The House of the Reaper has opened its arms to welcome:
Novice Dylan Husted.
Operatives Rache McPhee, Samantha Birman, Jackson Reiners, and Nikki Smith.
Their contributions and dedication to our cause will be honored through the Net and through the Stars.
---
After a few moments of silence, the tension that had reigned over the plaza finally broke. However, it did not vanish entirely as the existential weight of what Mark had confessed hung in the air and was clear in people's minds. But the immediate anger that had taken hold of many of them had subsided for the time being.
As Mark finally turned away from where he stood, a single clap from Davis broke through the tense silence, followed by Kenjiro, then Dr. Corven, and slowly, the clapping spread. It turned into a cautious yet genuine roar of cheers from the colonists who had realized just how close they had come to losing the man who had been responsible for keeping them alive.
Of course, there were still pockets of the crowd who refused to cheer, some men and women who stood with their arms crossed and their faces frozen in a perpetual frown that hinted at lingering disgust. The truth would always be a hard pill to swallow, and not everyone was ready to forgive the lies Mark had said simply because the intentions behind them were pure.
And Mark didn't expect them to either, since he knew that the trust he had shattered would have to be rebuilt brick by brick. But right now, he just wanted to make his way through the crowd.
Mark descended the steps of the City Hall with heavy steps, and as he stepped on the ground, it was as if he had been Moses parting the Red Sea, the way people moved out of his way. His Elites also moved along with him, forming a loose perimeter to keep the people at a respectable distance. Some of the people reached out as he passed through them, patting his armored arms, and shouting words of gratitude as they realized with overwhelming relief that the man walking past them was responsible for maintaining their safety on such a hostile planet.
Mark nodded to them, offering tired smiles as he walked through. But his attention was focused on a single target. Standing right next to Sister Elara was Lyra.
As Mark approached, her little face lit up with an innocent joy that pierced straight through the exhaustion in his bones from the battle just an hour ago, and from the emotional exhaustion that was weighing him down. No matter where they were or what he had done, she was always smiling at him, waiting patiently for her Papa to get home.
Mark stepped into the small clearing that the Elites had made for hima nd immediately leaned down, his arms instinctively reaching out to scoop her up as he had done many times before. But he stopped himself an inch away, and looked down at his arms. His armor, though partially retracted by the nanobots, was still covered in sut and dried blood from the men who had pretty much been pulverized earlier today. He didn't want to touch her, fearing that he'd stain her with the horrors of death and war, effectively contaminating her small, innocent worldview.
Mark hesitated for a moment, his hands hovering awkwardly in the air as a look of tired regret washed over his face before he began to pull back.
Lyra, seeing her Papa pull away, tilted her head in confusion and started to scan him up and down, her eyes finally settling on the grime on his armor before making their way back up to his exhausted face. She then took a step forward and thrust her small, clean hand straight out toward him, letting out a giggle that cut through the noise of the cheering plaza.
"You look really cool, Papa," Lyra said with as much certainty as a nine-year-old could muster in her voice.
Mark looked down at Lyra, and his brain almost short-circuited. He felt a small tightness filling his chest with warmth as the weight of command that had been slowly crushing him over the past couple of weeks evaporated, and a genuine, warm smile broke across his face.
He knelt down slowly and brought himself closer to her eye level, reaching out with one of his armored hands, carefully controlling his strength as he gently wrapped his fingers around her tiny hand. He then leaned in and pressed a soft, lingering kiss to her forehead.
"I'm glad you think so, my little bug," Mark murmured, his voice almost breaking with emotion. "Come on now, I think we should take the rest of the day off and just go home."
He stood up, his hand still holding hers, and started to make his way home.
The image they created as they began to walk through the parted crowd was quite impactful for the people watching. Here was a man who stood seven feet tall, who had just confessed to being a biological chimera and had just stared down ancient killing machines that possessed enough power to level this city, walking with his head bowed, his arm extended downward just to hold the tiny, fragile hand of a little girl reaching up.
That act in and of itself did more to prove Mark's promise and desire to create a haven than his words or anyone else's support could ever do. It served to ground everything they had just been told, showing them that beneath the alien DNA and the groundbreaking technology, the heart beating in his chest was still fiercely and protectively human.
The Elites fell into a loose formation behind them, escorting their Commander and his daughter out of the plaza and toward the residential sector.
