This Royal Navy has expanded and welcomes the following courageous soul: Patrick Wells.

  As your Fleet Admiral, I, Crimson_Reapr, welcome you, honor your commitment, and thank you for your service. May our power reach beyond the edges of charted space, and may ruin fall upon all who stand against humanity's strength.

  The rhythmic *hiss-click* of the chair helping me regenerate finally ceased, followed by a soft, melodic chime indicating the cycle was complete. The bio-gel had done its work, and the skin over my ribs was now tender and pink. The gaping hole that simucrum had put in me was gone, and the bruising that had mottled my torso had faded into memory, metabolized by a body that refused to stay broken.

  I sat up slowly, testing my range of motion. There was a slight stiffness, a phantom ache where muscles had been torn and knitted back together in two hours rather than the weeks or months it was supposed to take, but the pain was distant. It felt like something that had happened to someone else, in a different life.

  In my arms, Lyra shifted. She let out a small, soft snore, her hand clutching the fabric of my pants so tightly her knuckles were white. She was out cold. I guess all that jumping around in the orphanage has done her good, and finally left her surrendering to the heavy, dreamless sleep of childhood.

  I scooped her up carefully, cradling her head against my shoulder. She probably weighed around fifty-something, maybe 60 pounds by now, and had grown a bit since I had first picked her up. But to me, she felt impossibly light. It was almost terrifying how weightless she was as the realization that this tiny, fragile thing was the heaviest responsibility any man would ever carry. Heavier than armor, heavier than a rifle, heavier than the secrets of the past life I was keeping.

  I walked out of the med-bay, the lights dimming automatically behind me as the sensors registered the room was empty. The ship was quiet, except for the hum of the reactor, which vibrated like a heartbeat through the deck pting.

  I climbed the stairs to the upper deck. My footsteps were silent on the pting, and I moved with a predator's grace, a habit I hadn't realized I'd picked up until today. My quarters were at the end of the hall. I keyed the door open and stepped into the darkness, illuminated only by the "lights" of the station filtering through the dispy that served as a viewport. The room smelled of clean linens with a faint smell of popcorn.

  I walked to my bed, pulled back the duvet, and id Lyra down. She curled up instantly, burying her face in the pillow, seeking warmth. I pulled the bnket up to her chin, tucking the edges in.

  I stood there for a long time, just watching her breathe. The rise and fall of her chest seemed like the only clock that mattered.

  "I'm not good with kids."

  I remember that being my mantra for years, both in this life and my previous life. Back on Earth, I had been the awkward uncle, the guy who didn't know how to hold a baby, the man who focused on his career because retionships were messy variables I couldn't control. Even in this life, I had been a career-focused man, though not by choice. And when Anahrin found me, broken and dying, and then rebuilt me, I had sworn I was a solitary creature.

  And yet, here I was.

  I reached out and brushed a stray curl of hair from her forehead. The surge of affection that hit me was visceral. It wasn't soft, but rather a fierce and protective, possessive heat in my chest that made me want to tear the gaxy apart with my bare hands if it dared to look at her wrong.

  She wasn't my blood. We shared no DNA. But she was just like me. An orphan of this fucked up universe... a girl I had made an orphan...

  "I won't let anything happen to you," I whispered to the dark. "No matter what happens, I won't let any harm come to you. If I have to buy a whole world just so you could live comfortably, then so be it."

  I walked over to the viewport, leaning my forehead against the cold screen. Outside, Mechanicus Station rotated slowly, a carnival of lights and industry suspended in the bck. Somewhere out there, SIGS was burning. Somewhere out there, a fleet of warships was burning hard toward us.

  Sister Era's voice echoed in my head. "Build your exit."

  She was right. I knew she was right. This station... it was a trap... a cage made of gold and contracts, and as long as I was here, I was pying by their rules, fighting on their turf.

  I looked past the station, past Nova Celeste, and into the deep bck of the void. The unconquered space... Space at the rim of both human governing bodies in this universe... a pce some had taken to calling the Wild Sectors.

  That was where we needed to be. Out there, the only w was physics. Out there, if someone tried or threatened to kill you, you didn't need a wyer and a press conference to act. You simply shot first and asked questions ter. It was dangerous, yes, but it was also the most brutally human way to live. Might meant right, and where no one governed, whoever held the bigger guns was always right. And the Shepherd... the Shepherd was built for that kind of danger. Anahrin and I didn't make her to be a station queen, parading around her dock. She was a void-predator.

  "Soon," I promised myself. "I just have to get the money and bleed these fuckers for as much as I can before leaving for the wild sectors... before achieving true freedom."

