Chapter 70

***This article contains spoilers.***

## Highlights

* Sakura trains with John, and they both achieve enhanced speed.
* After everyone has their third helix activated, the girls' portraits in Alyssa's mind become vibrant and alive.
* John and Rachel get engaged.
* The real story of Jessica Blake is revealed.

## Summary

Dana looks into improving the weapon schematics Irillith ~~stole~~ requisitioned, and implementing motion tracking for the targeting reticle in the armor’s helmet HUD.

Rachel looks into nasty plagues and contagions that have afflicted the Terran Federation which will give her a chance to transmit any cures she develops to the medical authorities while still in comms range.

Faye and Irillith come up with ideas to improve their digital and physical security. Faye shows Irillith around her new server in cyber space.

Jade helps Dana and Alyssa with replating armor.

Alyssa psi-shapes armor plating,

Calara wants to start looking into what happened to John's mother.

Sakura empties John's quad.

John gives Sakura firearm training, and she has a flashback to a Shinatobe mission where a cuckolded husband wanted vengeance on his wife's lover.

Shinatobe didn't use guns. The tranquillizer pistol she used against John was the rare exception, and only for extractions. It was mostly swords, but sometimes poison or explosives.

Rachel hypothesizes that Sakura's flashbacks are her brain's way of trying to make use of her digitally-archived memories. Once Sakura's learned all the skills she used to know before, then she’ll stop having flashbacks.

Rachel describes John's attraction for the girls to Sakura.

* **Rachel:** How *insanely fucking smart* Rachel is, and the way she talks, especially her classy accent.
* **Dana:** Her intellect, as well as all the swearing, and how excitable she are.
* **Calara:** The kind of girl John would've liked to settle down with if he’d lived a "normal" life. They share common interests, and her stable family life must appeal too.
* **Alyssa:** John's first love, and the girl who transformed his life. They're soulmates with a case of "opposites attract."
* **Irillith:** A reminder of John's instinctive need to dominate. The fact that she’s strong willed and has a sharper edge to her makes her more of a challenge.
* "*John's quite fond of blowjobs.*"

John spars with Calara, who seems more perceptive.

Alyssa works on her Master's degree in Finance and her Master's degree in Economics, so that she can start building up the Orphan Fund.

John schedules a session with an irritated Eito Yamamoto for the next day. He may resent losing to John in their previous duel [60], or blame John for him losing control and getting drunk [62]. Befriending Yamamoto is important to John since he misses male company.

Rachel discovers Rogan’s Rot is a genetically engineered bio-weapon. The Terran Federation may have intended it for use against the Kirrix, but accidentally infected patient zero: Sam Rogan. She can create a gene-therapy which will prevent it from using someone’s cells to replicate itself.

The next day, John repeatedly wins against Yamamoto, who becomes furious and ends the simulation. Sakura, who was watching, picks up a katana and wakizashi, and has a flashback of Shinatobe doing sword training.

John psi-shapes twin ninjato for Sakura.

They pick up a distress beacon. Sitrep: An Ashanath ship was ambushed and interdicted by a Drakkar cruiser.

John notices a lack of Terran border patrols. They hail the androgynous Trader Cadanari. JohnBlake advises him/her to drop the ship's cargo which will make it lighter and give a better chance of avoiding the Drakkar, to keep the crew away from the airlocks, and to lower every blast door.

The Drakkar destroyed the merchant ship's engines, and boarded with two dropships. When the Drakkar cruiser engaged, Calara slashed through the Bridge with Beam Lasers, and then vaporized the dropships attached to the freighter.

The trader says that the Drakkar have recently become more aggressive.

Sakura practices with the XR75 more.

With assistance from Irillith and Calara, Rachel found a black-ops research facility that created the Rogan's Rot virus. Sam Rogan was a freighter pilot who was contracted for supply runs to the base. He must have been exposed, and then fled before he could be quarantined. The base was shut down in 2739, but they never developed a cure. Edraele thinks this is excellent news: he now possesses a PR bombshell that would be a disaster for High Command if the information were ever to be released. With enough PR spin, he could even twist it into an entirely justifiable *casus belli* if needed.

Edraele points out what the old her would've done: *secure samples of Rogan’s Rot, expose multiple worlds to create an epidemic, and then reveal who created the virus in the first place. High Command would be left reeling as worlds attempted to secede, and she would then be able to invade practically unopposed, against a military in total disarray. Once she’d crushed them under her boot-heel, she would then release the cure, for a massive public relations boost. That would help pacify the Terran civilian population, and make them more open to annexation and subjugation by the Maliri.*

Fortunately she's not the old her.

