He has died a thousand deaths. He will die a thousand more. When the very last star sputters out and all life thereafter in the galaxy is sustained only by Her grace, he will continue to die.

This is but one record.

————

Any man worth his rations kept to his own around a Virago, and any man wanting to keep his limbs made it his mission not to be around a Virago at all, but such maxims didn’t assume sharing a voidcraft with one.

The lesser clone didn’t have the mental capacity to understand that.

Daniel scrubbed the last remnants of proof the clone ever existed. The poor bastard just didn’t understand how everything, but guilt was wasted. You couldn’t teach them, you couldn’t reason with them. What sort of life is that, to be spat out into a cold reality where you can’t comprehend the rules?

He deposited another shard of shattered bone into the bowl beside him and continued wiping the bloody smear.

Maybe being intellectually stunted was for the best in this life. In that purposefully unsophisticated and underdeveloped lump of smooth brain matter, he couldn’t be concerned with greater woes or worries that a more gifted clone contended with. He was happy with his minor lot because he couldn’t comprehend anything greater than the charge of cleaning the halls of this ship. A clone who did no evil and thus could commit no sin.

Cali could, and happily did, and so this lesser clone’s demise was the product of an evil beheld only by his kind and ignored by her kindred. Morality is a matter of perception, and all clones exist in a Virago’s blind spot. If they occupied any space at all.

He wrung out the sopping cloth into the bucket.

The panicked squeal echoed, the floor rumbled, and Daniel gulped.

Keeping his head bowed low, he focused on scrubbing the floor, his inner voice praying that he go ignored by Cali.

When her towering presence shadowed him and her heavy thud crescendoed at his back, his mind whirred to figure out how he might have displeased her, and if such a transgression meant becoming recycled biomass.

“Turn, thrall.” Cali’s gentle voice dripped with contempt.

Daniel complied, picking himself up, but keeping his head lowered.

A harsh gut-wrenching crack followed, and a corpse fell before him. The bulging red features of the clone looked up at him, its bloodshot eyes almost popped from their sockets. Its face spoke of its confusion. For all his brawn, Cali shattered his chest in an instant, the result of a Virago showing what true strength was.

“Your slackness has been noted,” Cali said, “clean this mess up at once.”

Daniel watched Cali’s feet move away, and a wave of relief washed over him.

“And dispose of this corpse through the airlock,” she called out to him, “consider yourself fortunate that you are not viewed as equally expendable.”

Confident that the Virago was far removed from him, he loosed a sigh of relief and questioned why. Was it truly fortunate to continue living under the yoke of such women? His lot would never change.

He glared down at the corpse, feeling the guilt creeping in. Life for a man was ensuring you never caught the attention of a woman. Some clones were made too dumb to recognize that fact of life, and those more intelligent fought with the fact that such models sacrificed themselves obliviously to spare the others from that violent end.

But just a little longer, never long enough. Daniel loved the man for they both shared in the struggle of a cruel and unjust life, but he resented him for his stupidity and for the remorse he left others to grapple with. He felt powerless to prevent the clone’s death, but the accursed woman gifted enough intellect to recognize the futility of resistance.

A clone's lot was to die. The Viragos decided on the appointed hour.

—————————————

He lounged in a gel chair too big for him, fighting off the stabbing pains that came with hauling a corpse to the airlock.

With another of his partners eradicated on a whim, he found quiet companionship within the bridge from the white noise hum of the reactor, the flickering alphanumerics upon the holographic displays situated at the various command consoles, and the projection view of star-studded space cast onto metal.

The majesty of all the cosmic phenomena was stunted, considering he had to stand upright just to be able to peak over the command panel, but a half-view was better than no view he supposed. It would have been silly to think they would accommodate a man on a vessel specifically designed for the Viragos.

His emotions flipped between the binaric of being thankful for some consideration and then insulted that he had to take a step just to scramble onto the chair.

Still, with this vessel being designed for the Viragos, it gave him a lot more room to stretch his legs.

A click-hiss disturbed the peace; Daniel began counting the odds of his survival and gave his anxiety a chance to feast.

A thin slit of light invaded the bridge, and the boxed interior quaked with Cali’s approach. Her size and weight made what should have been a soft pitter-patter a dull thud, almost as if her bulk could have broken the floor panels and tested the structural integrity of the ship.

Daniel peeked behind his chair to see the Virago approaching, her amazonian frame bound tight in a dark skinsuit.