  I pushed off the screen. My mind was racing, too loud for sleep. I needed answers. I needed to understand what had happened in the waste processing sector. The strength. The crity. The way the world had slowed down. The way killing that simucrum and all those before it hadn't felt like a necessity, but like a drug.

  "Marcos," I said softly.

  "I am here, Mark," Marcos replied.

  "I'm coming to the bridge," I said. "There's... something I need to ask you."

  "I will be waiting," he said, pausing briefly. "And Mark, remember how I said I have something to show you?"

  "Yeah?" I half-asked, half-stated.

  "We'll talk about it when you get to the bridge," he said.

  I took one st look at Lyra and walked out the very door I had come in, not wanting to wake her with extra footsteps as I walked up the stairs to reach the bridge sooner. I took the long way around, letting my thoughts drift through my head before finally heading down the corridor.

  I stepped onto the command deck, and the air shimmered in front of the main console, and Marcos materialized. He was wearing his butler avatar, though slightly different, with a stylized, glowing tuxedo with a monocle. He popped into existence not three feet from my face.

  But unlike how I'd done various times before, I didn't flinch, didn't jump, hell, I didn't even blink. I just stopped walking, waiting for the pixels to finish settling.

  Marcos tilted his head, his digital eyebrows raising. He pulled out a small, holographic notepad and scribbled something on it.

  "Curious," he murmured.

  "Oh yeah? What's curious?" I asked, walking past him to the co-pilot's chair.

  "Your startle response," Marcos noted, turning to follow me with his eyes. "Or rather, the ck thereof. In previous instances, approximately 47 times in the st six months, my sudden materialization has resulted in an elevated heart rate, a flinch reflex, or a verbal expletive. Today... nothing. Your biometric readings are ft. Your cortisol is baseline."

  "Maybe I'm just getting used to your ugly mug," I grunted, sitting down. "Grow up, Marcos."

  "I am technically less than a year old," Marcos countered. "Maturity is a construct I am still parsing. However, your physiological changes are not a construct. They are data."

  "Fair enough," I said with a shrug. "So, what did you want to show me? You sounded serious over the comms."

  He dissolved his avatar and reappeared near the center console, hovering over a specific data port. "Come here, Mark."

  I stood up and walked over. The console was dormant, save for a single blinking light that was a deep, pulsing violet color I hadn't seen before. It felt heavy, and somehow ominous.

  "I guess it's time we discuss heritage," Marcos said. His voice dropped the butler affectation. It sounded deeper, more resonant. It kind of sounded like Anahrin. "Specifically, the heritage of your species. Or should it be said, mine."

  "My species?" I frowned. "What are you talking about, Marcos? I already know humans are descendants of the Strathari."

  "That you are," Marcos nodded. "But there's still more for you to learn."

  I stared at his hologram with a frown on my face. "What are you talking about? I know I'm technically part alien, Marcos. It's not news. So, what is there to learn? I thought whatever remained of the Strathari went extinct with Anahrin, and whatever remained was blown up in the self-destruction of the factory, and as a byproduct, the system."

  "Anahrin told you the history," Marcos corrected softly. "But he did not tell you the purpose."

  "Purpose?" I frowned. "What purpose?"

  "Based on what Anahrin had revealed, you believe the Strathari were explorers," Marcos said. "Philosophers who traveled the stars and left seeds of life behind. If humans derive from the Strathari, then humanity's capacity for violence is a corruption. A deviation from a peaceful norm."

  "Yeah, well, wouldn't that be true?" I asked. "I mean, shit, Anahrin was a scientist, and he seemed like quite the gentle soul."

  "Anahrin was many things," Marcos said, his avatar nodding. "But the Strathari were not gentle. Mark, why do you think your physiology adapted so well to combat? Why did your bone density triple? Why did your neural pathways re-map for hyper-aggression?"

  "What are you talking about?" I asked with a frown.

  He looked at me, his eyes glowing. "Tell me, Mark. Have you felt it yet?"

  Every word Marcos was spitting was throwing me for a loop. "Felt what?"

  "IT," Marcos emphasized. "The surge. The cold fire. The moment when the fear goes away and is repced by... efficiency... When the enemy isn't a person anymore, but a geometry problem to be solved with force. When you have a life in your hands, and squeezing it out feels not like murder, but like completion."

  I froze momentarily, recalling all the encounters I've had where I've killed something or someone. The most recent was in the waste processing sector, where I destroyed that simucrum. Something I had done out of the need to live. But that wasn't what was on my mind. Instead, I vividly recalled the trance I slipped into.

