Fuck me. What’s he going to make me do now?

  “Raith! Look out the window, Raith!” Tynan ordered as if he were talking to a dog.

  I raised my head and peered out of the bridge’s windows, gazing into the vacant expanse that stretched before the ship.

  “Wow! He does have the ability to listen!” Tynan ridiculed before speaking in a higher pitch, “What a good boy! Yes, you are! Such a good boy!”

  How do dogs put up with this? Do they even care? Do they know any different?

  “Okay, okay. Let us try another one,” Tynan exclaimed enthusiastically. “Raith, I want you to tell me what you see.”

  “Nothing. I see nothing. There is nothing to see.”

  “Wrong!” Tynan exclaimed. “We have ventured out into the universe, yes, but for a start, it’s not empty, and second, there’s a lot more happening than simply nothing. Look closer!”

  I squinted out of the ship’s window, trying to see what Tynan wanted me to spot in the vast, star-strewn cosmos, but all I saw was emptiness.

  Look closer.

  That’s what Tynan had said, but what had he meant?

  How close did he mean? Closer as in closer in space? Or closer as in inside the ship?

  I slowly surveyed the bridge, pausing briefly on each of the consoles that lit up the room. Then one caught my eye. It showed our current interstellar sector and the sectors around our own. There was a dot on the screen, centred in the middle – that had to be this ship – then there was a cluster of dots moving from right to left – a fleet of ships? I took a quick look out the bridge window, yet there were still no ships in sight.

  “You’re tracking ships?” I nervously inquired.

  Tynan nodded. “Yes, and?”

  And? And what?

  I looked out the window again. We were tracking ships, but that wasn’t the answer Tynan was looking for, so, what was I missing? We were in the middle of nowhere, and unless you were desperate or insane, you wouldn’t dare venture through here without a warp drive. My eyes widened as they shifted back and forth between the tracking console and the emptiness before us.

  “You’re tracking ships in warp!” I blurted. “But … that’s impossible!”

  A mischievous smirk appeared on Tynan’s face, his lips curling up at the edges. “Clearly, it’s not. It was once improbable, but we’ve obviously shown it’s entirely possible!”

  “With this technology, you could spy on anyone, anywhere! You could pinpoint their exact location and their direction of travel.”

  I felt my mind spinning as I tried to wrap my head around the enormous potential of this technology. You could track vessels for the safety of their crew and cargo – no more mysteriously vanished ships – but you could also foil any surprise military manoeuvres, rendering stealth attacks pointless. It was powerful, and in the wrong hands it was dangerous – and it was definitely in the wrong hands.

  Something outside stirred. I looked to see what it was, spotting a small autonomous drone flying away from the ship, heading straight ahead. I glanced at the tracking console and noticed that the group of lights was steadily approaching us, but they weren’t level with us – they were probably a few kilometres in front of us, which lined up with the direction the drone was going.

  “Come on, Raith,” Tynan drawled. “Connect the dots. Put it together.”

  I glanced at Tynan and realised he was watching me with great interest.

  What was I missing? What dots did I need to connect?

  We were tracking ships through warp; we’d sent a drone out into … into their flight path? Were they going to collide with it? It wouldn’t do much – ships had collision plating to absorb the impact of small objects and point defence systems for larger objects. It had to be something else. Abruptly, a recollection came to mind, something Captain Edgell had said.

  “I don’t know. We dropped out of warp – violently! I’ve never experienced anything like it before in my life.”

  “You haven’t just developed the technology to track ships in warp. You’ve developed the technology to disrupt warp – to pull ships out of FLT travel!”

  Tynan’s hands clapped together at an agonizingly slow pace, as a sadistic grin appeared on his face.

  “Who’s a clever boy?” he sneered mockingly.

  “What are you trying to achieve here, Tynan?” I snapped as I turned to face my doppelgänger. “What’s the point?”

