Chapter 2

The funny thing about space – beyond the asphyxiation and eyeball exploding and radiation – was how it took everything totally logical and threw it on its head. Most of my life was spent picturing space battles as being either sea battles or air battles, just with a prettier backdrop and force fields. Nope! Nada! Wrong!

Also, technically, so was the eyeball exploding thing. The internal pressure of a human body was nowhere near high enough to get even soft tissue to do more than bruise when your blood started to burst out of your capillaries.

For example, if you wanted to go down while in orbit, you actually to go backwards. To go upwards, you had to go forward. It was easier to go left when you were five million kilometers away from a planet than when you were only one million kilometers away – and left was actually a meaningless concept, so really, I was completely lost for most of basic training when it came to orbital dynamics. Even with a fancy computer that did all the hard math for me, I still spent most of the first five minutes of my first mission watching Magnum fiddle with the controls on the Angel Grove and tried to just ... grasp what the ever loving fuck was going on.

We were currently in orbit around Beta-3, the third planet in orbit around the star Betelgeuse, getting prepped to drop from orbit to the surface. But, like all of humanity's efforts in space, our goal was hampered by three real big problems.

1) Human spaceships sucked

2) Doyen could notice psychic powers

3) The only way to land to without a spaceship was to use psychic powers

Which led back to 1 and us burning to death in a horrible fireball. The Angel Grove had been built on the sly using excess material and funds from the various military budgets of NATO nations and former Warsaw Pact countries. And bits of Africa and Brazil. It had not been designed by NASA or Space-X or any of the other space agencies in the world, because NASA literally had to tell everyone about whatever the fuck it was doing. It couldn't not do it without breaking a bunch of laws. Also, NASA was mostly filled with non-psychic nerds, who couldn't be told about the Doyen anyway.

So when I say the Angel Grove is the most slap dash, kak hande, bullshit dumb spaceship in the history of the universe, I freaking mean it. I'd have preferred to be on the Apollo missions, and those were literally fifty years out of fucking date and had a computer less powerful than my freaking iPhone. Basically, it was two large tanks of hydrogen and one smaller tank of oxygen, with a rocket mixer at the butt that could fire up and kick us forward. That provided enough thrust to shift the hundreds of tons of guns, ammo and armor that the Lance required to deploy effectively ... and not much else.

There were a few hundred little RCS – Reaction Control Systems – mounted along each axis of the ship, which let us turn around like a really really fat man sitting on a stool pushing himself with one of those hand held fans. And, finally, as an afterthought, there was a huge mess of webbing and nets that held the aforementioned guns, ammo and armor, and then a teeny tiny little life supporting cockpit that was basically a room with a connection to all the control tech, a bunch of seats, and six highly trained psychic teenage nudist super-soldiers.

Opal Midnight chose this moment crossed her arms underneath her rather perfect breasts, demonstrating just why the service was a true delight and torturous agony for any cishet male aged fourteen to the grave. Her breasts were the largest of the Lance, and her rich, dark skin was accented by the even darker tips of her nipples. Even a tiny motion set off delicious jiggling through her breasts that came to a head (so to speak) with those nipples, practically begging people to suckle to them.

My girlfriend, Princess Tzali, who was sitting to my left, glared at me.

I looked at the ceiling and tried very hard to become asexual, a task I had never managed to do. I figured it'd be just as hard for an asexual to become yes-sexual, but at least I was trying for the universally good cause of not pissing off my girlfriend, as opposed to the universally bullshit cause of heteronorminatiy. Which I was pretty sure wasn't a word, also, I was reaching.

The ship shuddered and Magnum, our Lance's leader, grunted. "All right, we're in a stable-ish orbit. We won't start de-orbiting for at least four days..." he pushed himself smoothly out of the control nook in the "roof" of the room. I mean, I called it a roof, but we're in micro-gravity, so it could have been the floor. But it was opposite from all the chairs, so roof seemed like a good enough term.

Ali (my shortened nickname for Tzali because I was being paid by the nerdy reference, not by the syllable) nodded and started to push herself away from the chair. She, like most newbies in micro-gravity, overreached. Her body sailed forward and bumped against Magnum. Our Lance leader and her mashed together and in the naturally sensual way that micro-gravity encouraged, her breasts pressed to his chest and his cock slapped against her thigh. Ali squeaked and tried to push herself away, and ended up floating upwards and slewing around so that she basically flashed the entire group her astoundingly delicious Doyen pussy.