  I remembered the feeling. It wasn't rage since rage was hot and messy. What I had felt was an absolute coolness and mental crity that allowed me to act without hesitation. It was a dopamine hit so potent that it made the pain of a severed muscle feel like a tickle for the time being. It was the feeling of being a god of war.

  "What..." I swallowed, my throat dry. "How do you know about that?"

  "I did not know," Marcos admitted. "However, it was something I suspected. That thing in your pendant had allowed me access to monitor your vitals during the fight with the simucrum. Your cortisol levels dropped to near zero while your adrenaline production spiked, but it was metabolized instantly into focus that allowed your body to move before your mind processed what you were doing. You didn't panic, Mark. You synchronized."

  He gestured to the violet light on the console. "And because of that... because you have now survived three confirmed Life-or-Death scenarios where this state was engaged... a file has been unlocked."

  "What?" I asked. "How could that happen?"

  "Well, it is evident that Anahrin left a message," Marcos said. "One that was encrypted with a biometric trigger. It could only be decrypted if the system detected that the subject, you, had engaged the 'Limit Break' state three times and survived."

  "Three times?" I counted back.

  One: The fight with the gangsters on Eidolon Reach. Two: The fight with Thorne and his goons. Three: The simucrum.

  "But... how would the system have recorded that?" I asked.

  "It appears that, behind walls of code, Anahrin had already made contact with that thing inside your pendant..." Marcos paused. "I still don't know exactly what it is, but it appears to have something to do with the-"

  "Crafters," I finished for him in a whisper, remembering how, in a state of semi-consciousness, I had heard him say that the pendant on my chest was an article of the crafters. "Py it."

  Marcos nodded, and the violet light fred, projecting a rge holographic screen into the air above the bridge.

  Static crackled, a hiss of white noise that sounded like rain on a tin roof, and then the image resolved.

  It was Anahrin.

  But it wasn't the Anahrin I remembered from those days, the stoic, calm mentor who scolded me for giving dumb suggestions. This Anahrin looked wrecked. He was sitting on the floor of one of the decks that I recognized to be near the med bay due to the lower bs. His skin was pale, and he had deep purple bags under his eyes from overworking himself overnight to help the Shepherd get closer to the finish line. He was holding a datapad, recording himself, his hand trembling so violently the image shook.

  He coughed, a wet and rattling sound that seemed to tear at his chest. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and I saw the smear of his golden-blue blood.

  The camera panned down slightly, and through an opening in the construction behind Anahrin, I could see the floor of the hangar bay. There I saw myself welding the massive engine nacelle.

  Anahrin turned the camera back to his face and looked at the lens, at me, with eyes full of infinite sadness. He stayed quiet for a long while, just staring at the screen as if he was trying to find the words he wanted to say.

  "So," Anahrin's voice rasped from the speakers, almost as weak as it had been after he had colpsed. "If you are seeing this... it means you royally fucked up."

  I let out a startled, wet ugh.

  "I know, I know," the recording continued, a weak, fleeting smile touching his lips before vanishing into a grimace of pain. "I wasn't one for jokes. Time... time was always a luxury I didn't have. And honestly, Mark? You aren't exactly a comedian yourself."

  He shifted on the floor, wincing as if his very bones were grinding together.

  "I tried to keep my distance," Anahrin said, his voice dropping to a whisper. "I know you noticed the cold and detachment I had when I taught you. I fixed your mangled body, but I never... I never let you in. I didn't want you to get attached to a corpse. As you and I both knew, my clock was ticking. So I thought... I thought if I were just a teacher to you, and not a friend, then it would hurt less when I died."

  He looked down at his hands, turning them over, studying the strange lines of his palms. "It seems like I was wrong. It hurts anyway... it hurts to leave you, knowing that I'll never see what you live up to."

  He took a breath, steeling himself. The vulnerability in his eyes hardened into something painful, verging on the edge of shame. "But that's not why I'm recording this. I'm recording this because if this file is pying, then it means you've felt it. We took to calling it 'Zero Horizon.' Don't ask me how, I won't be around to answer, nor do I know why we coined it as such. But one thing's for sure... it was the Strathari curse."

  Anahrin leaned into the camera, tears brimming at the edge of his eyes. "I told you the Strathari were explorers, that we were a peaceful civilization of polymaths who were wiped out by a cosmic tragedy. I let you believe that humanity's violence was a regression as Strathari DNA degraded."

  He shook his head slowly, tears finally spilling over his cheeks. "I lied. We weren't peaceful. We were far from it... We were monsters."

  I stared at the screen, my blood running cold.