  “Strike him!” Tynan commanded, and moments later, I felt the butt of a rifle slam into my head. Pain shot through my body, and I dropped to my knees with a grunt of pain. I braced myself, expecting another few waves of pain, but already the pain had dissipated.

  Interesting.

  I knew what a buttstroke felt like, how much pain it caused – with and without a recently operated upon head – and how long that pain took to ease. What I’d just experienced defied my prior encounters with the butt of a rifle – so why the change?

  Regardless of why, this isn’t something that Tynan needs to know about.

  I masked my surprise by putting on my best expression of pain and slowly looked up at Tynan.

  “What the fuck was that for?” I furiously demanded.

  “Oh,” Tynan said, feigning shock. “Did I not explain the ground rules before? I ordered the soldier behind you to hit you in the head if you talked without being spoken to first or if you addressed me incorrectly; isn’t that so, soldier?”

  “Yes, Your Grace.”

  “Speaking of which, hit him again!”

  I felt the rifle butt strike me again, and another wave of pain washed over my body but faded as quickly as the first hit had. I shook my head in disbelief – was I still hallucinating?

  Where is the rest of the pain?

  “That was for speaking up without being asked. The first was to check your tone and remember your place, peasant!”

  I rubbed the back of my head to check that I was actually being hit, then looked at the tracking screen – the cluster was awfully close now. If I didn’t try to convince Tynan against this course of action, it was all but guaranteed that those ships would suffer the same fate as the Stardove.

  “Tynan, please –” I started to say.

  “‘Tynan, please!’” Tynan mockingly echoed in a high-pitched tone. “Please, what? Are you going to tell me I can’t do this? Because guess what, motherfucker! I bloody well can!” Tynan waited until I’d been struck again, then continued. “Why do you care, anyway? What skin have you got in the game?”

  I pointed at the tracking screen. “You don’t even know what those ships are – they’re probably a civilian trade fleet!”

  Tynan glanced at the console, then slowly turned his head towards me with a twinkle in his eye. “Raith – you think me so callous as to kill innocent civilians?”

  He waved his hand, and one of the crew reached forward and pressed a button in front of them. The tracking screen updated and showed ID tags next to the dots. Next to the dot in the centre, the tag read “TES Chupacabra”. The tags next to the cluster all started with ROHS – they were Republic starships!

  “That’s a Republic fleet!”

  “Exactly!” Tynan hissed.

  Now it made sense: Tynan’s seemingly random act of violence was now a calculated act of war. Tynan viewed those ships and their crews as enemies of the Empire, foes he had to defeat.

  “Listen to me. They aren’t your enemy, okay? They don’t even know you’re alive right now. You’re going to hurt or kill countless innocent people!”

  Tynan cleared his throat, and the soldier struck me again. I rubbed my head again, and Tynan looked at me with an eyebrow raised. “They’re not innocent, and I’d say they’re my enemy, and even if they aren’t, after this they will be. Hurting the Republic is the point.”

  The cluster was almost in front of us on the tracking screen, and Tynan waved his hand again. The same crew member from earlier reached forward and pressed a different button. I tore my gaze to the window and in the blink of an eye, the once empty void, was now crammed with ships. The vessels were in chaos, thrown off their axes; some tilted bow down whilst others tilted bow up, some twisted to the left and others to the right. The power was flickering on and off on several ships, and some vessels even appeared to have twisted superstructures.

  Before I could stop myself, I exclaimed, “What have you done?”

  “That should be self-evident,” Tynan muttered.

  “You know what I mean!” I snapped, then ducked in time to avoid another strike.

  “Oi! You’re being hit for a reason; don’t dodge them,” Tynan snapped. “You! Hit him twice for that little stunt!”

  I steeled myself as the rifle butt impacted my already bruised head twice and was still surprised at how quickly the pain disappeared. Maybe my pain tolerance had simply increased?

  “Whatever, hit me as much as you want – you’ve pulled them out of warp, you’ve made your point, now help them!” I demanded.