John's decision is to transmit the cure for Rogan's Rot to the Terran Federation Medical Administration, and keep who was behind it a secret for now to avoid further chaos during the war with the Kintark. When there’s peace again, they can find out who was culpable and bring them to justice.

Dana makes two new stations instead of just one for Sakura. John should've guessed whom the second one was for.

Faye explains her new improvements to John, but it's quite hard to describe to ~~a filthy organic~~ her wonderful biological master. Her PTSD of Jade getting killed is now cured; she was able to delete the file. Watching Jade fucking was the cure.

John returns a call from Felicity at Oceanus that Faye had fielded for him. As thanks for saving Terra, Oceanus is offering a free two months. Many of the employees there had friends or relatives who live on Terra.

When the team gets to Maliri space, they're hailed by Emalayne, Fleet Commander for House Loraleth, who distractedly stares at John from behind her armor. Matriarch Kali Loraleth had ordered her to meet him and transfer a dossier of information on the Underwold, the location Tashana is in.

Alyssa suggests they want John to *cum* pay a visit.

John is concerned whether Edraele will want to stay with him once he severs their connection to reforge their bond so that she doesn't have a compulsion to obey him. Edraele tells him not to. John will anyway.

Matriarch Tsarra Perfaren (Rank #3) receives troubling reports that fleets from Houses Naestina, Aeberos, and Loraleth were threatening her border, the size of which meant they either had a secret shipbuilding program, or they denuded their borders with House Valaden. But they'd never denude their borders with House Valaden; that idea is ludicrous. Aadya, her Fleet Commander, sends her a file showing four battleships, three heavy carriers, and several dozen cruisers from House Valaden heading for her border.

Alyssa shows John and Sakura the new training dojo that uses holo-emitters to make it appear like it's on Mount Daisen on Terra.

John and the girls talk about the TFNN interview. Rachel thanks him for fixing her credit in her treatment for rapid skin regeneration. Alyssa suggests acquiring a pharmaceutical company, and then start marketing the "Voss Miracle Cure" for both medical and beauty markets.

Irillith and Tashana used to watch Asphalt Arena together when they were young. "*Terrans killing each other is the best part!*"

Bill Armstrong, anchor for TFNN, interviews one of the protesters at Port Heracles. Lobard Jackson, son of famous holo-movie legend Troy Jackson, says they're launching a passenger liner, The Dove of Peace, into Kirrix Space to act as an envoy. After all, the Kirrix just want peace; the defensive skirmishes with Kirrix ships on the frontier of Terran Space is just fake propaganda from High Command. The Kirrix should be getting reparations for the Purges, Lobard argues. Bill brings Commander Paul Richards on to comment. "*Suicide isn’t illegal, so I can’t impound their ship.*"

Calara points out that the Terran Federation military is stretched pretty thin at the moment, so they may not be able to repel a major Kirrix incursion. The recent increase in Kirrix activity on the border could be due to the other Progenitor.

Faye and Irillith want to create more copies of the Progenitor server to use as defensive fortifications for the network. Since they'll have to take the network offline to replace the hardware, so they're going to wait until they're in drydock at Genthalas Shipyard.

Rachel analyzes Kintark DNA.

* There’s a hierarchy among the Kintark, with these "dragons" at the apex due to their raw power.
* The Kintark have been experimenting with genetic modification of their species for a few centuries.
* Kindralax was one of the earlier test subjects. He was at least 200 years old, and his genetic coding shows extensive mutation that must have occurred during infancy. Since then, he must have been growing at a steady rate over the decades, to reach the colossal size he was when he died.
* The reason they don't turn the entire race into dragons is likely that the resources required to sustain them would prohibit their practicality as a space-borne species. In other words, basic Kintark are still useful to man their ships, and run the more mundane aspects of Kintark society.

Rachel thinks John has made her too smart. She's getting too good at reading people. She wishes her mother was alive. John asks her to marry him, and she accepts.

Sakura trains with John in the dojo and has a flashback. She thought she was fighting a bodyguard with a sword. John finds patterns in her moves; the data chips must have been limited with improvisation.

Irillith, following Alyssa's idea, wakes John up pretending to be furious about the extra stations. "*Isn’t it bad enough that you’re planning on fucking my mother?! Now you want to add my sister to your little harem too?!*" John enjoys the foreplay.