He wondered what it would have been like if she was vat born and how her beauty would be viewed through that aperture, but such thinking served no one - females were Viragos, tube spawns were men. If a woman was given life through such a method, he didn’t know of it.

What always struck him about the woman was their eyes. For Cali, this manifested as a preternaturally purple hue that emitted the faintest glow.

The only mundane thing could be her black hair fashioned into curtain bangs, but he wouldn’t put it past the Viragos to have some sort of genetic enhancement that gave them naturally luxurious locks. He thought such things to be petty, but if you had the power to make yourself look like Cali, why wouldn’t you take that extra step towards physical perfection?

His chair rattled as Cali drew near. She didn’t bother to acknowledge him as she flopped into her chair, her impressive bulk filling out its breadth. He knew better than to stare, but by the Imperatrix did the size of her trigger some animalistic fear to scraper away.

Cultured in a gravity well, Daniel would have classified himself from good clone stock - tall, broad-shouldered, a chin that could cut reinforced steel and a marvellous hairline - all signs of a fine pedigree, yet Cali outclassed him in size such that he only reached below her hip in height. Hell, her thigh was the same width as him, and he’d seen how a Virago could use that thickness to good effect. Once you see a woman punt a vat-born man with a powerful kick, the mind doesn’t dwell on the sensual when it witnesses a crumpled-up mess of what used to be a man.

He straightened and tried to show Cali that there wasn’t a chill creeping up his back.

She tapped on the command console before her, and a transparent screen and keyboard projected before her. Using some alphabet unknown to him and typing what might have well been an alien language, Cali’s face twisted into a scowl as she worked.

He guessed it to be some form of log. Whilst not being privy to the reasons he was selected for this expedition with a singular Virago, he assumed Cali kept an internal record stored on the Kharon. Given how far off the vessel strayed off the hyperlane network, transmitting any information back to the core worlds would have taken a few centuries to reach at the very least, so he assumed the Virago merely kept a diligent record of events.

It was a remarkable idiosyncrasy for a Virago given that they left such tasks to the menial variety they grew, but deep space travel wore down any mind, even if that mind belonged to a genetically empowered fifteen-foot-tall avatara modelled in the visage of the Imperatrix.

Once Cali finished typing, the projections flickered and winked out. She checked over the various instruments, scanned over the feedback that he couldn’t decipher, and said “We’ll be increasing our burn.”

Daniel nodded. He didn’t wish to tempt fate with any verbal acknowledgement. The last thing someone like Cali would want is to hold a conversation with a clone.

He gripped the gel and prepared himself for the gravitic strain of high burn. The increased burden wouldn’t impact Cali, as if physical law was somehow worried of a Virago’s ire and decided to let them skirt restrictions placed onto everyone else. Where Daniel would creak and groan from the pressure, requiring him to medicate the lingering aches or suffer any long-term consequences, Cali’s enhanced physiology circumvented any problems caused by high G.

Forced back into the comforting gel, Daniel watched the twinkling stars and vistas of cosmic dust swirl and bend. High burn messed with his vision, and he stifled his pained groans by biting his lip, wishing throughout the agonizing strain upon his body would finish soon.

Beyond his blurred view, he caught a few glimpses of Cali jogging her leg, drumming her finger on her command console, unaware or more likely uncaring to the torture subjected to Daniel by the manoeuvre.

The crushing pain receded and a thankful sigh passed Daniel’s lips. Aches wreaked havoc, but a diffusion of various chemicals would tend to that problem momentarily.

As he prepared to leave the crash chair, a black blot upon an orange sun appeared on the main screen; Cali couldn’t contain her ugly grin.

The Kharon streaked through the abyss ever closer. The blot encompassed more and more until it seemed a void claimed the star’s heart, leaving the vessel shadowed by its size.

Cali kept beaming that rictus grin whilst Daniel watched on dumbstruck, a tingle of fear plucking at his nerves. He wasn’t a stranger to orbital structures and how their leviathan-like mass consumed one’s view of the void, but this structure dwarfed any port or shipyards in the Imperatrix’s domain. Such a creation eclipsed those lesser platforms by such a staggering degree that it would be like comparing grit against a boulder.

Sensor information detailed its mass, diameter, the alloy composition of its liquid metal surface as well as the gravity well such a structure projected, only further amplifying his unease - something that huge shouldn’t exist. It conflicted with some part of his mind and that primordial sense of of size and scale given by nature.

