P 1.2 - Jerome

  He turned and stepped away from the admiral — finally exhaling. The pressure that man’s presence emanated was almost physical.

  Caius Cornelius was a towering figure — two meters of rank and strength. Beneath that immaculate admiral’s uniform, barely containing his frame, Jerome could tell there were muscles that could tear a man’s limbs with little to no effort.

  Not just from mass — but from difference.

  The admiral’s power wasn’t human.

  It flet like standing before a gorilla, instinct screaming: Run, idiot.

  And for a moment, Jerome had felt that instinct spike. That laughter, the blue, cold gleam in his eyes growing brighter.

  In that moment, the admiral’s presence had shifted into something Jerome could only describe as predatory.

  Mentioning the H.O.Pe. project was probably a dangerous game, he thought, wiping away a bead of sweat trailing down his temple.

  He wondered if Cornelius had told him the truth — if he truly regretted being turned into a H.O.Pe. human.

  The highest-ranking officer on the Parvus was unnerving. Jerome couldn’t help but fear him — but couldn’t stop probing his intentions either.

  The admiral acted polite, even friendly — especially toward him. But the data Jerome had secretly recovered from the Science Bureau’s archives told he wasn’t supposed to be that nice.

  Cornelius was born, just like Jerome, in Metro-Britannia, but long before, in March 2717 — the latter half of The War.

  He’d survived the devastating 2736 orbital bombings by the Fourth Planet Republic, and that same year, at only nineteen, enlisted in the Earth Alliance Navy.

  He was immediately deployed with the newly assembled defense fleet beyond the Moon, where he fought to repel the FPR counter-offensive.

  Then, in 2744, he volunteered for the controversial H.O.Pe. project — the “Human Organism Perfecting” initiative led by the Bureau of Science.

  Its purpose was to merge human genetics with the enhanced code of select Alter-humans, creating commanders capable of ruling over the barely controllable super-human armies of the Earth Alliance.

  Cornelius accepted.

  Everything about his previous life — his civilian identity, his name — vanished from record.

  From that point, only the legend remained.

  Stationed on the Moon, where the Alliance’s war machines were forged, he fought battle after battle — bloody ones. He led boarding assaults himself, wiping out FPR crews from within.

  Cornelius didn’t know how to kill men — only how to slaughter them.

  That was the time when the name still attached to him was born: “The Lunar wall”.

  When The War ended and the FPR was absorbed into the newborn UN.SY., he was promoted to admiral — the only H.O.Pe. human to reach the rank, and one of the few of his kind still alive.

  Before continuing to the bridge’s elevator, Jerome glanced back.

  There he stood — proud in his gleaming white-and-gold uniform, looking barely past his thirties at the age of two hundred and twenty-two. Saturn loomed in his face, like some gaseous patriarch watching over its child.

  Cornelius’ pale skin, depigmented by the H.O.Pe. transformation, showed almost no sign of aging beyond faint expression lines. His neatly cropped hair was white for the same reason — not time, but genetic tampering.

  The only imperfection on that immaculate figure was a dark scar running from his temple down to the cheekbone.

  Shaped like a jagged tear frozen mid-fall, Jerome liked to think it was the last scab of humanity he had yet to shed.

  But the H.O.Pe. human was efficient, no one could deny that — even if they dared.

  He neared the elevator.

  Not a sound came from the officers manning their stations, not a speck of dust marred the polished metal floor. Shine reigned aboard the ancient Dreadnought Kentaurus.

  A far cry from the days when he’d commanded it — back when the Parvus was a forsaken warship turned prison.

  A little disorder hadn’t hurt anyone then. He’d grown up surrounded by people obsessed with order so he’d always preferred things a little messy.

  And who would care about a warship in times of peace?

  Just like Cornelius, the Parvus was a war relic too. Seeing it restored — and with a H.O.Pe. human at its lead — felt out of place to every officer on board in those time of peace.

  The Solar System had been without conflict for about forty years, ever since the last Alter-human rebel was killed or captured.

  But that peace was just… silence. The current times were not that good for humanity.

  The proof was Eden.

  The War might have ended a century ago, but its echo hadn’t faded.

