NOVEL NEXT B3 Chapter 1
In the cramped saloon of the Zephuros, under the soft glow of dimmed lumen strips, Angar adjusted how he sat in the aerospace-mechanicum's embrace
Though a new design, the device sat like some ancient relic, a cockpit cradle he barely fit into, bolted to a hulking machine, its surfaces etched with diodes, seals, and various gadgets.
Hidetada had wedged it here, caught between the galley's stale reek of leftovers and the chapel's wafting incense, likely to drill into the crew that self-improvement never paused, not even in moments of rest.
It was a simulator for astronautics and aviation, honing the arts of void-warfare and atmospheric dogfights, primarily for fighters, though the principles bled into shuttles, scouts, dropships, and bombers alike.
Angar harbored no burning ambition to master the fighter, or any pursuit distracting from his sworn duties as a Holy Knight.
But, as he was superior to all others, he couldn't abide incompetence in any task he might be called on to perform again.
His one clumsy stint in the cockpit, during that frantic clash with the Old Guard pack, had been a humiliating farce, an embarrassment.
No more.
With this machine, he'd rectify that. He'd be unmatched in this too, without squandering precious Skill Points.
Across the scarred table, with the chatter of the chapel's amplifiers murmuring half-heard litanies, Simo, Deli, Anarat, and Doc hunched over a game of scopa.
The forty-card deck slapped down with rhythmic precision, wagers of small sums of credits and minor favors piling in the center.
Garioch and Stek lingered at the edges, observers.
Stek, like Angar, shunned the gambler's vice, his faith an aegis against such temptations.
Saint Garioch, the newcomer guest, merely watched.
Mercifully, Heith had decreed an inspection of the propulsorium at dawn, banishing Slavo to his bunk early, and with him, Iyita, that thorn in Angar's side. A brief respite, then, from the constant need to conquer lust over and over again, a feat as tiring as it was frustrating.
"So," Simo drawled, his voice cutting through the shuffle of cards, as he leaned toward Garioch, answering his question. "I was the furthest out from that cursed follet, three klicks, at the least, perched on some crumbling rampart outside the city.
"But, even at that distance, she managed to slither into my mind, all the same. 'Simo Agiad,' she whispers, all sweet-like, 'fight for me, and I'll grant your wildest desires.' And the Three preserve me, she floods my skull with a vision of us...uh, you know? Just debaucherous, it was."
The aerospace-mechanicum demanded a neural connection, such as from a Neurvux implant or jack, birthing a holographic overlay that danced before Angar's eyes alone, like a spectral veil over reality.
He could still perceive the saloon's murk, hear the crew's banter, but now the void beckoned as an overlay, a simulated expanse of star-peppered blackness.
For void-battles, the distances were vast, engagements at great distance, gravity's clutch absent, vessels hurtling at fractions of c with no atmospheric drag to forgive errors.
Combat was a cold calculus of predictive targeting, energy management for shields and weapons, the subtle art of thrust vectors to evade incoming fire across vast gulfs.
"Wait," Garioch interjected, the strange skin of his brow furrowing beneath his braided pate, "don't follets resemble goblins? Twisted, malformed things? How could she tempt you with that?"
"Some are faeries, Saint," Doc replied as he laid a card down. "This one was a vision of profane beauty. She had me ensnared in my own depraved thoughts for half the fray."
Deli barked out a laugh.
"More like the whole damned thing," Anarat added, smirking as he claimed a trick. "We all were. Besides Simo, but he was over three klicks out."
Angar reinitiated the simulation's astronautics mode once again, gripping the yoke, its haptic feedback vibrating through his hand like the thrum of a real fighter.
The overlay plunged him into a mock void-skirmish, with enemy contacts blooming as crimson icons in his display, his ship a small speck amid the stars.
He pitched the nose, yawing to align on a distant target, but the lack of gravity betrayed him. Overshooting wildly, his simulated craft spiraled into a railgun barrage, the hologram fracturing in a spray of debris.
"Destroyed," the machine intoned in its flat, mocking monotone. Angar gritted his teeth, having had enough of the void, resetting the mode to aviation.
"Well," Simo pressed on, "I barely shook it off enough to drill her through the chest. Blew a small crater right through the witch. It starts healing as she heads at Kong, the closest to her. But Snipe came off cooldown, and I tagged her skull. Didn't kill the blasphemous horror, but it snapped the crew free long enough to gain some distance."
In-atmosphere mode was a different beast altogether. It was much, much slower, and gravity dragged at every maneuver, air resistance demanding constant thrust adjustments.
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Pitch for altitude, yaw for direction, roll for evasion, fighting the planet's pull while contending with turbulence, wind shear, and the relentless drag that turned fighters into plummeting coffins if mishandled.
Angar dove into it, the overlay shifting to a storm-lashed sky over some forsaken world. He banked hard, but gravity's malice yanked him earthward as surface-to-air missiles locked on, shredding his wings in a fireball.
"Destroyed," again. Frustration ate at his calm like acid. It seemed that the more he practiced, the worse he performed.
"Anyways," Simo continued, his tale weaving through the card-slaps, "it dragged on like that, being real dicey until Iyita flew in Harc and Saint Thryrna. I think that new shuttle did more damage than they did. When the follet was splattered all over, Thryna performed some rite capturing it. But when she finally killed it, the XP flooded in. Three whole levels, I got."
"It's your turn, Simo," Deli prodded.
"Oh, apologies," Simo muttered, tossing a card with a cybernetic hand. "I was lost in the recounting."
"You all voyaged to another arm just to hunt a follet?" Garioch asked in his strange accent, his loud and raspy voice filled with curiosity.
"Well, we hit three worlds in total, and it took a lot of investigating and battling to get to the follet, but I guess we did, Saint," Simo admitted with a shrug.