  "We were the apex predators of the universe," Anahrin whispered, the confession spilling out of him like water from a broken faucet. "We conquered. We consumed. We built fleets that darkened the stars. Our technology wasn't for understanding, it was for pure and utter domination. The countless gene modifications? Our supernatural strength? The durability I mocked humanity for? These weren't advancements made for our survival. My species was only meant to live 300 years at the most, but as a side effect of all our preparations for war, we extended it to thousands. My hands aren't just the perfect tool for ship crafting..."

  Anahrin paused momentarily, easily ripping part of the flooring to his right off and waving it in the air. He then held his fingers straight, and in a dispy of supernatural ability, softly ran his nails down the metal, leaving a deep gash on it. "We engineered ourselves to be the perfect killers. We removed the limits on our aggression. We created the 'Zero Horizon' state, a dopamine feedback loop that rewards violence with pleasure."

  He pointed a shaking finger at me. "That feeling you have tasted? That perfect crity that allows your body to move on pure primal instinct and commit feats completely unheard of to humanity? That isn't something accidental, Mark. That is your heritage. That is the Strathari ghost in your blood. We were the perfect killing machines, so I could only design you to love the kill."

  He coughed again, doubling over. It took him a minute to recover. When he looked back up, there was a depth of self-loathing in his eyes that was hard to look at.

  "And me?" Anahrin said softly. "I wasn't just a scientist. I was the bloody reaper himself... The cataclysm that destroyed us... It wasn't a random occurrence... It was caused by me."

  Anahrin's face twisted as he struggled to get the words out. "I didn't do it to save the gaxy from us. I did it because I was arrogant. I thought... I thought I could ensure our survival at the top of the food chain forever. I thought if I created a resonance field that suppressed the lower tech of our rivals, we would never be challenged. We already had the age advantage that would only increase... So I wanted to establish ourselves as the first of my kind... as the crafters. Gods amongst ants, Mark. To make our reign absolute... to make it eternal."

  He sobbed softly. "But I was wrong. My calcutions were fwed, and the resonance didn't just suppress the others but rather shattered us. It tore our crystalline data structures apart, scrambled our navigations, and destroyed our empire's core world's core stability. I didn't save us. I doomed us, scattering my people to the winds, turned the kings of the stars into refugees hiding in the mud of millions of worlds."

  There was a deep silence for about a minute before Anahrin spoke again. "I killed my civilization with my own ambition."

  He looked at his hand, stained with blue-gold blood. "This disease? This rot inside me? It's the backsh I received from the weapon while I was working on it. Radiation so votile that it rewrites your cells until your body is forced to give up... Ha... as if it was some sort of cosmic justice."

  He wiped his eyes, smearing the blood on his face. "I was never a good person, Mark. Even my daughter left me... I told myself that it was because she wanted to explore bck holes... but I know that it was because she saw the darkness in me. She ran to the stars to get away from her father's legacy."

  He paused, and his voice broke completely. "And my father... I never told you about him either. Well, I never shared much about my past. But..." Anahrin looked away from the camera, staring at the wall as if watching a memory py out.

  "I killed him," Anahrin whispered. "Not with a weapon, but with an engine. I was young, brilliant, and stupid. I built a prototype thruster that was efficient... too efficient. It created thrust that defied the ws of inertia. I wanted to impress him... and so I begged him to test it."

  Anahrin closed his eyes. "I miscalcuted the inertial dampeners and didn't scale them for the efficiency output. So when he engaged the drive... the G-force was near infinite. It pinned him to the pilot's chair, and even with all our species' augmentations... he wasn't able to move. He couldn't breathe or reach the cut-off... And because the fuel efficiency was near-perfect... the engine didn't stop. It had nigh-unlimited fuel. It just kept burning. He was trapped in a coffin of acceleration, screaming in silence, unable to die or stop. All the while I watched the telemetry... watched his heart struggle for hours until it simply... exploded... I built the machine that tortured my father to death."

  He looked back at the camera. He looked hollowed out. "Everything I touch turns to ash, Mark. Everything I build destroys the people I love."

  He looked at the younger me working in the background. "I thought... maybe I could make it right. Maybe if I saved one of you... one of the descendants... I could guide you. I could teach you to be better than us. To use the strength for protection, not conquest. To be a Shepherd."

  "But if you're seeing this," Anahrin sighed, his voice barely audible, "then you've been in three life-or-death fights. You've killed personally. And killing with your bare hands is something that activates the Zero Horizon. And that means that you've broken the limiter I had managed to set in pce. And.. well... you can't put the genie back in the bottle, Mark. Once you know how good it feels to be a god of war... it's hard to be a man... So, this is my warning. My final lesson to my apprentice."