The walk to the manor was quiet, but behind them, the colony was still buzzing with the aftermath of the assembly. The streets near Mark's residence were relatively empty since, with the lockdown status lifted, everyone had returned to their lives and their jobs.
The door hissed open as the biometric scanners registered Mark's presence, and the elites were about to take up defensive positions outside the perimeter, turning to face the city, when Mark told them to just return to their duties or take the day off since he and Lyra did not need extra protection.
The inside of the house was warm and smelled faintly of the synthetic pine cleaner the cleaning drones used. Mark let go of Lyra's hand as he rolled his shoulders with a heavy sigh.
"Alright, kiddo," Mark said, his voice returning to normal. "You hungry? Because I'm starving."
"Ooh. Papa, you know I'm always hungry. Can we have the noodles with the spicy sauce?" Lyra asked while practically bouncing on her heels, instantly forgetting the tense atmosphere they had just been in, not even ten minutes ago.
"God, how I envy a child's innocence... Yeah, we can have the noodles," Mark chuckled. "You go and pick a show to watch while I get started with the cooking, then I'm going to take a shower. And listen to me carefully. Do not touch the stove while I'm gone, understood?"
"Aye aye, captain!" Lyra yelled and fake saluted before sprinting toward the living room, her small boots thudding against the metal floor.
Mark walked into the spacious kitchen, grateful that when printing his home, Marcos had the counters built slightly higher than normal to accommodate his height. As he did so, he opened his inventory and pulled out a fresh pack of synthesized noodles and a few vacuum-sealed cuts of an evolved boar that had fallen victim to the tree-cutting operations while constructing the Maglev line.
Mark let out a heavy sigh as he remembered seeing the maglev line warped in sections and completely ripped off their supposed locations in others while making their way back in the transports. He then shook his head, clearing his mind, as he told himself, "Not my problem right now."
He continued to prep for the meal, moving with the practiced efficiency he'd learned around the kitchen in his previous life. He wasn't a chef or anything on Earth, but he did find comfort in the simple task of cooking, and it was clear that this act had carried over to this life. Though in this life, it was more of a grounding ritual he chose to practice.
He reached into the pantry, grabbing the cooking oil and the specific blend of spicy, Earth-like seasonings the farmers had managed to synthesize from the local plants. He fired up the electric stove, searing the meat quickly before adding the noodles and the sauce.
Once everything was combined, he turned the heat down to a low simmer, leaving the pan covered so it wouldn't burn.
From the living room, he could hear the upbeat intro music of a classic cartoon. After adopting Lyra on Mechanicus station a year ago, Marcos had done the due diligence of downloading tens of thousands of hours of children's entertainment, preserving a massive chunk of human culture, which meant that for however long we lived on this planet, which would probably be a long time, Lyra wouldn't grow up completely disconnected from her humanity's form of entertainment.
Mark leaned out of the kitchen, checking on her, and noticed that Lyra was curled up on the large sofa, completely engrossed in the colorful animation on the wall-mounted screen, her arms wrapped tightly around the refurbished Mr. Bear and the slightly lopsided plushie of an alien.
Mark smiled as the sight of Lyra being careless sent a warmth through him. He then turned and headed upstairs toward his bathroom, and the moment the door clicked shut behind him, sealing him in the quiet, tiled space, he finally let his guard down completely.
He looked down at his chest and realized that he hadn't even bothered to take off his armor with the exception of his gauntlets. So he sent a single thought directed at the pendant resting against his chest, and the nanobots making up the durable armor instantly dissolved, flowing like a dark liquid as they retracted swiftly away from his skin and poured into the small housing of the pendant, leaving him standing in nothing but his boxers.
He walked over to the wide mirror above the sink and stared at himself, letting out a tired sigh. "I'm almost thirty-four in this life... I'm getting too old for this shit."
But he wasn't talking about what he was actually doing. Leading the people, fighting death, breaking the news to people, or being a father. They were all things he didn't mind. What he did mind right now was the glowing blue icon that was pulsing gently in the upper right corner of his peripheral vision.
The System had been pretty much dormant for three years, giving him rewards here and there. He hadn't even been excited at first when he had gotten the first iteration of it, commanding fleets of starships, and had seen it more as a means to an end, a way to get off the rock he had been stranded on and survive. But as luck would have it, that lifeline he had planned to rely on was stripped away and replaced by this dormant version that had offered him nothing but a subspace inventory.