"No," Deli corrected in a firm tone. "The intel Saint Thryna wrung from it pointed to a Leliurium and a Fatae scheming for that world. The Peregrine's lot is tugging at threads, climbing the chain of the Heretical and profane, then yielding to the Seraphs when the unholy becomes too vicious."
Angar reset once more, his failures mounting like accusations against a sinner. Harc held the apex record in both modes, Iyita claimed second, Stek third.
Heith, the reclusive bridge-haunter, had attempted astronautics once, and secured fourth. The rest of the crew trailed behind, their scores etched into the machine's display-slate above him like judgments, laughing at Angar. He couldn't tolerate it.
He'd eclipse them all. He'd be first in astronautics, and at least fourth in aviation.
But the simulations mocked him. Death after death after death, his instincts too grounded in the melee of real battle, not this farcical nonsense. The yoke bucked under his grip, pitch and yaw eluding his grasp like Spirit dodging reason.
"Oh," Garioch nodded, absorbing the information. "You know, Simo, the Spartans of the United Front are commanded by a figure sharing your name – General Agiad, the Everlasting."
"Aye," Simo replied, laying cards down in his stack with a flourish. "I'm aware, Saint. But it's no homage to him. An ancestor picked it generations ago, after the ancient Spartan dynasty. He even etched a family legacy saying every Agiad male serves in the infantry, boots in the mud. I've got the scroll in my quarters. It fell to me when my uncle joined the navy, like some perfumed lady."
"What?" Garioch bristled, his pride flaring. "The navy teems with men of valor, I assure you. I served in the marines before my Knighthood, aboard many of their vessels."
The table erupted in coarse laughter, filling the saloon's air with camaraderie. "We know, Saint," Simo chuckled, slapping Garioch's shoulder. "I was army. Just ribbing the lesser branches, is all."
Angar's frustration peaked as another simulation ended in fiery demise, his fighter crashing into a building amid howling winds.
Enough. He cycled to the training module. He needed the basics, as powering through, learning through deed, just wasn't working.
Vector tutorials, gravity simulations, haptic drills to imprint the yoke's mastery into muscle and mind, and a dozen other trainings.
Here, the machine guided him slowly and patiently, correcting overshoots with phantom nudges from arrows, building from crawl to sprint.
Progress came slowly, incrementally, like a devout man's faltering steps toward the call of sin, but progress all the same.
He immersed himself utterly in flying, tuning out everything. There was only him and the aerospace-mechanicum he'd triumph over.
The voyage to Abyssalhome, in the Perseus Arm's depths, stretched nearly two months. Angar would seize the time as providence, and master flying.
He also needed to learn two rites or rituals from Stek, a requirement to ascend to the second Realm. He had just achieved the third and final Tier of the first Realm, so Sainthood was far off, but there was no time like the present.
First, he conquered the training drills, etching their lessons into sinew and synapse until the yoke responded like an extension of his will.
Then, back to astronautics' merciless arena. Death upon death racked up in the holographic void, but now he endured longer, his foundations laid firm as galvornium steel.
In that grueling session, he built upon them, layer by grim layer, determined to eclipse and conquer all his crewmates.
With dogged persistence, his simulated fighter danced amid the stars, evading phantom barrages with a precision that he felt bordered on prescience. He still died after mere minutes, but he now held the sixth-place record.
And then, like a siren's call from the Underworld's seductive maw, Iyita's voice pierced his focus, sweet as forbidden fruit, cursed as the whisper of a succubus. "Have you been chained to that aerospace-mechanicum all night?"
The words struck like lightning, jolting him, his virtual pursuers closing the gap, shredding his craft in a blaze of holographic fire.
Angar wrenched his gaze leftward, regretting it in an instant. There she stood, emerald eyes piercing into his soul like fishhooks, her long brunette locks damp and tousled as she toweled them with languid grace.
The dress code was loosened to and from the rain locker, where she'd just finished daily ablutions.
Clad in shorts that barely deserved the name and a shirt strained taut over olive-hued curves, she exposed far too much, stirring an unwelcome thunder in his heart, a betrayal of the flesh he had long armored against a thousand times over.
"It's oh-five-hundred, Sir," she said, her tone filled with surprise. "Don't you and Simo attend chapel at this hour?"
"Yes," he stammered, averting his eyes, resetting the simulation with fumbling haste as he strove to banish her from his awareness.
She leaned across him, her form brushing perilously close, her smell Heavenly, snatching a neural cord and jacking in with practiced ease.
Angar cursed inwardly, his craft veering into catastrophe once more. He reset, praying to the Three that she'd depart.
But no, her hands descended upon his shoulders from behind the machine's bulk, warm and insistent. "You're wrestling the yoke like it's an enemy. You're flying with all force and fury. You want slight movements, deliberate, always gentle and easy. Ships are referred to as female for good reason, Sir."
He drew breath sharply, holding it as his simulation crumpled again, her touch igniting his skin like a bonfire. Exhaling, he willed calm into his mind, a fortress against this unholy storm.
"My God, you're tense as a coiled spring," she observed, her fingers kneading his shoulders. Angar cursed anew in the silence of his thoughts. "Relax. Start over. I'll walk you through it," she added, her hands massaging.
With a grunt, Angar yanked the neural cord from his neck node, severing the link like a snapped chain.
He extricated himself from the faux-cockpit's cradle, evading her as one might flee a filth-laden beggar. "I must attend chapel," he muttered, his gaze fixed on the deck as he grabbed his maul, escaping the saloon, accompanied by the heavy clank of cybernetic feet on grating.
He couldn't wait to be dropped off on Abyssalhome, spending long months far away from this evil temptress.