• Nobles of Null is a forum based roleplay site where sci-fi and magic collide. Here, Earth remains fractured and divided despite humanity reaching out to the stars. Worse still, the trans-human slaves of one major power have escaped, only to establish their own Empire, seething with resentment at abuses of the past. Even the discovery of aliens, though medieval in development, has failed to rally these squabbling children of Earth together with its far darker implications. Worse still, is the discovery of the impossible - magic. Practiced by the alien locals, nearly depleted and therefore rare, its reality warping abilities remains abstract and distant to the general populace. All the while, unseen in the darkness of space, forces from without threaten to press in. For those with eyes opened by insight, it is clear that an era is about to end, and that a new age will dawn.

Day in the Life: Assault on the Heavenly State

"OH SHIT!" Jun shouted, checking out what all this was going on in meatspace only to see Hoshiko had been bitten... or at least was bleeding? It was probably a bite. Regardless of what it was Jun managed to stop herself from saying I thought you were being dramatic and instead said, "So we flame him right?"

...

"Ok, we don't have a flame thrower so we throw his body into space?"

...

"Wait, we can't be seen just throwing bodies out into space. We gotta lock him in a closet. This ship has to have some room we can use for Wen-Storage."
 
Looking at her sister, Hoshiko held her tongue long enough to listen. "I didn't mean it like that," she began in meatspace. Cooling off from earlier,the Tiger Princess looked away for a moment, briefly mulling over her thoughts before looking back at Koyama.

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"It gets under my skin when someone says I'm not even in line for The Jade Throne, but I don't want to move up in line either," she paused again, the uncomfortable silence between them making the point clear. Moving up in line couldn't mean anything good for the people that were previously further ahead after all. And if something not-good happened to the people ahead of her, then something not-good was happening in or to The Empire proper. She couldn't help but give a pessimistic "Heh," at her sister's suggestion though. "I doubt isolating my core is going to do anything," she elaborated, glancing at Wen's supposedly comatose body. Even so, she did do as suggested as she tried to gingerly stand. Though her reinforced bone didn't care for the bite, her flesh felt spongy and bruised. Fortunately, there weren't any humans she needed to hide her injury from with pain editors or other combat masking.

"...I am tempted to get the flamer though," she admitted to Jun. "The heavy flamer," Hoshiko added, completely deadpan. If something wasn't tossed into space, it was vaporized or as close to that as possible. But, there was something else much more important. Something that Koyama had touched on, perhaps without knowing. "If you look at Tiāntáng (天堂), that should tell you everything. It looks as good as Earth and yet we haven't even touched it beyond a single walled, fortified city and a few military-science outposts at best. Why? Some sort of fuckery we don't understand is there, and we have to secure, contain and protect everyone from it," she grumbled, glancing back at Wen. They weren't stupid and could easily know full well the implications of what this 'incident' meant. "I don't know what his chances are at all, but let's prepare for the worst and hope for the best. Like you said, we might have to turn his head into a PvP Zone if it comes to that, but let's try not to."

In their virtuality, Hoshiko loaded up the best anti-virus programs and ice-breakers she could muster, Hoshiko beckoned the others to get ready before they made their moved, quickly, quietly 'appearing' with their weapons drawn.

"Well?" she glared at Wen and....this...thing.
 
Wen had better days. At the point on his head where Hoshiko shot him, a nasty, bulging tumor grew. He was spread like an eagle, his limbs tied down by chain. More tumors ran across half of his body randomly, pulsing, causing the rest of his body to twitch in response. His eyes stared off into the distance.

An elven figure turned around. Unlike Wen, she was clothed, in lightly colored, desert attire, loose and flowing, covering her entire body. However, like Wen, she too, was corrupted, tumors covering half her face, visible elsewhere on her exposed neck and hands.

The ox-form's eyes twitched, turning to the group of fellow Daqinren, life returning to them. His small, thin tail swung tiredly behind him. His mouth turned, but behind the tumors it was difficult to tell if it was a smile or a frown. "This... is a surprise." He sputtered out.

The Aos Si said nothing. The rage in her eyes did the talking. She grit her teeth and clenched her fist, a tumor-ridden Desert Empress bursting out from the craggy wall behind Wen, which surged at the newcomers.
 
