A Race Against The Darkness/1

ADVISORY: Contains material that may not be suitable for all tastes, including violence, adult themes and generally stuff which isn't nice.

Genesis Facility #227 Seventh District, Heaven, Kingdom Of Man 2276.1906.523 ''Anno Rex

John Abbot always thought he had it all,a high Social Contribution Score, an unblemished record of Citizenship, an excellent job, more than enough income—after taxes—to satisfy his indulgences to the fullest, and the influence which came with being the manager of one of his Kingdom's most elite Genesis facilities, enough influence to maybe achieve the Immortality he had coveted for so long.

The alarm klaxon echoing throughout the corridors and in his office only served as a further reminder that he would be lucky to finish the day without being sent down, or simply shot dead out of hand if he were exceptionally lucky.

Abbot cursing his department managers and resurrection team leaders for feeding him the lies he'd repeated to his superiors, the lies his superiors had, in turn, repeated to their Immortal superior.

That Immortal now demanding explanations as to why Citizens and Immortals this facility had supposedly resurrected successfully had failed to return to their lives and duties.

He would not be interested in Abbot's answer...the report of the Buerau of Electronic Media forensic data agent his immediate superior, Chad Graham, called in to investigate floated over his terminal, along with his detailed analysis of all the past, present and future data states in the quantum isotope memories of all the facility's computers...biological anomalies such as the one which had triggered the alert were a more common occurrence than he'd been led to believe...more common were the "biologic malfunctions," a polite term for either stillborn resurrections, or those so badly unstable at the genetic level as to fall apart into a puddle of protoplasmic goo mere seconds after stepping out of the resurrection unit.

His people had tried forcing that data into a permanent delete state, and, for the last six months, it had worked entirely too well, Abott knowing nothing of the true situation until that call from Chad just yesterday, and the concurrent upload of the BEM investigation data showing how quantum time traces had been pieced together from the deleted data states to form a coherent and depressing picture of what had happened.

General Spinks would not accept Abbot's ignorance of his subordinate's actions as an explanation, he was the manager of Facility #227, he was supposed to be aware of the activities of his people at all times, and any excuses for his incompetence in that matter were just that, excuses.

And, only zeds made excuses.

"Sir," the holoimage of his co-manager reported, as it floated in front of his right eye," One-ten reports a biological anomaly has escaped containment from the resurrection chamber normally assigned Reverend Lord Springer, terminating the entire resurrection team and four 110s. They've locked down the facility and confined all non-security and non-management personnel to their work areas, as per procedure."

Abbot couldn't help but to say the f-word out loud, not caring about how much like a filthy zed he sounded right now—shaking his head before asking,"Where is it now?"

"Still in the resurrection wing, Sir," the co-manager replied, screams, cursing and the reports of displacement projectiles echoing in the background. "One-ten's bringing in the tiggers to try and contain it before—holy shit! Son of a bitch!"

Abott reflexively jumping out of his seat, his co-manager's head popping like a zit, as two hairy, meaty, hand-like slabs of flesh clapped the unfortunate man's skull between them, the holo zapping and winking out at that point.

"Fuck!" said Abbot over and over, his breathing sweaty, labored gasps.

Situation Room, Royal Palace Government District, Heaven, Kingdom Of Man 2276.1906.526 AR

Seated on His Throne, He watched the filthy zed scream in the wild animal passion innate to all its subhuman kind, as voices screamed from the speakers all around Him, ordering it to grab its tits, finger its twot, press that stinking ass up against the gravalloy glass of the enclosed swimming pool.

A tech seated at His right strained hard, sweat pouring down his face, veins popping out, a trickle of blood at the corner of his mouth, as he laid his hands on the interface surfaces of his workstation, sending a signal from his brain through his nanocolony to the nanocolony implanted in the body of the zed, the collar then relaying his control impulses into its pathetic brain, directing it to take responsibility for making all those men watch it do disgusting things to itself and others live on the freakin' InterWeb, the zed's hands jerkily moving towards its tits and twot, the animal insisting on fighting the collar and its controller the entire time, its mouth desperately trying to form the word "no," as if it didn't want to be a grotesque freakshow luring Citizens and Immortals alike down into the very depths of subhumanity.

Nearly twenty-three centuries' of expirience had taught Joshua, anointed King Of Man, better than to believe that of any zed; if it had been true, His Word would not have directed His Children to keep them beaten down and in subjection, and, He knew, for certain, His Word was not in error.

"Another shot of pain," Larry Addams, head of the Buerau of Electronic Media, ordered the struggling tech, as he walked up behind him, merely glancing at one of a veritable infinity of holoprojections in the Palace's cavernous Situation Room, thirty miles below the surface of the Eternal City, before joining his Master at the center of the room.