I was really glad that I was pretty dark skinned myself, or else I would be really red right now.

As it was, Magnum was doing his best to keep up his stoic Chinese attitude as he gently put his hand on my girlfriend's knee (the least sexual part of her he could touch, which considering Ali's intense inherent eroticism, was still a 4.89 on the Douglass-Ravenwood Eroticism Index) and pushed her away. Ali grabbed onto the upper left corner of the room and stopped her slew as Magnum coughed and said: "Here's the plan. We need to get our gear out of the net and starting down towards the planet. We'll be dropping as far from settled lands as possible. Shooting stars happen, but not a bunch at the same time. So, lets get to it."

Opal and her counterpart, Ebony, wriggled out of their chairs. Since they were old hands at this whole 'being in space' thing, they did so without mashing themselves against Magnum, even if Opal might have wanted to.

Quick, pick a word that might describe doing stuff in space!

Exciting?

Dangerous?

Adventureish?

Wrong, super right, wrong, but the best word is and always will be utterly fucking tedious. We were in orbit around a Doyen planet. And while Doyen were sparse on the ground compared to their "mindless" (read, non-psychic) chattel, serfs and slaves, that didn't matter. If one of them picked up an unusual amount of telekinetic energy in the skies above their heads, they would leap to their utterly logical conclusion of assuming that it was either other Doyen here to raid (because, despite being called the Doyen Empire, it was really more like the Inner Sphere during the pre-Clan invasion, if you know what I mean. If you don't know what I mean, think Europe during the post-Roman collapse) or us pesky humans.

Either way, they'd come up swinging and the Angel Grove was no X-wing. Or Starfury. Or Viper. Or literally anything capable of fighting or taking a hit.

So, Opal squished herself into the airlock, as she was the one who'd take the most time getting suited up, and the rest of us started to go through a checklist of what we'd do. The Angel Grove launched with six mechanical counterpressure suits that someone in PsiCom had literally stolen from NASA. It had even been reported as a theft. Once we got em, we'd started producing new ones, using Army and Navy and Air Force engineers to try and make them better. The end result was better than the bulky suits that you might have seen in space movies, but still not nearly as nice as, say, any space suit from a TV show.

Basically, remember the whole 'blood boiling' thing I had mentioned one thousand three hundred and fifty five words before? That's because space, as you may have heard, was a vacuum. Vacuum was bad, even if it wasn't eyeballs exploding bad. Old space suits fixed this by just pressurizing the inside of the suit with air. Now, if you've ever moved around in a bulky jacket, you know just how hard it can be to be properly flexible while swathed in thick cloth. Well, imagine if instead of thick cloth, you were swathed in material tough enough to retain shape while also being filled with pressurized air. Yeah, that's why moving and operating things in space suits took about fifty million years longer than it fucking should have.

MPCs got around this issue by, well, replacing air pressure with just skintight material pressing against the skin. They were easier to move in, sexier, and more comfortable. The downside was that putting them on took even longer than putting on a regular space suit, because fuck you, that's why. It was like struggling into one of those wet-suits divers wore, while also adjusting tiny mechanical clamps worked into the fabric to ensure it was tight enough to provide pressure but not so tight it started to crimp off blood vessals. All while crammed into a spare airlock in a tiny hab module on a massive flying bomb in micro-gravity while being aware that a single spark of psychic energy could get everyone killed.

And since Opal Midnight was our curviest girl, she had the hardest time working the MCP up around this delicious Indian hips and chomp-able Indian ass and over those perfect Indian breasts. So, while she did her wriggle and jiggle in the air-lock, the rest of us ... as I mentioned...

Did checklists.

Magnum Caliber passed out the clip boards. The rest of the Lance – me (Pirate Mask, yes, I was assigned this call sign, I didn't chose it, or else I'd have grabbed the obvious Roll Fizzlebeef), Ebony Noon, Tycho Bright, and Ali – all grabbed up a clip board. Each one had a series of instructions on them. I was going to be handling the red net's left corner. Step 1: Crawl along the edge of the ship to get to Step 2: Unfasten screw A-2. My eyes started to glaze over here, but I forced myself to pay attention.

Even simple jobs could get real gnarly without gravity, air, light or sound.

Which made sense, now that I put it like that.

