[Krylo]

The Red Empress

Fallout 3 Elseworlds: The Red Empress

The near infinite expanse of space. Even this one galaxy. . . too large to be comprehended by a human, or any other sapient, mind. Some will claim otherwise, but to know that you are not even a single vector in a full galaxy map? That even a mote of dust traveling through the projected image is infinitely larger than you? No, such distances were never meant to be understood.

More incomprehensible, then, to think that of all the stars in the galaxy, not one remains free. All now call me Empress. Only the dark spaces stretching without end between galaxies have been able to stop my conquest, and now. . . I am old and there is little more to do, other than to turn over my empire to Sally.

She will rule well.

BZZZZZ!

"Yes. Enter," I reply, in the imperious tone I am used to taking with my subjects, as the entrance alarm rings through my personal chambers. Toshiro and Elliot are still slumbering in the adjunct room, and with a wave of my hand I cause the door to swish close and lock. Men tire so easily.

No need to wake them, I think, as the entryway swishes open and a small green creature with large black eyes and a form fitting purple outfit enters. He natters on in the strange collection of clicks that are considered a language by his 'people,' but it is easily translated by the device I wear on my ear.

"My Lady Lucy, I have come for your Biography for the annals of our gr--"

I cut him off waving a hand, as I turn from the galaxy map, the boots of my powered armor dragging across the steel floor. "Yes. Ask your questions. No need for formality," I reply.

The creature glances about nervously, and then complies. I barely listen as he asks about the start, and instead close my eyes, and begin to recount my tale. . .

"It was. . . Two Hundred and Sixty years ago, now. I was nineteen, and had lived my life in a vast underground, Vault. . ." I begin. I take some time explaining the construct, and how it protected us from the nuclear war that had destroyed our home.

He responds in more clicks and buzzes, "You destroyed your own home planet, My lady?"

I shake my head. "No. Not I. My people. War and destruction is not particular to me. It is the birthright of humanity. We rained nuclear fire from the sky in the hopes of destroying our enemies, but in the end none of it mattered. Few remain who even remember what the war was about. . . but history's lessons were snubbed. The day the world ended, nothing was learned. We continued on as we had, and war never changed."

I chortle at myself now. I'm getting wordy and philosophical in my old age. The small green man--I've never bothered to learn any of their names--looks at me in confusion. "Nevermind," I tell him. "It turns out that my species' appetite for bloodshed was exactly what we needed, on that cold september day."



"I didn't know what to make of what I saw. Aliens, your people, were hardly even a children's story anymore. We had better things to worry about in the wasteland. Or at least we believed we did."



"Of course, my own view of these things altered when I felt my feet leave the ground. . ."



"And I woke up on an operating table, three of your 'people' standing above me, their instruments prepared to dig into my flesh."

The small creature replies, with clicks and squeaks. Some day I must enforce their bastard race learning English. "Implanting a homing tag, My Lady?"

I nod. "Indeed. I never bothered to have it removed. Let my enemies know where I am, let them see me coming. Let them know that they are powerless to stop it," my reply comes with a cold stare down at the creature, and for a moment I'm back at the slaughter of Andromeda. His people burn and bleed, and I feel only contentment.

He shudders visibly, and seems to shrink back in fear--funny how similar their body language is to ours--before asking that I continue my story, eager to change the subject.

I acquiesce. "I quickly lost consciousness. Most likely dosed with a sedative."





"When next I woke, I met Somah for the first time. . ."

"Somah, My Lady?" the creature asks, though he balks when I place my gaze upon him, immediately regretting drawing my attention. Even after all this time, it still makes me smile.

"You would not know her. She came from my time, and had a home to return to--and feared for her life in the personal war I was starting. A polar opposite to General Paulson. She was kind on the outside, but a sadistic and cold hearted woman within," I explain. The alien looks terrified at my mention of Paulson.

Of course, to them he would be even more terrifying than I am. They didn't murder my family, after all. I could explain, but let them fear humanity, instead. Let them believe that Paulson is what we consider kind.

Regardless I clear my throat, and get back to my tale.



"We conversed shortly. It was Somah who decided to begin a fight to lure in the guards."



"The captain sent two guards with shock batons."



