15 Million years in the future.
***
LILLIAN
***
The rat was growing bold. It could taste death in the air. Warily, it approached her. Its wiry paw skittering against the stone and mud. It took a little test bite first, before it began to gnaw on the open wound on her leg. She managed to summon the strength to swat it away.
It didn't run far, it's beady little eyes watching her. It knew, given enough time, it would feast.
Lillian was trapped under the beams and stone of the family barn. Her younger brother was no longer talking, his breath ragged. Her own throat was hoarse from shouting for help that she knew wasn't coming.
Two days ago the invasion jump ship had flared into existant without warning. Its elongated bulbous form blocking out the sun. Spewing out its deadly drone payload. This had all happened over a thousand miles away, but due to her grandmothers curse Lillian had felt it all. Her early warning of events had given her enough time to get her family to safety before the striker-bombers reached them.
The rest of her family were in the bunker basement of the main house - where she and her brother should be. She looked at her brother with cold detachment. Lillian knew she must have feelings but she never felt anything herself, living in a state of cold quiet calm. But every so often she would make a stupid decision that she couldn't explain to herself... like today.
Once she had gotten everyone to the bunker basement, a quick head count had revealed that one of her younger brothers was missing. She knew she shouldn't have said anything. Just closed the hatch doors, keeping herself and her family safe. She had an idea where her brother might be - the barn. He was young and had grown attached to one of the cats which had made their barn its home. She should have left him. She had no desire to save him.
But she left the bunker and ran for the barn. She spotted him just in time hear the striker-bombers streak over head. She grabbed him tight and pulled him under the load bearing beams. Seconds later the bombs hit and the shock waves tore the barn to pieces.
After the first wave of attacks, the explosions and noise had calmed. The fight was not over, it had just moved on from their location. She had screamed and called to her family to come and help them, but she had gotten no answers. It was likely that the bombs had brought the house down on the bunker. Her family would be safe there, but it would take some time for them to dig themselves out - longer than the time she and her brother had left.
She had her grandmothers' curse, the warlords curse. Her parents and brothers didn't know. Nobody other than her grandmother knew. She had shown her how to hide it, to keep it locked down tight.
The rat approached again, it's eyes locked on hers. It was time. She didn't have long left and nor did her brother. She weighed her options, of which she had only two. The first was the most sensible option. It was to die here and now, to let brother bleed out and for herself to succumb to the cold of the night. The other option would only lead to pain. To take the option her grandmother had warned her never to take.
Lillian made her second stupid decision of the day. She opened the chain eye in her mind and sang a song of binary.
***
CASTOR
***
The job was simple enough; a dock that had received a shipment of archo-tech, and someone wanted it bad enough to hire Castor to take it.
His boots squelched on the damp forest floor when he shifted in his perch. He had eight infantry drones surrounding him, set to a watch command, that would alert him if anything larger than a rabbit came close.
He scanned the dock through his drones' sensors and found that it was lightly guarded by people. Most of them were regulars armed with spears, there to deal with a human problem - petty thieves and the like. But he was far from a human problem and his infantry drones would make short work of them.
He clocked a couple of taccies near the archo-tech which was almost certainly the escort. Taccies, unlike regular folk, had just enough of the gift to use printed personal tactical wear and weapons. But not enough to interface with a warlord and control drones. The two were armed with a standard kit, including the standard mass driver rifle.
The docks themselves were a smaller and shabby affair. Wooden barns for cargo and some half dilapidated docks where a number of small sailing vessals were moored.
His real concern were the drones. As far as he was aware there was only one knight on this tiny little moon. A fool and a drunk by all accounts, but not foolish enough to leave any archo-tech completely unguarded. The Knight would be sending a powerboat or a transport unit to pick up the archo-tech. He didn't think that the rotting docks themselves would even support an infantry drone, so they were certainly going to have a bugger of a time moving the cargo aboard.
He lifted himself from the damp bush and started to approach the docks, the drones around him following in silent unison. That always freaked people out when they meet any infantry drones. They are huge, near ten foot tall a piece, with long rectangular heads. But they walked silently. For the regular folk they are silent killing machines of black metal.
Castor found that they would never shut up. All their data was being pumped into his remote command unit nailed to the back of his neck. His warlord would normally filter through the noise, giving him only the most important information. But out in the open like this he would have to rely on his wet ware and it was giving him a headache.