Once Opal had finally crammed her delicious squish into her MCP, she vacated the airlock and let Ali start to change. This gave me a chance to check out what an MCP did to a girl's body. And, uh, holy shit. The fabric clung like a layer of fucking paint. I could see the soft folds of her pussy and the cleft of her ass. I could see her nipples. Her breasts were shelved and held up by the form fitting pressure suit, and they were kept in a kind of jiggle-free perkiness that totally worked for me. I shook my head, once more feeling quite ashamed as Opal grinned at me.

"Can't wait to see you fit into one of these things," she said. Then, scowling. "I hate what it does to the talent, though..."

That brought me up short. I had been psychic for only a few weeks. In that time, I had just gotten used to being able to use telekinesis and telepathy and biokinesis and all my other powers. But wearing an MCP will do the exact same thing that wearing any kind of clothes did to a human talent: Screw it eight ways from Sunday. I gulped, slightly.

After Ali got her butt dressed – and holy shit, she looked amazing in an MCP. The pale gray fabric clung to her like Opal, accentuating everything awesome about her body, but retaining the alien exoticness that made her features so utterly compelling – I got to wriggle into my MCP. Once I had gotten that indignity out of the way, Tycho and Magnum and Ebony all went in to get their butts changed. Ebony, despite being just as cushy as Opal, went last. This wasn't because Ebony was some kind of amazing quick change artist. Nah.

It was mostly so each of us would have a nearly equal amount of time with the check lists.

Again, remember what I said about tedious?

Finally, we got our butts into space.

And ... just like the first time ... space took my breath away. And no, that wasn't some cute way to say I had forgotten to connect the air to my helmet (which was the only part of an MCP that resembled the old space suits, since you didn't need to have to have perfect manual dexterity with your lips to manipulate space components, we weren't pastel colored ponies.) No, this was just standard awe at the vastness and majesty of the universe. It was times like this where I almost wished that I believed.

Like ... in a god.

My grandparents were Muslim, but they had both died before I was old enough to remember them. Car crash, actually. Mom had been a Pakistani girl who had been going to Berkeley in the 1990s, and she had never exactly religious. Dad, meanwhile, had been going through his 'I'm a bitter edge-lord Atheist' phase. They had gotten together, gotten radical, then aged out of it by 2010. So for the first ten years of my life, I had actually gotten to see Dad record anti-Muslim youtube videos, and jeeze, that's a surreal as fuck thing to see from the other end of the camera.

Me?

I tried to just have faith in people.

But right now...

Right now the universe felt too big and too beautiful to just be people. I crawled along the skin of our tiny tinfoil shitship and looked outwards at Betelgeuse and Beta-3 and just marveled at it.

Okay, you hear "Beta-3" and you think, "Oh, it's the third planet!"

So you think that Betelgeuse would look like SOL, our cheerful middle of the road yellow dwarf star. Well, uh, no? Betelgeuse, if it had been swapped with our sun, would have had its equator brushing up against Jupiter. Yeah, holy fuck. More than that, though, Betelgeuse was a pulsating star. It had moved from brighter to dimmer over its observed history multiple times – and up close, that looked astounding. Imagine a huge red fist, throbbing and immense, and now imagine it was surrounded by a massive cloud of glittering rubies. That cloud shimmered and refracted, swirling and pulsating as it moved in slow, stately patterns. I could actually see faint impressions of magnetic pressure rippling through the haze of matter bleeding off the star.

That shroud's movement and orbit around the star was what had produced the variable light levels from Earth.

Below us, though, was another beauty. Beta-3 was a vast curtain of searing blood red clouds, shimmering with the reflected light of the star, and between the gaps in the clouds, I could see wine-purple oceans and vast continents covered with blackness. Like, literal blackness. Between the black, I could see more familiar earthen colors of browns and even golds. I shook my head slowly. If I had see this planet in a video game (cough, cough, No Man's Sky), it'd have looked ugly. Because humans had never seen a natural world with natural colors produced under an alien star.

Seeing it in this context, with these eyes?

It was alien.

It was lovely.

It was part of this immense universe and I felt positively thrilled to the bone. My mind reached desperately for some way to hang this feeling on something more than just gaping awe. But then the moment passed, the checklist reasserted itself, and I had to get my MCP-clad butt moving again. So, I could bore you with the play by play of us moving through every single step. But since nothing went wrong and, after two hours, we did finally get the fucking nets taken off, stowed away, and the armor and guns and ammo away from the ship, I think we can just call this a mission accomplished and move on.