  Anahrin's eyes locked onto mine across time and space. "Don't let it win. It's not easy to learn control over something that was the primary cause of a civilization's rise to the apex. But I believe in you. I believe you will learn to use the anger and the strength. You have a heart, Mark. A human heart. It's softer than ours was... It feels regret... Hold onto that. Hold onto it with everything you have. Because if you lose it... If you become what I was... You will burn everything you love."

  He coughed one st time, his strength failing. He reached out to turn off the recording. "I'm sorry, Mark. I'm sorry I lied and turned you into a weapon. But I believe in you... You're better than I was. And maybe you can lead humanity to rise to that apex and be better than all of us... Be the Shepherd, Mark. Not the Wolf."

  The screen went bck.

  The silence on the bridge was absolute. It felt physical, as if there were something pressing down on my chest. I stood there, staring at the empty air where Anahrin's face had been. The words washed over me like a tidal wave.

  It expined everything. The very first time I had killed, I hadn't felt an ounce of regret. The pain I felt from destroying that pirate frigate in killing Lyra's mom wasn't because I regretted what I had done, but because I felt for Lyra. For what a child would have to go through because of my actions.

  I felt a sudden, crushing weight in my chest. I walked backwards, tripping and falling back into the captain's chair, burying my face in my hands.

  "He knew," I whispered, my voice trembling. "He knew what I would become."

  "He hoped," Marcos corrected softly. I looked up. The AI had returned to his butler avatar. He didn't look sarcastic. He looked solemn. "He hoped you would be different. And you are, Mark."

  "Am I?" I asked, looking at my hands. "I ripped a Simucrum, someone who was once a man, apart today, Marcos. And I enjoyed it. The bastard asked me to kill him, and I did it with a smile. I felt powerful. I felt... complete."

  "What you did was born out of necessity in a do-or-die situation," Marcos said firmly. "You did it for the sake of Lyra. I can't believe I'm the one saying this, Mark, but you need to man the fuck up. You may have simirities with Strathari aggressiveness and their DNA in yours, but you are your own man. And clearly, you weren't dominated by that state. Anahrin said it's dangerous, but the only logical conclusion I can draw from this is that it is beneficial for your survival. It may have meant something else to the Strathari, but your human DNA, though descending from Strathari DNA, has changes that seem to allow you to work within a controlled parameter."

  Marcos floated closer, his holographic form glowing warmly in the cool light of the bridge. "The Zero Horizon state is a physiological reaction. It is chemistry. It is code written into your DNA. But the choice of when to use it? That is morality, that is human. Or did you continue to be under its effect once you were out of danger?"

  Marcos' question made me reflect. He was right. I wasn't controlled by it, and after I was out of danger, I was no longer in that state where everything was sharp and slower. I had returned to my normal self. But I don't know how I would be able to control it, since, up to now, it's activated by itself and gone away by itself.

  Marcos gestured to the empty air where the screen had been. "He killed his own people trying to make them gods... and killed his father with his own brilliance... A heavy burden, for sure. One he carried alone until the end. But you do not have to be alone, Mark. You have Kenjiro. You have Lyra. You have me."

  I looked at the AI. My friend. A copy of the mind of the man who saved me. I stood up and walked to the viewport. The stars looked different now. They didn't look like a frontier. They looked like a graveyard. They looked like a battlefield waiting for a war to return.

  But then I thought of the fleet coming. I thought of Kaelen Strathmore. A man of duty. A man of honor. A man who fought pirates and saved colonies, not because he enjoyed the kill, but because it was necessary.

  I wasn't just Anahrin's experiment. I was Kaelen's son. I was raised on The Resolute. I was taught that strength was for service, not dominance.

  "Three fathers," I whispered. "One gave me life, the other gave me purpose, and the st one resurrected me. Two made me a man, one made me a weapon."

  I clenched my fist.

  And then, something I had not heard from for over 2 years activated.

  *Hidden Quest Complete: The Shepherd is a Wolf*

  System Booting Attempt # 1...

  System Booting Attempt # 4,320...

  System Booting Attempt # 17,289...

  System Booting Attempt # 7,846,323...

  System Booting Failed. Complete the remaining hidden quests to unlock the system.

  System Name: S#%^&*@d &^ H&*@#(#%

  Book 2 has wrapped up at Chapter 50, which is a short 13,400 words, and Book 3 has hit the ground running with new chapters! That means that you can read up to 27 Advanced Chapters on my Patreon at https:///cw/Crimson_Reapr

  But listen closely now. I'm currently editing Chapter 8, so that number will naturally increase to 28 in a few hours.

  Crimson_Reapr is the name, and writing Sci-fi is the way.