Steeling Dan
From Unofficial Handbook of the Virtue Universe
Ensign, don't get me wrong -- I have all the respect and admiration in the multiverse for Cap'n 'Drake. And you better have too, if you want to keep your teeth in place. He and I have been floating around the galaxies for long before that pitiful excuse for a war started back on Cygnus. He saved my life more times than I care to count. His command staff? Highly competent, and the very first people I want at my back in a pinch.
But man, do they ever need some perspective. The Nictus inside of me is more than 3,700 Earth years old. So it's literally seen stars born, galaxies burn out, planets die. When the Nictus horde stormed across time itself, raping and consuming all life it could find -- when the Rikti went invading system after system for centuries on end? Those were wars. What happened between the Swans and the Arcs? Grammar school intramurals. But anyway, you asked about who I am, not about the war that got us here. But really, it's the same thing, and all begins with this Nictus...
For now, I'm in charge of the Nictus inside of me. For now. I know that someday my body, this host, this old, blind weary human will die off and the Nictus will forget all I've tried to teach it about compassion and justice. The very best I can hope for is to find a way to move forward in time enough that a final solution to the Nictus can be found, that I can turn it into a Peacebringer before it's too late.
Silos' time "menders" aren't the answer. The whole Oroborous organization has the stench of piety and Mender Silos is so shady that his aura reeks of it. Mender Tesseract is sheer evil and noone sees it and Mender Lazarus is dumb as a stump. I wouldn't let Silos or his menders try to "fix" my hamster dispenser, let alone events in past history.
The Midnighters, you know have their own agenda, using "magic" (ha!) to move their goals and using anyone who isn't "magical" enough for them like pawns and disposable batteries. At least the Legacy Chain and Circle of Thorns are honest about their predatory natures.
The Vanguard? Please. Lady Grey can't see the forest for the trees. Dark Watcher may have an idea of what's happening in the big picture, but Lady Grey is as blind as I am, and her eyeballs work just fine. I will admit a grudging amount of respect for Serpent Drummer and his group -- his Marine Corps in particular are fierce and fearless.
In the meantime, I'm effectively out of a job until we get Rho space-worthy again. It's not like you need a ships pilot for staying in the parking lot of geosynchronous orbit. A trained Rikti monkey could keep this thing in orbit. Well, it could if the engines weren't continuously on the blink, the nav console wasn't still fried from the wormhole, the power controller being wasn't run on less tech than got Humans to their moon, and...well. You get the idea. Circumstances, to say the least, are not ideal.
You ask how I ended up here, didn't you? How an old blind guy ended up as the navigator and helmsman of a starship? Pour us another cup of tea and have a seat.
Well, it starts like this...The Nictus inside of me -- which at this very moment is cursing me in 10,000 languages -- along with thousands others of its kind, raided my home planet nearly 4,000 Earth years ago. Nearly all life on the planet was consumed like so many jelly beans. Very few survived, and most of those were infected by weakened Nictus. One of them infected a wounded soldier. It used him as its host, like a tapeworm till he died. The Nictus jumped from host to host on my planet for centuries biding its time, until the Rikti came. Sensing the opportunity for a more powerful host, it infected a Rikti Mentalist and transported with its new host back to Rikti Prime. Decades went by until the Rikti attacked Cygnus (this was hundreds of years before Cap'n Drake was even born -- Swan society was still in the steam and fossil fuel era). The Rikti couldn't take the planet's high gravity and abandoned it, but the Rikti Mentalist host couldn't make the trip back -- it was far too old to survive. So this time the Nictus infected a Cygnian child. The Nictus spent the next five hundred years hiding on this planet, again jumping from host to host, biding its time and waiting to be able to spawn out a shadow cyst and turn the planet into an unlimited supply of food and breeding hosts.
Fast forward some number of centuries. Here I am, Colonel-Adjutant Stie-Lng Da'an Tnyzg'nclv of the N'glt Space Patrol -- lost, adrift in space, air running out, bleeding, hungry, desperate. My battle-torn patrol cruiser's engines had leaked and radiation from the Cymbidium crystals had burned out my eyes. I was beaten in battle, blinded, bleeding out, my spirit broken and I was quite ready to die.