Until today. After all this time, after learning to live without it, knowing that it was only useful for storing things and giving him rewards, it had decided to pop back up when he stood on the steps of the city hall. It couldn't have come at any other time, not when he wanted it years earlier, but now that he had learned to rely on his own resources, while he was speaking about the crushing weight of his history, and found the exact, mathematical middle ground between truth and deception to keep his people together.
Mark turned away from the mirror and stepped into the large, open shower. He hit the controls, and hot, pressurized water instantly blasted down from the ceiling, washing away the sut, dried blood, and the stale sweat of the battlefield that had stuck to his skin and to his armor. The heat seeped deep into his aching muscles, loosening the incredible tension that had been locked into his shoulders since the first mech had decided it would be funny to stand up and, after a minute or two of talking, try to blast his head off.
As the water washed over him, it was also somehow absorbed by the pendant, releasing a torrent of stained water out from God knows where. Mark shook his head as he didn't even want to conceptualize how the pendant was doing what it was doing, and closed his eyes, preparing himself to access his new system.
He had expected the System to return exactly as it had been three years ago, if not better. He was half-expecting a "Midas Touch" interface, some sort of god-like menu that would let him instantly spawn armadas, construct impenetrable fortresses with a click, or magically upgrade the DNA of everyone in the colony.
After all, it was called the Shepherd of Humanity, so he at the very least expected the ultimate cheat code to the universe.
But as the interface materialized in his mind's eye, expanding into a series of sleek, holographic menus that hovered semi-transparently in his vision, he quickly realized that, although he didn't quite remember much of the old system, this was not the overpowered tool it had once been, or that he expected it to be. The System had changed, evolved, actually, but to Mark it didn't quite seem like that.
[Dominion]
This was the label of the first tab that had drawn Mark's attention. He mentally clicked it, and immediately after, a sprawling, highly detailed map expanded across his vision. However, there was something interesting about this map. Aside from being a topological layout, it also had a real-time feed. He could see the entire layout of the colony, the S-Alloy walls, the agricultural pens, the plants, the wind turbines, the mine, the military base, everything.
Curious about this feature, Mark zoomed in on the military base, and as he did, the image magnified flawlessly. He could see the swarm of lifter drones hovering in the courtyard, and below them, he could clearly see some of Marcos's spider drones already swarming the inert chassis of the Strathari mech, sparks flying as they began the physical dismantling process.
He zoomed over to the residential sector and pushed the magnification further, focusing on the streets. He could actually see individual colonists walking back to their homes, their faces clear enough to be recognizable. He saw Dr. Corven walking with Kenjiro and Severus, the three of them engaged in an animated discussion.
Mark pulled the view back and centered it on his own manor, pushing the magnification through the S-Alloy roof, right into the living room, and there was Lyra, clear as day, sitting on the couch, laughing at the cartoon while squeezing Mr. Bear and her alien plushie.
Mark felt a sudden shiver run down his spine.
"Okay, that's... incredibly useful, but also deeply, deeply disturbing and creepy," Mark muttered to himself. The fact that he could watch his daughter, or any of his colonists, in real-time, through walls, without a single camera present, felt like a massive violation of privacy. It was omniscience on a local scale.
He pulled the view away from his house, deciding he needed to test the limits of this live feed while the hot water massaged his back. He dragged the map past the city walls and focused on the massive agricultural enclosures. He zoomed in on the wolves and found Atlas, the patriarch, pacing near the reinforced fencing.
As Mark watched, Atlas suddenly stopped, his ears perking up and swiveling frantically. He lifted his massive head, his nostrils flaring as he sniffed the air, his yellow eyes darting around the empty enclosure. He looked visibly spooked, and the fur on the back of his neck was standing on end.
Atlas knew. He didn't know what was watching him, but his instincts could somehow literally feel the weight of Mark's systemic gaze pressing down on him, which confused Mark a bit about how Ivory, the matriarch, had managed to get shot by the one and only active mech within a 500-kilometer radius.
Mark pulled the view back, apologizing silently to the beast, noting how the live feed was incredible, but it clearly possessed a tangible, almost psychic weight.
He dragged the map further out, zooming away from the colony and heading north, toward the mountains where the fighting had taken place. But as the map moved past the physical perimeter of the colony's cleared land, the live feed suddenly stuttered.
