The Misbegotten

He finished flicking the words, “…She had given me the greatest, mind-blowing fuck of my young life -.” They hung in the air before him for a few more seconds. Then the transparent keys disappeared when his fingers no longer intersected their ghost-like forms. He shooed away his ‘Swarm with a sudden wave. He seemed woozy, unsteady, though he still sat. The effect of his first encounter with his cousin had not lessened over the years.

Despite the time and effort he spent wrestling with his past, he had found unexpected joy at reliving some of the wilder memories of his youth. He is somewhat surprised at how much he’d forgotten.

There is yet another aspect of his journal that has proven just as eye-opening. The Delving Program is so thorough he even writes as he would have three and a half centuries ago. Immersed in his past, he not only feels seventeen. He thinks as though he were a teenager as well. He is not the overwrought sovereign of history’s greatest economic and military empire. He is young. He is careless. His only true care is to be between the legs of a willing young girl.

Flavia was right, he forces himself to agree and this makes his lips drawn forth a tired smile. His mind feels like mush in his head. He is no doubt overworked. All the writing of the past few days has indeed distracted him from the burdens of rule. Of this he is glad. Sometimes the reins of power are too heavy to lift. This had been evermore the case, since he and Flavia had met with Dr. Ahmed at Disneyscapes in Angel Free Town.

It was the present, the now, weighing heavy upon his mind, because there was so much of it. There were many elements in play now. Once the Synod had outvoted him, the mandate to mount an endeavor for the retrieval of the Shadow Spark from Europa was immediate. The great gears of his organization began to turn in earnest. And, when that happened, mountains of information, duties and tasks needed attention - all at the same time.

Thank god he had his wives! It always amazed him at the amount of “stuff” his eight women could get done when they worked like a well-oiled machine. Why wouldn’t they? he reminded himself. They’d been doing it for almost four hundred years. Still, it was surprising even after centuries had passed. It wasn’t often the entire Synod moved in a single direction, toward a solitary goal.

In the days following the return of him and the Guardian to Luna Prime, there had been a myriad of issues to attend. But there was none was bigger than calling of a Gathering of the High Command. This was a thing they seldom did. It was something unavoidable, imperative now. Their decision to retrieve and protect the Shadow Spark was of the highest priority. Combined with an unnerving lack of tactical knowledge, the situation demanded attention of an even greater magnitude. The entire command structure needed to be of a single mind. Even he couldn’t be cavalier affairs of state such as these.

Not that he was. No, he was very much the opposite. Nervous energy coursed through him with every passing second. He couldn’t seem to sit in one place for long before he felt the inescapable need to move. He was forever getting up to pace. And, it was driving the others of his family crazy.

That was why he had searched for solitude. He choose to lose himself in the past when only days before he was loath to swim amongst its’ turbulent waters.

The Shadow Spark unnerved him.

The thought of losing one of his precious wives was driving him insane. He needed to think of something else. He needed to dwell on something else. Obsessing over things beyond his control was fruitless, a waste of his time.

He left his desk. He walked over to the floor-to-ceiling observation portal. His gaze fell across the vast expanse Luna Prime itself. A slight smile came at the sheer magnificence of what the Synod had built here upon the moon. His grin grew when he thought about how it had begun.

A day – long ago – he and his family had decided Angel Free Town was too small. It was haphazard when it came to defense, much too porous for their rising security needs. Thus began the lengthy discussion of where they would go.

Some had suggested they purchase Phobos - the larger of Mars’ two moons – buy it outright and move there. Others had postulated a deep cavern system on the northern pole of Venus. Another group had said a home in the revived storm of Jupiter would be an excellent place to build a fortress worthy of the Synod. In the end though, proximity to earth, while not actually being on earth, won out. They chose the Moon.

From there, they could construct a home to their required specifications. A home isolated enough to offer a high degree of security, but a home close enough to the vast economies upon Earth. This would minimize the exorbitant cost of maintaining and re-supplying their base from an operational standpoint.