"Ew"

Jun spawned in a new pistol that was made up of many pistols.

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"So is Wen not behind this?" Jun asked, giving it a think for a moment before adding, "Was Wen even real or was he a 'the thing' from the get go? Some kinda Double-sleeper-agent from the HFR?"

There were of course other ways to handle the situation. Jun decided to aim her weapon at the digital-space-elf-thing...

"EAT LEAD MOTHERFUCKER!"

pew pew pew pew pew pew pew!
 
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Koyama's expression soured at her sister's words. "Hmph," her flesh bag body emitting the universal grunt of 'It could mean anything'. "I was born on that rock in that city. The locals were less than impressed and more in wanting to get the," Her free hand then made air-quotes, "Heavy Flamer, that the Black Empress decided to have one of her spawn on their precious planet."

"Siblings loved tossing it in my face." Koyama shrugged then, "But, it gave me years of breathing room by threatening them I could use magic. Never doubt the power of imagination, insecurities, ignorance, and holographic projectors."

She sniffed both in meatspace and virtually as Jun decided to answer Wen's exclamation with violence on his captor. "I bet Arthur C. Clarke is rolling in his grave."

Jun's volume of fire was soon accompanied by what only a true connoisseur of the ancient art of pen and paper games would get. A series of bolts of some iridescent energy streaked toward the threat. Hoshiko's sister had her nerd hat on it and decided to meet the Aos'Si on its magical home turf. At least insofar as she was able given the circumstances.
 
"....Yeah Jun, looks like it's Wen's worms causing the issue, not him." Hearing Koyama remark about her birthplace - their birthplace - made Hoshiko scowl as she bit back her tongue. There was not much else she could say, to Koyama or Jun, and not much else she could do, except -

"Shoot."

Bullets, smartrounds and magic-missiles filled the air, followed by hot, bright blood and gore splattering across the walls of the cavern. As the giant worm lunged, Hoshiko's shots - grenade and all - guided themselves straight into its gullet and exploded. But her eyes were locked on the Aos Si with menace as Jun's bullets riddled her body, only for her sister to blast chunks and limbs from the woman's body.

It felt like they were all locking eyes when her head exploded, grey matter sticking to the wall as the mass of worm lost momentum and collided with the floor. With things settled in what the Mother-Empress would have called a 'Distinctly Daqin' manner, Hoshiko summoned a Jian and sliced Wen free.

*****

Shen Zhou System,
Heavy Freighter Cháng Lǜ (常綠)
At Super Luminal Engine Rendezvous Point

"Your dreams are - " Hoshiko paused for a moment. " - pretty weird now," the princess remarked on their space-opera bridge. With Wen on 'light duty' it was up to everyone else to pull that much more weight as he recovered, and that also meant making sure Jun got practice being more than being a pretty face. With the cow at the helm, Hoshiko did another checkup over the bull as the dragon tended to the engines of their rather cantankerous Soyuz made freighter.
 
"Weird is the biggest understatement of my life right now." Wen didn't look at Hoshiko, instead blankly staring at his monitor. His entire head was bandaged up, a regular shot of pain killers injected directly into his veins. Every byte of processing power from his neural computer was pumped into keeping his meatspace mind functional. To an untrained eye he was cognizant, but to Daqinren half of him stopped existing entirely.

He tried to lift his right hand, which trembled as it raised. Carefully, he pressed his hand against his forehead, deep in thought.

"Princess." After a wave of numbness and pain washed over him, the ox-form finally turned around. He looked like he lost a quarter of his body weight, his face pale, the once-red hair, now muted under the bandages. His eyes were a mix of crimson red and void black. "This war must end. I have seen things."

He reached a hand out, trembling still, using all his will to squeeze it into a fist. "That Aos Si... a ghost of the past. She tore through my mind. I can still feel her presence inside me. She still haunts my dreams. But as much as she, it, stares into me, I too stared back into it. A great web of power spanning across the entire galaxy, we stand on the precipice of it. The humans aren't the greatest threat. They are merely a distraction. Something killed the Aos Si. We must be ready."
 
