In reality, of course, Jack was merely a boy gone to war too young. Unable to cope with the realities, he turned to drink. He rarely took shelter during bombardments because he was too [bad word] to stand. And it was his captain that slew the behemoth, while Jack hid like a coward. But heroes have been made out of less, and in the end, he died well.

And it was in this manner that the civil war raged on for thirty years. The space-pirate crew of the Aurora, known as the Mechanisms, had been watching all this time, fascinated, for when you are immortal a good war is a very pleasant distraction indeed. But it was at this point they discovered something interesting.

The Rose Reds were the most effective of the soldiers created from Rose’s genetic material, but they were not the [bad word] spoke of an early prototype known as the “Briar Rose” that had malfunctions, and slain everyone on the desert moon of Briar where she was being grown. But she was not dead.

As the Mechanisms discovered, instead, she slept at the heart of the defence grid that surrounded New Constantinople. The grid [bad word] of Thorn-class gun emplacements and was virtually impenetrable. And in its centre the Briar Rose slumbers, plugged into the system, her anger, her rage, her hatred and her fear fuelling the machines, and focusing their gun turrets.

And this bothered Nastya, engineer of the Aurora, so she went to the closest thing the ship had to a captain: Jonny D’Ville.

NASTYA
 Jonny, we’re not going to argue about this.

JONNY
 I don’t understand it, Nastya. We’ve been watching billions die for the last three decades and we’ve been having a great time!

NASTYA
 Yes, I know, I know.

JONNY
 And now you want to go white night over a science project with a broken snooze button? I don’t buy it.

NASTYA
 Well, you see Jonny, that is because I have not been telling you the whole story. It is not actually me who [bad word]  It is Aurora. Our starship.

JONNY
 [bad word] the ship!

NASTYA
 I do.

JONNY
 Ew.

NASTYA
 Anyway, Jonny, I am merely informing you out of courtesy. You see I have already asked Brian to lay in the coordinates.

JONNY
 Brian?! That insubordinate piece of brass!

NASTYA
 Yes I know. And we are on our way.

JONNY
 Well, I suppose that there’s no real danger. To the ship or us.

NASTYA
 No, there isn’t.

JONNY
 And it has been a while since we had any really good violence.

NASTYA
 It has indeed.

JONNY
 Alright. Let’s go.