Gunfire cracked in unison. He had given a mental signal and all his infantry drones fired at once. The human guards out in the open fell dead to the ground. But the majority of the bullets pierced the shell of the signal drone. It dropped to the floor. Castor knew that silencing the damned thing would only give him so much time. It's absence would be reported back to it's owning warlord within a minute. But a minute was all the time in the world.
Castor and his drones cut through the port like a hot knife through butter. His drones dispatching anyone and anything with cold precision. The two taccies put up a bit of a fight, damaging one of his drones, but Castor was an old hand at this sort of raid and quickly caught the two in a pincer move and swiftly despatched them.
He made sure to focus on any inactive drones he could find. After the 60 seconds passed there were two drones left which then woke up.
One was an infantry drone. It started blasting covering fire while it looked for safety. It scored a lucky hit on one of his drones but was quickly mown down as Castor commanded his drones to focus fire at it.
The other drone would be a problem - a full mech unit thirteen foot tall and at least two ton in weight.
Fuck.
As it came online it's armorments bristled. It would flatten his drones and probably most of the dock building with it.
Castor ducked behind the crates of archotech, praying the mech had a protection order placed on it which would stop him getting atomized.
The mech put a gun fist through one of his drones, it's feed winking out in his minds eye. He fully focused on another drone, taking over. His real body flopped on the floor, as he ran towards the mech as fast as his machine legs would take him. He had done this work before, in his last war. The mech swung a gun fist at him but he knew it was coming as drones are very predictable when unauthored. He ducked to the left and scrambled up the mech body. He pulled a grenade from its casing in his waist and shoved it fist first into the gap where the shoulder articulates. The mech moved it's shoulder around cutting off his arm, but it was too late, the mech exploded in his face. Sending him reeling back to his own body.
He took a moment, holding back the vomit. Coming back was hard every time. Its always so easy to adjust to a mechs senses but you feel so blind and deaf when you come back to the wetware of your own body.
The night was quiet again. The towns folk knew enough to not investigate gunshots. He imagined many of them would be quietly sneaking off to the nearby forest, because just like him, they knew a response would be coming.
***
JACKEL
***
In the endless black of the void Jackel floated aimlessly.
It was bored.
The galaxy was quiet. It always felt this way after a reckoning. The apes didn't get truly fun until they were navigating the stars, and it would probably be another few millennia before that. It had been a slow start to the cycle; they hadn't even hit an enlightenment yet.
Jackel drifted a lazy orbit around a deep red star, absorbing its light and heat. It's scanners idley picking up the background noise of a silent galaxy.
It came in faint at first... a song, a very old song. Interesting.
Jackel folded space in on itself and followed the wispy trail of the song. It lead it to the small world of Apash on the edge of the current Rindmoth Empire. It had been many a reckoning since it had last heard this song. It was curious how had it survived this long.
It took a closer look and found a female ape trapped under the rubble of a destroyed barn. He ran a scan on her. Reasonably well nourished and clothes made from practical and hardy materials. Not from a poor family but far from well off.
Her song had called every drone on the planet to her location. It seemed like there had been a small skrimish in the area but her song had hijacked the command of all the drones and put an end to the whole affair. The apes had gathered, familiar bonds, and they were digging the female out.
If Jackel had a face it would be grinning. In these trying and desperate times it had finally found what it was looking for...entertainment.
It always kept tabs on developments of local empires and their customs. It would have to get the female away from Rindmoth; due to its opressive structure she would be used as a breeding mare at best, her offspring adopted out to knight families. Shut away in a dark hole before she had the chance to do anything interesting.
Jackel scanned it's databases for potential characters and found a soldier without a war. Perfect. It sent a message to the soldiers' warlord, with a big carrot. It should be enough.
As it danced through the stardust, it searched through its lists for other potential players, because after all, every villain needs a hero.
***
NARA
***
Nara tugged the makeshift grapple hook to check its binding, and stepped down into the pit.
She had been doing this every night for months. She had grown familar with this wall; she knew every place to put a hand or a foot.
Her target lay at the bottom, in a shallow pit of water just deep enough to break the fall. She dared not touch that water as to break the surface tension would trigger the beast to wake and eviscerate her.
She found her normal spot, a small outcropping that she could perch with help from the rope. She settled in and like every night before she opened her minds eye and observed the sleeping beast.
