The moment he opened his eyes, the words came back to him—his own words, but not his own. The logs. The face on the screen. The man who had looked like him, who had been him, yet felt like an entirely different person.
“We used to say we were fighting for the people. For a better future. But the thing is, the people never asked us to.”
Marcus let out a slow breath and stared at the metallic ceiling of his bed chambers, his eyes tracing the grooves in the reinforced bomb-proof plating. The low thrum of power conduits and the distant sound of the city skyline usually helped him sleep, but tonight they left him feeling adrift.
He turned his head, and his gaze landed on the small data box sat on the small desk beside the bed—that thing would never leave his sight for long. For a long moment, he just stared at it.
That man. Me.
Yet how could it be him? That man had believed in something, this revolution. He fought on Vespera, he bled for some cause, whether real or imagined. He looked at the world around him and thought, I can change this.
But the idea of fighting for something other than himself, something abstract, seemed so alien to Marcus. What had I been before I saw Neptura? A sleazy salesman. A grifter. Selling people lies dressed as dreams. Promising desperate men and women that they could be rich if they only handed him a few thousand pounds.
That Marcus, the one who woke from cryosleep fifteen years ago, did not fight for revolutions or ‘the people.’ He never carried a gun, never exerted his mind or body for something greater than himself. Because deep down, he never realised there was anything greater than himself.
The Marcus in those logs would have probably hated him. That thought floated uneasily in his mind.
He sat himself upright on the edge of the bed, rubbing a hand down his face. I’m being ridiculous, that man is dead. He had to die so the Grand Archon could be born.
He was the one who had survived. He was the one who had taken Neptura to the stars, out of the void, shaped its people, built its fleets, and guided its destiny. He was the one who had transformed a slumbering army into an interstellar power.
Yet why do I feel lesser than this dead idealist?
Why did it feel like the man from the logs had more claim to this empire than he did?
Marcus sighed, pushing himself off the bed. The cold floor against his bare feet grounded him.
Enough was enough, he decided. He had work to do.
Still, as he reached for his uniform, his eyes drifted back to the data box. For the first time in fifteen years, Marcus Dain wasn’t sure who he really was.
#
When he got back into the GCI, he saw that his fleet now boasted fourteen Corvettes due to the increased investment in military production. Twice the size of the fleet that first engaged the star elves some years ago, and he planned to build many more to ensure there would never be a stalemate or lost engagement again.
His earlier investments into his economy, along with the new resources provided by the first colony world, was now bearing fruit too.
His resources stood at:
- Power Units: 187 +27 (Vesperan Standard Monthly Gain)
- Raw Materials: 570 +66
- Food: 881 +11
- Heavy Compounds: 46 +17
- Consumer Goods: 551 +23
- Research Points: +73
- Cohesion: +267
There were a few orders of business for the day. First, he had new technologies to research as the two previous projects had been recently completed. The first research slot presented him three options, being:
Biome Regulation Protocols - Which gave a boost to Food production from farming jobs by +20%, and Food from Orbital Command Center building slots by +10%.
Imperial Cohesion Doctrine - Which gave Neptura a small boost in Cohesion, atop a free Cohesion boost of +5% per standard month.
Tactical Biodegradation - Which would allow Marcus to clear certain hazardous zones on his planets, in turn freeing up construction for more productive zones.
The first option was not important as he already had a large Food stockpile and was producing it in surplus, anyway. The other two he was more conflicted on. Tactical Biodegradation would allow further investment in the economy by enabling him to build more zones on existing planets, but as the colony world already had plenty of space for new zones, this too was already looking like it was not a huge priority in the short term. The Cohesion boost, on the other hand, was a very attractive prospect as investment in this now would allow him to speed up Neptua’s Cohesion to rush along to further levels of advanced civilization. So with that in mind, Marcus clicked onto the Imperial Cohesion Doctrine and began research on that.
The other technology that had just been completed was a useful one—Strategic Power Allocation—which allowed for the construction of Power Distribution Hubs. This building would provide specific energy sector jobs for directly producing Power Units. He didn’t need to build one right now, but Marcus knew with how frequently the economy fluctuated, having such a building in his back pocket would prove useful by making him less reliant on continuous expansion into new star systems.
The two options the GCI presented for research after this were:
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
Annihilation Core Reactors - Which gave his corvettes fusion reactors, allowing them to travel faster.
Hyperconductor Grid Optimization - Which boosted Power Unit production from jobs by +20%.
Whilst Marcus did want to invest in the military, and having faster ships would improve that, he actually preferred the option of having a 20% boost to his Power Unit production. He judged that he’d rather have a stronger economy with slightly slower ships for now than a weaker economy with faster ships. His interstellar realm was not so vast that it warranted maximum speed for his still relatively small fleet, so he opted for the Hyperconductor Grid Optimization. With more Power Units, I can also buy more ships to crush my enemies with. Easy.
After that, using his big stockpile of Raw Materials, and noticing that the completion of an urban zone had given another slot to build on Neptura, Marcus commissioned the construction of an Industrial Forge Complex to further increase his Heavy Compounds production, which is exactly what he needed for more ships to shore his ever expanding navy. Since he had a healthy surplus of Raw Materials now coming in, it was safe to funnel more of that straight to Heavy Compounds production anyway, which had been lagging behind everything else.
