Well, someone else has risen through the ranks and earned the rank of Admiral. Stand proud, stand tall, hold your chin up high, for you are an Admiral the greatest Naval force Humanity has ever produced!

  May your fleet glide through the cosmos and show every maggot just how great Humanity is! Spread our name, spread our glory, and rise, Admiral Talos! For it is an honor to have you amongst our ranks, and in your Honor, an additional chapter shall be published publicly, and I shall expedite Chapter 9 of Book 3 and write it in your honor.

  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.

  Thursday, August 10th, 2985.

  3rd Person POV

  Only two days had passed since the extremely chaotic scene at Mechanicus Station's judicial district, and the current scene pying out was one that was almost the complete opposite of Thursday's madness.

  Mechanicus Station, just like all other stations, didn't really have seasons, nor did it have sunny days or rainy afternoons. Instead, just like every other station, it had a perpetual environmental cycle that consisted of Cycle A (day cycles) and Cycle B (night cycles), interrupted only by the occasional Ventition Purge that made everything smell like recycled ozone. But inside the walls of the orphanage, the air scrubbers were working overtime to filter out the station's grime, repcing it with the smell of sugar and anticipation.

  "No, no, Kenjiro! The streamer is too low! A grizzly could walk into that!" Sister Era stood in the center of the common room, directing traffic with the familiarity of someone who was used to giving orders. Her usual clothing was dusted with biodegradable glitter, and her face was flushed with the sheer effort of coordinating thirty orphans, three nuns, and one very confused engineer.

  Kenjiro, currently standing on a rickety stepdder, adjusted the blue and gold streamer with precise, calcuted movements. He was wearing a pristine, high-colred tunic made of ste-grey smart fabric, a utilitarian but expensive attire that cost more than the entire room's furniture, one of the few clothes he had packed before leaving it all behind on Elyse, which was now dangerously close to being ruined by adhesive spray.

  "Sister, with all due respect," Kenjiro grunted, checking the clearance with a ser measure built into his wrist-comp, "Grizzly bears have been extinct for six hundred years, and Lyra is four feet tall on a good day. The structural clearance is mathematically sufficient."

  "It's not about whether it's sufficient or not, it's about the aesthetic, Kenjiro," Era chided, pointing to the other side of the room where a group of toddlers was trying to eat the confetti. "I got this here. How about you go help little Luis with the balloons? He's probably inhaled three of them already."

  Kenjiro climbed down, looking at the chaos around him while wiping sweat from his forehead. It was disorganized, inefficient, and loud, but it was also beautiful. For the st few days, ever since the attack at the courthouse, the station had been a pressure cooker. The IUC still maintained its blockade of the station, though it was more for show than actual need. The threat had already been taken care of, and the IUC knew that, so this blockade was more of a way to show they had control over the situation, which, with everything going on, was a reassurance.

  The news feeds were screaming about corporate wars rising again, and these wars weren't full of stock crashes and corporate moves to screw with one another. These were actual wars. Houses that backed certain corporations versus houses that backed other corporations. For the time being, they were still small skirmishes between corporations, but to the houses, it was all a game of chess, and the IUC and VIC territories were the chessboard. Not to add, the face that had come to the forefront of humanity's news networks was followed by the question of "who is Mark Shephard?" But in here? In here, the biggest crisis was whether they had enough chocote frosting.

  "Is the... special guest ready?" Kenjiro asked, keeping his voice low so the children wouldn't hear.

  Era gnced toward the back service entrance. "Mark sent the signal. The drone is in the loading bay. It's... quite something."

  "And what about the cake?" Kenjiro asked, licking his lips as he thought of it.

  "Mark managed to order a Tres Leches cake, which is usually only one tier," Sister Era said. "But this one was made using some special things, so it ended up being three tiers. I have no idea how much Mark paid for it, but since it uses real condensed milk, I'm guessing it wasn't cheap. It's currently sitting in the stasis cooler."

  Era took a deep breath, smoothing her apron. "This has to be perfect, Kenjiro. That little girl... she's had one of the worst hands dealt to her, and she lived most of her life in literal darkness. Having lived most of her life as the daughter of a sexual sve, I doubt she's ever had a birthday. So we have to make sure that today is a memorable day."

  Kenjiro nodded, a soft, sad smile touching his lips. He remembered about 2 weeks ago when Mark showed he trusted him enough by sharing how he came to care for Lyra. It was quite an unfortunate thing. He then thought of the more recent days when he had witnessed a terrifyingly inhuman side to Mark. The terrifying, metal-ripping juggernaut he had become in the vents. It was almost the complete opposite of who he was around Lyra.

  "Don't worry, Sister," Kenjiro said, grabbing a bag of streamers. "I think today will become a core memory for little Lyra."

