We start off the day with some terrible news. It seems like God asked for reinforcements, and Chuck Norris answered the call. May a legend of our times Rest In Peace...
Our newest member shall be announced at the end of the chapter...
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3rd Person POV
The space Victor stepped into was empty. It was always empty. The polished black floors, made of a rare obsidian composite mined from the crust of a dead moon in the system, reflected his silhouette like a ghost trapped in the stone. The silence here was heavy, like the air inside an airlock seconds before cycling. It was the silence of a tomb built for a living god.
He walked to the single featureless, buttonless, and interfaceless elevator at the end of the hall. It was connected to the Spire's central AI, and it knew exactly who he was and exactly where he was going.
As he approached, the doors slid open silently, and Victor stepped inside. The interior was lined with mirrors, forcing him to look at himself from every angle. He saw the man in the charcoal suit, the man who commanded legions of employees, the man who could bankrupt planetary governments with a signature. But right now, he didn't see a Director. He saw a frightened animal. He saw the sweat beading on his hairline despite the rigorous climate control. He saw the slight tremor in his left hand and clenched his fist to force the fingers to stillness.
As the doors closed, sealing him in, Victor took a deep breath, trying to force his heart rate down, knowing that somewhere above him, He was watching that heart rate on a monitor.
The elevator began to ascend, and his ears popped. The pressure differential at this altitude was significant, even with the inertial dampeners. He swallowed hard, the click of his throat loud in the confined space, trying to clear the tubes.
The elevator stopped, and its doors slid open with a hiss of escaping hydraulics.
This wasn't the top. Nothing was allowed direct access to the sanctum. No simple push of a button could grant an audience with the master of the House. It was a walk that forced you to undergo a pilgrimage, a psychological gauntlet designed to make you feel small, to make you feel tired before you even spoke a word, to make you feel mortal.
Victor stepped out onto floor 445.
The air here was distinctly different. It was thinner, recycled with slightly less oxygen than the standard atmospheric mix. It was a deliberate environmental hostility, designed to make visitors lightheaded, to induce a subtle hypoxia that dulled reaction times and heightened anxiety.
The architecture shifted violently. Gone was the sleek, soulless corporate modernism of the lower floors. Here, the surroundings spoke of ancient power, of a lineage that predated spaceflight.
Dark wood, real wood, imported from the sanctuary forests of Gaia-4 at tremendous expense, hand-carved with scenes of industry and conquest, lined the walls, giving off the scent of polished mahogany, old paper, and the faint, metallic tang of ozone. The floor was covered in a deep, crimson carpet, woven from the wool of genetically reconstructed highland sheep, so thick it swallowed his footsteps completely.
A spiral staircase, wide and floating without visible supports, wound its way up through a massive open atrium, piercing the ceiling of each subsequent floor.
Mezzanine after mezzanine, Victor climbed his way up. His footsteps were silent on the carpet, but the sound of his own breathing seemed deafening.
Floor 446 was home to the Library. It was a vast, circular room lined with towering shelves that reached the ceiling. Rows upon rows of physical books, ancient paper and leather, rotting slowly behind glass boxes. These weren't datacubes or holographic archives; these were original texts from Earth, from before it had been destroyed. Treatises on war, on engineering, on philosophy. Sun Tzu. Machiavelli. Einstein. It was a display of wealth that transcended currency, a hoarding of human history that only a being who had lived through centuries of it could appreciate.
Floor 447 had a Gallery whose walls were adorned with art from dead civilizations. Statues of multi-limbed gods carved from void-stone that no longer had worshippers. Tapestries woven by species that had been extinguished by the very weapons SIGS now manufactures. After all, the Vulpinians hadn't been the only alien civilization humanity had interacted with, just the only one that had the ability to travel through space. All others were slaughtered by mankind.
There was also a painting that Victor recognized as a Rembrandt, something that had once hung in the Louvre on Earth, now gathering dust in the dark, illuminated only by the faint glow of the reflecting lights. It was a graveyard of culture, a collection of bones.
As he kept climbing, the scenes kept shifting. Floor 448 contained primitive weapons, swords of folded steel, old kinetic weapons, two of which Victor recognized as staples from Earth, the Heckler-Koch HK 416 and the Karabiner 98 kurz. There were also railgun prototypes that required a fusion pack the size of a tank to fire. It was a history of violence, a linear progression of killing capability leading up to the products SIGS now sold to the galaxy. It was a reminder that they had always been the ones holding the sword.
Floor 449 was a simple and empty waiting room with a single chair. It was a test, a place to sit and rot if the master wasn't ready to see you. But today, the door to the final stairs was open.