"The Terran President has agreed to the cease fire," he said, wasting no words,"and, over the objections of their Senate, it will shortly announce its issuance of an executive order standing down its military and granting You safe passage to Earth orbit in a live Webcast."

"Is their so-called military standing down?" He asked another of His most trusted Immortals.

"According to our agents inside Terran space," General Asa Spinks, His Director Of National Security, replied, as he stood at His left hand,"yes, Master."

Joshua nodded His head.

"Good," He remarked, eyes still on the zed screaming its head off again, its body twtiching and grinding itself into the glass, His mind remembering His last zed, how Ruth had insisted on denying what it was, denying that it hated the depravity which was its own kind, throughly unrepentant to the end of its miserable existence, no matter how many times it had made Him sic other zeds on it, no matter how many times it had forced Him to use the collar on it, no matter how many times it had forced Him to treat it like the brute beast that it was.

Their entire so-called Republic was equally as proud, as equally lost in their sin and innate perversity, they and the Conspiracy who ruled them and threatened the Kingdom of Man with eternal damnation so twisted and hopelessly deluded as to believe the penal colony they called their home world was the cradle of humanity, even in the face of legitimate scholarship proving beyond any shadow of a doubt that Heaven had always been the one true birthplace of His people.

The threat would end today.

They would all be reminded of what they were, just as the animal pressing itself against the glass was being reminded now.

It was the Perfect Will of their anointed King.

And, He was never wrong.

"...son of a bitch!" Melinda swore through gritted teeth, displacement torps screaming towards her an instant before the jump engine and point-defense network both engaged simoultaneously, her Sparrow III jump fighter swallowed up by its own wormhole, emerging less than ten meters above the deck of one of the Mannie JMOBs, the twenty-year old jump fighter squadron commander directing a thought through her nanocolony to her ship via its nanocolony, a salvo of Smashmouth anti-ship displacement missiles streaking from the Lightning Bolt's twin missile launchers as fast as their replicators could make them, the jump fighter too close to the enemy ship's gravalloy skin for it to prevent the missiles from exiting jump inside'' the vessel, the sun-hot flashes of detonating energy-liberation warheads erupting in front of her, momentarily blinding her and the fighter's lidar and passive EM sensors.

Displacement projectiles detonating like hail against the Lightning Bolt's own gravalloy, the cockpit echoing with alarms, Melinda jumping again, emerging from jump between a pair of Mannie destroyers, Melinda opening up with the missile launchers and the Lightning Bolt's'' four ninety-millimeter rotary-barrel displacement projectile cannon, the destroyers' point-defense network lobbing interceptor missiles at her, Melinda jumping before they had the chance to hit, a warning tone in her head telling her she hadn't escaped all of them, her own interceptors and countermeasures deploying against them, as she skimmed the atmosphere of Tom Dooley, Melinda glancing sideways, Vernon, the colony's only city, burning brightly below her, the flashes of displacement projectiles and missiles jumping and emerging from jump like pinpricks in the flames.

She thought of Gramma Thorne, and Sarah, her little sister, both down there risking their lives....

Fallon-Throne House, 68972 S. 320 Road Wagoner, Free State Of Oklahoma, Earth, Republic Of Earth March 21, 2076,1232.56 Master Clock Time

...Melinda Fallon screaming, fighting the bed covers, her body shaking and sweating, as she emerged from the recurring nightmare of the last twenty frickin years of her life.

"Babe?" a voice asked, holding her close, cradling her against her breasts, the captain of the Republic Of Earth Ship Shooting Star forcing her eyes to focus, as she turned up and looked into her wife's warm, brown eyes.

"I'm okay, baby," Melinda whispered. "What time...shit," she remarked, her nanocolony's internal clock syncing up with the MASTERCLOCK satellite over Earth's North Pole,"I slept in, didn't I?"

"You were up late, hun," Amanda Tallgeese whispered,"all night, as a matter of fact."

"Yeah," Melinda whispered, reaching up to stroke Amanda's hair, as Amanada was stroking hers.

"You're worrying about me again," she remarked.

"What do you expect me to do, baby?" Amanda asked. "Ever since the cease-fire went into effect—"

Melinda angrily sprang to her feet, walking to the open door of the bedroom she'd grown up in, looking down the hall at the closed door of Sarah's old room, the picture of the horse she'd drawn, when she'd been six still pinned to it.

She could only look at it for so long, before wheeling about on her heel and smashing her fist into the doorjamb, tears running down her face.

"Bitch," she spat angrily....

"...not a conversation, Chief," Ensign Parker's holo replied, Melinda's jumpfighter screaming alarms, shaking from successive detonatons against the gravalloy." Commander Brandt's ordered us to bug out, and now,'' god damn it. The last of the transports have jumped, and—"

"Damnit, my sister's still—" Melinda started to snap in reply, the angry buzz of the missile warning....

