Freshly showered, dressed, and hungry, the trio entered the mess hall to the accompanying sound of cheers and applause. That went on for a little while until Book emerged from the crowd and walked up to the group, still holding his data tablet and smiling broadly.
“We’ve got a table set up for you over here,” he said pointing to a small table and chairs at the front of the room.
“Feels like we’re superstars,” Red suggested, raising a hand and acknowledging several of the more attractive women looking in his direction.
“You are superstars,” Book confirmed, “and not just here.” As they sat down at the table, he turned on his data pad and showed it to the group. “The Ministry decided to open up the feeds and start broadcasting your fight. They waited until you won, of course, but now this is being shown all across the world.”
Gideon leaned over and watched the familiar feed screen as it showed first person perspective views of their fight against the Harrow Lord. Judging by the distance from the action, the current feed must have been from Mia’s perspective. A moment later the screen shifted to Red as he charged toward the enemy amid a burst of flame and ash.
Unlike the regular feeds there was no corporate advertising along the bottom. Instead, the Artemis Ministry were running recruitment ads for their armed services with slogans like ‘Join the Fight Today’ written beneath the action.
“So, they’re using us for propaganda,” Gideon mused.
Book nodded. “In essence, yes. They’re hoping that getting an early victory like this might drive up recruitment and help bolster the defense effort back home. The Ministry is even trying to get access to your first few fights so they can show those as well.”
“They can do that?” Mia asked. “Just tap into our echoes and show anything we’re experiencing?”
“They can. It’s part of the standard echo agreement which you signed before entering your new bodies. Of course, there’s a privacy block in place for anything personal. They have complete broadcasting rights over any fighting, but they won’t show anything of a personal nature or strategic details that might give the enemy an advantage. The footage will also be significantly edited before it’s shown to the public to make sure that nothing of a sensitive nature is revealed.”
He tapped the screen, showing a different perspective from a long way off.
“We’ve only got a few working cameras on the base at the moment, so the Ministry was limited with what it could use. Hence leaning on the first person perspective for the most part. Once you get down to earth though, they’ll have drone cameras, street cams and millions of other ways to capture your movements. They’ll also be able to use that surveillance network to give you a heads up on enemy troop movements and the like.”
“Curious,” Bullseye said, stretching his neck forward to get a clearer look at the screen while he sat in Gideon’s hand. “I note that the feeds seem to favor my companions but there is no footage I can see from my own perspective.”
Red snorted with laughter. “That’s because no one wants to see the Harrow Lord’s ancles, dude. Your perspective is gonna give everyone a headache.”
The turtle turned toward red. “I was transformed into a significantly larger size for a good portion of the fight, I’ll have you know, Doinkmaster Supreme!”
“Oh, shit!” Red said, turning to Book. “Is that the name they’re using for me? I lost a bet. Need to make sure that any time I’m mentioned they use my full name.”
The Communications Officer shrugged. “I don’t know. Currently, it looks as though they are referring to you all as the Lunar League.”
Red screwed up his nose. “Jesus, really? What kind of bullshit is that?”
“Ministry propaganda,” Gideon replied. “They will have had a whole team working on that shit for hours.”
“Alliteration,” said Mia. “Makes it easier to remember and for some reason humans give things more credence if alliteration is involved. They use it in advertising all the time. Coca-Cola. Best Buy. Krispy Kreme.”
“Lunar League,” Red muttered, shaking his head. “Sounds like a really terrible indie band.”
“They know your names as well,” Book added. “But it does look as though they’ve favored Red rather than Doinkmaster.”
He turned the data pad toward the other man, showing a stat summary which displayed a three-dimensional rendered drawing of Red holding his Bloodspire Maul. Limited details of his various strengths and abilities showed up alongside his portrait and a stream of love hearts and smiley face emojis ran down the side of the feed as an announcer ran through various details of what was being displayed.
Mia shook her head. “It’s just like the Hunt, but this is real life. It feels somehow wrong.”
“Yeah,” Gideon agreed, “especially if shit starts to go bad.”
“They won’t show it if you die,” Book said. “They’ll only show victories and, if necessary, they’ll just keep showing old footage for as long as needed.”
“Oh, good,” Gideon replied. “We’re dead and gone and they keep dragging out our old victories to keep people motivated.”
“Exactly. I know it’s not the easiest thing to think about, but I just want you to be clear about this. You’re not just soldiers now, you’re icons, heroes. You might even do more good to the overall fight against the Collective as symbols than you do when you fight. It’s an important part of any war effort and the Ministry is short on options, so they’re going to use everything they get from you.”