Victor didn't stop. He couldn't. The momentum of his fear pushed him upward, ascending the final curve of the stairs to Floor 450.
The room was vast. It took up the entire floorplate of the spire. The walls were gone, replaced entirely by high-tensile, thick, armored glass layered with reactive polymers that gave the illusion that there was nothing between the occupants and the dizzying drop to the city miles below. The clouds were drifting below the floor level, a sea of white turbulence that isolated them from the world.
The only light came from the three suns glaring through the glass, casting long, hard shadows across the room.
In the center of the room, facing the far window, looking out toward the distant, massive silhouette of the Helix complex, was a chair, a high-backed throne of black leather and chrome, its back turned to the entrance.
"Director Vance," a voice resonated.
It didn't come from the chair. It seemed to come from the walls, from the floor, from the air itself. It was a voice that vibrated in the marrow of Victor's bones, a baritone frequency perfectly modulated to command attention. "You are three minutes late."
Victor stopped ten paces from the chair. He bowed low, his waist bending at a perfect forty-five-degree angle, holding the pose until his back muscles screamed in protest.
"My apologies, Lord Volanti," Victor started. "The traffic on the skylanes was-"
"Irrelevant," the voice said, interrupting him.
The chair slowly began to rotate, turning with the heavy grind of a turret.
Victor straightened, clasping his hands behind his back to hide the tremor that had returned to his fingers. He forced his face into a mask of neutrality, locking away the panic behind a wall of corporate discipline.
The chair finished turning, and sitting there was Gregorio Volanti.
To the uneducated eye, he was a man in his late thirties. A devastatingly handsome man, with sharp, aristocratic features that looked like they had been chiseled from marble. His hair was jet-black, slicked back with severe precision, and his eyes were the color of polished steel, reflecting the light of the suns with an unsettling clarity. He wore a suit that looked like it had been woven from shadows and starlight, tailored to the physique of the Vitruvian Man.
But Victor knew the truth about Gregorio, and that truth was terrifying. Gregorio Volanti was three hundred and thirty-two years old. The man sitting in the chair was not a man, not anymore, not for a long time. He was a Simulacrum.
But not the mass-produced trash used for hazardous labor in the orbital shipyards, nor the advanced combat models from the Revenant program Victor had wasted on Mechanicus. This was a Masterpiece. This was the pinnacle of House Volanti's forbidden science, a singular creation that skirted the edges of the IUC's strictest laws on artificial sentience.
House Volanti had spent quadrillions of credits in research, production, and augmentations over the two centuries Gregorio had lived as a simulacrum. The skin was a bio-synthetic weave, grown in zero-gravity vats, indistinguishable from human dermis. It was warm to the touch, capable of sweating, bleeding, and healing. The internal skeleton was a hyper-alloy mesh, lighter than bone but stronger than diamond. The neural pathways were grown from Volanti's own cloned brain tissue, digitized, enhanced, and then grafted into a quantum-photonic core that processed information a million times faster than a biological mind.
He had sensors that could taste the vintage of wine from a single drop, feel the thread count of silk with a brush of a finger, and, most terrifyingly, smell the fear pheromones wafting off an employee. He had been the one and only human to have achieved true immortality, not by preserving the rotting meat of his birth body, but by becoming the god of the machine. Every few years, he would have to undergo procedures to change his appearance, to show aging, and to become his own successor while his descendants lived without a worry.
Gregorio didn't blink, his chest rising and falling, simulating breath.
"Sit," Gregorio ordered.
A simple wooden chair rose from the floor panels behind Victor, emerging from the sleek surface. Victor sat, perched on the edge, his posture rigid, his hands gripping his knees.
Gregorio stared at him for a long moment. Victor felt like a microbe under an electron microscope, waiting for the slide to be incinerated. He could feel Gregorio's optical sensors scanning him, measuring his pulse rate via the capillaries in his neck, analyzing the dilation of his pupils, tasting the cortisol in his sweat.
"Do you know the history of House Volanti, Victor?" Gregorio asked softly. His voice was a purr, a low rumble that sounded like a heavy engine idling.
"I... I know the basics, my Lord," Victor stammered.
"The basics," Gregorio scoffed and shook his head. He then placed his hands on the table and stood up.
The movement was the most unsettling part. A human has micro-stutters when they move, small adjustments of balance, and shifting of weight. A standard robot has rigid, servo-driven articulation. However, Gregorio had neither, moving with the fluid and impossible grace of liquid mercury. One moment he was sitting, the next he was standing by the window, without a wasted joule of energy, without a sound.