They had picked the crater, Eudoxus. It was a prominent, sixty-seven-kilometer-wide, impact crater. Its' complex structure lay east of the northern tip of the Montes Caucasus Range. It was the area seen on the lower right quadrant of the Moon when looking up from the Earth. Because the crater lacked a central peak of rebounded material, there were no more than low hills clustered there. The area was perfect, well-suit to the need of long runways and launch positions needed to serve the Synod.

And there was more. Eudoxus had a series of terraces along its’ interior walls, with worn ramparts about the high arching lip if its’ exterior. They offered an ideal, natural footing from which the Synod could build its’ new home. Add its’ convention of eight satellite craters about it, Eudoxus seemed the perfect spot to build upon the Moon.

Since Estefan had wanted the floor of the crater to function as a spaceport, one to rival the greatest ports in the Solar System. Thus, they opted not to enclose the entire moon structure as many other enterprises had done in the past. In typical fashion, they broke ground with the installation of transparent, ultra-dense Diatainium-Plaz shielding. But, they had placed it about the inner and outer edges of the rim of the crater instead. From above, Luna Prime would appear like a humongous, stringy donut with a monstrous gaping hole in its’ middle. About the middle hills upon the crater floor, they had built a large complex which served the needs of the spaceport itself.

It had taken decades and trillions of exchange credits to construct. But by owning a majority of the companies involved, the Synod did in fact see their project finished as scheduled. And, it was by far in the "black" as well.

He peered out over the expanse of the crater now, remembering those days when only the Aegis module and the Sacristy were there. The tube surrounding the outer edges of the structure had already been in place. And, it dwarfed the initial habitations, made them all feel insignificant and alone.

From this same observation portal, he had watched as the years passed and Luna Prime had grown. In time, the giant spaceport his team constructed. Eventually, the towering tube-scrapers filled their unique tunnel-like dome. Some of them almost touched the highest portions of it.

He had watched the fitting of the trains, the elevators and the Grav-ways. He gazed on as his workers connected them to the flexing network of gravity-propelled highways. Some of them spanned the whole of the Sixteen Worlds.

He had sat and stood and slept as thousands upon thousands of workers placed the fuel and munitions dumps, the waste management plant and the three great greenhouses. Their storage facilities and the critical life support complexes occupied each of the eight ancillary craters. They attributed to the growing mass that was Estefan’s base within the Eudoxus impact crater system.

He ate and lounged and made love as the intra- and extra-space cannons went online. Now there was bank after bank of Titan XX anti-missile missile batteries in place. There were hundreds of Interdictor laser pillboxes, ever on guard, protecting all that was precious to him.

He had felt it in the soles of his feet when his teams dug deep into the lunar surface. They had hollowed out roads and passages. They set up secondary and tertiary command centers, bunkers and extra storage chambers. They had powered-up auxiliary power and life support and weapon depots. This of course included the gargantuan barrack complex, housing over ten million Aegis Marines. There was even a hidden hangar underneath one part of the crater floor. It was capable of housing seventy-eight percent of his majestic space fleet, which was incredible. Estefan's spaceport had facilities for all his Agave Class Frigates, every Avenger, transport and Littoral Combat Airships. This included all the Destroyers, Cruisers, Aero-Amphibious Troop-Carriers, Battleships and Space-Carriers flying under his Sigel. There was even docking area for three of the four, one-point-seven-five kilometer Dauntless Class Interdictors as well as berth for all his Dreadnaughts. Three of which stretched an unbelievable, four-point-five kilometers long. Only the Ernando Class Capital Ship-of-the-Line couldn’t fit within the humongous confines of the Aegis’ Hangar. But then no port anywhere in the Solar System could dream of housing the seven-point-five kilometer, Keeper’s Own. That super-ship was a city onto itself.