The ship flies on automatic. I don't need to touch anything unless it gets all beepy

Jun repeated that to herself again and again as she watched the controls of the ship with her actual-eyes. Flight ALSO wasn't her specialty but its not like anyone else would be doing much better.

Unless it was Wen.

And Wen couldn't be trusted with flying the ship, or with a gun, or with touching Hoshiko's boobs.

Or with touching ANY boobs for that matter.

Jun could only think of how smart it was for her to restrict just what Wen could touch earlier. If he'd attacked her then it would have really hurt!

"Can we really stop a war NOW? We're barely able to keep this ship running and SOMETHINGSBEEPING!" The panic rose in Jun's voice just long enough for her to realize it was something about needing to slightly adjust their position and that the ship was already correcting for it, "-- Nevermind... that's fixed. Well, I can't stop the war... can uh... is that a Princess-level thing?"
 
Her body carried out the assigned tasks with precision and efficiency, inspecting the antiquated engines and the magnetic bottle that contained the reactor's energy. With a meticulous eye, she thoroughly scrutinized every component, searching for any signs of sabotage prior to the unfortunate demise of the engineers.

Taking a deep breath, she remarked, "This place truly needs a thorough cleaning, not to mention some quality time under UVC exposure. The lingering scent of potato vodka from the pre-spaceflight era seems to cling to the air, reminding me of Humanity's tumultuous World Wars. One of them leastways."

The dragon princess' avatar underwent a transformation to resemble that of a Daqin engineer, donning a more suitable outfit. With a mix of curiosity and amusement, she continued, "Believe it or not, I found half a sandwich tucked away next to a dead Soyuz giant... and bizarrely enough, a baseball bat nearby."
 
At first, Hoshiko remained silent as the moment of truth neared. Outside their captured vessel, some of the stars in the great dark void began to move ever so slightly like specks of dust lit by light. Only, they slowly became bigger and bigger, eventually standing out from the field of stars as a necklace of pearls all neatly lined up in front of a human-made constellation capped with a single larger mote at its base. Like a vast flower, it glimmered in the distance as they neared, only for it to reveal its true nature once they 'neared'.

Their own freighter was half a kilometer long and far larger than the vast majority of military vessels. Made for efficiency over long journeys, it was a slow and ponderous giant. One that was now joining up with others of its kind like great whales forming a vast pod. All fixated on one thing. The Super Luminal Engine, its constellation of satellites and commanding space station all pointed towards Earth. Not quite like a vast flower, no. More like a launcher or gun. One that would sling them across the stars soon enough.

"Wen, I'm Koyama's sister-princess and in line for the throne, but not because we're blood relatives," Hoshiko began in meatspace, nervously flexing her injured leg. The dull pain an ever present sensation that her mind 'filtered' out and put into the background. Acknowledged and put aside, without so much as a wince given to it, but not forgotten. "Mother-Empress adopted me from the Aos Si refugees clamoring for a bite of bread or mouthful of water." In their VR bridge, she sighed and glanced at Jun, then Koyama.

"Maybe it is a princess thing after all," she shrugged. "And if it is, we're going to need some more gear if we're going to save The Empire," she rolled her eyes sarcastically. "You wouldn't have happened to find a watch with some weird buttons, maybe a cigarette case with some odd labels inside, or, I dunno, a butteryfly knife?" Hoshiko grinned at her sister. She cleared her voice in meatspace for Wen though.

"Do not cite the deep-lore to me wench," Hoshiko haughtily began, playfully prodding at one of the ox-man's helmeted horns. "Point is, I know, and I'm pretty sure mom knows too," the princess irreverently referred to The Empress. "I mean, why else stoke the flames of a cold war and spurring military buildup on top of military buildup?" she shrugged. Before she could say much else though, the handshake signals came in from the Super Luminal Engine's Star Traffic Control.

"Okay, it's showtime. Let's feign that engine problem and get us a spot at the back of the formation. Koyama? Jun? You girls know what to do!"
 
"Showtime," was an overstatement though. It didn't matter that there was a beehive of human activity buzzing around the Super Luminal Engine's constellation. Distances across space were vast, and the time it took for a sent message to arrive and then be replied to, was lengthy. Faking a minor propulsion issue was even easier, and the Republican forces were far too busy to send an engineering crew over for something that could be reportedly fixed in-ship.

