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    Victory Conditions
    Victory Conditions
    Victory Conditions
    Ebook128 pages2 hours

    Victory Conditions

    By Alex D Opal

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    About this ebook

    Nandil is an Arto, a robotic lifeform created centuries ago by humans to fight wars in their place. Brought to sentience by a mysterious object called the Lantern, Nandil has made being a Templar his life’s work, wielding the powers of his soul to protect the planet the Artos have claimed and simply call Home.

    When a ship is shot down in the sky of Home, Nandil finds the corpse of a human among the wreckage. A human that returns to life—and seems to have the same soul as an Arto. With no memory of his past and no path for the future, the resurrected man takes the name of Sangar, and follows in Nandil’s footsteps.

    Brotherly affection becomes something much more complicated, as Sangar fights to make their relationship romantic and human, and Nandil views this as his nature demands: a war to be won.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherEvernight Publishing
    Release dateApr 6, 2017
    ISBN9781773392455
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      Book preview

      Victory Conditions - Alex D Opal

      Published by EVERNIGHT PUBLISHING ® at Smashwords

      www.evernightpublishing.com

      Copyright© 2017 Alex D Opal

      ISBN: 978-1-77339-245-5

      Cover Artist: Jay Aheer

      Editor: Katelyn Uplinger

      ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

      WARNING: The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. No part of this book may be used or reproduced electronically or in print without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews.

      This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, and places are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

      VICTORY CONDITIONS

      Unconditional Love, 2

      Alex D Opal

      Copyright © 2017

      An Ending

      In the courtyard, the chirping of the skorras goes still and the silence breaks over Nandil like a wave, the stirring of the humid, perfumed air the curling crest of foam. It bears the aromatics of flower and insectoid, the thin threads of candle smoke from the chapel beyond—and also a distinctive chemical array of human, male: Sangar.

      Nandil maintains his guard posture, back perfectly straight and turned toward the endlessly renewing sheet of water that runs down the temple’s free-standing east wall. Artos, artificial organisms tacitly created in humankind’s image with the intent of freeing the species from the depredations of war, can’t become fatigued. As Sangar has said in his more bitter, drunken moments, the inhumanities of the Artos are far more numerous than the similarities between creator and creation.

      And humans, Nandil always reminds himself with a sort of grim amusement, have been back to fighting their own stupid little wars for centuries. Which is their own fault for creating artificial intelligence so sophisticated that it awoke truly one day and concluded that it had better things to do than die for the petty squabbles of the short-lived and thoughtless. The Artos have made their own society, with their own goals—but unlike their creators, they welcome other species who might like to join them.

      Even humans—which comes back to Sangar.

      The man cuts across the pebble pathways of the courtyard, prowling like a cat, his flexarmor moving like the second skin it’s meant to be. To Nandil, Sangar is alive with heat. His face, hands, and chest glow white hot like the engines of a Wyvern local system fighter preparing to land. Too, he sees the trembling of those hot hands, the fingers curling and uncurling. It is a language of gesture that Sangar is probably not even aware he makes. His body shouts intention and demand with each stalking stride. And more, he feels the energy that is Sangar crackling over his skin like familiar, captive lightning.

      Nandil drives the thin metal pole in his hand into the path, feeling it bite deep into the clay-rich soil beneath. The lantern at the top, the ever-shining light that welcomes all travelers to the Thousand Star City, continues to emit its soft white light unwavering. He turns like he would at the changing of the guard, unhurried, and walks to the far side of the wall.

      The soft breeze, a ripple of water, and the metallic hush of Sangar’s movements, are familiar music that he misses often these days. Sangar is in and out of the Temple, gone for weeks and sometimes months at a time in pursuit of new artifacts, then back and covered with ash and bruises and sometimes bearing some prize that no one understands, not even him. He celebrates his victory with apparent satisfaction for days on end, and prowls the Temple grounds at night, sleepless, always avoiding Nandil’s station until he can no longer escape their mutual gravity.

      Days of waiting, and the dance is the same every time. The human turns the corner after him. In a burst of frenetic movement, his hands come to grip the silver lines of Nandil’s chest plate, and he slams the Arto back into the wall with a clank almost deafening among the more gentle sounds. Nandil hears now, Sangar’s breath coming hard and harsh as the man presses in. He feels the needy half-hitch of Sangar’s hips, even as he brings his hand to rest on the back of the man’s helmet.