He looked out at the rival tower of House Helior, the massive star-shaped complex that dominated the horizon. "Before the Exodus... before we left the cradle of Earth... my ancestors were builders. We didn't focus on building starships, or banks, or anything that you might be trying to imagine. We built foundations... foundations of concrete and steel, trying to hold the earth together while the rest of humanity tried to leave it. From the territories megatowers of the Chinese Imperium, the capital buildings of the Russo-German Empire, to the gleaming towers of the United Continents of America, we were the architects of stability."
Gregorio turned, his silhouette framed by the blinding light, casting a long shadow that engulfed Victor. "And now, for over two hundred years, I have led this House. My father died when he was eighty, his father at seventy. They decayed, lost their grip, let sentimentality and fatigue cloud their judgment. They were meatbags with only the dream of immortality, but never taking the step towards it."
Gregorio raised a hand, examining his own palm. He flexed the fingers, the synthetic tendons moving perfectly under the skin. "I am the only one who took those steps. I spent eighty-eight years of my life, ever since I reached the age of twenty-five, dedicated to researching immortality through the creation of the Revenant program."
Gregorio stopped, looking out the window, as if reminiscing. "Of course, didn't last all those years researching, and the only real headway was made after I was forsaken to a life strapped to a wheelchair. But I did manage to live as a meatbag to witness the first simulacrum be activated. A man by the name of Lee Saint... or as you might know him, Asset 0-53... Two years after that, my body was on the verge of failing, so I took the step to become a simulacrum."
He then turned back around to face Victor. "I have been the only Volanti to hold the reins for almost three centuries. I built SIGS from a logistics firm into an empire. I hold the IUC Senate by the throat because we build the guns that protect them and the engines that move them. House Helior has the money," he gestured dismissively toward the massive Star-complex in the distance. "They are the bankers, the vault keepers. And House Zaurelia? They manipulate the laws, and they hold the political leverage. They think they are the equals of Volanti."
He laughed, a sharp, metallic bark that lacked any humor.
"But I have almost as much leverage as Helior and Zaurelia combined, Victor," he turned his back to Victor once againa nd approached the window. "Do you know why? Hmm? Well, the reason for that is that a banker cannot stop an invasion, and a politician cannot terraform a dead world. Only we can... We are the necessary evil... the iron in the velvet glove."
He suddenly snapped his head toward Victor. The movement was instant, faster than a human eye could track, a blur of motion that ended in perfect stillness, his eyes locking onto Victor's like weapon guidance systems. "And do you know what threatens that necessity, Victor?"
Victor swallowed, his mouth dry as dust. "Inefficiency?"
"Perception!" Gregorio roared. The volume didn't distort. His vocalizers were perfect, capable of reaching decibels that could rupture eardrums, but he held them just at the threshold of pain, causing Victor to hold his ears in agony, the sound vibrating in his chest cavity.
Gregorio walked toward him, his steps heavy as they deliberately thudded against the floor to shake the chair Victor sat in. "It was perfect. We were untouchable. And then... one insignificant insect. One grease-stained mechanic sullying one of our most valuable orbital assets."
Gregorio leaned down, his face inches from Victor's. Victor could smell him. He smelled of ozone, expensive cologne, and something faintly metallic, like the taste of blood in your mouth. The eyes were too perfect, the irises adjusting their aperture like camera shutters, zooming in on Victor's fear.
"Aliastar Thorne was a fool," Gregorio hissed. "I allowed you to put him in place with the expectation that he would fail. To me, he was middle management, a blunt instrument put in place to sign papers and look important. But you? I allowed you to climb up the company I built from nothing. I allowed you to become the Director. You are supposed to be the scalpel."
Gregorio circled Victor like a shark, his hand trailing along the back of Victor's chair. "You let a minor thermal vent project, a project worth less than ten percent of our portfolio, dominate the news cycle. You let the name 'Mark Shephard' become a symbol. A symbol, Victor! Do you not know how dangerous symbols are? All throughout human history, symbols have led to rebellions. And then... You sent my property to be destroyed."
Gregorio stopped, his voice dropping to a dangerous whisper. "Four Class-A Simulacrums. Do you know the engineering required to build just one? They are the culmination of two centuries of evolving technology that's only been given to the other Houses for them to create their own as a means to give me leverage over them. But not to the level of my work. The condensed carbon nanotubes? The combat algorithms distilled from centuries of warfare? Under the control of the virtual mind of some of the most elite operatives, they are apex predators, Victor. The Class-B simulacrums have never failed, let alone missed. But to have four fucking Class-A's do that? The only thing they don't have is the skin or all the other unnecessary shit that makes me look human. But aside from that, they are built in my image."
