Into the Black

(Training Room, Sentry Base, Star’s Reach)

The training room was silent. Only fitting, since it was the dead of night, and the only other people here were my bodyguards. But I needed the quiet to help me focus.

I had skills that I had been granted, but hadn’t been using. Skills that might have prevented us from having to make that mad dash into Hellspace, relying only on Hades to try and mount a desperate rescue when it was still on a skeleton crew, its systems still untested. That was a foolish decision of mine, one born out of desperation.

If I had been using all of my skills, it could have been avoided.

The problem was in actually using the skill I was most concerned with, Foresight. I had gotten it way back when the psychic wave rocked Sol System, making me a sorcerer, and causing the Empress to ascend to greater power, but, unlike my Sorcery, I had not found a way to train it, or even activate it, and had forgotten all about it.

Looking at my character sheet in depth, I saw that I’d actually gained a small measure of experience in the skill. It was only enough to push it 3% towards level two. Level two out of one hundred. So, probably an accidental activation, one that I hadn’t even realized at the time.

There weren’t timestamps on the skill XP bar, but, looking back at things, I thought I figured out when the skill had activated. Back during the defense of Bandar Base and the Uldat System, I’d had a sudden twisting in my gut, like I just knew something bad was about to happen. I hadn’t thought much about it at the time, but it was possible that was Foresight attempting to make itself known.

Trying to remember the feeling I had in that moment, it was just a cold twist in the gut. I didn’t know how I knew, but I knew what was about to happen. That was great, and all, but it was worthless if the feeling came too late to prevent or alter the course of events.

If, as we guessed, the Ihm had access to people who could actually see the future, and clearly enough, with enough advance warning that they could position fleets in advance to trap us, then there was a huge difference in skill level between me and whoever they had available. The knowledge that it wasn’t a self-fulfilling prophecy, but more along the lines of advanced predictive algorithms, with several different possibilities being shown, was actually calming, once I’d had time to really think about things. After all, that meant the game AI wasn’t trying to control our actions, but was just making sophisticated guesses about the future.

However, that gap in skill between me and the Ihm seers was still a huge problem. Sure, it wasn’t exactly figuring out what we would do before we did it, but even so, it had already been proven to give the Ihm a tactical advantage that was far too strong. We needed a counter to it, even if we didn’t find a way to use it ourselves.

Of course, to counter it, we first needed to understand it. Hence, why I was sitting cross-legged in the training room, trying to concentrate on meditation, and finding that bit of foresight. We were in the training room because there were recorders in here, so if anything happened, the lab coats would be able to get the data.

The problem was that foresight was a tricky skill to pin down. Knowledge skills could be improved by using the knowledge, or by seeking out more information. Other skills had activities involved with them, which made them easy to advance. You just kept pushing your limits in those activities.

Foresight, on the other hand, didn’t have any clear conditions that would make it activate. This meant I couldn’t just practice new tricks, like if I wanted to expand my repertoire of psy powers, or build on my shapeshifting skill. I was stumbling around in the dark, with exactly one point of reference, and no concrete evidence that what worked for another person would work for me.

I didn’t like it.

No, couldn’t get distracted by that. According to the lieutenant who discovered his own version of Foresight, he focused his mind inward, and then began casting out, trying to find connections. He’d found something, and began seeing different versions of the next twelve seconds. Twelve seconds wasn’t much, but it was better than I was doing, so I was trying to follow his lead.

I took a breath, and cast my mind inward, focusing on following the trail of energy that was my power. Power that I knew came from Hellspace, where demons and gods dwelled. If it was anything like the source material the game devs had clearly drawn from, then it was a door that could be opened, but one that swung both ways once it was opened.

With my mind, I pierced the veil between material and immaterial, following the font that was my power. Time had no meaning in Hellspace. Or, rather, time twisted upon itself at random, so there was no fixed progression from minute to minute. It was chaos incarnate.

I plunged into the chaos, and began looking for threads and branches. But it was hard, with the howling of a thousand windstorms and the screams of ten thousand tortured souls echoing in my brain. And then there were the demons.

Clawing and biting, they came for me, trying to get at my mind. If they could overwhelm me, they could consume me. Worse, they could possess and become me. I couldn’t let that happen.

My blades manifested in my hands, mental echoes of the true items I carried with me. There were dozens of the demons, but after the first ten fell before me, they learned to give me a wide berth. After fifty, they fled, far enough that I could barely see them. They did not leave me, merely hung back, waiting, hoping I would falter or let down my guard.

The landscape I found myself in was a twisted hellscape, unlike any I had seen before. Strangely enough, I knew that I would not be able to describe the features of this land, even in my own mind, much less speaking the words out loud. To know this place to that degree would be to embrace madness.

I did not ‘look’ at the scene directly, for that way lay chaos, and the lies of demons. Instead, I looked as though through peripheral vision or eyes squinted. The features of the world faded, but that also lessened their maddening influence. Once I no longer saw the trees, I could see the forest, and the forces that comprised it.

By stepping back, and looking at the larger scene, I was able to see things that I couldn’t before. Patterns, or perhaps just the ghost of patterns, weaving their way through the chaos. Not order. There was no such thing as order, here. But there was a rhythm, and ebb and flow that I was beginning to see in my mind’s eye.

