Chapter I: A Creeping Dread
"By the fetid fumes of Mercury!"
Captain Keith ripped the Omniforum helmet from his head and hurled it across the room in what was, for him, a rare loss of temper.
Cia of Mars looked up from her star charts, her brow furrowed over her stunning azure eyes. "My love, what is the matter?" she asked, concerned.
His ire raised, Captain Keith stalked around the room like a Rigellian Multi-Tiger. "These fools on the Omniforum!" he spat. "The way they blather on, spouting nonsense and believing it to be wisdom. I try to understand their reasoning, to put myself in their thoughtspace, but their views are so astoundingly wrong-headed and illogical that I fear it will drive me mad!"
"Star of My System, there are beings whose path has taken them into a mental and spiritual black hole, from whence they will never return. To try to steer them from their course is as futile as it is noble."
Captain Keith paused by the window and stared out into the stormy Martian sky. "Cia, these are men who were my colleagues in the academy. They come from backgrounds so similar to my own. How can they have fallen sway to such vexatious ways of seeing the universe when the flaws in their ratiocination are so evident to me? Is it possible that I'm the one whose perspective has been warped? Could it be that my cognition has been corrupted somehow and that there's actually some wisdom to the idea that we are all made safer when everyone is in possession of Venusian vapor grenades?"
Cia went to Captain Keith and took his hands in her own. She fixed him with a gaze as steely as a Centaurian Hawk. "Star of My System, there is no being in the known universe whose logic is as impeccable as yours. Doubt that the sun will rise. Doubt that rain comes from clouds. But do not doubt the soundness of your reason."
Suddenly, the door of their quarters burst open. A figure collapsed through the threshold and spilled onto the luminous emerald Uranian marble of their floor. Captain Keith rushed to the figure and turned it over to reveal a face that wore the ghastly expression of one who has been pushed past his limits and has little hope of returning. The man's shiny pate was bruised. Blood caked on his swollen lips. His eyes bulged like those of the hypno-sloth of Tau Ceti IV. Despite this, there was, somewhere in this man's pitiable visage, something that was as familiar to Captain Keith as his own hands.
"Dannap?" He said.
"Captain Keith," the man rasped. "Have I actually reached you? Or is this another of their tricks?"
Cia had brought a sifter of Plutonian brandy. Keith waved its healing scent under the man's nose. He sat a little straighter, saw a little clearer. He reached for the cup and drank. The alertness the beverage granted him brought with it a sharpened fear. "If you are actually Captain Keith and not some fiendish illusion, tell me the name of the admiral who led the academy."
"His name, my friend, was Cor-L."
Dannap relaxed visibly. "Forgive me my suspicions, old friend. I no longer know who to trust."
Captain Keith helped Dannap into a chair. He looked at the man before him and tried to reconcile this figure with the care-free young lad whose flowing curls and roguish smile had made him the star of the academy. "Dannap, please, you must tell me what has driven you to this state."
"The conspiracy I have unearthed, old chum, is so insidious that I have never seen its like. I have stumbled onto a plan to take over the entire galaxy. Not with armadas. Not with warriors. With mind control. And almost everyone we knew from the academy..."
He took a drink,
"...is already taken."