He leaned in closer, his voice vibrating with genuine confusion and rage. "And yet... according to their handler, one was torn apart by a human. Do you understand the physics required to do that, Victor? To rip a hyper-alloy limb from its socket requires more than five thousand pounds of force. A normal man would shatter every bone in his body attempting it. And yet, Mark Shephard did it."
Gregorio straightened, looking at his own hand. "And the bigger issue was that because they were destroyed, they were found. You forced us to lie, Victor. You forced House Volanti to claim incompetence, to claim we were hacked rather than admit we were beaten by what is more than likely a lab rat. Do you know what the Senate thinks when the galaxy's premier weapons manufacturer claims it can be hacked? What the current Emperor will do?"
Gregorio slammed his fist onto the back of the chair, the wood splintered with a sound like a gunshot, causing Victor to flinch violently, covering his head. "They get nervous, Victor! And when House Zaurelia smells nervousness, they start drafting regulations. When House Helior smells weakness, they start raising interest rates on our loans. When the Emperor gets nervous, he starts backtracking on our deals..."
Gregorio stopped in front of Victor. The steel eyes bore into him, stripping away every layer of defense as his voice reached a terrifying level of rage masked by calm. "You have shaken the pillars of my fucking house!... So, tell me, Victor. If you had the man responsible for this... this royal fuck-up... standing in front of you right now... What would you do?"
Victor was sweating profusely now, the moisture slicked his palms and forehead. He felt small, like a bunny before a hungry wolf. He looked up at the perfect, synthetic face of his master. He knew the answer Gregorio wanted. He knew the ruthlessness that had gotten him this job. He looked down and out at the window.
"I would kill him," Victor whispered, his voice trembling, but the intent genuine.
Gregorio stared at him. The silence stretched for a while. Then, slowly, the robotic head nodded. "You tell no lies."
Gregorio's hand shot out, moving faster than thought, the fingers, hard as diamond-coated steel, wrapped around Victor's throat. Victor gagged, his hands flying up to claw at the wrist, but it was like clawing at a statue.
Gregorio lifted him into the air. Victor's feet kicked helplessly as he was effortlessly hoisted one-handed. Gregorio didn't even brace himself as his internal gyros compensated instantly for the shifted weight. He held the two-hundred-pound man as if he were made of Styrofoam.
Gregorio walked slowly past the chair and toward the far wall of transparency.
"Open," Gregorio commanded, and a section of the heavy glass slid away with a mechanical hum.
The wind howled into the room. It was a freezing vortex of stratospheric air, thin and biting, that instantly chilled the sweat on Victor's skin. The roar of it filled the room, drowning out Victor's choking gasps.
Gregorio stepped out onto the maintenance ledge. It was a narrow strip of metal, barely a foot wide, suspended four hundred and fifty floors above the ground.
He held Victor out over the void.
Victor screamed, or at least he tried to, since the sound was ripped away by the wind. He looked down, miles down. With the exception of a few clouds, it was a mostly clear day, meaning that Victor could see the vehicles below as specks of dust. If he fell, he would reach terminal velocity before he hit the ground and would liquefy on impact. The sheer scale of the drop paralyzed his mind.
"Do you know how much damage you have caused?" Gregorio shouted over the wind, his voice cutting through the roar without effort. "Due to that idiot Aliastar, the stock dropped forty percent... But he is dead... and you are not... Your stunt caused another thirty percent drop! My leverage with the Senate is shaky! They think we are losing our edge! They think Volanti is getting old!"
Gregorio's grip tightened on Victor's throat, pinching the carotid artery. Victor's vision began to spot with black dots. He was choking. The world was narrowing down to the face of the machine holding him.
"I liked you, Victor!" Gregorio yelled, shaking him over the abyss. "I liked your ruthlessness! I liked how you acquired the Terra-Forming division! How you ripped the company from that bitch at Titan Logistics. I liked how you crushed the Unions on Ouros III without firing a shot!"
Gregorio's arm extended further, pushing Victor out until only Gregorio's hand connected him to the building. "But stupidity? Stupidity is a sin I do not forgive! It is the one flaw that evolution and engineering cannot fix!"
Suddenly, Gregorio's fingers opened, and Victor fell.
For a split second, there was nothing. Just gravity reaching up to claim him with greedy hands. Victor's stomach lurched into his throat, his heart stopped, and his soul left his body. He saw the ground rushing up to meet him. He saw his death, his whole life flashing before his very eyes.
And then-
*CRACK*
Gregorio's hand snatched him out of the air.
