Logical Irrationality 7 (Patreon)

Logical Irrationality

Chapter 7

-VB-

Ba’al considered what had happened in the past five days. 

One, he lost one of the five ha’taks of his expedition fleet to the unknown newcomer.

Two, he failed to down more than a handful of the newcomer’s ships in return. 

Three, he called the High Council and got a meeting scheduled, which was to take a year from today.

Four, the very act of getting the High Council scheduled gave Apophis a favor. Beyond that, he would also owe anyone who came to help favors as well. Weak favors, yes, because they would be coming in as a group and thus have to split one strong favor for many weaker ones, but each weak hook was one that would forever haunt him for years to come.

He was not going to let that happen. He needed to plan on how he was going to get them to call those favo-.

A jaffa ran into the throne room, gasping and bleeding. Ba’al stared at the jaffa.

“My lord! There were boarders!” the jaffa reported frantically. “Milord, we mus-!”

And screamed as a blade pierced through his chest from the back and lifted him up.

Ba’al stepped back in fear as whatever killed the jaffa tossed him out of the way and showed itself to him in the narrow corridor of the ha’tak.

It was a scarab, much like the ones that decorated many of the golden walls of ha’taks. 

But no scarab used by goa’ulds were black with green glowing eyes. Nor as big as a man.

He didn’t even have time to scream before something struck him.

-VB-

Ramming the much bigger ha’tak had been an ingenious move on my part, even if it cost me a cruiser. 

Ba’al, who I roughly recognized through the visual receptors of the canoptek scarab, would have retreated successfully without that Thorax depositing its boarders into the ha’tak itself. Fortunately for me, he died along with the rest of the jaffa aboard the ha’taks.

As it was, I discovered that Ba’al had called for help, but goa’ulds being goa’ulds, they weren’t going to help him immediately and delayed the meeting to get him the help (not the help itself) by a full year. 

This was enough for me to turn my new home system into a fortress system complete with mega shipyards to pump out ships even faster than I was right now. 

“Sir?”

My new “fun-sized” body looked down at one of the Warhammer orphans I’d brought with me. She was a … growing girl. She would have her time soon. I was sure that she would grow into a heartbreaker with her lustrous hair, kind eyes, and heart-shaped face. 

Her name was …

“Ah, yes, Pelia. What can I help you with?”

---

“... What are you doing?” Pelia asked the giant robot in charge of all of the other robots. He was a giant robot, but somehow, he made a smaller robot that looked like a person!

Well, almost like a person. He had weird lines on his limbs and body that looked more like space between body parts. He didn’t have shiny skin like a robot but fleshy skin like she did. 

He was creepy. 

He’s been doing nothing while his robot minions were doing all of the work!

He was suspicious. 

“I’m coordinating.”

“Oh,” she muttered. “... Like how?”

“I am in every single machine you see around you. Deeper in some and less so in others. Because I am those machines, I can act through those machines. Thus when I coordinate those machines, I am moving a lot of machines at once.”

“What are you doing with them?”

“Do you remember the explosions in the sky from half a week ago?”

“Yeah! It was pretty.”

“That was me fighting people. Slavers.”

“... Oh.”

“I managed to sneak a few of my machine soldiers aboard their ships. I am now killing the slavers, turning the ship around, and piloting them home.”

“So no more slavers?”

“Just no more slavers that know about us right now.”

She took a deep breath in and let it out slowly. “Then what?”

“Hmm?”

She looked up to meet the “eyes” of the machine. “You killed the slavers. But you also have us confined and doing whatever you want to us.” She gulped. “Aren’t you the same?”

He, the machine, looked down at her before coming down to her eye level by kneeling. 

“If you truly want to leave, then I’ll let you go.”

She jolted. Huh? Did he…? Really?

“Really?”

“Really. I can’t send you back to that world. I have no intention of opening up a gateway to that world again. There is a world in this universe that will help you if I explain to them enough. People whose situation and circumstances are not so horrible that they have lost their empathy, though they might not think that about themselves.” 

She gulped. She couldn’t imagine a place like that. 

“... What if I stay?”

“Then I help you as much as I can,” he replied. “But I won’t tell you what to do. You get to choose what you want to do.”

“And what are you doing?”

He took a long moment to respond. It was almost as if he was coming to a decision. 

“I will be ending the galactic empire known as the Goa’uld System Lords.”