“No, Julian.”
“But why not?”
Her mouth pursed into a tight line, and shot the blonde, long-haired dandy a narrow-eyed glance. It was made all the more dramatic by her elegant makeup, dark eyeliner and mascara that brought out her pale complexion and ancient human features of seventy-six thousand year old genetics bolstered by modern science. Her stylist had worked for hours to prepare her for this gala celebrating the troops, dancing the line between flowery and light and commanding-yet-beautiful. She was the unofficial head of the entirety of The G.O.D. after all, and had been for centuries.
The last loyal living member of The Prime Triumvirate, blessed by The Creator itself with ascension and divine secrets all those tens of thousands of years ago.
“You know why.”
“And what if I don’t, Ser?”
“Then you should seek passage on the next shuttle offworld, and I’ll attend this gala sans any consort. Or find some hot young fresh ascendant to hang from the arm of. There’s never any dearth of egotistical suitors.”
“Humor me, my darling.”
She sighed, annoyed at Julian ignoring the dig at him, and picked at bits of white lace on the hems of her strapless ballgown, looking for imperfections that didn’t exist. Her frustration with him was palpable, and with how close to a wedding dress this looked like, he was frustrating her even more than usual. If only she hadn’t empowered him so much within The Guardians of Destiny those few short centuries ago with the title and privileges of spymaster… More annoyances in the form of regrets.
Serania had an endless number of regrets.
“Heavy-handedness is what caused a certain prior schism, just before your time. And you know damn well my opinions on and of men who try to ensure such strict control over others as to cause schisms.”
“They’re all fools, Ser. The majority being gutter scum who couldn’t think their way out of a box. It’d be a kindness to maximize their utility before death, really.”
“Yes, and you’d have our soldiers revolting the moment they discovered we had A.I. directing them as superior officers. Regardless of any battle strategy practicality, there is a distinctly human element to the battlefield, not that you’d know it yourself, scuttling about in shadows as you do, my pretty little God of Darkness. Imagine knowing that you are fodder at the whims of thinking machines, half taboo as they already are in some circles of our organization such as the cabals of financiers and businessmen, terrified for their positions of power…”
He swayed slightly. She knew he loved being called upon according to his proper title. Nothing stroked Julian’s ego more than people deferring to him with respect and formality. The British noble in him would likely never die until he did, unlikely as it was.
Sometimes Serania wished for Julian to be caught with his pants down – killed by some accident or mishap in spite of his endless planning and plotting to ensure his own safety with webs of wetwork agents and spies.
“As if we couldn’t keep such a secret.”
He strode to the island and poured himself a hearty glass of Nebbiolo, careful not to risk sploshing any of the red liquid on his white tuxedo as he swirled it vigorously and sniffed deeply.
“You couldn’t. There is a specific brutality to artificial intelligence. They lack the human element that weighs overall victory versus the morale of the grunts at the bottom. They are calculator, not conscience. Save one we have been unable to replicate, I remind you. That fucking Class 7, Taboo of all taboos. And we’re barely keeping up with recruitment figures for Cassius as it is.”
“You’re referring to the murmurings of meat grinders and attrition-style warfare as if I’m not familiar with the Boer wars, and scorched earth techniques, dear. I’ve watched Redcoats and Khakis be slaughtered in various incarnations for over two hundred years now since the Enlightenment.”
She stood, and moved to the window, staring out at the city in silence as Julian drank his wine. Julian loved to throw his few centuries of experience openly against the average hundred to hundred-fifty of any ordinary human. As a woman seventy six thousands years young, give or take, it was Julian’s most infuriating habit. The subtle misogyny and classism reeked from him like skunk musk. She handwaved her annoyance away as best she could with the gorgeous view and a quick inner monologue soliloquy towards his ignorant youth and petty, shitty nobility. The magnificent skylines of Monument From The Gods to The People stretched out for miles, most impressive here in the capital of Cape Martin near the Sea of Fecundity.
Monument was one of the most beautiful Guardian worlds, untouched by the larger ravages of the centuries-long war. Serving as mostly purely aesthetic religious set dressing, it was mostly devoid of arms manufacturing, naval installations, or training facilities. Ignored as a military target outside the occasional terrorist attack. Artists, economists, and beauty were the most important things in such a place as this. Largely the reason events such as these were held here. The only profitable export of any excess was farm produce, a dime a dozen across any half-terraformed colony world across even The Neutral Territories.
“Yes, as if simple, petty colonialism from centuries ago could compare to all of this, Julian, God of Darkness.”
She gestured out at Cape Martin, a metaphor in the moment for the greater conflict.