He caught Victor by the left forearm. The force of the stop wasn't all that brutal, but the gentleness, or lack thereof, was. Victor felt the bones in his wrist grind together, a sickening crunch that shot blinding white agony up his shoulder.
The pain brought him back to life, and he shrieked, releasing a primal sound of pain that even the wind couldn't swallow. Dangling now by one crushed arm, swaying in the high wind like a ragdoll, he looked up, tears streaming horizontally across his face, staring up at the impassive, synthetic face of Gregorio Volanti.
The Simulacrum wasn't straining. He wasn't even grimacing. He held the dangling man with the casual indifference of holding a pen. The wind whipped Gregorio's hair, but his body was a statue of unyielding force.
"Listen to me closely," Gregorio said. He wasn't shouting anymore, but his voice was projected perfectly to Victor's ears. It was calm, contrasting terrifyingly with the violence of the moment. "You are going to fix this."
Victor nodded frantically, sobbing, snot and sweat mixing on his face. "Yes! Yes, Lord! I'll fix it!"
"You are not to go after Mark Shephard again," Gregorio commanded, staring down at him with cold, calculating eyes. "No more kill squads. No more petty revenge. It makes us look weak. It makes us look scared. If a simple engineer can defeat my best Simulacrums, if he can rip them apart with his bare hands as their handler witnessed, then he is not a bug to be squashed. I have lived for over three hundred and thirty-two years... and I think there is no one more qualified than I to judge someone. He is a rival to be respected. He is just like me... he is a predator."
Gregorio pulled, effortlessly hoisting Victor back up until they were face to face, Victor's feet still dangling over the abyss.
"You may be ruthless, but you've never killed," Gregorio's eyes narrowed. "You've had others do the deed for you... You are a businessman, Victor. Act like one... Buy him."
Victor wheezed, cradling his crushed wrist against his chest as Gregorio held him by the collar of his expensive suit. "B-buy him?"
"Offer him money," Gregorio said coldly. "Offer him power. Offer him ten billion credits. Offer him twenty. I don't care about the cost. Buy his proprietary vent technology. Buy his manufacturing process. Buy his patents and make him sign a non-compete clause that binds him for a century. Ensure he never touches a piece of thermal dynamics engineering again."
Gregorio leaned in, his synthetic breath washing over Victor's face.
"If he refuses... let him be. SIGS will survive a minor competitor, and even if he takes over the Thermal Dynamics sector, it's not our only source of income. We will not survive a public war with a martyr. So, do not make him a hero, Victor. Make him rich... History is rarely filled with rich men who are also heroes."
Gregorio turned and threw Victor back into the room.
Victor slammed onto the crimson carpet, rolling, clutching his shattered wrist. He gasped for air, curling into a fetal ball, the adrenaline crash making him shake uncontrollably. He retched, dry heaving into the expensive wool.
The transparency field slid shut with a hiss, cutting off the wind. The roar vanished. Silence returned to the room, heavy and absolute.
Gregorio Volanti stood over him, adjusting his cuffs. He looked immaculate, and not a single hair was out of place. "You return to making me money, Victor. You return to building my empire, not tanking it."
Gregorio turned his back, walking slowly toward his chair, his footsteps heavy and rhythmic. "And Victor?"
Victor looked up, his face pale, his eyes wide with trauma, his arm throbbing in time with his heart. "Y-yes?"
Gregorio stopped, looking out at the massive star-shaped building of House Helior, the symbol of the only power that rivaled his own.
"There better not be a next time." The Simulacrum turned his head slightly, just enough for the steel eye to catch the light. "Because next time... I will not catch you. Did I make myself understood?"
Victor struggled to his feet, cradling his broken arm. He bowed, low and clumsy, pain radiating through his entire body. "Yes, my Lord. I understand."
"Good," Gregorio examined him before returning his gaze out of the window. "You may leave."
Victor limped toward the spiral staircase, leaving a trail of tears and sweat on the pristine carpet. He began the long, painful descent, leaving the god in his high tower, plotting the purchase of a wolf.
---
This Royal Navy has expanded and welcomes the following courageous soul: Danielle W.
As your Fleet Admiral, I, Crimson_Reapr, welcome you, honor your commitment, and thank you for your service. May our power reach beyond the edges of charted space, and may ruin fall upon all who stand against humanity's strength.
Book 2 has wrapped up at Chapter 50, which is a short 13,400 words, and Book 3 has hit the ground running with new chapters! That means that you can read up to 27 Advanced Chapters on my Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/cw/Crimson_Reapr
But listen closely now. I'm currently editing Chapter 11, so that number will naturally increase to 28 in an hour or so.
Crimson_Reapr is the name, and writing Sci-fi is the way.