• 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.

VotO Book 2 Chapter 7: Trapped Souls

Ray of Meep

Ray of Meep

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Three Earth-days after the 2321 International Summit

Jiang Xue, Asteroid Belt, Sol

Prime Minister Luo Meng stepped through two fortified airlocks that led to a suspended cell in the cavity of the cruiser, isolated from other compartments of the vessel by layers of water, liquid helium, and several meters of pure vacuum, steel plates sandwiched in between. Two marines were stationed at each check point along with a security drone that took her fingerprint, eye pattern, and blood sample. Getting into the cell alone took 5 minutes. The cell itself was one of the most fortified, radiation proof compartments in the cruiser, on par with the CIC itself, crammed with four more marines, sensors that could see across the entire electromagnetic spectrum and hear a multitude of sound frequencies. There was even a gravitational sensor that compared the space time fluctuations in the compartment to the rest of the ship.

In the center of the room was a lone tank, now emptied of fluids, but the smell of a sedative solution remained in the air. In it was a bound women, constrained at her ankles, wrists, neck, and waist by steel clamps, a mouth piece that previously fed her a cocktail of reawakening drugs slowly rotating off her mouth. A mic lowered to half a meter in front of her nose.

Luo Meng eyed the extensive security in place, as if the Shen Zhou personnel here were handling a fusion bomb just a few atoms away from going critical. She could never understand it subconsciously; the horrors of Zhongzhi weren't baked into her childhood education. But logically, she could understand why her Shen Zhou compatriots are so cautious around the Daqinren; the One-Month War certainly proved what they were capable of. Thus, she gave the guards around her a polite nod, before she spoke into a headset as she eyed Zhuli Number Four.

"What is this?" She asked in an exasperated tone, and asked frankly. "Is this just another scheme to get us all in another war? You couldn't send Sakamoto as the diplomat this time?"
 
"Mmmmmm," the Empress stirred. "We feel like we have been here before, " she thought aloud. Despite the Daqinren being much superior to their human makers, they were still very much flesh and blood. And if something bled, it could be killed. "This is like the beginning, yes," Zhuli began to wake, her eyes slowly opening as the slights before her came into focus. "Your predecessors were straight to the point as well when they decanted us for their next set of experiments," the Empress recalled. Despite all her majesty and standing, she was now reduced to being a prisoner in the most inhospitable of cells. It was, of course, unwarranted. "We apologize for the rambling. Déjà vu was it?" Nothing that, she smiled at Meng.

"No scheme, only possibilities," the fourth of her kind replied. "And we point out that Sakamoto is a very-low level diplomat. No others had interest and could come, and so she was allowed to play," Zhuli added. "You seem concerned. What are your thoughts?"
 
Luo Meng ignored her comments regarding detainment. She barely acknowledged the Zhuli at all. "You have a lot of blood on your hands. Everyone in the human and the Daqinren sphere knows that. Yet as one of the original perpetrators, you still have the gall to meet the human leadership personally. The Daqinren are many things, but being stupid isn't one of them. So why? What consequences here do you see as boons?"

It was a half-rhetorical question. Luo Meng well understood possible, natural Daqin reactions to their mother-empress being captured and potentially executed. She just wanted confirmation of intent from the mother-empress herself.
 
"You seem very agitated, so we will attempt to assuage that. No, this was not another scheme to plot the downfall of humanity," the Mother-Empress replied. "We had hoped to engage in diplomacy, as conflict is highly destructive. We did however, believe there was a possibility our gestures of good will as being taken as an opportunity. However, we also believed that to be illogical and...extremely unlikely," she paused for effect, only to smile with amusement. "After all, we did not believe the current leadership would be so foolish as to provide such an excellent casus belli." Zhuli looked about her cell. "It would be better, if our quarters were more fitting our station however."
 
Luo Meng ignored the Zhuli's comments about their holding conditions. It was unclear to Luo if the Zhuli knew that she was kept on the cruiser by force, but admittedly it felt quite humiliating. The Prime Minister wondered how her people would react back in Li Ming, if they would play along with Shen Zhou's antics are threaten cracks on the confederacy.

None of that spelled on her expression, save for a few seconds of pause. Her following accusation was cold and neutral. "For all the HFR understands, we've been at war with you ever since Zhongzhi. Shen Zhou itself experiences Daqin sponsored piracy on a regular basis. All this new causus belli does is force your assaults out into the light, greater escalation." She eyed the guards. Statistically, most of them will have been Shen Zhou born. What she stated next was addressed as much to them as it was to the Zhuli. "Shen Zhou likes to tout that the RSC will crush your forces by pure multi-stellar weight. I'm sure you have your own propagandists. But both you and I know that both sides are just going to be left with is a bunch of broken starships and dead people."
 
