It would be six hours later that everything had been wrapped up; the contract written out to everyone’s satisfaction… and Kyle received his first-ever upload of NDA software… though one that was so heavily neutered as to be pointless, since it was his own family putting it together.

  The only thing he couldn’t reveal was the location of the system the samples were being sent to for testing and research… and he could just fly there. So there didn’t really seem to be much point. Still. The dubs insisted. They even insisted that anyone he take with him have the same software. So… here he was. With his first batch of permanent software that could never be deleted, and a need to share it like some pre-genetic-engineering STD.

  Unfortunately, probably not the last. As he settled the shuttle down on the deck of the Sapper, he leaned back, sighed… and tapped his wrist.

  “Alright, people. Good news, bad news time. Lets meet up in the galley and we can go over whats going on, and the wonderful new requirement for anyone who wants to stay on the crew. And Poisseux, if you wouldn’t mind setting a course for the Cyprus, we’re going to be giving her the escape pods.”

  He adjusted settings for a bit. Sending out a message to Sari, to see if she wanted to meet up later… then shut off the comms…

  As he hit the button, he looked out… blinking. His uncle’s shuttle was approaching. He hadn’t contacted them at all first. Not that he minded the visit, but…

  “Fuck, Uncle steve! Stop! Your godforsaken…”

  It was too late. The shuttle slid right into the bay… and with an awful screeching sound, at least five of the spikes sheared partway off, warping, as it came in to land. A few bits went flying, and it kept scraping along the top until it landed, with the warped spikes sticking off to the side.

  Thankfully, none of it came his way.

  Kyle stared at it. Then at the large gouges the craft had left along the roof… and just shook his head. “Godamnit, old man. Would it kill you to think of pragmatism instead of just looks for five seconds?”

  ~Coming from the boy whose ship looks like a damned box with a couple of engines attached, and is named after a piece from a board game. Yes, I suppose I could make a few sacrifices for effectiveness sake, but come on… you gotta make sure your ship looks dangerous. You want people to be scared when they see you coming, not bored.~

  He crossed his arms as the cargo bay door slid shut.. Watching as his uncle stepped out, the red jacket flitting about wildly as the chamber started to repressurize… and he popped his helmet off before it even finishes, eyes bulging for a moment before he got settled… trying to pretend as if everything were fine.

  “...Damnit, uncle Steve. Sapper isn’t….Ugh. Alright, whats going on? You wanted to meet my friends?”

  The man chuckled. “Well, of course. I brought the tech to upload the NDA software if they want to hang around. I also wanted to have a few words privately.”

  “...Fine. Just… don’t try to scare them.”

  “I only scare my enemies, nephew. Only my enemies.”

  ***

  Hundred of light-years away, deep in the heart of United Worlds, rested the Admiralty Board station. Spending much of its time in Darkspace, it was closer to a carrier than a station, able to transition from system to system; and acted as the command and control hub for the largest; albeit not most populated; star nation in the galaxy.

  Deep in its heart, six men wearing the dark blue uniforms of United Worlds navy admirals sat; alongside the projections of seven others, ringing the table.

  And at the center… a video played. Showing a tentacle-covered monster simply appearing from the void… its tentacles being shredded by railgun fire, missiles striking it… and then vanishing again… with the planet showing a strike a few seconds later as if an enormous bomb had gone off.

  “The discoverer gave us a sample, and we’re going to be delivering it to the research base shortly… after all of the unwanted hangers-on have the proper NDAs signed and installed in their implants. That being said, we’ve got a preliminary analysis of what we found.”

  The bulbous blue figure of Admiral Thorn looked around at his compatriots. Some looked more normal; one woman actually had pointed, elf-like ears; another was so unnaturally tall and slim that his image was distorted for the projector.

  “The egg is actually just a dragon egg, just like what the Empire has given us in the past for our own research. The ‘plant’ is actually a parasitic organism that attaches to the dragon egg when active. Essentially… the ‘Kraken’ is just a dragon whose body has been deformed and twisted by becoming host to a swarm of parasites… who somehow grant the dragon the ability to briefly travel at FTL speeds. We have no idea how it works… but we already have a task force headed to get more samples.”