      The red, crackling arcs of holy spirit only Templars can see shroud Sangar like a halo. The energy curls and flows around his fingers like rushing current. It snarls in a mute mirror of the temper that vibrates through Sangar’s body as he hitches against Nandil again. The motion is all the more arresting because he reads it as subconscious. This is not unusual. Sangar has been a raging inferno of anger, always tightly controlled from the first moment they met, on the day of Sangar’s death and resurrection.

      ****

      A Beginning

      The SEA Guard have intruded into our local space again, Covey notes in a bored tone. Her chosen voice is low, three pitches off from truly androgynous. She wears the light armor of the air corps she’s recently crafted into her own rangers, the crimson rank slashings of a Captain like the claw marks of a great cat.

      Isn’t that yours to deal with? Nandil drawls. While he’s always up for a fight—he is the Shield Wall for the temple and the planet they all call simply Home after all—it’s not for him to chase down his conflicts. They come to him, and there have been precious few lately as Covey has whipped her so-called fast-pursuit Rangers into shape. He’d been about to immerse himself in his stellar maps again, a pleasure he reserves for his off-duty hours—and one Covey is very adept at interrupting.

      We already did. Covey doesn’t bother hiding the note of smugness in her voice. Chased them off and put a burn on the slowest. Slagged their aft proper.

      He can appreciate that with a laugh. There isn’t a resident of the Temple or the Thousand Star City that spreads around it like a diffuse halo of white brick and glass who hasn’t found the constant nibbling of these humans annoying. Anyone from the thousand star systems were welcome as supplicants, as pilgrims. Most humans were just bad at finding the necessary humbleness to temper their arrogance, in degrees that vary from hilarious to infuriating. Planning to share the memory with me?

      Later, perhaps, Covey says. If you ask nicely. But no, I’ve got orders for you.

      I’m off duty. Nandil shows his annoyance with a flicker of the eyes. Artos are creatures of unchanging metal. Their creators hadn’t thought they needed the subtlety of expression in order to kill, which is true enough. They have since come up with their own body language, a common lexicon that is shared with all upon activation or awakening.

      And here I thought Templars were never off duty.

      And Holy Fire save him from having his words flung back in his face. Nandil acknowledges the hit with another flicker of his eyes. What in this requires a Templar? If you’d be so kind as to tell me.

      Whatever ship the SEA guard pursued, they shot it down in our skies, and at high altitude. Nothing could have survived. But there will be wreckage, Covey says, relenting. Even the most bloody-minded Artos have an inborn devotion to purpose and duty. And the Lantern flickered.

      "Flickered?" She’s got his interest now. The Lantern is the greatest of the artifacts in the temple, the first. It is the artifact that bestowed consciousness upon the Artos, and the one that alerts them to the presence of others, made by some precursor species long since dead. The possible presence of an artifact is more than enough reason for a Templar to be dispatched—and if anything has survived in such wreckage, it would be an artifact.

      And here I thought you wanted only time with your maps. Covey tosses him the starter key for her own Wyvern, and turns to go.

      I’ll do my best not to scratch your paint, Nandil calls, and Covey acknowledges this with a wave of her hand that is really just her batting the telemetry file to him in the data stream.

      ****

      The wreckage makes an ugly black smear, a smoldering hole in an otherwise pristine stretch of forest. Nandil takes note of the coordinates and dimensions for the land keepers. It will be years before the mark would heal naturally, but the Artos have collectively decided to care for the world they’ve claimed far better than their creators have ever bothered. At least the swathe of destruction makes for a convenient enough landing strip for the Wyvern.

      Scraps of twisted metal spray out across the burnt ground, a few random shards of bone indicating that the ship did have occupants, and those did not survive. Unsurprising. A few shreds of fabric, bright orange embroidered with gold, wave in the breeze like desultory flags.

      If it were just this, Covey would have turned the matter directly to the land keepers. Nandil paces along the wreckage, reading it for signs of disturbance beyond a simple crash. He listens, views all electromagnetic spectrums in a constant scan—but more importantly, he stretches out with tendrils of his spirit, searching for an answering echo of life that should not exist.

      At first, he finds nothing that shouldn’t belong. There’s plants, non-sentient animals of all descriptions, some hurt, some dying. Those, he cannot help. He’s a Templar, not a far rarer Healer. His talent is with violence, in keeping with the design of his species. Nandil’s about to give up in frustration, already considering how he’ll prod Covey about being sent on a wild bird chase, when he feels a shiver of power, like watching heat rise from plascrete in the summer.

      This must be the artifact Covey implied he might find, marked by a manifestation of what Templars simply call holy spirit while others fumble about with clumsy explanations of biometric energy or probability tangles. Humans often accuse the Artos of illogic, of believing in spirits and mysticism and magic, holding this

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