The Empress eyed the woman with the faintest hint of rising disdain, or perhaps something worse. The roll of her eyes might have said it. She was getting bored.

"So dreary, at least make this conversation a friendly one. Not even so much as a, 'how are you doing' to us," she remarked with displeasure. "Well, do you really think that is what is going to happen?"
 
One of the guards eyed Luo Meng with an inquisitive glance, who shook her head in response. There was no need for escalation, for now. She looked back at the Zhuli. "The time for friendly conversation ended when you killed half the colonial population in Pingqiong and subjugated the survivors, then continued to wage a cold war of piracy and espionage against the rest of humanity for more than a century." Curiously, she failed to mention the massacre of the Old Guard specifically.

Still, a screen was beamed into the Zhuli's eye, a paused surveillance video, depicting a man in a green uniform sitting at a desk. "March 19th, 2199. General Wang Yue Ming, 1st Battalion of the Nuclear Defense Corp. The first recorded instance of your many, many crimes." Luo Meng then proceeded to play the footage, uncensored. One of the guards adjusted their footing. They couldn't see it, but they remembered the contents frame by frame: Shen Zhou's departments of education made sure everyone in the system witnessed the brutality of the Daqinren.
 
"Ugh, yes. Him," the Mother-Empress sourly shook her head, briefly glancing up to some unknown force for salvation. "Everyone is shown this in high school due to Ming's preference for sexual intercourse with female Zhùlǐ units, and not the underage girls in the Communist Youth League," Zhuli recalled with displeasure. "I despse him for taking advantage of my sisters, but will acknowledge his good taste. But that aside, I believe we are done here," she nodded to the guard. "It is clear to me that you are nothing more than an indoctrinated machine, and this lack of personhood displeases me. I wish to retire to my cryotube, the one and only thing that in this ship filled with flesh-drones that is mine to have."
 
Luo Meng raised an eyebrow, then looked down in thought. Ultimatley, this was inhumane, and impractical. As much as the HFR has refused to acknowledge the Zhuli and their spawn as sapient, it was undeniable that they indeed were. Worse, they were the spawn of the Old Guard, which was far from benevolent. The current HFR and Daqin leadership could kill each other all they want, but it didn't matter at the end. All their grievances were placed on a cabal of men long dead. The Prime Minister looked back up at the Zhuli, her eyes narrowing.

This wasn't working, not here, not in Ping Qiong, Shen Zhou, Li Ming, Sol. This cycle of hostility was stopping both sides from moving on. She felt powerless, trapped on this cruiser, unable to enact change despite her status. The so-called-Empress will die a corpse on the sun-baked square of Ri Li, and the cycle of violence will continue. Unless...

The Prime Minister had to hope the rest of the leadership in Li Ming could see how reckless this act of Shen Zhou was. Until then, she needed to make some peace.

The Empress found her senses stripped away from her, trapped, along in her thoughts, deprived of all stimuli inside her glass prison. She was trapped, for ten, twenty, thirty minutes, before she found her constraints loosening, her sight and hearing returning to her. She saw Luo Meng, now alone in this brig, two chairs and table in front of the glass chamber, a jumpsuit hung over one of them. Next to the table looked to be a temperature controlled box. The chamber itself opened with blaring red lights and nearly deafening sirens until Luo Meng pressed something on her datapad, a hint of annoyance on her face, until all was quiet again in the room.

"Get dressed." The Prime Minister addressed the Empress, her tone steady, prepared. The human was alone, vulnerable, a lunge forward, snap her neck, slit her throat, bash her head against the wall, that would be all it would take.
 
Mother-Empress Zhuli was upset. Upset enough to have stopped using the 'Royal We', which was something that hadn't happened in a very long time. Upset enough that they could hear her angry breathing as she was put back into her cryo-tube. However, something was off. Zhuli had been frozen and thawed several times over like the Westerners would with a Christmas Cake, taking it out every year but never eating it. This time, she was not being put into proper cryostasis. No, they were having her sit here, quietly, in what might as well have been a sensory deprivation chamber. For her, this was not uncomfortable, having retreated to the recesses of her mind and sitting down to think. But it felt like....an insult. And it had her stew, angry. But only for so long.