Red stood holding up his hand. Gideon shook his head.
“For the hundredth time, dude, you don’t need to raise your hand every time you’ve got a question.”
Red grinned. “Yeah, I know, but it really shits you when I do it. So, these privacy filters, are they gonna kick in when I’m eating or having a shower or making sweet, sweet sexy times?”
“They will only function whilst you are in the field actively involved in combat,” Book replied, “or if you are called upon to address the public directly, answer questions the Ministry supplies, or attend press conferences and that sort of thing.”
Book turned off the data pad. “Now, you should eat. I’ve asked chef to bring you all the food at once so you can eat as quickly as you like and head off to bed. I’m conscious that you’ve still got a long way to go before you get back home and you’re probably very tired.”
Gideon nodded. “Thanks Book. We appreciate it.”
The next hour passed with food and conversation. Red quickly moved away, gravitating toward a group of young women at a nearby table and regaling them with tales of his prowess He even pulled the maul out of his inventory and started showing it off.
The author''s narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.
Gideon and Mia ate together, but it rapidly became apparent that their budding relationship was something of a talking point among the lunar station crew. Catching sight of furtive glances and whispered words, Mia frowned.
“You wanna get out of here?”
“Yeah,” Gideon agreed. “Feels like we’re being watched way too closely.”
“Guess that’s something we’re gonna have to get used to now?”
“Guess so.”
They left the celebration and retreated to their sleeping quarters. Driven by passion, they quickly abandoned all pretense of taking it slowly and jumped each other the moment they reached the room. Gideon jammed a chair against the door, hoping that Red wouldn’t join them any time soon anyway.
Time blurred as they lost themselves in the moment, thrilling in each other’s bodies and the sheer joy of intimacy and passion. By the time Red finally sauntered into the room, thoroughly inebriated despite the superior abilities of his echo body, Mia and Gideon were both asleep, lying in each other’s arms and sharing a bunk they barely managed to fit into.
Gideon woke as the brawler entered the room and broke wind as he tried to launch himself onto one of the top bunks and ended up hitting his head against the ceiling. Red swore, farted a second time and eventually caterpillared his way into the bed before promptly falling asleep and snoring up a storm.
Still glowing from the time he’d spent with Mia, Gideon closed his eyes and drifted off to sleep. Darkness surrounded him and he felt the bed shift a little, sinking down to the floor.
He opened his eyes but was met by pure darkness rather than the interior of the lunar sleeping quarters. Gideon was also aware that he wasn’t lying down any more, but was standing, his bare feet on cold stone.
The area resolved around him, bringing into focus the dull black sphere he had witnessed when he’d merged with the Strider’s cortex. He looked up and saw the ring of captured monsters floating above their hateful stares leering down at him.
“What the hell?” he asked, his voice sounding muffled.
Figures began to emerge from the stone, rising up as indistinct forms that slowly became more vivid. There was a dozen or more, all surrounding Gideon, alien creatures of different kinds, some with armored bodies and horns stretching from their heads, others with tentacles or dark, matted fur. One of the creatures looked like a Stalker, but its dark plat armor was lined with gold trimming and its teeth were vivid white.
Gideon looked from one to the other. He tried to summon his talons but as with his previous experience in this place, his weapons were unavailable.
“I’m guessing you’re the Collective then,” he said. “Or some kind of ruling council or whatever?”
One of the figures moved forward, her lithe form surrounded by dark mist. She was tall, clothed in a dark blue dress that shimmered with gold trimming and various strange symbols sewn into the fabric. Twin horns stretched from her forehead and twisted to the left and right, and her skin was light blue, her lips and eyebrows punctuated with a darker shade.
Golden chains hung from her neck and around her horns, with glinting gems positioned at even intervals along their length. A dark blue hood covered the back of her head, its surface etched with golden symbols that echoed those on her dress.
Her hips swayed seductively as she moved toward Gideon, her hands held at her waist, every movement slow and deliberate as though perfectly choreographed. She stared at him with light blue eyes that never blinked, an aura of mist surrounding her as though she had just emerged from a hot bath into frigid air.
“You are correct, Soulless. We speak for the Collective. We rule a thousand worlds and direct the affairs of the Harrow.”
Gideon nodded. “I figured. So, what’s this then? You’re reaching me while I’m dreaming?”
“We seek to understand you, Soulless. We wish to better know our enemy but those we have slain thus far offer no answers. We have broken with tradition and seek now to converse with you while you still live in the hope of learning what we can.”