"That was the beginning of the end for your people. You were weak. Fragile. I was not a strong woman--" The small creature looks shocked by this. "At least, not physically. Amongst members of my own race I was considered slight and weak. . ."



"And still my fists caved in the skulls of our assailants with ease. . . and then I was armed."



"I do not recall how many guards were sent to recapture us, I merely remember, with a fondness," I continue, a small smile upon my lips, "the broken bodies littering the halls."



"But I remember Sally."

He raises a hand unsteadily, "Princess Sally, the angel of mercy?"

I raise an eyebrow at the last epithet. Sally always was soft on these creatures, too young to understand their evil when they took away her family. Her feelings were so strong that. . .

"Yes." My reply is cold and thunderous. A warning not to bring up my daughter again.

He mumbles out a terrified apology, and I feel my hand loosening on the atomizer at my waist.

"It was she who told me how to destroy your generators. . . how did she put it? 'If you turn off the coolant, it will get really hot and explode, so be careful, okay?'" I smile. "At the time Sally was just another trapped person. A useful child who knew the ship better than I did. She is not my biological daughter. . . but she had no family, and in time. . . well, I'm not sure when, exactly, I began to see her as my child."




"Regardless, your generators explode in the most pleasing way, and the field keeping my daughter locked away faded out."



"We talked for a short time. As much as I could spare, given the circumstances. She told me she'd been all over the mothership. And that she had been here since before the war. At the time, I didn't understand how, but now I know it was a combination of life extension testing and cryogenic freezing, though even today I'm not sure in what degree each was used."

I sigh slightly.

"I tried to tell her it was too dangerous for a child, but she merely disagreed and ran off to lead me into the bowels of your ship. If not for your 'angel of mercy' I'd have never come as far as I have."

"Perhaps that is w--" the squeaks are quickly translated and I glare down at him, silencing the creature immediately. My own daughter leads the rebellion against me now, and I know it, but do not need to be reminded. All the same, I have no intentions of refusing her the seat of Empress. These rebellions give me reason to exercise the anger I still feel toward the creatures, both for my and her sake. . . and perhaps she is right that my ruthlessness is no longer needed in a conquered galaxy.

Perhaps I will retire to earth. See how Mayor Gannon has done with it after my father appointed him on his deathbed. It's been Seventy years now since my father passed, but perhaps time with my own people will still quiet my anger.

And besides, I think, glancing toward the door, Elliot and Toshiro have gotten old, and it is perhaps time for me to find a new husband. Or three.

I let out a long slightly defeated sigh, and for a moment my age shows. "Regardless, it was due to her knowledge of the ship, and ability to fit into access panels that allowed us to navigate to the engine core. Of course, along the way she suggested methods to hide, and asked that I not hurt the unarmed aliens."







I straighten myself and look directly at my biographer. "I ignored every warning, and killed every little green sack of worthless flesh between me and my objective. Each and every one of you on that ship was complacent."

"This would become a pattern across many worlds. The Slaughter of Orion, the Butchering of Andromeda. . . it was five years of righteous genocide before I decided to make your empire into mine, rather than merely wiping your race from the galaxy, and it was only Sally's pleading that convinced me of it."


I turn my back on the creature again, and stare at the galaxy map, letting the memories flow.


"Our goal, at the time," I segue back into how I took over their ship, "was to get to the bridge of your ship. Or the 'top' as Sally called it."



"Her first plan was to use a teleportation pad that led directly there, however your captain had shut it off. Sally believed that they must be 'very mad about us exploring'. I prefer to believe he had already realized that death was coming for him, and was doing all he could to slow my inexorable march."



"Unfortunately for him, Sally had another plan."













"She led me to four cryo-pods, and there I saw, for the first time, my future husbands and General Paulson, though her plan did not involve them. Instead she insisted that I needed the spacesuit from the 'space man' to go outside and climb to the top."

"Elliot was a combat medic. You had taken his unit as well. He was mostly worried about them, and paranoid. Understandable, but irritating. He's just lucky he's so pretty. . . as for Paulson, well, he didn't want to talk about it, and probably doesn't want me publishing it. If you want his history, you can ask him yourself."

