Chapter 396 (1/2)

The day was warm and comfortable, the breeze making the grass wave back and forth, the flowers that had managed to get sprinkled across the grass bobbing their heads in time with the slow easy gusts of breeze. The sun, yellowish-white, was warm and almost comforting in the azure sky. Clouds were spread about the sky, almost as if someone had placed them with an eye for how it would appear from the ground.

The house was small, off away from the other houses, in between the forest and the space port, in between the forest and the small town where the Lanaktallan lived their quiet lives beneath the warmth of the sun. It had a clay roof, clay and wood walls, wooden window frames around macroplast smartglass, and was painted soft pastel blue with white trim.

It was an unassuming house that housed the sole Tnvaru on the planet.

Matron Sangbre stared out the macroplast window at the day and wondered, again, how she had ended up where she was.

She had been a lot of things over her life, but what she had become since the Case Omaha had been declared was beyond her wildest dreams.

Her eyes, black warsteel, were warm and comfortable in her head, not at all like she had heard others of her people complain about. No feeling of coldness, no feeling of a foreign object embedded in her face, but natural feeling.

Many days she forgot that they were completely artificial, placed in her skull by the blood slicked fingers of, well, to be honest, witches. Women who's eyes had never seen the light of day, who's psychic abilities had been nutured and honed in the caverns beneath the surface of Rossaya, known as the Vodka Trog Empire to outsiders.

Captain Manners stood by the door, silent. He too had undergone his own changes. Sangbre wasn't privy to all of them, like many things in Rossaya, changes were often a private affair that were to be endured rather than lamented.

Sangbre sipped at her vodka and lime juice, real limes, not artificial flavor, and stared out the window, waiting.

The ship, when it landed, was unmistakable.

It looked like it had taken the brunt of a supernova and kept coming. The warsteel was pitted, cracked, warped in places. Massive engines, depowered, at the rear. Two huge six-barrel C+ cannons, one on either side, sticking from the hull.

Sangbre had been the owner of a trading consortium, had seen plenty of ships. Cargo ships, passenger ships, system defense ships, Unified Military Services ships.

None of them exuded the raw malevolence of the ship she saw settle on the tarmac of the spaceport.

”They're here,” Captain Manners stated. ”ETA, if they ride in a vehicle, is five minutes.”

”They won't,” Sangbre said. She didn't know how she knew, but like many things since Case Omaha, she knew. ”They will walk. It will be just shy of an hour.”

Captain Manners nodded.

Sangbre knew he was unhappy with the whole situation, but he had given his blood oath to serve her, an oath beyond what the Confederate Military had demanded, deep in the Caverns of the Soul.

The knock on the door came right when Sangbre knew it would just how she had known it would. Three heavy spaced knocks. She used her datalink to open the door, steeling herself for what was requesting entrance to the little house.

The first to enter was a slim man, his skin dark brown, his head shaved, his cheeks and chin clean shaven. His brown eyes were piercing, his face intent, and his body gave the impression of being hardened by decades of labor.

The next was a tall woman, clad in a black dress with long sleeves. She wore a hair net and a veil, covering her face. Her face beyond seemed pale and the veil was lit from the purple fire burning in her eye sockets. Sangbre could see that her throat was slashed open, revealing her windpipe, and black blood slowly coursed from the wound and into her dress.

The fourth was a woman of dark brown skin, her hair was black and tightly woven in such a manner that the thin braids looked almost plastic. Beads, microtransmitters, superconductor wire, and circuit strands were woven into the braids. Her body was slim but undeniably feminine, her eyes were old and wise, to Sangbre's warsteel eyes, the woman's eyes were kind. She wore a colorful dress of red and gold, sandals, and jewelry of gold and silver set with semi-precious stones.

The other three faded into the background as the third one entered. She knew who he was despite the fact he had changed so much from the description her daughter had gone into such detail about.

Gone was the heavy combat frame. No more was he a massive robotic figure of warsteel and black chrome, of thumping pistons and hissing valves, of the clattering of hidden servos and flatware motors.

Now, he stood slightly taller than the thin one, even taller than Captain Manners, at a hair over two meters. He was wide, thick of body and muscle, with shoulder muscles that practically hid his neck. His face was clean shaven but he had close cropped black hair on top of his head. Tattoos in his face, including three chrome tears beneath the corner of one eye. His legs were covered in heavy black cloth, but a panel was opened in the leg of the pants to reveal what looked like, to Sangbre, a pop-open compartment.

”Daxin Freeborn,” Sangbre said, rising from her seat and moving forward.

Only a few months ago she would have been afraid of the massive Terran. The malevolence and rage balanced on a razor's edge, the simmering explosive violence just under the surface, the hatred for a universe that had taught him to hate from a young age.

Now, her warsteel eyes saw further, saw past what was in front of her.

She saw a tired male who had given much to a universe that just devoured what it was given and demanded more.

”Matron Sangbre,” Daxin rumbled. He touched fingertips with her and moved back slightly. ”My siblings beneath the gaze of our Digital Father,” he motioned at the slim man. ”Dhruv, known as Vat Grown Luke,” he pointed at the gray skinned woman. ”Bellona, the Grave Bound Beauty, oldest of our Digital Father's daughters,” he motioned at the brown woman who was smiling gently. ”Our baby sister, Menhit the Singer.”