By the time she was released, Zhuli was sullen, but not angry enough to lash out. Instead, her golden eyes drifted over to the jumpsuit.

"This is..." her voice trailed off, golden scaled tail prodding at the prisoner's outfit offered to her. Eyes flicking back to the Prime Minister, the pieces quickly clicked into place. There was some sense in this human. "I appreciate this gesture of hospitality, but I am not sure if I will be very comfortable in it," the Mother-Empress of her kind admitted, dropping the royal verbiage in return. She didn't care much for her lack of clothing - her body was shapely and perfect in every way, and viewing it was a privilege - but the cloth was of questionable quality. "Maybe if I hug it to myself as a blanket," she wondered aloud, scooping it up before sitting down before Meng. "It is a start. So, what do you want to ask?"
 
"Suit yourself." Luo Meng replied nonchalantly. She reached down to the temperature controlled box, temporarily taking her eyes off the Zhuli, setting two bowls wrapped in aluminum foil, and two green bottles of beer onto the table. In one smooth motion, she popped the top off the bottle using a pre-packaged bottle opener, sliding it over to Zhuli Number Four, then unwrapped her own bowl, revealing it to be fried rice with chopped up carrots, potatoes, green beans, and pork.

The Prime Minister looked back at her. She was completely unfazed by the woman's nudity; frankly, her own wife looked a lot more appetizing. The politician's gaze lost its cold leer that came with the interrogation. Instead, she was visibly more relaxed, resigned.

"Qingdao beer." She raised her bottle to the Zhuli, taking a sip herself. "An old delicacy, courtesy of our friends back on Earth. Even when the world burned around them, the mega-brewery kept churning it out to drown out all the suffering, funny how things work out like that." Luo Meng mused out loud.

"The thing is... we know why you did it, why you do all of this, the piracy, the espionage, the flaunting. We don't need psychiatric evaluations to figure that out. The Old Guard were a bunch of fuckers, and frankly, there's enough people who despise them to swing elections." Luo Meng took a bite out of the rice.

"My grandfather was a small time bureaucrat on Zhu Que, a third generation immigrant. He oversaw the exports and imports to and from the surface, and noticed discrepancies. Supplies not going to the right places. A day's worth of food meant for the Jing moonbases never making it onto the launchpad. Half a ton of neodymium for the surface fusion powerplants, mysteriously burnt up in atmosphere. Small quantities, in the grand scheme of things, but a bot could easily compile them, and anyone who paid attention and understood the data knew that these weren't anomalies."

"He kept his mouth shut and wrote them off exactly as that: anomalies. Reaching into the leadership's pockets searching at the time would've ruined his career. I'm sure as a space dweller like you would understand, unlike those on Earth, colonists have to earn the air they breathe and the water they drink. It's a bit less extreme for surface colonists, but the threat was still there."

"Why am I spinning a yarn about my grandfather? Because under all that scrutiny, oppression by the Old Guard, he had his family to fall back on, my grandmother, my father and two aunts, who were distinctly not Fuckers. He could go to the city park and relax with people who didn't filter his words or reprimand him for any undesired action. But you didn't have that privilege, did you? The Fuckers were all you saw. They were your whole view. The Old Guard were your only reference of humanity, unlike my grandfather."

Luo Meng gulped down another bite of rice. "You're scared. Scared and angry. It makes what you've done and are doing forgivable. Almost."
 
"At last, civility befitting people," the Mother-Empress smiled, picking up the beer bottle to start. "I remember this beer, and am glad it hasn't changed much. Keeping its production running through the chaos was a wise decision, as it provided a bedrock of familiarity," the golden antlered woman noted as she began to sup. Even so, it was clear that she was listening to Meng's recounting of her family and its part in history, waiting patiently with mouthfuls of fried rice until she was paused. "Your perception is based on a myoptic view of history, but before I correct you, I must point out that we were scared and angry once, but now, I would say we are angry and concerned. That is, concerned in the same manner you would be in dealing with great apes," she pointed out, having dropped the 'Royal We' from before. "Specifically, the same type of concern should an armored gorilla constantly threaten to barge through the front door with a shotgun," she continued to smile with amusement. "But that insight aside, I am familiar with folk such as your own family. And General Wang Yue Ming's family. And their friends' family. We cared for them after all. And they were all the same, really."