Just about everything one could think of they had at Luna Prime. Whatever one saw above ground, there was three times as much beneath it. If anyone ever wanted to pick a fight here, where Estefan and his family lived, they’d be hard pressed. They would most likely pay dear for their short-sightedness.

Luna Prime was impregnable.

He sighed, impatient of a sudden, shoving his hand the pockets of his bio-jeans. He had programmed it to look worn and aged, though they were either and never could be anything other than new. He wore only a loose-fitting, synth-cotton shirt and nothing else. His ‘Swarm he programmed to heat the terracotta tiles covering his floors to 25.5 degrees Celsius on the nose. This allowed him to go barefoot. He liked walking barefoot. Something about his skin touching foreign surfaces made the acuity of his surroundings increase.

The wide chamber, his personal quarters, was without walls. And, it looked more like his Loft of a bygone age. He filled it with the accoutrements, gadgets, trinkets and keepsakes he had gathered over the years. Some of them were priceless works, some weren’t. Most were somewhere in the middle.

The oil on canvas painted by Francisco Jose de Goya y Lucientes, named The Colossus, was one such priceless artifact. It had been on display for many years in the Museo Del Prado in Madrid Spain. This was before the fall of that ancient nation to the Americon Corporation. Estefan had purchased it a long time ago. He had a lot of Spanish treasures now. They had been bargains when that country's debt was sought through the liquidation of its’ historical wealth.

There was a deeper relationship between him and the painting than just its value though. He felt connected to it in some strange way.

The Colossus Goya had painted over the horizon, fist before him balled. To the Heavy, he seemed to seethe with frustration. It was like he was trying to figure out something crucial, something that kept eluding him. Though his depiction has him walking away, in the foreground the regular people flee or appear to scatter in fear. But, he appears to take no notice of them. His problems are too mighty for him to notice mere humans.

Estefan could never explain why, but he felt sometimes like the giant of Goya’s masterpiece. Though the love of many women surrounds him, he has felt alone at times. His problems were so huge, no one but he could hope to understand them. Yet, some of his innermost worries were quite simple, downright basic if one qualified them. Sometimes, he just wanted to keep everyone safe.

There were other such items about – statues, sculptures, figurines, paintings, pictures (film and digital). They were all over his inner sanctum. There were so many in fact all he had to do was half-turn to one side to have a whole different view than he had a moment before.

Still though, the painting was his favorite. He had even hung it upon the wall above the headboard of his just as colossus, circular bed. Often, he would stare at it and try to wonder what ailed the great man painted of oil, brought to life on canvas.

He looked at none of it now. He continued to stare out of the only view of the lunar landscape he had allowed into this chamber. He was a private man. Though none could see within, he didn’t like the idea he could look out, especially when he was entertaining his guests. He liked to focus on them and not face distraction by abstract thoughts portals to the outside sometimes forged in his mind. Pleasing the many women who visited his bed was more important to him.

He sighed, watching the comings and goings about Luna Prime.

A Gathering of the High Command was now in play. For the past few days, he’d been waiting for those of his family and his close associates to come to him, upon the Moon. They needed to discuss what was happening next.

Simple as it may sound; it wasn’t easy coordinating the schedules of so many important people. Those comprising the entire upper echelon of the Synod were busy. There was so much they had to change. To accommodate a meeting of this size they had alter meetings, appointments, appearances, ceremonies, etc. The list went on and on. It had taken almost a day to sort out the tangle before they could do much else. Then and only then, did they get about the logistics of the Gathering of the High Command itself.

For some, it was only a short rail or Grav-ride to the Aegis Compound. Katie, his First Advisor and Chief of Staff was already present within the broad complex of Luna Prime. She had arrived within the compound hours after the “To Gather” summons.

For others, there was travel involved, but not the extensive sort. All their CEO’s who sat upon the Combined Corporate Board of the Sixteen Worlds of Sol lived near the Inter-Solar headquarters of their given conglomerate. Thus, they were all on Earth. They had made the trip the following day after the summons, arriving a few hours after Ramona. She had come from High Earth Orbit, so the trip for her had been even shorter.