  Tynan held up his hand, halting an in-progress strike, and then burst into laughter. The rest of the crew on the bridge added to the cruel and mocking laughter, making it last longer than necessary to drive the insult home. When Tynan’s laughter ceased, a thick, palpable silence filled the bridge.

  “Now, let’s break down what you said. One, yes, I pulled the fleet out of warp,” Tynan said. “Second, no, I have not made my point. And C, I will not be helping them.”

  Did he just use three different list types?

  I noticed Tynan’s eye twitch – had he noticed it, too? And what did he mean he hadn’t made his point?

  “If this wasn’t the point you’re trying to make, what is the point you’re trying to make?”

  Tynan halted another in-progress strike. “I’m glad you asked … let me tell you a story.”

  “Please don’t.”

  Tynan nodded, and the rifle slammed down a little more forcefully this time.

  “Come on, Raith – it’s a good story. You’ll love it.”

  I sighed; between Tynan’s insistence and the bashes I received when I objected, the situation seemed to leave me with few choices.

  “So, there’s this guy, right? He eliminates the emperor, dismantles the Empire, and, for a while, life is nice and peaceful. Then, while lying in bed one night, he wonders if the emperor had any contingency plans. What if there were plans in motion to bring the Empire back?”

  I watched Tynan, trying to read the subtle nuances in his expression as he spoke. I was unsure whether he had learned this from Zavis or if they had pulled it from my head. Either way, I suspected the how was not as important as the why he was telling me this.

  “Now this guy spends years researching this theory, trying to prove or disprove that the Empire is coming back. But he finds hardly anything, and anyone he tells doesn’t believe him. There have been no encounters with the Empire, not a sight, not a sound. They are gone. ‘You are worrying for no reason. Let it go,’ they all say.”

  Where was Tynan going with this?

  “Now there’s a different guy, back from the dead, and his Empire rising with him. He wants to reclaim all the territory that he once controlled. He wants to reinstate his place in the universe. But how is he supposed to do that when no one even believes he exists anymore? How is he supposed to take back what is his when nobody fears him anymore?”

  I looked out the window at the fleet, stranded and damaged, helpless and adrift, and then spoke, “By making them fear you again …”

  My stomach dropped as I realised he would kill them all somehow, strike while they were down. I spun back around towards Tynan. “You can’t do this. Not like this! To kill a disarmed and wounded opponent, there’s no civility to that. It’s cowardice!”

  Tynan waited until the rifle had collided with my skull before responding. “But I can, and I will, Raith. It’s not cowardly; it’s efficient – just good business, you might say. Now, can someone tell Raith what ordinance we’re going to use today?”

  “We’re going to be using a Firecracker warhead.”

  An icy shiver ran down my back, sending a wave of goosebumps over my skin. I’d heard of those. Firecracker: an underwhelming name for a brutally efficient weapon designed to be a force to be reckoned with, even though its name gave no hint of its potential. I suspected that its creator – my own grandfather if I remembered the history books correctly – had intentionally named it that way. I’d never seen one used before, for good reason, but their status was practically infamous at this point.

  “A Firecracker,” I muttered. “Aren’t those expressly forbidden?”

  Another impact struck my skull, and I winced – despite my increased pain threshold, each strike was slowly getting more painful.

  “If you asked the Republic, the existence of me and my Empire would also be expressly forbidden. But much like a Firecracker, we’re only banned within Republic territory, and luckily for me, this is my territory now,” Tynan replied.

  In its infancy, the Empire had developed and used the weapon against a Republic fleet attempting to quell the burgeoning Empire’s “rebellion”, just as the Republic had crushed Mars’s rebellion. On that day, the Empire had sent the Republic packing after only firing a single warhead. The Republic had outlawed the manufacturing and use of Firecrackers ever since.

  “Please, Tynan, you’ve made your point; the Republic will fear you, okay? You can track and pull ships out of warp – that’s enough! You don’t need to kill them!”

  “Hit him twice!”

  I braced as the blows rained down, grimacing as they struck.

  “Once more, for good measure.”