The small creature shakes his head, and my lips twist into a sadistic grin, which quickly softens. "As for Toshiro, well. . . I couldn't understand a word Toshiro said," I added, tapping my ear piece. "I know now he was worried about his sword. Silly man. . . knowing what I do now, it was probably compensation, but he makes up f--" I clear my throat. There's no need to mention THAT in the biography.

"Regardless," I state with a finality that says I would not be continuing that line of thought. "Sally informed me that I would need to destroy three more generators if I was going to go outside. I can't remember why."



"But, I do remember that I grabbed Elliot and headed to the Cryo-labs."



"I found countless frozen humans and ghouls, but they were all insane when I attempted to wake them up. Occassionally they were useful--wake them up next to your people and let them murder each other--but for the most part I only revived them to put them out of their misery and ensure, that even if I failed, I'd at least set back the experiments happening on that ship--awful experiments I would encounter later."



I let out a small sigh, and speak in slightly hushed tones. "I'm still not sure whether I regret bringing Elliot to that place. . . we found his squad. Your people had torn them apart. Vivisected."





"They paid, however, when I activated the room freeze while they were still inside."



". . .Though it was of little comfort to Elliot," I finish, before putting on a strong demeanor once more, speaking with the power my subjects had come to expect.



"And that's when I discovered the first part of your plan. Awful as it was, I did not fully understand it yet, merely seeing thousands upon thousands of stasis tubes. They stretched out as far as the eye could see. But I shrugged it off."



"It wouldn't matter, I reasoned, what your plan was, when I put an end to it."



"We made our way back to the Engine Core after destroying the generator, but I asked Elliot to stay behind. He had seen enough, and while I hated you as much as anyone, his anger at seeing his squad. . . it was affecting his judgment. We were still outnumbered. Only five adult humans and a single child against your entire mothership."

I laugh for a moment. "At the time I thought our odds were slim. Now I realize it was four more people than we needed."



I calm myself before continuing, "I took Paulson down to your Hangars, to find the generator down there."



"Your men tried to stop us, I don't know how many of them. . . but that just let me play ping pong with the hangar pylons and dead aliens, while Paulson blasted holes in any that managed to get past the hangar floor--of which there were few."

"Ping pong?" the creature asks, timidly, scuttering back from me a little.

I glance back over my shoulder and nod, before turning fully around, back to face him. "A human game, you use small wooden paddles," I hold my hands apart a bit to demonstrate their size, "And knock a ball back and forth across a field. That's all you really need to know to understand the comparison."

He nods slowly, and seems a shade paler than he had been before. Good.



"Destroying the hangar generator was child's play. Pathetically easy, really."



"Sally informed me that the last place left to hit was Robotic Assembly, so I asked Somah to come with--she had a good technical mind, and it seemed it would be useful there."



". . .I'm still not sure if she actually was." I shrug, the pauldrons of my power armor squealing against the plates of my breast, slightly.





"You had turned all the teleporters off again, so I was forced to blow out an assembly line to get past."



"And back there you made yet another mistake, when you sent some kind of commander after me with a robot controller. I blew a hole in his chest, and helped myself to an army of drones."



"Not that they lasted long. . . your people sent their own robotic army after me, and when the smoke cleared dead aliens and destroyed bots littered the floor of the assembly area. . ."



"And the way was clear to the generator."



"That was all three generators down, so I slipped into my space suit, and decompressed a section of the ship."



I chuckle a little as I recount the memory. "Someone didn't anticipate the manuever and failed to either give an evacuation order, or vacuum protection to the aliens stationed there. The floors were littered with their bodies, asphyxiated."









"Once outside I found a beam transporter, almost exactly like the one that had originally lifted me from the surface of the planet, and soon I found myself inside."



"It didn't take me long to find and activate a teleporter to bring Sally and the others up. . . and it was there I saw. . ."



"Well, it was the first time I saw a planet from space. It was. . . beautiful, but clearly dead, and grey. A kind of tragic beauty that earth had. Of course, the moment was soon interrupted."



"By a comedy show." I smirk. "The captain had decided to speak to us directly, and the ship rumbled with what was obvious a serious discharge of energy--the ship's cannon I'd learn later--and though I couldn't understand what he was saying, I could tell from inflection it was a threat."

A laugh escapes my mouth, a short one. Almost like a bark.