Each supply unit was contained in a large package of sturdy ablative armor that served as a heat shield. Once the shield burned off, the unit would open up several immense parachutes to slow the descent. Which was another reason why we were going to wait until we were in a different hemisphere from civilization before we dropped. But the actual dropping wasn't hard. Each supply unit also came with a small rocket thruster. We just had to attach, then fire them off at the exact right time while also not blowing ourselves up. Easy as pie.

"All right, that's package six prepped and ready," Magnum said. "Everyone look away."

"Oh, no, I like being blinded, so..."

"Quiet, Tycho."

A quiet giggle came from Opal while Ali scoffed. "I don't understand why you humans are so enamored of dead things. Rockets, thrusters, Em Cee Pees."

"Well, to be fair," I said, grinning as I pushed myself over to look her in the face. Her eyes showed what her voice didn't: Ali was riding along the edge of utter panic. She had never been in a 'dead thing' like this save for training. I wondered how much it was fucking up her her talent. The Doyen were natural psychics, as opposed to us humans. They didn't need to get dunked in a high tech gizmo to awaken their talents. But even if her talents were only dampened and not destroyed, it still had to be like being blindfolded, gagged and forced to wear oven mitts while also juggling live chainsaws.

I reached out and cupped her helmet with my gloved hand.

Ali smiled at me.

And Magnum said: "Three. Two. One."

Foosh.

The rockets were silent in space. But I could still imagine it.

The streaks the units made as they hit the atmosphere were like lines of fire.

"All right," I said. " ... how do we get down?"

There was a longish silence.

"That's where, uh, things get awkward." Magnum sounded like he was rubbing the back of his neck. "Remember the gold bikini?"

"I was kidding!" Opal exclaimed.

A conversation much like this had to have occurred in the smallish village of mindless serfs.

Scene: A pair of dirty farmers grubbing at the ground with stone hoes and wooden stakes. Farmer 1 turns to Farmer 2.

Farmer 1: "Say, did you notice the huge fireballs yesterday?"

Farmer 2: "Yes."

Farmer 1: "Think we should be worried?"

Farmer 2: "Nah."

Cue the arrival of us. And farmer 1 could be heard, faintly, muttering: "By the god's ballsack, Ned, you're wrong about these things every fucking time."

You may be picturing a pastoral English village. And you'd be half right. Move the scene about three thousand miles eastward into the steppes of Russia, turn every plant pure black, paint the ground a pinkish red, and replace the English peasants with English peasants as played by a bunch of sexed up skittles, and regress the tech level from 16th century to a curious mixture of the neolithic and early modern, and you've got a pretty good image. And yes, I did say sexed up skittles. Not just because the farmers were of every color under the rainbow, but they were also covered with hardened carapace that looked faintly bug-like, exposing rubbery flesh between armored plates. Their bellies and thighs were mostly exposed, giving the men chances to show off their rocking abs and the women to show off their astounding titties.

Their eyes were pure black, and their mouths were small and placed underneath non-existent noses. Instead of nostrils, they had long whiskers, which were all twitching upwards at our arrival. And now, our arrival was pretty dang impressive.

At the front was Princess Tzali. Not Ali, you may ask. No, no, no. She had dressed herself in a reasonable facsimile of her old battle armor, which made her look like a walking geode made of spikes and lens flares. Her face was concealed behind hardened crystal plates and her fingers were clad in intricate, articulated gauntlets. Don't ask me how PsiCom had managed to recover enough of her armor (which I had kinda accidentally shattered when we first met) for her to rebuild it. But the end result was intimidating as fuck. And behind her came us.

First, Opal and Ebony and Tycho. Each of them was dressed in a no shit gold bikini with tassels and bits of silk to cover their lady bits. They had each gotten five hours of marching through a jungle to get over the discomfort of having their psychic powers stripped down to nearly nothing, and were now dealing with the ... other indignities. And in them, we could see the three reactions to wearing a gold bikini. Opal was having fun selling herself as a beautiful slave girl. Ebony, her taciturn clone, was looking bored. Tycho was shooting glare-daggers at me and Magnum.

But while the three girls of our Lance were in bikinis, at least they had their powers.

And weren't currently literally dying.

