Chapter 65

***This article contains spoilers.***

## Highlights

* Irillith finds a recording of Admiral Lynton blackmailing Vice Admiral Von Brandt to continue the Nexus project despite his protestations. In another, Nexus took control of his ship, the Loki, and killed the crew with robots.
* The Terran traitors give their loyal crew over to the Kintark on Xen-Nuchek to be used for slave labor. The prisoners are indoctrinated by the pheromones of a 60-foot-tall female Kintark Consort.
* Irillith hacks the Terran battleship Phobos, starting a battle between the Terran traitors and their Kintark escorts.
* John, Alyssa, Rachel, and Dana clear their way through the mine and find the footprints of something much larger than the Consort.

## Summary

Sakura relives Shinatobe's assassinations.

Despite John doing his best to talk Sakura out of immortality and an enhanced body and mind, she finally convinces him to let her join. Sakura joins the family after having sex with John.

John Spirit Walks to talk to Athena, who looks like Alyssa, but has an inner confidence and maturity that Alyssa sometimes lacks. John asks Edraele for some power so he can have time to ask Athena questions.

* John did well getting Sakura, because she will be a valuable ally, and the more girls he has the more powerful he'll become. (*John argues he was just trying to help Sakura, but the morality of it doesn't concern Athena.*)
* John isn't ready for the specifics of how to enhance people (Sakura). He should just think in general terms and let his subconscious guide him.
* When Irillith joined, John instinctively customised her to specialise as a cyber-psychic, to specifically counter Nexus, something Athena hadn’t thought possible. Left to her own devices, she would have developed telekinesis and electrokinesis, but John massively upgraded her psychic talents beyond anything someone who isn’t a Progenitor is capable of.
* Progenitors have developed a mastery of genetic manipulation that rivals their psychic abilities.
* All sorts of knowledge was ingrained in his DNA intended as a birthright to help get him prepared to fight. The Progenitor table of elements and the schematics that Dana had in her head are examples of this. John imprinted those in her when she joined.
* While Progenitors typically hoard their power, jealously guarding their tech and abilities, John's a team player, so he tends to share his abilities and ingrained knowledge with the girls. It’s a novel approach that would appal the Progenitor he's facing.
* People with psychic abilities can visit the Astral Plane, but when they do, they’re only brushing over the surface of the Ether. There are ancient, powerful things that lurk much deeper there, and one should try to avoid their attention. However, the more powerful a psychic is, the more attention they draw.
* Since John's fed Sakura three times now, he'll get sucked in again. Athena will try to think of a way to avoid it.
* It's possible for John to get rid of his Progenitor half since he's meant to be a temporary guide, and if everything had gone normally, he would have been harmlessly absorbed into John when he learned all he needed. With him fighting against John now, John will have to break him out of his prison, then confront him.
* When Athena merges with Alyssa, she'll cease to exist.

Irillith plays a recording she found of Vice Admiral Von Brandt receiving a call from Gabrielle Lynton. Van Brandt tells Lynton they're having difficulties with Nexus and should shut it down, but she snapped at him, telling him to proceed. He told her one got loose a few days ago and went on a rampage. A cruiser it attacked knocked it out of action, but he's worried that Commodore Blake will "start kicking up a fuss."

Hearing Blake's name got her attention, but she dismissed the situation as one incident of bad luck, despite Von Brandt's protestation that it wasn't just one incident. In the first robot field test, one of them tried to bludgeon a researcher to death, which Lynton called "just a glitch" and ordered him to continue as planned. Von Brandt threatened to go to the Fleet Admiral, but she blackmailed him for unlocking the classified Ganymede archives. That would get him court martialed if it were to become public, regardless of the fact it was her suggestion to begin with.

Irillith plays a second recording, where Nexus locks out Von Brandt and his crew from his ship, the Loki. He was willing to sacrifice himself and his crew to stop Nexus from taking the Loki, but they were already locked out from being able to trigger a powercore meltdown. John yelled at Irillith to stop the video just as Von Brandt's crew started to get hacked apart by robots wielding saws.

Lynton is following the Progenitor's agenda, so he must've wanted to fatally weaken the Terran Federation by destroying Terra.

The Invictus catches up with a big fleet of ships heading on a parallel course to theirs, including a Terran battleship, cruisers, destroyers, and a small group of light carriers, one of which was the Hydra, Mateo's ship. They were escorted by a Kintark battleship, cruisers, and destroyers. There's no sign of the Vengeance of Hera, Admiral Norwood's dreadnought.

Faye figures out Gabrielle Lynton's message. She had matched the code against the sigils used in the Progenitor schematics that Dana had reproduced from her head. She rebuilt the language based on Dana’s reproduced schematics, then matched that against the message's encryption. It wasn't actually encrypted; it was masked by the content code being written in the Progenitor language.

Irillith plays the message. Lynton tells Norwood, who she seems to have a close relationship with, that one of Devereux's pawn's crew figured out his plan, and he has to defect to the Kintark and kill the forces he hasn't convinced. Norwood is appalled. He really believes in claiming moral superiority and establishing a new Republic. When he suggests killing John, she tells him, with a deathly chill in her voice, she has plans for John, and he is not to confront him. He agrees to defect. With a calculating smile, she tells him she loves him, and they end the comm.