“You always use my full name and title when you’re cross with me.”
He seemed to finally have caught on to her subtle sarcasm and prodding. Only took a century.
“Oh, do I Jules? I hadn’t noticed beyond your usual foppishness as the truly false formality here.”
“Well, not all of us were raised in the woods and traded for pigs, my darling. Sometimes I wonder if this seventy-six thousand odd years has made you soft.”
She glared a single sharp dagger into his left eye. His arrogance, seeping from him like poison. That ego from highest Britain in an age when men like him with blonde hair and sky-blue eyes took whatever they wanted from the rest of the species, without rhyme or reason beyond purest wanting. The ugliness of colonialism without humanist leanings – not encompassing the entire species as The Creator had originally requested of her. Prone to slavery at worst, and wage slavery at best, not that such hypocrisies weren’t common within The Guardians of Destiny organization itself.
“Well, don’t mind me then, go right ahead. Don your powdered wig, sir. Kneel before the council and beg that they replace Generals and Admirals of the Guardian Army and Navy with your precious robots.”
A scoff, at that.
“I’ll have you know powdered wigs were the highest method of fashion, as were the high hairstyles. I have merely adapted to modern high fashion with small throwbacks to my court origins.”
“Yes, and here we are in the twenty-fifties, and I sport a rather simple braid with flowers woven into it. You, on the other hand, sport the same old ponytail. Shall you admonish me for reverting to my simplest nature as the tribal savage of an ancient, uncivilized Europe? A mere slave-wife barter trade – for a boar?”
She turned to him, her dark brown eyes piercing as deeply as she could manage into his sky blue ones, opposite.
“Serania, we are losing ground, and this new little rebellion persisting over the past several years must be crushed swiftly and without mercy. We cannot afford to fight two enemies on two fronts! I say this as your spymaster, not just as your lover and romance partner.”
He emphasized the last title oddly, with strange inflections.
“Yes, and while I was always opposed to the abuse of such sentient robots for war, now we have half such a monster helping at leading said petty rebellion, do we not? Are you insisting we fight fire with fire?”
“No, I…”
“Jules, listen to me. I have been fighting, and manipulating humanity with the use of mortal proxies for the better part of seventy-thousand years. It doesn’t matter if you are uniting fractured tribes in Sumeria, or leading Seraphs into battle across the great plains of Bukaviev. Humans are such staunchly tribalistic creatures, that the moment you give them an identity they do not hold dear and true to their hearts, you incite more insurrection. The God Resistance Army, as so many splinter groups before it, even The Black Armada, has found identity and purpose in their idealisms – in a push for “true democracy” and in fighting all of us immortals equally, regardless of faction.”
She turned back to the window, watching the sun begin to dip towards the horizon, casting shadows off the skyscrapers. Tiny Agathas and other transports, small as ants from here, soared high above wheeled vehicles which trundled to and fro in gridlock below, betwixt the massive concrete and glass towers. Those who could not afford personal, private, or company air transports across the many planets of The Central Universe were doomed to more ancient modus operandi towards transportation. Often even using airless tires, no less!
“Serania. You’re The God of Justice for god’s sake! Are great losses worth some semblance of assumed loyalty? I’ve executed treasonous soldiers before, and what else is new? War never changes, it merely evolves into new forms. The basest root is always there. Kill or be killed. We must maximize our ‘killing’ and minimize our ‘being killed.’”
He finished the last gulp of wine and went back to the bottle for a refill. Serania thought about commenting on the value of said import from Earth, but refrained. Cost was, as always, largely irrelevant to Julian. It merely had to be the best available. A man of simplicity for all his wit and power and intellect. Worse, High Council gods wielded billions both privately and publicly in both Guardian currency and many others.
One bottle of wine was negligible, even off the Guardian expense reports.
“Yes, but the average person will kill or be killed only most furiously when their own life is on the line, and it is the moments between that you must ensure loyalty. When moving to a new battleground, when opening a new front, when planning an attack and wanting maximum effect. If the Shocktroopers on the ground knew that they were potentially being fed into a meat grinder, do you think they would fight as hard, or as long?”
She let it sink in, for effect.
“I can see your fears, but if my reports are correct, The Black Armada is already experimenting with such a strategy. The Brutal Calculus must be met with Brutal Calculus, as we cannot hope to meet pure intellectual efficiency at warcraft with purest zealotry.”
It was Serania’s turn to scoff.
“You grossly underestimate the power of zealotry. I could walk up to any Chayot, ask them to commit suicide, and in nine out of ten instances, they would have pulled the trigger before I could reconsider. That is the power of faith.”
