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Dark Lord Substitute

Chapter 21

By Draconicon

The site of a contract wasn't unique, but as soon as Data mentioned the script, Bertram's attention was snagged. Of all the things that he needed information on, that ranked highest.

"Is the information still here?"

"I believe so, sir."

"Mark, with me. Soledad, too. Ilia, Lazir, tell the others. I will be busy for a while."

The fox and snake nodded, obeying immediately as they left the Citadel. He knew they'd inform Admiral Tardak of what was happening and keep the badger in the loop, but for now, the ram was more focused on the possibilities that lay beneath the Citadel.

Of course it was below the Citadel. The safest place, after all; it's indestructible, or the next thing to it. Where else would they have put their records?

Soledad and Mark fell in step behind him as the three naked men went down the stairs, descending into the basement of the Dark Citadel. He put the recent orgy out of his mind, shaking his head as he heard the rather meaty sound of cocks slapping between the legs of his men.

The script was the thing that bound the behavior of everyone on his side to this stupidity. It was the force that kept him from surrendering or being anything but the most idiotic of villains against the rest of the galaxy. Against all odds, he had managed to survive thus far, but without some idea of what he was dealing with, he didn't put long odds on his luck holding out forever.

He needed this. They all needed this.

"Why didn't this open before?" Mark muttered as they descended into the dark. "It's not like we haven't looked for a basement before."

"What were you thinking when you looked for a basement?" Bertram asked.

"I don't know. The underground? Weapons? Armor?"

"Then you were looking for the wrong thing."

"What were you looking for, Master?" Soledad asked.

"I was looking for information. And the Citadel responds to what you ask it for..."

If the previous iterations of the Dark Lord and their servants had only been looking for power, pleasure, or weapons, then it was not at all surprising that they hadn't found a place that was dedicated purely to information. He wondered what else the Citadel had been hiding from them, and just what they might have found if they'd asked it for something else entirely.

They reached the bottom of the stairs. Bertram had a fleeting thought of bringing some light down with them, and the walls flickered, illuminating with a soundless twist of lightning through the walls. The white light spread across the black panels, shimmering over a vast open chamber. The walls themselves were curved, creating a dome that went over and around it, and in the center was a large meeting table. Circular and made of a similar metal as the Citadel itself, it had three chairs, two together on one side and one standing alone on the other.

"Well...this is interesting," Bertram muttered.

"The site of the contract, you think?" Soledad asked.

"Probably."

"Then there will be records," the mouse said. "With your permission?"

The ram gestured for the monarch to do as he would, and Soledad stepped around him. It was a pleasant sight, seeing that naked - and still dripping - mouse rump swaying as the king walked to the table. He smiled to himself, unable to help it as his cock twitched at the view.

As soon as Soledad touched the tabletop, it came to life with a dull hum. Mark jumped, but the king just nodded to himself, running his hand over the smooth surface. He touched things that only he seemed to see, muttering this and that under his breath. Bertram crossed his arms over his chest as Mark leaned in. The hyena rested one hand on his shoulder as he whispered in his ear.

"Are you sure we should leave him be?"

"He's a slave, just like you."

"That's why I'm concerned."

"If I can't trust you here, how am I supposed to trust you in the bedroom?"

"..."

"Let him work. And besides, he's better with the tech than either of us..."

Which was embarrassing to admit, but nonetheless true. The mouse continued to flick at things that neither of them could see, probably something that he could visualize through his various implants. Other than the king's muttered utterances, the room was completely silent.

Despite his proclaimed confidence, Bertram fought his own anxiety. This would be the point where someone could betray him. As the Dark Lord and master of the many slaves on the planet, he knew that the script protected him from their betrayal to some extent, but at the same time, he hadn't forgotten what Zelda had pulled. Mark's sister had betrayed him in the most passive way possible, holding back from saving him when he was at risk of death, so someone stabbing him in the back was certainly possible.

But he held firm to what he'd said. Even if King Soledad stood to get his planet back if he did screw the ram over then and there, they had made an arrangement, and he didn't see the king giving up on that arrangement. Not without a better offer, at the very least.

The minutes ticked by, and just as Mark was about to speak up, the mouse sighed in triumph. Soledad turned, his implant buzzing and sparking behind his head.

"I've got it."

"What did you find?"

"A lot of legalese, and outdated legalese, at that. There's documents in the hard-drive of that thing that date back hundreds of years, all the way to the start of the wars between the Dark Lord and the Allied Systems."

"How many do we have to sort through?" Bertram asked, feeling his heart sink at the idea of going through that much paperwork.

"Just three."

"...Three?" he blinked.

"You didn't think I was just downloading all of them, did you?" Soledad smiled. "I know the value of time to a ruler, Master. I'm not going to throw a library at you when a couple of books will suffice."

"...You keep rising in my estimation, Soledad." He smiled. "What do you have for me?"

"Come here."

As he joined the mouse at the table, he heard Mark's soft grunt of discontent. By the time that he looked over his shoulder, however, the hyena was completely fine. Or, if not fine, then unbothered.