  Another blow hit me from behind, and I felt a trickle running down the back of my neck. I reached up and touched my throbbing head, my hand wet and red when I brought it back in front of me.

  “See, this is why you’d make a terrible emperor,” Tynan said. “You are too soft. You think too much, and you feel too much! If I left the fleet, sure, the Republic would fear me for now, but they’d also fast-track the development of countermeasures or tracking capabilities of their own. But if I destroy them, it’s both a promise and a follow-through: I will pull your fleets from warp, and I will destroy them.”

  “That makes no sense. The Republic would develop countermeasures either way!” I protested, but almost as soon as I had yelled my objection, I saw the warhead shooting away in my peripheral vision.

  “Oops …” Tynan said, holding his hand in front of his mouth mockingly.

  “It’s not too late! Disable it or shoot it down!”

  With two hand motions from Tynan, two more hits landed on my head and caused my vision to blur at the edges.

  “You know, I’ve just realised I’ve forgotten where the missile disabling button is … I swear it was around here somewhere?” Tynan said as he gazed around the bridge in fake concern.

  I clutched my bleeding, throbbing head and turned to the bridge window, exasperated as the warhead neared the fleet. I stood frozen and powerless, my throat tight, as I watched the fleet and all-hands face their eminent destruction.

  I felt a shiver of morbid curiosity as I wondered how the Firecracker would wreak its havoc.

  What the fuck?

  My stomach churned with nausea, sickened by my thoughts.

  “Three … two …” Tynan said, counting down to detonation. “One!”

  The warhead burst open with a flash of light, partially obscuring the thousands of objects it was projecting forward like a shotgun, spreading out wide, dispersing amongst the entire republic fleet.

  “That’s it?”

  Tynan held up his right hand, index finger pointed upwards. “Watch!”

  Suddenly, the objects detonated, blinding me with white light. Before the initial light burst had disappeared, thousands of secondary, then tertiary and quaternary light bursts appeared, making me squint every time as the attack seemed to continue without end. Finally, the light faded, and the fleet came back into focus. The Firecracker had decimated the ships, completely destroying the smaller ones and riddling the larger ones with gaping holes, giving them the appearance of Swiss cheese rather than starships.

  “What did that –” I started to ask when one of the large ships detonated, silently exploding in the distance.

  “No life signs detected, Your Grace,” a crew member informed.

  “Excellent,” Tynan exclaimed as he clapped his hands together. “I officially declare this a victory!”

  I watched the debris field, unable to tear my eyes away from the chaos. There were shapes floating among the wreckage that looked distinctly like human bodies, and I clenched my fists as a quiet rage grew inside me.

  “What did that just do?” I demanded as I turned towards Tynan.

  The soldier behind me swung his rifle again but fuelled by my anger, I caught it, pulling the weapon from his grasp, much to his surprise, and my own.

  Tynan calmly looked at the soldier and then at me. “Well, first of all, it destroyed the fleet, didn’t it?” he stated the obvious, pointing out the window.

  I pointed the gun at Tynan. “I meant how? How did that just destroy the fleet?”

  “There’s a saying about magicians … hang on, it’ll come to me,” Tynan said, seemingly completely unconcerned about the gun.

  I rolled my eyes. “About never revealing their secrets?”

  “Yes!” Tynan exclaimed, clicking his fingers. “That’s the one. Now you, give your sidearm to Raith,” he said towards the solider who’d lost his rifle.

  The soldier glanced between Tynan and I uncertainly, just as I also glanced between Tynan and the soldier. Now I was suspicious – why did I need his pistol when I already had his rifle?

  “I beg your pardon, Your Grace … I don’t understand.”

  “Did I stutter?” Tynan demanded. “Give your sidearm to Raith.”

  The soldier swallowed but pulled the pistol from its holster. “Yes, Your Grace,” he said, holding the weapon out to me.

  I took the gun from him and held it, looking at Tynan to see what would happen next.

  “Well, shoot him,” Tynan said towards me.

  “What?”