...interrupting what she'd been about to say, Melinda hearing her mom letting in whoever had been at the door, Mom and their visitor talking, Melinda able to discern she was a young woman, just before all conversation abruptly shut off.

Mom was at her side, before she'd even heard her padding along the carpet, telling her," Lindy, hun, you...um...have a visitor."

Just the way she said that meant Melinda knew she wasn't going to like this.

She turned to face the woman with her mom...slight build, long blonde hair all rumpled, lines in her face making her look older than her voice sounded, a jagged scar along the left side of her cheek running almost all the way down to the corner of her mouth.

"Captain Fallon?" she said, extending her hand. "Lieutenant Stephanie O'Connell, Field Ops, StarForces Intel."

Melinda now knew for sure she wasn't going to like whatever this Stephanie O'Connell had to tell her.

It felt like she'd left her body, watching from the ceiling, as the field operative from StarForces Intel tell someone else,"ma'am, it's about your sister."

Just before Melinda's body took the other woman's hand....

...that bastard so-called anointed fucking King Of Man screaming at the broken, brutalized body of her little sister, still twitching, pissing and shitting all over herself, Sarah's mouth fighting to get out the word "no" just one more time, before that son of a bitch just....

...fucking beat her to death and had her body crucified with her legs wide open, frickin'—

"Get out," she said tautly, turning back towards the doorjamb, O'Connell replying,"ma'am?"

"Fucking, get out!" Melinda screamed, pounding the doorjamb again.

Terran Government Complex Ninth Ward, City-State Of New Orleans, Earth, Republic Of Earth March 21, 2076, 1232.60 MCT

Swallowing, taking another deep breath, Flavia Brandt steeled herself for possibly the biggest gamble of her people's lives, to say nothing of her nearly fifty years in their service.

The report from Intel was still fresh in her mind...Norm the Cripple had seemingly gone for it, hook, line and sinker...she'd know for sure the instant he'd jumped, along with however many ships he thought he'd need for the job.

Once he jumped, there would be no chance to get everything into place, she had to rely on the active-duty StarForces and her people's ability to remobilize so soon after the cease-fire order had gone into effect, just as she had to trust in her people's faith in her abilities and in their unwillingness to crucify her for even giving the appearance of wanting to discuss peace with a walking fucking corpse of a madman who should've been taken out along with the rest of the goddamn trash two hundred years ago.

She got up from the chair in her office, the holo of every Terran President since Ellen Garvey staring down from three of the four otherwise plainly-decorated walls, Flavia facing the fourth, a picture window affording a view of the Government Plaza's Boardwalk and the Gulf Of Mexico lapping gently along the shore just beyond it...terraforming had rebuilt the entire planet from the inside out the instant the shooting had stopped over Excelsior, reversing three hundred years of enviromental outrages which had seen winters in Alaska shooting up into the lower hundreds on the old Farenheit scale and super hurricanes which had ravaged this great city, turned into a sprawling concentration camp of a Metropolitian Prison Zone by WARCOM, before the Free Alliance had liberated it.

At this moment, the sky was cloudless blue, the sun high in the sky, making the crystal waters of the Gulf glitter...couples and families were walking hand in hand down there, reminding Flavia keenly of her own losses, of the losses this war had already added to all the dead from the other four wars her people had fought with the Mannies over the last couple of centuries, the losses which would surely come if this insane scheme she'd hatched went wrong in any way.

Another hard swallow, more acid bubbling in her stomach...the Terran President couldn't think about that right now, she had to stay composed, not betray anything, when she went online in a few minutes to tell her fellow citizens she was about to let the devil himself come to their homeworld for a visit, on the pretext of talking the peace talk she and they both knew damn good and well he and his so-called Kingdom of Man were incapable of.

"Madame President," a voice said from the doorway behind her...speak of the devil, as King Solomon would say....

"Time already, Gloria?" she asked her Vice-President.

"'Fraid so, Flavia," Gloria Rundgren's Titan accent drawled slowly in reply.

"'Kay," Earth's first citizen said, nodding her head, before turning round and sitting back down at her desk to well and truly put her gamble into motion.

Aboard the RES ''Shooting Star Muskogee Spacedock, Free State Of Oklahoma, Geosynchronous Earth Orbit, Republic Of Earth March 21, 2076, 1237.22 MCT

"Captain," Gerilyn Meeker, the Shooting Star's first mate said, as Melinda climbed out of one of the ship's three StarBarge utility jumplanes onto the Kip Morgan-class war cruiser's hangar deck,"we weren't expecting you back for another—"

Melinda brushing past her, her duffel bag slung over her right shoulder, her SOCOM-12 light assault rifle patrol slung over her left, her sky-blue StarForces flight suit, grav-holstered Smith, grav sword and her CyberLink headset the only damn things which ever made her feel fully-dressed, the Mark III Sparrow jump fighter she was walking rapidly towards an old friend entirely too-long abandoned.

