Ugh. If I’d thought MY new quarters were amazing, the XO’s were staggering. It was less an office and more a combination of a strategic command center and a luxurious salon. One wall was a single, giant tactical display showing the drydock and the local system traffic.
Another was a floor-to-ceiling bookshelf filled with real, paper books. The desk was a slab of polished obsidian. It made me wonder what the CO’s quarters looked like, but even warrant officers have limits… she’d see me when she was ready for me, and not a moment sooner.
For a Taer, Commander Jennifer Taera was remarkably cute, in that weird, androgynous way they had. Taers had been designed to be perfect immortals, with all extravagances like sex, reproduction, dropped alleles, and even body hair removed from their genes before they were born. A perfect, blank, ageless slate.
Commander Taera had clearly chosen to identify, at least socially, as female. She had a smart, attractive haircut that was likely implanted or grown via some advanced treatment, and she looked and behaved remarkably female. She was so good at it, in fact, that I suspected she’d been practicing the role since before the Empire fell… or possibly even before it was founded in the first place. Her movements were graceful, her posture poised.
“Hello, Mister Wasserman! Or should I call you Mister Greene?” she asked, her voice a pleasant, melodic alto.
I grumbled a little, the pain making me even more curt than usual. I had changed my name over twenty years before in an attempt to shield my family and acquaintances from the fallout of being connected to me, an attempt that had been largely successful. It did not pay to be a known asset of an incorruptible, unstoppable force of justice like a paladin.
It didn’t surprise me too much that she knew my identity, though. Like I said, she had her finger in a lot of pies… immortality gave you a lot of time to catch up on history and intelligence. “Wasserman is fine, please.”
She smiled, very friendly, but I knew damned well that this was not the heart of her power. She was playing a role here, and I didn’t know what it was… Then again, I’d never heard of a Paladin getting a quest to deal with her, so it was unlikely that she was a powerful force of corruption. She was just… very, very old and very, very well-informed.
“Now that we have both frightened the scrot out of each other,” she said, her smile turning wry, “me by knowing your real name, and you simply by being what you are, welcome to the Crow. I assume you are not simply slumming it among us uneducated pirates in order to expand your employment horizons?”
I shook my head, a wave of fatigue washing over me. “Not really in the mood for verbal gymnastics today, sweetie, I’m having a bad hair day. A bad hair decade.” I gestured vaguely at my own scarred face. “I am sure you know exactly why I am here, probably better than I do. Instead of spending an hour intimidating me with every fact you could dig up about me, from the name of the first girl I had sex with to listing all my traits in reverse order, what do we do? Let’s skip to the end.”
Her lips thinned a little, a flash of something—annoyance? respect?—in her ageless eyes, and then she smiled again. “While I do love the game, I understand pain. I truly do. And yes, she can fix it. And a lot of other problems besides. I am a little sad, however, that you were more unobservant than I expected, although that should be expected with what you are going through.”
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She leaned forward, and her demeanor shifted. The playful intelligence operative vanished, replaced by something else. Something older. “Believe it or not, I am incredibly glad to have you aboard. I got a quest, you see. A mind-blowing, world-changing quest that I have sought for my entire, very, very long life.” She steepled her fingers. “Please tell me, and don’t beat around the bush, did you get a quest involving Reynard, too?”
She sounded almost a little desperate, but as with anything Taer, it was almost certainly artifice. Very, very good artifice, though. So while I wouldn’t bother with a smug smile, I could… probably… engage her game instinct for a moment. Never play poker with a Taer. “You show me yours and I’ll show you mine?”
She laughed brightly, a sound that seemed genuinely surprised and delighted! “Did you know, in my entire life, that is actually the first time anyone has actually said that to me? No one ever wants to see mine, since there’s nothing to see.” Her smile was razor-sharp. “Do I have your word that it’s a deal? System contract?”
I nodded, feeling the gravity of the moment settle around us. “System contract. Share your quest, entirely, no hidden parts or redactions.”
Suddenly, my UI flashed, the familiar blue text searing itself into my vision.
System contract acknowledged. Share the quest, ‘Help Roisin Gabrielle Reynard’, acknowledge?
Yes/No
I tapped on the ‘yes’ and suddenly got a flash of system-encrypted data, a torrent of information that slammed into my consciousness.
Quest: Help Roisin Gabrielle Reynard.
Provider: Experimental genetic upgrade, project Netzach, subject 3001 code named ‘Taer 2’
Objective: Ensure subject Reynard comes safely into her power without being enslaved, murdered, or forced to bond for unethical or political power.
Benchmark 1: Recover Gabrielle’s protector, Divine Paladin Kushiel, David Kushiel Greene (Charlie David Wasserman) and prevent his deviation and loss of Paladin status.
→ Reward: Spiritual Root and true name
Benchmark 2: Assist Kushiel in discovering celestial heart in rift 121.630.477
→ Reward: Form a basic dantian
Benchmark 3: Assist Kushiel and Gabrielle to defeat Chaos Lord Baalanor
→ Reward: cultivation manual, ‘forming elementary meridians’
Final Rewards: A pair of powerful allies. Advancement to tin tier cultivation.
Failure: Loss of human presence in galactic sector 18 (Southwest spiral arm) Universe 7.
Note: This quest cannot be shared. Rewards incompatible with basic human physiology.
I read it twice. The sheer scale of it was… humbling. And terrifying. My pain, my struggle, it was just one small moving part in a cosmic engine. She wasn't just offering me a chance at repair; she was offering me a purpose that dwarfed my own suffering. And the cost of failure was unthinkable. I let out a long, slow sigh, the weight of the words settling into my bones, momentarily eclipsing the physical agony.
I looked back at the immortal being masquerading as a ship’s executive officer. Her expression was unreadable, but there was a faint glimmer of that earlier desperation in her eyes. She had given me her truth. Her vulnerability. However artifice it might be, the system contract was not.
“Well,” I sighed, the sound ragged. “It looks like I got the carrot, and you got the stick.”