Somehow, just sheer luck, Cap'n Drake and First Officer Khastiana were doing a freight run and heard my cruiser's distress signal. Rescuing me from the leaking wreckage of my patrol cruiser at great personal risk, they took me on-board, sewed up my cuts and got me fed and hydrated. The one thing they didn't know about was that the Nictus had infected one of their security crew long ago and decided that my essence was weak enough to conquer. That was the Nictus' first and last mistake.
Laying there in the sickbay bed, I *felt* it wrap around my mind, my soul. But it picked the wrong target. I'd been through too much, suffered too long, endured far too many pains to let some...thing own my very soul. I was a noble of the Third House of N'glt and a Patrolman. Noone would OWN me. For twenty one days, the struggle went on inside of me. The medbay crew had no idea until I woke up out of a 3 week coma. The only initial sign of trouble was that for a few seconds at a time, I could...well, "see." Not like humans normally see, but in spectrae: everything from x-rays to gamma rays to light to sound. I realized that I was "seeing" through the Nictus. I thought for sure it was the Nictus trying to drive me mad and take over my soul. I shut it out with an iron will. I had no idea what had happened at first, but the medcrew knew exactly what had happened, they saw the Nictus aura in my eyes -- I was now a Nictus host, an evil of legendary proportions.
The reaction of the medcrew and the ship to the presence of a known Nictus host, was to say the least, negative. Days passed where noone would even look at me except to spit at me or call me names. Irrational fear ran wild. Some thought the infection could spread (it couldn't). Some thought for sure I was a spy or an infiltrator of some sort (I wasn't). Others thought the Nictus had send a suicide killer to get rid of Captain 'Drake (they wouldn't). Rumors went around that I was going to be spaced out of the airlock. Like that would have killed the Nictus. Finally, in a fit of pique, I asked to speak to Cap'n Drake himself. I may have been blind and infected with a Nictus and marooned light-years from home, but I was a trained officer of the Space Patrol and at least deserved to face death with some measure of dignity! Shackled and surrounded by his Marines, I explained what I thought had happened and that it was me -- ME -- not the Nictus who was in control. We talked for hours, me showing him how I could shut the Nictus down with an effort of will, of my background in the aristocracy and Patrol, and more beyond that. Somehow, he saw that my heart was true and the Nictus was under my control. I was allowed to live.
The original plan was for me to make the hop aboard the Rho to Areneus IV, where we had a consulate, and from there I'd go home and retire from the Patrol to enjoy my old age in peace. Well, plans change. The Arcs attacked and rather suddenly I became Ensign (the first of many demotions aboard the Rho) Steeling Dan, Asst Jr Deputy Vice Undersecretary of Bilge Cleaning and Deck Swabbing. Or something like that. It didn't matter at all, since without my eyes or my cruiser, I wasn't going to be much of a fighter pilot and I sure as hell wasn't going to be anyone's charity case. At least I had a job and a sense of purpose other than trying to find the toilet and mess hall in the dark. Doing menial tasks, I at least freed up able-bodied crewmen to do the important jobs of running a starship in time of war.
It's when we took that first nuke -- the one that blew off the portside engine and breached the hull. I'm not sure how or why, but the Nictus knew it was in danger and begged me to open my eyes and see -- to see. And I did. I saw light and dark and sound and heat and chords and waves and pulses. I realized I didn't have to be blind as long as *I* controlled this Nictus inside of me.
I just started pulling bodies out of the way, doing what triage I could as the battle raged around me, helping how I could. It seemed like days on end without sleep or food. The Nictus in me was starving in agony and howling in my brain. Each cry was one step closer to this thing owning me forever. Once again I realized that if I didn't control it, it would control me. I reached out my palm toward a dead crewmate and opened my mind to the Nictus for just an instant. I could feel the life force of that crewmate soak into my skin, to the Nictus inside of me. Instantly I was a new man -- fresh and able and ready. It felt awful at first, "eating" the dead like that. I could only hope that they'd forgive me and that I could put their essence to a noble use.
Somehow, word got to Cap'n 'Drake what had happened. People were understandably freaked out. 'Drake was surprisingly rational, and I came to find out from him that he's known one of the "Peacebringers" -- Nictus who have been transformed somehow to not need to feed on life essence. He knew what was happening to me. Instantly I felt a weight off my shoulders -- someone understood. I wasn't alone and drifting.