“Have all the fleets redeployled?”

“Yes, most Perfect One. They are ready, and waiting upon your command.”

“Then do it.”

I blinked, shocked at the voices. Those were Ihm voices. Ihm females, unless I was completely mistaken. But how? And who? And where were they?

Wait, if I was hearing them, did that mean they were in hellspace, or connected to it? And ‘Perfect One’? Was that the Imperatrix?

I stretched out, trying to hear the words again, or hear what came next. But there was nothing. Just the howling of chaos in my mind. I half wondered if it had been a delusion brought on by looking into hellspace.

Suddenly, I saw a man, sitting behind a desk. No, wait, I knew this man. It was Lucio, the Empress’s confidant, and spymaster. But he wasn’t on a ship or station, that much was clear just from the walls, which were drywall, not metal. On a planet, then? That would mean he was off, away from Sol. On a mission, perhaps? And why was there a chain in one hand, that led off the desk, and down between his legs?

A pair of feet stuck out slightly from underneath the desk. Upturned, like the person they belonged to was kneeling in the cramped space. Every so often, spasm would cross Lucio’s face. Pleasure, perhaps? The man sitting across the desk from him was smirking.

“Well, I suppose that concludes our negotiations.”

Lucio grunted in reply to the man, and said, “Y-yes. Rest assured, Captain, that the first half of the money will be in your account one hour from now. The second half, upon delivery.”

“That’s perfect. Well, I’ll leave you to your exertions, Mr. Johnson.”

The other man turned, and left, and I knew, somehow, that he was going to stop by a brothel on the way to his ship, and relieve his stress. Lucio just waved, leaning back as he lost himself to the pleasure that the person under the desk was giving him. This wasn’t like the Lucio I knew at all.

The moment that the door closed, Lucio became a different man. He straightened up, laid the chain, and the empty collar it was attached to, on the desk, and pushed back. Looking down, his pants were closed, and not even tented. But there was someone under his desk, a young woman, probably no more than twenty years old.

“Did you get it?”

She nodded. “Yes, he never noticed the hacking attempt. Surprised he didn’t ask about me being here. Anyway, I own his devices. When he gets to his ship, I’ll own that, too. It will take time to go through the data, though.”

Lucio nodded. “Good work. With any luck, our good captain will be the missing link we’re looking for between the smugglers and the Ihm. As for your presence, well, people see what they want to see.”

The woman nodded once as she moved to get up. Looking down at Lucio’s crotch again, she said, “You know, if you need a bit of ‘help’, after that performance?”

Lucio laughed, and waved her off. “Sorry, my dear, but unfortunately you have the wrong equipment for my tastes.”

“Figures,” the woman grumbled, as she made her way to the door. “The pretty ones always are like that.”

My head spun as I reeled back into my own thoughts. What was that? That was more than what I’d heard with the Imperatrix. Was that real? Or was it a hallucination?

I blinked once. I saw the pattern, where that image had emerged from. Looking through the tortured, chaotic plane, I saw countless other patterns like it. Including one that called out to me. I touched it.

I saw myself, sitting cross-legged in the training room, surrounded by my sleeping guards. Only Jaynie was awake. Were they taking shifts? How long had I been unconscious? And why was I seeing this from outside my own body?

The door opened, and Raven stepped into the room. There was a look of concern on her face. A look that Jaynie didn’t miss.

“What is it?”

“There are some interesting reports out of Hellspace. The Chaos Brigade has gotten in touch, and they say that the forces of Baxanke, the new goddess of the Ihm, have been pulling back throughout Hellspace. While they had been pushing against the other forces of the three gods we have only heard rumors of, the Chaos Brigade has seen evidence that they’ve abandoned all battles on all fronts. They’re returning to Ihm space. No one knows why.”

Jaynie grunted. “Well, that sounds like they’re reacting to something. Either our attack hurt them more than we know, or that whatever it was we found beneath Thraki is causing them serious problems.”

“Perhaps. Or, they’re putting together a counteroffensive, to cripple the Empire. The Imperial Navy is still spread far too thin to cover all the planets in the Empire in forces strong enough to overcome the kind of fleets the Ihm could send after them.”

“Well, that’s just fucking wonderful.” Jaynie sighed. “I’d wanted him to stay under for a while longer. This is the closest to a good night’s sleep he’s gotten since we got back from Hellspace.”

“He’s been at it for sixteen hours straight. If he wasn’t meditating, and reducing how much energy he needed, I would have had the doctors come in and shut this down a long time ago. As it is, the doctors are still not pleased with how long he has gone without actually sleeping, or taking care of basic bodily functions.”

“Fine, fine. I’ll wake him.”

I pulled back, all the way into myself. By the time I felt the hand on my shoulder, shaking me, I was almost to consciousness already. With a deep breath, I opened my eyes, and saw that Raven was, indeed, there.

“Ah, Raven. What is the situation with the demons?” I had to fight not to laugh as the two girls tried desperately to fight back their surprise. So, I distracted myself by looking at my notifications.

Foresight has increased to 2/100. +1 WIS