User:Steelingdan
From Unofficial Handbook of the Virtue Universe
Don't get me wrong -- I have all the respect and admiration in the multiverse for Cap'n 'Drake. He and I have been floating around the galaxies for long before that pitiful excuse for a war started back on Cygnus. His commanders? 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 I've literally seen stars born, galaxies burn out, planets die. When the Nictus stormed across time itself, raping 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? Intramurals.
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.
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.
The Midnighters 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 themselves.
The Vanguard? Please. Lady Grey can't see the forest for the trees. Dark Watcher may have an idea of what's happening, but Lady Grey is as blind as I am, and her eyeballs work just fine.
Hrmph. And in the meantime, I'm effectively out of a job until we get Rho spaceworthy again. It's not like you need a ships pilot for staying in the parkinglot 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 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? Well, the Nictus inside of me -- which at this very moment is cursing me in 10,000 languages -- raided my home planet nearly 4,000 Earth years ago and infected a wounded soldier. It used him as its host, like a tapeworm, until the Rikti came. Sensing the opportunity for a more powerful host, it infected a Rikti Mentalist. 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 gravity and abandoned it, but the Rikti host couldn't make the trip back -- it was far too old to survive. So this time it infected a Cygnian child. The Nictus spent the next five hundred years hiding on this planet, 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. Here I am, Leftenant Dan McPhereson of the N'glt Space Patrol -- lost, adrift in space, air running out, bleeding, hungry, desperate. My patrol cruiser's engines had leaked and radiation from the Cymbidium crystals had burned out my eyes. I was beaten, broken and ready to die.
Somehow, blind luck (pun intended), Cap'n Drake and Khastiana were doing a freight run and heard my cruiser's distress signal. Rescuing me from the wreckage of my cruiser at great personal risk, they took me onboard, 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 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.
The reaction of the medcrew and the ship to the presence of a known Nictus host, was to say the least, negative. 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. Somehow, he believed me and I was allowed to live.
The original plan was for me to make the hop to Areneus IV, where we had a consulate, and from there I'd go home. Well, plans change. The Arcs attacked and suddenly I became Ensign (the first of many demotions) Steeling Dan, Asst Jr Deputy Vice Undersecretary of Bilge Cleaning and Deck Swabbing. Or something like that. Whatever, 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.
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 I'd been doing. He 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, and instantly I felt a weight off my shoulders -- someone understood. I wasn't alone and drifting.
I'm still not sure which side 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 soapbubble 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 only two officers on the ship who have ever piloted outside of ground school, I -- a blind man -- took the helm of the Rho and guided us around quasars, through tachyion storms, asteroid belts and finally outside of a system with a sun so young it'd last millenia. For 96 hours straight, I sat at the console, eyes closed. I steered with the Nictus sight and the instinct gained by a thousand flights with the Patrol.
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 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 family, Irondrake to those who know his strength and skill. '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? 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 navigated 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 beam rifle tuned to carry a multispread wave signal. She and a couple of the others started recording the signal, but what if noone 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 traveller who needs no ship -- only the first of many amazing beings I've met since reaching Earth. Their war with the Rikti, their sad misdicovery of atoms, the arrival of the Kheldians -- all of these have forever changed who these people are. Here, their nobles come not from the aristocracy as do my people, but from their intentions and deeds. Here they are called Heroes and come from all over the planet in all shapes 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 their brethren.
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. Her kindness and strength have been a comfort 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. 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 SuperSize McVillain meal or something.