Apparently Lynton is manipulating Norwood, and her Progenitor told her not to kill John. It's like a cat toying with a mouse. The mouse never wins, and Jade recommends they stop being the mouse. John decides that until they have more information, they'll have to do what they've been doing: upgrading their tech, and working on their powers. He asks the girls for ideas. Alyssa, acting as the their spokeswoman, tells him they agree with his plan so far. She then points out that he gets more powerful the more girls he's linked to, and Valaden is full of beautiful women who can't get enough of him. Making their base in Valaden would have many advantages.

They arrived at Zeta Draconis and started running on minimal power to keep a low profile as they headed to Xen-Nuchek.

John allows Faye to fly the Raptor. He decides Calara, Jade, and Irillith should stay on the Invictus, Calara for guns, Jade for flying, and Irillith for hacking. Dana needs to go in case there is security to keep prisoners under control. Of course Alyssa's going. Rachel's going for treating sulphur dioxide poisoning. She has an idea of how to reverse lung damage.

Fortunately, Paragon armor is fully sealed, because long-term exposure to Xen-Nuchek's atmosphere would be fatal, causing respiratory acidosis. However, Kintark wouldn't suffer adverse effects because of their different respiratory system, and they're adapted to high carbon dioxide environments.

Faye drops them off in the jungle a couple of miles away from the base. As they're making their way through, John senses something wrong, like a big predator. They fly the rest of the way to be safe.

When they got to the mine, they saw a Terran officer unload dozens of prisoners to hand to Kintark soldiers, and spotted Mateo among the prisoners. Then they saw an enormous, red lizard, shaped like a Kintark Royal Guard with four huge stocky legs, a thick tail, and a body that was covered in red scales. The main difference was this was at least quadruple the size of the Royal Guard at nearly sixty feet in length.

Rachel suggested it must be some sort of ruling caste. John remembered it being called a *Consort*.

When the Consort arrived at the prisoners they became docile from a pheromone she secreted, and the Kintark soldiers unshackled them.

The massive fleet still hasn't left, so Calara, Jade, and Irillith decide to hack them from a Raptor.

Commodore Nathaniel Wheeler of the battleship Phobos was one of the first to agree with Admiral Norwood's plea for starting a new Republic. He felt bad for those in the Xen-Nuchek mine, but it's their fault for not believing in their Captain. They were currently waiting to meet Norwood in six hours while warily keeping the eyes on their Kintark escort. Suddenly, they were hacked, and their ship fired on the cruiser Birran'tor, obliterating it. The Kintark battleship Bershan'tok of his counterpart High Prelate Tedaktu fired at Phobos, which in defense fired back.

The Hydra had just launched its first waves of fighters and bombers when it was quickly destroyed by plasma bolts in a brutal crossfire from two Kintark cruisers. Another Kintark cruiser exploded after its powercore was hit by a laser beam. After the Phobos had initiated the battle both sides were reasonably balanced, and Calara just had to wait for the opportune moment to strike.

John and Alyssa cleared two Kintark guard towers, each with two guards.

John and Dana start out covering the northeastern section of the base, while Rachel and Alyssa cover the southeastern section.

As they made their way through the base, killing Kintark soldiers and Royal Guards, the prisoners acted oblivious to the gunfight.

A Lieutenant-Commander who told John the location of the Consort told him she was beautiful, adding more evidence to Rachel's pheromone indoctrination hypothesis.

As they walked into the pyramid they came across a footprint of a Kintark much larger than the Consort. They passed by more Terran prisoners, machinery, and lava as they began their descent into the dragon's lair.

### Allies

* Invictus
* Raptor

### Enemies

Big fleet of Terran ships:

* 1 battleship
* Several cruisers
* Handful of destroyers
* Small group of light carriers (including the Hydra)

Kintark escort

* 1 battleship
* Significant number of cruisers and destroyers

### Enemy Ships Killed

* 1 Kintark Cruiser (Birran'tor) - Irillith via Phobos
* 1 Terran Cruiser (Hydra) - 2 Kintark Cruisers
* 1 Kintark Cruiser - 1 Terran Ship

### Enemy Soldiers Killed

* 2 Kintark Guard (Alyssa/Railgun)
* 2 Kintark Guard (John/Railgun)
* 1 Kintark Soldier (John/Railgun)
* 2 Kintark Soldier (Alyssa or Rachel/Railgun)
* Group of Kintark Soldiers (Dana/Laser Rifle)
* Multiple Kintark Soldiers (Alyssa or Rachel/Railgun)
* 1 Kintark Soldier (John/Railgun)
* 1 Kintark Soldier (Dana/Laser Rifle)
* 12+ Kintark Soldier (John/Grenade Launcher, Dana/Laser Rifle)
* 1 Kintark Royal Guard (John/Railgun)
* 1 Kintark Royal Guard (Dana/Laser Rifle)
* 1 Kintark Royal Guard (John/Railgun, Rachel/Railgun)