ORIGINAL FICTION: "Whispers in the Void" by Keith Hamilton Cobb

face in the cool of the evening, sweet and clean from chewing Antarian mint leaves; from the feel of his muscled neck upon the bridge of my nose, chiseled and hard, warm and vibrating with the bass timbre of his voice as it shook me; from the scent of his frame come fresh from the bath to lie with my mother; from the unrushed melody of his exhortation as it fell upon my ear; from the helplessness and security that his fingers, feathered through my hair to hold my head in his proprietary grasp, made me feel both at once; from the words themselves said over so many times that they, along with solitude, are now become my only unflagging and constant companions, I understand the depth and breadth of the only Nietzschean doctrine that will ever truly matter here in the supreme abyss that cradles us all, rocks us in its arms, and has no use for any of our petty plans, yet deigns our thriving if we will only own our primal right, and exercise our will to power.

Suleiman, sire of Temujin I, then four generations removed from Temujin II, sire of Barbarossa watched the death throws of The Systems Commonwealth in the conflagration of Witchhead, and watched the only united Nietzschean front since Museveni collapse and die right along with it. According to the Than historian, Snow Laden Branches, despite the absolute evisceration of the Argosy by the Nietzschean strike force in the first few days of “The Nietzschean Betrayal”, the Commonwealth somehow miraculously managed to bounce back and engage it’s enemy to a stalemate in an out and out war of attrition for another two years. This biased account tends to paint the picture of an epically heroic High Guard recovering unexplainably from its unequivocal devastation and valiantly fighting on into perpetuity fueled, apparently, by nothing more than the power of right, that dubious quantity (that a certain endearing High Guard relic bandies about to this day), which may have its place, but has never won a war in all the annals of recorded history – EVER!! The first strike against the High Guard forces was the culmination of years of intricate planning and design on the part of myriad disgruntled Nietzscheans mobilizing in the very breast of The Systems Commonwealth, which did not notice for being much too busy engaging in the self-deluding politics of “benevolent imperialism”. In brief, The Commonwealth had grown fat on its own sense of altruism, and far too secure with its unmanageable expanse of worlds, which had all come to drink from the same cup with visions of an impenetrable interspecies brotherhood as bulwark against the terrible darkness. Fear of isolation masqueraded as right-minded good will. (Ironically, I imagine that no world ever felt so very alone until the slipstream gave them cognizance that someone else was in fact there. But perhaps that’s another discussion entirely.) In this oxymoronic climate of self-righteous cohesion that yet spread itself untenably thin over a trillion lightyears, the attack on the Argosy and ground forces was a Hammer-of-God offensive; an Alpha-and-Omega coup de main which could not have failed. So why did it? Suleiman “The Sultan” Anasazi, observing the end from the command deck of a commandeered freighter christened The Gift of Industry, refitted for war and renamed Prides’ Provocateur, admired the pluck of the High Guard captains, and the seemingly inexhaustible bravery and stamina of their corps. Even so, all the years of Academy instilled esprit was no match for a united Nietzschean offensive launched at the High Guard not only from the outside, but from within as well by great numbers of battle hardened Nietzschean officers who for years had lived and served peaceably among its ranks. Nor was it any match, once the battle was engaged, for the killing potential spawned by ten or so generations of strict Nietzschean selective breeding. Or…perhaps the finely hewn Nietzschean pedigree was, in fact, the problem. For Suleiman, the study of the Nietzschean foe, himself included, or at least that which lay restive in his Nietzschean heart in the last days gave him most clearly to understand what had happened in the first, answering the greatest question of the two years past. Why did the united Nietzschean front, or at least their supremacist conceits, go down to ultimate defeat? They ran.