  Four centuries of work on the Mars Terraforming Project were gone in a single strike, when Earth’s fleets weaponized Phobos and sent it crashing down. The Fourth Planet Republic surrendered. Mars burned. It still orbited, unhabitable.

  Stolen story; please report.

  The rest of the System hadn’t fared better.

  Cut off from supply lines after Mars fell, the Principality of Ceres and the Metropolitan Space Stations of the Belt were abandoned, then seized by Alter-humans during the Eclipse uprising.

  Now they drifted like mausoleums — vast, silent cities turning endlessly in the dark.

  And Earth — the returning survivors were expecting a sanctuary.

  They were wrong. Spectacularly so.

  Three centuries of total war had stripped the planet bare. Agriculture alone could not feed more than twenty billion people; the Venusian greenhouses were harvested faster than they could regrow.

  In peacetime, the Sub-humans bred during the conflict to fill civilian roles became competitors overnight — taking jobs from veterans, suppliers, and mechanics suddenly made redundant. Tensions ignited across the megalopolises.

  The wealthier Martians had fled first; by the time the rest returned, housing on Earth had become impossible to find at reasonable prices.

  That was what the billions that came from Mars and the MSSes of the Belt found when they came back to the Blue Planet.

  Getting rid of tens of millions of Alter-humans and Sub-humans barely sufficed to placate the rage and hunger ruling those times.

  But at least, giving the united humankind a new enemy, provided the newborn UN.SY. with the time to reshape itself into what was today.

  Jerome was sure enough; they stuck the Alter-human label to whoever they wanted gone too.

  And they got away with it.

  No one talked much about the first decades after the War and the Alter-human purge, after all. They just said: Sacrifices were necessary.

  As he waited for the elevator, Jerome caught his reflection in the steel door. He adjusted his gray captain uniform, tugging at the collar; polished the golden sun-shaped badge on his chest — reminded himself what a lucky bastard he was.

  First, lucky to have learned about that the War from the Bureau of Knowledge chrono-records instead of personal experience.

  He was twenty-five. The chaos had ended before he was born.

  And second, he’d escaped the aftermath completely — a De Chevelle won’t be touched by such things.

  Third son of Gerard De Chevelle, owner of a real-estate empire sprawling across the central districts of Metro-Britannia — a city so vast it swallowed the remains of half of Europe.

  Comfort was his birthright.

  But comfort bored him. Curiosity had always been his curse. Without it, he’d never have wandered into the famine-stricken slums of inner Metro-Britannia, where the War had never really ended.

  That was when his gaze turned upward. In the black sky, the stars were barely visible. But still brighter to him than street lights.

  At eighteen, Jerome joined the UN.SY. Navy.

  Not out of duty or patriotism. The job promised enough relax, distance, and a uniform that kept him far away from both the scorched Earth and the family he’d had enough of.

  He rose — fast — thanks to his connections. By twenty, he was stationed aboard a military prison — the Parvus.

  He became its captain only a year later.

  He’d enjoyed the privileges of command for exactly one year — before the Parvus stopped being his.

  Before Eden, and later Cornelius, came — two years ago.

  The elevator doors slid open. He stepped inside.

  “Time to meet this Alba Fauster,” he thought with a faint smirk as the metal closed behind him.

  Time to start playing the truly dangerous game.

  He remembered the faces — barely visible through the frost of their capsules. The chill of the airlock. The hiss of the release. He’d pressed the button himself; watched the prisoners drift into space.

  Criminals, yes — but unharmed. Defenseless. Unconscious.

  Condemned not by a UN.SY. magister, but by an untraceable order that came from nowhere.

  Jerome had not forgotten.

  They’d made him dirty his hands. He wanted, at least, to know for whom — and why.

  That was the reason he’d gone as far as to infiltrate Alba Fauster onto this ship.

  A military technician with a taste for breaking into UN.SY. systems — and a well-informed Alter-human sympathizer, no less.

  He’d given her a ticket to Eden: the expedition meant to lead humanity beyond the Solar System for the first time.

  It was thanks to her that he knew as much about Cornelius as he did — and more. Information like that didn’t exist in any public file, not even in a captain’s classified access.