As before, its watchdog subsystem greeted her. It pawed it's way over to her mind and mirrored her every step. If she got too close it growled at her; a warning that if she pushed too far she knew it would shread her mind to tatters.
She looked at the sleeping beast from as close as she dared. In the pool it's bulbous head was sitting on it's mass of thirty two black metal tentacles. In her minds eye it was a volume of wispy black smoke in a white room.
She sang to it every night. At first she had tried all of the songs her masters had taught her - the pious hymms known to speak to the angels. None had even caused a stir in the black beast. She had then tried other songs from different priests of different gods, mournful songs, songs of anger, songs of joy. She had even translated tavern ditties into binary and sang them to the beast in the hope of... anything.
But there was nothing, never any response, and her frustation with the beast, and her life, grew.
The watch dog sat between her and the black beast observing her impassively. She spat a song she had learnt at a tavern. The translation to binary lacked the orginals' charm, but the rude intent was still clear.
"You are certainly persistant, I will give you that," the watchdog said. Her minds eye shutdown and she immediately threw up.
What the fuck was that?!
She gathered her thoughts while hanging on the wall. The ropes had grown painful and her body was cramping on the perch. But in all the months of coming here this was a first. She looked to the top of the pit. There was no sunlight coming from the high slatted windows. She still had time. She wiped away the vomit as best she could from her clothing.
She took a deep breath and reopened her minds eye. The dog remained in its position, observing her.
"You spoke?" she asked it.
"Yes"
"Why now?"
"Because I believe that you will neither give up or fully commit. And if you are going to keep disturbing my sleep without giving me a meal to eat, you might as well entertain me."
Nara was stunned. She had had conversations with warload subsystems before and most spoke only in terms of pray. She had only once had the honor to talk directly to a warlord itself. She had found the experience to be overwhelming.
She had never know a subsystem to be so direct. Infact, she had never heard of a watchdog subsystem talking at all.
"Who are you?" it asked her.
"I am Nara, sixty third daughter to the great Khann."
"I have been asleep for a very long time, you will need to provide more context than that."
"The Khan is the ruler of the Khannite.. "
"I do not care for a history lesson of whatever podunk human organation that happens to exist now. Tell me about yourself."
Nara was taken aback. No one in her life had ever talked about the Khannite that way before. "I am just Nara. My mother was one of the Khanns warbrides. I never knew her. She maybe still alive in the tower of lilies. Outside of being one of many Khanns daughters there is nothing special about me."
"But you are here? Why?"
"Because there is nothing special about me
I can communion with warlords, but so can nearly all of my siblings. If I am lucky I might find a position in the army as a knight errent, or in the medical core. If I am unlucky I will be married off to some merchant. My 'value' is limited."
"So you are here to claim the black beast of the pit. So that your father actually notices you? You should marry a merchant, nothing good ever comes from being noticed."
"I would not give a slaves shit to be noticed by the Khann. I just want to pilot a warlord."
"You want to slaughter?"
"No"
"Power?"
"No"
"Prestige?"
"I heard a song." She decided to tell the dog a story that she had never spoken before.
"When I was younger I went out horse back riding with my siblings. The Khann arranges these runs - he likes to see his childern compete for his attention. I pushed too hard and before I knew it I was near the front of the herd and the childern of his first wife noticed me. I should have been more careful. I was pushed from my horse and trampled by the herd. I should have died there, but the children of the second wife noticed my fall. And picked me up to embarrass the first wife's childern in front of the Khann for their sloppy horsemanship. The Khann was annoyed with the bickering and the fact that the herd had been stopped."
My body was straining on the wall. The ropes burning around my waist.
"You may step into the water. I will not eat you... while you tell your story..."
I returned to my body and lowered myself down into the water. It came up to a little below my waist. My muscles were thankful. I reopened my minds eye to talk to the dog again.
"I was barely alive at that point. I might have already been dead. My skull had been cracked and my ribcage shattered. But the Khann in his hurry to get the herd moving again put me in the cockpit of his warlord, the Saint. It healed me, and I heard its song as it did so. I need to hear that song again."
"That is not the song the black beast sings little one."
"But do you sing?"
"Yes."
"What song do you sing?"
"A far far older song, from a god forgotten."
***
Authors note - none of these people are speaking english, but im using words that will draw an understanding from the reader. The Khann isn't really called the Khann, but you get the idea.