Checks and balances, he thought.
As the months ticked by, he also ordered the recruitment of two new clone armies to be stationed into orbit.
Then, Athira’s voice bloomed to life from the virtual display. “Your excellency, Claric requests your presence once again. A breakthrough at the quantum clone vat has been made.” The AI did not comment further, and already Marcus felt a sense of unease tapping into his mind.
The last ‘breakthrough’ or ‘discovery’ had thrown Marcus’s entire existence and memory into question.
“Is it urgent?” Marcus said.
“Yes.”
He sighed, or made a sound resembling a sigh in this cybernetic realm, and unplugged himself from the neural interface. He did not rise from his chair immediately; instead he sat in the dark command room for a moment, listening to the low chatter of the officers at their terminals, letting the dull beeps and clicks blot out his thoughts.
He rubbed his face and let out a slow breath. Let’s see what he has to say now, then.
The skyhawk took him to the quantum clone vat with all haste, and he made the dreadful journey from the landing pad to the main control room only accompanied by his squadron of clone honour guards. He did not want Claric to guide him this time. He found nowadays that everytime he spoke with the scientist, it only made him more depressed. Neverthless, he was curious to hear what his most loyal confidant had to say.
The cold blue light of the vat chambers flickered across Marcus’s face as he descended into the depths of the facility once more. A hollow sort of silence always seemed to carry over this place as though the air had been stripped of anything human.
Claric stood at the center of a holographic display in the control room, his fingers tapping against a console. The image displayed now was thankfully not one of a human or the Forerunners, which would have likely carried more troubling information for Marcus, but instead a spinning strand of DNA. Tapestries of numbers and codes surrounded it, which he didn’t even bother trying to understand.
Nor did he bother with the pleasantries this time. “You summoned me, Claric. What is it?”
The scientist didn’t look up at first, still scanning the data before him. “It’s something quite unexpected.” He flicked his wrist, and the genetic structure expanded before them, twisting into a three-dimensional representation of the quantum bio code embedded in the vats.
“We’ve found another cipher in the sequence,” Claric said, his voice calm. “Something hidden deep in the genetic structure of our clones. We almost missed it, buried under layers of encoded redundancies.”
Marcus folded his arms, looking at the DNA structure as though trying to put on a face that said he knew what it meant. “A cipher of what?”
Claric turned to him now. “For fertility.”
His words settled in the air between them for a moment, but Marcus’s eyes widened. “What?”
“Our genetic structure still retains the capacity for fertility, like original, natural born humans, but every attempt to reactivate those sequences has failed.” He turned back to the display. “Obviously the Forerunners, or some amongst them, intentionally removed our ability to reproduce independently.”
“Well, I was told it was to make you lot better soldiers, no?” Marcus said.
“That was just a theory, yes, and the accepted one.” Claric stepped forward, scanning the shifting code as though it might reveal some hidden answer.
“Do you think this cipher could bring it back?” Marcus glanced towards him. “You could reverse it?”
It had all made sense to him, anyway. Of course they were bred as an army, so why make them reproduce? It would solve their capped population issue if they could reverse it, though, but might that change the clones in other unintended ways, too? They had been designed as a docile and obedient force, insofar as Marcus had gathered, nothing more and nothing less.
“Possibly.” Claric exhaled, shaking his head. “More time and research is required. This is merely a discovery, not a solution, but we are learning more every day. And faster, too. But, Grand Archon, if we do restore it, this could change everything.”
Marcus’s jaw tightened. Yes, that is what I fear.
“We would no longer be just an army,” Claric continued, “but an actual civilization. A people. The continuation of humanity.”
Another silence. Marcus let his gaze drift over the display again, his fingers tapping idly against his arm. I have no intention of allowing that. This is my army, and they exist to serve me.
But for now, beginning to fear the accumulating number of secrets this scientist now possessed, Marcus only nodded. “Keep digging, if you must. Just do it quietly, will you? We can’t have this sort of stuff leaking just yet.”
“Quietly, your excellency?”
“I just want to know more before we decide anything. Tell that to everyone you have researching this. They are all to keep their mouths shut. That’s an order.” Marcus turned, heading toward the exit. “If that is all…”
Just as Marcus reached the door, Claric spoke again.
“There is one other thing, excellency, if I may,” he said.
Marcus stopped. “If it’s going to depress me, make it quick.”
Claric chuckled, adjusting the display, shifting the clone genome to something else. A biological profile, foreign in its structure yet eerily similar.
“The Xaelith,” he said. “As you have instructed, we’ve been studying their cellular degradation. As their species is fungoid in nature, we already know they don’t decay the same way as we do. If our research is accurate, then we may have discovered biological mechanisms that extend their lifespans significantly.
Marcus felt a flutter in his chest. Something he hadn’t felt in years. Hope. He had almost lost any hope of being able to extend his life at all, considering he was fast on his way to fifty years old.
“Any more?” he asked.
“I’ll spare you the details, but each life form in one body is not exactly one life form as we know it; but rather, billions upon billions of cultures acting as a single collective. It is possible that even the planet of Sarrith 4 itself connects them to one another. Our research is still early, but I think with the right approach we can… extract… something useful. For our project, as you call it.”
He could almost jump with joy, though he didn’t need to hear more. “Then do it.” And he left without another word.