  Jerome had been chasing answers since the day the order came down; The day that killed a hundred and eight prisoners.

  Stubbornness, money, and luck had led him to Fauster.

  Infiltrating her into the crew had been almost easy — he’d had more than a dozen months to make it happen.

  He’d quietly redirected maintenance personnel, letting the prison block run short-staffed. When Cornelius questioned it, Jerome had used the secrecy surrounding the Alter-humans as justification.

  Then he’d arranged for a blast door “malfunction.” A dedicated technician would be a wise precaution, he’d said.

  By then Fauster had already entered and passed the Eden selection. With his help — and her hacking skills — her record had been conveniently improved.

  No one suspected him when she was chosen.

  They’d been in contact for long enough through encrypted channels.

  Now, finally, he was about to meet her — in the flesh.

  As he stepped out of the elevator and started toward hangar L-4-C-3, where she’d just disembarked, Jerome wondered what kind of person she really was. What it would feel like to meet his own personal mole for the first time.

  Ten minutes of steady walking and he had his answer.

  —Disappointment.

  That was the name of the feeling.

  A girl in dark-red technician’s overalls leaned against the hangar wall, a suitcase hovering beside her on its magnetic field.

  Small frame, dark hair like most of the population these days. The uniform’s high collar covered her mouth; large round goggles hid her eyes — soldering lenses where there was nothing to solder.

  He saw her jolt when she noticed him staring. Then she adjusted her goggles — and happily jogged toward him.

  “You! You must be Jerome!” she said — and moved to hug him.

  Jerome raised a hand to stop her.

  “You… you’re Fauster, correct?”

  “Ah, sorry — skipped the introductions — yes, I’m Alba!” She reached for his hand to shake.

  “I am Captain De Chevelle, Fauster,” Jerome sighed, glancing around to see if anyone was watching.

  “Aren’t you forgetting something?” he asked, tone edged with meaning.

  The girl blinked, then jabbed a finger to his face.

  “Right — Captain.”

  She made the UN.SY. salute — attempted it.

  Five fingers in the air, then a clenched fist to the chest. At least the arm angle was correct.

  “Sol Invictus, huh?” Fauster recited, like this was none of her business.

  “You know, Fauster, it’s four fingers first, then five — and where did you even pull the fist from?”

  “Ah, sorry... I usually do more maintenance than saluting,” she said scratching her hair. “But it’s the passion that counts, no?”

  “Are you drunk, Fauster?”

  “No! I wouldn’t dare!” she protested — then leaned closer, whispering. “But I brought some of the good stuff, cap’n… if you know what I mean.”

  “I’ll pretend I don’t know what you mean,” Jerome whispered back listless.

  He took her by the shoulders and eased her back to a proper distance.

  “At least try to get the salute right in front of the admiral,” he warned. “He wants to see you — now.”

  The girl clasped her hands together.

  Not fear — the emotion that crossed what little of her face he could see was something else.

  Happiness.

  “Really!? The H.O.Pe. human?” she squeaked, her voice sharp with excitement. “I’ve never met one! Caius Cornelius, right? Is he handsome?”

  “Are you sure you’re not drunk, Fauster?”

  “I swear!” she said, quickly performing the UN.SY. salute again — still wrong.

  “Then are you insane?”

  “I don’t think so, cap’n.” She shrugged.

  Jerome exhaled — hard.

  “It doesn’t matter. We should go — Cornelius is waiting, and I have a feeling his patience is limited.”

  “Let’s go then!” Alba said brightly, hurrying to collect her luggage.

  “You’re taking me to see the Alters later, cap’n?”

  “You make it sound like sightseeing — but yes.”

  “What a day…” she mused.

  As they walked side by side back to the elevator, he felt a flicker of guilt rise.

  The other candidates for the position — the ones who’d lost to Alba Fauster — would probably be left here to die.

  Maybe I’m wrong about her. Maybe she’s a genius — the crazy kind, he thought, trying to wipe his conscience clean.

  But well… billions will die anyway. Who am I to say this girl doesn’t deserve a chance?

  And maybe there was a reason fortune had brought them together, he thought.

  If there was a single thing Jerome believed in — it was his own luck.