See, both Magnum and I were dressed in mindless guard uniforms. That meant thick boiled leather with obsidian knives at our hips and those wooden club-swords that were used by ancient peoples across Earth. The edge came from obsidian tips. And yes, the bizarre nature of the Doyen technology, where they had both faster than light travel, spaceships and planet destroying super weapons, but had never invented a better sword than stone and wood was still making my head boggle. Well, the part of my brain that could think past the fact I had marched five miles through a jungle, in a world with nearly 90% humidity, in leather armor.

Leather.

Armor.

My head wobbled slightly as Magnum stood to my left, looking as impassive as a statue carved from stone.

Fucking Magnum. Showing off. I tried to stand taller and ended up nearly falling over backwards onto my ass. Meanwhile, the girlfriend was doing the standard Doyen greeting.

Your headman, her telepathic voice echoed in my head, booming loudly. Reveal them.

"M'lady, he-" A farmer holding a hoe in shaking hands started. Tzali flicked her fingers and a telekinetic hand closed around the farmer, then lifted him into the air. He squalled and kicked his legs, his eyes bugging.

Don't waste my time, Tzali said and I nearly added my own pee to the puddle of sweat gathering in my leather kilt. Her hand twitched and I almost felt the farmer's mind being probed. And here's the creepy thing? Tzali was being gentle. By Doyen standards. I could see it and almost feel it, even with my neutered talent. See her mind rummaging through his. A pale glow surrounded his head and he started to writhe and kick. But he wasn't screaming. Or pouring blood out of his nose. Or dying. It still didn't make me feel any less icky inside. My stomach turned as a short alien woman rushed forward, throwing herself flat to the ground. She pressed her palms to the pinkish dirt and mashed her not inconsiderable, bright yellow chest to the ground.

"Please, oh honored Doyen, mistress of the stars, master of the mind, we are nothing! We are mindless chattel, here to serve you and all Doyen. I am the headwoman of this village."

Tzali dropped the farmer to the ground. He hit the dirt with his rump and looked dazed. Then he scrambled backwards, bowing his belly as far down as he could make it while gasping out thank yous. And the worst thing was?

Well, okay, the worst thing was that this was a thing that happened. But the extra bad edge to it was that everyone in the village was looking relieved.

I could metaphorically read their minds.

Oh, thank the gods, they had to be thinking. A nice one.

We require rest and sustenance, mindless one, Tzali said, her telepathic voice barbed with sneering condescension. It actually hurt to hear and made me grind my teeth. But the headwoman bowed her head low.

"Of course, oh glorious one! Please, take my home, my husbands, whatever you desire."

Tzali snorted. I have my own pleasure chattel. Take the bleating thoughts of your stud-cows elsewhere. They bore me. She flicked her fingers dismissively and stalked off, rolling her hips. Still sexy, despite being dressed in spiky death armor and acting like a despotic tyrant. But that might have just been the heat stroke talking.

I literally had to drain sweat out of the leather helmet and mask that I had been wearing. As it pattered onto the ground, Magnum took his helmet off and looked at the others. "You three okay?" he asked the three "slave" girls. Opal nodded, but her good cheer had gone somewhat damp and gray. She rubbed her shoulders and glanced at Tzali, who was quietly taking off her armor. I bit my lip slightly, then shucked off my leather armor, feeling the delicious sensation of some cool breeze blowing onto my skin at-fucking-last, and the slow growth of my talent. Once I had gotten the kilt off and kicked off the sandals, I stepped towards my girl.

The headwoman's house was yet another example of Doyen skitzotech. Dirt floor, wood carved bed, mattress made of straw. Glowing crystal that produced a continual stream of cool air that pumped through the room, keeping us at a comfortable temperature. Well, comfortable for the skittle aliens, which still meant Florida on a bad day, as opposed to Florida on a bad day five years from now. The instant Tzali completed her transformation back into Ali by stepping out of her crystal boots, I put my hands on her shoulders and felt the rush of emotions almost too late.

I clamped down a psychic shield around us. This was good and bad.

Good, because it prevented the rush of emotions from escaping her brain like a scream of pure psychic agony. Bad because it trapped those emotions in a bubble and bounced them back into my own brain. For just a few seconds, I felt every single emotion that had roiled through Ali as she wore her Tzali mask. And it was a brittle mask indeed. I felt her anguish at having to tear through the mind of a man. I felt her shame at throwing around her power on the weak and painful. And I felt her horror at the realization that her 'gentleness' only reflected the barbarity of her people. That went right back into shame town and intensified it to a horrifying, gnawing darkness, right in her gut. She wanted to throw up and she also wanted to make a psi-sword and start hacking off heads at the same time.