  “The mercenaries don’t seem to have picked it up… but as soon as enough of the parasites were removed, it seems they immediately become hostile to other Kraken and try to free the infected.”

  The pointy-eared woman gave a quick nod. “This explains much. When the Empire cracked the Alliance monopoly on galactic core darkmass? We always thought it was just a matter of luck, or extensive surveying. But no. They had a secondary means of getting there.”

  Thorn nodded. “Its fairly clear that the Empire has been selective about what they told us. They’ve been hiding these creatures from us.”

  One of the other admirals chuckled. “Even worse. They’ve shown us four different voidborn xenos, one of which is the final evolution of the ‘Barnacles’ that keep getting everywhere. Warned us how to fight them. And one of them…. The stealth one… looks kinda similar to one of these Kraken.”

  He gestured at the image. “These mercenaries thought the Kraken was turning invisible, at first. If we found one, we might kill it without even realizing it wasn’t what we thought. We’d think it had just moved in quietly and attacked from hiding. Our assumptions would taint the evidence.”

  “..Which means they not only deceived us about it existing, but tried to frame their lies in such a way to avoid us learning on our own.”

  Thorn sighed. “So. Somewhere out there, the Empire likely has had this alternate form of FTL that has no connection to any black hole whatsoever for… possibly centuries. We won’t know how bad it is til we can use it ourselves, but… if I were them, I’d have colonies spread to the galactic rim, in Andromeda, in the deep void… everywhere.”

  Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

  An admiral who had been silent until now; the only unaugmented human in the room, with short, neatly trimmed grey hair and heard on his pale skin; slapped the table. “They are, most likely, the largest star nation. Even with a century of unchecked growth behind closed doors, they probably can’t beat us all. But… if there’s other secrets behind this… they could come close.”

  Thorn nodded. “I would like to present this information to a closed session of the security council. And with it… a recommendation to scout quietly, look for more such creatures… and reproduce their abilities. Once we can do so… and only once we can… I believe we should recommend letting the Empire know we have the truth about these things, and our own ships, and weapons. And using this knowledge to push them into working with us to crush the Alliance.”

  He looked around the table. “We could give them an ultimatum. Either they help us purge those lunatics, or we out them publicly and share the technology. Unite the galaxy against them.”

  The woman with the pointed ears smiled. “Use one monster against another. Morally repugnant…. But strategically sound. If we were lucky, the Republic and Directorate might not even get involved if the Empire backs our play from the beginning. I agree. Any opposed?”

  The remainder of the board looked at each other. The sole natural-born human was the sole dissenter, raising a hand.

  “I feel we should postpone this decision, and informing the security council, until we have a more thorough understanding of how it works. That may impact things, if, for example, this FTL is only useful for short, in-system bursts. It would mean our concern is no longer about the Empire having extragalactic holdings, or much more than we know about, but rather purely some extremely traumatic weapon systems. This would make it far less valuable as a tool of extortion than if it were a repeat of the first secret.”

  He looked back at Thorn.

  “But in the meantime, we stage a false flag operation by one of the lesser, Alliance-adjacent groups, to justify a budget increase and increasing our scale of operations. Preferably one that’s less dangerous than we’ve made them out to look… so we can take them out fairly easily, and use the funding to prepare for a more significant war.”

  Thorn blinked. “...Excellent suggestion, Admiral Ross. Delaying things, so long as we’re actively researching the creatures, shouldn’t be a problem. In fact…. That would be an excellent idea. No real way to backfire, even, so long as we choose a group that was already hostile.”

  “Good. You’re already there with the Skulls. They’d be an excellent choice for this sort of operation, and you can even explain the why.”

  ***

  As Kyle and Steve stepped onto the bridge, the crew went silent. Most of them just stared at him. Elise looked… disgusted. Thor… awed. Sherry seemed to be measuring the height difference, mostly amused by being taller than him even while seated.

  When the airlock door hissed shut, and the scan for bugs started, Thor and Elise both started talking at the same time.

  “I knew you were related to this monster, but..” “I can’t believe I’m actually standing in the presence of the hero of…”

  The two stared at each other.

  The Butcher chuckled. “It seems I’ve got both fans and enemies here.” He crossed his arms; the same dark red coat as he wore to meet the admiral, the same bone white armor… the same ridiculous skull helmet now hanging on his back.

