Book One - Chapter Twenty-Seven: Never Again

The machine sat there, all innocent brass and copper piping, looking about as threatening as a museum piece. Which it was. Wasn't it? I squinted at it, searching for hidden weapon ports or laser arrays or anything that might justify the “war machine” designation.

Nothing. Just an antique coffee machine that weighed more than I did.

“Green Lady,” I said slowly, “what exactly did you bring me?”

But even as the words left my mouth, pieces started clicking together. Her insistence that I have it now.

My hand hovered over the brass surface. The HUD prompt pulsed patiently, waiting.

Fuck it. In for a penny, in for a pound.

I selected yes.

The machine didn't transform or sprout cannons. It just... woke up. A low hum vibrated through the metal, and for a heartbeat, the brass gleamed with that familiar golden light before settling back into perfectly ordinary antiquity. A new menu materialized in my vision.

[WAR MACHINE OF THE GRIND]

[BREWS AVAILABLE: 3]

Brew of Peace

Brew of War

Brew of Hope

No descriptions. Of course not. The System never made anything easy.

I fed beans into the grinder with unsteady hands. The coffee that emerged was darker than midnight and smelled like gunpowder.

“Hope it is,” I muttered, and started pouring cups.

The first sip hit me like a religious experience. My ribs stopped screaming. The cuts on my arms sealed over like someone was running time backward. Every bruise, every ache, every reminder that I'd nearly been buried alive just... vanished.

[STATUS EFFECT GAINED: BREW OF HOPE]

Restores wounds and quiets lingering pain, of all kinds.

Grants temporary clarity.

Ideal for campfires, long silences, and remembering things you swore you'd buried.

Warning: May cause you to believe, just for a moment, that everything might be okay.

Peña's eyes went wide as color flooded back into his face. “Jerry, what is this stuff?”

Riley took a cautious sip, then another, her shoulders straightening as exhaustion peeled away like old paint. “Better than any combat stim I've ever had.”

Whiskers lapped at his cup, then sat up straighter, ears perked, looking more alert than I'd seen him since boarding this ship.

Whipsteele closed his eyes and I watched the torment of the last few days melt away.

I settled onto the edge of the bed, cradling my cup like a lifeline. Riley found her spot against the bulkhead.

The Paw's Pride drifted silent through the Neutral Zone, her engines cycling down to whisper-quiet as Whipsteele stared into his coffee cup. He sipped it slow but held it like an anchor, something solid in a conversation that was about to venture into waters he'd sworn never to navigate again.

Whiskers had curled up on the couch beside Peña, looking more relaxed than I'd seen him since this whole nightmare started.

Whiskers spoke first. “Once upon a time, Jackie here was the best navigator of policy I ever met. A master sailor of the bureaucra-seas. Jack, if that version of you’s still in there somewhere, we could really use that man’s help. Right here. Right now.”

Jack smiled, slow and crooked. “That was a long time ago, Whisk.” His voice rasped like old cigarettes and emotional damage. “Jerry, you asked about Kigel Four.”

“It sounded personal,” I said.

“Personal.” Jack laughed without humor. “Everything with the Karens is personal. That’s their whole thing. When they ruin civilizations, they make it hurt.”

He set the cup down and moved to the viewport. Stars spun, slow and silent.

“Many, many years ago, I left piracy. Took up a new name, went straight, got in good with the powers that be. I got respectable, if you can believe that. An Officer of the Fleet.”

“What happened?” I asked.

His fingers trailed over the fog his breath left. “Her name was Lyra.” His swagger cracked. “Twenty-six. Bright as a nova, and twice as dangerous to look at straight.”

He turned, facing us without really seeing us.

“Kythara, Morven, Tali, Zelani. The peaceful worlds of Kigel Four. Paradise. The kind of place that makes you think maybe the universe is done kicking you in the teeth.”

He began pacing, old energy kicking up behind his steps.

“A thousand years of peace. A thousand years of not screwing it up. I kept waiting for the catch. Mass graves, secret police, something. But there wasn’t one. They’d done it. Built paradise. And it worked.”

“Sounds too good to be true,” Riley said.

“That’s what I thought. I got there on shore leave, poked around, looking for rot. There was none. People were free. Happy. Cooperative. No one was stabbing anyone in the back. Weirdest thing I ever saw.”

He paused, eyes distant. Not here. Not now.

“Their race had a forty-year lifespan, which should have given them a major disadvantage. But they overcame it. Above all, they prized ability, compassion and understanding. They measured knowledge by what it solved. Not by how it sounded in committee meetings.”

His hands moved as he spoke, painting it all out in the air.

“The Archive sat at the heart of Kythara. Tower of crystal. Transparent walls. Floor after floor of history, science, culture. Books. Simulations. Memory theaters; places where you could step into someone else’s life, live a whole century in minutes. That's how they'd cracked the lifespan problem. Kids grew up with the wisdom of thousands who came before.”

He gripped the back of a chair.

“The society was wild, man. Children worked alongside elderly scholars, teenagers debated with master engineers, artists consulted with scientists on projects that bridged disciplines. Everything ran on apprenticeship. Knowledge flowed freely. No gatekeeping, no bureaucratic bullshit. If you had something useful to contribute, they listened.”

“And Lyra?” I asked.