I held her as hot tears poured from her eyes, my own eyes blurring and snot running from my nose. My hands closed around her belly and I clung to her, and she clung to me.

"It's okay, it's okay, it's okay," I kept whispering aloud.

Opal knelt down next to us. Her hand pressed to my shoulder and to Ali's – and I felt the warmth of Opal's boundless love enfold us. Even with a gold bikini and thong, her talent was enough to take the biting edge off the emotions, to ease us gently away from the refractions. Eventually, both I and Ali could feel something other than her misery. I started to filter my own love for her into her soul. Ali responded back with a tightening of her arms that was augmented by a spurt of telekinesis that flattened my hair, crushed my balls, and almost snapped my arms.

"Too tight!" I wheezed.

"Did you contain that?" Magnum asked Ebony. Ebony shrugged.

"I'm a good telepath, and we're on the planetary surface. The curvature of the horizon and the other living beings should cover it. But if there's a Doyen whose sniffers are out, we might have been made."

Magnum nodded, curtly.

I felt tiny and crawling. Like how Barry made me feel during the worst parts of Basic Braining, when you start sleep walking and fucking everything up. Which is differentiated from the start of Basic because at least at the start, you're supposed to be fucking everything up. But before I could stammer out an apology, Magnum waved his hand.

"No. Any intelligence we get here is worth it – including how good Doyen sensing is in territories like this. PsiCom might need to carry other similar missions without a Doyen Princess helping them," he said, his voice flat. Neither warm nor harsh. I nodded slightly.

"If a Doyen arrives, I can bluff him off," Ali said, quietly.

"Okay," Magnum said. "I want Pirate and Opal to do the rounds. Pirate, act like you're checking the perimeter for the Princess. Opal, make no bones about the fact you're looking for potential pleasure chattel."

'And what's our actual mission?" I asked.

"Your mission is the actual mission. Opal, check people. See if any seem ... more prone to resistance than others." Magnum smiled. "That might be the clue we need to find the source of the Event Horizon."

We both nodded.

Then I raised my hand. "Do I have to put on the armor?"

"No," Magnum said. Then he picked up the sword I had discarded. "It's dangerous to go alone. Take this."

I narrowed my eyes at him.

"What?" Magnum asked, his face still holding that damned 'if that was a joke, it will take waterboarding to get it out of me' expression of his. I narrowed my eyes further and started edging towards the door. Once I was outside and back into the bake oven crossed with sauna crossed with tropical jungle outdoors, I started to regret every decision in my life. I may have the skin and name of someone from the Middle East, but I had been raised in fucking California, in case my obnoxious snobbery hadn't made that clear enough. Do you know why California has the fifth biggest economy in the world? It sure as fuck wasn't because of the earthquakes and southern Californian water vampires!

It was because people could live here and never have to wear anything but T-shirts, god fucking damn it.

I sighed and started to pace the way to the edge of the village. As I walked, I saw farmers and villagers about their work. There was a huntsman who looked like had had downed a cthulu-pig with a thrown spear and was now gutting and skinning the creature. He had already cut the tentacles off and put them to boil in a small pot shaped stone. He looked at me, then frowned and lifted his chin. He looked me up and down, then said: "So, the Doyen are plucking hairless svenk for their guards?"

"You know it," I said, casually. "This hairless svenk happens to be three feet taller than you and armed, though."

"I never said being a hairless svenk is a bad thing," the hunter said, trying to sound casual, even as I noticed him shift slightly backwards. About to run. His whiskers twitched and I put on a big old smile and hoped that wasn't a threat gesture among these people. Either it wasn't or my dumb face put him at ease because he breathed out a quiet sigh and went back to his hacking and cutting. He winced as he pulled out an organ the size of my fist that glowed a pale green.

"What's that?" I asked.

"It's this huuld's death organ," he said. "The liquid within can be turned into a poison."

I looked around the village. Two young children ran by. They, unlike their nudist parents, were dressed in almost burquah like robes that made them look like tiny piles of ambulatory laundry on the run from the vicious woman and men who would prefer to drown them if they could. As they pealed by, laughing and chittering, I looked back at the hunter.