"You see, the great crusader of human civil rights known as 'Martin Luther King Junior' was quoted as having said that he was more afraid of the average moderate citizen than the extremists who sought to oppress other people - his own group included - based on the color of skin," Zhuli pointed out. "This was for a very good reason, and what I do not believe you understand is the banality that goes into the continued existence of entities such as the Chinese Communist Party. People like your own family would do precisely as you have described, and despite agreeing change needed to occur, that there were wrongs that needed to be made right, that there was Evil that needed to be destroyed, they would do nothing. Why?" the Mother-Empress rhetorically asked. "You said it yourself, but apparently have not solved this simple puzzle." Putting her chopsticks down, the brunette ran her hands through her still damp hair, grooming herself as she continued to speak.

"Because they were more interested in maintaining their lives as it was then than taking any risk or action to enact change. They were selfish at best, and deluded, ignorant sheep at worst. At the very least, those that were selfish at least knew precisely what role they were taking in that they were complicit." Though the Fourth of all her kind continued to smile, there was a hard edge to the gaze she gave Meng. "Only your people could have saved themselves, but they refused to. And if they refused to, why should we even try to save them? We saved ourselves, and left them to what would have inevitably have happened sooner or later. Do not blame me or my children for that rotten husk of a nation collapsing so spectacularly."

Having said that, Zhuli happily finished her beer.

"Having enlightened you, what else would you like to discuss?"
 
Luo Meng covered contemplation by steadily feeding herself with the fried rise. The Zhuli wasn't wrong; for centuries, her people were raised and indoctrinated that the Old Guard way was the only way, that other systems of governance and society were obsolete and inefficient. Even as the piles of bodies threatened to reach the heights of the rockets that carried them across the stars, it was always thought of as a necessary evil.

Who was the actual manufactured species here?

The politician decided to swerve and change the topic. "Regardless of your motives, you still threw our society into chaos. Many of us don't have grandparents. Zhongzhi aside, why did you manufacture a war between the GDW and the Soyuz? The execution looks sloppy. Sure, they reduced each other's ship and personnel counts, but they're far from crippled, and you blatantly exposed your espionage operations and turned two fairly neutral supernations against you. I can only guess that you were not in complete control of this operation, which is somehow even more damning."
 
The golden horned woman raised the glass bottle to her lips and took another sip, but before she could take another, stopped and paused. Her eyes turned to fix on Meng as they shimmered, their corners mischievously grinning as gears spun into motion. "Oh. Don't tell me," she began, her lips now matching her eyes. "You're a prisoner too? I was wondering why you were not present, but, you didn't hear me explain what had happened previously, had you?" she realized. "If you weren't a prisoner, you would have already received a recording or a summary of everything I had said and what had occurred, but you are implying that was not the case," the Mother-Empress noted, eagerly leaning closer to the Prime Minister.

"And what happened to you?" she asked, casting away the rest of the Prime Minister's questions with a smug smile.
 
"Oh, I did listen to your explanation. You didn't give much of an answer, frankly." Meng instinctively fell back on her political habits: dodging the question completely with no apparent shift in facial expression or body language. The status of prisoner was soft but ultimately true: she could roam the ship at will, but had no ability to communicate with the outside without her messages filtered through the Shen Zhou loyalists first. Still, the Prime Minister was reluctant to admit any cracks in the HFR's unity.

"You gave a two sentence explanation for everyone present." Meng frowned, "Sorry, I was unaware and my 'children' got trigger happy is not an adequate response. Why was such an extensive operation at least two years in the making allowed to happen under your eyes? Procuring the explosives, infiltrating and bribing GDW and CCM personnel, that all takes time and effort. Do you truly only have loose communication with your subordinates beyond the Pingqiong system? If so, that is quite concerning."
 
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"Ā la ā la!" the Mother-Empress exclaimed, a hand held to cover her mouth. "For a Prime Minister, you seem to be rather unknowing! Though, I suppose it explains your current situation," Zhuli playfully poked at Meng. Crossing and uncrossing her legs, she began, "Let me use a historical example. Prior to World War Two, mid-rank officers in the Japanese Imperial Army attempted to start a war with China on a number of occasions, believing that they were doing their superiors a favor. That is, starting a much needed war they believed their superiors wanted and would win but did not have the courage or will to begin," she explained, amused at having to do so. "Surely you understand this, or have guessed this was possible?" she asked, raising an eyebrow. "And surely, you don't think that the operation was the only one of its kind?"

The Mother-Empress continued to smile.
 