“So, you can figure out how to kill us more easily? Forget it. I’m not saying shit.”
She shook her head slowly, as though moving underwater.
“Not all of you will die, Soulless. You have already proven yourself worthy of inclusion within the Collective. In besting The Ashen Harrow you have won a place for your kind. Thus, once the lesson has been taught and your people have been punished for their crimes, some of you will be selected to take your place among us. It is for this reason that we wish to better understand you.”
Gideon stopped short of replying right away. They wanted him to join the Collective? Or rather, wanted whoever survived. But did that mean they wanted echoes or humans? Did they even know what Gideon actually was, how his consciousness had been transferred to this body?
“I don’t get it,” Gideon said. “Why bother fighting us. If you want us to join your Collective, why not just meet with our leaders and make a deal?”
She smiled, but the gesture never reached her eyes.
“There must be recompence, Soulless. Your kind have plundered our etheric fields, that sacrilege must be answered with war.”
Gideon wondered whether he should have pumped more points into his Charisma after all. It was crazy that this had landed in his lap. What the hell did a burger boy know about interstellar diplomacy.
Come on Star Trek, don’t fail me now!
“You’re going to spend a lot of resources going to war,” he reasoned. “You’ll loose people and, if I remember correctly, you’ve just come from waging a war somewhere else. Wouldn’t it be easier to just ask my people to pay back what they took? Maybe there’s a way we can make it up to you over time without both sides losing a lot of resources with this war.”
She shook her head.
“The Collective do not offer diplomacy to those who have proven themselves untrustworthy, Soulless. You breached our boundaries and failed to heed our demands to cease. You plundered our hunting grounds in full knowledge of your crimes.”
“Wait. We knew? You mean, when our ships first came to Artemis you told us to leave?”
“A delegation was sent to advise your kind of the Collective’s claim on the planet you call Artemis. When you ships refused to leave orbit, we send the force that remained to protect our hunting grounds against you.”
She paused, taking a slow breath before continuing.
“The next time your people came, they brought weapons of profound destructive power. They fought and overwhelmed our forces and then began harvesting ether with abandon.”
Gideon’s heart skipped a beat. He swallowed. This all rang terribly true. It was exactly the kind of thing the Ministry would do. It was the kind of thing just about any country with sufficient military might would do.
This was humanity to a tea. Find something you want and kill whatever gets in your way. Then claim it as your own and act offended when the rightful owners fight back.
Then again, he had no way of knowing whether this alien figure was telling the truth or not. She could have been lying outright or twisting the facts to suit her own narrative. Just because humanity had a track record of stomping all over native inhabitants when it suited their purposes didn’t mean that was what had happened here.
“There must be another way,” Gideon urged. “Not everyone on earth knows about this stuff. It wasn’t put to a vote or anything like that, so you can’t just slaughter everyone when they had no knowledge of what was going on.”
She smiled, and this time he could see more emotion in her blue eyes. It wasn’t joy or even anger he saw, but sorrow, maybe even pity.
“The Collective lives by strict principles, Soulless. A blood price must be paid for your people’s actions. Whether it was simply a few who acted unilaterally or every soul within your realm knowingly breached our territory, the result is the same.”
“So that’s it then?” Gideon said. “It doesn’t matter what I say, you’re going to do this anyway? War is inevitable.”
She nodded.
“Okay then,” he went on. “What’s the point of talking with me? What are you going to learn by just asking me questions that I don’t have the answers to? I don’t make the rules down on earth. Hell, I didn’t even know that we apparently breached some border of yours. Like everyone else on earth I thought Artemis was an empty planet when we arrived.”
She stepped back a few paces, joining the silent figures gathered around him.
“We have already learned much,” she said, her expression shifting to a neutral visage. “There will be other occasions to study your kind, but we thank you for your efforts thus far. We will study what we have gleaned from you, Soulless. With luck you will survive a little longer, but I fear this is perhaps the last time we will meet one another.”
Gideon nodded, struggling to think of something else to say, some way to influence the Collective and steer them away from invasion. Reasoning with them hadn’t worked, so he tried something different.
“We’ll make you pay for it, you know. We might not have your technology, and you might outnumber us, but we’ll never surrender, and we’ll make you pay for every inch of ground you take.”
“That is precisely why the Collective will seek to add you to our ranks once the price has been paid, Soulless. We expect you to fight and we are willing to pay any price to ensure that all is made right.”
Gideon nodded.
“I don’t think you understand what you’re getting yourself into here.”
“Oh, but we do. And that is why we intend to strike swiftly and with purpose. Even now, we are among you, Soulless!”