"Isn't that dangerous?"

"Takes three moons to be anything but stinky. That's why I'm at the edge of the village, warrior," the hunter said.

I nodded. Good to know. I filed that into my 'good to know' slot. And that got me thinking about just how much there was to learn. We still hadn't even fully explored Earth. Now there were millions of Earths, each one as complex, as intricate. Each one waiting for us to royally fuck up.

It'll be fun!

The hunter paused, then muttered. "Do you know how long the glorious and holy Doyen will be staying in our humble, inconsequential village?"

He said all the right words. But with my psychic power, I could smell the loathing that emanated from every fiber of his being. He had to know, for a fact, that I was mindless to risk that kind of thought. It made me wonder how much Doyen simply refused to see, or how good the "mindless" were at controlling those minds. As I worried at that question and tried to come up with a good answer that wasn't just 'the fuck if I know', my senses tingled and the little premonition I had whenever shit was about to smash into the air conditioning crystal kicked up a hissy fit.

I grabbed the hunter and yanked him away from his job. His obsidian knife thunked into the ground and he squalled in alarm moments before a Doyen in his warform smashed down onto the hut that he had been working near. Wood splinters filled the air and I threw myself over the hunter, squashing him flat and getting a face full of alien dong. Fun fact, he smelled sweet. Like skittles. Huh. But then I was scrambling to my feet and wiping my face clean with one hand. The rubble of his house was now filled by a Doyen – a Doyen surrounded by the faint wisps of his dissolved war-form.

And what a Doyen.

He was male, for one thing. I had seen a single male Doyen up close and personal but he had been armored. This one was not. Well. Barely. His chest was entirely exposed. He was a bit like me: Athletic and thin, with toned muscles, but nothing that bulged or nothing. He was more like a gymnast than Magnum's body-builder hugeness. And, like me, he had a sligthly femmy face. Which, I hasten to add, every woman I've met has said is super sexy. Not that I'm insecure.

... is there anything more insecure than saying you're not?

Fine! I'm fucking insecure! Are you happy?

The Doyen though, was blue where I was brown. His hair was crystal shards that flared backwards like a full on anime character, while mine was ... you know ... human. And black. And he wore a crystal set of speedos that hung around his crotch, with a few bits of flexible fabric that made it quite clear that he matched me in another way.

Dong size.

He was hung like a horse too.

I wondered if he had used biokinesis to enhance himself too.

The Doyen also reeked with arrogant confidence so genuine and intense that it almost made me like him. Save that he had just crushed some poor hunter's house without any seeming reason, and was now swaggering towards me and the hunter like a peacock. He flicked out his hand and a shimmering psi-sword appeared in his hand. Normally, psi-swords were only as complex as needed. They were telekinetic constructs, after all. But this guy had added extra swirls and details to give himself a shimmering fencer's guard to his sword, which came to a narrow point like a rapier.

He immediately flicked his psi-rapier out and pressed it to the chest of the hunter, ignoring me. Mindless! Tell me, who here has been so unwise as to insult and besmirch a Doyen woman's honour?

Yeah. I could hear the extra u. I swear his voice sounded British and posh as balls. The hunter stammered. "W-What?"

Do not lie to me, mindless churl, the Doyen said, smacking the hunter across the face with his back hand, sending the man sprawling to the ground. The hunter spat out a tooth and coughed some blood onto the pinkish dirt. I felt her scream of pure indignation from the capital of this backwater hole!

"Ex-cuse me," I said, my voice flat.

Commander Norrington (I'd have called him Johnny Depp, except that Jack Sparrow had been cool and this guy was a fucking tool) looked up at me and curled his lip in a sneer that was augmented by his talent. It smashed into my defenses and I almost felt as pathetic and wormy as he thought I was. Then his eyes narrowed. I see I am interrogating the wrong mindless. Her psychic despair is on you like stink. His eyes flicked to my sword and he scoffed. A guard? And you fail your posting so deeply?

"I don't-"

And you talk back? Seems I must teach you a lesson ... The Doyen male lifted his sword up to his chest and his voice rang with purest mockery, even as Magnum, Tycho, Midnight and Ali came spilling out of the headwoman's house. Ali was putting her armor back on as quickly as she could, but this slowed her down as the Doyen rattled off: My name is Count Gatzlon Xon Chur of the House Chur, Paladin and Scout Master. Prepare to die mindless scum. Enguard!