  POV: Mark Shephard

  The promenade of Mechanicus Station had become a pce that I had come to dislike after being flooded by people trying to take a picture with me. It was something that reminded me of my past life on Earth and a specific "would you rather" that asked if you would take being rich or being famous. And I see why no one wants to be famous. But today, the promenade was a kingdom, and I was the beast of burden carrying its little queen.

  "Higher, Papa! I can't see the fountain!" Lyra called.

  I chuckled, the sound rumbling in my chest, and adjusted my grip on Lyra's ankles. She was perched on my shoulders, her hands gripping my hair, which was back to being shoulder length in just a few months, and, thankfully, was sturdy enough to withstand her excitement.

  "If you get any higher, bug, you're going to hit your head on the ceiling fans," I said, although I knew there was still another 10 or so meters until we reached the ceiling of the walking corridors, and about 100 meters for the reinforced duragss ceiling of the promenade. All that being said, I straightened my back to give her that extra inch.

  We were walking through Sector 4's main shopping district, which was a riot of neon signs, holographic advertisements, and the press of hundreds of thousands of bodies. Under normal circumstances, my threat assessment protocols, both the human ones and the new, instinctual ones Anahrin had snuck into me, would be red-lining.

  And they were, to an extent. My eyes scanned every face, every shadow, every hand reaching into a pocket.

  However, due to recent events, we had a buffer.

  "Make way, citizens. We are on official governmental business. Keep the path clear." Four IUC Marines, cd in full tactical armor and exoskeletons with their unit's insignia on their pauldrons, formed a diamond formation around us. They weren't being aggressive, their rifles slung low and all, but they were firm. Their presence created a bubble of personal space that followed us through the crowd like a force field.

  I would say it was ridiculous and unnecessary since I was an engineer, not a dignitary. But after the incident at the courthouse, Admiral Krane hadn't given me a choice. "You're a high-value asset and a high-value target, Shephard," he had told me. "You want to take the kid shopping? Fine. But you're taking a detail."

  So, here we were. A man who wanted to go unnoticed but did everything contrary to that, and his daughter, escorted by the government.

  "Look!" Lyra squealed, pointing a sticky finger toward a boutique window dispy.

  It was a clothing store, high-end, the kind that didn't put price tags on the items because if you had to ask, then you couldn't afford it. In the window, floating on a gravity-suspension mannequin, was a dress.

  It was yellow. 'Christ, why did this girl like these eye-catching colors so much?' I thought to myself, because this dress was NOT a subtle, pastel yellow. It was bright-ass, violent punch yo momma in the gut, kick a kid in the balls, sunshine yellow. It had frills, a sash, and it looked like a lemon had exploded in a tulle factory.

  "It's... bright," I noted.

  "It's perfect!" Lyra corrected, patting my head. "Can we? Please? Pretty please? The old one is... itchy."

  The "old one" was a perfectly functional dress I had bought her a few months back, not to mention all of the clothing she had back on the Shepherd, which, knowing girls and their growth rate, she wouldn't fit into them in about a year or two...

  "Alright," I sighed, feigning reluctance. "Let's go see about the yellow menace."

  We walked into the store. The shop assistant, an older woman with violet cybernetic eyes and impeccable posture, looked up. Her eyes went wide when she saw the Marines fnking the door, and wider when she saw me, the man whose face had been pstered on GNN for three days straight.

  "M-Mr. Shephard," she stammered, bowing slightly. "Welcome. How can I...?"

  "No need for all that," I smiled at her. I swung Lyra down from my shoulders, setting her on the polished floor. She smoothed her hair, trying to look grown-up.

  "We need that dress," I pointed to the window. "In her size. And... I guess some to either match or do a little bit of contrast."

  Twenty minutes ter, Lyra walked out of the dressing room and twirled. Don't know where she learned that from, but the dress spun around her like a sor fre. She beamed, a smile that showed off a missing tooth, which I guess Sister Era had taken care of.

  "Do I look like a princess?" she asked, looking at herself in the mirror.

  I felt a lump form in my throat as I looked at her. She didn't look like a princess. She looked like the only clean thing in a dirty gaxy. But what pained me the most was thinking about just how many more children were in the same situation around this fucked up universe. Just how many innocent people were under svery, and the IUC didn't do shit because they either couldn't viote some bureaucratic bullshit ws or didn't want to step on somebody's toes since it was clear that corruption was a problem for it.

  "No," I said, my voice rough. I cleared my throat. "You look even better than a princess. You look like yourself, Lyra."

  She ran to me and hugged my legs. I knelt down, ignoring the shop assistant's gasp as the "dangerous super-soldier experiment" carefully adjusted the sash on a child's dress.