Sangbre moved forward and touched fingertips with each of them, nodding. The thing man knelt down on one knee to stare her in the eyes, holding her gaze for a long moment.

Finally Sangbre moved over and sat down. ”What do I owe the pleasure of this visit?” she asked carefully.

”I wished to see, with my own eyes, the mother of the woman who started all of this,” Dhruv said. He moved over and sat down in a chair. ”History may not remember that it was your daughter who's escape from a Mantid Precursor Autonomous War Machine set your people upon this course, but we will.”

The woman, Menhit, laughed softly, her voice a tinkling musical thing. ”You make it sound so ominous,” she said.

”I see you, Matron Sangbre,” the gray skinned veil clad woman said, her voice gurgling. ”I have seen, now I understand, and can see more clearly the path before me.”

Without a word the woman vanished, a puff of purplish black smoke erupting and then vanishing into itself.

The thick bodied man, Daxin, sighed. ”She needed to see you so she could clearly see your daughter,” he said, as if it explained everything.

To Sangbre, with her new knowledge, it did. Sangbre nodded slowly. ”She seeks to escape our self-imposed imprisonment.”

Daxin nodded. ”Yes.”

”And where is FIDO?” Sangbre asked.

”On board the ship. The cyborgs make him nervous,” Daxin said, shrugging. ”He's a goodboi though.”

Sangbre nodded. She felt more than a little intimidated, she had to admit. She had just seen a woman so psychically powerful that her image still lingered in Sangbre's sight vanish in a cloud of purple energy, and was sitting in a room with three living legends.

”It was nice meeting you, Matron,” Daxin said. He turned and walked away, closing the door quietly behind him.

”You have to excuse our brother,” Dhruv said, shaking his head with a smile. ”He has never been one for social etiquette.”

”He has never been the life of the party,” Menhit smiled. She accepted a drink from Captain Manners then withdrew a pipe from her pocket, holding it up. ”Do you mind?”

Sangbre shook her head. She noticed that the pipe was hand carved plant shell. Menhit smiled, using a match to light her pipe and puffing on it a moment to get a good draw.

”He's uncomfortable around people,” Dhruv said.

Sangbre waved a hand. ”I was not offended. I understand that despite his fearsome reputation, he is still a Terran male, still a person to be more precise, with a person's quirks and foibles.”

Dhruv nodded. ”Trust us, in a fight, there's nobody you want at your back more than Daxin Freeborn, even if you're about to fight a supernova or a black hole, but in a social setting, well...” he let it hang.

Menhit laughed again. ”He would be perfectly happy if guests piled their coats on him and hid him from view.”

Sangbre giggled, ignoring Captain Manner's slightly outraged look.

”Bellona is not exactly social gatherings personified,” Menhit said, sipping at her drink before puffing at her pipe again. ”But then, she is more the Master of the Black Fleet than the Grave Bound Beauty.”

”Who named you?” Sangbre asked suddenly.

Dhruv heaved a sigh, looked at Menhit, then back at Sangbre once Menhit gave a slight nod. ”Our Digital Father named each of us as he touched us.”

”And you're eight thousand years old?” she asked.

”Not quite. It's the Eighth Millennium, but I'm a little over seventy-five hundred years old,” Dhruv said. ”It gets a little confusing for me.”

”I care little for the passage of time,” Menhit shrugged. ”I watch the seasons closely, from my hut, as I tend my crops and cattle, but I care little beyond that.”

Sangbre leaned forward slightly. ”Do you live around others?” she asked.

Menhit nodded. ”I live in a village, a small one, in Nubia. I have watched each generation grow and pass.”

Sangbre reached up with her catching hand and touched beneath her eye, her vestigial claws resting on the reddish fur. ”I have been touched, changed, and I worry that I can no longer live as I once did.”

Menhit shook her head, smiling sadly. ”No. The days of being a simple Matron are gone forever. Your eyes see more and less than the eyes of others. You will sought out by rulers, the wealthy, the powerful, the lost and forlorn. They will come, claiming to seek your wisdom, your advice.”

”They just want you tell them what they want to hear,” Dhruv sneered. ”Or to do something for them they feel is too difficult for them to do themselves.”

Menhit gave Dhruv a sly smile. ”Like have you work in a Black Box?”

”That's different,” Dhruv said, then shook his head and laughed. ”Touche.”

”So, living in this little house, isolating myself, is the best answer?” Sangbre asked. She heaved a sigh. ”My sisters, the Daughters of Chrome Baba Yaga, they sequester themselves.”

Dhruv nodded. ”I eventually did. Removed myself, waited, left behind my old life, remade myself again and again in the hopes that humanity would forget me and let me live a halfway normal life.”

”Like I have, retreating to my beloved village,” Menhit sighed. ”After the war, after our Digital Father's murder, I wanted only quiet and peace,” she puffed on her pipe. ”I walked the earth of my homeland, walked the paths of my ancestors, found ancient secret paths, until the world quieted again.”

Sangbre sighed.