounded as serious ever as she said: "What secrets can we possibly trade to them?"
"Darth Vader is Luke Skywalker's father," I said. "Snape kills Dumbledore-"
"He
what
!?" Magnum yelped.
We all gaped at the team leader. For the first time since I met him, Magnum actually flushed.
"Okay, firstly!" I said. "It's twenty eighteen, current year argument. Secondly-"
"While Harry Potter is as popular in China as you'd expect," Magnum said, his voice stiff. "I didn't have
time
to see the movies, and I was
busy
while the translations were coming out. Some of us had real jobs, Pirate."
"Hacking the Pentagon is totally a real job!" I said, scoffing.
"Uh, I think under every single possible criteria of a real job it is, in fact, not one," Opal said. I glared at her.
Ali scoffed. "I've seen some hints of what you people call real jobs. Endless drudgery for masters you will never meet, for fiat currency. No times for naps or leisure. Chained to desks and
clothes
." She shuddered slightly. "I'm shocked that the Empire hasn't detected your planet from the sheer misery alone."
"Don't Doyen normally wear clothes?" Opal asked -- her eyes flicking to my girlfriend's exposed, dark purple breasts.
Ali scoffed. "They won't when I'm in charge."
"You know that we're going to try and replace the current Doyen government with something a bit more...representational?" I asked.
"And I will be in charge of that," Ali said, then showed a huge, toothy grin at me. This reminded me just how
sharp
some of her teeth were, even as her ears perked upwards in excitement. Her palm pressed to my thigh and I felt a faint tingle in my brain as she peeked at my surface thoughts. Her eyes gleamed happily. "George Washington was nearly unanimously elected, wasn't he?"
"I think we're getting ahead of ourselves," Magnum said. He looked at Tycho. "You ready for a warp? We'll be heading across the Empire...it'll be quite a trip."
Tycho sighed. "That's just it. I'll burn out before we're a quarter of the way there. I need at least
one
break." She looked at the rest of us. "And I don't know how you all feel about spending a day in..." She looked at me, then back down at her thighs. "A ten foot wide drum."
"I've played Anachronox, I know how that turns out," I said. Blank expressions from everyone. "Okay, here's where I'd normally look aghast at the lack of culture onboard, but lets be serious. No one fucking played Anachronox."
"I know a pit stop," Ali said, cheerfully.
"If you know a pit stop, won't every single other Doyen in the galaxy also know it?" Tycho asked.
"No," Ali said, scoffing.
Magnum nodded slowly. "She didn't
tell
any of them."
***
The Doyen Empire did not expand like how an Empire would in, say, Stellaris. If you haven't played Stellaris, get your ass to Steam and buy Stellaris.
You
are at home, on Earth, presumably on or near a computer, and you can get to Steam and buy Stellaris. I'm the one stuck in a tin can flying through space surrounded by psychotic psychic aliens who want to put a lightsaber through my head. Anywho, unlike the rational, systematic, unified expansion of a rational interstellar state run by reasonable people, the Doyen explored in piecemeal and in secret.
Each household wanted to be the first to claim a new world. Each household wanted to be the first to exploit a new race of "mindless" chattel, or to be the first to attain honor by wiping out a potential rival. So, each one sent out scouts. And none of them
mentioned
where said scouts were going!
Picture, if you will, a Doyen Paladin sent out by Tzali. She brags to all her Doyen buddies while playing...croquet or whatever it was Doyen nobiltiy did between subjecting planets: "Oh, I sent so and so to such and such planet."
So, said Paladin arrives and five other Paladins jump him. But secrecy meant that sometimes, solar systems were "discovered" multiple times, or they were discovered then lost when the Paladin in question got killed somewhere between finding the system and getting home, or they weren't scouted at all but someone claimed it was scouted and full of...space dragons or something. In the end, it produced a map that gave any fan of Tolkien palpatations. No nice, neat drawings of the Shire for you buddy! We had to deal with an incoherent psychic map of 'maybes' and 'uhs' and 'question marks' and 'confusions' and 'well, kinda sortas'.
Upside, though?
Not a single Doyen knew about
this
place. What place?
"Holy shit!" I laughed as I stepped through the warp I had opened and onto the pure emerald green sand that sprawled from here to the horizon. The ocean was the most beautiful shade of
pure
pink that I had ever seen. I'm talking 'pink as Pinkie Pie' levels of pure pink. The frothing caps of the waves that crashed against the green beach didn't turn white -- they actually started to glow with a searing luminescent blue, which flared out into a haze of smokey light that hung in the air for a heart-achingly beautiful second before drifting down and being swept out again by the waves.
The beach was banded by trees that looked almost exactly like palm trees, save for all the differences. But who cared about leaf shapes and bark consistency and colors and such when they were doing the God given work of providing shade from the bright pinkish sunlight that blazed across this beach. The sun felt great. Doubly so after what felt like a million years in the
Angel Grove.
You will not believe how
fast
being crammed into a closet with five other people could get. Being sexy naked teenagers did not extend the length of that time by much.
By the time we reached here -- which was roughly the midway point between Beta-3 and the entry to the Abyss -- Tycho had been so tired that I had to be the one who opened the warp. And now, she stood beside me, her hands sliding through her frizzy hair, her eyes closed as she soaked in the sun. "God," she groaned. "This is
amazing
."
"It is!" Ali said, cheerfully as she stepped through the warp.
Magnum shaded his forehead, frowning. "Any dangerous wildlife here?"