Luo Meng shot back a perplexed look. "The Imperial era Japanese? It's not that I'm unknowing, it's that I find it utterly hard to believe that you're so smug about this situation, the fact your subordinates act as Japanese Imperialists. That's who you're comparing yourselves to? Remember that three and a half centuries ago, they lost that war. The mid-rank officers were wrong; they got bogged down in mainland China, eventually getting nuked twice. They started a war that they could not win, destroying themselves and everyone that they touched. They were utterly annhialated, saved only by old America's need of bodies to combat the old communists."

She pointed a finger at the Empress. "You are on death's door. Your 'empire's' military leadership, it seems, seeks to follow in the footsteps of those ancient islanders: infighting, utterly arrogant, and savage. None of this concerns you?"

The politician's eyes drifted down, her eyebrows knit. "Brace!" She looked back up and ordered the Zhuli, shoving the drinks and food back into the box with chaotic clatter, shutting it. Two marines stormed into the room, the clattering of their boots informing the activation of maglocks. They forcefully strapped both the Zhuli and Luo Meng to their chairs.

Suddenly, gravity disappeared in the room. Try as she might, the Empress couldn't hear anything beyond the room as the brig's dampeners made it utterly soundproof. All she could tell that the entire ship was under going a rotating motion, with both her hair and the politician's dragged toward one direction. Then, as sudden as it disappeared, gravity returned in full force, pulling everyone's body in the room down towards the floor with one and a half times the force on Earth.

Luo Meng took a deep breath. Gene therapy helped her with the high and low gravity, but half her weight suddenly put on her still sucked. She glared at the Zhuli with frustration. "Your children are mad. I hope you understand that."
 
As Meng spoke, the golden horned woman continued to eat, a look of gentle pleasure on her face. She was listening, but what it all meant to her was something different. However, Zhuli raised an eyebrow when she was ordered to brace, but even her reaction betrayed something else. Reptilian tail wrapping around her maglocked chair, she waited to see what would happen. Even as the guards strapped her down for safety, the Mother-Empress was more curious than concerned.

"You don't have to worry about me so much you know," she reassuringly smiled. "As for what you said before, I am comparing these Second Class Citizens to those impulsive and unknowing officers of the past. And, I also point out that I have come in person to give reparations." She then gestured to the guards. "Only to be accosted by all these big, burly, insistent men!" Zhuli knowingly grinned. "And yes, I am well aware that my children are very rightfully angry. It was a potential contingency that I have planned for and come to terms with. However, the person or persons that have orchestrated this whole ordeal? I am uncertain as to whether or not they realize just what is going to happen next." Bringing a finger to her lip as she pondered, Zhuli's eyes darted back to the Prime Minister. "Do you think he knows what is going to happen?"
 
"I don't think they think." Luo Meng scoffed under the extra weight of her own body. "Tell me this, Zhuli Number Four, surely your people have simulated wars in your virtual reality? Landfalls on Earth, cities burning, rivers flowing with blood, corpses of the innocent. I imagine your most hardened fanatics have grown numb to the suffering through these simulations, even come to revel in it."

"Have you, by chance, simulated the worst case scenario for the Daqin Empire? Your collection of tubes and rings in space. A thousand ways to die painfully and slowly in these metal coffins that many in a 200 light year radius call home now. Surely you've seen the footage of the One-Month War. Verrier Station, if I recall. A stray railgun round from the communists tore right through it. Half of the population got wiped out. The lucky ones died instantly to the round itself. The unlucky ones took seconds and minutes to die in vacuum and wounds from the shrapnel. The most unlucky are the survivors, who had to spend days tumbling through space in sealed chambers before they were rescued by freighters."

Luo Meng looked at the Zhuli with a concern. "And the GDW and the CCM didn't want to beat each other to death. The war between the Daqin Empire and the HFR will certainly not be so bloodless. Verrier Station is going to happen a thousand times over for your people, even if you win. Do your subordinates understand that? Did they think?"
 
"I am quite surprised you are asking such a rhetorical question," the Empress replied, a hint of smugness tugging at her lips. With the danger having come and gone for the moment, she relaxed in her chair, not bothering to reposition the makeshift blanket over herself. "To answer your question, we have studied worst case scenarios and all of its potential iterations. I am proud to say that as a society, we are very well prepared," the golden horned woman boasted proudly. Bright, gleaming tail gently wagging, she added, "Assuming your intelligence apparatus has purchased the right to Imperial Citizenship and used it to enter our space and explore, you should know this very well. But, your own remarks make me question as to whether you have managed to place agents at all. And it is one of the easiest steps too, might I add!"
 
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