He didn’t look up. “She was the heart of it. Youngest Chief Curator in their history. And she’d earned it. On their world, the Chief Curator was the top brass, politically speaking. Their North Star. She started working systems at twelve. By twenty, she’d rebuilt the Archive’s retrieval system from scratch.”

I leaned forward. “She sounds amazing.”

“She was. They picked leaders based on what they fixed. What they built. What actually helped people.” His smile twisted. “Wild, right? Not who gave the best speech. Who delivered.”

He started pacing again. Faster now.

“Teacher didn’t just give out answers, they taught how to find them. How to think.”

“Sounds like she loved her work,” I said.

“She loved what it represented.” Jack's smile was soft with remembrance. “It's what I love about your Earth, actually. At least, there are little pockets of it. Knowledge is humanity's greatest achievement. History is full of people working tirelessly, trying to figure out how to make life just a little less shitty. Some farmer discovers crop rotation. Some engineer designs more efficient engines. Some artist finds new ways to touch human souls.”

He nodded at the stars. Cold fires in the dark.

“All of it building on what came before. Newton standing on the shoulders of giants, then becoming a giant for others to stand on. That's what civilization really is, not cities or governments or technologies, but accumulated wisdom that lets each generation start where the previous one left off instead of beginning from scratch like a bunch of cave-dwellers.”

He stopped.

“I spent six years visiting Kythara on every leave. Six years falling in love with her, and with a people who’d figured out how to do it right.”

“I get the feeling it didn’t last. What changed?” Riley asked.

“The Karens.” His voice was stone. “They came as consultants. Doctors. ‘Helpers.’ Kind faces. Compassionate voices. Slowly, they worked their way into everything; mental health, government, history, science, education. 'Dangerous' memories were deleted from the archives. The past got ‘corrected.’

“It happened slowly. Barely noticeable. Each change seemed reasonable, even kind.

“You’ve got books on Earth about this. 1984, Brave New World, among others. Doublespeak. Changing the meaning of words until up meant down, freedom meant slavery. Integrity meant cruelty. Your world wrote about it but the Karens perfected it. Knowledge became hoarding information. Success became exploitation. Achievement became theft.”

His voice faltered.

“Lyra’s own students began to turn on her. They started parroting lines about how thinking was trauma.”

He paused. Shook his head.

“Then social segregation. Separate housing. Separate laws. Divide and conquer. Then came a new religion, government sponsored. They introduced mandatory medication. Harmony enhancers. Chemical lobotomies with a friendly name.

“She fought it. Fought tooth and nail the whole way. And I helped her. Built a hidden archive of banned memories. Tried to save what they were burning. But she couldn’t move fast enough.”

He looked out the viewport again.

“There was only so much I could do. I wasn’t allowed to get involved in Council planet politics. It wasn’t long before I received evac orders—a war had flared up near Centauri. I begged her to come. But she had to stay. Someone had to protect what mattered. I swore I’d come back.”

His reflection met him again. Harsher now.

“When I returned eight months later, she was gone. They’d come for her.” His voice cracked.

“On an early morning in spring. They arrested her, not as a criminal but as a ‘patient’. The treatment centers were clean. Staffed by professionals who wanted to help patients recover from the sickness of selfhood. Chemical treatment helped her see how selfish she'd been. Electroshock treatment had cured her of her last bits of resistance. When they released her after eight months, she was grateful. Fucking grateful!”

He didn’t meet our eyes.

“She returned to the Archive. Her job was waiting, overseeing the systematic destruction of everything she'd once protected. I watched her feed centuries of knowledge into purification fires, smiling as she burned the works of philosophers she'd once loved.”

Jack's hands clenched into fists.

“When I tried to remind her who she’d been... her eyes, Jerry. Those eyes. She'd said, ‘Jack, you’re still thinking in the old ways. Still trapped in that individual consciousness that causes so much suffering. You should get help, before it gets worse.’ She meant it. She wanted to help me. Wanted to save me from the disease of being myself.

“It didn’t take long after that; a few generations. One by one, the planets fell. Now there’s nothing left but slag. War. Poverty. Then silence.

“You know what broke me?

“It wasn’t watching her die.

“It was watching her be grateful for her own destruction.

“That’s what they do. The Karens don’t kill you.

“They make you kill yourself, and smile while you do it.

“They use your love.

“They sharpen it.

“Then they stab you with it.”

He looked at me. No mask now. And a tear ran down his cheek.

There was silence for a long while.

I placed a hand on his shoulder. “I’m so sorry.”

“It is what it is,” he said.

“It doesn’t have to be.”

He held my eyes. Something shifted. Then: “If I do this, I want your personal word I walk off this ship alive.” He turned to Whiskers. “No matter what happens. And I want my crew cleared. Every Mewsari list. Gone.”

Whiskers didn’t hesitate. “Done.”

Jack stood. The swagger didn’t come with him.

“You know what they forget about pirates? Almost every one of us was once one of them.”

He stepped to the viewport, pressed both hands to the glass.

“They’ve been winning so long, they think folding is just what people do. The Worlds of Kigel Four did. Twelve billion souls on Kythara alone, all grateful to be erased.

But their trick only works if you believe them. If you trust the smiles. If you fall for the lies.

They’ve never faced someone with nothing left to lose. Someone who sees through the mask and won't look away.”

He turned. Eyes like deep space.

“Now, hand me that goddamn manual.”

Outside, the stars kept watch. Still. Cold. Witnesses to a pirate’s resurrection and a war long overdue.