Leda had arrived upon the Moon the following earth-morning from Mars. Then, Mena shot in from the Jovian System. Ruby and then Sandy followed her. Both had traveled long, lonely trips from Saturn and Neptune’s Triton, respectively.

Jacob had come sometime during the morass of homecomings and hugs, but Estefan didn’t know exactly when. This was typical of Jacob, being their Chief of Security. His oftimes annoying attributes of stealth and unwavering tenacity were still par with that of a cockroach. He was always sneaking here and about unseen. The Keeper had long learned to ignore it, because it was too bothersome to attempt to keep tabs on the man. Besides, he trusted his cousin with his life.

Now, as a new day dawned on one side of the Earth, the only members of the High Command they awaited were Johan and Jolene. They were his Director of Research and Exploration and his Chief Scientist. Though they had one of the fastest frigates in their mighty fleet, they had the longest journey of them all. They were coming from a deep space exploratory mission within the Kuiper Belt. This was a vast uncharted region between the orbits of Neptune and outermost elliptic of Pluto. It consisted mostly of comets, proto-planets, dwarf-planets and asteroids. This placed them, in a rough sense, about 0.8 of a light year from Luna Prime.

As far as he knew, they were set to arrive overnight, but hadn’t for some reason. So, to quell some of the nervous energy surging within him, he had decided to write in his journal. But, after he’d finished delving through his memory of his first sexual encounter with Katie, a child of his mother’s sister, he had found he couldn’t continue. He had to stop, take a breather, because thoughts of that night never left him relaxed. Being with her had been life-altering. Seventeen years of pent-up desire and longing released, he compressed into one sweet hour of exhilaration, not to mention sweat. He couldn’t sit still with thoughts of him using his cousin’s pliant body as he wished. He had to do something. He couldn’t sit still any longer.

Ah Katie, you were magical that night…

Something caught his eye and he turned to stare more direct. He craned his head to see around a Diatainium-coated X-beam, his eyes focusing on an object descending at speed from orbit. Lacking Earth’s atmosphere, the Moon offered little resistance as the craft drew nearer. There were no plasma trails or buffeting flames. The spacecraft came in swift. Then it began a series of reverse-thrusting, vectoring toward a large landing pad.

As it came closer, he could make out the stylized “A.S.” stenciled within the intersection of a “resting” numeral eight. Many thought it stood for the age-old symbol meaning infinity. The description was fitting, considering they were all Old-Timer’s. They would most likely live forever, barring some bizarre accident. But, when applied to the Synod itself, it stood for something completely unrelated. It was an “8” in actuality and it stood for the number of women in the Aegis Synod itself. This was the number of women married to Estefan.

He felt his mood lighten at the sight of his brother’s private frigate.

It’s’ pilot maneuvered the cylindrical ship with practiced dexterity into position above the landing zone. It was small for a frigate, but it was a fast model. In fact, it was faster than all the others owned by the Synod, though it still bristled with armaments much like it larger cousins. It looked like a bird-of-prey, frozen in mid-dive. It was bulbous at the front, followed by an elongated neck, flowing into a broad, swept rear. Immense Grav-accelerators attached to thick bracketing arms at either side. This gave it a low profile, despite its considerable width at its end.

He had long admired the Peregrine. It was dangerous looking and beautiful at the same time, well named.

It was scores of kilometers away, but he could see its’ three landing feet extending from the bottom of the fuselage. Their flat bottoms pointed downward as if to test the firmness of the ground before committing to settle upon the pad.

At his waist, he brought his hand together, touching a knuckle, activating his ’Swarm. A miniature version of his sim-screen appeared off to his left.

“Open the common band, Reyna. Let the others know my brother and his wife have finally arrived from the Belt,” he spoke with quiet tones into the air.