“And what would throwing away a highly-trained soldier capable of operating a suit of powered artillery armor accomplish, Ser?”
He rarely challenged her beyond this point in an argument, the wine was clearly having an effect despite his ascendant-level tolerance for such intoxicants. The trick for immortals and substances was to drink or use hard and fast enough to work. She could feel him grasping at straws, however, and pushed the advantage.
“I could ask The Hand of Wrath to throw themselves into a mission with no hope of survival, and they would do so without hesitation because the last remaining member of the Prime Triumvirate is asking. The closest connection to The Creator, one such being who charged me with such a duty as protecting our future as a species. They would sacrifice everything to meet their mission objectives. Would I waste such a prestigious unit on frivolity? Of course not. But I dare you to ask them to do the same under orders from an A.I. that is weighing overall losses versus the value of such an elite force. What of the four Archangels? Would they tolerate such sacrilege as being given orders by a machine?”
“Fair enough, but perhaps we are only talking on a macro-economic scale, and not merely a single mission? How many ships, how many lives? How many pieces of equipment could we save with such a calculation?”
She had the upper hand, now.
“Oh Jules…”
She strode briskly over to a reclining couch and smoothed out her dress as she lay herself out upon it, careful to show just enough to pique Julian in all the ways she wished. Her wardrobe and stylist teams had really outdone themselves, as much as she hated the “virgin bride” look. The lights in the suite clicked on at almost the exact moment the sun was beginning to crest the horizon, adding to her elegance without any added intention.
“There are always more lives. There are always more resources. At least insofar as we need to end this war. What do your projections show, again? That if we can break this current awkward stalemate, we could crush Xex and his Black Armada in half a century? And what is fifty years to immortals? What do either of us care about the short lives of mortals when we seek to protect the entirety of the herd for all of time? We are shepherds, not warlords, remember!”
Julian moved his mouth to the side, poured himself a third glass of wine.
“You do make a good point, love. But what of The Armada using such A.I. commanders?”
She smiled demurely at him, patting the couch next to her for him to join. He drained this third glass in three quick gulps, set it back upon the island, and then crossed his legs on the chesterfield next to her, careful to sweep the edges of her ball gown out of the way first.
“You see, my love…”
She reached over and pulled his chin in close for a kiss. He smirked in that egotistical way she hated and loved simultaneous, and leaned in the rest of the way, delicately pecking her enough to avoid smearing her lipstick too badly so that she couldn’t fix it before the event.
“It doesn’t matter if it’s god rebels, or The Armada, or some other act of The Creator’s last dregs crying out from within The God of Control. We must show them the power of faith, in crushing them quickly, brutally, and without mercy. They cannot calculate the force of faith, and of the power that duty holds. And if our servants of various strokes and colors fail, then we can come back around to your ideas, no?”
He smiled, and took her hand in his, careful not to scratch the meticulous polish on either of their fingernails.
“Of course darling, of course. Perhaps we can chat with Cassius about a push against the rebels and we’ll crush their resolve before they can truly regain their footing. After all, Petronova was merely a setback, was it not? We’ve definitely replaced the lost fleet by now all these years later?”
He leaned in to kiss her a second time, more forcefully, but she pushed a finger up against his lips, smearing his gloss before he could sloppily do the same to her.
Physicality hardly mattered, seeing as her powers eclipsed his exponentially in both liberal applications of experience and practice. Perhaps the only ascendant immortal tougher than her was Xex himself, who dwarfed her capabilities the same as she did Julian’s.
“Everything is merely a setback when you live forever, dear. There are always more battles. There are always more ships. And there are always more lives. Think of them not as current assets, but as future investments into the species. The less you see them as people, the easier it gets. What are a handful of lives in the Brutal Calculus of war, when the entirety of humanity is at stake? We’re shepherds, darling, leading the blind towards their destiny. And the fallen serve as heroes to spur the rest on. Faith, remember? It has power. And we must utilize that power, even if we forgo such petty advantages as A.I. for now. It’s not like they aren’t already assisting our Generals and Admirals as assistants, no?”
“I suppose so, dear.”
He was properly drunk, now – though it would likely fade before the gala with his immortal metabolism. His demeanour changed, having ceded the argument to his much elder lover.
“I wonder if they’ll have those little pastries tonight. I do love the jam-filled ones!”
“Of course they will, dearest. I made sure of it for you.”
He smiled at her with the look of a faithful hound.
She masked her sudden, inwardly gross feelings about their immense age difference perfectly, face stoic.
Julian had no clue such feelings even existed.
“You always do.”