  “Go ahead, get it out of your system. We’ve got important things to discuss, preferably here, rather than the galley, once that scan is done and we know we aren’t being watched. If any of you aren’t actually mounted in your bodies right now, please step off the bridge and put your stack inside rather than wirelessly transmitting.”

  Thor gave a nod, and glanced at Kyle. “I think I’m the only one at present. Mind re-installing me?”

  “Server room?”

  “Server room.”

  The two nodded, and opened the door… as Elise turned to face the Butcher.

  “How many people have you killed? Not soldiers. Not pirates. Civilians. Do you have any idea?”

  The Butcher gave a slow nod. “Over a billion, by now. Most of them on Petrov. And if I had to do it again? I would’ve used bigger bombs, and killed more. We may have only won the battle because of my actions, but if I’d been more thorough, it would’ve taken hours instead of weeks to end it.”

  He held up a hand, raising a finger. “Admiral Deskov was forced to kill over a billion of his own people with the second bombing, because I didn’t get the job done with the first one. And Commodore Ikari died to finish the job. I was only the first. And I was the lucky one.”

  She stared at him. “Not a shred of guilt, or remorse?”

  “The AIs calculated reduced odds of us striking factories inside population centers. Its why they built them there. They were building so fast… and actively increasing their production ability by the moment… that if I’d done anything else… or delayed even a few more minutes… some of them would’ve escaped the system. Do you have any idea how close we were to living beneath the heel of AI rule for whatever brief span humanity had left?”

  “...there had to be a way. Something else we could do. EMPs. New weapons.”

  He rolled his eyes. “Withdrawal was defeat. Delay was defeat. The enemy was smarter than us. Faster than us. Was building multiple platforms per second by the time I’d launched my bombs. Frankly, if tensions weren’t so high at the time and fleets that were meant to fight each other hadn’t come together to contain the threat….”

  “You enjoyed it, didn’t you. It wasn’t the only time you nuked a city into ash. Were you one of the ones who conquered this place?”

  “No. But I’d have bombed that research base in a heartbeat if I were, and damn the collateral damage.”

  Elise closed her eyes… as the door re-opened. Thor and Kyle stepped back in, with Thor resuming his seat… and Kyle setting a hand on his uncle’s shoulder. “We clean?”

  The Butcher nodded. “Perfectly. You did good work. All incoming signals, no outgoing. Not bad. Now… “

  He looked around at the crew, focusing on Elise. “As you probably all know, there’s going to be a war. But. The dubs don’t want to jump in half-cocked. They’re going to try to reverse-engineer what makes the Kraken tick, and scout out the Empire’s deployments. Among others. Once all this data becomes public, there will likely be a war. But… they might be taking the Empire’s side.”

  They all stared at him. Thor started to say something… but stopped, just looking confused.

  “Right now, the dubs haven’t invaded the Alliance for one simple reason. Whoever starts the war? Everyone else is going to come in on the other side. If it’s uncertain? Some will side with one, some the other. Basically… the dubs are looking at possibly using this as leverage to get the Empire on their side of that war, maybe even help make it look like the Alliance started it and that convinced the Empire. Which…. Has nothing to do with why I’m here. No…”

  He looked around at the crew. “I’m here to offer the lot of you an extremely lucrative part-time job. A million credits apiece per year. To crew this ship, and go with Kyle here to a specific spot. Look over the research they’re doing on the Kraken. Make sure they aren’t hiding anything… copy anything useful…and report back to me. Or his mother. Once you’re satisfied, get back to whatever you were doing, and repeat until they’ve got the thing reverse-engineered. Say… once every three months or so. So… Work a few weeks a year. Make enough to retire… or whatever you’d like.”

  He raised a finger. “One downside. You need to accept NDA software. Kyle already has. You can’t tell anyone without the software where the system is, and it’ll make you check any ship you’re on to make sure nobody else who doesn’t have the software is with you before going there. You literally won’t be able to tell anyone about the location, aside from just that its within a hundred light-years of Ash.”

  “..So. Any takers?”

  The group just stared at him… then at Kyle, who nodded… and then at each other. Thor slowly shook his head. “....Fuck.”