Hmm...something to watch for.

If Mark was getting jealous, he'd need to keep an eye on that. The pair of them were master and slave, and no more. If there was something else in the hyena's mind, some idea that they were more than that, he'd need to correct it. No point in allowing someone to get too close, as tempting as it was. He shook his head, putting it out of his mind. Later. There would be time then.

As he leaned over the table, the surface lit up with three paper-shaped rectangles. Soledad gestured at them.

"I've told the table to show its files more visibly. Everything else is downloaded up here for future examination," the mouse explained, tapping the implant. "But I thought these three would be the most important for you to see. Considering that they talk about the script most here -"

"Yes, that's what we need for the moment. Show me."

"Just...tap it and treat it like a touchscreen, Master."

Bertram nodded, reaching over and doing so with the first of the three documents. The others flicked off to the far side of the table, while the selected file unspooled into a long litany of text that ran out of sight. If it had been a physical copy, he imagined that it would have rolled right off the table and off into the distance. As it stood, it still required a great deal of tapping and scrolling to get to the point of the document.

"We, henceforth known as the Free Systems, do hereby agree...you, henceforth known as the Void, Void Star, and other names to be selected over time..."

Bertram muttered to himself as he skimmed through it, a skill that he had picked up in the library and had used extensively since. It came in handy now, considering the legal document was as lengthy as it was specific. He kept running his finger up, to the point where Soledad opened his mouth to say something. Holding up his finger to silence the monarch, he kept reading at his pace.

It was a fascinating document, and no mistake. It was certainly in old legalese, however, and speed-reading was not going to get him the loopholes and detailed information that he really wanted. However, it did give him the details that he'd been missing for a long while.

"I don't suppose this has a video recording of the meeting?" he asked.

"If it does, it's not on any files that I can access," Soledad admitted.

"Limitations to royalty," Mark said. "...Sorry."

"No apologies necessary. This table was built before there was a monarchy on this planet; I doubt it would accept anything short of the Federation codes or whatever equivalent our Master has on him."

Bertram doubted that anything he had would unlock further files. If it had taken this much random chance just to find this chamber, he had little doubt that any additional files were locked down behind quite a few more protections than a mere password would disable. But at least he had a text agreement, which told him a hell of a lot more than he had known before. He got back to reading.

According to the contract, two schools of thought had developed over the course of many years. One side believed that utter freedom was the best way to run things, bound in the loosest of ways by alliances between the different governments. No regulations, no restrictions, just complete freedom to be who they wanted, as they wanted, and trusting the weight of obligations to keep each other in check. He winced just reading it.

The other side, however, was nearly as bad, and perhaps worse in many ways. Its proponents believed in utter order, of a greater autocracy, where a unifying purpose and greater regulations and a defined hierarchy would direct those beneath it. It was easy to tell which side he was supposed to be on with his role.

No regulation, or over-regulation...

And just like every story that he had ever read in the library, one was clearly written as the good-guys and the other as the bad-guy. It was fairly typical, he supposed, but no less annoying for that. It was just one more reminder that even here, in a completely different universe, the idea of rules still seemed like someone being evil to the people that were writing the story.

He continued on down.

The two schools of thought fought against each other, their philosophies infusing various governments and creating a number of different proxy wars throughout the universe. Sometimes, the Free Systems won. Sometimes, the Void - named for the 'lack of freedom, the void of it' from what he managed to discover - came out on top, but never for long before the unity that it brought along was broken up by agents of the other side. Every time the rules were laid down, someone on the other side managed to find a way to sell them as something bad, and war started anew.

However, this contract laid out a solution. If one side was that good, then it had to be able to eventually develop supremacy over the others. The Free Systems would rule most of the galaxy, while the Void would rule one small corner. In exchange, the Free Systems would freeze their tech at a specific level, and the Void would be able to call out to the rest of existence for a champion every time that things were supposed to start all over again.

"Wonder how they got them to agree to that?" Bertram muttered under his breath.

The contract had apparently been signed and sealed. Yet, the war had continued for hundreds of years. How?

It became clearer further down. The terms and conditions defined one side 'winning' as being able to completely dominate the entirety of the known universe to the point where the other side was judged inferior, forgotten, and that was where the Free Systems had shot themselves in the foot in two ways.

First, they had ensured that the Void had a corner of the galaxy that was very isolated, unable to stay in contact with the 'other side' save through their regular wars. As a result, it was very easy for the Void to keep them all unified under the same sort of ideals. Unlike the other cultures in the galaxy, the arrangement suited the Void to create a mono-culture between its different planets, and all outsiders would look like invaders as a result, making it all but impossible to convert them. To win, the Free Systems would have had to go through a mass-extermination event, and even then, there would still be the force of the Void itself at the far end of the galaxy, believing in itself. They couldn't actually win.