The image of the jungle and the mountains was there, displaying incredible topographical quality, but it was completely static. The trees weren't moving in the wind, and there weren't any signs of wildlife, as if time had been frozen.
Mark spent a few minutes experimenting, dragging the map across different sectors of the planet that Marcos's scout drones had previously mapped, noting how the result was the same. The map was only "live" within the immediate borders of the colony.
"Ah, I see," Mark deduced, the hot water running over his face as he analyzed the boundary lines. "The live feed is restricted and is only active in areas where I have established a physical presence, or where the people loyal to me reside. It's tied to my direct influence, not just the planet as a whole."
He closed the map, feeling a sense of relief that he wasn't burdened with the ability to see every single leaf fall on the entire planet. He then moved his attention to the next major tab that had caught his eye.
[Technological Ascendancy]
When he opened it, a massive, branching tree of nodes exploded across his vision. It was a tech tree stretching upward into nodes that were blacked out and completely unreadable. The lower branches were illuminated, showcasing technologies ranging from advanced metallurgy to zero-point energy containment.
But what immediately caught his eye were the padlocks.
Almost every single node was locked. It appeared that the System wasn't just going to hand him the keys to a kingdom, the blueprints for a dreadnought, or a planetary shield generator. He had to physically research and master the preceding technologies before the next branch would open, kind of like what his learning experience with Anahrin's teachings was going to be once he got to them.
This was, without a doubt, a forced progression system. As he looked at the tree, Mark focused on one of the few illuminated, partially unlocked nodes near the base of the energy branch.
[Nuclear Fusion: Perfected Stabilization]
Beneath the title, a small progress bar hovered that read: 43% Researched.
Mark frowned, confusion cutting through his relaxed state as he reached up and wiped the water from his eyes, staring hard at the number.
"Forty-three percent?" Mark said, genuinely baffled. "How the hell is that possible?"
He had spent over a year learning from Anahrin. He had literally designed and built the massive fusion reactor that powered the Shepherd with his own two hands, under the direct supervision of a Strathari master who had finished it for him. That reactor dwarfed anything the IUC had ever created in terms of efficiency and raw power output. It was, without a doubt, a marvel of engineering.
How could he only understand forty-three percent of it?
Mark leaned against the wet tile wall, letting the water beat against his back as his mind raced. Unless... unless humanity's understanding of fusion, and even the Shepherd's reactor itself, was just the absolute basics. Unless true, perfected fusion, which was probably the kind that powered the Strathari empire, was so incomprehensibly complex that his current knowledge was just the tip of the iceberg.
As Mark continued to explore the intricacies of the new interface, a realization settled over him. This System wasn't the overpowered, reality-breaking cheat code he had wielded when he had woken on the Perseverance. It wasn't going to fight his battles for him, and it sure as hell wasn't looking to hand him a galactic empire on a silver platter.
It was quite evident that this system was designed to be a guide, maybe even a brutally strict, demanding mentor. It was meant to point him in the right direction, offer him the tools, but force him to do the actual heavy lifting. It would only improve and unlock new things, based entirely on his own actions and the progression of his people.
For a brief, fleeting second, Mark wondered about the entity that had created this system. The being responsible for his transmigration, for tearing his soul from Earth and dropping him 900 years in the future in a universe where Earth no longer existed. It felt less like a mechanical algorithm and more like the tool of a higher, incredibly bored being who was treating Mark's journey as an interactive story, rewarding him only when he earned it, or it felt like it.
Mark turned off the shower, grabbed a towel from the rack, and dried himself off as he fully grasped the reality of his new situation. He understood now. Nothing in this universe was free, and his System operated on that exact same logic. It would give him the path to advanced technology, but it wouldn't give him the physical blueprints to just plug into a 3D printer. It was going to give him the raw, complex knowledge. He was going to have to study. He was going to have to build it himself through trial and error.
He wrapped the towel around his waist, catching his reflection in the mirror one last time.
In his past life, he had once heard a quote that had always stuck with him: "The sword of your mind must be sharper than the spear in your hand."
As he looked at the locked tech tree hovering in his vision, demanding his dedication and his intellect, he realized just how much truth those words held. If he was going to protect Lyra, if he was going to build a haven that no one could touch, he couldn't just rely on a magic inventory and innovative ship-building strategies. He had to become the Architect he was meant to be.
---
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