Rachel will finish curing Kyper’s syndrome and the RAC-5 virus by the time they back to Terran Space

Sakura has another flashback and reenacts Shinatobe's assassination attempt on John, and uses enhanced speed. He breaks her out of trance by using a wave of telekinetic energy. Shinatobe's fighting styles came back to her during the reenactment.

Sakura and the rest of the girls now have triple-helix DNA. Dana wants to shoot fireballs out of her eyes *and shit like that.*

Irillith panics that Shaedra might be waiting to ambush them on the outer edge of Loraleth territory. Edraele is proud of her for being cautious, but promises they won't be attacked.

Irillith's reaction at finding out that Kali is now Matriarch of House Loraleth is one of disbelief. Due to Kali's temperament, the only way she could have become Matriarch is if her mother and all three of her elder sisters had died.

When they pass into House Ghilwen territory, Irillith is even more disturbed from seeing no fleets on either side to defend their borders. Maliri matriarchs are an obsessively paran«oid. Edraele just assures John everything is fine.

The portraits in Alyssa's mind change. They used to be static images made out of clear crystal showing the girls looking happy. Now they look alive, their portraits animated and full of vibrant color. It could be due to them being more psychically receptive now.

Faye admits to Irillith she's fallen for John.

Sakura defeats John in the dojo. She teaches him Wushu forms.

They cross the border into the Unclaimed Wastes.

Sakura uses her enhanced speed in a duel to push John to develop enhanced speed as well.

Alyssa bonds with Sakura.

Alyssa hexa-shapes new swords for John and Sakura, whose parents' faces are now embossed on the pommels of her swords. Just as they looked the last time she saw them.

Sakura's *Change* is complete. Faye wishes she could join the orgy.

Calara presents her research on Jessica Blake:

* Jessica Blake was a xeno-biologist attached to a deep space survey vessel called the "Cora." Her ship set sail from Olympus Shipyard in 2737, under the command of a Captain Joseph Ebner. The Cora had a crew of seventeen, who were mostly scientists, with a handful of additional personnel necessary to run the ship.
* Their mission was to head beyond the eastern frontier of Terran territory and discover new alien species, both plant life and animals. The Kirrix had been scoured from this area of space decades beforehand in the previous purge, and these systems were uninhabited by bugs at this time.
* They spent months landing on planets, studying exo-fauna and flora, until they eventually stumbled across Arcadia, an Eden World deep in a dense nebula. They spent several months there, cataloguing hundreds of different species.
* Another file contained an image of a Progenitor ship (Dana: "*Crap! It’s that feeling again.*") that had taken massive damage.
* After they deemed Arcadia was benign after their first week there, the crew of the Cora split up to pursue their own research. It was his mother who discovered the ship.
* She went missing, and stopped sending her status reports. The crew eventually tracked down the subdermal homing beacon that they’d all been implanted with, but she’d cut it from her body, and left it hundreds of miles from the Progenitor ship. After weeks of fruitless searches, they gave her up for dead, but decided to stay on Arcadia to continue their research.
* A couple of months later, they discovered the Progenitor ship by accident, and spotted Jessica out foraging nearby. When they tried to bring her back to the Cora, she fought with them, and they had to sedate her. The ship’s medical officer performed a full-body scan while Jessica was sedated and discovered she was pregnant.
* When Jessica awoke, she begged them to let her return to Arcadia, desperate to return to her "Master." Captain Ebner panicked, not wanting to confront a potentially hostile, technically advanced alien lifeform, and decided to return to Terran Space with all haste. They couldn’t put Jessica in cryostasis now that she was pregnant, so they kept her in the brig on the journey home.
* She was heavily pregnant by the time they returned to Olympus Shipyard, and gave birth shortly after they arrived. He was examined by medical personnel and deemed to not be a threat, appearing essentially identical to a normal Terran baby apart from his ears, and other... enhancements.
* According to Incident Advisory Board findings, she sabotaged the Cora while her former shipmates were unloading the specimens they’d brought back for study. The survey vessel then exploded, killing all aboard. She stole a corvette undergoing a refit in drydock, and then escaped before anyone realised what she’d done. The corvette was tracked heading towards the eastern frontier, before contact was lost.

John goes to his Ready Room, asking to be left alone. Irillith goes to speak to him, saying she's seen the look on his face before. On Tashana, when she told her that their mother had killed their father. Tashana didn’t believe her at first, but Irillith made her understand that their mother was a monster.

Irillith wonders what Tashana's doing right now...