She ignored Geri's asking "Captain?" over and over, the looks of the pilots assisting the robotics maintaining the ship's battalion of 240 jump fighters parked by squadrons directly behind the bay doors, directly behind the Lightning Bolt parked at the other end of the bay, armed and ready to finish the mission Melinda had abandoned twenty years ago....

"...jump for Green Mountain, now!" that bitch snapped at her, Melinda continuing her descent into Tom Dooley's atmosphere, her comm system scanning for Sarah's transponder signal, EM sensors looking for her life signs, warning tones indicating Mannie destroyers and jump fighters hard on her ass, but she didn't give a fuck...Gramma Thorne....

...Flavia's goddamn wife had fucking been crucified with her legs wide open, dildos shoved in everywhere, her body covered with scrawlings, feces, frickin' come, that had been what greeted Melinda's people when they'd finally taken back Tom Dooley sixteen goddamn years ago, and here she was, shitting on Gramma herself by telling her people to sit on their goddamn hands and let Norm the fucking Cripple come in and finish the mission he'd been forced to abandon two hundred years ago.

Gramma was a damn sight better as President, than Flavia ever fucking could be, she thought angrily, the slender needle form of her fighter in front of her now, the master of the Shooting Star laying a hand against an interface surface to the right of the nosecone to drop the gangway down from the belly of the craft onto the deck.

Bitch, she thought again, the same thing she'd always fucking think about her, no matter what the fuck—

"Not without me, you aren't," was all Amanda said, as she stood behind her.

"Baby—" Melinda started to say.

"Not without us," Geri added.

"This is family," Melinda replied, getting ready to climb up into her fighter.

"And the Mannie homeworld," Geri remarked, Melinda hearing the clank of the ship undocking, feeling the war cruiser moved underneath her feet, as her grav thrusters kicked in.

"Not without us," Geri repeated, when Melinda turned to face her.

"Captain."

Aboard the His Divine Majesty's Ship ''Iraqi Freedom Geosynchrous Orbit Over Heaven, Kingdom Of Man 2276.1906.75 AR

The Bull Run-class Joint Mobile Operations Base was the finest war-fighting platform in modern military history.

Twenty miles and ten million tons of gravalloy, gun turrets, torpedo tubes and hangarage for one hundred Connally-class destroyers, 240 JF-14E Tomcat jump fighters, over five thousand AC-390 dropships capable of deploying the ship's entire 150,000-man Marine complement in a single hop and thousands of other smaller craft of various mission profiles, more than capable of disposing of one of their so-called fleets in a sinhgle battle.

And, each of their fleets only had one of what they laughingly called JMOBs.

The Royal Interstellar Navy's Home Fleet had thirty of these magnificent machines, with one thousand such fleets all across Kingdom space, poised and ready to drive a stake into the very heart of the Conspiracy at His word of command.

The jumpplane bearing Him flew along and directly above the Iraqi Freedom's starboard side, Joshua gazing at His Seal freshly painted atop the mirrored silver surface of the rectangular hull, the jumpplane's pilot slowing, so as to give His Master the best possible view, finally clearing His leviathan's forward section, turning around gracefully, decelerating, almost drifting into the mammoth hangar bay, Joshua sending a thought to the Throne's nanocolony, it,the tiggers standing guard around Him and the zeds chained and grovelling at either foot floating above the deck, the grav thrusters gently propelling Him down the opening rear ramp, keeping him aloft above the hangar deck, the anointed King of Man smiling benignly, as His eyes took in the view of spacers and Marines in their dress uniforms lined up almost into infinity on either side of Him, Joshua moving slowly through them, nodding slightly, as the Iraqi Freedom's captain and executive officer saluted Him, before taking their places directly behind the Thorne, the King Of Man giving His children ample opportunity to show their respects to Him before making His way to the ladder at the end of the hangar deck, another thought causing the Throne to rise gracefully into the hatchway specially designed to accomodate it.

He was soon on the great ship's operations deck, all activity ceasing at once in His presence, resuming only after their Master had maneuvered His Thorne through the operations deck into its place along the back wall of the adjacent battle management center, everyone snapping to attention and bowing low as He passed them, remaining on their knees until He told them:

"As you were."

"Thank You, Master," the commander of His personal Marine legion replied, ordering his officers and NCOs back to their stations, before turning back to Joshua, bowing low, before reporting:

"Master, the Terran President is on line with its...citizens...now. Our agents are busy sowing the seeds of dissension amongst them—"

"Not a hard task," Joshua commented,"considering."

"Of course, Master," His Marine commander replied, Joshua merely glancing at the holoprojections of their President's online conference with its fellow zeds