No, "Showtime" ended up meaning they got sent towards the back of the line of super-freighters waiting for the jump. Which meant waiting. And waiting, and waiting. Hoshiko shivered, her hairs standing on end when space bent and warped under the immeasurable forces wrought by the mortal-made machines.

She glanced at Wen. Seeing his hairs stand on end, he apparently felt it too. Only, they weren't Supposed to feel anything from a jump. It started off sharp, but gradually tapered off as their long journey to Earth continued. Hoshiko chose to stay silent - there wasn't anything to be done. But a matter of life or death was something they could all see to.

Keeping their sanity.

Patrolling and maintaining the ship, 'processing' any human remains and so forth could only take up so much of their attention, and sooner or later, it was all mundane routine. Even with their shared virtuality, it all boiled down to what they could come up with doing to entertain themselves. Surfing a tsunami, raiding a goblin dungeon, or quarrycrafting would only entertain a person so much. Whether they liked it or not, they were still human, and appreciated company. The trick was not driving eachother to the point of strangling.

But even that eventually came to pass.

"Okay, showtime for real!" Standing on the bridge of their space-opera virtuality, Hoshiko did her best to inspire. "Everyone to your stations!" As she took her place at the helm, the three narrow passages to their gun turrets opened up, a station to the starboard, starport and bow. The massive mega freighter rumbled as the cargo bay door opened, the view within the gunnery pods shifting from ship interior to black space as their weapon barrels pointed off into the distance.

The moment they took their seats and powered on, their chairs slaved to the laser cannons at their disposal - to their fore and aft, 'fellow' mega-freighters silently drifted through the black night, unaware.
 
Wen turned around in physical space back to face his console, dutifully tapping away on the terminal to arm the missiles and warm up the laser cannons. Having lost access to virtual space, operating like this felt like working with only one limb, and half blind. Still, years of training bored in brutish muscle memory.

The ox-form aimed the gunship's sensors at the unsuspecting freighters around them and took microsecond range measurements and random time intervals to make the laser pings look like noise to the freighters' sensors and their operators. Their best chance at maximum damage and survival was disabling the engines. Their little pirate ship didn't have enough missiles to disable the entire escort, so he placed lock-on's on one side of the convoy so they can use the corpses for cover. While the missiles were reserved for the escorts, the laser cannons trained their sights onto the freighters. A battle sequence and target priority list was calculated, then sent over to Hoshiko for approval.
 
*POIT!*

Jun's T-posing avatar would pop into existence in the gun turret, clipping through the chair as she started checking things out. She'd had training for ship operations a little bit. She remembered that they called the weapons 'Effectors' and cannons were a thing on pirate ships? Was Hoshiko doing a pirates thing? Did you load laser-cannons with laser-cannon-balls?

Should she get a parrot?

Those pirate-vest-things always did help accentuate some of her best features, or should she go full corset? Corsets were fun, but she really ran the risk of looking like a space-pirate-call-girl instead of a pirate.

A quick scroll through her outfit folder and she'd end up with a BIG pirate hat, and a colorful blue Tucan which wasn't a parrot but no one would know that right?

Also a big red pirate coat pulled tight around her waist!

"Aye Aye Captain!"
 
Koyama her backside plopped into its assigned station. Over time the monotony had been grating, teeth grindingly so to the point she'd started to isolate herself and build her little worlds. Some she shared with the others. The rest were her escape but even then it was getting old and stale at an increasingly rapid pace. Her outfit wasn't much like Hoshiko's or Jun's. More utilitarian, and practical, a pocketed vest, a gun belt, tuxedo-striped trousers, and high boots with a beige v-necked pullover shirt with its collar high.

There was even a grossly clunky weapon in the holster clipped to the gunbelt. It all looked so antique and out of place. But fit her mood since one of her private little worlds had been nothing more than a small cinema where recordings, movies as the humans called them she enjoyed watching.

"Soon as we start firing the Humans'll be going into a mad panic." Her voice seemed to hold some relish at the prospect of mayhem and destruction. It'd certainly be a morale booster for her.
 