I'm still not sure whether it was the Swans or the Arcs who shot the nuke into the star. Whether they did it on purpose or not, it doesn't matter much. It caused the star to collapse, forming a wormhole and the Rho was sucked into it like a soap bubble in the bathtub drain. There weren't many of us left, and admittedly I only survived by the deaths of so many others. With no other options, and being one of only two officers on the ship who have ever piloted outside of officer school, I -- a blind man -- took the helm of the Rho. For 96 hours straight, I sat at the console, eyes closed, hands on the control panel. I steered with the Nictus sight and the instinct gained by a thousand flights with the Patrol. With not much more than a pencil and paper for my calculations, I somehow guided us around quasars, through tachyion storms, asteroid belts and finally outside of a system with a sun so young it'd last millenia.
At last, we came to a drifting stop. Our drives were burned out, we were running on battery power and half the ship had hull breaches, but we'd made it through. We had no nav system other than docking thrusters, no comm systems any more complicated than tin cans and string, and somehow we'd managed to rescue or capture (a subtle difference at best) some Arcs who were now marooned with us in this system.
Like I said, not ideal circumstances. This had powderkeg written all over it. Lucky for all of us who were left, we had one ace in the hole -- Captain Xenophon to you, Randall to his mother, Irondrake to those who have seen his strength and skill up close and personal in battle. 'Drake was mother bear, drill sergeant, engineer, and twenty other things in the months we spent adrift. It was him with his human sight, not me surprisingly enough, who saw the probe sailing across the bow as we were up there watching the stars one night.
A probe -- from where? There was a civilization here that had tech that advanced? They had to be close to send something that small into space. We scrambled -- him to the bridge, me to the engine room, everyone to anyplace on the ship they could be of use to get us moving. I put every bit of battery power not needed for life support to the thrusters and ran back to the bridge to steer. I calculated and steered a course back towards where the orbit must have originated -- a little green planet deep in the system. Khastiana figured out a way to get a Marine-issue beam rifle tuned to carry a multi-spread wave signal. Freaking genius, she is. She and a couple of the others started recording the signal, but what if no one could understand it? I had an idea. I forced the Nictus to speak the words in every language it'd heard over its time -- and that was a lot. Khastiana and her team managed to hit the probe with the beam. Our signal was sent -- now just to hope someone heard it. What if the people who sent it were hostile? Or extinct? We could only drift towards that little planet and hope.
It's been what, five years now since the Vanguard sent Dark Watcher to us? A space traveler who needs no ship -- only the first of many amazing beings I've met since reaching Earth. Their war with the Rikti, their sad mis-dicovery of atoms, the arrival of the Kheldians -- all of these have forever changed who these people are. Here on Earth, the nobles come not from the aristocracy as do my people, but from their own intentions and deeds. Here they are called Heroes and come from all over the planet in all shapes, sizes, colors and forms. There are even some exotypes like myself -- not just Kheldians, but mutants of all kinds, beings changed by "magic" and more. There are also sinister, predatory forces at work who would want nothing more than to enslave and feed upon their brethren to enrich themselves.
As we work to gather the resources to get the Rho space-worthy, we find ourselves more and more taking up the cause of these Earthlings. I myself have made friends with another of my kind -- called Warshades, I come to find -- named Shadowstar. She acts as a nexus for the Warshades of this planet and has been instrumental in helping me master my control of the Nictus within me, even helping me to transform into what they call Dwarf form (and back, which is more important). Her kindness and strength have been my sextant in times when I truly had no star by which to guide my soul. She's helped me to accept the fact that even though I have indeed mastered the Nictus, there are some who will never trust me and will always hate me for who I am.
Well, enough wool-gathering, I guess. Back to work, Ensign. The oxygen scrubbers need refreshing, Cap'n Drake wants the new transports to Talos Island and Atlas Park powered on by next orbit and there's supposed to be a crate of Guinea Pigs on the next tender boat. What? Don't look at me like that. You'd rather I snack on my crewmates? Besides -- it's not like I can go to McDonald's and order a McVillain meal or something.