A seductive version of a long lost girlfriends’ voice replied, “As you command, my love.”

He felt himself smile, uncaring of what Flavia had said about him naming - and characterizing - his ‘Swarm after a girl who had slighted him centuries ago. He liked the idea of hearing her voice, her inflection - completely subservient. The bitch deserved it, he mused, wondering in an off-hand sort of manner what had become of her. He hadn’t seen her in months before that night and he hadn’t seen her since. She had lived a few blocks from his parents’ house… just down the hill. I have always contemplated whether you turned Muto like the rest of us, Reyna. It seems totally plausible that you did. Most of the old neighborhood had become infected with the Shadow Seed.

And yet, if you hadn’t…, you’ve been dead for a long, long time.

No more teasing cock for you, little girl. No more twisted anal adventures either.

“My love...? The Aegis Synod will meet in the Sacristy in two hours,” announced his ‘Swarm, using Reyna’s delicious tones.

“Thank you, Reyna. Sentry Mode, please,” was his reply.

“Yes, my love.” She and the sim-screen dissolved into nothing.

He spun away from the observation portal, making his way to the Dermal-Cleanser. He shed his clothing as he stepped across the tiled floor. There was no sense going to a full Gathering, smelling like dirty socks. He had a reputation to uphold – the Keeper must look immaculate.

He was halfway there when a series of pleasant chimes sounded throughout the chamber. It was Ramona’s inquiry, a sound specific to her. She was applying for entry into his private domain.

“Come,” he spoke to the room, looking toward the sliding, mahogany-covered doors. They led out to the foyer and the Aegis Marines guarding him there. He counted to three and one of them initiated the door, his head peeking within.

“Synoddess Cervantes, Enlightened One,” he announced, nonplussed by Estefan’s lack of clothing.

She came around him before Estefan could answer, looking as dazzling as usual, then stopped dead in her tracks. The sight of his nudity always seemed to do that to her. “Leave us, Marine,” she commanded.

He disappeared behind the air-tight hissing of the door.

She dressed in a fitted sweater (black) with a deep V-neck and a white cotton button-up underneath. She had unbuttoned it as far down as the neck of the sweater, showing her ample cleavage. She had on a pin-striped mini-skirt, hemmed mid-thigh, with sheer over-the-knee, nylon socks. A pair of platform, five-inch heels covered her feet, making her about as tall as him. She had her hair up, showing off her neck and her exquisite, squarish chin. Her blue-grey eyes were searching his body over a pair of thick rimmed glasses. She tended to wear, but did not need, when she was working. No one needed prescription glasses nowadays. It was just a residual sign she was an Old-Timer. She remembered things others couldn’t, including habits of a bygone time.

As usual, the programming of her make-up used more lines of code than was necessary. But, she had always been fastidious in that fashion. As long as he had known her, her face had looked as if sculpted by Leonardo De Vinci himself.

He stared at her strong thighs, wanting to see what she had on under her skirt. It was more like a belt, covering the same amount of flesh. He didn’t care though. He had never been one to tell a woman how to dress. As long as she was going home with him, he could care less what she wore. Whatever outfit she had on, he was going to be the one to take it off. So, why be an idiot and make a fuss?

“I can see you miss me as much as I missed you,” she said, over a stifled giggle.

He glanced down at his thickening manhood. “I was just gonna clean up in the Dermal’, care to join me.”

Her eyes twinkled and the smile he had come to cherish lit up her entire face. “I sure would.” She passing a finger over an unseen sensor on the hem of her skirt and the straps of her heels came off. She kicked them away, walking toward him on the balls of her feet. “I really did miss you,” she breathed as they came together. Her hand caressed what was growing between them, kissing him upon the lips, chaste, girlish. She tilted her head up to look in his eyes.

He kissed her chin, and then walked her toward the Dermal-Cleanser, peeling off her clothes as they went.

They would be getting clean for a long time if he had anything to say about it.