With the crew settled into their gunner positions, Hoshiko cracked her fingers and grasped the throttle and stick.

"Forget about procedure Wen, we're from The Empire and I say kill em all!" she shouted with a smile. "And 'headpats' for anyone who saves on missiles!" Their stomachs lurched as the princess hit the throttle, their corvette rocketing forward into laser range of the mega freighter ahead. Like a massive skyscraper, it suddenly came closer, closer, closer before bursting into puffs of flame. The hull of their corvette shook as automatic pulse lasers raked the gargantuan hull, comms and turrets melting away before Hoshiko pulled them right up to the bridge. Shining their lethal lights, the panicking crew turned to ash as holes suddenly bored through their consoles. "We have it on the ropes, go for the engine blocks and start the fireworks!" Hoshiko cheered them on. Pulling back, Koyama, Jun and Wen had no problem ventilating the vital heart of the leviathan, but a massive explosion suddenly caught them, rocking their tiny vessel.

"YES!" Their previous home for weeks on end had flipped around and started its burn prematurely, rocketing back according to its instructions and colliding head first with the ship behind it, their contents quickly erupting into a chaotic mess of fire, plasma and fragments. "We're not done yet!" Quick on the draw, the tiger princess deployed their decoy as gatling shells ripped past, their corvette sharply blasting itself onto a new course with its thrusters. But the resistance the humans put up quickly withered wherever it sprung up.

And just like that, their gunnery run was over, the wrecks bursting as their contents burned out the oxygen. And with their pulse cannons screaming with heat, there was no continuing anytime soon. Like so many of the humans leaping into their life rafts, Hoshiko brought their ship to bear, slipping out of the Super Luminal Engine's field and into the night. Now, they just needed to rescue Mother. They were going to be heroes...but any watching eye would have only seen machines of faceless flesh and nerve move with mechanical precision into the cramped confines of their ship, and without a word, annihilate the civilian cargo ships. Flickering and flittering in and out of sight, an occasional decoy projector would burst into flames as it was hit, the holograms dying with their emitters before the tether was cut.

Whether or not they knew it, their whole 'world' was being destroyed and remade, and The Cháng Lǜ (常綠) incident would only be the beginning.

*******

"RRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHH!" Hoshiko let out a roar. "I can't believe it! The war is already over!" Fabricating a baseball cap, the princess plucked it off the top of her head and ground it into the floor with her foot. Worse yet, Mother was sending them back Home.

And in a hurry.
 
Wen floated across the bridge, sucking on a bulb of caffeinated tea. Denied access to virtual space, he resorted to making meatspace life as leisurely as possible, reducing his garments down to a comfortable, white undershirt and black boxers. In one hand was a tablet terminal, allowing him to browse whatever news they had access to, through intercepted messages and whatever command was willing to share.

"Looks like our enemy imploded internally, and the Mother Empress was released. I wonder what happened; the Republicans spent the last century preparing for this war. We did a number on a convoy, but just a single one."
 
"So we won?" Jun asked in meatspace... before relaying the question digitally. "... Does that mean we own the HFR?"
 
"It was kinda of quick wasn't it?" Was all Hoshiko's sister could muster in response as she sat back in her chair in their shared virtual space. In meatspace, Koyama was throwing away an empty bulb in their galley and wore a sour expression. She'd just ended her shift on engineering duty and was eyeing what they had that might pass for actual food for about the thousandth time.
 
"Yeah, just like that. We won," the tiger princess grumpily replied, her mouth moving to say the words in meatspace as well. "But we don't own them. Yet!" Like her sister, Hoshiko was well beyond bored with the mass produced, shelf stable food in meatspace as well. But even so, she offered another to Wen before opening her helmet. Through the opened crack in her humanity stripping helmet, her lips appeared lusciously glistened as she slurped down the soupy mess that was nutrition.

Fangs bared, a massive, juicy tomahawk steak appeared before Hoshiko in their virtuality. Gripping it like a club, the princess angrily chomped down on the delectable cudgel and tore away a chunk as she ate like a khan. It tasted wonderful, but the joy was as ephemeral as the splatter of savory juices on the space opera ship's floor.

It all vanished as quickly as it came, a thought, a concept, and nothing more.
 
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