Second, as a result of their non-regulation and no centralized rules, the Free Systems were in free-fall. He'd seen it on every other world that he'd visited and conquered; one species inevitably developed greater power than the others and leaped to the top. On the mining planet, it had been the snakes. In the clusters, it had been the foxes. Someone always found a way to seize power and leap upwards, telling others that it was in their best interests to stay down below, manipulating the system in non-lawful ways to create different barriers for anyone rising up again.

As a result, it was not the efficiency or the 'freedom' of the Federation of Free Systems that allowed them to beat back the Void time and time again, but merely numbers. They were so many that they could just swarm any new Dark Lord that came about before he could get his feet under him, and then it would be done with until the next one was called in.

A bad deal on both sides...

And a galaxy that paid the price for dealing with them. Whether it was the common people of the Federation or the slaves of the Dark Lord, they were both fighting and dying for a cause that only this long-held treaty kept them to.

As he scrolled to the bottom, he finally found the answer to the script itself. He'd wondered from the start how he had been bound to a strict behavior and script, and the contract spelled out the hows and whys.

The scholars on both sides of the conflict had tapped further into behavioral sciences than anyone else had. The advocates for the Void systems had learned how to work the Indoctrination signals, and those on the other side had learned how to save personalities, allowing an art form of long-held memories to come about, where they could resurrect different people to put on a show for them. The two were combined, the signals being broadcast through -

Bertram paused, leaning in towards the table.

"...Dammit..."

"What? What is it?" Mark asked.

"Remember how I told you that you were a slave the moment that you signed up for my army?"

"Yeeeees?"

"I stand corrected."

"What, you don't think I'm a slave anymore?"

"No. You were a slave since the day you were born."

The contract detailed a vast undertaking that had been agreed upon by both sides. The 'script' for the various conflicts that had overtaken the galaxy was spread through every planet in the universe. Hidden stations on every planet broadcast the message via thousands of subtle Indoctrination signals, while the public had been infected with bio-nanites, allowing the signal to be brought in, replicated, and spread through the body at the time when it was needed.

Everyone that had been born since the signing of the contract had been nothing more than actors on a stage. The only one that was possibly free of it was the summoned Dark Lord, but obviously not in his case, as he had been forced onto the script mere minutes after arriving.

And he doubted that they had the technology to reverse such an infection, either.

Thumping his hands on the table, he kept scrolling through the document, trying to find something that justified that level of generational slavery, yet found nothing. The scholars and manipulators had obviously believed that they'd achieve a quick victory, and even if they hadn't, that it was worth it for the experiment that they had in mind. One had to be found superior.

Bertram wanted to throw up after reading that. He'd managed to justify slavery in his own head, seen it as a way of transitioning to something better, but the galaxy had been locked in its own chains for generations before he'd ever been brought here. All for the sake of a fucking philosophical argument between two sets of insane ideals.

It was enough to make a man sick.

Closing out of the document, Bertram leaned back from the table. He breathed slowly until the urge to throw up or flip the table - either one - had passed. His slaves said nothing to him while he calmed down, merely giving him the space that he silently required. When he felt at peace enough to speak, he looked them in the eye.

"This...this stays secret," he said.

"What stays secret?" Soledad asked, and he knew the mouse understood.

"...Why?" Mark asked, and he knew the hyena didn't.

"Because it will make everyone stupid," Soledad answered before he could. "Our people will get arrogant and think that we're destined to win, and their people will think that we're lying, sending propaganda their way. It serves no point, and makes us look worse."

"Mm-hmm." Bertram sighed. "So, this stays between us. Soledad?"

"Yes, Master?"

"What about the other two?"

"...One was on the nature of implanting others with the script -"

"Save it for later."

"And the other was how the script functions...but it's corrupted."

"How bad?"

"Bad enough that the latter two-thirds of the document are unreadable."

"...That is unfortunate," the ram muttered.

"But the first third is not as bad. And it suggests that our current script of behaviors is...not entirely permanent."

"...Explain."

The mouse nodded, gesturing at the table. Another document opened, and the king scrolled down until he reached the pertinent section.

"It seems that, as part of the negotiations - as a means of preventing the mind control technology of Indoctrination from winning automatically - the Dark Lord has to show himself as someone worthy of following. As the Dark Lord continues to win and gain territory, then the programmed behaviors in the script will change along with it."

"...Fascinating."

"And from what I can understand...we're on the cusp of a behavioral shift."

"To..."

"That's the part where it starts to get corrupted, I'm afraid. But -"

Thump thump thump.

They turned from the table to the stairs leading down, and to Bertram's surprise, it was Zelda. The hyena was panting, naked, and more than slightly matted with sweat, but her eyes were clear and her face serious.

"We got trouble."

"What kind?"

"Fleet battle. Almost done, but we need to make a decision upstairs."

"...I'm on my way."

The End

Summary: A hell of a lot of information is dug out about the script that the team is all suffering under .

Tags: M/solo, No sex, nudity, male nudity, ram, mouse, hyena, female nudity, worldbuilding, sci-fi, patreon, series,