Dan stood on the bridge of Terra’s Pride, looking out over the bustle of Portland from where the ship sat in its drydock. Behind him, Sam and Jennifer tapped furiously at the computers built into the ship’s walls, making final preflight checks. Abe was being Abe: lounging in a chair, aloof and relaxed despite the historical importance of the moment.
A lot had happened in the year and a half since the battle of New York. Dan shuddered as he remembered the mana-fueled orgy of destruction that followed the death of the Orakh lord. He’d torn through thousands of eggs, feasting on the small amount of mana in each, sinking deeper into madness with each spell and sword stroke until finally he ended up back at the broodmother.
Remembering the flashes of mana he’d gotten from stabbing it, he tore into the dead body, only to find corpses. Dozens of half-digested human corpses floated in huge amniotic sacs. The realization that the Orakh had been digesting people and using their nutrients and DNA to create more monsters had shocked Dan out of his frenzy and into a bout of vomiting.
The flashes of mana he’d absorbed while attacking the broodmother? It sure looked like the giant Orakh was absorbing the mana and very identity from the living New Yorkers the warriors had captured and brought back.
Then he’d staggered out of the wreckage of the Orakh ship to the tatters of the forces that had held off the remainder of the horde. The first thing he had done was look for William. Deep down, he’d known that the old general hadn’t made it out alive, but he’d held out hope.
There was something about the man’s infuriating but laconic personality that made Dan refuse to give up hope until he saw the body. William was larger than life. If anyone could have pulled himself out of the death trap where Dan had last seen him, it was William.
He had to call Jennifer to help him with the body. William had somehow self-ignited his fuel canister at the end, igniting both himself and the pile of Orakh that were hacking at his armor. It was William to the very end. Out of pure spite, he killed all of his attackers and denied them even his protein.
The next couple of days had been hard, piecing together what was left of the army and repairing the Viceroy. A lot of good men and women had died in New York City, but the infestation was well and truly dead.
After about a week, Bessie DuBlanc had given him a call. Abe had already briefed her military advisors on what had happened in New York, and apparently she’d been busy. The World was in shambles, but the remaining governments were to meet in Paris to discuss what needed to be done next.
She’d nominated him to be America’s representative, but Dan turned her down. He could handle a small unit and magic with his eyes closed, but he was lost dealing with anything more than twenty people.
Instead, he publicly gave her his blessing, and DuBlanc won the popular vote in a landslide. As a compromise, she hitched a ride on the newly patched-up Viceroy and let him tag along as a consultant on magic and xenodiplomacy.
His title was a bit of a mouthful, but teleporting above a major city without setting off any alarms earned them some major political capital. By the time the highlight reels of their battles unifying America and beating back the Orakh were finished, pretty much everyone at the conference was eating from the palms of their hands.
In a matter of days, the United Nations was reworked into an organization with actual teeth. Each nation now resembled a state or province, largely self-governing but subject to the overarching laws of the UN. He left the meeting around the time that they started debating how to determine general assembly membership, confident that Bessie DuBlanc would inform him of the results.
She stormed back to the Viceroy, victorious but upset. They’d elected her President of the revamped United Nations. But the almost-unanimous consensus of the nations other than America and Brazil was that Dan was too powerful.
His organization was transformed into a sort of international special forces. Some of the most talented individuals in every field would be sent to Dan to have their mana awakened, and they would work with him to advance magical learning until a self-sufficient academy could be founded.
After that, he would be showered with awards and wealth, before politely being asked to retire from the public eye. Which brought him to today.
He wasn’t going to retire. Fuck that. If his presence on Earth would upset the delicate peace he fought so hard to win, fine. He didn’t need to be on Earth. It was his home, but the past year or so had widened his horizons to the point that he didn’t need it. Other than his complicated relationship with his family, Dan didn’t even have any proper connections on Earth. His friends, his job, his hobbies, everything that he had thought mattered, it had all fallen by the wayside in the fight against the Tellask and the Orakh.