  "Once she's got her mind set on something, there is no changing her mind. So, I guess we'll take it," I told the assistant, sneakily taking my banking card out of my system inventory and tapping it against the terminal without looking at the price. It could have been five credits or five thousand. I didn't really care. I had money to burn now.

  We spent the next three hours tearing through the promenade. We went to the zero-G arcade, where I watched her float around in a hamster ball, ughing hysterically as she bounced off the walls. I bought her a bag of rock candy in the shape of heavy-metal bolts and nuts, and let her eat until her tongue turned blue.

  We walked past a newsstand where a holographic paper dispyed my face with the headline: HERO OR HYBRID? THE MYSTERY OF MARK SHEPHARD.

  I steered Lyra away from it, positioning my body between her and the screen.

  "Papa, people are looking at you," she whispered, noticing the stares we were getting from the passersby. Some looked at me with fear, others with awe. A few brave souls raised their datapads to take pictures before the Marines waved them off.

  "They're just jealous of your dress," I lied smoothly. "Yellow is a very intimidating color."

  Lyra giggled. "You're silly."

  "I try," I smiled.

  As the artificial twilight of the station's day-cycle began to set in, dimming the overhead lights to a soft amber, I hoisted her back onto my shoulders. She was heavier now, filled with sugar and exhaustion, her head drooping slightly onto the top of mine.

  "Alright, bug, it's time to head back," I said.

  "To the ship?" she yawned.

  "Uh, yeah, sure. To the ship," I said.

  I walked with purpose, navigating the byrinthine corridors of the station. But as we reached the junction that separated the civilian promenade from the industrial shipyards, I didn't turn left toward the docks.

  I turned right, toward the residential sector.

  We walked for five minutes before Lyra stirred. She sat up straighter, looking around.

  "Papa?" she asked, her voice losing its sleepiness. "I think we're going the wrong way."

  "Are we now?" I asked, keeping my pace steady.

  "The ship is that way," she pointed back over my shoulder. "This way is... this way is Sister Era's house."

  I smiled. Her spatial awareness was getting better. She was smart, maybe a little too smart.

  "You're right," I said. "We're taking a detour."

  "Why?" She leaned forward, looking at my face upside down, her curls tickling my nose. "Did we forget something? Did I leave Mr. Bear?"

  She took off her bag, swinging it in front of her and spping the left side of my face.

  "Oopsies, sorry, Papa," she apologized while frantically looking through her bag until she found the refurbished teddy bear. "Here is Mr. Bear! Mr. Bear is safe!"

  I stopped walking. We were now standing in front of the doors of the orphanage. The entrance was quiet as the usual bustle of the orphanage was hidden behind the steel walls.

  I reached up and lifted her off my shoulders, setting her down gently on the deck pting. The Marines stopped ten feet away, turning their backs to us to form a perimeter, giving us a bubble of privacy.

  I knelt down on one knee.

  "Lyra," I said softly.

  She looked at me, her blue tongue darting out to lick her lip nervously. "Are you leaving me here again to go sell vents?"

  "No," I chuckled, grabbing her shoulders gently. "Not again. I don't have to do that again. Plus, I told you, bug. Where I go, you go. We're a set, like a nut and a bolt."

  She rexed instantly, trusting me. "Then why are we here?"

  "Do you remember st week?" I asked, brushing a stray curl behind her ear. "When you asked me what a 'birthday' was?"

  She nodded slowly. "You said... You said I would find out this week."

  "Well," I said, tapping the tip of her nose. "Today is the week, and today is the day."

  Lyra tilted her head, her brow furrowing. "Today is... a birthday?"

  I looked at her, really looked at her, and saw the intelligence in her eyes. She was growing up so fast.

  "Lyra," I said, my voice thick. "One day... when you're older, and you can understand the more complicated stuff... I'll expin everything. I'll tell you how I found you, and I'll tell you how I became your Papa."

  She stared at me, absorbing the seriousness of my tone.

  "But for now," I continued, forcing a smile. "All you need to know is that a birthday is the day a person enters this world. It's a very special day. It marks a whole year of life. And it means that everyone who loves you, everyone who is your friend, gets together to celebrate you."

  Lyra blinked and tilted her head, processing this. "Celebrate... me?"

  "Yes, you," I said, softly pcing a pointed finger on her chest, near her heart. "Because you're important. Because the gaxy is a better pce because you're in it."

  She looked down at her yellow dress, then back at me. "Is that why I got the dress?"

  "Well, I guess you can say that's part of it," I agreed. "But I think it will be much better if I just show you."

  I stood up and offered my hand. "Do you trust me?"

  She grabbed my hand, her fingers small and warm. "Always."

  I led her past the main entrance, guiding her around the side to the service gate that led to the backyard. As soon as I pushed the gate open-

  "SURPRISE!"