He thrust his rapier towards my heart with blinding speed. I flipped my sword upwards and caught the rapier tip on the wood. The blade struck. Now, if I actually had been mindless and this actually had been a normal wood and obsidian sword, I would have been turbo-dead. Battlefield tests had seen even a human scale psi-sword going through multiple layers of ablative tank armor before stopping. A dedicated psi-swordsman (or woman) could hack through the heat shield on a shuttle, or into the bulkhead of the stargate room.

Wood would have provided even less resistance than my skin, rib-cage, heart, spine, and second layer of skin.

But I wasn't mindless.

And this fucker had pissed me off.

His sword struck a telekinetic field I buried underneath the sword and rebounded. He staggered backwards, his eyes widening. What!?

And then it was on. I stepped forward and swung my sword in an upward slash. His rapier batted at it and he knocked my arm up and away, but I returned with another swinging blow, trying to remember everything Barry had taught me. Unfortunately, none of that was sword fighting, so the second blow was caught on his filigreed hilt and he twisted his sword and sent mine flying through the air. It struck a bit of rubble and the obsidian shattered. He smirked slightly, then shook his head. You may have some talent, churl, but you cannot best Count Gatz-

I rolled away. He lunged, breaking off in mid sentence as he saw me move. His sword tip struck the ground and sent up a gout of steam and left behind a line of cherry red melted glass. But he missed me, which was enough. I grabbed the death organ that the hunter had discarded, turned, and hurled it at his face. Count Dickface VonDouchebag lifted his blade up and slashed the organ in half. The searing heat of the blade cauterized the blow he struck, and the death organ struck the ground behind him with two wet plops, without spilling a single droplet of their poison gunk.

"Aww man..." I whined.

A clever ploy, mindless. May your next life be more fortunate to not end on my peerless blade. Now ... die with honor! He charged forward. I didn't look away from that point, not even towards my friends. Instead I twisted aside as quickly as I could, surging biokinetic energy into my muscles. My skin and bones ached as muscles moved harder and faster than they had any right to. But the end result was that I got out of the way of his sword and smashed my elbow into his jaw. Count Fuckoff staggered to the side, blood streaming from his nose and mouth as he clutched his hand to his face.

He cried aloud – a wordless sound of gargling agony.

Stop this nonsense at once! Tzali's voice boomed out. That's my prize gladiator, Count Xon Chur!

Count Limpdick was, currently, still coughing and spitting. A few bits of shattered teeth hit the ground as he hung his head forward, trying to breathe around the blood. He held up one hand in a placating 'one second' gesture. Then he gargled out: "Owwwwwwwwwwww!"

Tzali put her hands on her hips. I told you he was my prize gladiator!

I glanced at Tzali. Under the armor and officious Doyen 'tude, she looked nervous as fuck. But Count Douchenerd simply bled on the ground for a few more moments in silence. His eyes were closed, and slowly, I realized he was controlling his pain. Then he was focusing his talent. As I watched, the blood flow slowed and villagers gasped in awe as they saw teeth regrowing, nose-bones realigning. I wondered if I could do that with my biokinetic talent – but it had to be fucking hard. Imagine doing surgery on yourself while you were in pain and conscious. Yeesh. But after about three minutes, Count Lamewad was back to 100%. He stood up, rubbed his face-

And then Tzali slapped him. He staggered.

My lady! He exclaimed. I was merely defending your honor!

You were trying to kill a slave that cost a hundred chits, you cockmonger, you foolish braggart, you ... Tzali paused as Count Shonenrival stepped backwards. Behind her mask, her eye swept over his body. I noticed that the smug prick was actually posing slightly. Arching his spine in just the right way to draw attention to his bulging thong. I bit back a growl of pure fury as Tzali shook her head, then continued. You knave! You-

Please, m'lady! Count Asshole Von Gonnadie swept himself into a deep bow. Let me make it up to you and your prize ... gladiator ... and your servants. I am the Paladin earmarked to defend this land against pirates and raiders from other houses and the Hu-Mans. Let me at least wine, dine, and entertain you. He took her hand, then kissed her knuckles. It would be my most glorious privilege.

Opal, seeing my expression, kicked me in the shins.

It looked like we were going to be the guests of honor.

Goodie.