"He thought to threaten us? It was then, exactly then, I knew that I was going to win. He was scared. He knew he couldn't stop us. Why else attempt words NOW after so many attempts to simply kill us all. No, this was the captain admitting his defeat, he just didn't realize it yet."



"Of course he had turned off more of the teleporters, which meant I would have to simply carve a path through the ship. At first, this was sim--no, it was simple regardless. It never got difficult. You know my reputation as a warrior, so I don't have to explain how simple I found it to cut through a single ship, with the records of what I have done to entire garrisons. . ."

The biographer merely nods, and replies, "There. . . there is no need to go into details, My Lady."

"However, it was on my way to the bridge. . ."



"That I came across the biolab, and. . ."



"Amongst the horrors of that place. . ."







"Discovered why your people wanted to take so many of mine. A. . . crossbreed, between alien and human. Awful monsters, who knew only pain and violence. Complete abominations. . ."

My gaze hardens, and my hand tightens on my atomizer, plainly terrifying the alien before.

"It was then I decided that your civilization would fall."









"And all its members would perish--though at Sally's insistence I have settled for mere enslavement."



"When I reached the bridge it took only a single blast from my atomizer," I pat the old relic on my hip. "The very one I still wear, to put a hole in the captain's head. After that clearing out the rest the bridge crew was hardly memorable."



"Of course, my conquest would not begin yet. No, first another Alien Commander hailed the ship, though this time the ship's computer translated for me after a moment of fiddling with its translation program to output in english. I don't remember his exact words, but it was a call for surrender and a quick death if I did, as opposed to becoming a research subject again. . ."



"I merely closed the channel and took my seat, and within moments explosions were rocking the ship."





"He tried beaming over more of your soldiers, but you know how that went for him. . ."



"And eventually Toshiro made his way to the bridge. With him and Paulson watching my back I was able to concentrate on the ship to ship volleys"





"As the burning hulk of the enemy ship drifted into Earth's gravity well, I turned back to the others, and addressed them. . ."

The speech comes almost as naturally as it did the first time I gave it, as I recount it for the history of my empire. "I don't know about you, but I don't feel this is enough. I saw the things they did to us. I know what they did to Paulson's family. To Sally's parents and Sister. To Elliot's crew. . . and I know why they did it. The horrible experiments they did to create half-human half-alien abominations. That not even the lives of their own kind are sacred to them. And I, like most of you, don't have a home to go back to. . . so instead. . . instead of going home, I say we take them apart. We show them that humanity is not a toy to be played with. We show them just who we are!"

"I turned to the console and pressed a few buttons, bringing up a map of homeworlds and research stations. In effect, a map of your entire civilization. A galaxy map sprung up and thousands of worlds lit up. I heard Toshiro behind me."

""

"I glanced down at the translator to see what he had said, and replied, "They aren't worthy to be my opponents!"

I stop and laugh again for a moment. "At the time. . . I thought it was bravado, but now. . . now I'm known as 'The Grey Empress' referencing the color of your blood. . . The Nightmare of Andromeda, the Final Wind, Despoiler of Orion, the Hellfire that Consumed a Thousand Worlds. . . My name is death in ten thousand languages. . ."

As I talk I move over to my chair, and finally fall into it. "And I am. . . very tired. I know you were an assassin sent by my daughter's rebellion. I realize this was a ploy to get you close."

The alien stops shock still, as I continue to speak. He thinks his life is at an end. "But I'm not going to kill you. I allowed you here for a reason, knowing all that. Tell my daughter, tell Sally, that the throne is hers. All she needs do is grant me amnesty on earth. . . and promise to visit on Christmas," I add with a wry smile.

"If she agrees to this, I will surrender all power and never leave my home planet again. Your. . . people will be safe. . . Now go."

The small man nods and scurries out of the room, as I release a long sigh and slide down in my chair letting centuries of rage slowly leak out of me. No longer useful.

No longer needed.


---------- Post added at 05:08 AM ---------- Previous post was at 05:06 AM ----------

This is a non-canon 'elseworlds' update. It was the only way I felt I could really fit Zeta in, and I feel is better than a normal one, anyway.

Also, Aero, I have no idea what you're asking for, unless you're just asking for the updates to be bigger than the last one.

Which, well, that one was small to make room for this one.