  The shout was loud enough to wake the dead.

  Lyra jumped, squeezing my hand so hard that it might have actually hurt if I weren't who I was, but her fear vanished instantly as her eyes adjusted to the scene.

  The courtyard had exploded with color. Streamers were everywhere, balloons bobbed in the gentle airflow of the ventition system, and in the middle of it all was a massive banner, clearly painted by children, hung crookedly between two pilrs, that read: HAPPY 9TH BIRTHDAY LYRA!

  Sister Era was there, cpping. The other kids whom Lyra had pyed with during the days, while I was busy navigating the corporate bullshit being blown my way, were jumping up and down, blowing noisemakers. Kenjiro was there, looking ridiculous in a cone-shaped party hat, snapping photos with what even I, in my previous life on earth, would have considered an antique analog camera.

  But Lyra didn't look at them. She gasped, her hand flying to her mouth, since, standing next to a table den with food was a robot.

  It was a modified heavy-lifter droid, but its industrial chassis had been painted a sleek, formal bck. It wore a fabric tuxedo jacket that had clearly been tailored for its bulky frame. Its facepte was a smooth LED screen with a holographic image that was currently dispying a pixeted, familiar face with a gentle smile.

  "Marcos?" Lyra whispered.

  The robot moved. It was slightly jerky, since I guess that remote piloting from the ship had a few milliseconds of g, but it was gentle. It walked toward us, the servos whirring softly, and knelt down on one knee before Lyra.

  "Greetings, young mistress," Marcos's voice emerged from the droid's vocalizer. It wasn't the tinny sound of a standard droid, since I had helped modify the thing so that he could route high-quality audio through it. It was a st-minute thing, and now that I thought about it, I had promised Marcos that I would make him a body someday. "A joyous inception anniversary to you."

  From behind its back, the droid produced a small cushion. Resting on it was a tiara that was made of twisted silver wires, but my eyes were able to notice the faint pattern on them, meaning Marcos had probably crafted this using the ship's fabricator, though the small, polished pieces of colored gss that caught the light like jewels were definitely put on after.

  "For the Last One's Princess," Marcos said softly.

  He pced the crown on Lyra's head. Lyra stood frozen for a heartbeat, her hands reaching up to touch the cool metal of the tiara. She looked at the robot, then at me, then at the sea of smiling faces, then she squealed.

  "FRIENDS!" She let go of my hand and bolted. She hit the group of orphans like a missile of joy, disappearing into a hug of arms and ughter.

  I stood back, watching. I saw Marcos's droid stand up slowly, the pixeted smile on its face widening.

  I narrowed my eyes at the droid. "The Last One's Princess? Really?"

  The droid's head tilted, generating a distinctly human gesture of sass that seemed to say, "Deal with it."

  I shook my head, fighting back a smile. I morphed my face into one of pure, unadulterated fatherly pride. I walked over to the edge of the scrum, where Lyra was showing off her dress. I knelt down.

  "Do you see this, bug?" I asked softly.

  She turned to me. Her eyes were shimmering. A single tear was trembling on her shes from an emotion too big for her small body to hold.

  "Is this... a birthday?" she asked, her voice filled with wonder.

  "This is a birthday," I confirmed, wiping the tear away with my thumb. "You are nine years old today. This is your day. Go enjoy it."

  She threw her arms around my neck, hugging me fiercely. "Thank you, Papa."

  Then she was gone, running toward the Tres Leches cake that defied gravity.

  I stood up, watching her. The warmth in my chest was absolute, and I sort of let my mind drift.

  "Mark?" Sister Era's voice snapped me back. The text vanished.

  "You're drifting," she said, handing me a paper pte with a slice of cake. "Here, have a slice. It's so good."

  I took the pte. "Thanks, Sister. For the advice, for helping me take care of her, for everything."

  "She's happy," Era said, watching Lyra try to feed cake to Marcos's droid, smearing icing on its tuxedo. "And when kids smile, that's all that ever matters."

  "Yeah," I said, taking a bite. It was sweet and milky, it was perfect. "That's all that matters."

  The party sted for two hours. It ended when the sugar crash hit the children like a tactical EMP, leaving a dozen exhausted orphans sprawled on the artificial grass.

  I said my goodbyes to Era, the kids, and Kenjiro, who promised to handle the cleanup.

  I carried a sleeping Lyra out of the orphanage. She was still wearing her crown, refusing to take it off even in sleep.

  Marcos's droid walked beside me, silent now as we navigated the corridors.

  "Good work, butler," I murmured.

  "I aim to serve," Marcos replied quietly.

  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 will now be writing and editing Chapter 9, so that number will naturally increase to 28 by the end of the day.

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