Dan wasn’t even mad. His reward for saving humanity from being enslaved, dinner, or both was the first Earth-built void ship ever. Terra’s Pride was massive. 300 meters long and cylindrical with a 45-meter radius and meter-thick armor, it would have been immobile without the use of gravity and space magic.
After reverse engineering the mana forges, they’d put four in the ship. Enough to power the pair of modified spell cannons in its prow, the improved spellshields, and the eight heavily runescripted railgun turrets mounted along its sides.
Between him and Sam, they’d been able to design a line of space-born rockets powered using a combination of space magic and conventional thrust. They were elegant weapons, teleporting to within a half kilometer of their target in an instant before igniting powerful sprint engines. In practice bouts, they managed to almost universally avoid point-defense fire, making them a powerful ace in the hole for when the Terra first would run into the Tellask.
The world leaders had complained and worried, but eventually, Dan had gotten his way. Even if most of the rockets for the twin launchers had powerful conventional warheads, It only made sense to arm a handful with fusion payloads.
Finally, the ship was loaded with a nuclear reactor for conventional electricity, hydroponics to keep everyone on board alive, and enough mechs and power suits to take over a small nation. Then, it was only a matter of bringing aboard the five hundred crewmen and women, all experts in a multitude of fields, and then it was time to launch.
“How are we doing, Tatiana?” Dan asked the air, confident that the borderline-omnipresent computer was listening. “Are we set to launch on schedule?”
“There was a slight delay in loading some of the replacement parts,” she responded smoothly from the bridge’s speakers. “But things are under control. Honestly, we are ready to launch now, but we should still drag it out a little bit. The news crews are setting up their cameras, and we want to make sure that they get a good view of the Hero of Earth’s triumphant departure.”
“Sounds good,” he agreed affably. “What about the rest of you? Any last doubts about leaving your friends and family behind to go wander the stars and blow up anything that looks at us funny?”
“I call the green space babes!” Abe responded with a cackle. “You can have the blue or yellow ones, but the first mate gets to sleep with the green space babes. I’m pretty sure it’s an unwritten rule of science fiction or something.”
“I’m ready.” Jennifer’s voice was a little bleaker than he liked for a momentous occasion, but Dan wasn’t going to second-guess the vortex of emotions she was likely buried in at the moment. “This place has been more hassle than anything for the past two years. I’m ready for a fresh start.”
Sam just nodded at him, her fingers clacking over her keyboard as she made final adjustments.
“Are the cameras in position?” Dan asked Tatiana.
“All except Nebula Broadcasting, but they were the fearmongers fighting your arming the Terra with nuclear weapons,” she huffed, a hint of petty joy in her computerized voice. “There’s no big loss if they miss the event of the decade.”
Dan cracked a smile. He couldn’t publicly tear into the news network, but they’d caused him a fair amount of stress with their slanted coverage. He’d be glad to be rid of them, along with the rest of the self-interested corruption that seemed to exist in Earth’s very air.
President DuBlanc would root out the worst of it, he was confident of that. As for the rest? Humanity had made it very clear that they didn’t want him butting in any more. That was someone else’s problem.
“Very well.” Dan pulled himself up in his command chair, trying to make himself look photogenic for cameras that clearly couldn’t see him. “Here we are, boys and girls, boldly going to space the-”
“Dan,” Tatiana cut in, a stern tone to her voice. “I do want to warn you that the copyright you’re about to infringe on is still valid. You might be embracing the dashing life of a space captain, but don’t underestimate the lawyers. Even if you are fifty light years away, they will find a way.”
“Fine,” he grumbled. “I can say ‘ad astra,’ right? It just means ‘to the stars.’”
“That is an acceptable catchphrase,” Tatiana agreed, benevolently.
“Ad Astra!” Dan pointed upward, a shit-eating grin across his face. “Jennifer, take us up.”
To the dozens of video cameras trained on Terra’s Pride, nothing happened. One second it was there, the next it was just outside lunar orbit. No fire, no explosions, no drama. Just a man and his crew escaping Earth’s gravity, the first to explore the truly unknown.