“What is that thing?” His hushed whisper spoken out of awe and terror, not so much a question to the Virago beside him but to the universe.

Cali’s hands worked fast on the console and typed frantically into her log. “The Eightfold.”

Seeing the Virago absorbed by her work, Daniel didn’t inquire further. From the way she worked on the keyboard projection, logging the discovery of this Eightfold was of greater importance than satisfying the branching questions he had in his mind… such as how did Cali know this structure’s name?

Other problems cascaded in. Coming off the known hyperlane paths and translating into real space at the edge of this particular solar system meant Cali must have known of its existence beforehand, and this particular mission meant making sure the clones didn’t know about it.

Turbulence struck the Kharon, rocking both him and Cali. Warning symbols flashed, and red light soaked the bridge, but rather than look worried, the Virago appeared far too pleased with the vessel’s direct course towards the Eightfold.

From his view, it looked like falling into a black pit. The sun’s heavenly glow spilling around the Eightfold’s circumference disappeared, leaving them both soaked in sanguine and staring at the abyssal embrace of nothingness.

Claxons blared, the Kharon quaked, and Daniel’s grip on the crash couch tightened such that his fingers almost dug out chunks of the malleable material.

Cali crossed her legs, folded her arms, and waited.

Daniel gritted his teeth, and recounted hyperlane timings in his head, steeling his nerves by focusing on everything but the dark infinite consuming them, the rising crescendo of the straining hull and petulant whine of the engine, and the visage of a Virago whose towering physique grew all the more stark when cast in the contrast of dark shadows and red highlights.

She waved her hand and the outside lights flicked on. The monitor screen displayed glittering ice crystals drifting above a sea of dull gold, still and unmoving.

A current took the sea, swirling around until a depression formed at its centre. The Kharon shuddered and then was pulled into the vortex, drifting through the violent whirlpool.

Daniel fought the unease welling in his gut. Just what was this Eightfold and why was Cali so interested in it? She hadn’t taken any precautionary measures, like deploying an emergency beacon in case some problem befell the Kharon as they veered closer.

He swallowed a lump in his throat. Cali knew this place, and it excited her.

The Kharon sailed through the open space as the gold raged around them. From the sensory readings, a fleet of ships could fit through the opening created for them.

Descending further into the whirlpool, a white circle came into view. Within a few moments, the Kharon slipped through, leaving the golden sea behind and plunging the vessel into the middle of a raging blizzard. Amber warnings appeared on the monitors noting the sudden drop in temperature as the occupants were somehow blind to the tempest before them.

Cali tapped on her command console. “We’ve entered into the Eightfold’s artificial atmosphere.” Her eyes flicked from her screen to the display before them. “It appears to be dragging us to a landing pad nearby. Make yourself ready, clone.”

The storm killed any chance of visually identifying a landing zone, but that was the least of Daniel’s concerns.

What sort of architectural and engineering lunacy compelled the creators of the Eightfold to have a snowstorm of all things as a weather system? The water such a structure as big as the Eightfold wasted to create this effect could be used to sustain the populations upon a dozen orbital platforms or frontier worlds. The energy requirements alone meant whatever reactor the Eightfold had would have been immense and far beyond even the most advanced systems within the Imperatrix’s domain.

Cali kept jogging her leg, her rising excitement unable to be contained. Daniel remained glued to his seat, fearing that moving would break the Virago’s trance and incur her wrath.

A grey edifice emerged from the mist - a flying buttress with its arch connecting to some grander structure still obscured by the blizzard. The column extended ever downward until it was lost to the white void.

Bile ran riot in Danie’s gut, and an infernal lump in his throat refused to budge.

Cali worked once more on the command console before turning off the display, leaving them both staring at a flat surface rather than the megalithic construction.

Despite the Kharon still being in motion, Cali pushed herself out of the seat, dashed towards the exit, and disappeared into the hallway beyond.

Time dripped by. Daniel kept himself still, refusing to budge, fearful that any movement from his chair would invite death. He focused on the hum of the drive, the rattle and groan of the bulkheads, the faint hues of the holographic displays, anything to distract himself from that wretched leer on Cali’s features.

It kept reappearing every time he blinked as if it were burned into his retinas.

A heavy thunk and rumble broke him out of his reverie.

They landed on the Eightfold.